The air in the training chamber was heavy, tasting of ozone and the dry with sterilized scent of spent mana. This was one of the basement chamber used for Glenda's magic trial, a place where the floor was made of reinforced obsidian and the walls were wreathed in dampening enchantments that could swallow the blast of a high-tier spell without so much as a tremor.
"Incantation, whether mentally projected or spoken aloud, is crucial for a magician, whether you like the aesthetics of it or not, Jay," Glenda said, her voice echoing with a slight metallic ring against the obsidian. She stood perfectly still, her purple hair shimmering like a nebula. "It is the anchor for your intent. Without the words, the mind tends to wander, and in magic, a wandering mind is a death sentence."
She looked at Jay, who stood twenty feet away.
"But," Glenda continued, a small, predatory smile tugging at her lips, "with enough experience, you can learn to compress the logic. You don't need the bridge if you've already reached the other side. And you can do something like this."
She didn't move a muscle. She didn't breathe a word. Yet, in the space between heartbeats, three intricate, cerulean magic circles manifested in the air around her. They were sharp, glowing with the frigid light of deep-sea pressure. In an instant, three spheres of high-density water formed, spinning with such velocity they hummed like turbines.
They launched simultaneously, three blue streaks aimed at Jay's head, chest, and knees.
Jay didn't move. He didn't even raise his hands to guard.
A violent, silent surge of purplish-black flame erupted from the floor. It wasn't an explosion, it was an erasure. The water spheres hit the wall of fire and didn't splash, they simply ceased to exist, evaporated into hot steams by the overwhelming thermal gradient of the Incinerate Anthem.
Jay stood amidst the dying violet embers, his expression as flat and cold as the obsidian beneath him. His control of Incinerate Anthem had improved enormously in just fourteen days. It was no longer a wild, devouring fire.
Glenda lowered her gaze, her mind racing. The characteristics are wrong, she thought, her brow furrowing.
She was intimately familiar with the records of the Incinerate Anthem. She knew its supposed 'previous user,' the Witch of the East, Augusta. In all historical accounts, the Incinerate Anthem was characterized as an Avatar-type Sacred Gear.
It possessed a dense, often volatile consciousness. A flickering, sentient ego that spoke to its wielder, guiding them or mocking them, sometimes fueling their rage to keep the purple flames burning.
"Still nothing?" Glenda asked, walking toward the center of the room. "No voice? No flickering image in your mind? No sensation of a 'second soul' trying to claw its way out?"
"No, just silence." Jay answered, shaking his head.
Glenda bit her lip. This was the core of her confusion. Usually, training for an Avatar-type wielder began with months of "Bonding and Synchronization." The user had to negotiate with the spirit inside the gear, forming a contract of wills. But Jay was in full, absolute control from the start.
He wasn't negotiating with a spirit to borrow their power, he was just using it at will. But despite there is no 'avatar' to be compromised, it's still-
'This is no mere genius,' Glenda thought, watching the way the violet embers clung to Jay's sleeves without burning the fabric. 'To achieve this level of control in two weeks is unheard of. It's almost as if he was born with it.'
Humans usually have a fundamental problem processing new power whether it was magic or sacred gears. A Sacred Gear especially is an external graft, a piece of "System Logic" from the God of the Bible forced into a mortal frame. It should feel alien initially, the feeling that cause rejection symptoms or mental fatigue.
'Even Augusta,' Glenda recalled, 'needed three months just to stop the fire from burning her own skin. And she is considered a paragon of supernatural talent. This boy... his battle experience is non-existent, he's a peanut in this big supernatural worlds, but his sheer control... it's perfect.'
She looked at him, and for a fleeting second, she felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. It was fear. Not fear of his power, Glenda feel that she could still crush him with a wave of her hand if she was serious, but fear of his nature.
He was a void that consumed knowledge like black hole.
'Not to mention his magic,' she thought.
Ever since the "accident" in the library, when he had activated a perfect illumination circle without her, Glenda had thrown the syllabus out the window. She had skipped the years of linguistics, the months of magic equation theory, and the tedious geometry of circle formation. She went straight to practice, and every day, she regretted it a little more.
One of the hardest parts of being a novice magician is the transition from theory to mana manipulation. For a human, using Mana as a catalyst to form a magic circle in the air is a grueling mental labor. It isn't just about "feeling" the energy.
'It's like trying to code an entire operating system in your mind,' Glenda thought as she watched Jay prepare for the next set. 'Without a screen, without a keyboard, and without the ability to fix a single bug. If you misplace one line of the thousand-line equation, the program crashes, and in magic, a "crash" means your magic circle collapsed. And if it happens in the middle of intense battle, that's the end for you.'
The human brain wasn't evolved to hold that much geometric data while simultaneously supplying the "electricity" of mana to keep the lines stable. It required an impossible level of focus.
Yet, Jay didn't seem to struggle. It was as if his brain perceived language, geometry and equations as a native tongue. He lacked the massive magical reserves of a Witch like Augusta or a Devil in general. He also didn't have the "High Mana Affinity" that Glenda possessed, which is a term Magician usually used to people with natural ability that makes Mana responds easily, flows smoothly, and feels intuitive.
In fact on the contrary, his affinity to Mana was terrible in a sense.
'But that's exactly why he's better than almost magician i've known in perceiving mana,' Glenda realized with a start.
Because Jay didn't rely on instinct when performing his magic like most magician does. He treated magic as a puzzle to be solved with cold, hard logic. He didn't think, 'Let's make just a circle, activate it and and let it go kaboom.' He thought, 'What is the most efficient geometric path to achieve the desired output?'.
"That's called Multiple Activation," Glenda said aloud, snapping back to the lesson.
"So, it's essentially like completing three different sets of calculus equations at the same time," Jay said, his eyes tracking the residual mana trails of her water spheres.
"Exactly. Most humans magicians usually only able to use one spell at a time, even though they compensate it with faster activation time. But in a real fight against a strong supernatural being, if you're only casting one spell at a time even if its activation time is fast, you're most likely going to be dead.
" The difference between a good and a great magician is that, a good magician uses their mind to save time on one spell using quick mental activation, but a great magician is never afraid of a close-range combatant because they never relied on just activating one spell at a time." Glenda explained.
Jay stood there, his mind humming. He wasn't just listening, he was rewriting his internal combat manual.
"You know," Glenda added, her voice dropping to a serious tone, "that the Norse Valkyries can activate hundreds of spells simultaneously? Each one different? Fire, ice, gravity, all in the same microsecond?"
Jay's eyes widened, the first sign of genuine emotion he'd shown all day. "Hundreds? At once? That's absurd. Are they even thinking at that point?"
"The scary thing is, they do it instinctively," Glenda said while shaking her head, leaning against a pillar. "Remember this, kid. Humans like us aren't supposed to be on their level. They are freaks of nature. This is why there isn't a single human in the Top 100 strongest beings in the world. We are existentially capped."
She looked at him significantly. "Until the God of the Bible created the Sacred Gears."
" That's why it's called a Longinus, because it supposed to be a way for humans to fight against those gods despite us being the weakest of them all. Its a way for the weak to kill the strong." She continued.
"A way for the weak to kill the strong, huh." Jay whispered. He had thought about it, even though he is learning magic as a way to get strong, he also planning to learning close combat that's why despite his study, he still saving some time to training his physics and swordmanship even though its technically still on amateur level right now as Glenda said she can't help him with that.
Beyond his own internal evolution, Jay knew that amassing an arsenal of high-tier weapons such as Sacred Gears in Longinus level would provide a necessary edge. However, the 'collection' of such weapons was a mechanical nightmare. A Sacred Gear was a soul-bound program; to even attempt an extraction, the current host had to be eliminated. But death usually triggered a reset in the System, sending the Gear back into the cycle. Without the knowledge of how to force a transfer, he was merely a killer with no way to harvest the spoils.
'Though beyond Sacred Gears, there are also godly artifacts scattered throughout the world, items like Indra's Vasavi Shakti or Thor's Mjolnir. But with my current strength, those are still far out of reach. For now, they're nothing more than a dream.' Jay thought.
The conversation drifted toward the nature of the research. Jay had spent hours being poked and prodded, demonstrating the heat threshold of his flames and the speed of his activation, yet he knew very little of Glenda's true goal.
"Is that why you're doing this?" Jay asked, looking at the purple sparks on his fingertips. "To research Sacred Gears so you can create one yourself?"
Glenda stayed silent for a moment, her face unreadable. "You could say it's just curiosity, Jay. A Witch without curiosity is just a woman with a pointed hat and a grumpy attitude."
"Oh, that's a rare self awareness."
"Shut your mouth, brat."
She didn't elaborate, and Jay didn't bother to push. He knew that Glenda kept her secrets tightly and as he said before, he couldn't care enough about that.
"Now," Glenda said, straightening up. "Try to do what I did. Create several activation circles simultaneously. Don't worry about the power it generate, just focus on the stability of the geometry and channeling your mana."
Jay then focused his mind, as he trying to create three identical magic circle like Glenda.
The air in front of him flickered. Three cerulean magic circle is slowly formed in front of him, glowing with a faint, unsteady light. But before he could channel the mana, the second circle's equation shifted, the lines crossed, and all three collapsed into a shower of harmless sparks.
But, it didn't explode or backfired on him in any shape or form. Just showing how good his control on magic right now is. It's failed but calculatingly.
"Hmm... that's harder than it looks," Jay muttered.
"Of course it is," Glenda said, a hint of satisfaction in her voice. "Increasing the number of activations isn't a linear curve of difficulty, it's a power function. You're trying to split your consciousness into three separate, independent processors. It takes years for normal magician to master even two."
She checked a small, silver watch at her hip.
"Alright, that's enough for today. I have an important meeting with someone in the human world, and I'll be gone for about a week. Stay here. Do not go into the city without me. You're my 'guest, and not a magician of The Oz to anyone else. If you're caught without my signature, the Emerald City Guard will question you, and that will waste my time."
Jay nodded. "I understand."
Glenda gathered her things and walked toward the exit. "There's food in the larder. Read the books, but don't burn my basement. I mean it, Jay." Glenda remembering how Jay's Incinerate Anthem destroyed her basement walls last week during their Sacred Gear test.
With a swirl of her cloak, she was gone. The heavy obsidian door sealed shut, and the silence of the pocket dimension settled in like a shroud.
Jay stood alone in the dark.
'She only told me not to go to the city,' he thought, his eyes glowing faintly in the dim light. 'She didn't say anything about going to the human world.'
Over the past two weeks, he had learned to perform several forms of spatial magic, one of them being teleportation as it is surprisingly fairly easy for such amazing use of magic. Normally, teleportation magic is considered illegal when used to travel to realms such as the Underworld, the Heavens, or the worlds of the Pantheons. However, because the human world and the dimensional gap are not governed by a single ruling entity or protected by a unified barrier, transferring from Emerald City to Earth posed no real problem.
The reason why he want to get to the human world is that Jay had realized something fundamental about himself. He was learning at a rapid pace, but he was a "scholar" in a world of "warriors." He had the equations, he had the power, but he lacked the friction of a real fight. Glenda refused to spar with him properly, claiming it was "too early" for him to face her without his Sacred Gear fully mastered yet.
"Well... this is a pointless day of magic otherwise," Jay whispered.
He felt the Incinerate Anthem humming under his skin. As he had discovered something that even Glenda didn't realized.
" But she is right on one thing though, Sacred Gears is such a cheat code. "
What Glenda does not realize is that, given enough control, the Incinerate Anthem itself can be used to create a magic circle.
'As Merlin said in The Roots, Any corporeal thing that may serve as a vessel for mana is, in theory, apt to be awakened and wrought into a circle of magic.'
Usually, magicians formed circles in the air using raw mana, which was like trying to draw in a pool of water. Or they wrote them out with pens on paper, which was slow and tedious. But Jay had the Incinerate Anthem.
Because the fire of the Incinerate Anthem is itself a physical form of mana, it is the ideal medium for a magic circle. Most magicians, even someone as skilled as Glenda must create magic circles by carefully shaping mana by hand, or by drawing them with pens or chalk. Both methods require deliberate physical actions, much like writing each line one by one.
A Sacred Gear works differently. Instead of manually forming a circle, it directly projects the magic circle stored in the user's mind into the physical world. The process is closer to printing than writing with Incinerate Anthem acting as the printer, with control similar to adjusting the resolution of an image before it appears.
However, describing this as simple "control" greatly understates the difficulty. Creating a complex magic circle filled with equations using fire alone and entirely within the mind on top of that demands extraordinary precision to manifest. Only with near-perfect control can such technique succeed.
Within three seconds, a massive, glowing purple magic circle appeared beneath his feet, perfect in its resolution, every line of the equation sharp and stable. Just blazing.
By using the fire as the circle itself, he bypassed the "Cognitive Load" Glenda had warned him about. He didn't have to hold the equation in his mind while pumping mana constantly at the same time,
He didn't need to write hundred of magical circle to activate hundreds of spell, he can just make one in his mind, and print it a hundred times. Though it require an enormous amount of Mana, but that price is justified for an instant, multi-activation, and almost no risk of failing magic circle generator.
After that, then a blaze engulfed his body as he muttered.
" Teleportation. "