Chapter 11 10: Change (1)

The sun had come overhead when Elric woke up. His silver eyes glistened and his pale skin glowed under the scant afternoon dye as he turned over on his back and slowly pushed himself up.

Not too far away, Claude was working out below a tree. There wasn't a single blemish in his push-up form as he dipped down and came back up in a smooth motion.

"You look like garlic."

"What even?" Claude asked back, not stopping his push-ups.

"That's exactly what garlic would say."

Elric stretched his arms above his head while yawning. At the same time, Claude finished his set and stood up. He didn't exactly know what he was doing. He did go to the gym now and then back in his original world, but the experience of modern weight training was completely different from the regimen he followed here. For now, he had just been following the workouts General Volfram had cooked up specifically for him.

Claude walked over to the other side of the tree and picked up a fruit. The pome had russeting yellow skin and looked rather scrumptious even from afar.

"So, I didn't know you could use magic." Claude tossed the otherworld original fruit over to Elric who grabbed it with a smile.

"I didn't know either," Elric answered. He scratched the skin of the fruit, the waxy layer seemingly a topic of great interest for him.

Claude crossed his legs and sat in front of Elric. He dropped the other four of the same yellow fruits from his hand and picked one up.

pαndα,noνɐ1,сoМ "What do you mean?" Claude asked.

Elric's nails tore into the skin and the yellower juice of the yellow fruit dripped out. "I just read the basics in a book once," Elric said as he decided to tear the whole thing open and dig in. "Did whatever I remembered. Couldn't have done it without you, though."

The sarcasm in Elric's words flew over Claude as his eyes widened.

"Wait, you mean that was the first time you even tried?"

"Hmm? Yup."

An air of silence covered them.

"Hah…" Claude laughed.

"Hahaha…"

"Hahahahaha!! Nice one, Elric! Good joke!"

"…"

The smirk was wiped off Claude's face in an instant. He leaned closer to Elric and narrowed his eyes.

"Erika's class was an archmage, and even she took a whole day to get a feel of mana enough to use a primary spell."

Elric bit into the fruit and shrugged. "Sounds like a skill issue to me."

With no retort left, Claude pursed his lips and looked away.

It didn't make much sense to him. Using magic required a strange amount of understanding and calculations being run simultaneously, the requirement was to the point that many magician families in this world had their brains adapting to performing a large number of calculations in their minds.

He remembered how badly Erika struggled each day trying to implement basic physics into things, and even after that, she couldn't pull something off without getting a feel of things. She had to be able to actually use her mana and the mana in the world to apply the calculations and use a spell.

There were chants and keywords that people of this world used to visualize and calculate things, and most importantly, help with that sixth-sense-ish concept of feel for magic that came with mana-control. Claude remembered Elric's stats again, 5 was such a small number that even using magic scrolls required a higher mana control. On top of that… the intelligence required. The priest that taught Erika could multiply two-digit numbers in a breeze.

Suddenly, Claude snapped out of his thoughts and turned to Elric.

"Hey," he said. "What's 367 multiplied by 244?"

"89548, why?"

Immediate.

"It must have been a one-time thing…" Claude pressed his nose bridge, trying to explain the sudden answer when something seeped into his skin.

The cold sensation ran through his back and set his spine up straight. Right above his nose, a mass of water about the size of a small cup kneaded into a circle and moved back and forth from his face.

Claude's jaw dropped down.

"T-this…"

Beyond the ball of water, Elric had a small wrinkle running below his eyes and his lips were pursed into a slightly pained smile. The beautiful face of the boy seemed to have had its beauty enhanced by sweating a bit.

With a wave of his hands, the floating ball of water rushed backward, and then with another, again to him.

Claude blinked, he rubbed his eyes, but that thing was still there.

The mass of water suddenly elongated from the center. It was about to separate into two halves when it suddenly lost strength and plopped to the ground.

"Hmm, still tiring," said Elric. Claude was frozen with shock at the sudden magic Elric had pulled off casually.

One-time thing. Definitely not. He had just managed to break the simple spell to the point where he won't be out of mana.

"So, you." Elric wiped his face and dusted his hands. "Shall we set off again? The lord of shadows probably has a sacred fountain in here."