Chapter 129: Afterschool Training

The incident at the start of the week was annoying but thanks to that, the participants of our afterschool training sessions have increased to seventeen. Fifteen of them are from Class A, while the remaining two are Sola’s friends, mages currently attending Class B. The only ones who haven’t joined us are the first prince faction’s Glen, Milt, and their three lackeys. There are 20 students in Class A, so even the members of the second prince faction joined our sessions.

As usual, we’re having a training session after school today, so I headed to the training area at the previously scheduled time. By now, I’m already close enough with the professor processing the documents to have short chats with them. 「Personally, I’m rooting for you.」 When I was told this, I really felt guilty about scaring them with the principal’s signature.

As I arrived at the training area, I saw that someone was already there. It was a real mystery how she got here earlier than me despite our classes ending at the same time.

「Miss Hermie, you’re quite early.」 「Well, it seems like I was a bit overexcited.」

This person that arrived ahead of me is the lady of a purple peer household, Miss Hermie of the second prince faction. She should have become the leader of the second prince faction since Tebby sided with us, but she was the first to join our training immediately after that incident.

「Frankly speaking Miss Hermie, is it really alright for you to participate in my training?」 「Of course, there’s no problem at all. To begin with, for the second prince faction, the advancement of magical technology is a joyous thing. While this is certainly something we would have preferred to carry out with our own hands, if this advancement should happen under your leadership, it is still a joyous happening nonetheless. How about it? I do believe that we have the same intentions in mind, don’t we?」 「-whoop, I’m not falling for that one. I’ll cooperate with what I can, certainly, but I have no intention to take part in political activities. 」 「Oh, that’s a shame.」

True, the second prince faction is aiming for the reinforcement of the kingdom’s national power through the advancement of magical technology. They likely decided that if the reformation of the academy would result in more excellent sorcerers and mages, then it’s more important than any trivial factional dispute. Still, it doesn’t seem like the second prince faction is in complete unity and all.

「It seems like everyone is here. Well then, let’s start today’s training in high spirits as usual. To start, everybody; please split into two teams: A and B.」

Since there are seventeen participants in total, sixteen with me excluded, I divided all the participants into groups of 8. What we’re going to do today is everybody’s favorite: dodgeball. Ball games being effective for magic training is something already proven with Adan’s training. Having everyone juggle balls is fine and all, but since we have this many people now, it should be better to have a game where everyone can play with each other.

It might be nice to incorporate soccer and volleyball eventually. Baseball is…… probably not suited for training, I think? Rugby would be a bit dangerous with female students playing too. What other games are there again? Tennis might be suitable for magic tool use training though.

-whoops, the game was settled while I was distracted with my thoughts.1 Today’s game was between Tebby and Hermie’s team A, and Urania and Sora’s team B; but it seems like I’ve made a mistake with the team balancing as team A had an overwhelming victory. Rather, only Urania and Sola were capable of receiving Tebby’s throws. While he was one of the first training participants, Tebby’s growth is terrifying.

The balance adjustment for team distribution is something we’ll have to solve. Unless we assess everybody’s abilities and distribute the participants in a way that would make the games a close match, it won’t be effective as training. After all, if the match is too one-sided, they’ll barely have any contact with the ball.

I considered going for another round, but we need to make efficient use of our time, so I decided to move on to the next training exercise. The training I’m conducting is currently divided into three stages. The new participants who aren’t familiar with manipulating magic power, and the two mages that can’t use magic in the first place, are at the first stage of training. Participants like Hermie who can manipulate magic power but don’t have great control over magic are at the second stage. Lastly, Urania, Tebby, and Sola are currently in the third stage.

The first stage, as you know, is the training of magic power manipulation through juggling, but in addition to that, I’ve also handed out modified grimoires. Unlike Urania’s grimoire, these don’t have the magic recording function, but they are equipped with the magic power manipulation support function. While I call these modified grimoires, they’re in the shape of a wand, so calling them grimoires might be a bit weird.

When activating these grimoires, three balls will appear, and they will have to juggle them while supplying a fixed amount of magic power. At first, the grimoire will automatically draw out magic power from its user, so even those who aren’t familiar with regulating their magic power can practice magic power operation. With that, they’ll have to start by mastering how to control their magic power. It’s the foundation of everything, so if they stumble at this point, they won’t be able to do anything. No matter how slow the progress, mastering this is necessary.

The second stage is magic mastery. Learning magic construction is important and all, but in the end, the most important thing is the ability to control one’s magic. People that aren’t proficient at it like Adan and Miss Hermie can have their magic hijacked and could cause them harm. It was a shock to discover that most of the students neglect to learn magic mastery.

So for these people, I had them train in pairs and do “Light Ball” battles. This one is also based on what we did during Adan’s training, but compared to what we did, the participants are showing off some pretty high level techniques. Like producing six “Light Balls” and firing them instantaneously, making them flicker to cause confusion, the level of creativity is amazing. Though if only the one that produced six at the same time didn’t get their magic hijacked due to the lack of control, I would have given them a passing grade.

I’ve also taught the second stage participants how to hijack magic. As long as you’re somewhat decent at magic power control, hijacking magic is surprisingly not that difficult. More importantly, when you know how to do it, you can directly apply what you learned to magic mastery.

And lastly, the third stage participants do nothing but mock battles. However, they have to wear the magic sealing bangle I made. This magic tool has the effect of sealing certain magic while also disturbing one’s magic power control. Naturally, it makes manipulating magic difficult, and they absolutely can’t use the magic that’s sealed off.

The magic sealed could be the user’s favorite magic, offensive magic, defensive magic, and many more. Sealing attributes instead would consequently incapacitate Tebby, so I limited it to certain magic. I honestly had a hard time figuring this out, but thanks to that, I was able to create my secret weapon, so it was worth the trouble.

Incidentally, I’m currently fighting them 3 on 1 with two of those equipped in each of my four limbs. This really makes for great training. First of all, hijacking their magic is impossible, and constructing magic itself becomes considerably harder.

Even so, I don’t have any intention to lose, and as of yet, I still haven’t lost. After all, since Urania’s magic comes mostly from her grimoire, the construction is too clean; and while Tebby’s firepower is amazing, he’s easy to counter since he only uses one attribute. To be honest, the most troublesome among them is Sola. Since she uses water and fire attributes independently while occasionally firing off composite magic, she has the most varied move set out of them. I guess the point to improve would be her lack of power then?

In the meantime, I decided to focus on the training of the new participants for today. At their current rate, I might be able to take them along with us this weekend after all.