“All right, now start by using one hand to create wind and the other to create fire.”
A few days had passed since I’d come up with the idea for a warm air spell, which I’d named Thermabreeze. I had called Amy and Tida over to try out a new training method I’d come up with too.
We were starting later than I’d planned, but with good reason. Gramps and I had tested it out ourselves to figure out the best way to explain it before I was going to teach it to them. We had used Aura as our test subject, er, volunteer...and let’s just say that things hadn’t gone very smoothly.
We’d actually had three people helping with the trial run, including Aura, Jeanne, and Amur. Amur went first, but she’d never been great with magic, so she couldn’t get it to activate at all. Jeanne went next, but seeing Amur mess up had made her nervous, so she failed to get both spells going at once.
Aura was fired up after seeing the two of them flub it, and she decided she’d show them how it was done. But she ended up pumping way too much mana into the spell. Instead of a Thermabreeze, she shot off a full-on Flamethrower. And not only that, but she blew through her mana so fast that she collapsed with something that could only be described as magical anemia.
Thankfully, we’d picked a spot by the river where we’d split up from Namitaro just in case something went wrong, so there was very minimal damage. And thanks to that experiment, Gramps and I caught a problem we’d totally missed and spent some time working on a solution. We also had to wait for Aura to recover, explain everything, and apologize to the king, which had delayed our training session.
“Don’t worry if it doesn’t go perfectly. We’re out here so no one gets hurt, and I already gave the knights’ brigade a heads-up. No one’s gonna yell at us, even if a pillar of fire shoots up into the sky,” I told Amy and Tida.
Back when Aura had unleashed her Flamethrower, the city knights had been nearby and had seen the whole thing. It’d caused a bit of a panic, so they’d rushed over to check it out. I’d had to explain to them that it was just a failed spell, and they had bought my story. Still, since they had officially been on duty, they’d had to report it to Prince Lyle, which had led to a whole round of apologies. No one had been mad at us, but they had made fun of us a little. Magical misfires weren’t that unusual, and nothing had been damaged.
Anyway, this time, the plan was to get people used to casting two types of magic at the same time first. And once someone could do that, we’d work on adjusting their power levels while casting them separately. Once they had that down pat, we’d move on to actually practicing Thermabreeze.
Gramps and I were good with magic, so we had nailed it on our first tries. Jeanne and Aura...not so much. Jeanne hadn’t had enough mana to manage it, and Aura had gotten the balance of the spells wrong and cast another Flamethrower.
“I’ll do my best!” Amy said brightly.
“Um, just to be safe, maybe we should stand back farther than usual,” Tida said.
“Okay. Amy’s over here, so I’ll take this spot, and Amur can stand next to me. Tida, you stay over there!” Luna said. She was already trying to boss everyone around.
“Time for revenge!”
Amy was so overenthusiastic that Tida was worried something might happen to her. Originally, it was just going to be Amy and Tida today, but Luna had insisted on joining in too. Now, she was trying to force her way into the formation. For the record, Amur had signed up voluntarily as well, even though she thought she was the worst at it. She’d said that she just wanted to cast the spell before Luna did, at the very least.
“That setup makes it hard for me to coach Amy and Tida. Luna and Amur, you two go train with Gramps. Is that okay with you, Gramps?”
“Sure. Over here, you two,” he said.
Honestly, Luna and Amur would’ve just gotten in the way of Amy and Tida’s practice, so I had already discussed splitting them all into two groups with Gramps supervising one group.
Neither of them was likely to do anything too crazy with him in charge. Hopefully not, anyway. There was a solid chance they’d just end up goofing off together, but we’d already made it clear during setup that today wasn’t the day for that. Essentially, they wouldn’t interfere for now, and if they tried to, Gramps would stop them.
Luna looked pretty annoyed, probably because she’d been planning to pull a prank on Tida. Even so, she followed Gramps without complaint.
“All right,” I began, “just like I said before, start by casting both types of magic. Face the river, and if it gets hard to keep the spell stable, just release it into the water. Don’t force it.”
“Got it!”
“Okay!”
I didn’t expect them to struggle too much given their skill levels, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Speaking of sorry, river fish...if something does go wrong, odds are you’ll end up on our dinner table anyway.
“I did it, Master!” Amy exclaimed.
“Me too!”
I was lost in my own silly thoughts, and before I knew it, both of them had already succeeded on their first try.
“Hold it right there and keep the magic going until I give the signal. Then, gradually let it fade out,” I instructed.
I had planned on having them cast the spells, cancel them, and then reactivate the magic over and over again. But since they had pulled it off so easily, I upped the difficulty. Now, they had to maintain the spell and then carefully end it. That brought us closer to stage two, which would be output control. The idea was to slip in a little extra practice for the next phase while they were still working on the first. The more comfortable they got with the process, the better.
“Okay, cancel it now.”
At first, I gave them the signal to cancel the spells after about a minute or so, but both of them were so focused on my cue that instead of easing off, they ended it all at once.
“Ah!”
“Huh?”
“Well, it’s just the first time, so it’s not a big deal,” I told them. “All right, let’s go again... Start!”
Amy flinched at her magic’s sudden disappearance while Tida seemed confused. I didn’t give them any time to dwell on their mistakes, though, and quickly kicked off the second round of training right away.
Despite the rush, they managed to activate both spells again and tried to hold them steady like before. But then...
“Okay, deactivate them.”
This time, I gave the signal after just a few seconds. Instead of stopping the spells, they cranked them up by accident.
“Don’t panic, just bring it down from there.”
Their spells had intensified, but they weren’t out of control or anything. I calmly prompted them to start scaling the magic down.
Maybe I’d been a little mean with the timing and tripped them up a bit again, but once they calmed down, they were able to start reducing their mana output bit by bit. It still disappeared all at once as it dwindled, but they were almost there, so I could call that a success.
“That was basically a win besides the power spike at the start. All right, next round.”
We kept going and did a third round, a fourth, and a fifth. Before long, both of them were getting the hang of it. Their accuracy was increasing, and they didn’t even flinch when I threw in some curveballs.
But then...
“I’m getting kinda hungry, Master.”
“Can we take a break, please?”
About an hour into the session, the number of small mistakes increased. And after two hours, their errors were pretty noticeable. I was just starting to think it was time for a break when they asked for one.
“It’s about lunchtime anyway, so let’s eat. Jeanne, Aura. Get things going!” I called out.
Jeanne and Aura had been waiting a short distance away. They quickly began setting up tables and chairs. I’d asked them ahead of time to prepare lunch while I trained Amy and Tida so we’d be able to eat right away once it was all set up.
I looked around to see where Gramps’s group had gone. They’d headed farther away, but once they noticed we were done, they started making their way back towards us. They were carrying buckets and fishing rods—just as I’d expected, training had turned into playtime.
“Tenma! We caught a baby Namitaro!” Luna said.
“A whole bucketful of ’em!”
The bucket was full. There were over a dozen small carp inside, each one maybe ten to twenty centimeters long.