Chapter 38. Developing world’s first ‘gun’, update on swordsmanship

"Not a Magic God?"

I couldn't help but chuckle at those words.

Just how much was I holding back here?

Either way, after my display of power, Pascal appeared much more respectful. He no longer treated me as an inexperienced youngster, but more as a magician of equal rank.

In fact, he became incredibly invested in teaching me. He would stare at me intently, as if hoping that his teaching were useful to me and I'd appreciate them.

First he asked me to show off my full arsenal of Wind magic spells, and then attempted to give me advice based on his experience.

In general, I can say that it seems that in this world wind is viewed as a very unpredictable magical phenomenon. It takes on different forms and intensities, and there is no explanation for why it happens.

Instead of being seen as something caused by nature, it seems to be viewed as a random effect of magic power that permeates the world.

As a person from Earth I knew that wind is the result of the differences in atmospheric pressure in different places and the differences in temperature.

However, even though I knew that much, I didn't really know how things work in practice.

I managed to modify Cumulonimbus to make the clouds self-sustained for some time, and also disperse them afterwards by reversing what I did, but just reversing the effects of the Cumulonimbus spell alone would also allow it to disperse naturally-formed storm clouds, so my knowledge wasn't overly useful.

My only advantage seemed to be the fact that I was simply aware that pressure and temperature play a role in the formation of wind.

I believe that large-scale Saint-rank Wind magic would also be based on natural phenomena like Saint rank Water magic and lower ranked Wind magic, so I should be able to learn how to make it stronger through manipulating temperatures and pressure by analyzing the spell itself.

By analyzing a given magic spell, I can see how it works. Then I can tweak it to increase its power and effects. That's the best I could do.

Wind magic is fast, but perhaps because it does not have a form, it cannot be faster than a Stone Cannon bullet, so my Wind magic was still not my strongest magic.

By the way, Wind magic is not related to the speed of magicians' spells, like the speed of Stone Bullet or a Fireball. As I have theorized recently, what should give most spells their velocity is instead pure kinetic energy transformed from magical energy, and it's unrelated to Wind magic in cases apart from Wind magic itself.

Using Wind magic to affect the speed of my other spells was still not impossible, but it completely throws off the aim and isn't even a boost when used at a small scale, so it isn't applicable in most cases. Simply converting mana directly into kinetic energy was the most efficient and effective.

In the end, thanks to my knowledge and experimentation over the years, and mainly thanks to my silent casting, my Wind magic and my control of wind were already above Pascal's.

Perhaps because of this, during our lesson Pascal looked quite dispirited.

But it isn't like he couldn't teach me anything. It wasn't much, but there were things I couldn't have known.

Putting aside the regular Wind magic, the thing that I wanted to learn from Pascal the most was everything else anyway: mainly Magic Circles, Enchantment Magic and Saint rank Wind magic.

When it came to Saint rank Wind magic, I didn't mention the topic just yet. I have already shown off considerably and taken a small risk by doing so, so I decided that I don't want Pascal to know that I'm already at the level of being capable of casting Saint-ranked magic and was a national level threat.

Learning Saint ranked Wind Magic at this point wouldn't have increased my combat strength much either way.

Among his personal Magic Tools, Pascal showed me a wand that fires off the Advanced rank [Sonic Blast] without the need for an Incantation. A defensive Magic Tool.

I used it myself as well.

As a result, even when compared to my silent casting, when using the Magic Tool I could send out a Sonic Blast a few times faster than normal.

I want one.

After the Wind magic practice, it was time for us to test the effect of the [Stone Cannon] wand prototype that Pascal had made.

The wand aimed to increase the speed of the stone bullet by close to 3 times.

In practice, it was an amazing speed that was impossible to track with the naked eye.

Pascal looked a bit excited after seeing that effect.

As for myself, I wasn't disappointed either.

Our target practice was one of the trees.

Although the stone bullet would crash on impact and was unable to pierce through an average tree, I could tell that this kind of result was simply because of the bullet's density and shape. If it hits a human or a monster, it should still easily shatter their skull.

For both me and Pascal it was easy to control the wand, so there was still some potential to upgrade it.

I didn't bring the topic forward, but Pascal himself said that he'll attempt increasing the power up to 4 times while also increasing the density of the bullet.

I said nothing.

…

When we returned to Roa it marked the end of my lesson with Pascal that day.

As I began studying under Pascal, I was also teaching my own students magic.

During the scheduled lessons each morning I taught Ghislaine the foundational knowledge while Eris was receiving a repeat that would certainly not be useless.

While I taught Ghislaine the basics of magic, I was also revising what I knew myself, keeping in mind what I learned about the laws of magic the other day.

In her free time, Ghislaine continued practicing Elementary rank Fireball.

As for Eris, I began trying to teach her silent spellcasting.

To get her started, I first explained to her the idea of silently attempting to duplicate the feeling of casting magic she normally does with an Incantation.

She tried hard for a while, but was simply unable to do it on the first try unlike Sylphy.

Seeing as she grew increasingly frustrated, I think she didn't even have an idea on how to get started.

At that time I felt that I needed to use a different approach.

Apart from Sylphy and himself who had grasped it on first try, in the novel of Mushoku Tensei there was one more clear case of Rudeus successfully teaching someone silent casting.

It was about the dwarf slave girl Julie who started learning magic at 6 years old, starting from scratch.

To teach her Silent Magic, Rudues simply made her attempt silent casting again and again every day until she finally managed it after a month.

But I personally think it's a rather dumb approach and something I'd try as a last resort if nothing else works.

Instead, I had Eris start with shortening her chants instead.

She would cast a spell normally with a complete Incantation, focusing on observing the feeling of how her mana flows, then she would attempt to cast the same spell again while skipping only the first verse of the Incantation.

I have done similar training with Roxy while trying to help her, which paid off well. Although Roxy didn't manage true silent spellcasting in the end, she still greatly shortened her chants.

It isn't that getting used to casting magic with an Incantation would make it more difficult for someone to cast magic silently.

In the novel Sylphy had done first Incantation only casts for a whole year, then still easily grasped Silent Magic just the same.

But putting a fantasy novel's example aside, I have also understood the process, so I knew it wasn't like that.

Silent spellcasting requires a strong power of imagination and visualization, that seemed to be all. For some reason, it comes easily to kids in this world, but theoretically an adult could also manage it if they were talented enough and had a good brain.

The first sentence of a spell seems to be like the training wheels, making it easier to cast the said magic, but the given spell can also be 'triggered' with the second sentence alone. This is called 'shortened incantations' or 'truncated casting'.

I wanted Eris to reach that level first.

Casting magic is more difficult this way and once she manages to cast Fireball with just half the Incantations, it would serve as a proof that she's more familiar with the spell and is a step closer to learning true silent casting.

***

Days passed by as I was studying, training and teaching.

Around 3 weeks have gone by since I came to Roa.

My strength hadn't grown much, but I certainly have learned a lot and my swordsmanship skills improved.

Of course, I was still learning the most ordinary sword moves, so there wasn't much to report. It was simply a repeated practice of guards, slashes and counters.

There were three main guards in the Sword God Style, and Eris and I practiced all of them.

Ghislain also taught us the fundamentals of the [Longsword of Light] technique from the very beginning, even though there's no hope for us to perform the real Longsword of Light any time soon.

Combat strength wise, my physical strength and size were both below that of a fully-grown adult. Without awakening Battle Aura and without using magic, I would probably still struggle to fight the most average of thugs.

So while my magic was already powerful enough to probably blow up half a city with a wave of my hand when I was only 5 years old, my strength as a swordsman was unfortunately limited by my age. There was no way around it.

Eris was also growing stronger quickly, both when it came to her strength and also to her ability in handling the sword.

When we first met, there was a huge gap in our swordsmanship skills, with Eris being mostly just a violent brute, but now she began to adapt to my fighting style and sparring with her became very tricky.

Sometimes my strategies that worked the day before wouldn't work the following day, or Eris would do something completely different. Sometimes the things I couldn't do yesterday, I could do today, and the same went for Eris.

Training with Paul in the past was not pointless, but practicing with an opponent closer to my own size and skill level was much better.

As these small experiences and discoveries accumulated, I felt like I was becoming a more skilled and experienced swordsman overall.

I was the kind of person that was good at formulating strategies beforehand, and then I would improvise in the moment anyway, because I would make a mistake.

It was like that in my first life, at least. I was quite clumsy and bad at sports.

In games I often played tanks and healers. 

That's because on a tank or a healer you have to adapt and sometimes change what you do in the moment. Even if you don't do the exact perfect thing to get you a top parse, as long as you respond correctly and in time to unexpected situations, it is good enough and you can perform at a high level.

Even if sometimes I did stupid things, I was used to improvising.

Now I think I benefit from this in swordsmanship.

Using logic, I would formulate various strategies in my mind before a fight and analyze proper responses for the future after a fight.

Then during the fight, I would follow my instinct and in the moment respond by executing one of the moves I thought was correct. 

Sometimes I was right, but sometimes I made the wrong move.

But Eris was the same.

I think what fighting practice is about is practicing to minimize the amount of times you make the wrong move, ideally down to nothing. My approach should be quite good.

That being said, Eris was way more random than me and seemed to not think at all about what she does. Because I was not an easy opponent, she more often than not responded wrongly.

Even so, she still did great. She was talented.

"You improved a lot," I complimented her one of those days with a light smile.

"Hmph!" Eris responded with a light snort and a reverse v-shaped mouth like a cat.

After mellowing her a bit at first, I then added, "But you're also very random. You're difficult to counter, but I think it's also very dangerous. I think you should think more, because you're sometimes doing very stupid things."

Eris was silent and only maintained a pouting face.

"That's because she's the instinctive type," Ghislaine said.

"...What's that 'instinctive type'?" Eris asked.

"Someone who can just do things without knowing how they do it," I said. 

"Is there something wrong with that?!"

"...No. It basically means you're a genius. But if you just rely on that and do random things, I don't think it's good."

"It's like Seraphim said. It doesn't matter how much talent you have, you won't get stronger if you don't use your head," said Ghislaine, looking at Eris seriously.

"Why not? You said I'm already doing well!"

"It's because if you don't understand the entirety of what you're doing, you won't be able to improve properly. I used to be the instinctive type as well, but once I started using my head and thinking logically, I became a Sword King."

Eris: "..."

"That's why practicing the basics with logic in mind is important, you understand?" Ghislaine continued.

"...Well, it's not like I care about becoming that strong! It has nothing to do with me!" Eris proudly declared.

I looked at her with a little disappointment.

Eris continued, "But I will do my best to keep up with Seraphim!" 

After a moment's delay, I faintly smiled at her and said, "Is that so? Then you should try hard, because I plan to become the strongest man in the world. Without doubt."

I nodded my head with a slightly solemn expression.

I then added, "And if you're too useless, I won't take you on an adventure."

…

Apart from my usual training each day, what I was the most busy with these days was learning Enchantment Magic and the art of Magic Circles directly from Pascal. Enchantment Magic of course referred to creating Magic Tools.

There were still more foundations that I felt I should have studied first, but Pascal was very enthusiastic about teaching me personally regardless, so I didn't decline.

I could see a fervent desire in the middle-aged magician to teach me anything and everything he could.

He seemed greedy. But as long as it was greed akin to wanting to become remembered as a prodigy's teacher, which seemed to be the case, then it was a kind of greed I could accept.

I visited the Magicians' Guild almost every day.

Pascal used the Stone Cannon wand as the basis of my studies, coming forward with the idea himself.

Over time I learned how to adjust the parameters of speed of the [Stone Cannon] spell, how to change the bullet's size, weight, density and also the rough shape by making changes in the Magic Circle.

We eventually created two wands with the speed enhancement of four times and five times over the norm, and with much sturdier bullets.

Having done that, we once again went out of town to test it.

For the wand with 4x times speed, both me and Pascal could use it. It seemed to have Saint rank level requirement of mana control.

However, Pascal seemed to require a lot of concentration when using that wand and had to put his full focus on it, his forehead filling with sweat when he controlled the bullet. It was his limit. He was unable to use the wand with 5x speed with any accuracy.

On the other hand, I could use that wand without a problem.

Seeing how I was able to use the 5x speed wand with perfect accuracy, Pascal stared at me flabbergasted.

Originally I made that 5x speed wand just as an experiment and Pascal doubted it would be usable, but in truth, I did it because I wanted to test it.

In the end, I could use it, and it was great!

As the power of the wand increased, the amount of bullets I could shoot out per second decreased, but the wand was still great.

Normally, when using Silent Magic, I needed around 2-2.5 seconds to power-up my Stone Cannon to the limit.

In contrast, when using the wand I made, I could shoot out about 2 bullets each second at the speed similar to my full-powered Stone Cannon.

That was a difference of at least four times! Plus, with the wand I could prepare my first shot much faster, in just 0.5 second, and with little mental burden.

The real party started when I tested using two wands in both hands back in the manor.

Dual-wielding two of the wands we made, I shot out a rain of bullets at a mud target I made with double the amount of bullets.

One after another, a barrage of about 4-5 high-speed and high-power bullets rained on my target.

It was 4-5 bullets per second, and each of these bullets was more than powerful enough to kill an Advanced rank swordsman and even threaten a Sword King like Ghislaine.

Before a month passed when I'd to leave Roa, I made one more wand.

Apart from the 5x speed modifier, the final wand also had more modifications to its bullets. The bullets were more aerodynamic, receiving a cone shape, and were made slightly bigger and denser.

The wand's bullets didn't include a rotation, but logically the spin should only be there to increase the accuracy of the bullet and not the penetration, so it was just an extra aspect that I was fine with skipping for now.

When a full month was about to pass, it was the scheduled time for me to get back home to Buena village.

***

[Special. My Little Owl: Lia.]

Evening.

One of those days, to take a break from studying Magic Circles non-stop, I decided to do some sculpting with Earth magic for a change.

I didn't like making figurines much and my skills were not great, but I felt it would be good to copy Rudeus and practice doing that at least to a certain degree.

As Eris was practicing her shortened Incantation sitting at the side, she served as my model.

When I said that I wanted her to act as my model for a figurine, Eris became very angry, but after I explained to her that I wasn't making fun of her, and after I showed her how I do it, she suddenly became very happy to be my model instead, rapidly shifting moods.

In general, I felt I understood Eris even better after this month, and understood how to handle her.

She is… to be frank, a bit stupid.

When complicated things are told to her, she would often assume that people are insulting her. Because she's bad at arguing, she would then instantly raise her fist to shut them up. Perhaps that's what happened back in school for nobles.

So if Eris was ever angry, I only needed to explain to her that I wasn't making fun of her, and she would immediately calm down.

But although she would calm down and form a smile on her face when I compliment her, for example, she would still try to punch me. It's as if expressing herself by punching someone was her default response when she doesn't know what to say.

It was a bad habit she had yet to correct, but at least it made me see that she didn't always punch people just out of spite.

"~Hoooo, ~hoooo."

At one point while sculpting I heard hooting behind the window.

I knew it couldn't be anything else but my owl familiar.

After thinking for some time I decided to give my owl the name Lia.

Lia was a smart bird. At least, that's the idea I got from watching her.

She was also quite obedient. She didn't randomly fly away and didn't rip things apart.

She mostly hovered near me when I was outside, floated around the manor as if searching for threats or simply slept in a cage I made for her.

She became something like a guardian of the Boreas manor.

Perhaps as expected of an owl, Lia liked to frequently nap during the day. She liked to stay in the stone and cage I made for her, probably because it was dark and cold, and right now we had the middle of summer.

At night, she would appear at the window of my room and hoot.

Eris often gave her high quality meat from the kitchens while petting her, but Lia also seemed to be going out to hunt each night.

She would often drag back a dead mouse and place it at my window still as if to show off.

Or maybe she expected me to eat it?

Either way, Lia seemed quite happy with her life.

If she were really from the North which has a harsher climate and way more high-rank monsters, then I could understand that it would have a more carefree life here.

At this moment, Lia flew right inside through the window that I felt half-open.

While flying through the room she then dropped something onto my bed.

That something was… a green lizard.

The lizard didn't immediately start running away, it just laid there and was only slightly twitching. It seemed as if its spine was crushed by the owl's talons, but it was still alive.

I had a blank expression on my face.

"~Hooooo!" Lia landed on my desk and hooted, a slender snow-white figure. She seemed very proud of herself.

'It's a lizard, Harry! Is that what she's saying?' I thought.

It was another time that she brought me her game.

When she first started doing that, I chased her away, trying to teach her that I didn't need it, but she would instead bring me something else - if not a rat or a mouse, then a snake or a frog.

Now it's a lizard.

But although Lia seemed to work hard to please me, I could not appreciate her efforts.

"Oooh!!! Let's eat it!" Eris said and excitedly grabbed the lizard, lifting it up by its tail.

"...What?"

"We can make a fire and grill it! Like a real adventurers' meal!" Before I could rebuke her, Eris had another bright idea. "No, I can use Fireball!!!"

"..."

"...Let the great protection of fire be on the place though seekest! I call the bold head of a torch here and now! Fireball!"

Disturb Magic.

"Huh? What?" Eris looked in astonishment as her fireball dissipated.

"You still have a long way to go," I told her, nodding.

"You did something!" She glared at me.

"...Yes. Don't start a fire on my bed."

"...Then let's fry it outside!"

Eris was very determined to eat the lizard hunted by Lia and wouldn't give up.

Fearing that she might do something stupid, I followed her.

That evening we made a small bonfire at the square and grilled the lizard with Ghislaine, and ate it together.

It wasn't very good.

But Eris liked it.

Afterwards Lia often brought me lizards for dinner. It took me a long time to teach her that I don't want them.

Lia was pretty smart and cute… but she was still a bird brain in the end.