Chapter 9

The Fruits of Training Complement an Evening Picnic

“What? She learned that advanced of a protection charm? We’re talking about the same Lucy, right?” Nora paused from brushing her hair, looking incredulous at the reflection of her two subordinates in the mirror.

“It’s true!”

“We saw it!”

“One moment there’s nothing there, then a barrier appears!”

“Not to mention we also saw her use some kind of fire spell! That one looked pretty powerful!”

“What are you going to do, Nora?”

Nora looked back at herself in the mirror. She had been ordering her lackeys to do reconnaissance such as this since her first match, but this was the first time their findings surprised her. By the description, it sounded like Straughsen’s Triggering Barrier charm. It was a spell that would give anyone an edge in the tournament. She herself had practiced it before, but to no avail. It was just too complex, and she instead opted for an easier, less impressive barrier charm for her matches. But if she couldn’t learn it, how could that pink-haired peasant who couldn’t cast a proper hand-drying spell do it? It had to be a mistake.

“Are you sure it wasn’t Rosseau who cast it?” Nora asked, setting the brush down to flick her hair back until she was satisfied with how it sat.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” one of the girl’s replied while Nora stole a quick glance at her short, unkempt hair and fought a smirk.

“Well then. It sounds like our little darling, Lucy, has been doing well with her latest practice sessions. Too bad it will all amount to nothing. Hmph,” Nora finished with a cocky breath.

“Th-that’s right! You’re undefeated so far in the tournament! There’s no way she’ll be able to beat you!”

“Oh, I have no intention of letting her have the honor of facing me,” the beautiful Elefrian girl smiled deviously, her two lackeys both confused and fearful at her words. “Also, it turns out our lovely little farm-girl has been hiding something surrounding the consequences of our match. Something I plan to take advantage of that will put that peasant in her place for good.”

“Wh-what’s that?”

Nora smiled. “It’s a secret. But let’s just say that our own little luckless mage won’t be at Greidwhen for very much longer…”

Lucy and Rosseau yawned and walked down the cobblestone path from the dorms to the campus. The crisp morning air nipped at their cheeks. The day’s classes wouldn’t start for two hours, but last night they had all agreed to meet up in the morning to strategize in the library—an agreement that came with regrets for the two groggy looking kids as they moseyed along with eyes half open.

“Cedric probably has it a lot worse, with doing his research and all,” Rosseau mumbled as they walked up the library’s steps.

Lucy grunted in agreement while she rubbed her cheeks, looking forward to escaping the cold, outside air. As Rosseau opened the door for her, she promptly dashed in and made a pleasant face as the warm air enveloped her. “That’s so much better!” she exclaimed.

At first glance the library was empty, but Lucy knew exactly where to look at this point to find Cedric. Sure enough, in the back-right corner table of the library, there he was surrounded by stacks of books, currently slumped over and digging through one of them.

“Morning!” she said, jarring Cedric out of his deep concentration.

“Oh, it’s just you,” Cedric said. “Did you watch those recordings of Nora’s matches?”

“You bet,” Rosseau replied, catching up to the two of them. “I can’t believe we didn’t think to do that for our other matches! Now that we know what to expect from her, we can start forming a strategy!”

As she and Rosseau set their bags down to settle in at the table, Lucy took a more careful look at Cedric’s research station. It was an inarguable mess. Stacks of books and parchments were strewn about—not just on the table’s surface, but also on the seats and even the floor beside him. There were also a number of worn-down, graphene pencils and even an abacus, beside which lay another sizeable stack of parchment with collections of calculations and notes scrawled onto them. Then there was Cedric himself, who glanced back at her with heavy eyelids and a drained expression, and immediately Lucy could tell that he had been here all night.

“Here,” Cedric said, pulling a few sheets of parchment from under his current book, presenting them to Lucy. “I’ve detailed the process for optimizing the charm’s lifespan based on Nora’s spells.”

Lucy took the sheets in her hand, orienting them to get a proper look at their content. The writing on it was much cleaner than on the one’s with the notes and calculations. The instructions on this one were numbered and pleasantly spaced out, making it easy to read. There were even some rough illustrations of how Lucy and Rosseau were supposed to space themselves out. One drawing in particular made her stifle a smile as it clearly had erase-marks around the head that showed an abandoned effort to draw the hair buns that rested on the sides of her face. It was a cute detail which made her happy, but she was more overwhelmed with happiness from how far he was going to help her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Inner Warmth. Fire shot. Draw water. Wind Blast. Inanimport—that’s an interesting one,” Cedric read from the list he had asked Lucy to prepare last night. Though their goal for the day was to have Lucy get more consistent with casting the barrier charm for herself and Rosseau, Cedric’s plan for the morning was to perform a complete review of every spell she currently knew.

Running through the list, Cedric found that many of these spells weren’t useful for combat. He expected as much, though. It was normal for someone to know more spells that helped with everyday tasks rather than than one’s meant for combat. Ideally, Lucy could learn a couple more combat spells—he even had some ideas of which one’s—but there wasn’t enough time to guarantee she could learn even one before the day was over. No. He had to find a way to strategize with the one’s she knew now. That combined with a consistent protection charm would at least grant her a fighting chance against Nora.

Flipping the sheet around to make sure everything was accounted for, Cedric did a double take at the huge list of spells on the other side. “You know all these?” He asked.

“Oh no! I don’t know the one’s on that side. They’re just one’s I’ve tried practicing but never got the hang of. Sorry, I thought it would be a good idea to include those, but…”

“No. This is good information,” Cedric said, surprised he hadn’t thought of asking her to do this himself. The second list had a good balance of everyday-use and combat spells, though none of them were particularly outstanding. However, one spell at the bottom stood out from the others.

“Telepathy?” He asked. “I imagine that was a short-lived attempt.”

“Yeah,” Lucy signed. “I just couldn’t understand how to maintain the link. It would immediately break every time we connected.”

Cedric suddenly tore his attention away from the sheet to look at Lucy.

“Well it is a graduate level spell,” Rosseau said. “Probably wasn’t realistic of us to expect to cast it correctly. You did a lot better than me, though,” he laughed.

Lucy giggled in reply, but Cedric remained silent where he stood. Rosseau was correct. It was a graduate level spell. But the spell’s difficulty didn’t come from having to maintain the telepathic link. The real hurdle…the reason it was classified as a graduate level spell…was the incredible difficulty it took to even establish the link in the first place.

“Is everything okay?” Cedric heard Lucy call to him, breaking his train of thought.

“Y-yeah,” he replied, distracted by the countless questions flooding his mind. He had never had the opportunity to work with Telepathy before, and he never expected to any time soon. It was a spell that delved into the arduous subject of Mind Magic—a branch of magic that found little exposure at a preliminary Magic Academy such as Greidwhen. His scholarly instincts were pushing him to inquire more about Lucy’s experience with the spell, but he knew it wasn’t what they needed right now. Calming down, he reminded himself of the reason they were all there. “Right, now let’s get to work.”

Strategizing magic for use in combat was an unfamiliar territory for Cedric. Lucy and Rosseau had attempted it themselves for every one of their matches, but a dismal spell arsenal, slow casting times, and a lack of information on the opponent didn’t bring any tangible results.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it before,” Rosseau said. “The protection charm doesn’t just help you with defense, it also gives you more time to cast your own spells!”

“Really?” Lucy thought for a second before the reasoning clicked in her mind. “That’s amazing! Nora’s own charm can’t do that if I remember correctly? From the recording?”

“That’s correct,” Cedric answered, pleased that Lucy had observed such an important detail from the recordings he gave them. “Her charm is a crude downgrade compared to the one we’ve been practicing. It lets her put unchanneled magic into it to activate, but she can’t cast anything while the barrier is up. You’ll probably see her dodging more spells than she blocks with her charm.”

A nervous excitement rose in Lucy’s chest. It was hard to believe that she would actually be going in with a protection charm stronger than Nora’s. It really began to feel like she could win this match after all.

The rest of their morning session focused solely on analyzing Nora’s tactics from the recording. Looking for ways to exploit the ones that had openings. Discussing ways to defend against the ones that didn’t.

Nora didn’t use any complicated spells, but she still had a balance of close, mid, and long-range attack spells. What stood out the most was how gracefully she fought—her movements in close-quarters combat especially dazzled Lucy. Thankfully, she shouldn’t have to worry about facing her that close—that’s what Rosseau was for.

Nora’s knight wasn’t anything special either according to Rosseau.

“His movements are sloppy. He has training, but he uses a lot of wasteful movements.”

“If Lucy can perfect extending the barrier charm onto you, I say you’d have no problem annihilating this guy in two seconds—there’d be nothing he or Nora could do to stop you.”

“We should probably start practicing right away, then.” Lucy said, nervous.

“I know you’re anxious, but it’s important to do this first. The more we know, the better chance we have of winning,” Cedric said, catching himself afterwards. We, he had said. When had he begun framing it that way?

Lucy and Rosseau had caught it as well—the former, smiling embarrassedly and the latter smirking. Neither made a deal of it, though. They were grateful to Cedric for the help he was providing, and hearing him include himself in the stakes made them happy.

The morning eventually passed, and the time came to end the strategy session and attend classes. Their strategizing had been fruitful, though, and Lucy purposed herself to review everything they had gone over rather than paying attention in class—after all, there wouldn’t be a point to learning the information if she lost tomorrow.

She also found herself dealing with a nervous sensation that slowly grew throughout the day. Today was their last chance to practice—and her last chance to find a way to stay at Greidwhen. Her anxiety wasn’t as unbearable as it was in the beginning, though. Thanks to Cedric, she had learned a spell that promised to give her an incredible edge against Nora. She also had Rosseau, who was already fantastic in battle, and had been graciously patient with her shortcomings. She wouldn’t let him down anymore.

Thankfully for the trio’s training agenda, classes ended at twelve o’clock on Fridays, and the final bell signaled a return to the training fields for all of them. Lucy and Rosseau walked over together as usual, and Cedric—as usual for him—showed up from wherever he spent his time while class was in session. Lucy knew it wasn’t the time nor the place to inquire about his enrollment at Greidwhen, but if she was fortunate enough to still be here tomorrow it was at the top of the list of things she wanted to poke her nose into.

The time had come to resume practicing the barrier charm. As a warmup, Cedric had Lucy focus on casting it for herself only. The first couple of tries failed with a fizzle, but on the third try she got it.

“About eight seconds within the timeframe,” Cedric said, referencing the short window of time Lucy would have in between rounds to cast the charm. Ideally, she would cast it fast enough to allow for more strategy discussion after a round, but for their purposes right now any progress was good progress.

Half an hour later they moved on to extending the charm to Rosseau. Lucy had already done it successfully a couple times last night—out of a dozen tries—but failures here were more critical than ever. Extending the charm to Rosseau required twice the amount of magic to be put into the spell cast, so a failed cast wasted twice as much magic as before.

Again, there was nothing more for Cedric to teach her at this point. She had managed two successful casts already, which showed that she knew the process, but as he already told them—knowing a spell’s process is only the first step in casting it consistently.

Rosseau’s presence seemed to help again, though. For whatever reason the young, blond noble was not bashful at all when it came to placing his hands on top of Lucy’s while she cast the spell. She was shy about it, though. After all, Rosseau was a handsome boy—she had always thought that—and he had been a constant pillar of support for her all this time. She felt lucky to have him, but she didn’t appreciate the distracting thoughts that flooded her head whenever their hands touched. She only wanted to focus on how much she appreciated that he was there. And—unbeknownst to herself—it was thoughts such as that which made these complicated spells seem trivial to complete.

CHING!

A familiar chime resounded around them and Lucy smiled, having no doubt as she opened her eyes to see her work. The charm was active.

“You did it!” Rosseau cheered, looking down at the two, overlapping rings of light on the ground. One centered around Lucy, and the other around himself.

Cedric sneaked a short sigh of relief. There was still plenty of work to be done today, but a start like this in only an hour should bode well for day’s end results.

The hours passed one by one, and after Lucy showed an acceptable consistency with casting the charm onto herself and Rosseau, Cedric moved them on to optimizing the amount of magic to put into it. As always, he began with a short lecture that covered the underlying concepts behind the topic—this time concerning magic measurement.

“I’m sure you’ve seen this in class before, but the first thing we need to understand is that magic is incredibly difficult to measure. Whether it’s measuring the amount of raw magic an individual holds, or how much magic a charm needs to sustain itself for a period, there are too many factors that keep us from getting a perfect value.”

Lucy shot her hand up from where she sat, “Like the varying lengths of people’s arms!”

“Err, yes that is one example,” Cedric said, nearly rolling his eyes as he watched Lucy smugly cross her arms with a self-satisfied smirk. “Because of this, no single-instance method has been found to measure magic. However, we can use carefully planned processes that will approximate whatever measurement we are looking for.”

Rosseau raised his hand. “So, this is kind of like the Inner-Warmth-Index? How caravan traders used Inner-Warmth so regularly that it became a way to size up each other’s magic-reserve?”

Lucy smiled and gave Cedric an acknowledging glance. It was exact same story he had introduced her to the first day they met up in library.

“Yes, that’s probably the most well known measuring process for magic. However, an entirely different one is required for our needs—a process that you have an important role in,” he said to Rosseau.

“Here comes another one, Lu’!” Rosseau shouted from the other end of the field.

“Right!” Lucy answered back. Her protection charm was active, and there were noticeable scorch marks on the grass around its perimeter.

Taking a deep breath, Rosseau channeled his magic and shot out a burst of fire from his wand. The violent, curling flame sped across the field towards Lucy, closing the distance in a few seconds. On cue, a few barriers appeared at the last second to protect her, and the flaming mass exploded against them, dissipating to reveal an unharmed Lucy.

“That’s ten, so far,” Cedric mumbled to himself, looking back at his notes for the measuring process. The plan was simple, but lengthy, as he had explained to them earlier.

“The process to figure out how much magic you should put into a charm like this is to decide how many attacks we want it to last through, see how many attacks it currently survives, and adjust the amount of magic you cast it with accordingly.”

Eleven. That was the number of attacks Cedric had decided on after his extensive research last night. But not just any attack—not all attack spells were equal of course. Lucy’s charm had to block eleven hits from Nora’s favorite spell, which he ascertained from the recordings to be a combination of Make-Icicle and Throw.

The combination was also supported by Nora’s second charm that she used for matches—Levitate—which helped her stylishly keep an arsenal of icicles beside her, ready for throwing.

Cedric held his breath as he watched Rosseau fire an eleventh instance of Fire-Shot towards Lucy. While Rosseau didn’t know how to cast an icicle and throw it, Cedric had calculated that Fire-Shot hit just as hard. Their near-equal destructiveness did raise concerns, though. Nora’s combination should require more magic to use. Did she not know this? Did she use ice because she liked it? The lapse in optimization bothered him. Hopefully it would just be another mark for the small tally of advantages they had against her.

Rosseau’s spell clashed with Lucy’s charm for the eleventh time. It would be a miracle if the charm broke here and Lucy happened to cast the charm with the exact amount of magic they needed. If that was the case, they could spend the remaining time perfecting other spells. But as the smoke and dust cleared, the charm’s perimeter of light could be seen, and its barriers faded then disappeared as usual—ready to intercept the next attack.

Lucy let out an irritated breath, looking at the perimeter of light that continued to surround her. That was the attack Cedric wanted the charm to break with. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take too many more attacks to break it. If it was even one or two more over, Cedric said that would be acceptable. But any more than that and they would have to bring that number down.

The process of hitting the barrier with Fire-Shot continued, and finally the charm broke after the nineteenth attack.

“Not bad. I was worried it would get into the high twenties,” Cedric said as they gathered together.

“So, now I have to try to cast it with less magic?” Lucy asked.

“Yes, and this is where it gets difficult. There’s no real way to define how much less magic you’ll need to cast the charm with. We’ll just have to keep adjusting and see how many attacks it can handle each time.”

“And then we move on to doubling it, so it can be extended to me,” Rosseau confirmed.

“Yes-“

“Double?” Lucy interrupted. There was a puzzled look on her face.

“Err…yeah. Because we have to extend the charm onto me.”

Lucy began to fidget, hesitant. There was something there, an observation putting itself together in her mind. It felt obvious, but if Cedric and Rosseau weren’t speaking up—perhaps it wasn’t anything after all?

“Isn’t—umm...isn’t nineteen already pretty close to twenty-two? That’s almost enough to cover me and Rosseau for eleven attacks,” she finally said.

Cedric looked at Lucy, a look of unbelief taking over his expression as he began flipping through his notes. Rosseau himself looked intrigued, reading along over Cedric’s shoulder, eager to see if Lucy was onto something.

“Y-you’re right,” Cedric said, his tone astounded. Lucy had cast a charm that blocked nearly twice the amount of attacks he specified. If she used just a bit more magic for the version that covered both herself and Rosseau, the result should be a charm that protected them from the exact amount of attacks they needed. It was so simple, but it was an outcome he hadn’t considered, and he realized why. During his research, he wrote off having them start with the extended charm because of all the magic it could potentially waste. So, when he laid out the measuring process, he became fixated on not doing the extended charm until they had perfected the normal version. The possibility that Lucy would cast the extended charm with nearly the exact amount they needed completely escaped him.

Cedric fought a smirk. “We’re moving onto the extended charm. Lucy, I think you already know what to do?”

“Right!” Lucy said with a jubilant nod, standing herself beside Rosseau for the charm.

“Pretty good catch,” Rosseau commended.

“Oh, it was nothing!” Lucy smiled brightly, closing her eyes and beginning the the cast before Rosseau even had a chance to get ready.

In no time at all, the charm was cast onto them both, and the two teammates spaced themselves out to see how many attacks it would survive this time. A few short minutes and some violent fireballs later, the results were in. Both charms blocked eleven attacks exactly.

Cedric was astonished, though he hid it better this time. If Lucy hadn’t realized what she did about the charm, right now he would be taking them through the long, arduous method he laid out in his notes. With this new development, though, they would be done with this part in maybe another thirty minutes.

Cedric looked carefully at Lucy, watching as she frolicked towards him with a delighted smile on her face. It took him awhile to admit it, but he was enjoying teaching her. When was the last time he had felt that way?

Still, there was something in the back of his mind whispering to him that it wouldn’t stay like this—that it would end the same way it always did.

Continued in part 2...