Well, if I had been inclined to be more miserly, I’m sure I could have skimmed off the top. However, the fact of the matter was that I couldn’t maintain the upkeep costs for any additional land, given my current resources and level of authority. Plus, hoarding too much territory would only incite discontent among my lords—and as matters stood, I would rather increase their influence by giving them more territory than give them reason to be dissatisfied with me.
Hmm? What’s to say that wouldn’t result in the second coming of the Chancellor and Minister of Ceremony, you ask? Well, all the borderline neurotic fussing I was doing over each and every detail to ensure it wouldn’t, for one. Honestly, that was probably an accurate one-line job description for being an emperor. What a pain in the behind.
But I digress. If Vera-Sylvie was going to accompany the emperor’s host as a noblewoman, then it was my duty to treat her accordingly. I understood that very well. Yet, on a purely human level, I couldn’t help but be concerned for her safety.
“You’re determined to do this?” I asked.
There was no hesitation in Vera-Sylvie’s reply. “I am,” she said.
“Very well, then.”
Being fair, Salomon of all people had claimed that she’d be a useful military asset. And it wasn’t like simply keeping her away from the front lines would guarantee her well-being.
Vera-Sylvie looked relieved to hear my response. A thought occurred to me. “I didn’t know you could ride,” I remarked. Her mount stood next to us, waiting obediently.
“But I can’t,” she said, cocking her head.
I almost wanted to mirror the movement. What did she mean, she couldn’t ride? Unable to help myself, I pointed at her mount. It was neither a donkey nor a pony, but a fully grown adult hor— And that was when I noticed something was off. When Vera-Sylvie had dismounted—no, the whole time she’d been riding, in fact—she hadn’t been holding on to the reins, because there were none. On top of that, the horse seemed far too docile; it hardly even moved. It flicked its tail and ears occasionally, but that was quite literally all. Don’t tell me it’s a spell construct? I thought.
Vera-Sylvie seemed to have discerned my thought process, because she said, “That’s not a horse.” She opened its mouth, and where there should have been teeth and a tongue, there was only a hollow cavity, enclosed by something akin to packed dirt. “See?”
“It’s a golem?” I said, somewhat incredulously.
“I’m too scared of real horses to ride them.”
If I was getting this right, then Vera-Sylvie had created a spell construct in the spitting image of a horse, and was even directing it to act like one. Even now, it was staring at us while flicking its tail, just like a real horse would. If she hadn’t pointed it out, I honestly never would have noticed.
Ah. That explained why she’d had no problems wearing a dress, or riding sidesaddle. I’d thought she had been protecting herself against the bumps and jolts of riding with magic, but evidently there hadn’t been much to protect against in the first place. Although that just prompted a different question.
“You could’ve chosen any shape for a mount, couldn’t you?” I said. “Why go to the extra effort?”
“Because it’s cute,” she said, stroking the pseudohorse.
Oh, right. I’d known she was a magical prodigy, but I’d almost forgotten that she was the natural kind. Here I was taking into account all these details like efficiency, while she was casting spells going purely on vibes. Talk about feeling inadequate. Though, as a fellow mage, it also inspired a burning sense of curiosity.
“Hypothetically, could you cover it in armor?” I asked.
“Of course,” Vera-Sylvie said, and proceeded to do just that.
“What about giving it eight legs? Could you do that?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Probably not?”
Okay. So that meant it was an issue of imagination. To be fair, I thought the mobility of a horse was highly useful too. It was why I’d developed my Mollis Lutum spell several years ago—a spell that created an obedient construct out of earth for me to direct as I pleased.
However, due to her inability to ride, Vera-Sylvie had created a mount that wouldn’t shake her off so that she could keep up with the march. As spells went, that was highly inefficient.
“Isn’t it not worth the mana?” I inquired.
“It just...takes some time, is all,” Vera-Sylvie said, in a tone that made it clear she was wondering why I’d asked that.
“That’s true,” I conceded, realizing. “I suppose there’s really no need to care about efficiency, in this case.”
Spellcraft in this world was performed by exploiting the ambient mana in the air. People had their own internal reserves too, but pulling in ambient mana was about as simple as using a magnet to gather iron filings, so it was the most common method.
Another key characteristic of this world’s magic was that too much spellcasting in one place would leave the surroundings drained of mana. If you thought of ambient mana as fuel, then this was a simple phenomenon to understand. However, an area would not remain mana-burnt forever. Its ambient levels would eventually recover, given enough time.
In other words, there was, for all intents and purposes, no limit to the aggregate amount of mana a spellcaster had access to (in game terms, this would be your MP). As such, there was also little reason to prefer spells with a more efficient mana expenditure cost. The sole drawback of casting magic that required larger amounts of mana was that they would take more time.
Incidentally, while there was no hard limit to the amount of mana a spellcaster could use, there was a practical limit in the sense that maintaining control became more difficult as the amount of mana increased. Vera-Sylvie’s pseudohorse qualified her as a bona fide monster in the field of spellcasting.
“There are no enemies around to bother us,” I continued. “So I suppose you can cast whatever spells you wish.”
By the way, that drawback I’d mentioned, of higher mana-cost spells taking longer to cast? I wanted to be clear: In battle, that could be the difference between life and death. To illustrate, let’s consider how it applies to adventurers.
Adventurers had migrated to the frozen Northern Continent, where they hunted powerful magical fauna that had long since become extinct on our Eastern Continent. They made their living by exporting the raw materials and reagents gathered from their hunts, which they—as a general rule—conducted in small parties. In such hunts, a slow casting time could be a death sentence, so my understanding was that they preferred fast, efficient magic.
On the other hand, mages who were part of a more formal military—sometimes called battle mages—fought the exact opposite way, trying to maximize their mana expenditure as much as possible. This was because doing so would drain the ambient mana and leave less for the enemy to use as well. In other words, it was kind of a race to the bottom to use it all up before the other guy did. The mentality was prevalent enough that military mages preferred fuel-inefficient spells.