Chapter 19: Chapter 19. Offensive Magic (1)

The sea breeze was cool.

After making sure no one was around, I closed my eyes, then opened them again.

I can sense the elements.

Countless polyhedra appeared over the seaside scenery, which had looked perfectly ordinary a moment before.

I could now see the various elements that existed in nature.

Among those, the fire elements are… regular tetrahedra.

Being by the sea didn’t mean there were no fire elements.

They existed even in the seawater.

The presence of fire elements didn’t mean there were actual flames burning there, after all.

Draw the power of fire… from those regular tetrahedra.

I constructed a spell formula in my head.

Combining what I’d learned in class, what I’d taught myself from the textbook, and… the advice Professor Horizon had given me.

Countless pieces of formula language came together in my mind, completing the spell formula.

Construct the formula… project the formula.

I projected the formula in my head into the real world.

The regular tetrahedra scattered along the shore began to vibrate, and their energy gathered in front of my hand.

Create a sphere of flame.

Boom!

With an explosive roar, a mass of flame the size of a person appeared.

Last time, I’d created a sphere large enough to swallow two or three people, but this time, applying Horizon’s advice let me control its size.

“Ah…”

Then the sphere of flame in front of my hand began rolling forward, quite literally like a ball.

“…!”

Splash!

It finally fell into the sea and vanished completely in a cloud of steam.

“Phew.”

I wiped the sweat from my forehead and looked around.

Fortunately, there was still no one nearby.

Just making a lump of fire isn’t enough, after all.

There was no point in simply creating a large sphere of flame.

Only when I could launch it and hit an enemy would it become the offensive spell Fireball.

If I want to fight monsters, I need to be able to launch my spells properly.

That was a separate skill from drawing energy out of the elements to create fire.

The Fundamentals of Elemental Studies textbook did cover it briefly, but reading that alone hadn’t been enough to learn it.

So I went looking in the library… but didn’t find much.

Apparently, the libraries open to first-years had very few books on magic for actual combat.

I’m starting to think…

I’d had a vague suspicion for some time, but it seemed access to combat magic was restricted to keep just anyone from learning it.

Outside the academy, the only books in circulation were general-interest works that barely scratched the surface. Even the bookstores near the academy had nothing covering practical techniques.

It seemed they kept a tight rein on who could learn it.

Have they made it so you can only learn through formal education?

The libraries for upperclassmen might have relevant material… but I couldn’t enter those yet.

This isn’t easy.

I tried again, but the sphere of flame failed to fly properly. It simply rolled off and crashed into the shore.

“…”

But I wasn’t particularly disappointed.

If anything… I was enjoying myself.

Shall I try again?

I felt as though I might be getting the hang of it.

I created another sphere of flame.

---

Monday afternoon.

A lecture on Basic Magical Combat was underway in the first-year top class’s classroom.

The lecturer was Professor Inies of the Elemental Department, a woman in her thirties with the haughty air of a queen.

“Greenhorns like you can only manifest magic directly in front of your hands.”

Holding a pointer, Inies spoke in an icy voice.

“Whether you create fire or ice, the formula you project takes effect in front of your outstretched hand. What should you do if you want to attack an enemy with that magic? Hold the fire or ice in your hand and swing it at them? Or wind up your arm and throw it?”

Without waiting for an answer, Inies shook her head.

“You are mages. You use a formula to launch your magic and hit the enemy.”

She raised two fingers.

“I’ll teach you two methods. One is throwing, and the other is shooting.”

Throwing and shooting.

The concepts seemed familiar and unfamiliar at once.

“To compare them to conventional weapons, think of throwing as throwing a stone or a spear, and shooting as using a bow or a crossbow.”

Inies moved her left hand, and illusions of a fist-sized stone and a spear appeared in the classroom.

Then she moved her right hand, and a bow and a crossbow appeared as well.

“Throwing stones and spears, versus bows and crossbows… What is the difference between the two? Anyone care to answer?”

Her gaze swept across the classroom.

Perhaps her voice was too chilly, because no one dared raise a hand.

“You there. The red-haired girl in the back row.”

“Ah, yes!”

Unlucky enough to be singled out, Milia hurried to her feet.

“Your name.”

“M-Milia Morpheus.”

“Then answer the question. What’s the difference?”

“You throw stones and spears… and shoot bows and crossbows.”

“A ten-point answer. Sit down.”

Milia sat down, looking ready to cry.

“The red-haired boy beside her.”

“Yes, Professor.”

This time, her older brother Karis had been chosen.

“I’m Karis Morpheus.”

“Just answer the question.”

“When you throw a stone or a spear, you’re throwing something with greater mass than an arrow. That means its power…”

“Five points. Sit down.”

He’d answered more calmly than Milia, but apparently it wasn’t what Inies wanted to hear.

“The blond boy next to him, who’s been nodding off.”

“Ah, yes!”

Kane jerked in surprise and hurriedly stood.

“Your name?”

“Kane Trigger!”

“Wipe the drool from your mouth and answer.”

Inies fixed him with an icy gaze.

“‘Throwing,’ as with stones and spears, and ‘shooting,’ as with bows and crossbows… What is the biggest difference?”

At the question, Kane first wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

Then he answered calmly.

“Well, isn’t it the aiming?”

Aiming.

The moment he said it, a smile appeared on Inies’s lips.

“Eighty-five points, Kane Trigger.”

“Thank you.”

The other students looked at him in admiration.

Kane wiped away the rest of his drool and sat down, perfectly unruffled.

“Fundamentally, you cannot ‘aim’ a thrown stone or spear. By aiming, I mean using reference points on the weapon to establish the direction and distance to your target.”

Throwing stones and spears also involved sending a weapon toward the enemy, but unlike with a bow or crossbow, you didn’t use the weapon itself to aim.

“With a bow or crossbow, however, you attack while aiming the weapon at the enemy. That allows you to hit even distant enemies accurately. Think of this as the distinction between ‘throwing’ and ‘shooting’ in offensive magic.”

As she spoke, Inies held both hands out to her sides.

Magic manifested an instant later.

“I now have a ball of fire in my right hand and an arrow of fire in my left.”

“…!”

The students caught their breath at the instantly cast elemental magic.

“Suppose I ‘throw’ this sphere of flame at a distant enemy. Beyond a certain distance, its accuracy drops sharply. But if I aim this arrow of fire carefully and ‘shoot,’ I can hit even a distant enemy without difficulty.”

“Oh…”

“Of course, we don’t peer through physical sights when launching magic. Instead, we add an aiming formula. It takes more work, but the accuracy is far better.”

Shooting was more accurate than throwing.

Understanding this, the students nodded.

“But shooting is not always better.”

“…!”

“As I just said, shooting requires an aiming formula, which makes it more involved. Naturally, it takes longer and places a greater burden on the mage.”

Inies flicked the fingers of her left hand, and the arrow of fire vanished.

“Throwing requires a simpler formula than shooting, making it less taxing to use. And…”

This time, she moved her right hand, and the sphere of flame flew over the students’ heads.

Then it spread outward with a bang.

“Argh!”

“Aaah!”

“Stop making such a fuss. It didn’t fall on your heads.”

As Inies said, the exploding sphere hadn’t set our hair on fire.

It had merely swept across the entire classroom ceiling.

“For magic with a wide area of attack, like this, you can simply throw it without an aiming formula. It can inflict damage even without a direct hit.”

“Oh…”

“Leaving out the aiming formula also makes it easier to add formulas that improve things like power or effective area. So…”

A ball of fire appeared in her right hand, and a spear of ice in her left.

“With something like this sphere of flame, you can ‘throw’ it toward a group of enemies and burn a wide area. But if you throw a spear of ice like this, it will merely shatter and scatter shards of ice around it. You should aim properly and ‘shoot’ it to pierce an enemy’s vital point.”

The formula had to suit the nature of the magic.

As they grasped this important principle, the students nodded repeatedly.

“Professor.”

One student raised a hand to ask a question.

“Are throwing and shooting the only two ways to hit an enemy with magic?”

“No.”

“What other ways are there, then?”

“You couldn’t use them even if you knew.”

Inies’s reply was sharp and cold, but she answered all the same.

“The third method is called ‘guidance.’”

“Guidance…”

“It requires an entirely different formula from throwing or shooting. It’s quite difficult, so don’t even dream of trying it. I won’t be teaching it in this course, either.”

With that, Inies tapped her pointer against her palm.

“For now, learn throwing and shooting. I’ll teach you enough to keep you from starving wherever you end up, so work your hardest to learn it. Understood?”

“Yes!”

“The competition for new students is in three weeks. Practice hard so you can successfully throw or shoot a spell by then.”

“Yes, Professor!”

“Then let’s begin learning the formulas in earnest.”

As the students answered enthusiastically, Inies began writing on the blackboard.

There was so much to write that the blackboard scarcely seemed big enough… and the students realized that mastering offensive magic would be no easy task.

---

The next morning.

Senia had risen early as usual and was out running.

She made a habit of running for at least an hour every morning to build her stamina.

Throwing, shooting… They’re such difficult concepts.

Running along the deserted path, she sighed.

I kept reviewing last night, but I still didn’t understand any of it. It’s too difficult.

Senia had managed to create a sphere of flame quickly during their last elemental studies practical lesson.

But she couldn’t begin to imagine launching it by throwing or shooting.

Most of the other students were probably in the same position.

Magic really is hard…

Her confidence faltered a little.

But she immediately shook her head.

I can’t let myself think like this.

Determined to clear her mind of distracting thoughts, Senia picked up her pace.

Today, she planned to run along the shore and collect herself.

“…?”

But when she reached the eastern coast, she heard a loud noise from somewhere.

It sounded a little like crashing waves, but something was odd.

What’s that?

Was someone using magic for construction work?

Senia cautiously approached the source of the noise.

And then…

“Ah…!”

A gasp escaped her.

There on the quiet shore… Eriol was ‘throwing’ an enormous sphere of flame far out to sea.