Some strange people made an enigmatic mastermind move, leaving me completely behind as they left.
They pulled off some seriously confusing moves, and rather than feeling frustrated, I’m mostly bewildered. What was with those people who had the atmosphere of a mastermind but only so-so intelligence and skill? It’s actually kind of scary.
Well, that level of craziness isn’t limited to America; there are people like that in Japan too. It’s probably just everyday stuff in L.A.!
Since they didn’t come at me directly, I’ll just let it slide for now.
More importantly, I’ll focus on the school training exercise.
“Let’s go! ‘Heat Hauser!'”
The fireball Zess released from his palm arced through the air in a perfect trajectory.
It seems like the fireball, which has no mass, is being controlled by applying the texture of a mass projectile to it.
If it were shot in a straight line at a constant speed, it would be hard to control and dangerous.
It’s more useful as a weapon if the projectile explodes upon hitting the ground rather than going beyond the target range.
Plus, it’s easier to calculate this way.
You just shoot it at this speed, it slows down under gravity, hits the ground, and then explodes when it touches something, ending the whole process.
Even a beginner programmer could write a simple trajectory calculation program like this.
Ah, and if an ordinary person tried to make it fly straight endlessly, it would keep draining their magic power until they run out, right? You can forcibly stop it, but it’s not something you can do easily.
In that sense, this magic system is quite practical as a weapon since all the calculations are done once it’s released, leaving it outside the caster’s control.
And then, it hits its target.
“Gyagaaaaa!!!”
The ogre exploded after being hit by the fireball.
Just as its name suggests, it was like an artillery explosion. The whole body was blown away—game over.
Speaking of ogres, they’re a step above orcs in humanoid monsters.
A three-meter-tall creature with an iron body.
A knight, who trains hard in non-magical combat, is about on par with a single orc, but an ogre? Several knights would need to risk their lives just to stand a chance.
And this was done in one shot. The power balance of mages in this world is insane.
“Hey, Zess! Calm down; it’s just a training exercise! You’re going too wild!”
“Holman! You fight too!”
“I’m defending here! ‘Obsidian Wall!'”
Holman raised an obsidian barrier to block the incoming monsters.
“‘Zero Gravity,’ ‘Offline’… alright, I’m outta here! Floating through the air is pretty fun!”
Hector manipulated vectors to cancel out gravity and flew through the air.
“Hector! We’re short on hands! Fight!”
“Ugh… I’m more of an assassination magic specialist, so I’m not really suited for front-line combat…”
“Fight, or you’ll die!”
“Ah, fine! Just keep this between us, okay? ‘Blood Confuse!'”
“Gyagagaaa!!!”
Monsters started dying, bleeding from every pore.
He reversed the flow of their blood for just an instant, causing their hearts and blood vessels to rupture, making them bleed out from every orifice.
“Whoa, impressive.”
I gave my hardworking classmates some praise.
“Fight, you cause of all this trouble!!!”
Hmm?
“You’re the one who dragged us out to the mountains, aren’t you?!”
“They say there’s a dragon in these mountains? Yeah, right. Sounds like a hoax to me.”
“I just want to go home already!”
Ah, right.
According to rumors, a dragon appears in these mountains.
It’s a dungeon in the shape of a mountain, and the boss is supposed to be a dragon. That old man from the Carenheit family told me that.
So, I suggested we at least take a look at the dragon before heading back.
“You guys agreed, didn’t you?”
“You threatened to kill us if we didn’t…”
“That was a joke.”
“When has your ‘I’ll kill you’ ever been a joke?!”
Fair enough.
“By the way, aren’t you going to use your Delete Magic? I taught you how, didn’t I?”
“That… It’s too perfectly constructed. All your disciples have created counter-magic for it, so it’s actually unusable.”
Oh really?
It’s gotten to that Zoltor-like level, huh?
“Well then…”
“I’ll tell you now: no one can block yours. When you cast magic, you introduce random variables into the wavelength and structure, making counter-magic completely ineffective.”
That’s just basic fault tolerance… You naturally build redundancy into a program to account for it being blocked, right?
Casting magic on someone is like transmitting data over the internet.
You need to break through the firewall (counter-spell) and somehow deliver your data (spell) to the target server (their body).
On the other hand, mental spells, for example, are delicate, and even a small firewall can interfere with them, making them harder to cast. If you increase redundancy by adding more data, it takes longer to transfer, and by the time it’s done, the target’s mental state might have changed, leading to a timeout. So, it’s tricky.
Ah, right, wasn’t there talk about Adon’s magic country having mental manipulation magic?
They have an unnerving number of ‘dolls’ with destroyed minds, so they probably have some kind of powerful mental magic… Oh, is that what those ‘White Light’ people were doing earlier?
Things are starting to connect. Not that I care much.
“Well, we’ll deal with that later. First, we need to focus on writing proper spells.”
“I think we’re doing fine when it comes to killing monsters… Now! ‘High Frequency!’ Hyaaaah!”
Oh, he’s using high-frequency waves on his sword to cut down monsters. Nice.
Anyway, this Vége mountain is the source of all this trouble—an impassable dungeon full of monsters.
The boss monster: a dragon.
I really want to see it with my own eyes.
