Published at 20th of November 2020 09:25:04 PM
Chapter 18.2: 18.2
Translator: SFBaka
Whoah, there’s some unwanted company . Nanom managed to capture magicle reactions .
“Ria, there’s a Gray Hound . Just one . 500 meters out in that direction . ”
The sucker was in the 11 o’clock direction . It’s right out front .
“Please let me deal with it . ”
Well, she’s asked, so she shall receive . I’ll leave it to her then .
“Alright . But it’s still not certain that it’ll head our way . ”
Judging from its movements, it seems the Gray Hound hasn’t noticed us yet, but the carriage was moving in its direction, so it’ll probably notice us before long . The Gray Hound’s movements finally showed some changes when the carriage reached a distance of 200 meters from it . It was definitely heading straight for us . Well, the carriage was noisy as heck, so it was probably inevitable .
“Beck, stop the carriage!”
The carriage promptly stopped moving and Cleria jumped out front .
“What’s wrong!?” Beck asked .
“Gray Hound . Just one . Ria will deal with it,” I announced .
Cleria drew her sword and held it in both hands before her chest .
The Gray Hound appeared about fifty meters away from the carriage . It wasn’t wary of us one bit and kept charging at us . I raised the rifle slightly, just in case .
“Flame Arrow!”
A single, large flame arrow appeared before Cleria and headed straight towards the Gray Hound . The flame arrow struck the Gray Hound right in the chest when it managed to come within ten meters of Cleria’s position . Whoah! That was some fast casting! She just took about fifteen seconds to cast that spell . And Cleria also had her eyes opened all this time . She’s really managed to improve by a lot .
Beck and Thor raised a fuss . Cleria would have normally jumped up and down in celebration, but she had a calm and composed expression today . It seems she was putting up quite a front due to the presence of Beck and Thor, but I didn’t miss the faint arch which graced her lips . Well, she was regarded as a really skilled knight by the villagers, so I sort of understand how she’s feeling .
She didn’t forget to take the magic stone from the corpse . She made her sword glow and split the Gray Hound in two, recovering the magic stone afterward . Beck and Thor made a fuss about it once again . We tossed the Gray Hound remains down a cliff .
“That takes care of that . Shall we depart?”
“Amazing, Alan-san! Is Risama always like this?”
Let’s give a bit more props to Cleria today .
“Yes . She’s always been like this . Shall we go then?”
“Yeah!”
The carriage started up once again . The two out front were still immersed in the excitement and were talking animatedly with each other .
“How was I, Alan?”
Looks like Cleria couldn’t hold down her own excitement and finally inquired about her prior performance .
“That was great . The time you took to solidify your image was quite short . And what was even more impressive was that your eyes remained open while casting . ”
“Huh? My eyes were open?”
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Looks like she wasn’t aware of it then .
“Yeah, they were . Your next goal would be to shorten the casting time further . Ten seconds at the longest . Next would be not using your hands to aim and chantless casting . If you can do all these, you’ll have enough breathing room to prepare your spells before a battle begins, and you’d be able to defeat your opponents easier . Your combat capabilities would rise considerably . ”
Cleria seemed like she agreed with my points . I was curious about why she didn’t cast spells like this before .
“How did you learn magic, Ria?”
“You’d first need to read and memorize magic tomes before you can learn magic properly . You’d have to do as the steps in the magic tome indicate one by one in order to cast magic spells successfully . ”
“Magic tome huh? Sounds kinda amazing . ”
“Yes . For example, Fireball has seventeen steps . Flame Arrow has fifty . ”
“So does that mean you’re reproducing the seventeen processes in your head in those ten seconds before casting a Fireball spell?”
“That’s correct . ”
That’s quite amazing . That’s beyond what geniuses can normally do . No wonder she had to close her eyes before . I’m not familiar with the exact processes, but she’s basically completing an average of two every second .
“I haven’t even heard of the method of using images like what Alan does . ”
Hmm . Well, I guess if you didn’t know of the process of gathering magicles in order to form spells, you would have a relatively more difficult time casting magic . I remember that I learned of the exact method from an NPC teacher for several days back in the game . I see . So I guess those steps would allow one to construct an effective mental image .
“Is using a magic tome to learn magic the norm?”
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“Of course! I can guarantee that every mage in this world learned to cast spells through reading magic tomes… except for Alan, that is . ”
She seems really sure of her words huh . I see . So it’s possible that the people who produced these magic tomes must have written them in such a way that would allow one to form a mental image through the use of a step-by-step process . And as a result, it became common sense to learn magic by imitating the steps written in those magic tomes . Mm . It’s definitely possible .
But Zack said yesterday night that there were a few of the villagers who could actually use magic . Did those people read tomes too?
“Actually, Zack said that the village had about two or three people who could use magic in the village last night . ”
‘Oh, those are probably people who can use an incomplete form of spell casting due to not having the chance to read a tome . Magic tomes are expensive, so normal citizens able to use magic are quite few in number . ”
I see . It’s plenty possible to cast magic if you have a good imagination . But without a tome to provide definite steps for processing an image, casting may prove difficult for beginners .
“Well, now you’ve experienced it too Cleria . What’s truly important when casting magic is forming a concrete and vivid image . You need to be faster, more detailed and precise when imagining just how you want a spell to come out and how much magic power you wish to use up during spell casting . Imaging power, so to speak . ”
“Imaging power…”
Cleria was once again lost in thought . I was free once again, so I just plopped down on the luggage pile . That’s some nice weather . It’ll be great if it doesn’t rain . Oops, that was close . I was just about to fall asleep .
I looked at the digital clock on my virtual HUD and found that we’ve traveled for close to an hour . Nanom was still keeping watch, so I bet it’ll wake me up if there was some kind of trouble along the way, but I’ll fail as an escort if that happened . Let’s be more careful from now on .
Cleria was silently sitting while keeping her eyes closed . It seems she’s meditating… She isn’t just asleep, right?
At that moment, the scan managed to pick up another reaction . It was a weak reaction that was barely in the scan’s detection ability and was right in front of the carriage again . It’s 400 meters out . It doesn’t look to be anything dangerous .
When we got within a hundred meters of it, I finally managed to see what it was . It kinda looked like a rabbit . It had a short, fluffy-looking tail . It was hiding in the bushes near the roadside, but its tail was sticking out like a sore thumb .
These creatures had an uncanny ability to sense and avoid danger . There were a lot of instances where I got to detect them using scanning magic, only for them to escape before I could get any nearer . If we manage to catch this guy, guess we’ll have rabbit meat for dinner .
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“Ria, there’s a rabbit out front . ”
Cleria’s eyes sprang open . Was she really asleep?
“Where is it? I’ll bring it down!”
Thought she’d say that .
“It’s hiding inside those bushes . ”
“I cannot see it . ”
“Hm . Seems you can’t see it from here . How about this? I’ll throw a rock at it and you bring it down once it gets out of the bushes . ”
I brought out some stones I had reserved inside my backpack .
“I’ll try . ”
I brought up my throwing arm and prepared myself . The rabbit still isn’t fleeing . I bet it’s just waiting for us to go past it . I’ll make my move once we close in as much as possible… 30 meters more… 20 meters… 10 meters… Now!
I threw a stone right next to the bush where the rabbit was hiding . It panicked and jumped out of the bush, right into the road .
“Flame Arrow!”
Looks like she missed the timing a bit . The spell would just manage to graze the critter at this rate . Well, that’s what I thought at first, but the flaming arrow changed projectiles mid-flight and pierced the rabbit’s neck!