Chapter 42
The professor's sudden declaration.
Naturally, everyone's faces were tinged with bewilderment.
If everyone's eyes weren't deceiving them, today's schedule clearly showed Basic Herbology.
The professor, who had arrived late out of nowhere, was now ignoring the planned lesson out of nowhere, and even saying things like "I hate all of you" out of nowhere before declaring he would teach them magic.
A situation that made absolutely no sense.
However, the bewilderment soon turned to anticipation.
A genius widely acknowledged as a great mage. A being outside normal standards who could even unleash Archmagic, was personally offering to teach them.
How could they not be excited in this situation?
The magic major students' eyes all sparkled with enthusiasm.
On the other hand, the swordsmanship majors.
A few students who, despite being in Class A, had unfortunately missed out on getting into the swordsmanship lecture. Though they showed somewhat disappointed expressions.
Those expressions didn't last long.
Professor Ryan specifically pointed them out.
"That's exactly the kind of attitude I don't like."
Why choose only one between sword and magic?
Why not try to grasp both?
Professor Ryan posed these questions to everyone.
Immediately, everyone present was struck speechless.
It wasn't because the criticism was particularly sharp.
Rather, it was because it was so fundamentally wrong.
Of course, there are those who possess talent in both sword and magic.
The professor before them was the perfect example.
But not everyone is born with such overwhelming talent as the professor. How common could geniuses be who reach the realm of Heart-Sword and still have power to spare for unleashing Archmagic?
A body and reflexes suited for martial arts.
Overwhelming magical power and the wisdom to understand magical structures.
Not many people are born with all those talents.
Therefore, the majority of swordsmen tend to lag behind in terms of magical power and spell manipulation. They could use it if they tried, but if they had that much magical power, it would be better spent on body reinforcement.
"With our magical power barely enough for body enhancement and sword energy, isn't trying to use magic too much?"
One student carefully took the lead in asking.
Though they knew the professor was exceptional, it seemed he was so exceptional that he couldn't understand the position of ordinary people. The blonde youth was indirectly conveying this opinion.
Surely that would be common sense that everyone agreed with...
But why?
Professor Ryan visibly frowned at the statement that their magical power was too low to even attempt magic.
"So because you seem to lack some talent, you're going to give up without even trying? That's pathetically disappointing."
If one leg is broken, hop on one foot.
If both legs are broken, use your arms.
If your arms are broken too, crawl on your head.
Without the resolve to advance even ungracefully, you cannot reach the summit.
If talent wasn't given to me, then I have no choice but to fill that gap with effort, obsession, and desperate struggle.
"Giving up should only happen at the very last moment. I won't allow you to run away without even trying to understand what magic truly is."
The professor looked at Sylvia.
Towards the second-ranked student here, the most talented among the magic majors, he posed a simple question.
"What do you think magic is?"
"...It's constructing spell formulas to create miracles."
The textbook answer Sylvia gave after some thought.
Though it was the basic definition found in textbooks.
The professor shook his head. He directly denied this common sense and spoke to everyone.
"Magic is language."
Could this be some kind of metaphor?
Everyone thought so, but the professor continued his assertion.
"Word magic that twists the world's principles through one's own words is not exclusive to dragons. In fact, we're already using it."
He said we're already using word magic.
Just with some slight differences in method.
"...Rune characters."
Sylvia unconsciously blurted out those words.
Hearing this, the professor grinned.
"Yes, that's right. The rune characters that you've been treating as mere drawings are actually a proper language system."
Let me break down one spell to make it easy to understand.
Professor Ryan said this as he drew out his staff.
"Fireball is a basic spell, so you all should already have memorized the formula and be able to construct it anytime."
Everyone nodded at those words.
Seeing this, the man smiled playfully.
"But can you truly say you fully understand this spell?"
Familiar runes appeared above the professor's hand.
Though they were characters they'd often seen while constructing the fireball spell, the string of runes seemed incomplete, as if partially cut off.
"This part written here is for position designation."
It designates the caster's existence.
Then it designates a point 30cm above the caster's hand, generates heat there, and amplifies that heat.
"And this part forms and launches the sphere."
It also gathers the generated flames into a spherical shape.
Then fixes the form of the created fireball.
When the caster determines where to launch the fireball, it's set to fly in a straight line toward that location to attack the enemy.
"All those processes are written here in the language of rune characters. Not drawings, but long sentences."
Memorize the already established spell formula.
Simply copying and drawing those patterns exactly is certainly easier to learn, but its limitations are all too clear.
Because fundamentally, those aren't drawings but sentences.
"But don't you think this formula is inefficient?"
The professor said this while freely modifying the characters.
"What if we skip all the heat generation and position designation and just create the fireball directly?"
Without the process of fire appearing and being shaped into a sphere, a fireball appeared in the professor's hand.
"Or we could try increasing the numbers. Let's add a sentence to reduce power but increase quantity."
In an instant, the fireball multiplied to thirty.
Though the intensity of the flames was visibly weaker, their number had increased incomparably from before.
"Now it's time to launch the fireballs at the enemy, but let's modify the formula just before they hit. We'll swap the positions of the runes for power and number."
Trading power reduction for increased numbers. That becomes a sentence trading increased power for reduced numbers.
The power of each fireball intensified insanely.
In exchange, dozens of fireballs were about to disappear, but before that could happen, all the fireballs crashed into the wall.
In the end, thirty large marks were left on the wall surface.
"This way you can discard the risks and keep only the benefits. Now do you understand what I meant earlier?"
A phenomenon incomprehensible even when seen with their own eyes.
The man who had casually achieved this spoke to everyone.
"Magic is language. Therefore, a mage must deceive this world through absurd wordplay."
For someone who needs to cheat to be illiterate.
That's embarrassingly inadequate to even be called a mage.
Therefore, you must know the rune characters, he said.
"......"
For a moment, silence fell over the audience.
But this wasn't because they realized how revolutionary this lecture was. It was only because they realized just how much of an outlier the professor was.
...Rune language wasn't created to be understood.
The characters alone number in the tens of thousands. Moreover, it's common for a single character to contain thousands of meanings on its own.
Add to that how meanings completely change based on character combinations, and there aren't even rules for reading order in that nonsensical language - how could anyone possibly learn it?
Mages aren't stupid.
They didn't deliberately design inefficient spell formulas.
Like monkeys endlessly hitting typewriter keys until they complete a novel, countless people work together to randomly arrange rune characters.
When a spell formula happens to manifest by chance, they record it, gradually establishing spells one by one.
Every spell is a record of countless trials and errors.
A history built up over thousands of years by all of humanity. Yet this man had casually surpassed it alone.
He instinctively understood an incomprehensible language.
He'd single-handedly surpassed humanity with overwhelming talent.
That was certainly an amazing feat, but there's no way to imitate a genius's intuition. None of the students gathered here had the ability to keep up with this lecture.
Therefore, this lecture had no meaning.
Surely that should have been the case, and yet.
"I can tell what you're all thinking. But didn't I clearly say? That I would teach you what true magic really is."
The professor looked at everyone and spoke.
"I don't have a habit of making promises I can't keep."
But they simply couldn't understand those words.
Understanding characters through intuition and teaching that to others were truly problems of different dimensions.
Bringing divine language into the human realm.
Containing meaning that no Imperial language could contain.
Making an incomprehensible system comprehensible.
Such things should have been impossible.
Despite that impossibility, the professor spoke.
"Teaching everything would take more than a lifetime, but explaining the most basic nine characters - their arrangements and meanings - is simple. And I guarantee..."
The white-haired man looked at everyone.
With golden eyes shining, he declared.
"That alone will change how you see the world."
In that moment, everyone's faces were painted with shock.
They couldn't help but be shocked.
Right now, at this very moment, in this very place.
...The history of magic was being rewritten.