“WINTELLE is ready. How are things on your end?”
“I’ve finished preparing as well. Please begin as planned,” Orth replied from his place about a hundred feet away.
There was an empty plot of land outside the bureau where they could conduct their experiments. Liddeus had asked us to help test his brand-new crest tool today. Liddeus himself was still out cold, but it sounded like the tool was ready to use. We would simply report our findings to him later. I felt a bit guilty about that, but I didn’t exactly want to wake him up either.
“All right, Wintelle. Go ahead,” I instructed.
“Grah!”
With that response, Wintelle spawned a series of ice spears in the space around her body.
This experiment was meant to test the intensity of a defensive crest tool.
Crest tools ran off of the magical energy stored in magic stones, allowing anyone to replicate the magic cast by sorcerers. They were very useful items.
Orth activated the large, ring-shaped crest tool, causing a wall of dirt to rise upwards. He quickly left the tool there and ran for cover. Behind the wall, I could see he’d left a human-shaped target.
“That target has always been destroyed whenever we test it…” I muttered.
What would it be today?
We’d already tested the intensity of the defensive crest tool a number of times, but the wall was destroyed each and every time. The defensive wall created by this crest tool was as strong as anything a sorcerer could achieve on their own, so long as it wasn’t extremely large. Wintelle’s ice spears were fast and strong enough to destroy wood, dirt, and even steel plates on the thinner side.
“Grrrah!” With a roar, she sent her ice spears flying out.
Every last one of them hit their target with perfect accuracy. They thundered toward the wall…but it remained standing. Only the ice spears snapped and crumbled. The dirt wall was dented but remained standing and unpenetrated.
“Grrrruh…” Wintelle grit her teeth and let out a disappointed growl. She’d just attacked with the maximum amount of power she was capable of. I knew her pride must be wounded to see that her spears were now failing to pierce the wall.
“Don’t be so upset, Wintelle,” I said. “Ice isn’t your only strength. You have incredible mobility because you’re physically powerful too, remember? In a real fight, you could run around the wall and carve out your own opportunity to attack.”
“Rurr…”
I tried to cheer her up, but she still seemed disappointed. She stared up at me with a pouty look on her face.
“…Um, are you asking me to knock down that wall myself?”
“Grah!” Wintelle nodded. It appeared that she wanted me, her master, to be the one who got revenge on that wall.
It was the same with Fon the griffin—intelligent and powerful Mythical Beasts always wanted their masters to show off their abilities.
“Orth! May I try to destroy the wall with my magic next?” I asked in a loud voice. “There’s a spell I’d like to test out!”
“Certainly! I’d love to see that!”
I detected a bit of excitement in his response.
Orth had a more stable head on his shoulders than Liddeus, but everyone who worked for the Bureau of Magic seemed to care about magic much more than the average person. He was waiting for me to use my spell.
I could feel the eager eyes of both Orth and Wintelle on me as I focused.
It probably wouldn’t be hard to pierce the defensive wall with a high-tier spell. However, that would result in a loss of magical energy, and using something so overpowered would defeat the point of the experiment.
I decided to go with a seventh-level, mid-tier attack spell.
Once I’d assembled it to my personal liking, I activated it just as I pictured.
“Circular fire, crimson fists. Turn to a racing bullet!”
Flames erupted in the air and instantly condensed.
My improved “Crimson Pebble” left dazzling trails of light as it shot into the dirt wall.
“Yes! It went through!!” I struck a victory pose, celebrating my success.
The small hole opened up in the wall revealed that it had shot through cleanly to the other side.
“Gyahah!”
“Well done!”
Wintelle seemed to praise me as she looked up at me, her tail swishing from side to side.
“I did it! How was that?” I petted Wintelle and called out to Orth and Director Bodorey, his boss who’d come to watch the experiment as well.
“…That startled me,” Director Bodorey said. “You just chanted ‘Crimson Pebble,’ did you not? How are you able to cast that spell with such great force?”
“I simply intensified the flames and condensed them before firing,” I explained. “It reduces the range of attack, but it’s better at penetrating a target.”
Casting spells consisted of constructing a formula, with an emphasis on the sorcerer’s own imagination. In that regard, my past life memories made things much easier.
My mind was packed full of things they didn’t have in this world—all sorts of phenomena, scientific achievements, and images from works of fiction. I had no lack of material to create with. I’d been picturing a gun from my past life when I cast the spell at the wall.
Crimson Pebble usually consisted of firing off flames that were anywhere from the size of a fist to a human head. But I’d condensed mine down to about the size of a marble.
Normal attack spells had a very wide range and were difficult to use without harming those near the target. That was why I’d gone through multiple stages of improving the spell, so that I could concentrate the firepower only where it was needed.
It was better to have no need for attack magic, but I couldn’t be naive either. I’d just gone through an incident in my homeland of Elltoria where I needed to use my magic in such a way.
There was no harm in being prepared, at least.
My brothers had been training me my whole life to be prepared in case of an emergency. I would have to keep devoting myself to magic if I wanted to guarantee my safety each and every day.
“You merely intensified the flames and condensed them…? There’d be no need for researchers like ourselves if that was a simple feat… You’ve outdone yourself today, Queen Laetitia.” Director Bodorey approached me, scratching his head.
“Thank you very much. Does that conclude the experiment?” I asked.
“Yes, that will do it. The crest tool appears to be functioning very well.”
“Oh?”
Even though I broke through the wall?
Director Bodorey beckoned me over in my confusion. I came around to the other side of the wall and was instantly impressed.
“I see. So there are two layers of protection,” I observed. “The wall appears to be the main target, but behind it is a hidden hole in the ground where you can take shelter and wait out the attacks.”
A hole large enough for a person to sit in had appeared on the other side of the wall. The human-shaped target had laid down inside the hole, completely unharmed.
“Hohoho! Isn’t Liddeus clever?”
“It defied my expectations. It’s wonderful.”
It wasn’t unusual to use dirt magic to dig holes. I’d also used these methods to create pitfalls at an enemy’s feet, and knew the method of placing a hole between yourself and an enemy to obstruct their path forward.
Of course, a simple hole could be circumvented, and it wasn’t effective against spells that flew through the air like arrows.
That was why Liddeus had built his crest tool to provide a hole for the sorcerer to hide in, not to trap their enemy. It also crafted a protective dirt wall, as it would be hard for the sorcerer to move defensively while in the hole. This crest tool was a brilliant invention indeed.
I surveyed the dirt wall, the hole, and the crest tool placed inside it with fascination.