She Professed Herself The Pupil Of The Wiseman (LN) - Volume 12 - Chapter 25

Chapter 25

“I’D LIKE TO SEE THINGS for myself. Could you try to summon something?” Mira asked.

“Huh?” Layla looked up, confused. They’d just finished explaining that she couldn’t summon anything. Now Mira was asking her to summon. Wasn’t that contradictory?

Mira didn’t expect Layla to summon successfully, though. “I want to observe how you construct the spell. That’ll show me the problem,” she said nonchalantly. 

Her confidence had a solid foundation. Teaching wasn’t one of Mira’s specialties, but summoning was her ultimate area of expertise. During her time as one of the Nine Wise Men, she’d been hailed as the foremost summoner. People had asked her questions, naturally, and her answers became sharper over time. When someone told her what aspect of summoning troubled them, she could pick out the general cause in no time.

“Um, okay…”

Mira’s powerful ashen knights and mansion spirit had demonstrated her skills; if she requested this, she had to have a rationale. Recognizing that, Layla tried the method Bruce had taught her. Her mana spread, but rather than forming a magic circle, it vanished into thin air after a few seconds.

“Erk…” The failure depressed Layla. “Why does it do that?”

After watching Layla’s results, Mira looked at the other girls. The three front liners were a knight, a warrior, and a samurai. The mid-liner was a hunter, and the other back liner was a priestess. Priests were the most common mages, and summoners were the least common. 

Based on that lineup, Mira knew the problem. Taking into account their formation and how the spell had failed, she asked, “Layla, was it? You’re used to casting Ethereal Arts, aren’t you?”

“How did you know?! Yes, I am. And I’m pretty good at them too!” The girl beamed. Sara and the others praised her Ethereal Arts as well; they were indispensable to adventuring, after all.

Knew it. Hearing that, Mira was certain that she understood why Layla’s evocations failed. 

She’d predicted Layla’s aptitude for Ethereal Arts based on her position in the party. Ethereal Arts was a special field of magic that anyone with mana could use. The group’s priestess could use it too. It was a convenient field; as long as you learned the spells, you could employ their myriad useful effects.

When Mira looked at the group, she saw the priestess helping out with support and healing; on the other hand, she saw a summoner who couldn’t even use her basic summon. It was obvious which of the two the party would expect to take care of any required Ethereal Arts. Layla finding herself in that position had caused her failing evocations.

“As a mage, you should know that different magic schools use different processes,” Mira said.

That prompted a nod. Bruce had taught Layla that, yet while she’d tried summoning the way he instructed, she still couldn’t do it. She’d started to worry that either Bruce’s teachings were wrong or she misunderstood them. 

But Mira told her something different. “You can’t use summoning because you’re too focused on the process.” When summoning, the spell process wasn’t the only important thing. 

Mira had seen many people suffering from this problem in-game. Most had switched fields to summoning after being impressed by Danblf. In other words, they’d all been other types of mages beforehand.

Of course, that was in the video game. Layla was no gamer. In this reality, talent—an individual’s innate magical quality—was important. There were people best suited to being sorcerers, priests, and even summoners. When they picked a field, their magic changed to suit it, leaving them unable to wield anything but their chosen magic and Ethereal Arts.

However, if you were talented in multiple fields, a skill called Endogenous Sense let you awaken powers you hadn’t chosen. It decreased your aptitude in both fields but increased your adaptive capacity greatly. Used well, the benefits outweighed the costs.

Still, in an age when summoners were such a minority, would anyone willingly adopt that class? As much as it stung, Mira had to doubt that. Thus, she surmised that summoning had been Layla’s only option, which made her even more interested in the girl.

“Ethereal Arts and summoning differ not just in process, but in how they use mana as well.”

Layla couldn’t employ evocations because she’d gotten too comfortable using Ethereal Arts. To cast a spell, you went through several steps. Selecting the spell, aligning it with a target, concentrating your mana, deciding things like trajectory, speed, and range… Truly countless processes could be required, depending on the spell involved.

That was fundamental magical knowledge. The problem was one of these steps, an element common to all spells.

Layla listened carefully, as if Mira were a professor. “Common to all spells… Hmm. Um…oh! You mean concentrating mana!”

“Correct,” the “professor” replied. The girl’s studiousness improved Mira’s impression of her even further.

Concentrating mana was an important part of spellcasting. In doing that, you isolated the mana necessary for a spell. That step also influenced the state of the mana.

Most experienced mages controlled their mana’s state subconsciously. The state to release flames was “expulsion.” To heal someone, it was “activation.” Every spell had a state that suited it. Mira never really paid her mana’s state much mind, though. With proper mana concentration, you could cast a spell even if your mana’s state was neutral.

But when you deepened your understanding of magic, and became an expert who sensed its flow automatically, you changed. When envisioning a spell, you could change your mana’s state to suit it.

People commonly referred to that as “breaking their limit.” More precisely, they just subconsciously shifted their mana to a state they could use more efficiently. Mira explained this proudly, as it was something she’d learned through her own research.

How valuable was that research on subconsciously assigning and changing mana states? Well, when they heard it, Layla and her party’s other mage were both shocked.

“Her mana state? How’s that related?” asked Sara, who’d been listening from next to Layla. 

She didn’t know much about magic, so she had no sense of how important this was. Her sister was still a summoning novice. If people could cast spells without changing their mana’s state, why couldn’t Layla do so? That was Sara’s real question.

Mira’s pupil wondered about that too. How did Mira’s explanation connect to her current problem?

“It’s related to Ethereal Arts,” Mira replied, then asked Layla to cast the spell she was best at.

What would Mira learn from this? Though confused, Layla could tell that the girl had a wealth of knowledge, so she quickly assented. “Okay!” 

She cast an Ethereal Arts spell. It was Illumination—and no ordinary Illumination. The ball of light flew around in accordance with her will, even brightening and dimming as she pleased.

Mira was genuinely amazed by what she saw. Well, well… She looks young, but she’s got experience. The girl had reached a level of mastery already.

The only mages Mira knew who could do that with Illumination were players who could go toe to toe with raid bosses, and those hailing from the Tower of the Ethereal. In short, in terms of Illumination specifically, Layla was already among the best casters—and Mira was now certain that skill level was why she struggled to activate evocations.

“Your skill is genuinely incredible,” Mira told her. After praising Layla’s magic, she added, “That’s exactly why it’s become an obstacle to your progress.” 

Acting as much like a professor as she could, she explained Layla’s predicament. Despite being a novice summoner, the girl was an expert Ethereal Arts user. When she cast Ethereal Arts spells, she subconsciously changed her mana’s state. Otherwise, she couldn’t have controlled that orb of light as well as she did.

“Wow… I had no idea.” Layla was surprised, but happy as well. After all, she’d done something that only an expert could. That made all the effort she’d put in worthwhile. The thought that this made her unable to summon worried her, though. She awaited Mira’s next words with bated breath.

“Your skill is astounding. Still, your subconscious change in mana state is the problem.” Mira continued her explanation with a dignified demeanor, obviously getting into this “professorial” act.

When trying new things, including spells, a person typically didn’t know how to do them. Therefore, they tended to rely on their other experiences. Through much research, Mira had found that that especially applied to mages. When trying to cast new spells, they compensated for a lack of experience by imagining the sensations of other spells. Spells of the same type or function might share features, but summons were somewhat special in that regard.

“The Illumination spell you showed me had mana in the state of ‘change.’ But there are other states, like release, fixation, flow, diffusion, condensation…” As she spoke, she showed off more Ethereal Arts—a fire art for “ignition,” ice for “cooling,” water for “extinguishing,” wind for “drying,” and drilling for “digging holes.” Finally, she asked Layla, “Now, what state do you think is most apt for summoning?”

“What state…? Um, ‘release’?” Layla answered weakly. However much she thought about it, she had no idea.

“Unfortunately, no. The correct answer is ‘fixation.’”

Evocation spells summoned contracted allies. Their effect could be more precisely described as creating gates for said allies to travel through. There were vital formulas engraved on those gates that couldn’t be disturbed by surrounding influences; as such, a “fixation” state was critical for summoning.

Smiling, Mira reassured her student. “To be fair, this is my field of research. It’s natural that you don’t know this yet.” 

Then she got to the core of the problem. When Layla attempted evocation, she groped for the feeling she got when she used Ethereal Arts. That shifted her mana to the “change” state, the state most incompatible with evocation.

“When you excel at one kind of magic, you tend to reach for the feeling of it when you condense mana. As a result, compatibility worsens, causing the spell to misfire. Incidentally, a ‘release’ state is also a poor match for summoning.”

“What should I do?” Layla understood that her Ethereal Arts aptitude was the problem, but she couldn’t go back in time and undo it. How could she fix this issue? She watched her teacher uneasily.

Mira flashed a cheerful smile back at her. “Come now, it’s easy. If you do that subconsciously, all you have to do is consciously correct it. Now that you know how it works, it ought to be easy.” She moved to stand next to her pupil. “First, designate a summoning point.”

“All right!” Layla immediately replied. 

Under Mira’s guidance, she progressed through the steps of summoning. Having designated a summoning point, she had to decide what to summon. Naturally, she chose a dark knight, since that was her only option.

“Now, this is the most important part,” Mira said. “Forget all about Ethereal Arts, and focus only on summoning. Envision an unchanging gate and sturdy armor. Imagine the mana you pour in giving them form. Do that, and concentrate the necessary quantity of mana.”

All spells shared the mana-concentration process, which made it the step likeliest to cause an overlap in imagery. Mira gently yet precisely guided Layla’s consciousness, careful not to disturb the mana-concentration process. Once the mana stabilized, Layla was finally ready to summon. Now, she just had to manifest an evocation. Would she succeed, or would this be another failure? 

Worried about what she’d do if she failed despite all this guidance, Layla turned toward Mira for a moment. The master nodded confidently, as if certain that her teachings would never result in failure.

Layla felt an odd relief. Her teacher was younger than her, yet seemed so much bigger in this moment. She felt as if she was being watched over by the god of summoning and could do anything. With the confidence Mira’s gentle push provided, Layla finally cast the spell.

[Evocation: Dark Knight]

Perhaps because this felt so different from anything she’d experienced before, Layla gazed in surprise at the summoning point she’d designated—the place where her mana gathered and became a magic circle. From that black circle emerged a suit of armor. Compared to Mira’s ashen knights, her underling’s physique and armor were simple. Still, its figure was the very symbol of a summoner’s beginnings.

Once upon a time, Mira had started with that summon. Feeling a tinge of nostalgia, she congratulated Layla on taking this first step. “There you have it. Success! That’s a dark knight if I’ve ever seen one.”

As for Mira’s pupil, Layla had a grin on her face as she gazed at what she’d done.

“You did it, Layla!” Sara cried. Her wish—Layla’s first summoning!—had come true. Even happier than the person who’d summoned the dark knight, Sara hugged her sister and sobbed. “You did it! Great job,” she repeated over and over.

Ah, sisterhood, Mira thought, smiling in satisfaction at her work.