Chapter 115
“I want to make magic too.”
At Estasha’s declaration, Hiasen spat out the water he had been drinking and coughed repeatedly.
“Esha, even so, there are things in this world that can be done and things that can’t—”
“Why do you think I can’t? Look how much I’ve accomplished.”
Esha reached out and gathered the scrolls scattered messily across the desk.
Seeing her waddle along while hugging a scroll taller than she was, Hiasen grinned and relieved her of the burden.
“What kind of magic do you want to make?”
“Magic combined with swordsmanship.”
“There are already plenty of magic sword techniques, aren’t there?”
“Having fire or ice shoot out of a sword isn’t magic swordsmanship! That’s just using magic with a sword...”
“Hmm. I don’t really understand what you’re thinking, Esha.”
“I’m going to create magic that anyone can use, even without talent for magic or swordsmanship, as long as they’re willing to work hard to learn.”
“Are you implying that I’m the one without talent...?”
“You’re always getting beaten by Jade in magic and Feiran in swordsmanship.”
“That’s because my brothers have been studying for much longer than I have...! My talent is far superior, though!”
“You know men look pathetic when they make excuses, right?”
“...So you borrowed all these books from the library for that magic too?”
Hiasen asked while dusting the books off.
They were books about subjects that seemed to have nothing to do with magic, such as the motion of pendulums and the materials used in buildings.
Esha furrowed her brow and snatched the books away.
“That’s none of your concern.”
“I think you’ve been awfully cold to your big brother lately. I’m starting to feel hurt.”
“What do you mean, ‘big brother’?”
“But aren’t you going to study swordsmanship anymore? Wouldn’t it be a shame to waste all the exercise you’ve done so far?”
“Swordsmanship is enough. There are already three people above me learning it, so there’s no need for me to do it too.”
“Even so, Marquis Bastion said you’re the most talented among us. Honestly, I agree with him—”
“If I practice swordsmanship, what will you do?”
“Huh?”
“Be my porter? I’m a prince, you know.”
Esha spun around. One of the scrolls resting at the very edge of her arms slipped free and rolled across the floor.
Hiasen picked up the scroll and examined its contents.
It depicted a blond boy and girl standing back to back.
“Don’t look.”
Esha retrieved the paper and spoke with a sulky expression.
“Is this you and me?”
“What if it is...?”
“I’m a little surprised, that’s all. I thought you didn’t like me.”
“When did I ever say I disliked you? If anything, I feel sorry for you since you seem to do nothing but get beaten these days.”
“You feel sorry for me?”
Esha cast a sidelong glance over Hiasen’s body.
His limbs were covered in vivid blue bruises, and there wasn’t a single part of him that looked uninjured.
“Are they still bullying you?”
“‘Bullying’ is a bit much. I just got hurt during some sparring.”
“Then have you ever hit them back just as hard?”
Hiasen couldn’t easily answer Esha’s question.
In the room filled with silence, Esha was the first to let out a sigh.
“The Marquis of Bastion said he’d host a two-on-two sparring match next month as his final lesson, right? I’ll finish this Unique Magic no matter what by then and make those bastards’ faces match.”
“What? You’re saying you’ll team up with me? The balance would be all wrong. Brother Jade is seventeen, and Brother Feiran is fifteen.”
“No. That’s what makes it more or less balanced.”
A playful smile bloomed on Esha’s face.
She set the scroll down on the floor again, brought over a pendulum model, and dropped its weight from midair.
“Why do you think even three- or four-year-old children can swing so well?”
“Swinging? They just extend their legs when going forward and draw them in when going backward.”
There was no way Esha had asked because she didn’t know, so Hiasen waited for what she would say next.
“You’re right. But this pendulum here—even though it looks like it’s just sitting still...”
She drew attention to the metal ball, whose movement had stopped with the passage of time.
A delicate aura was periodically injected into the pendulum. It began to tremble, then shot into the air with enough force to reach the ceiling if it hadn’t been attached to a string.
“If you give it the right vibrations, it goes wild all on its own.”
“Does that have something to do with this magic?”
“I like you because you’re so smart. We really understand each other, don’t we? Anyway, just wait and see.”
After saying that, Esha went into her room alone and continued researching her Unique Magic for days on end, refusing food and sleep.
She appeared looking even more haggard and asked Hiasen for a small favor on the day of the sparring match.
Hiasen, the Third Prince, agreed to help her without a hint of suspicion,
and the First and Second Princes suffered internal injuries requiring sixteen and twenty weeks of recovery, respectively, forever sealing away her first Unique Magic.
* * *
The thing a swordsman had to be most careful about was neither the force behind a sword strike nor the proper stance used to guide it.
It was ensuring that no force went to waste.
In the universe we inhabit, energy is conserved under every circumstance. Even if a god died and came back to life, that proposition would never change.
Therefore, thinking that delivering a blow of five with five units of force is inferior to delivering a blow of six with ten units of force was one of the common mistakes made by novice swordsmen.
The value of accuracy could not be exchanged for anything.
That was also why everyone’s stance differed slightly in archery and shooting.
It was because, through their bodies’ own experience, they had learned that those stances allowed them to perform their tasks with the greatest accuracy and no wasted force.
But not everyone could have a swordmaster as their mentor.
Born from all those various considerations was this ‘Impact Resonance’ magic.
Even if the assistant was a novice swordsman, as long as the initial caster could set the proper resonant frequency, all the wasted force in the blow delivered by the two of them together would accumulate as mana through the mana-energy equivalence principle.
Destroying the gears was like pushing a child’s back while they were riding a swing.
When that force accumulated once, twice, and then dozens of times, the swing might merely complete one full revolution—but what would happen if it took place inside a body?
Fatigue fracture.
Allow ten blows, and even a body reinforced with aura would have its bones crushed. Allow twenty, and every organ in the body would be torn apart.
But I never got to see the result of detonating thirty, forty... and then one hundred vibrations all at once.
At that time, that girl and I wanted to shatter head-on the prejudice that 1st-circle magic had limits to its power.
And that wish...
“Hyaaaaaaaaaah!”
[Unique Magic – Estasha Style, First Form]
[Adella – 200 Chain]
[Break]
was finally realized in the hands of the silver-haired girl.
[Critical Hit!]
[200 HIT COMBO]
[394870 DAMAGE]
[HP: 10826/666666]
-NoName, stop being so damn good!!!!!!
-400k this timeㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-That’s a number you only see in Act 4 ㄷㄷ
-And that’s on Nightmare, too. On Normal, even Mephisto only has 500k HP.
-This is genuinely incredible.
-Is she even human?
-How do NoName and Adela both pull off a 200-combo without breaking it even once?ㅋㅋㅋ
-For real, I’m a ranked rhythm-game player too, and a three-digit combo happens maybe once a year.
-Human turned machine (NoName) vs. machine turned human (Adela), truly a battle between equals
└ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ They’re on the same team, why are you pitting them against each other?
└A picture like a painting vs. a painting like a photograph
└What is this? Why does it sound like you’re complimenting both of them?ㅋㅋ
-What the hell is that 1st-circle spell? (Genuinely asking)
└How would I know? (I’m currently a private academy teaching assistant in Daechi-dong)
└How would I know? (I’m in the SKY theoretical magic department)
└Whoa, really? What’s your GPA?
└1.8
└Ah, if you’re defending a GPA in the 1-point range, that’s respectable~ㅋㅋ
-There’s no way to explain this unless it’s a hack.
└True. With bugs already in the game, it’s not like hacks are impossible too.
The damage was impressive. We had drawn out the maximum possible.
But it was incredibly disappointing that it hadn’t led to his death.
[■■■■■& %^$#$ Jin Chronicle’s HP regeneration increases by 200%.]
I had no idea why enemies like this all had such stubborn lifelines.
“Hah... Haa... I can’t move my arms... Can’t you heal me anymore?”
“...!”
[MP: 160/2800]
This wasn’t a question of whether Heal would work or not.
Adela’s face was deathly pale, her eyes unfocused, and her breathing excessively labored.
More than anything, her face kept shifting from a smile, to a grimace, and then back to a stern expression.
She seemed to have so little strength left that she couldn’t even control the facial muscles moving on their own under the influence of the waves flowing from the Unique Magic.
“No. Rest now. You’ve done more than enough.”
“No... I can do more! Just a little... If I did just a little more, I definitely could have finished him off.”
“You’re out of mana anyway. I’ll somehow handle the rest.”
With only 10,000 HP remaining, I thought I might be able to manage somehow even on my own.
Apparently, the half-formed demon remnant was vulnerable to magic damage, unlike Valum or the vice dean before he was possessed.
Just as I was about to formulate a battle plan while controlling my mana to the limit, Adela grabbed my ankle.
“Hngh... Waaahhhh!”
“...”
“What am I supposed to do...? I’m scared of dying, but now there’s something even more frightening than death... I don’t think I could bear it if you died even one more time, Sis... Please don’t go anywhere. Please... I’m begging you...”
“...”
“We don’t even have anything to do with each other! If you think about it, today is the first time you and I have ever met! Why are you being so kind to someone like me...? Why?! Just abandon me and run away instead. I’m telling you to run!”
I grabbed the whimpering Adela by the armpits and hoisted her into the air.
“Huh...?”
“Adela. Do you know what the world says your reason for existing is?”
“No... I don’t...”
‘The Young Noble of the Library,’ Valum Venanons.
‘The Vice Dean of Remnant Academy,’ Jin Chronicle.
[Headline Effect ON]
[Cat of Dawn - Adela]
“They call you the Cat of Dawn.”
“Dawn?”
It was a phrase so ridiculous it wasn’t even funny.
The title ‘Cat of Dawn’ came from her background story.
Adela had wreaked havoc across the capital with daring thefts in the dead of night, then vanished without a trace as dawn broke while the guards chased after her.
That was how she earned her nickname, but fate was a truly terrifying thing.
Who could have known that the faint sunlight rising at dawn (黎明) would become her remaining life (餘命)?
“Personally, I like the dawn. When the darkness lifts and sunlight shines down, it feels as if a new day, different from yesterday, is beginning.”
The dawn I welcomed after studying all night was fulfilling.
The dawn that greeted me after I spent the night crying was especially full of hope.
“After we get a good night’s sleep, everything will be different.”
[Cast: Circuit Reconstruction]
“...!”
It was the first spell I had cast when I launched WOA.
When I drew all the mana from Adela’s mana core, her body went limp.
[MP: 660/2800]
I could only use it once. But that didn’t matter. I had more or less met the conditions.
“I’m sorry, everyone, but...”
-???
-?
-??
-Huh?
-Hi?
-?
I lightly waved toward the camera I had briefly forgotten about.
“This is something like my trade secret.”
[Twish Notification – Cameras 1–9 have been blocked by the administrator.]
“I’d appreciate your understanding.”
[Unique Magic – Estasha Style, Second Form]