Ch.7773 – Competitive Spirit

Mana is never a static substance.

Some say mana is a tool that materializes ideals.

Others say it’s like a wheel that carves out destiny.

But my way of defining mana was a bit different.

Though it might sound more barren and plain than their expressions, I’d like to call mana a thread of probability.

Another word for probability is possibility.

We pull a single thread from that skein to determine the future.

For example, when clouds gather, it might rain, snow, or lightning might strike.

A farmer whose crops are about to wither would wish for a moderate shower.

To draw out these possibilities, we study mathematics, observe natural phenomena, and weave the fabric of the future with the thread of mana and the loom of magic circles.

But mana is a skein of thread that moves on its own.

Just as it’s harder to fix the beating heart of a living person than to repair the engine of a stationary car, the same applies to mana.

My master once shared the “marble on a bed” analogy, which I strongly related to.

A marble placed on a bed won’t move without external force, but the moment we sit on it, a slope forms toward the center, causing the marble to roll around and approach us.

We can understand that the marble rolls because of the slope, but the marble itself doesn’t know why it started moving.

Though mana isn’t a sentient being, it moves incessantly and irregularly like a tadpole in this chaotic world.

This fact made it difficult for us to inject the appropriate amount of mana into magic circles.

[5.4]

“Oh, you defended quite well this time.”

“Honestly, I don’t even know why it scored high. This is so hard…”

After a dozen attempts, Yuna was completely exhausted and banged her head on the desk.

She tried injecting mana throughout the entire circle and also just in the center.

Following my advice, the stronger she made it, the higher the overall efficiency of the magic circle became, but seeing occasional scores of 2 or 3 suggested this wasn’t always the case.

“NoName, why don’t you try?”

Yuna handed me the model magic circle.

“What efficiency level should I aim for?”

“Wait, you can control that?”

“Yes.”

“I see…”

Yuna’s expression darkened as she had been trying her hardest to get a high score.

I felt uncomfortable, like I was crushing a child’s dream.

Her lips were pouting, making it obvious to anyone that Seo Yu-na was upset.

Sigh, as the adult, I should comfort her.

“Yuna, listen to me. I’m not better at magic because I’m more talented than you. It just seems that way because I currently know more about magic than you do.”

“What’s the difference…”

“There is a difference. You’ve only been learning magic for a year, right? I’ve been doing it much longer.”

“How much longer?”

“About 20 years?”

“Stop lying…!”

“Okay, about 5 years. So if you study hard and learn everything I know, you’ll definitely become a better mage than me.”

It’s natural for reincarnated individuals to appear genius-like when young.

But that doesn’t guarantee they’ll remain geniuses into adulthood.

Just like how I could dominate 3rd Prince Hiasen or the hero Klaus in swordsmanship when they were young, but eventually they caught up in terms of skill.

I instilled confidence in Yuna that her magical aptitude was second to none compared to any friend her age.

“So I’ll roughly explain what this magic is about. Look here.”

The number of circles doesn’t necessarily indicate the strength of magic.

However, higher-circle magic tends to produce higher output because the longer and more complex mana circuits offset efficiency degradation.

Magic is really just a matter of naming, but in this case, I would call it “Heat Transfer-Coil” magic.

The heat transfer magic I used earlier to slightly warm Yuna’s head could be cast by selectively choosing one of three methods: conduction, convection, or radiation.

However, this 2-circle magic was somewhat unique in that it used electromagnets and coils to transfer heat.

To explain in detail, one would need to understand “Ohm’s law,” “Resistance Loss,” “Skin Effect,” “Eddy current,” and so on, but I kept quiet to avoid overwhelming Yuna.

Since it’s fundamentally heat magic and not vector magic, injecting more mana produces stronger output.

Due to the scale effect, magic with stronger output tends to show higher detection values as the relative inefficiency decreases.

However, the reason efficiency varied depending on where mana was injected was because the magic circle itself had different resistance values set.

So if 150kE was optimal when injecting from the north when viewed from the front, 200kE might be the optimal solution from the south.

For such low-dimensional magic, whether it’s 150 or 200 doesn’t really matter, so you could just ignore efficiency and use it anyway. But when you start dealing with units of 100,000 or 1,000,000, you can’t ignore the injection stage.

I simply sent about 170kE of mana to the center of the magic circle.

Beep-

[9.9]

The analysis showed that the magic was cast at near-theoretical maximum efficiency threshold.

It seemed to be rounded to the first decimal place.

If calculated properly, the efficiency would be around 99.17%.

“How… how did you do it in one try?”

Yuna asked in an astonished voice.

“You can do it too. Would you like to try injecting 171.4kE of mana?”

“I can’t be that precise.”

“I’ll help you, so give it a try.”

Just like when we interlocked fingers in the bathroom before, this time I placed my palm over the back of Yuna’s hand.

Human skin has various sensory receptors, among which Merkel’s discs that detect touch and Meissner’s corpuscles that detect vibration are particularly abundant in the palm.

By interlocking like this, I could easily tell how much mana she could inject by the degree of hand trembling or the number of tingling sensations each time she drew from the skein of mana.

The human hand is such a sensitively developed organ that it can even directly engage with magic cast by others.

“Your hand is really soft. Like baby skin.”

“That’s rich coming from you, NoName.”

“We’re almost out of time. Let’s hurry.”

“I’m not responsible if I faint now.”

Yuna summoned all her strength, drawing out her last remaining mana.

The mana she unconsciously tinted red slowly flowed from her hand.

“You’ve passed 150 now.”

“A little more…?”

“Slowly now, we can’t overflow.”

I could feel the blood flowing through the capillaries in her hand and even her pulse.

Mana injection is an irreversible process, so once injected, it can’t be retrieved.

Normally, it would be good to fill it generously, but since we were only focusing on efficiency here, I asked her for precise control.

“It’s exactly 170 now. Just one more drop.”

“One drop? How? I don’t know how to do that!”

“You can do it. Just trust your instinct.”

“I really don’t know how…!”

Finally, Yuna squeezed her eyes shut and curled all four fingers.

She attempted the creative approach of placing just her pinky finger on the magic circle.

She instinctively realized that reducing the contact area would reduce the injection amount.

“Perfect!”

Beep-

“I can’t look at the result! You tell me instead!”

“Are you sure you don’t want to see? If you don’t look quickly, it’ll reset!”

I pushed the box toward Yuna so she could see it clearly.

It would surely be a result she’d be satisfied with.

[10.0]

* * *

Teacher Jacqueline Carroll watched with pleasure as the children enthusiastically participated in the performance assessment.

The goal of familiarizing children with the ‘injection’ stage through models with the same structure as magic circles seemed to have been achieved early.

It was a simple assessment where they just had to try various methods of injecting mana into the magic circle and record the process on paper, but the box with quantitative measurements from 0 to 10 unnecessarily ignited the students’ competitive spirit.

‘Who will record the highest number?’

In Cephiron Academy’s 2nd grade Class A, there was a quiet competition under the implicit agreement that, during this time, the child who cast the magic circle with the highest efficiency was the most outstanding.

It all started with Kim Han-gyeol’s shout.

“Look! I scored higher than the teacher! 8.7! It’s 8.7!”

Han-gyeol shrugged his shoulders, basking in the envious gazes of the children.

Random numbers appeared when mana was injected recklessly.

But if a high number appeared by chance, it instantly drew the attention of the entire class.

For second-grade elementary school children, this was an irresistibly sweet fruit.

“I got over 9!”

Lee Ha-ru showed her box and stuck out her tongue.

The fact that this was a performance assessment had already been forgotten in everyone’s minds.

Five minutes remained.

The record that seemed unbreakable was broken once again by Yoon Si-hoo.

“Everyone, look! Yoon Si-hoo got 9.4!”

Although Si-hoo himself didn’t seem very interested in this competition, the classroom became chaotic as many children jumped out of their seats to check.

Some had already given up on the competition, while others still held onto a small hope in the remaining time.

And just before the bell rang for break time, Seo Yu-na stood up abruptly, pushing her chair back, and held her box high in the air.

“10.”

She emphatically announced a single number. But at this moment, it was far from an ordinary number.

“I won.”

Yuna gave Si-hoo a faint smile. It was clearly the smirk of a victor.