When Eugene opened his eyes, the very first thing he did was check his underwear. He was worried that he might have wet himself, just like Melkith had warned.
Fortunately, his underwear was soft and dry. However, Eugene couldn’t feel reassured by this fact alone. Mer’s gaze, who was standing nearby and looking in his direction, felt somewhat unusual.
“Did I do something shameful while I was out?” Eugene asked as he desperately tried to remain calm.
“Well, it was a bit shameful for you to faint like that,” teased Mer.
Eugene bit out, “Apart from that.”
“Were you worried that you might have peed your pants?” Mer asked with a mischievous grin.
As Eugene felt his heart sinking, he shook his head desperately and said, “There’s no way I could have done something like that.”
“Haven’t you heard that the truth almost always hurts?” Mer sighed.[1]
“Please, don’t feed me such bullshit. Because, as I said, there’s no way I could have done something like that!” Eugene’s tone grew even more desperate.
Mer finally let up on poor Eugene, “Stop worrying about it. At the very least, you didn’t pee your pants, Sir Eugene. Although you did froth at the mouth a bit.”
“...So just froth?”
“You also had a bit of a nosebleed. But anyway, haven’t I already told you that you didn’t wet yourself? Sir Eugene, if you had peed your pants, there’s no way I would be standing this close to you….”
“...From the way you say that, it seems that there are people who have wet their pants.”
“Of course, there’ve been quite a lot. The current White Tower Master, Melkith El-Hayah, also peed herself… and so did the Blue Tower Master Hiridus Euzeland.”
Eugene recalled the Blue Tower Master with his uptight face. So that old wizard with an easily-offended personality had actually peed himself upon entering Witch Craft? He didn’t really want to imagine such a sight….
“I see, so that means I really didn’t wet myself. If that’s the case, then it’s fine,” Eugene said in a relieved tone as he got to his feet.
How much time had passed? As he was looking around for a clock with this question in mind, Mer suddenly spoke up.
“Sir Eugene was passed out for around two hours,” Mer said, answering his unspoken question.
“That means I was out for quite a while,” Eugene murmured in surprise.
“So, how was it?” Mer asked, her eyes lighting up as she waited for his impressions.
However, Eugene found it almost impossible to describe his reaction to all that he had just seen and felt.
“...Difficult,” Eugene eventually chose to begin with this word. “And arduous. I don’t even know what I was looking…. No, I think I can vaguely understand what I saw. However, I’m finding it difficult to accept it as the truth, or as even just a theory.”
“Of course, that’s the case,” Mer declared in approval.
Mer truly appreciated Eugene’s heartfelt impression. Archwizards, who held an overflowing pride in their skills and knowledge, rarely gave their honest impression after experiencing the contents of Witch Craft.
“That’s exactly why Witch Craft and the one who made it, Lady Sienna, are so amazing,” Mer proudly affirmed.
“That’s right,” Eugene admitted, not denying such a fact.
Or rather, he couldn’t deny it.
Even though he had wholeheartedly believed that Sienna was the greatest wizard, he had still been curious about what had made her so amazing that even the other wizards were forced to rate her so highly. Such thoughts couldn’t be helped.
Eugene — no, Hamel knew Sienna extremely well. Not as the Archwizard, The Wise Sienna, but as Sienna Merdein, the person who had once been his comrade. He was all too aware of how clumsy, rude, and foul-mouthed she could be, as well as how good she was at getting on other people’s nerves due to her over-inflated ego.
‘Though I guess she deserves to have such an ego.’
Eugene turned his head back to look at Witch Craft.
To be honest, if he relied on self-study, it didn’t feel like he would be able to understand Witch Craft even if he struggled for the rest of his life.
“...The movements of the Circles were truly mesmerizing,” Eugene mumbled to himself.
As she heard Eugene’s mutters, Mer’s eyes lit up, “Hoh?”
Looking at Eugene deep in thought, Mer smiled.
“Indeed. He must have good eyes to see that Witch Craft can’t be compared to all the magic he has learned up until now. And it seems that his comprehension is also pretty good,” Mer quietly analyzed Eugene.
“That Circle, just what the hell was that?” Eugene asked as he rubbed away the dried blood left from his nosebleed.
The most surprising and incomprehensible thing in Witch Craft — that Circle — was the very essence of the magic formula taught by Witch Craft.
Eugene knew what a Circle was. It had been three hundred years since Sienna established the Circle Magic Formula. Over these past hundreds of years, Aroth’s wizards had spent that time exploring the Circle’s capabilities, improving its functions, and developing new versions. In this current era, it wasn’t just in Aroth but most of the wizards in the world who had started practicing magic through the Circles.
In other words, Circles had become popularized because they were easy to understand and learn. Even the introductory books on magic that Eugene had read were all able to describe Circles in a detailed way that was also easy to understand. Although he had read more than a dozen of such books back at the Red Tower of Magic, the description of the Circles given across these many magic texts were mostly similar.
“And what exactly was it that you saw?” Mer asked with a mischievous smile.
It seemed that she really wanted to hear more of Eugene’s evaluation or, more precisely, his amazement at Sienna’s accomplishments.
‘So Sienna must have already been like that even when she was young,’ Eugene realized.
Mer had said that she had been created using Sienna’s childhood personality as a basis. The Sienna, whom Eugene knew, had also enjoyed listening to other people’s gobsmacked impressions as a way of fluffing her own ego.
“...That Circle… it just kept multiplying,” Eugene said as he rubbed his aching head. “But the Circles I know… they only go up to the Ninth Circle.”
The Ninth Circle.
These days, there were no wizards who had managed to reach the Ninth Circle. Even the Tower Masters, who were seen as the forefront of magic, were limited to the Eighth Circle, and even Helmuth’s black wizards, who had signed a personal contract with a Demon King, could not cross the wall into the Ninth Circle.
The Ninth Circle was the final step of the Circles magic formula. Although Eugene had seen this line written down in the many books of magic that he had read, only the Wise Sienna had actually been able to reach the Ninth Circle after the Circles magic formula had been established.
“Witch Craft is the last grimoire that Lady Sienna ever made,” Mer declared, placing her hands firmly on her hips as she looked at Eugene. “When she had first created the Circles magic formula, Lady Sienna was already at the Ninth Circle. However, Lady Sienna continued to focus on researching and training her magic. And just like that… she surpassed the limits that she had set herself.”
Eugene surmised, “If it’s after the Ninth Circle, then that means that there’s a Tenth Circle?”
“Are you an idiot, Sir Eugene?” Mer rudely asked.
He was just making a guess based on simple arithmetic, but he was forced to hear someone call him an idiot. Eugene put on an offended expression, silently asking her to mind her words, but Mer’s expression didn’t change from the look of pity that she was giving him.
“Sir Eugene should also have witnessed the contents of Witch Craft first hand. You shouldn’t have fainted before the demonstration reached the ten Circles, right?” Mer asked doubtfully.
“I saw what happened after that,” Eugene admitted. “From the moment that the ten Circles split apart… their mana started intertwining with each other, forming a single huge Circle. Then, inside that Circle, countless circles were multiplying, dividing, and intertwining….”
“That right there was the core truth of Witch Craft,” then, as if she had been waiting for this, Mer raised her finger like a lecturer calling for attention. “It’s called the Eternal Hole. The ultimate end goal of the Circles magic formula that only Lady Sienna has been able to reach. Since Witch Craft was released, numerous wizards have attempted to recreate the Eternal Hole, but none have managed to break through the wall into the Ninth Circle.”
“...,” Eugene listened patiently.
“Without wasting even a single point of your mana, you need to contain all your mana within a giant series of Circles, then split them apart and recombine them to form a new one. This could be said to form the most efficient and amplifying model of a Circle. And it’s not as complicated as a conventional Circle.”
“You’re saying that it isn’t complicated? Something like that?”
“Although it’s difficult to create an Eternal Hole, it’s actually very simple and easy to cast magic through it. Didn’t I tell you this before?”
An optimized mana application system for Circles that amplifies the magical power created by a Circle, simplifying any technique, increasing its efficiency, as well as removing the need for an incantation. Allowing multiple castings of the same spell through a single casting and imprinting spells into your subconscious mind to save them for later use.
“If you can create an Eternal Hole, you can do all of these as naturally as breathing,” Mer assured Eugene while also bringing up an example. “A fireball cast through an Eternal Hole is stronger than a Hellfire spell cast at the Ninth Circle. At the same time, it doesn’t require such vicious consumption of mana as a Hellfire, and its casting technique still isn’t any more complicated than before.”
“If I can create an Eternal Hole, can I even cast Ninth Circle spells without incantations?” Eugene asked curiously.
“Of course, that’s the case, but you won’t have any need for that. Since you can reproduce the power of a Hellfire spell with only a fireball, why would you even need to use Hellfire? It would be easier to just keep throwing fireballs. Ah, of course, if you do need even more power than that, it might be better to cast Hellfire, but by the time that Lady Sienna had created the Eternal Hole… she never once felt the need to use Hellfire.”
By then, she was no longer trying to conquer the Castles of the Demon Kings, nor was she fighting the Demon Kings and other high-ranking demonfolks. Following ‘The Oath,’ the world had been at peace, so Sienna was no longer living such an action-packed life as she had when they were wandering through Helmuth.
“You should have figured it out by now, right?” Mer asked as she waved her upheld finger left and right. “For Lady Sienna to be assassinated by black wizards, there’s no way such a thing would happen. By creating the Eternal Hole, Lady Sienna could be said to have become invincible. Although she didn’t confirm it personally, she could probably have slain a Demon King all on her own.”
“Maybe,” Eugene said, unable to deny those words.
Sienna, with whom he had wandered around Helmuth together, was already an incredibly powerful wizard, but it seemed that she had become even stronger after the end of the war with the Demon Kings.
Eugene’s basic understanding couldn’t fully comprehend the greatness of Witch Craft. However, he could tell that Sienna, who had made Witch Craft, was far stronger than her previous self that Eugene remembered from her days out in the field.
‘Sienna wasn’t just wasting her time frivolously.’
The others had probably done the same, except for one.
1. What Mer literally said is: There’s a saying that the truth is mostly cruel. I’ve changed it to a version more familiar to Western audiences. ☜
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