Chapter 77
Mana is by no means a static substance.
Some say mana is a tool for giving form to ideals.
Others say it is like a wheel that carves out its own destiny.
But my way of defining mana was a little different.
It may sound bleaker and more prosaic than their descriptions, but I would like to call mana a thread of probability.
Another word for probability was possibility.
We pluck a single thread from that skein and use it to determine the future.
For example, when clouds gather, it might rain, snow, or lightning might strike.
A farmer whose crops were on the verge of drying up and dying would want a suitable shower of rain.
To draw out such possibilities, we learn mathematics and observe natural phenomena, weaving the fabric of the future with mana as our thread and magic circles as our loom.
But mana is a skein of thread that moves on its own.
Just as repairing the engine of a stationary car is easier than fixing the beating, living heart of a person, the same was true of mana.
My master once gave me an analogy related to this called ‘a marble on a bed,’ and I strongly agreed with it.
A marble placed on a bed would not move without an external force, but the instant we sat on the bed, a slope formed toward our center, and the marble rolled toward us in circles.
We could tell that the marble rolled because a slope had formed, but the marble itself had no idea why it had begun to move.
Though mana was not a sentient being, in this chaotic world it moved ceaselessly and erratically like a tadpole.
That was why it was so difficult to inject the proper amount of mana into a magic circle.
[5.4]
“Oh, that's a pretty good score this time.”
“Honestly, I don't even know why it came out so high. This is too haaard...”
After a dozen or so injections, Yuna was exhausted and slammed her head down onto the desk.
She tried injecting mana throughout the magic circle, and she tried injecting it only into the very center.
The more forcefully she injected it at my prompting, the higher the magic circle's efficiency rose overall, but the occasional scores of 2 or 3 showed that this wasn't always the case.
“Name, can't you try?”
Yuna handed me the model magic circle.
“What efficiency should I aim for?”
“You can control that?”
“Yeah.”
“I see...”
Yuna's complexion darkened after all her desperate efforts to raise the number as high as possible.
I felt uncomfortable, as though I were trampling on a young child's dream.
Her lower lip jutted out, making it obvious to anyone that Seo Yuna was sulking.
Sigh, as the adult here, I had to comfort her.
“Yuna, listen to me. It's not that I'm better than you, which is why I can use magic well. It only looks that way because, for now, I simply know more about magic than you do.”
“What's the difference...?”
“It is different. You said you've only been learning magic for a year, right? I've been at it for much longer than that.”
“How long?”
“About twenty years?”
“Don't lie...!”
“Okay, about five years. So if you study hard and learn everything I know, you can definitely become a better mage than me.”
It was only natural for a reincarnated person to look like a genius when they were young.
But that did not guarantee they would remain a genius after becoming an adult.
It was just like how I had been able to overwhelm the Third Prince Hiasen and the hero Klaus in swordsmanship when they were young, only for them to eventually catch up with me in skill.
I gave Yuna confidence by assuring her that her magical aptitude was in no way inferior to that of any other child her age.
“So I'll also give you a rough idea of what this magic is. Here, take a look.”
The number of circles did not necessarily indicate the strength of a spell.
However, higher-circle spells made it easier to produce high output, because the decline in efficiency caused by the mana circuit becoming longer and more complex was offset.
Magic was ultimately a matter of naming, but in this case, I would call it the ‘Heat Transfer–Coil’ spell.
The Heat Transfer magic I had used to warm Yuna's hair earlier could be cast by choosing one of three methods: conduction, convection, or radiation.
However, this second-circle spell used electromagnets and coils to transfer heat, making it a rather unique type of magic.
To explain it in detail, I would have to discuss ‘Ohm's law,’ ‘Resistance Loss,’ ‘Skin Effect,’ and ‘Eddy Current,’ but I kept my mouth shut. If I explained all that to Yuna, I might make her cry for no reason.
Since it was fundamentally a heat spell rather than vector magic, the more mana I injected, the stronger the output would be.
Due to the scale effect, spells with stronger output tended to produce higher detection values because the proportion accounted for by inefficiency became relatively smaller.
However, the reason efficiency varied depending on where mana was injected was that the magic circle itself had different resistance values set at different points.
Thus, when viewed from the front, 150kE might be optimal in the north, while 200kE could be the optimal value in the south.
With such low-circle magic, 150 and 200 were practically the same, so one could simply ignore efficiency and use it. But once the values reached hundreds of thousands or millions, the injection stage could no longer be disregarded.
I simply let about 170kE of mana flow into the very center of the magic circle.
Beep-
[9.9]
The analysis indicated that the spell had been cast near the theoretical maximum efficiency threshold.
It seemed to display this value because the result had been rounded to the first decimal place.
If calculated precisely, the efficiency should have been around 99.17%.
“How... How did you do that on your first try...?”
Yuna spoke in a shocked voice.
“See? You can do it too. Want to try injecting mana at 171.4kE?”
“I can't be that precise.”
“I'll help you, so give it a try.”
As I had done when we interlaced fingers in the bathroom before, I placed my palm over the back of Yuna's hand.
Human skin contains various sensory receptors. Of these, Merkel tactile discs, which detect touch, and Meissner corpuscles, which detect vibration, are especially abundant in the palms.
When we interlocked our fingers like this, I could easily tell how much mana Yuna was able to inject by the degree to which her hand trembled and the number of tingling sensations she experienced whenever she drew up a thread of mana.
Human hands were sensitive organs that had developed to such an extent that they could even directly influence magic cast by someone else.
“Your hand is really soft. It's like a baby's skin.”
“That's not something you can say, Name.”
“There's almost no time left. Let's hurry.”
“If I pass out, it's not my fault.”
Yuna squeezed out every last ounce of strength and drew up all the mana she had left.
The mana she had unconsciously dyed red slowly flowed out of her hand.
“You're over 150 now.”
“A little more...?”
“Don't let it overflow, so slow down now.”
I could feel everything, from the blood flowing through the capillaries in her hand to her pulse.
Injecting mana was an irreversible process, so once it had been injected, it could not be taken back.
Normally, it was better to fill the spell generously, but since we were only concerned with efficiency here, I asked her to adjust it precisely.
“It's exactly 170 now. Imagine you're letting just one more drop flow.”
“One drop? How? I can't do that!”
“You can. Just trust the feeling.”
“I really don't know how...!”
In the end, Yuna squeezed her eyes shut and folded all four fingers.
She tried the creative idea of touching the magic circle with the one remaining pinky finger.
She had instinctively realized that reducing the contact area would reduce the amount of mana injected as well.
“Perfect.”
Beep-
“I can't look at the result! Tell me instead!”
“You really won't look? If you don't look soon, I'll reset it.”
I pushed the box toward Yuna so she could see it clearly.
It was certainly a result she would find satisfying enough.
[10.0]
* * *
Teacher Jacqueline Carroll watched the children enthusiastically applying themselves to the performance assessment with a pleased smile.
It seemed her goal of familiarizing the children with the ‘injection’ stage through models with the same structure as magic circles had been achieved ahead of schedule.
It was a simple performance assessment: the children only had to try injecting mana into the magic circles in various ways and record the process on paper. But the boxes, which produced a quantitative value ranging from 0 to 10, had needlessly inflamed the students' competitive spirit.
“Who would record the highest number?”
In Class A of Sephyron Academy's second year, a quiet competition took place under the tacit agreement that, for this period, whoever cast a magic circle with the highest efficiency was the most capable.
It all began with Kim Hangeul's shout.
“Look! Mine's higher than Teacher's! It's 8.7, 8.7!”
Hangeul shrugged proudly as he basked in the children's admiring gazes.
The numbers came out randomly when they recklessly injected mana.
But if someone happened to get a high number, they could instantly draw the attention of the entire class.
For second-graders, that alone was an incredibly sweet fruit.
“Mine's over 9!”
Lee Haru showed everyone her box and stuck out her tongue.
The fact that this was a performance assessment had already been forgotten by everyone.
Five minutes remained.
The record that had seemed impossible to break was surpassed once again, this time by Yoon Sihoo.
“Hey, everyone, look! Yoon Sihoo got a 9.4!”
Sihoo himself did not seem particularly interested in this competition, but the class became so chaotic that many children jumped out of their seats to confirm it for themselves.
Some had already begun giving up on the competition, while a few still clung to the faint hope that they might accomplish something with the time remaining.
Then, just before the bell rang for break, Seo Yuna suddenly kicked her chair back and lurched to her feet, holding her box high above her head.
“Ten.”
She forcefully shouted a single number. But at that moment, it was anything but an ordinary number.
“I won.”
Yuna gave Sihoo a faint smile. It was the unmistakable smirk of a victor.