Human beings were generally bad at doing multiple things at the same time. If your right hand held a kettle, it couldn’t carry a cup too. The solution to that was still simple enough—just use your other hand—but you’d soon run out of limbs if the tasks kept piling up. The same crude principle applied to magic too.

  The simpler the technique, the less effort it took to cast. Maneuvers rehearsed countless times didn’t necessarily take up all your brainpower and left you free to keep lecturing, or perform acrobatics, or even cast a second spell in tandem. But more advanced, mana-heavy rituals, especially ones you still had less experience with, disabled the caster for such a long period that it turned into a vulnerability in combat.

  When your hands were full, all your available processing power invested in the current action——War mages called that the dead moment.

  Aiming at your opponent in their dead moment while covering your own was what high-level magical fights were all about. In the theory books, that is.

  At actual war, the top choice was to catch the enemy less chivalrously “with their pants down,” and end things before they ever knew they were in a fight. If that didn’t pan out, you’d run away and try again later with better luck, instead of sticking around to trade fire like a fool. At least, that was the tactic the enemy favored against me.

  Now I found myself in the underdog position, with no way out, the door shut, and Professor Goldsinger watching over our every move. On the receiving end of a very heavy technique.

  Alice Silla’s giant eagle of water dived across the room at me. Water. The element notorious for its difficulty. Her approach wasn’t bad at all, per se. She was going to force me out of bounds with the mass of the water and wrap things up without serious injuries. Offense and defense, packed cleanly into one form.

  How nice it must have been, to wield magic without any restrictions.

  The young witch’s expert technical control and prodigious mana capacity would probably have been enough to make any of our classmates surrender on the spot. Going against a Tier 4 face to face was sheer stupidity, even for an adult wizard.

  But there was an unfortunate gap in field experience.

  All of Silla’s processing power locked in operating that ostentatious marine specter, she was left immobilized.

  For only a second. For a blink. But too long.

  No longer an active operator. For all intents and purposes, dead in the water.

  I pointed ahead. In that instant, the rubber ball I’d sent bouncing on the hall floor sharply changed direction, picking up all new vigor, and landed in the middle of the girl’s forehead at the brisk speed of 75 feet per second.

  Pop! Silla was knocked off her feet and down to the floor. The water eagle broke apart and landed in a big whoosh and splash, as a sign that she’d lost consciousness. Power and control cut off, the conjured water behaved the same as the real deal and washed past my shoes, to be collected in the floor drains.

  As I thought, the rubber ball made the ideal bullet.

  It had mass and surface area to resist motion and didn’t go completely crazy, while also being flexible enough to absorb the brunt of the impact. Best of all, unlike real bullets, it was reusable.

  I was prepared to keep pummeling Silla until she gave up, but she didn't come back for seconds. Her consciousness returned soon enough but she couldn’t get up, writhing and groaning on the floor, holding her head. The senior medic came to his senses and rushed to Silla's side.

  Meanwhile, Professor Goldsinger approached me, not looking too pleased.

  “That match appears over,” he dryly remarked. “That was a very cost-efficient application of an exceedingly simple technique. But don’t you think you have shown your opponent discourtesy with a display of only that level? Magicians’ duel is not a brawl. Beyond a mindless exchange of offense and defense, it is an opportunity to compare your learnedness and wealth of imagination with your peers.”

  “I heard nothing about that,” I answered and launched the rubber ball across the floor back into my grip. “This should prove I have full control over my channel and am not about to randomly detonate in class. The point of the match has been achieved.”

  “So it would seem,” the man had to admit. “Oh well. Arcane knowledge aside, it is clear you have asserted mental superiority over your opponent. Continuing would then be meaningless. I expect that you both accept the outcome and hold your end of the agreement made before the match. Then, have a pleasant day.”

  The Professor left the training room without sparing a look at Alice Silla, who remained on the floor, receiving treatment from the healer. As gentle a mask as he wore in public, Goldsinger was unmistakably the “proper” sort of wizard, more intellectually curious than he was sympathetic. A monster of magic. Neither of us had earned his interest through the bout, and our names and existence left his mind as soon as he was out of the door.

  “You’ll be all right,” the third-year mage assured recovering Silla, helping her sit up.

  What was his name again? Harald? Harold?

  There was no need to keep bathing her in healing magic only because of a small bump on the head. The frontal bone was the thickest part of the skull and magicians' innate manaflow accelerated their recovery rate. It appeared Silla’s good looks had won the senior over, and he thought he could score points with a compassionate play. Medical personnel were always the horniest in the RA too. But he was in the way and should’ve followed the professor’s example.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  “I need to talk to her,” I went to tell the man. “Please leave the room, senior.”

  Harald answered me with an unfriendly scowl.

  “I can’t leave you alone after such a dirty fight! You can talk all you like, but I’m staying in the room with you.”

  He was asking for a rubber ball to the face too. But before I could make a heavier argument, Silla got up on her own and gestured at the man to give space.

  “I’ll be fine. I won’t fall for such a cheap trick a second time. I promised I would hear her out, and the heirs of the Silla House always honor their word. Please, leave us.”

  I recall she also promised to do whatever I asked without even hearing me out…but never mind that.

  I didn’t expect her to hold some moronic pledge to start with. It was only an excuse I made up in the heat of the moment to get past all the talking.

  The older student reluctantly left the training hall. He paused once in the doorway to glance back, but I had no intention to say a word before he was out. The door needed to be closed for the wards drawn on the walls to connect and become active. I made sure they were working with my senses. Especially the soundproofing field.

  “So?” Silla asked, impatiently scowling at me, rubbing the lingering phantom pain on her forehead. “You said you had something to tell me? Hurry on with it. I already lost fifty points today, thanks to you.”

  “Turn around,” I said.

  “What?”

  I skipped over and shoved Silla’s shoulder to make her turn. I sought a firm grip under her shirt collar and kicked the back of her leg to force her down on her knees. Holding her head down, I drew forth all available energy and brought down my free hand’s palm on the flat plateau between her shoulder blades. Precision was much higher with direct contact. In a fiery, ferocious burst of energy, the power passed through my arm and I seared a pattern through the fabric and onto her skin. The barest thousandth of an inch deep, shallow enough to not be visible to the eye, but still clear enough a physical change to anchor the formula in place.

  Though the flesh was unharmed, her spirit rejected the foreign invasion of energy, manifesting as a burning sensation no different from a branding iron. Silla tensed violently and screamed without holding onto aristocratic dignity. But the soundproof barrier on, not a whimper could carry outside.

  I retracted my hand and appraised the result. It had been a while since I last did this, but for a rush job, it was passable.

  “W-what did you do to me…?” Silla asked when the pain gradually eased, hugging her shoulders and panting, eyes watering.

  “An insurance.”

  “What?”

  I drew her up by the collar to sit, knelt beside her, and spoke in a lowered tone,

  “Since you’re such a good student, tell me this: do you know what is an engram?”

  “E-engram…? Why…Ack!”

  I tested the effect. The accelerating vibration of particles on her back rapidly accumulated heat, and the burning sensation left her gasping for air.

  “Answer the question!”

  “Aah! It—It’s a type of seal!”

  “You get half marks. What does an engram seal?”

  “It seals magic!”

  “No shit! It seals a single preloaded instance of a technique! Don't you forget that! The next question is, what kind of spell did I encode in it? The answer is—this one.”

  I took the rubber ball from my pocket and tossed it ahead. Before the ball could touch the floor, I assigned it a downward vector to hold it in place, and drove an opposing upward air current at it from below, slowly peeling the madly spinning ball with friction down to nothing, one white-hot-glowing layer after another. When the game item was all smoke and ashes and the stench of burnt rubber surrounded us, I drew Silla closer again and said,

  “Do you understand what that means? That means you’re my dog now! You wag tail when I tell you, bark when I tell you, give paw when I tell you, and at all other times you will not talk to me, look at me, or show by any sign that you even recognize I exist. And if you tell a single soul about what happened here today, you will have a hole burned through your heart faster than you can say ‘cat’! Do you understand me!?”

  “W-w-why—”

  “DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!?”

  “Yes! I understand!” she cried, sinking under me.

  “Good!” I wrenched her back up and continued. “For your information, I can feel remotely if foreign mana comes into contact with the seal. And if I feel anything off, if I get the vaguest impression that you’re up to something you shouldn’t be, I will set it off right then and there. Bam! You will die, and it will hurt like nothing you can imagine!”

  “Alright, alright!”

  “You wanted to know what was up with me? Well, now you know! Are you happy!?”

  “No! I’m sorry!”

  “I didn’t ask you to be sorry! Get up.”

  I let the girl go and stood. Silla remained a sobbing heap on the floor, so I encouraged her to get a move on by warming up the engram again. The heat made her jerk and shriek, and she wrung herself stiffly upright and continued to spill tears, her face a streaked mess and eyes red. I took a handkerchief from my pocket and wiped her glistening cheeks, but it would take a while before she was fit for public. And the Professor said somebody else had a reservation for this hall too. There was no time.

  “Mages don’t make faces like this.”

  “Why are you doing this…?” she whispered, sniffling.

  Why, why, why. Because I was an evil witch? Because all people were evil? Because the world itself was evil? Because you were a sheltered idiot who had it too good and never knew that, never realized, and could never even imagine? Because your parents and tutors didn’t teach you the things that truly mattered? Because you insisted on poking your nose into a stranger’s business against better judgment, without making any effort to see what kind of quagmire you were diving into? Because you were incurably naive and honest at the worst of times? Because you had no luck? Because I had no luck? Because neither of us had any luck? Because the road to Hell was paved with good intentions?

  What did knowing matter? Not all questions had answers worth hearing.

  “Because you care too much.”