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“Mm-hm, even with this
magic, it looks like it could penetrate the knights’ armor. It is powerful
enough.” (Ruspede)
After saying this, the
professor glanced at the fifth-year students.
“Look at other people’s magic
and immediately increase the power of your own magic. It is not enough to
simply imitate. You have to devise your own way, just like them.” (Ruspede)
The professor nodded again
with a satisfied expression, then looked at me, saying, “Is there anything
you want to ask me?”
I was more concerned about
earth magic than fire magic, and it seemed to show in my expression.
“About what you did earlier,
building an [Earth Wall] and then changing it to a [Stone Wall], for the life
of me I can’t figure it out.” (Zack)
The professor asked with a
pleasant expression, “What about it?”
“I can use the magic of [Earth
Wall], but I think it takes a lot of magic power to make something that big.
And also that speed. Isn’t it the same with [Stone Creation], turning that much
volume of soil into stone would be difficult even with a very large amount of
magic power. It seemed to me that the professor had some special technique in
mind, but for the life of me I can’t figure it out.” (Zack)
The question I had was whether
there was some kind of device used to build the stone wall. No matter how
high-ranking a magician he may be. In terms of the absolute amount of magical power
“MP”, It is impossible to build a stone
wall of that size with my method. Perhaps it is a characteristic of his race as
an elf, but I could not see the value of his magic power. Even a first-rate
magician has at most four or five times as much magic MP as I do.
The professor kept an amused expression
on his face and asked, “You have a hypothesis, don’t you?” He asked
me.
I had a theory in mind, but
there were many things I could not fully explain. However, the professor was
not going to give me an honest answer unless I answered him, so I presented my
theory, which was partially lacking.
“There are still many parts I
don’t understand, but I have an idea. Creating matter with magic requires a lot
of magic power. But if it is a phenomenon, the amount of magic power consumed
can be reduced. The [Earth Wall] is probably made from the soil on the ground,
and if so, it leaves traces of the soil on the ground. As far as I can see,
there are no traces of soil around it, so I don’t know how the professor did
with it.” (Zack)
“ Hmmm. You have a good point of view. I can almost say that you are
right. What about [Stone Creation]?” (Ruspede)
“I think [Stone Creation] is a
similar method. …To begin with, [Stone Creation] is a magic that hardens soil
to create stone. Unlike the wall of soil, it only changes the nature of the
soil, so I think there must be some way to do it, but I also don’t understand
this one at all.” (Zack)
When I said this, the
professor asked Sharon, “What do you think Miss Jakes?” Sharon shook her
head, saying in a small voice, “I don’t know.”
The professor leads us to the charred
stone wall.
“Mr. Lockhart, make a
stone yourself.” (Ruspede)
I did as he said and made a
small stone from the soil on the ground and offered it to the professor.
He took it and picked up his
own stone that had fallen nearby.
“Look at them carefully.
I think you will immediately notice the difference.” (Ruspede)
The stone I made is like a
sandstone made of hardened sand, and if you hit the stones against each other,
they shatter rather easily. However, when I looked closely at the professor’s
stone, I saw that it was made of cement-like sand mixture and some kind of fine
substance.
I muttered, “Is this plaster?”
“You’re right. I was
thinking of something like plaster. To turn soil into stone, the usual way is
to harden it by making it stick together, but I’m using the image of coagulating
it as it solidifies.” (Ruspede)
I asked him if it was a matter
of creating a coagulant-like substance, which would consume a lot of magic
power.
“Not necessarily. I
compared the magical power to turn soil into stone and the magical power to
create a substance by coagulation, and compared which was greater. And the most
efficient one was the one that combined the image of solidifying and the image
of coagulation. It would take less than a tenth of the magical power of magic with
the image that simply solidifies soil.” (Ruspede)
I was impressed.
It is true that if the
proportion of coagulant is high like cement, it will consume a lot of magic
power. However, if it’s just an image of using something like glue as a small
amount of support, it shouldn’t consume that much magical power. Even so, if a
stone wall can be built with one-tenth of the current mana, it is quite
possible to build a castle wall faster.
I tried to create a stone with
the image that the professor had described.
As expected, it was not
one-tenth the amount, but the amount of magic power consumed was reduced to a
fraction of the current level.
“Amazing. But why is this
magic image not common?” (Zack)
The professor chuckled as if
he had just heard an interesting story.
“You’re really
interesting. I, you, and the chosen ones like Miss Jakes can probably remember
this image, but it’s hard for ordinary people to grasp this image. I wrote
something similar in a grimoire, but the general image is that stones are
hardened soil, or that soil is crushed stones. They can’t reproduce it as
easily as you did unless they began to believe otherwise.” (Ruspede)
It is true that biases are
something that cannot be easily dispelled. I myself often think so, but when it
comes to magic, I can understand it well by looking at Liddy.
Liddy is a wind attribute
magic user, but Sharon and I are good at [Swallow-Winged Blade – Swallow
Cutter]. She is good with the [Whirlwind Blade – Wind Blade], but her power is
reduced only when she forms it in the shape of a swallow. She has practiced a
lot, and she can even guide it, but even so, she can’t control it as finely as
Sharon and I can.
When I asked her why, she
replied that it was precisely her bias that were getting in the way. It is
difficult for her to imitate living things with magic. Liddy can easily imitate
tools with magic. This is probably because she assumes that magic is a weapon
and a tool.
Sharon, on the other hand, has
seen my magic at a very young age, so she doesn’t have that bias. Even my
Peltier effect magic was easy to replicate for her.
I asked him again about my
first question, how he had created the [Earth Wall].
“About that [Earth Wall] you
mentioned earlier. Can you do the same thing here by eliminating the bias?”
(Zack)
“Yes, it’s not that
difficult. It’s not that difficult, but since it’s a problem… Let’s make this your
homework. Mr. Lockhart, please get your thoughts together before the next
lecture. By the way, this is also in my book, but don’t ask Professor Elvine –
Liddy’s old friend, Kitely Elvine – about the book.” (Ruspede)
After that, I used magic to
the extent that I didn’t run out of magic power, and received the professor’s
advice.
Finally, the professor disposed
of the stone wall that he made.
“This is an application
of what I just said. If you imagine breaking down the material solidified…”
(Ruspede)
Saying this, he puts his hand
on the stone wall and casts [Sand Generation – Sand Creation] spell. Then the
solid stone wall turned into a pile of sand, just like the pile I had made in
the sandbox.
“Well, something you made
yourself can be easily broken down, though natural stone is a bit more
difficult.”
I almost dismissed the idea of
such a thing, but the magic of turning stone into sand has more uses than I
thought.
It can be used to dig tunnels
in rock piles, and if it can be partially converted, it can also be used to
process stone materials. Furthermore, it can be used to extract metal from
metal ores, and when cultivating farmland, if large stones can be converted
into soil, the labor required to cultivate the land will be considerably
reduced.
When I mentioned this to the
professor, he said.
“You are really interesting.
What kind of development process you would do to make that happen? It never
ceases to fascinate me.” (Ruspede)
He said that and laughed.
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