Knight’s & Magic: Volume 1, page 3
And while it was a matter of course that children would not take well to book learning, Ernie was different. Since he knew it was all for his dream of becoming a knight, and by extension riding a silhouette knight, he not only did not chafe at having to read such books, he happily read all of the textbooks from cover to cover. In fact, given the subject, he enjoyed it far more than ordinary studying. It was sort of like playing to him. That, coupled with a child’s ability to learn flexibly, had him understanding the subject matter at frightening speeds.
Though she wasn’t a professional, Tina served quite well as a teacher. After all, her father was the headmaster of the academy and her husband was an active instructor there. She responded to Ernie’s wishes and taught him persistently.
What was referred to as magic in this world was, put simply, the technique to convert mana into a physical phenomenon. All living things in this world absorbed the ether that existed in the air, and those same living things all possessed the ability to turn ether into mana. Furthermore, they also had the ability to store some mana in their bodies.
“Mana is like fuel. Magic is created by writing a script that details what the magic will do, then manifesting it in the world through a catalyst.” Tina continued her explanation to Ernie, who was sitting politely in front of her.
There were two types of living things in the world: those who could use magic on their own, and those who couldn’t. The reason for this difference was the presence or absence of a catalyst within their bodies. Those who could use magic had a crystalline catalyst in their bodies. It was because of such catalysts that these creatures could do things like a dragon’s breath attack.
“By nature, we humans do not have catalysts in our bodies, so we are the kind that cannot use magic on our own.”
Because they were living things, humans had mana. However, they could not normally use magic since they didn’t have an innate catalyst. It was an established, immutable fact in this world.
However, humans had learned to use magic. This was all thanks to their unique weapons: wisdom and knowledge. Once they had learned the secrets of magic scripts and could prepare external catalyst crystals, they were able to overcome their natural disadvantages.
With that discovery, humans—who had been in the weakest tier of beings of this world—had begun to grow stronger and stronger. From then on, human magic only increased in strength as more research was done, until it eventually resulted in giant weapons—silhouette knights. And so humans had climbed into the highest tier of strength.
“Mother, if silhouette knights are so strong, wouldn’t we be able to make a larger country with all our knight orders?”
“Well, we might be able to, but it’s still difficult.”
Silhouette knights were certainly powerful weapons, but they were also strategic arms of the type that were very expensive to build and maintain, incurring great costs in both funds and effort. It wasn’t realistically possible to gather enough to conquer the entire continent. As a result, the countries to the west of the Auvinier Mountains did their best to achieve stability using the mountains as a border, while Fremmevilla was left to act as a shield for the west. That deadlocked state had carried on for hundreds of years until today.
“Let’s leave the details for when we study history later. You’ll have to memorize a lot of things when you go to school, anyway.”
There was a defined method to use magic. As was noted before, in order to cast magic, the caster would first need to start with a script. Such scripts were constructed and processed by a virtual organ in an organism’s brain: the Magius Circuit. This magic calculation area existed in every being with a will in the world.
“So, Ernie, each magic script has a defined shape depending on the phenomenon you want. Let’s start with the basics: manifesting a simple phenomenon is split into the foundational element and the control script connected to it in order to use the element.”
Combining a foundation and a control script created a single spell, and resulted in a shape that people back on Earth would have described as a magic circle.
The highest hurdle for anyone who was starting to learn magic was the construction of magic scripts. Most people could grasp implementing the foundational script right away, but trying to expand the entire script to make the spell bigger required practice to understand. Because humans couldn’t originally use magic, constructing and casting high-level magic needed a good amount of experience. That was where the differences of talent between individuals played a large part.
So there’s the foundational script that determines the effect of the spell, and the control script needed to expand it, Ernie thought. Combining each shape follows certain rules... Oh, right. I get the feeling I’ve seen this stuff before, but it’s...
What helped Ernie’s ability to understand here was his experience as a professional programmer in his previous world. In other words, the rules governing the combination of shapes in magic scripts were the same as the logic used in programming languages, and the Magius Circuit was basically a virtual computer. Not only that, there was no startup lag for a Magius Circuit as it was inside the brain, which meant “programming” here was far more convenient than in his last life.
After learning the grammar he needed, Ernie started to pore over and “load” the foundational and control scripts from the textbooks into his Magius Circuit—which could also be thought of as an in-brain editor. It didn’t matter how skilled or experienced they were—no programmer would be able to compile a large piece of source code in their brain alone. They would always need the help of an editor. However, using his Magius Circuit as an editor, Ernie continued to edit and compile scripts one after the other in order to construct magic.
Because he was a beginner with no common sense or practical knowledge about the subject—meaning he didn’t understand how well the people of this world could handle magic—he never noticed how easily he was constructing and controlling incredibly complex syntaxes. Nor did he realize how abnormal his calculating ability was.
★★★
Ernie took a small staff made of plain wood in his hand, closed his eyes, and focused on his thoughts.
The tip of his staff had a small crystal embedded in it—a catalyst crystal, to be precise. A miraculous “fruit” of the world which allowed humans to use magic. It was common knowledge that a human needed to use a staff with a catalyst crystal embedded in it to use magic, just like what Ernie was using at the moment.
With a pwhoosh, a jet of fire extended from the staff in Ernie’s hands, charring the center of the target in front of him. He had cast an elementary spell using fire as the foundational element, Torch.
“Wow! Ernie, you’re amazing! It’s an elementary spell, but still! I’m amazed you got the hang of it so quickly!”
“Mother, the textbook said that this foundational script was the most basic of basics, and that anyone would be able to learn to use this immediately.”
“Use, sure. But making it hit the center of the target so accurately like that takes practice. Also, your magic is so pretty, Ernie.”
No matter how familiar Ernie was with programming, classroom learning was still ultimately theoretical. And so he had erected a simple target behind the house in order to conduct practical lessons in magic with his mother, Tina. He tried each foundational script one after the other in order to develop a feeling for actually casting magic.
As he unleashed spells in quick succession, Ernie started to experience a strange feeling. It was a unique sensation, like power was draining out of his body. It was somewhat similar to the exhaustion someone would feel after working out, but it was different from physical exhaustion. He felt bewildered at this new feeling, but it was just something brought on by expending mana. His body was trying to suck in the ether around him in any way it could in order to make up for the lost mana.
I didn’t expect to get this tired, Ernie mused. If I ever try to cast large-scale magic, I’ll probably end up falling over and finding it difficult to breathe.
That was when Tina, who had up until now been watching over her son, walked over and patted him on the head with a warm smile.
“That’s how it feels to use up mana. If you don’t experience it at least once, you could find yourself in trouble in the future.”
“I feel breathless... This is...really tough to bear... How pathetic... I’m already out of mana...after only casting...this much?”
“You’re not pathetic at all. You’re still little, Ernie. It’s natural to not have much mana.”
“So if I get bigger, I’ll have more mana?”
“Hmmm, well...that’s not quite right. Think of it like stamina. It does have something to do with how big you are, but you’ll also train it the more you use it.”
“I see. Okay, I understand. I will start training to increase my mana, mother!”
Faced with Ernie’s endless enthusiasm, Tina adopted a somewhat forced smile as she continued to pat his head. “My, you really are a hard worker, Ernie. But don’t be in too much of a hurry. Forcing yourself is not a good thing.”
Ernie reflected on his impatience. Tina was right—trying to hurry along his growth wouldn’t bring about good results. Also, he didn’t want to make his mother worry after she spent so much effort to teach him.
“Right. Then I will start with what I can do right now, mother,” Ernie promised with an earnest expression.
Seeing that, Tina embraced her son in a comfortable hug.
★★★
Thus started Ernie’s days of training.
Keeping in mind both the future and his promise with Tina, he decided to start by gradually building up his stamina and mana reserves. Constructing magic scripts was Ernie’s specialty, so as long as he let his skills from his previous life shine, he’d be able to handle that. The problem was having the mana reserves to make use of that ability. His plan was to do cardio as well as a range of other exercises for physical stamina, and to cast spells to expend his mana to build up his capacity. That was how Ernie spent his days, putting effort and hard work into training.
But at some point, he came upon an interesting spell in a textbook. What he found was the Physical Boost spell. As its name implied, Physical Boost enhanced the user’s physical parameters. More specifically, it raised raw strength, endurance, and movement speed. Ernie had the idea to combine his normal physical training with this spell in order to train both physical and magical ability at once.
However, Physical Boost was considered an advanced spell, so it wasn’t easy to use. The construction of the script was what determined a spell’s effect. The closer the spell was to the effect of the foundational script for the element, the easier to control the spell would be. The more targets a spell had, the more complicated its script had to be, in turn making control even harder.
Though the name of the spell was simple and easy to understand, it was a composite spell that entailed targeting each individual muscle and enhancing it, along with all the person’s bones so that they could withstand the recoil of such newfound strength, as well as toughening up the skin to be able to withstand any punishment it might take as a result of the powered-up movements. On top of controlling and maintaining the spell, the user would also have to manage their every movement carefully, since their muscles would be operating wildly differently from normal. Compared to a spell that simply needed to output a single attack (no matter how large-scale it was), this sort of strengthening spell was much more complicated.
Normal people would have given up at this point and chosen a more normal, doable route toward growth. However, Ernie had a solution for this hurdle. It lay in his unique skill, the ability to program. Having had experience in designing and coding embedded software, he knew how to keep track of and control multiple variables at once. Thanks to that, instead of launching straight into magic practice, he first attempted to modify an existing spell. Looking over the script for Physical Boost, he compressed the code within using functions as well as variable hiding. After reducing the number of variables as much as possible, he created a sub-function to automatically keep track of the user’s condition, making it so that the spell would control itself once it was cast, lessening the mental burden on the caster.
Though it was rare for anyone to be able to modify and improve scripts, Ernie didn’t know that, so he finished his work in a flash, with the spell showing frighteningly incredible improvement. It would most likely still be categorized as a difficult spell that put a high burden on the user, but Ernie’s abnormally strong calculating ability could easily handle that. Unbeknownst to everyone, a world-changing event had just happened. Though the person who had caused it only considered this event to be a small step toward his real goal.
★★★
With his staff in one hand, Ernie finally cast his long-awaited, improved Physical Boost spell, and he enthusiastically went about his daily physical regimen. Though he set off with a skip in his step, he quickly met with tragedy. Though he was able to fully enjoy the immense effect the spell had on him, he ran out of mana within a couple hundred meters and ended up falling over.
As one might expect out of an advanced spell, the mana cost was just as high as its demand for precise control. Having completely overlooked such an elementary point, Ernie couldn’t hide his disappointment as he decided to spend some time casting foundational spells to build up his capacity first.
It took about three years of ceaseless effort to develop his reserves to the point where he could maintain Physical Boost for a decent amount of time. With that, Ernie pushed toward his goal each and every day, with a fervent passion that no one could dismiss as merely a childish passing phase.
Chapter 2: Let’s Play with Friends
The land bordering Laihiala Knight Runner Academy’s grounds was dominated by facilities intended for students, including lodging, restaurants, and other businesses. This included smithies as well, since the academy maintained silhouette knights. These workshops tended to be large, incorporating living spaces along with the actual workshop.
Actually, because Laihiala Knight Runner Academy was the largest school with the largest campus in the nation, it and the town around it rivaled the size of the capital itself. Thus, the town took the name of the academy it was built around. This was the place Ernesti lived in.
★★★
The setting sun hid behind the walls surrounding the town, covering Laihiala in darkness. Most shops had closed already, and the streets had emptied of people. Silence enveloped the area as a small humanoid shadow raced along the rooftops. The shadow was clothed entirely in black, making it difficult for anyone to properly recognize it in the twilight as it leaped from roof to roof with lithe, nimble movements.
It needn’t be said that the true identity of the small shadow was Ernesti Echevalier, now eight years old. His daily routine of exercising to tune his body had changed form over time, and now it was custom for him to make a lap around the entire town atop the roofs. According to Ernie, doing so allowed him to feel that he was in a wide-open space, and the undulations of the roofs were perfect for his exercise.
After his first failure using Physical Boost, he continued to tune the spell until he was able to cast it at low output so that it only affected his legs. More experience also helped him to keep full control of the spell even after an intense workout, making it possible to output quite a lot of speed from his enhanced legs.
As Ernie continued to run, he reached the end of the row of roofs he’d been traversing, and a large street yawned before him like a deep ravine. Taking a deep breath, he increased the strength of his Physical Boost spell. Suddenly, he accelerated as if being launched by a slingshot, all while feeling a strong feedback from his body.
Instantly reaching the end of the roof, Ernie kicked off and jumped into the air, casting a spell at the same time. Air compressed in front of him, forming a dense pocket of compressed air. It was the elementary spell of the wind element, Air Bullet, but instead of firing it at a target, Ernie waited until he had passed through the pocket and then had it burst behind him. Instead of the compressed air being shot off like a bullet, he had instead given the explosion directionality so that upon release it would act as an improvised source of thrust.
Ernie’s body, having instantly increased in forward momentum, drew a neat arc in the air as he sailed over the wide street. Furthermore, he suppressed the effects of Physical Boost as he flew through the air and cast another spell at the moment of his landing. It was another Air Bullet spell—except the bullet was much larger than normal. Instead of firing off an attack, he instead used it as an Air Cushion. Having stuck a fine, soft landing on the roof on the other side of the street, Ernie bent his body to burn off the rest of his excess momentum and continued running.
★★★
It was the year 1273 of the Occidental calendar.
Three years had passed since Ernie started training his magic. Because he had tirelessly trained until now, his mana reserves had grown far past what his small stature would suggest into something that was utterly insane for someone his age. That said, normally no one at his age would be polishing their magic ability to such an extent, so taking that into account, his exceptional mana capacity made sense.
At the same time, Ernie had committed to other forms of training as well, so he had gained quite a lot of physical stamina on top of his magical growth. However, he still found it impossible to have Physical Boost perpetually cast upon himself at full strength. The solution he found to that problem was to instead have it constantly activated at low strength on specific parts of his body, and to only open the spell to full strength when needed.
