Chapter 310

Chapter 310 Strongest Sage, Suggests Advice

"That was a good practice . Is that illusion magic an original work?"

"It is, yes . At first we were using rocks and stuff as targets, but once we started training with discovering targets first . . . I thought that kind of magic would be nice, so I made it . What do you think?"

"Ah . It"s pretty good . . . Is there any reason why the illusions are slower than demons though?"

"That one"s . . . Because of our lack of expertise . We"d like it to be as fast as the real demons, but it"s quite difficult to get right . . . "

Meirad showed me one of the magically augmented lumps of metal .

There are traces of trials and errors from attempts to raise its speed on it .

True, magic that enable high speed long distance, and complex movements are hard .

It"s close to the territory of archers" 『Homing Wired Enchant』 even .

Demons aren"t as fast as an arrow, so that much precise control is unneeded . . . but the ability to activate augment magic remotely means a pretty complex spell formula .

Not that you can"t learn it from the Second Academy textbooks, but you need to be pretty skilled to construct one .

As I was thinking that, Ruli fetched a pen and a piece of paper before drawing a magic circle on it .

"Err . . . How about you do this part, like this? I"m sure it"d at least get as fast as flying demons!"

The part that governs motion has been rearranged, greatly raising its speed .

That"ll afford a speed rivaling that of a demon"s flight indeed .

"That"s a good formula . . . You"d gain more speed with it yeah . "

"Ah, creating a high speed motion spell formula on the spur of the moment just like that . . . I"ve heard about how great Ruli-san is from augmenters . . . and it really shows . . . "

"It"s Mathi-kun that"s amazing! I was taught by Mathi-kun himself, so, you know!"

Ruli puffed out her chest .

. . . Magic circles aren"t so simple that you could get to this point just from my teaching though .

Ruli uses any free time she has to think up ways to construct magic circles and carry out experiments .

Her efforts have paid off in the form of her ability to make magic circles like this .

But . . . It might be not be practical to employ this magic circle .

"How long should we maintain this magic circle?"

"Umm . . . Cast time is around 40 seconds at most, so 40 seconds it is!"

"I figured it would take that long . "

You don"t have to always beat the demon targets in a practice .

In the battle pattern written on the textbook, what"s most important is to create a situation where you restrain the demon flying in the air where you can shoot at it all you want .

Nevertheless, 40 seconds are needed .

Ruli"s magic circle consumes a lot of mana in exchange for speed .

It"s an inescapable trade off if you want speed with augment magic . . . they"d need some pretty big magic stones to hold 40 seconds with that magic circle .

Even if they"ve been getting a lot of magic stones from dungeon after power up . . . Obtaining valuable large magic stones for training would be tough .

The magic stones embedded in lumps of metal for the illusion magic are quite big themselves . . . but even then, it would last less than 10 seconds at their size .

"Ah . . . Right there"s not enough mana for 40 seconds . . . I guess bigger magic stones aren"t really a feasible option?"

"Yes . We can get our hands on magic stones that are the size we have now from the school dungeon . . . But any bigger than these are strategic resources so . . . "

"Then how about you do it like . . . Let"s add more mana sources!"

Ruli added a new magic circle .

A magic circle to draw power from three magic stones in addition to the main one where the spell formula is .

With this they can maintain 40 seconds operating time even without changing the quality of magic stones .

" . . . This will work right?"

Ruli asked me after uniting the magic circles .

She"s already confident enough when it involves normal magic circles . . . But we rarely ever use magic circles that need more than two magic stones in real combat after all .

Even Ruli isn"t that experienced in that .

"I think it will work no problem . Nice formula . "

Ruli"s formula isn"t that efficient in term of mana consumption .

It can probably be squeezed down a bit more by revising the formula .

But this formula has been made to be really easy to create in exchange for better efficiency .

It would turn out more complex otherwise .

Even Second Academy would have only been able to create and maintain one or two at most if that were the case .

That may be fine for real combat, but for training, magic circles that you can reliably construct are better than the more efficient ones .

I don"t know if she had all those in mind when she made it though .

"Yay! I got Mathi-kun to praise me! . . . Kind of feel like I could make it more efficient and decrease the magic stones though . . . "

"We can easily procure four magic stones no problem! Thank you very much!"

Meirad copied the magic circles as he said that .

After confirming that . . . The time for meeting drew near .

"That"s all the advice I can give you for now . It"s about time we head to the meeting place . "

"Thank you very much! . . . I"ll pull all-nighters to quickly learn these magic circles and the [Spatial Mana Slow]!"

Meirad saluted me and Ruli .

"You better not, staying up all night isn"t actually good efficiency-wise . Occasional sessions got its merits for practicing long expeditions, but it"s gonna have the opposite effect if your goal is to learn new things . "

"I understand!"

Afterward we headed to the meeting place to check the rest of the doc.u.ments .

From what I"ve seen in their training, the Second Academy units are diverging from ordinary army in a good way .

Ordinary army would have uniform weapons and move in unison as determined by common tactics .

However, these Second Academy units achieve unity while employing their own unique tactics .

That"s exactly what"s written on my textbooks .

But executing it in reality is quite difficult .

Meirad and the students are growing at twice the rate I originally antic.i.p.ated .

They will definitely become stronger if they just keep at it .