Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 2 - Chapter 5

Spring of the Twelfth Year (IV)

Non-Player Character (NPC)

A character controlled by the GM as opposed to one of the players. Unlike in console games, NPCs are still controlled by a person, but are considered “non-player” because they are not controlled by a literal “player.”

They act as quest givers, information sinks, helping hands along the journey, and more. They are both the damsel in distress that the session revolves around and the villains that kidnap her. They are the supporting cast and the antagonist—a party of protagonists alone does not a world make.

I could have saved face had I been a mage’s apprentice, but being a mage’s servant was exceptionally disappointing. The difference one word made was incredible.

I found myself in a pointlessly lavish room with these sorts of inconsequential thoughts passing through my mind. Elisa had finally fallen asleep in my arms after crying her heart out, so I laid her down in a chair.

“Hmm, how strange. I was under the impression that the opportunity to learn magic would put a twinkle in any child’s eye.”

Lady Agrippina, who had changed into a blue robe as luxurious as her first, stared at us curiously. Don’t act like this isn’t your problem. She’s your disciple.

“I believe it’s only natural for a young girl of seven to fear leaving her parents’ side,” I said.

“Children in the city often indenture themselves to merchants at the age of five, you know? You do know, don’t you, ‘Mr. Brother’?”

The mage took a seat as she mocked me. Her chair was cushioned beyond belief and overburdened with embellishments. That one piece of furniture probably cost as much as my house.

“That aside, this is so...incredible.”

I was hoping to change the subject and sidestep her banter. Any attempt to explain the emotional state of the average young servant who ran away out of homesickness was clearly futile.

Currently, we were in a room akin to a small salon. White wallpaper was interrupted by a chic circle of glass, and high pile carpet covered the floor. The table and chairs that lay atop it made it difficult to believe that we were in a carriage. Forget hearing the constant clamor of wheels turning on a well-tread path—the vehicle didn’t so much as shake when we crossed a pothole. If I were to say that this was the magistrate’s tea room, I doubted there would be many who could see through my lie.

“But of course. I put a great deal of work into my carriage. Why should my quality of life have to suffer for the sake of boorish fieldwork? Well, truth be told, it has dropped quite substantially.”

The methuselah spoke as if she were reciting obvious platitudes. Honestly, it was no wonder to me now why they were so unpopular.

“Developing space-expanding magic is backbreaking work. So few people know how to use it that it was quite the ordeal to learn it myself. Still, it’s nice that the cost of maintenance is negligible—though I suppose I should expect no less from the methuselah of yore.”

This handmade carriage was a point of pride for Lady Agrippina. She went on to brag that it contained seven total rooms, which she could switch between at will. We were in a relaxing tea room now, but there was also a study, break room, and even a drawing room and kitchen that I suspected would never be used.

Essentially, it was a penthouse suite, no expenses spared. Long ago, I’d once ridiculed deluxe carriages as studio apartments on wheels, but to see that premise taken and run off with left me with mixed feelings.

This wagon alone could fit my house in it twice over. Mages truly were horrifying. Their hesitance to spread their craft made a lot of sense all of a sudden. Of course, my sister had left home specifically to learn this hidden art, but still.

On the day of our departure, we’d parted ways with the caravan that Lady Agrippina had been traveling with. (They’d desperately tried to retain their skilled travel companion, to no avail.) Instead, we set off straight for the imperial capital.

The capital of the Trialist Empire of Rhine, Berylin, was not the largest city in the empire. Between the imperial palace and the college, it was home to the centerpieces of power; however, the city had little in the way of industry outside of shopping and fiscal services. This was in part due to the routine rotation of the crown, but mainly stemmed from the fact that the population was very select. Most who settled down in Berylin were either nobles who had regular business in the palace, the retainers that served them, or merchants that dealt with the Imperial College.

The three imperial houses and seven electorate houses dictated the vast majority of politics in the empire. They most likely had written off a large urban center as unnecessary, as they all controlled their own territories. Each region’s cities were tailored to suit the local lord’s interests or the area’s culture. No one would pine for a massive metropolis that threatened to encroach on those privileges. The capital likely came about from shrewd political negotiation where each party tried to avoid yielding influence. As a result, the city towers high to this very day.

To reach the college, we had headed in the opposite direction from the caravans scattering to the distant reaches of the nation in search of new stock. The plan included stops at various inns along our journey; in fact, Lady Agrippina went out of her way to force these stops into our schedule every night, causing us to spend some days hardly moving. Don’t screw with me, woman.

At our current pace, she told us that it would take three months for us to get to the capital. I couldn’t help but feel listless when I thought that summer would arrive alongside us.

“I know it’s cramped, but I ask that you put up with it. Who knows how many years I had to do the same.”

If this was cramped, what words could describe the four beds lined up together that I’d shared with my siblings? The circumstances of birth were laughably unfair.

“With that said... Erich.”

“At the ready,” I said. I stepped away from Elisa and obediently waited on Lady Agrippina.

I intended to play the part of a dutiful servant as best I could. Despite recognizing that the slight pause that preceded my name had likely been the result of her trying to recall it, I didn’t let any emotion show.

As an aside, we were now on our fourth day since meeting one another. It had taken her a long while to learn my name. She’d previously stated that remembering faces and names was not her forte; I believed this stemmed from a fundamental disinterest in other people.

“I plan to have you work as my servant, but at present that seems to be an inconvenient task.”

“I...see?”

I had no idea what she meant by “inconvenient,” but decided that it would be unwise to talk back to my employer. Maybe she doesn’t have any work clothes for me? Or perhaps she doesn’t own any cleaning supplies. That would indeed be inconvenient—I was less than keen on taking up the practices of a certain school where the toilets were cleaned with bare hands.

“So come on over here,” she said, beckoning me to her.

I obeyed. She then made a cup with her right hand and exhaled into it, muttering something inaudible. Now that I thought of it, methuselah didn’t need catalysts to use magic, unlike mensch.

Thinking back on the few precious books about that I’d gotten a chance to read at the church, there were organisms that had an organ for discharging mana and those who didn’t. Mensch fell into the latter category, meaning that we required some kind of conduit to draw out our magical power. On the other hand, methuselah fell into the former category: words or breath alone could be imbued with mystic energy, allowing them to cast their spells unassisted.

Lady Agrippina’s breath swirled into a glowing vortex atop her palm. Just when I thought it had settled, it converged into a tiny droplet at the tip of her index finger.

“Now then, this may hurt, but be a dear and bear with me. You’re a boy, aren’t you?”

My head had been filled with moronic thoughts like Wowee, sparkly! Pretty! Yet her terrifying statement suddenly pulled me back to the moment. Before I could ask what she meant, her finger pressed against my forehead.

The world shattered.

In a word, I saw hell.

Over a lifetime as Erich, I’d endured my fair share of pain. I’d been bludgeoned with blunted iron training swords, fallen from tall trees, and been kicked through the air when Holter had been in a bad mood. All the usual injuries sustained by rural children were familiar to me.

As of late, I’d even been battered and bruised to the brink of death when I’d faced off against the kidnappers; as if to overwrite that pain, I had a vivid memory of the sensation of fangs tearing into the flesh of my ear.

However, none of that could compare. This new torment reduced all of that to a mere bug bite in scale.

It felt like bits of metal had been jammed into my skull only to suddenly expand; paradoxically, I could feel a vise grip crushing my brain. The backs of my eye sockets burned. I was made acutely aware of nerves that I had never before felt, as if somebody had yanked them out of my body to play cat’s cradle.

The world spun, pain danced, and my senses twisted. The concept of “I” had been tossed into a blender and run through a hydraulic press; the remaining slurry was loaded into a compressor and dispersed on the four winds as fine particulate. “Pain” falls woefully short of conveying the experience.

Tormented by the illusion of eternal suffering, only a fraction of a second had passed in reality. Perhaps I had accidentally triggered my Lightning Reflexes amidst the agony, as I could see Lady Agrippina’s eyes close in slow motion.

After a blink that had used up all the time in the universe, all that ailed me vanished.

“Hngh?!” Yet my body seized at the phantom sensation. I could feel my gut churn, threatening to rend my flesh asunder. Sullying my master’s home (carriage, technically) was unthinkable, so I somehow held myself back through force of will. I’d been less than a moment away from reuniting with the wonderful meal that my mother had put her heart into making this morning.

“Well done and congratulations. Are your eyes open yet?”

As the pain subsided and I writhed to try and ask her what she’d done, the magus cut me off. Her words were accompanied by a pop-up in the corner of my vision. I’d awoken to my magical talents.

“Huh? Wha... What is this?”

I flipped through my stats in a frenzy to see that both Mana Capacity and Mana Output had little “Awoken” tags stuck to them. The magical traits that had refused to even budge in the past were now unlocked in spades. Many of the skills were still hidden away behind restrictions, but a few of these had opened up too.

What? What in the world happened?

“You’ve awoken to magic. Welcome to the world of magia.” Lady Agrippina puffed up her chest and smiled, ready for all the praise in the world.

Hold on a minute... Are you sure this was a good idea?

[Tips] Just as instruction can award experience points, the actions of others can also unlock various skills and traits. Experience is not consumed in this case.

Still battling the lingering pain, I was utterly confused as to what she’d done to me. Lady Agrippina casually began to leak the secrets of her inner clique—that is, the details of magical society.

“I informed you of what exactly a magus is when I invited you to serve me, did I not?”

Under normal conditions, this sort of information was kept from outsiders. However, I clearly needed to know if I was to work under her. She’d told me that mages recognized by the college were allowed to bear the title of magia. This distinguished them from mere mages or sorcerers.

Their fixation stemmed from the fact that they prided themselves on being able to choose between true and hedge magic to suit their situation. The word “mage” carried the connotation that one was a mere user of magic—and perhaps only magic.

Furthermore, the secrets behind spellcasting were tightly kept, but that didn’t mean they were completely unknown to the world at large. Self-taught wizards could be found everywhere, using their skills to earn a living despite not even knowing the rigorous definitions that differentiated spells from cantrips. These grassroots mages simply awaken to their gifts naturally and manipulate mana through intuition alone.

Apparently, this talent for weaving magic into phenomena generally took form once the person crossed some threshold for Mana Capacity. They went on to learn how to control this power by themselves, lest they be overtaken by their own surging energy.

“It may seem complex to discern between true and hedge magics, but it isn’t a particularly daunting task. Regardless of the amount, all living beings contain mana. Naturally, our bodies are built to accommodate this ever-present resource.”

The magus listlessly puffed a cloud of smoke into the shape of a person walking through the air.

Mana was inherent to all sentient life. The average amount and utility differed between races, but you’d never find anyone without it. It followed that cases in which one’s body could not bear the load of something it was designed around were few and far between. Babies do not need to be taught how to breathe or suckle their mother’s teat. In parallel, an awakened mage would eventually amass at least some intuitive understanding of their powers. This was no different from a child’s first steps being eventually followed by running and jumping of all kinds.

“Yet that does not suffice.”

Another stream of smoke took the form of someone racing past the first figure, still walking leisurely.

“There is a sharp contrast between one whose legs flail about without direction and the deliberate movements of a sprinter. Magic must be refined.”

In essence, her analogy was that there were all sorts of nuances hidden away in the act of running. The time it took to get from point A to point B was not set in stone: a top runner with perfect form was hardly in the same realm as an amateur who knew nothing of balance. The efficiency that accompanied polish was just as present in magical exercise as physical.

And I could see the difference now. The unending bands and orbs of light clinging to the running smoke man were mana itself, neatly woven into a ritual spell that evaded the watchful eye of physics.

The other smoke man now flailed to catch up. Ugly clumps dotted the makeup of the spell. It was clear that the sprinter was indeed refined—I could see no excess parts in the flowing hex powering it.

Both spells achieved the same effect; yet one look was enough to tell there was a difference in their performance. Mana usage, casting time, and the lag from the initial cast to activation all clearly pointed to one’s superiority. My opened eyes let me see all that I needed to.

I never knew the world was so rational—so beautiful.

“Oh? It would seem you can discern the difference immediately after waking up. Commendable.”

Lady Agrippina watched me stare at the elegant form of the second smoke man and smiled in satisfaction. Between the two solutions to the same problem, she seemed pleased that I had noticed which was to be preferred from a magus’s perspective.

“Truth be told, you were quite peculiar. Imagine seeing a full-grown adult without a deformity in sight crawling about on all fours like a toddler. That was how you appeared to me.”

That seemed about right. One was meant to get a grasp of their talents naturally at a certain point. A mensch with no inclination for the craft despite a V: Good capacity for mana would be sure to raise questions. This was the twist that had come with the future Buddha’s blessing. I could do housework for the rest of my life, but would never get better at cleaning unless I explicitly chose to. To an outsider looking in, I was an irregularity, through and through.

Perhaps I’d piqued her interest as a talented individual not yet aware of my path to magehood. That may have been the reason I’d been chosen to accompany Elisa.

“Still, as peculiar as you once were, that was all there was to it. A tiny injection of priming mana was enough to open your eyes.”

“What do you mean, ‘open my eyes’?”

Lady Agrippina explained that the phrase was an idiom to suggest that one had awakened to their potential as a magus. Considering that I couldn’t perceive the pretty sparkles of mana until moments ago, the metaphor was surprisingly straightforward.

Evidently, talent for spellcasting could come about naturally or be triggered by a magically provocative event. Like me, some realized their powers after an influx of another person’s mana shocked their system. Others could experience similar episodes by venturing to a mana-rich location—these were usually spiritual, taboo, or holy.

But all this information still left me with one question.

“I take it you’re wondering if it was all right to open your eyes so casually?”

I froze for a moment. She’d predicted exactly what I wanted to ask before I had even opened my mouth. I thought I’d had a perfect poker face; at most, I’d tilted my head by the faintest of angles.

I renewed my resolution to remain vigilant around my liege. Having my mind read off the back of every tiny movement would drive me to my wit’s end.

“I told you this before, did I not? The title of magus is only a necessity to those who wish to set up an official laboratory in the city or special cases like your sister. There are common folk who go about their lives using magic to earn their bread. No one will mind if one or two more happen to wake up and see their own aptitude. Provided I don’t take you as an official disciple, of course.”

Lady Agrippina laughed with a great air of ostentation and puffed on her pipe. Seeing her cackle, I finally understood: she hadn’t just used me as an excuse to take Elisa as her apprentice... She’d done that, and earned herself a handy little manservant.

“At any rate, here. Read this.”

She pulled a thickly bound book out of thin air (in the most literal sense) and tossed it to me, still laughing. I couldn’t help but wonder just how many birds she’d managed to kill with one stone—as one of the casualties, I was overcome with an indescribable emotion.

I was happy that she’d primed me for sorcery. The self-study experience rates for magic as a category weren’t too bad. Further, with the right add-ons, I could visualize a build based on various skills and traits that tickled my love of fixed values. The tantalizing thought of scouring through the newly unlocked pages of data already had me watering at the mouth. Still... Man.

“You are my servant, after all. I shall teach you just enough not to warrant tuition, so I look forward to seeing how you repay me. Let us begin with housework.”

The fact that my powers were going to be put to use doing Lady Agrippina’s bidding made it notably harder to celebrate. I thought back to the old mage and the five years I’d spent eagerly awaiting this day.

All that to amount to this?

[Tips] The gap between mage and magus is far greater than what the layperson assumes. Direct requests from magistrates only ever go to the latter, and they are the only ones licensed to advertise their businesses with magic lettering. All others simply fly under the radar—the state lets them swim, knowing that it would do more harm than good to crack down on every stray wizard.

What do you imagine when you hear the word magic? A scorching flame that burns enemies to nothing more than ashes? A tidal wave that washes away legions of helpless foot soldiers? A lightning bolt absolute that fells a giant foe? From a gamer’s perspective, these spectacles are what I assume come to most people’s minds.

There isn’t anything wrong with that. My beloved tabletop games so often had combat systems crammed with rows and rows of offensive spells, sometimes so densely they warranted a chapter of their own. Many of them were incredibly powerful, but could catch allies in the blast just as easily as they swept through enemies. The way they spurred on the imagination had a different flavor from video games, and they were always fun to play with.

Once, our front line had tunneled in on fire resistance, and I’d blown away everything in our path with no regard for friendly fire. Of course, that wasn’t to say I hadn’t regularly done the same with less resistant allies if the situation called for it.

Those had been the only times my dice dependably turned out high rolls. I reminisced on the times I’d gotten a cramp laughing about how my explosive dice roll demolished either me or my companions.

Regardless, TRPGs also included magic meant to be more useful in daily life. To take an example from a certain setting containing dragons and dungeons, there were spells to create energizing food and control the temperature of the space around oneself. These were the grounded types of spells that had made me wish for magic in my own life.

Other examples like temporary face shifting, water walking, and the like could single-handedly ruin the premise of entire campaigns. Although they could fail to deal even a single hit point of damage in regular use, even the most pointless spell could have a chance to shine in the right scenario. It was one of the biggest draws of fantasy systems.

The book I’d been given was chock-full of magic just as alluring. I knew from the first few minutes of flipping through the pages that this text was to be revered. It went without saying that it contained all sorts of cooking and cleaning magics for the menial tasks in life, but the table of contents alone listed tons of things that were rife for abuse.

Above all else, reading through the theory behind a given spell automatically unlocked it and awarded experience points. I was just about ready to begin worshipping this as a holy text, but...couldn’t they have done something about the name? One Thousand Spells to Keep the House in Order wasn’t exactly the most exhilarating title.

My enthusiasm for my first arcane textbook decelerated at the fact that I could imagine the subtitle The Housewife’s Bible being added to the end. Regardless, my curiosity won out, and I carefully turned through the thick sheepskin pages.

Magic was certainly not a commonly studied subject, but the existence of this book pointed to that being untrue at the top echelons of society. Some of the occupational skills I’d unlocked corroborated this: there was an Arcane Attendant section that suggested that those serving the bourgeois could cast spells and cantrips themselves.

What this meant was that stewards of noble houses could be gifted magicians in their own right. Highborn life never ceased to surprise me.

That aside, I thought the manual was rather slim for its claim to contain a thousand spells. Yet upon closer inspection, the book itself was magically condensed; the page count extended well beyond the physical dimensions of the binding. The contents are as plebeian as you can get, dammit. Who went out of their way to cast this fancy spell on it?

“I leave the whole of housework to you. Hired help doesn’t live up to my standards, so I’ve been taking care of myself for some time, but it’s quite tiring, you see.”

Lady Agrippina wearily waved her hand and bid me away. I was to read through the book and report back to her when I came across a spell I deemed useful, at which point she would teach me how to actually use my mana.

I’ve thought of magic as this giant undertaking for so long... Am I really allowed to learn it this casually?

I set my doubts aside and ended up choosing a simple spell called Unseen Hand found in the preface of the book. The summary—which had been a horrendous read, laden as it was with metaphors and euphemisms in palatial and archaic tongues—stated that it was a beginner spell that allowed one to exert a nebulous force from afar in the form of a hand.

I figured its simplicity gave it perfect utility. I couldn’t even count how many times I’d dropped a spoon or something into a crack and struggled to reach it. And I’m sure everyone has prayed at least once for an extra hand to hold the last of their luggage. Most importantly, I could touch things without using my real hand. That was just begging to be twisted to my own ends.

“Oh, this? It must be so difficult to live as a mensch, having to learn how to use spells like these.”

Lady Agrippina slipped in an offhand violently racist remark and began to lecture. I’d spent a lot of resources bolstering my Memory, but I honestly would have liked a pen and paper. Maybe I’ll ask for some later.

At long last, we finally reached the question: what exactly was the difference between real magic and hedge magic? I initially worried that explanations given by a scholar like her would be difficult to follow. However, her lesson was surprisingly comprehensible.

“In effect, the world is a cloth woven from the strings of the gods.”

She began with an analogy—a suitable choice for teaching children. As she spoke, she plucked the top off a teapot that had been resting on the table.

“Take this lid. If I let go of this lid, it will fall back onto the table.”

The reality of gravitational attraction that we took for granted was not a physical phenomenon in this world. Gravity was instead attributed to the gods. After all, in those early days of existence, the heavens were said to have created the better part of the world as they pleased.

“If any given object exhausts the things beneath it upon which it can rest, it will eventually fall into the stars. This is a theory proposed by Elder Christof which we will take as our vertical thread.”

My instructor didn’t bother to dwell on anything, but this theory being accepted meant that the denizens of this world had already adopted the notion that the planet was spherical. Come to think of it, I had never spoken about grand ideas about the planet or the like with anyone, and there weren’t any scientific treatises kept in my church’s storage. I didn’t think the world was this advanced!

Oh, wait... Is it? On second thought, the philosophers of ancient Greece had come to this conclusion as well. If I discounted the Abrahamic religions that swept the globe, maybe it wasn’t that impressive after all.

“What would happen if I were to swing it like a pendulum and then let go? But of course, it follows its momentum and flies away. This abides by the law of inertia set out by Robert of Ursov. We shall take this as our horizontal thread.”

The lecture went on, unbothered by the chatter in my brain. Lady Agrippina took the lid between her willowy fingers and hurled it across the room. I was thoroughly intimidated: had the carpet not been so shaggy, the delicate teaware would have been seriously damaged. The financial situation that fueled her lack of hesitation struck me with fear.

“The universe layers innumerable threads together to weave together what we know as ‘normal.’ That includes the magic that we use.”

This time, she lifted up the teapot itself. Without a moment’s pause, she threw it too. The expensive-looking china...did not follow the “normal” path that was expected of it. Instead, it gently hovered to the floor like it had sprouted a set of wings.

“We take the spells we form with our mana and use them as needles and dyes, skipping stitches in the fabric of reality to fashion patterns of our choosing.”

The teapot came to a soft stop after drifting over to the lid that had preceded it. The reality before me was the result of phenomena that spat in the face of what was meant to be. I could tell that the magus’s skill was immeasurable precisely because what she’d done was so difficult to wrap my mind around. This was on a different level from shooting off fireworks or exploding pockets of air.

“Just now, I merely toyed with the two threads I mentioned that make up part of the world. I fooled reality into thinking that this teapot falls slowly.”

Although she made her incredible technique look almost cheap with an easily understood example, I managed to internalize just how unthinkably difficult it would be to get to the roots of the craft. Magic was intertwined with science—it was no doubt a path of scholarship to the highest degree. No wonder the state built a giant research institute to get all the geniuses in the empire to dedicate their lives to this.

“In contrast, science is the endeavor of attempting to perfectly imitate a cut of cloth woven from the magical fibers of reality. Thus, the consequences that we bring about hold until the cloth eventually shrinks and disappears.”

The teaware floated up and returned to its original position. When the lid found its spot with a soft click, Lady Agrippina smiled so brilliantly that it was a shame there wasn’t a painter on hand to immortalize it. She retained her beaming face as she made her concluding remark.

“See? Isn’t it simple?”

The hell it is!

Reason beat down my urge to scream and I managed to instead thank her for the well-presented lecture. From there, we moved on to emitting and manipulating mana.

If reality was but a cloth, then mana was the sewing kit stored in one’s body. It piled up until one’s Mana Capacity was reached, and one could let loose an amount dictated by their Mana Output. To use another analogy, one’s capacity represented a tank of water, and output could dictate the difference between a gardener’s hose and a fireman’s.

I had thankfully leveled both to V: Good, but I imagined that a lopsided ratio would be agonizing. I pitied the mages out there who drew an unlucky lot.

“Spells are something you ought to work out in your head, but spoken chants can help solidify the image in your mind. Complicated procedures sometimes require body movement, as well, but as a general rule you should hope to come up with the spell and simply let it activate through a conduit. Of course, I would never deny that chants, movements, and even magic circles drawn on paper can help bolster your power or accuracy.”

My sympathy for hypothetical people did me no favors as she briskly pressed on. Interesting. So chants and magic circles are training wheels that eventually become a booster of sorts.

As one might expect, the underlying rationale behind long-winded mantras and sparkly light was not to look cool—which meant that I could unleash my inner middle school boy and it would be considered good form.

“At times, you may consider using a formal catalyst, but... Well, we shall leave higher-end topics for another day. Now let me see...”

“Wha—hey! What are you—”

I don’t know whether or not she picked up on my boneheaded thoughts, but Lady Agrippina thrust her hand down my collar out of nowhere. I’d been so focused on the lesson that my reactions were a beat late. I had no hope of stopping her as she ruffled around my chest.

When she withdrew her hand from my travel clothes, it reappeared with a ring. I’d kept the old mage’s ring dangling from my neck at all times since he’d given me it all those years ago.

I’m pretty sure this could be considered sexual harassment. Had I been a girl, the whole scene would have been cast in a...let’s say less than printable light, outside of a thin and expensive format at certain fan gatherings.

“Ah, I knew you had something. My, this is far nicer than I would have expected.”

The magus peered at the ring with a piece of cord fed through it and muttered her first impressions. She pulled it closer to get a better look, so I leaned forward to make sure the string wouldn’t catch on my neck—only to witness a set of dainty fingers pluck the thing right off.

“Huh?!”

“This sort of thing is a rare sight nowadays. Where did you get your hands on it?”

My disbelief dragged my mental capacity through the mud, but I somehow managed to work my tongue-tied mouth long enough to recount my encounter with the old man. I’d witnessed physics-defying events at an alarming frequency with little ado ever since I’d gotten involved with Lady Agrippina. This was not good for my psyche.

At the very least, would it be too much to ask that she put more hurrah into it, like the church ceremonies held by my hometown bishop? Then my brain could shift gears and accept the hocus-pocus of it.

“What a generous magus... To think he’d give away a lunar ring.”

“What does that mean?”

“The material used to craft these is rare. That being said, its rarity is all there is to note; the trend for the past century or so is to forgo ease of use in favor of raw power. Still, this has its uses as an uncomplicated conductor for mana.”

Lady Agrippina returned the ring to me after her appraisal. Apparently, this would do in place of a staff.

Arcane conduits generally required tedious operation or were large and bulky in the name of transferring mana more smoothly. Thinking back, the old man had carried around a staff that was far too large to hide.

Evidently my ring was ill-suited for powerful spells. Still, it was solid enough to be used for most purposes, which was why she’d called the old magus generous. It looked like I really had received a wonderful gift.

This was exactly what a magic swordsman would need. It conducted mana but didn’t even take up a hand, leaving me free to cast spells with a firm grip on my sword. The direction of my build was rapidly coming together. Instead of being a magic swordsman that used spells and then swung, I was going to aim for a style where I wove magic into my swordplay.

While these two paradigms sounded similar, they were stylistically distinct. The former used magic at mid-to-long ranges and switched to swordplay in close quarters. Like a Roman legionary throwing his spear before charging into the fray, in this archetype magic was a tool to soften up one’s opponents. From there, one could stack buffs and jump into the melee or pull back to cover holes in the rear guard. It was a role that could do anything a party needed. As hackneyed as this may sound, this flexibility made them masters of nothing, and I had many memories of struggling to make similar builds work.

It was simply too easy to fall into the classic jack-of-all-trades role. When I’d faced a warrior who’d single-mindedly devoted their experience to their class, I hadn’t been able to land or dodge a hit properly, and my squishy, untrained flesh had been the stuff of tears. Compared to mages of equal level, the experience I’d wasted on warrior skills had left my magic stats woefully inadequate.

The only ways to make this archetype worth using were to spend a ludicrous amount of experience, or to have a perfect set of racial bonuses for the task.

In contrast, the style I wanted to pursue was a sub-archetype that revolved around breaking the action economy over my knee. I would fit in small spells as bonus actions while speccing as a full-fledged frontliner. Here, magic was the seasoning on top; I would only pick up the bare minimum I needed on the arcane side of things. Instead of throwing around flashy direct-damage spells, imagine calling a glowing sword from a galaxy far, far away to slice opponents into pieces.

You may think that this would make this build easier to put together, but that wasn’t at all the case. Even the slightest error in balancing out my resources between magic and swordsmanship could leave me at the whims of proper front-guard fighters. The challenge that came from finding this impeccable ratio plucked at my munchkin heartstrings. At the end of a long battle with calculations, there was nothing more cathartic than slamming down big numbers on a crowd of brain-dead warriors who’d jammed all their resources into warrior skills.

All that said, I took a step back to examine myself in terms of game balance. I could enter combat, set up with Lightning Reflexes, fire off a spell with my extra action, and then take a full normal turn. This was ludicrous. I was the type of front guard that I dreaded seeing from the GM’s seat.

I could see a future where I began combat by buffing my party and debuffing the enemy, throwing a hex on the back line if line of sight allowed it. My unfair schemes were a reflection of my personality; this skipped past strong and went straight to oppressive.

GMing for a clever gremlin with ludicrous offensive ability is exhausting, since it severely limits the range of viable combat encounters. If they got too strong and somehow slipped through to behead the backline enemies, the whole encounter would fall to pieces. A GM’s job is, in part, to set up fights the players can win; making it still feel like a challenge is where the struggle comes from.

On the player’s end, though, there’s nothing better than bulldozing right through the GM’s carefully planned work! Take the initiative when it comes to bullying your GM!

Now that I had a real idea of how I could min-max myself, I was getting excited. Without any delay, I acquired Unseen Hand while listening to Lady Agrippina explain how I ought to organize my mana.

I once again marveled at how efficient it was to be taught something. A free unlock was par for the course, and lessons came with an experience discount to actually acquire the skill. Furthermore, the experience I earned while learning ended up returning a net profit. My blessing was utterly busted.

For now, I elected to raise the spell to III: Apprentice and obediently began forming an image in my mind. I felt a strange and novel sensation wriggling within me, conglomerating into a single mass. The process grew fiercer and fiercer until the mystic body flowed out of the ring on my left middle finger.

It dribbled out of the conduit as a band of light before demonstrating the behavior that I had programmed it to do. My target was the string still draped around my neck. Now that I no longer had a need for it, I wanted to remove it. As soon as I focused my attention, the Unseen Hand bent to my will and removed the string, holding it up in front of me.

So this is magic! The result was simple and boring, but seeing my spell take effect was enough to deeply move me. This was what I had been searching for! How grand!

“Wow, on your first try? Not bad at all.”

While I was busy throwing together enough mental applause to produce cosmic noise, Lady Agrippina caught me off guard with words of praise. Methuselah could use this sort of spell off instinct alone, but she knew—or rather, she reasoned out at this very moment—that mensch children were not the same.

In the time that I’d taken to acquire the skill, she’d been lost in thought—she’d reevaluated the difficulty of training a mensch based on the fact that I couldn’t even use a spell like Unseen Hand. Yet evidently, I’d managed to surpass her expectations, if only slightly.

“Good boy, good boy... This is what I’m meant to do, isn’t it?”

Lady Agrippina awkwardly placed her hand on my head and petted me, trying to figure out how an instructor was meant to carry herself. It was clear from her question that she wasn’t very good with children, owing to a dearth of experience.

I couldn’t help but feel guilty for some of the vengeful things I’d fantasized about in our short time together. They had been a touch too gruesome to put to writing, so I simply resolved myself to apologize through honest work. That wasn’t to say that I reconsidered my opinion of her. And I completely deny that having my head patted for the first time in a while swayed me in any way.

“Very good. Go along and practice by yourself for a time. I’m sure we’ll arrive at the inn by sunset, so I’ll be off reading.”

I bowed my head as she returned to her little world and prepared to immerse myself in my own.

[Tips] Some abilities can only be unlocked by being taught, and many receive acquisition discounts in the presence of a tutor. This effect is most pronounced with magic and other scholarly pursuits.

The clever boy may be able to work toward things he has yet to learn, but all the wits in the world aren’t enough to unlock something he doesn’t know exists.

The genius researcher of the Imperial College glanced up from her book for a brief moment. She saw that her apprentice had immediately begun to sniffle upon waking up, and her servant moved in, frantically trying to appease her. Even as she dropped her gaze back to the text in her hands, several threads of parallel thought blazed in her mind.

This was what made the methuselah the preeminent humanfolk. In terms of physical specifications or magical affinity alone, there were races that matched or at times even surpassed them.

Although they were on the brink of extinction following a deadly plague that had wiped out most of their population, the old giants still reigned over the sacrosanct mountain peaks that pierced the clouds.

The nephilim inherited the blood of divine avatars who’d descended eons ago. Their every breath wrought miracles upon the land.

Great fairies were living manifestations of various eternal phenomena of this reality and controlled nature as they saw fit.

Lastly, the only beings that could destroy a vampire for good were the gods themselves.

Besides these examples, there were countless other races that posed a legitimate threat to methuselah in a contest of tenacity or magical talent. All one needed to do to kill a methuselah was part head from body—in a way, they were one of the most modest races around.

Yet despite all their fellow humanfolk antagonizing them as a thorn in their sides, the methuselah did not crumble. Quite the opposite—they went around dancing to their own tune to this very day.

The reason was simple: methuselah were naturally born multitaskers. They could simultaneously process a second and third unrelated task at any given time. While their bodies went through their daily affairs on autopilot, they could ceaselessly devote themselves to lofty contemplation. Whether they were a scholar or a politician, a tactician or a strategist, this was a fearsome power to behold.

From the concurrent, overlapping revelations in their mind, they could predict things to an unreasonable degree of precision. Able to pit two arguments against one another fairly, it was as if their minds were a constant battleground for debate. Paired with their tendency toward monomaniacal fixation, their expert calculations ascended to the realm of prophecy. To rob such a being of its life through skill in combat alone was a daunting task.

Agrippina was using her racial specialty to the best of her ability as she pondered the future of the two children.

The brother was a far better learner than she’d expected. Still, he was nothing more than an outlier; his case alone would not be enough to improve her opinion of mensch capabilities in general.

The more imperative matter was that the toddler-like sister would need time before she was ready to learn anything. It would smooth things along if she remembered her true identity as a changeling. In the event that she did, manipulating magic would come to her more easily than breathing air.

However, that alone would not do; that alone did not suffice; that alone would fall short of their goal. The college demanded logic, not technique. Only when bound by reason and refined by the whetstone of theory could magic be considered Truth—something worthy of being passed down to those who would carry the torch.

Mere usage would do the girl no favors. To wield the awesome power of her birthright was no different than a freshly born babe swinging around a stick. Generations to come had nothing to glean from such trifles.

There was no need for eminence that died with its wielder. This precept was grander than the college; it was the collective will of the empire itself. Society did not pine for a fleeting splendor that bloomed and withered in a single generation. Slow and steady expansion of prosperity was venerated above all else. Otherwise, the nation would not have elections for its emperors. The very foundation of Rhine spat in the face of the egocentrism of monarchy.

It was a matter of course that the college did not favor mages for their might. Such clowns would never be permitted to carry themselves as magia. Agrippina’s disciple would never graduate with her mind as innocent as it currently was.

Come to think of it, the methuselah recollected that a man had once barged in to boast about the gift of magic he’d been born with. The episode clung tight in a corner of her flawless memory. What was his name? Though her kind hardly ever engaged in the act of forgetting, things that didn’t hold their interest were difficult to bring back to the surface. That was why it had taken Agrippina some time to be able to smoothly recall her apprentice’s and servant’s names.

Truth be told, the man from however many years ago had been quite the impressive sorcerer. It had taken the brilliant Agrippina until adulthood to begin learning space alteration magic. The fact that he’d taken the first step already had left her genuinely amazed. She remembered thinking that these unpredictable bundles of raw potential ready to burst that popped up now and again among mensch were the reason they couldn’t be underestimated as a whole.

However, said in a different light, that was all he had amounted to. He’d failed to properly explain the intricacies of his marvelous technique. Agrippina hadn’t felt even remotely curious at a man whose only trick was to flex his natural talent. She’d wondered, If you can do no more than brandish your innate endowments, what difference is there between you and a beast?

At the very least, there would have been something of interest had he carried some grand ambition to fulfill with his gift. Yet the profound eyes of the magus had fallen upon a child seeking approval. His future at the college had been beyond hope.

Even so, there had been a chance that he’d be of some use, perhaps as a businessman or a data collector. Alas, the Imperial College was the pinnacle of magic. Those who walked its halls were broken and complete, and they would be sure to deem him as worthless.

Agrippina thought that she’d explained all of this to the man very cordially and with great detail. Yet he had failed to cede, and the only reason she’d written him a letter of recommendation was to get the stubborn fool out of her hair.

This had led to her receiving a strongly worded letter that read, “Don’t send us your garbage.”

Not that she particularly cared. She’d put this behind her, and it was hardly worth dedicating any of her precious brainpower to reminiscence. With his skills, the mage had likely gone on to be a successful mage in some city, so she offered a light prayer that he might mature and put the subject to rest.

Agrippina needed to raise her apprentice to be the opposite of that buffoon. She needed to mold Elisa into a proper thinker. That was the responsibility she had taken on in deciding to take in a student.

Now, how long would it take to teach Elisa how to read and write to a level where she could navigate a treatise? How much longer to cultivate the logic and deduction needed to write one of her own?

When Agrippina thought of the road ahead...a faint smile graced her lips. So long as she had a disciple, she was free from fieldwork! Those who shouldered responsibility were granted privilege. In the name of dedicating all her time to the education of her apprentice, Agrippina could free herself from all sorts of bothersome tasks!

With a notably brutish thought swirling around in her mind, Agrippina wondered how the dean of her cadre would react when she returned. She was at the edge of her seat in excitement. What was more, silent rage filled the space between the lines of the dean’s reply to her letter that she’d sent two days prior. Her superior’s reaction was guaranteed to be priceless.

Agrippina du Stahl, noble daughter of the Stahl Barony, internally mocked the dean and began to plot. Where shall I start? Her byzantine and horribly inconsequential scheme started to take form.

[Tips] The highest rank within the Imperial College is that of a professor, and a council of them manage the institute’s affairs. To join its ranks, one must prove that their true nature is worthy of the honor.