The strongest sage of disqualified crest

Chapter 14 Strongest Sage, Teaches Magic

  "Way of magic combat.... No. I want to make the territory prosperous than training heavily in magic. Magic is a mean for that end."

I see.
If he answered 『I'd like to walk the way of magic』, I was going to give him the magic-up set and the hellish stamina training.... But if he's fine with just surpassing Biffgel, I've got something simpler.

"Okay then. First, you should stop using Chant."

When I told him that, Reich opened his eyes wide in surprises.

"Chantless right from the start!? Don't you think it's too unreasonable...."

"The act of chanting itself is unreasonable you know."

The use of magic demands stability of mind.
There is no way you'd be able to properly use magic while shouting those embarrassing lines out loud.

"Then how am I supposed to use magic?"

"Of course you do it by gathering mana like this...."

I gathered mana on my right hand while saying that.
You can do this on your legs and head no problem, but doing it on your dominant hand is easier for a beginner.
I thought only doing this much would be simple, however--.

"Gather mana? How do you do that?"

He doesn't know how to... gather mana...?
My brother Reich, up until now just how did you activate magic then.
Perhaps there's some sort of secret hidden in these Chant things?

"Hold on. I'd like to test something."

While saying that, I put my hand toward the tree that Reich used to test his magic on.
And then I mimic the chant thing while feeling embarrassed.

"Fire mana that dwells in my body, become a straight arrow and pierce my-"

And then, a portion of my mana gathered on my hand even though I didn't control it at all.
It feels like an outside force forcefully controlled the mana inside my body.

Furthermore, the mana was changing to magic at an extremely inefficient way--it stopped halfway through and the magic activation was canceled.
It seems the conversion that was automatically happening was hindered because I reflexively controlled my mana.

....This is not a natural phenomenon.
Someone intentionally devised this system during the time I was reincarnating.
A system that makes using magic become exceedingly inefficient while also making mana control unknown to people.
But, for what sake?

You'd normally think that they thought up this method to make magic easier to use, yet it's still too complicated. If it's using your voice as a trigger, a simpler keyword would be more than enough, and in the first place, you can easily activate a magic of this scale simply by controlling mana. The assistance has no point.
Judging from the current situation, this is perhaps intended to keep people from learning how to control mana and for the magic development to--.

"Mathi, you suddenlly fell silent, what's wrong?"

Oops. I got lost in thought.
I was in the middle of teaching my brother magic wasn't I.
Fortunately, I found the problem. Along with the way to overcome it.

"I was thinking a way to teach you how to control mana.... I found a good method."

"Good method?"

"Un. There's this sensation of mana moving when you're chanting a magic right?"

"I'm not sure if it's the sensation of mana moving, but it does feel weird."

"Try to disturb that. I think you'll grasp the sensation of the movement of mana a bit with that."

"The movement of mana.... I'll give it a try."

After saying that, Reich chanted once again.
The magic still got activated however.... there was a slight disorder in the movement of mana.

"The sensation just now.... Did you grasp it?"

"Somehow or another. I'll try it once again."

Saying that, Reich repeated the same chant.
This time the mana movement truly stopped. The magic didn't activate either.

"Alright. What should I do next?"

"This time, try to move your mana on your own instead of stopping it, without relying on the Chant. I think it's easier if you gather it on your dominant hand."

"Got it."

Reich gathered mana on his right hand. He's got some skill. Enough that it's a waste for him to stop at just being a territory lord.
He would be a fine magic combatant if he just kept training for several hundreds years.
But now's not the time to do that.

"Then next, imagine a flame appearing in front of your hand. If the flame is too big, it won't go well due to the lack of output, thus I think starting with a small one is a good idea...."

Right after I said that, a small flame lit up in front of Reich.
If this keeps up, he should surpass Biffgel by tomorrow even if I leave him alone. Reich's crest is the Second Crest after all (It has no special characteristic at first, however its power will increase along with training.)

However, it'll be a waste if I do that, I'll teach him a simple way to practice.
It might even pique his interest in magic combat.

"Looks like you did it. After that, I think you should observe the flame you created and solidify its image."

The most important thing in changing mana into magic is image.
If you want to quickly increase your magic power, the quickest way is to make the image accurate.
....Though since the amount of your mana is closely related to it, you will also quickly hit the limit if you only do that.

"Image? I don't think an image of flame is that complicated...."

"You think so? Try drawing a flame then."

"Okay. It's like this... Huh?"

The thing Reich drawed on the ground with a stick was a very haphazard deformed not-like-this thing.
Even Reich seems to understand that there's something wrong with it, but he doesn't seem to know what precisely, and the drawing ceases to look like a flame as he repeatedly tries to correct it.

"See?"

An image is more ambiguous than we think ourselves.
That's why when you try to give it a form, it will take a different shape in case of drawing, and in case of magic, reduced conversion efficiency.
Accurately comprehend the phenomenon, memorize it and then reproduce it with magic. That's the first step of magic training.

Looks like Reich is practicing it right away. The flame created by Reich who gathered his mana while staring at it looked slightly bigger than before.

"I see. It got stronger.... Mathi, are you really 9 years old?"

"If I wasn't, how old would I be."

The current me really is 9.
If we count the past me, it's thousand, un, hundreds years old.

"No well. I know that you're 9 and all. But looking at Mathi's magic and swordsmanship, it's really hard to think so. I think there's only a few adventurers in active duty that could beat you, let alone 9 year olds. Or am I just being a stupid elder brother?"

Since I don't know the level of the current world, I can't be exactly sure about it, but even I should have some problem against adventurers in active duty.
The gap in things like body size and physical strength is way big too....
By the way, I could already win against my father. That is only if I use 【Mana Strike】 and Physical Reinforcement though.

"Though it's probably impossible to catch up to Mathi, I will do my best. It won't be funny if I can't beat Biffgel with this."

After saying that, Reich restarted practicing magic.
It was one week later that Reich showed flame magic that was several hundreds times stronger than Biffgel's and gained fame as the best magician in the territory.