--Books are not for reading. It is something to look for.

　These are the words of the father of a man whose life Arx relived.
　He said that people must always search for books.
　First, one searches for the book itself that one should read.
　First, one searches for the book itself to read, and then one searches for the necessary information in the list of words.
　Finally, one must search for situations in real life in which that information can be used.


　That is why books are not to be read, but to be searched.
　These are the words of a man who lives in a world blessed with reading materials.
　If you listen to him calmly, you may feel that he is saying something absurd, but you can understand what he is trying to say.
　Anyway, under the influence of his father, the man began to read a lot.
　As an Arx who has greatly benefited from this, I am very grateful.


(It really depends on you, doesn't it?)


　The information he has gained has been useful for many things.
　It is not limited to magic.
　It's not just magic. It's everyday life and quick thinking.
　It's probably because of his own abilities that he can absorb them so efficiently.


　The ability to accurately remember what you have read or seen.


　It is a power similar to what is called instantaneous memory.
　It is because of this ability that I can accurately and vividly memorize the books that the man read, even if I only read them in passing.
　And this power is properly exercised even when he is not reliving it.
　In fact, I should say that I am making good use of it.


　At ......, there is a chronicle in front of me.
　This is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of books in this world.
　Dozens of thick books contain many volumes of [ancient arts language].
　It would be extremely difficult for an ordinary person to memorize all of them, and even if one could, it would be impossible to memorize them word for word.
　The main use of such a thing would be to create magic.
　The technology to create spells and cause various phenomena by using the [ancient arts language] that constitutes the book.
　It is not only for enriching people's lives.
　Naturally, it can also be used to attack others.


　There are three main types of magic.
　Offensive magic" which directly attacks the opponent.
　Defensive magic is related to defense.
　Lastly, spells that have auxiliary properties are called "aid spells".


　In the garden of the Arbent mansion, Arx holds up a book.
　It is a book of words and phrases taken from the annals and their meanings.
　The only reason for bringing it out to the garden of the Arbent mansion is to create new magic.
　Naturally, a lot of magic will be needed in order to rise in the future.
　Powerful spells, but also spells that are appropriate to the situation.
　In some cases, we must assume that we will be fighting against other people.


　However, chanting time is a bottleneck in the use of magic.
　As is the case with mage against mage, if you are fighting a non-mage opponent, the longer your spell is, the more time it takes for the opponent to see you, and the more likely they are to defeat you while you are still chanting.
　To avoid this.
　To avoid this, you should focus on melee combat in the early stages of the battle, and take advantage of their gaps to chant.
　Alternatively, you can deploy a vanguard and chant while the vanguard is fighting.
　You need to do these things.


　The latter is impractical because you cannot always have a vanguard ready.
　Therefore, the choice in that case is automatically the former.


It's the sword after all: ......


　...... reminds me of the swordsmanship that man learned.
　In the man's country, it was common to use imitation swords made of bamboo, but the man mainly used serious swords or special practice swords as part of his spiritual training.
　This is the art of drawing and striking a sword from its scabbard while seated.
　They mainly practiced prescribed kata over and over again, sometimes cutting stationary objects.
　Although it was not a way to cultivate many skills for fighting against others, the man was not completely devoid of skills, as he was taught footwork and other techniques by an older swordsman who had dabbled in several schools.
　I've been practicing what I've learned there for four years now, and I've already mastered some of the moves, and I'm almost at the point where I can reproduce some of the techniques that I've read about.


　Anyway, now for the magic.
　Close combat techniques.
　Vanguard positioning.
　Other measures would be to revise the form of magic and the spells themselves.
　Create spells that last longer.
　Create spells with shorter chanting times.
　Either of these.


　By sustained magic, I don't mean one-shot spells such as [Flamrune] that end with a single blow, but spells that, once used, can maintain their effects for a long time, such as defensive magic.
　The magic used by my uncle Crabbe and Noah's [Jacqueline's Freezing Sword] can be said to fall into this category.
　While these spells are powerful, they require a huge amount of magic power.
　Therefore, it is difficult to say whether you can afford them.
　If you want to use a spell more than once, the amount of magic power you can use at one time is limited because you have little magic power.
　If it is a powerful spell, the majority of the magic power will be taken away just by using it once.
　This is also unrealistic because we have not yet found a way to increase or replace the magic power.


　If we want to be practical, we have to shorten the spell.
　Of course, the shorter the spell, the better.
　However, if you make it extremely short, you will run into the dilemma of not being able to achieve the desired effect.


　What kind of phenomena does the magic spell use?
　What phenomenon does it utilize?
　What form does it take?
　What effect will it have?
　If you don't specify them properly, the spell will not be sophisticated.


　If you use too few words, you will not be able to specify them, and even if you succeed, the spell will be monotonous. Of course, the more monotonous the spell, the weaker it will be, because you cannot add more effects to it.
　However, we still want to make spells short and powerful.
　So this time, I decided to use words that are usually considered to be too difficult to deal with, instead of words that are useful for increasing the power of magic.




　[flame] [fire] [thunder] [lightning] [ice and snow] [avalanche].


　These are words that are powerful in themselves and are usually difficult to mix into a spell.
　If these words are poorly incorporated into a spell.
　Or they can get out of control.
　Or they will cancel each other out, making the spell weaker.
　However, this does not mean that they cannot be used in spells.
　If you can find words that can be controlled and come up with combinations, theoretically they can be used in spells.


　Look down at the book where you wrote down the ...... words and phrases.


[[Explode]] ......


　I muttered to myself about a word I had just found in my research.
　It is a word related to explosions and blasts, and is found in the sixth book, "The Demon King at the End of the Century.
　It says, "A flame explodes. It pours down like rain and roars. The fires run and run, raging and reaching far beyond the horizon. The voices of sorrow never cease. The voice of sorrow will never cease. It will consume everything and reduce everything to dust. One demon lord, Ganzardi. The only thing that will remain after you have conquered is a field of sorrow.


　...... This depicts the manifestation of Ganzardi, one of the demon kings who are said to destroy the human world.
　When the demon king Ganzardi appeared, he blew away the civilization that people had built with fire and shock, turning it into a wilderness.
　Even from this description alone, we can see that a considerable number of powerful words are used.


　Roaring," "raging fire," "burning out," "dust," and "never-ending.


　These are all words that are not easy to handle.
　The word "explode" is definitely one of them.


　However, simply chanting the word "explode," even if it is powerful, does not make it magic.
　In order to make it magic, we have to specify the result to some extent and fit it into a mold.
　However, even in specifying the result, if you don't prepare and control words and phrases that will not be defeated by the [explosion], the magic will immediately go out of control.


"If you stand up for yourself, you will not stand up for yourself. ......


　You want to shorten the spell, but you also want to increase the effect. But if you want to use powerful words, you need to make the spell longer.
　However, for everyday use, we want to keep the spell to about five verses, and each verse should be as short as possible.
　For this purpose, we use the following spell-creation techniques.


　The repetition method.
　This is a technique of using the same words repeatedly to strengthen them intensively.
　It is not found in any magic textbook, and is a technique that I discovered by myself while searching for the rules of spells.
　It is simply a matter of repeating the same word several times in succession.
　This concentrates the effect and reinforces it, making the spell more powerful.
　The spell is at its best when you repeat it three times.
　The other thing to keep in mind is simplicity.
　There is no point in adding too many words and phrases.
　With this in mind, I will cast the spell I have created.


"--minute. Fine. Fine. Explode.


　The image is an explosion on the ground ten meters in front of you.
　Immediately after the chanting ends, the [Arts Glyphs] scatter around the area and eventually converge towards the target point.
　It's a good idea to have a good idea of what you're looking for, and how you're going to get there.
　There was no sign of an explosion.
　It failed.


"No? ......


　I groaned, but it was nothing to be disappointed about.
　This is the way it always is. It's not every day that a spell you create succeeds in one shot. The creation of magic is done by preparing a number of spell candidates, extracting the one with the best effect, and improving it further.
　If the spells are so shallow that they can be easily created, there is no way they can be used in a wide variety of ways.
　Probably, the current failure is due to too much force to suppress the power.
　Because of the overuse of the word "minute," the power to weaken has exceeded the power of the word "explode.
　The word "fine" is not a good one to begin with, so even if it works, I will probably improve it.


　Next, he began to chant another spell.


(If it's a bad idea to use too many of the same words...)


　This time, I'll try to make it more powerful than before, incorporating other words.


"--fine. Fine. Transfer. Blast it big.


　Chanting.
　But until the effect occurs, the [Arts Glyphs] move in roughly the same manner as before.
　Eventually, a small burst of fireworks erupts in front of you. It was a small burst, like a firecracker popping. There is almost no combustion or heat, and there is nothing aggressive about it.
　This is no good. It doesn't even serve to startle the opponent.
　Besides, there is no need for a spell with such a role at the moment, because there is a spell called Astonish Bubble that I made before.


It's not a complete failure because it looks more like an explosion than before. ......


　Then, I should make it without any technique.
　Of course, we need to suppress the power of the word, so we need to use more words.
　However, if you just use repetition, the power of the magic will be suppressed too much, and you will not get the desired result.
　So, what should we do?


　We have to make the magic controllable by reducing the ...... effect and power to some extent. Therefore, we need a few words to reduce the power. Hence the irregularity of replacing all three repetitions with different words, while providing tone and rhyme, and adding a word to the last part [blast] that reduces the power.


　After that, I'm going to work on the image a little more.
　Instead of gathering together haphazardly, the scattered [arts glyphs] will gather together and connect with each other to form a magic circle. This creates a premonition of an explosion. Eventually, they gradually contract, limiting the target of the explosion. Causes a small explosion.
　Imagine a single target, or four or five people if involved.


　This time, the target is a stone randomly placed in the garden.


(How about this!)


　Chanting with the hope of success.


"--minimal. Joining. Focus. A small explosion!


　When you chant the spell, the randomly scattered [Arts Glyphs] gather together to form a circle and further form a formation. The magic power draws the ink and forms straight lines, circles, and polygons around the letters to form a geometric pattern, creating a magic circle.
　The magic circle will contract as you envisioned, narrowing as if you were grasping your hand while visualizing the magic circle drawing the target.
　Finally, he squeezed the narrowing hand tightly, and the magic circle crushed at the same time.
　It was right after that.
　The red and orange flames of the explosion expanded in a black cloud.
　The roar and impact of the explosion combined to strike my body.
　I felt the heat, but then, instead of the sound dying out of my ears, came a keening sound from beyond.


　A burning smell wafted in the air, and between my eyes I saw the ground gouged out as if it had been shelled. Crushed stone.
　If you look up, you will see shattered [Arts Glyphs] flying up into the sky in a cloud of black smoke.


"I did it ......, I did it ......!


　I muttered over and over again, trapped in the euphoria of success.
　It was still too powerful to be controlled, but it was a definite success.
　Only four verses. This power in only four verses is unparalleled.
　Because it does not contain a codification, the result is a simple phenomenon that only generates an explosion, but this alone is powerful enough.
　Even though the time it takes for the effect to take effect and the distance over which the effect can take effect are not as great as the [Flamrerun], the power is comparable to it.
　In addition, the amount of magic power consumed has been reduced to some extent.
　The three words may have had an effect in this regard.
　I felt a definite sense of satisfaction that I had created a practical magic, and I was filled with joy.
　After all, magic is interesting. It is precisely because of this trial and error that the joy of success is so great.


　...... In the future, we should continue to create spells that consume less magic power and require less chanting.
　However, explosions are still hard on the ears.


I'll have to make some earplugs with the Mark.


　I need to make some earplugs with the mark." He was thinking about making earplugs with his arms crossed, while his heart was filled with the aftermath of his success.


"Hey, Arx. I'm sorry to bother you for a moment.

"Yes, Uncle, what's wrong ......?


　When I turned around at the sound of a familiar voice, there was my uncle with a beautiful smile.
　Yes, a very nice smile.
　A shiver ran up my spine at the sight of him.
　A chill went down my spine.
　Intuitively, you realize that this is a sign of anger.


　But I have no idea what's wrong with me.
　Then Crabbe said


"You know what? I don't mind that you're trying to make magic, but I don't think you should be doing this.　Hmm?

"This?　............ Oh.


　He looked at the place where he had just used the explosion spell.
　But the earth had been dug up by the magic, and it was a mess.
　Messed up.
　Very messed up.


No, this is, you know...

"Think about your location!　You're a no-talent!


　Go on, go on, go on.


Geeeeeeaaahhhh!


　As a result of my efforts to create magic, I ended up having my head gouged by bulky muscles and fists.