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!"

Ruli presented a revised version of the magic circle augmented on the lump of metal .

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 documents .

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 anticipated .

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