[V3C21] If Only There Was a Magic Just for Pretty Boys
Translated by Jodas 3: The Fateful BrothersAfter leaving Hütter’s classroom, Wren walked by himself to the Guidance Office’s workroom, located in the same First Spire: White Smoke.
He was a little nervous hearing he had to go here, but it was just a small room with a table and some chairs. Other than that, things that couldn’t be stored in the reference room seemed to be piled up here temporarily, so the walls of the room were covered in boxes of various documents.
“Come on in, take a seat over there.”
Röhm, who was already waiting inside, gestured for Wren to sit down.
As Wren sat in down in the chair, his heart refused to settle down. That he had been asked to take a private lesson by himself put him on edge.
He wasn’t sure if it mattered, but Wren’s grades in group lessons weren’t bad at all.
There was a huge variance in the Apprentice Mages’ grades, but among them, Wren was somewhat on the high-scoring side.
If you were to grade them purely by their test scores, then three people: the representative from the Classic School, Roswitha; the representative from the Modern School, Julius; and glasses-wearing Ella; stood out among the rest.
Wren would place himself in the group after them.
Those in the middle ranks of the grading scale all had topics they specialized in and topics they struggled with, so it was hard to rank them objectively, but Wren and Sophie the Shaman had the most well-rounded results.
The three adults; Rose, Oliver, and Sevil; varied wildly in their strong subjects, while the artisanal Rukiye and long-banged Gerald had even bigger weak spots.
Finally, competing for last place were Tia the Harpy, and Finn who grew up in the middle of nowhere.
(If we’re just talking about written exams, my grades aren’t that bad…… I bet the reason I got called out was that…… My mana reserves.)
Wren was the one with the lowest mana reserves out of the Apprentice Mages. All eleven of the others were at least able to clear the line required to qualify as a novice mage, whereas Wren alone was at the level of an ordinary civilian.
Wren nervously wondered if this would be a discussion urging him to give up on becoming a mage.
(I didn’t even really want to be a mage in particular to begin with, I was just happy being able to leave my home and study, but……)
Even now, he still didn’t have a clear idea of what kind of magic he even wanted to study.
Nevertheless, after the events of the past few weeks, it was a fact that he had become deeply interested in magic.
When he saw those letters of the magical formula glowing brilliantly in today’s group lesson, something deep in Wren’s heart lit up. Awesome, he thought. I want to do this more often, he thought.
He hadn’t yet decided on an objective, but he wanted to study more things. He wanted to learn how to do more things.
Wren folded his fingers tightly together in his lap as Röhm spoke to him.
“Let me get straight to the point, you’ve got pretty low mana reserves, Wren. Because of that, I thought we should talk about mana organs and methods for increasing mana reserves.”
His heart skipped a beat, but Röhm hadn’t told him to give up on becoming a mage at all.
Methods for increasing mana reserves. That was what Wren wanted to know most.
“Humans have a chamber that stores mana as well as vessels for the purpose of ingesting or expelling mana. Those are your mana chamber and mana vessels, right? Depending on where you learn magecraft, the names for those things might differ, but these days those names are the most common.”
Röhm sketched a simplified diagram of a human body on a sheet of paper in front of her, then drew a circle in the middle of it. That must be the mana chamber.
“Mana vessels run all throughout your body, but it’s believed the area with the most openings are your palms. That is why humans typically release spells from their palms when using magecraft.”
Röhm drew lines stretching from the mana vessel all throughout the body. More of them led to the hands than anywhere else. These must represent the mana vessels.
“The more mana reserves a person has, the larger their chamber is, and the thicker their vessels are. The reason those with large mana reserves can use such powerful magecraft is because they can emit much more mana at a time. On the other hand, people with narrow vessels can only output a trickle of mana, making it hard for them to do the same.”
Wren recalled that morning’s group lessons.
He decided to set aside Tia for the moment, as she was a Harpy and thus an exception. The other one whose name came to mind was Ella Frank, who had issues emitting mana.
“Does that mean that Ella has a bigger mana chamber than me, but her vessels are too small….. or something like that?”
“We can’t diagnose that without conducting a proper examination. There are also cases where the vessels bottleneck in certain parts, or where the vessel openings are focused somewhere other than a person’s palms.”
“I see….”
There’s a lot, huh Wren thought as he looked at his own palms. He couldn’t see them with his naked eyes, but the openings of his mana vessels were concentrated there.
Thinking of it like that, he felt as if an invisible power was coursing through palms. It was just a feeling, though. Nothing really happened.
“These mana organs will develop as you use them throughout your teenage years. Basically, the more you practice magecraft while you’re young, the better they’ll become. Once you age past twenty, your mana organs will gradually decline from there on. While I’ve read some papers that suggest that you could maintain your mana reserves by continuing to use magecraft or by forming a contract with a spirit, but that specifically involved advanced mages.”
In short, she was saying that he should keep practicing his magecraft skills as much as he could while he was still young?
As Wren considered that, Röhm continued.
“In addition, if you use magic until all of the mana in your body is depleted, your mana chamber will swell. Or, if you practice in an area with high mana density, you mana organs will develop faster……. is what some will say. To be honest, they’re not wrong.”
Röhm stopped talking and looked Wren straight in the eyes.
Beneath her short bangs, her always kindly smiling eyes narrowed threateningly.
“However, I want you to promise me that you’ll never do such things.”
She spoke in an uncharacteristically low, weighty voice.
Wren unconsciously inhaled sharply under the pressure.
“I was once a member of the Extermination Office, but my mana organs were severely damaged…… both my chamber and vessels were ripped to shreds.”
Röhm drew a picture of a cup on the paper in front of her.
Why a cup? Wren’s doubts must have shown on his face, as Röhm added “It’s easier to explain this way,” before launching into her analogy.
“Imagine my mana chamber is this cup, and there’s a small hole in the bottom of the cup. No matter how much water you pour into the cup, the water will end up leaking out through the hole…… As a result, my mana reserves are only fifth of what they were at my peak.”
It didn’t seem like Röhm was the type to practice past her limits or to go out of her way to train in places with high mana density.
Instead, her battles with Monsters had been so intense that she had no choice but to use magecraft until her mana was almost entirely drained again and again in order to survive.
…….And, in the end, her prize was the destruction of her mana organs.
“My vessels are in somewhat of a better state…… but even then, if I try to flow mana through them as I did before, my whole body hurts tremendously.”
“…… Can’t you do anything to heal that sort of thing?”
“While progress is being made on research into medicinal magic across the Empire, no one has been able to come up with a satisfactory theoretical treatment. Most types of damage heal naturally, but that depends on the person.”
Wren’s assigned instructor, Hütter was the same way.
He specialized in illusions, but he said his mana organs were damaged, and it now hurts him to use illusion magic.
“That’s why Mr. Hütter asked me to talk to you so you wouldn’t go off and hurt yourself training like that.”
That made sense, he asked Röhm, who had experience with mana organ damage to hammer the point home…… At that point in his thinking, a “Hmm?” escaped Wren’s mouth.
“Wait, doesn’t Mr. Hütter have the same condition? Why would he go out of his way to ask you to say this, Ms. Röhm…..?”
“Mr. Hütter said ‘It has more impact if someone other than his assigned teacher says it, right?’ ……. I think he was worried you might do something reckless.”
Well, he might have been right, Wren thought.
If he caught wind of the idea that there was a way to quickly inflate his mana reserves, knowing his personality, he had a feeling he would try it out, thinking ‘well, a little try wouldn’t hurt…..’
Hütter could see through that part of Wren’s personality, and had asked Röhm to nip it in the bud.
“Also, Mr. Hütter asked me to discuss what types of magecraft might be suited to you, Wren.”
Wren was a little surprised. Even Hütter himself never had that sort of conversation with him.
(But, a type of magecraft that’s suited to me……. does such a convenient type of magic really exist?)
Wren hadn’t been studying magic for very long, and his mana reserves were tiny. As an Apprentice Mage, he clearly lagged behind the others.
What sort of magic would be suitable of someone like me…….? Wren wondered, before speaking with a serious expression.
“You mean, magecraft that’s exclusive to pretty boys……”
“Mr. Hütter mentioned that you’re good at copying other people’s handwriting, and asked if there was any kind of magic that involves writing…… which gave me an idea.”
Röhm reached into one of the boxes lining the walls and pulled out a few books, some loose sheets of paper, and a high-quality feather pen, then set them on the table.
“How about you try looking in to inscription magic?”