Ch. 35

"It's been a week since I've seen all of you! You've all reviewed what we covered last class properly, I trust?"

Linen Ford, the professor of Accumulation and Depletion.

He was the same professor who'd looked sheepish when I called him "big bro" during the scuffle with Professor Marey in the rooftop garden.

Holding that heavily twisted staff of his like before and looking over the students, he met my eyes and jumped in surprise, then came over.

"Huh? You're that student who got beaten up by that Marey brat back then, aren't you? But why is your face still in that state? Didn't you get treated?"

I'd noticed it before too, but his way of talking had a subtle knack for needling people.

To live up to his expectations, I made an even uglier face and spoke in a sarcastic tone.

"I did."

"You did? And it's still like that, even after treatment?"

"...Like what, exactly?"

"No, I mean, if you got treated, why is it still that... um... that is, today's lesson is..."

When I stared at him sullenly, he seemed to finally realize he was putting his foot in his mouth, and trailed off.

"Ahem, ahem! Everyone, open to page 135!"

'Wait... don't we usually continue from the last lesson? So why page 135? This is only the second class, and they covered up to page 134 in the first one?'

As I flipped through the book with a flustered expression, Professor Linen came over and looked at my book, which had no notes in it, and spoke.

"Come to think of it... I don't believe you attended last week's lesson."

By last week, he meant when I'd fainted during Professor Elin's class and missed it.

When I looked at Professor Linen with a face that finally understood, he asked me.

"Hmm... it says here you were hospitalized at the Order. Are you ill?"

"I'm not ill... I used magic wrong and ended up with an overload."

"An overload? Hohoho! In this day and age, to use so much magic as to get hospitalized from an overload through sheer brute ignorance, what a rare, romantic young man!"

He said it so warmly that for a moment I couldn't tell whether it was praise or an insult.

Judging by the fact that I felt bad, it wasn't praise.

"Then would you tell the students what it was like when you hit the overload?"

"My nose just started bleeding, and then I immediately passed out?"

"What? What on earth did you do to get such a severe overload!"

I guessed it was because I'd turned a Talent into magic.

No, wait, why didn't this old man know something everyone else already knew?

Professor Elin... I hadn't taken her for that kind of person, but had she been going around talking about me while discriminating between people?

"Hohoho! Well, I suppose it doesn't matter. In my class, we learn not only how to accumulate mana but also the stages of overload and how to withstand it, so it should actually be easier for you to understand."

He turned around, walked up to the blackboard, and began writing something.

"For the sake of the student who unavoidably couldn't attend last class, I'll briefly summarize what we learned and then proceed with today's material."

The professor, writing 'The Human Body, Mana Suited to Oneself' in a flowery hand, looked at me and spoke.

"Last time, we learned what you must absolutely know when accumulating mana in the body. Does everyone remember?"

Only a few students nodded at his question.

Covering 134 pages in a single day, it would be stranger if anyone remembered.

"It seems none of you remember very well. Ahem, ahem. As you use magic, you'll find that attributes you rely on as your main ones gradually form, one by one. And I told you that the biggest cause of those attributes being determined is the environment you grew up in."

"..."

"Some say that the attribute a human specializes in is determined from birth. But that is wrong!"

"..."

"In fact, statistically, more Fire attribute mages appear in desert regions, and more Water attribute mages near the sea. Just as with Mr. Lewin here, even Natural attribute mages, who are nearly nonexistent on the continent, can be encountered more often than you'd expect on the forest-thick Northern continent."

'Then which attribute is advantageous for me? It seems like I can just use any of them regardless of attribute.'

"However, being influenced by the environment you grew up in is only the biggest case; it's not that everyone's attribute is determined by where they grew up. For example, there are cases where a person using Water attribute magic in a desert region, or a terminally ill person awakening to Life magic, acquires an attribute through their own yearning, entirely unrelated to the environment."

'Yearning, huh...'

"In other words, a yearning that strong can sometimes become a miracle that ignores the environment."

So that was why Jane's cursed sword, [Call of Yearning], was called a miracle that went beyond the realm of cursed swords.

Well, it seemed she couldn't yet use it to that extent.

"Of course, there are cases where an entire family specializes in a single attribute, but I think this is because the members of that family grew up in one place and were influenced by their environment, not because of any difference in bloodline."

He said it was only his own opinion, but he couldn't have come to say this so easily.

It would be information organized only after he'd traveled through many regions, classified the specialized attributes, counted the numbers, and thoroughly investigated even the process by which they'd awakened to those attributes.

"And what matters here is that even if you absorb the same amount of mana, the final amount of mana accumulated differs depending on the attribute contained in the natural mana. Which brings us to this thought: 'If the environment I grew up in is so excellent for that trait that it determined my attribute, shouldn't I just train there for my whole life?'"

"..."

"But a human can't live in one place for an entire life, as you who have come here to be educated show. In that case, must we stay here and accept the loss?"

I was just thinking that, even so, there was nothing for it since you had to learn what you had to learn, when colorful mana burst from Professor Linen's hand and simple spells were completed.

[Flame]

[Water Droplet]

[Stone Fragment]

The spells he'd created were basic spells of Fire, Water, and Earth, known as the three major mainstream attributes of magic.

"Remarkably, after long research, humans have become able to classify attributes through the manifestation of magic, and using this, we've succeeded in developing a device that can turn a specific place into one strong in a specific attribute.

"If you use this, you can think of it as being able to accumulate mana into your body at a higher density than where you used to live. Of course, building such a device consumes at least a high grade Mana Stone, so it isn't something that can be done just anywhere, but this is the academy... a place that invests without hesitation when it comes to the students."

A Mana Stone of at least high grade; how many gold would that even be?

I'd handled transport missions up to intermediate grade Mana Stones, but from high grade upward the mages carried them personally, so I'd never even seen one and couldn't begin to imagine the price.

"However, before using the device, you must first properly figure out what your specialized attribute is. That's because there are often cases where the magic you thought was your main one turns out to have been used incorrectly."

Just as I was wondering how that was checked, Professor Linen turned his head and looked at me.

"So last class we had a session for identifying the attribute that suits you, and only Mr. Benjamin missed it. So come on out now and dip your hand into this bowl."

He called me to the front, took a vial of reagent from inside his coat, and began pouring it into a wide bowl.

[Specialized Attribute Detection Reagent]

Perhaps because mana was infused in the reagent, its name could be read like a Mana Stone's.

Since I had no idea what attribute I specialized in, my heart pounded a little.

If I could "edit" any magic whatsoever, might some special reaction occur that would astonish everyone?

"...?"

"..."

"Uh... why isn't there any reaction?"

He tilted his head, took out another bowl and poured in the reagent, then told me to dip my hand again, and once more I dipped my hand without a word.

"Strange? If there were even a little mana, there's no way this would show no reaction at all. Just in case, would you try using magic?"

Ah, now I understood why there was no reaction.

It only reacted if there was mana, and since I had none whatsoever, it wasn't changing.

Still, without residual mana I couldn't use magic... but just in case, should I try it on the reagent?

Crackle!

But the reagent seemed to be judged as something similar to a Mana Stone, so the spell didn't complete and only a small spark flew.

"Hm? What was that just now? Did you use magic? Try it once more."

When he told me to try again, I repeatedly Edited the reagent's name, and again and again only sparks flew.

"This is...! For now, go back to your seat. I'll let you know once it's clearly understood."

Yeah, a reaction like this must be something even a professor was seeing for the first time.

With a professor's pride on the line, it would be hard for him to say he didn't know.

"This class is truly unusual. To have two people whose attributes are hard to determine."

Saying so, the professor looked at Aria, and she, meeting his eyes, gave a sheepish smile.

Last week she must have taken part in this class, and the reagent had probably shown a Light attribute reaction.

But since this was still a time when the very category of Light attribute didn't exist, they likely hadn't been able to pinpoint which attribute she specialized in.

Was that why she'd pressed me so persistently earlier when I'd said I had a separate strong attribute?

"Alright, then we'll discuss the attributes of you two next time, and for now we can't delay any further, so let's proceed with the lesson. If you look at page 135..."

It was a pity not to learn what my specialized attribute was, but on the contrary, learning that I had so little mana in my body that I couldn't even react to the reagent let me think of other possibilities.

"In the lab, they thought the reason the formula doesn't react to the mana a person emits was that the formula had been placed on a sword, and they tried applying the method to the human body, but...

"To put the result simply, the formula was activated, but because the mana of the body and the mana of the formula collided, it ended up bursting on the spot, you could say..."

That was what Gary had said about enchantments when I was at the Tower.

He'd clearly said that applying an enchantment to the human body had ended in failure because the mana in the body and the mana in the formula collided.

But what about me, someone without a single handful of mana in my body?

What if, precisely because I had no mana, there was no collision, and enchanting was possible?

Even if it was possible, there was the problem that with no mana I'd have no way to activate an enchanted formula, but that was something I could solve when the time came.

Still, there was one big problem in checking all of this.

Among the mages around me, there was no mage with enough knowledge of living-body experimentation to carve an enchantment into my body.

There was Gary, who had some knowledge of enchantments, but given his personality he would absolutely oppose enchanting my body, so what I needed was someone with outstanding magical knowledge and whose humanity was shattered enough to experiment on living bodies without hesitation.

Actually, there was one mage who fit all of these conditions.

The Great Witch, Winter.

If it was her, the one who had kidnapped me when I'd dropped out of the academy and was wandering the streets before the regression, she might be able to complete an enchantment.