Chapter 6 | The Assassin Creates New Magic
My lessons with Dia on how to read runes soon began in earnest.
There were thirty-six characters. After learning the pronunciations of each, I then had to study how their pronunciations changed when lined up with other characters. It didn’t seem like Dia knew anything about the meaning of each individual symbol, which was a little disappointing.
Creating new spells with Spell Weaver looked like it was going to be really hard.
There was no way I’d be able to write new spells without understanding the meanings of the runes or the rules behind the language.
Despite such a complication, Dia was a wonderful teacher. Her pronunciation of the language was beautiful. She read the most difficult of words without falter.
Altogether, the thirty-six characters of the magic language combined to make 114 sounds. Dia was having me learn them all through repetition. She read some runes to me, and I repeated back what she said.
“How are you able to memorize these after hearing them just once?!” she exclaimed.
“I have confidence in my memory. My tongue is having trouble keeping up, though,” I replied.
There were certain methods that existed to help improve one’s memory. I knew of them from my previous life and had put them to good use with learning runes.
That’s not the only reason my memory was so good, however. My Tuatha Dé eyes were continually sending massive amounts of information into my brain. Thankfully, Rapid Recovery and Limitless Growth were also allowing my brain to adapt to handle such a burden. As a side effect, my level of retention also increased.
Compared to Dia, though, my pronunciation was still quite rough. The runic language required the use of facial muscles that I didn’t normally rely on, so it was going take practice to improve my intonation.
“That doesn’t make me feel any better! I had to study super hard to learn these… Anyway, once you learn how to pronounce the characters, you can move on to incantation. You can currently only use one spell, so I’ll read that one to you first,” Dia said.
Dia chose the first earth spell, the one that produced lead, and wrote it down. She slowly chanted it while tracing the characters with her finger, and a clump of lead appeared in her palm. With a motion, she bade me to try next. Nodding, I read the spell.
With some effort, I was able to produce lead. It took no small amount of concentration, however.
With my Tuatha Dé eyes, I was able to see the movement of mana as Dia and I cast spells. Far more of my own had been wasted than Dia’s, and for the amount of mana I’d spent, the lead I produced was small and full of impurities.
“So this is magic. It’s fun,” I commented.
“I was excited the first time I used magic, too. It’s so much fun being granted new spells as you use more magic.”
“Wouldn’t you be able to skip waiting for spells to appear in your mind if someone just wrote one down on a piece of paper and handed it to you? Shouldn’t using mana and reading the formula be enough?” I asked.
“Want to give it a try? I’ll write another earth spell… Should I demonstrate it for you first?” offered Dia.
“No, that’s fine. I just want to see if anything will happen.”
The one Dia had written looked to be about the same length as the formula for creating lead. Upon closer inspection, I realized that around 95 percent of the characters were the same. Dia had probably intentionally chosen a spell that would be easy for me to read.
I recited the spell, and a piece of metal appeared just like before. This time, it was iron.
“No way, it actually worked… That’s so weird. Now that I think about it, it seems obvious that this should work. I can’t see why no one ever thought to try it until now.”
As Dia had said, it was baffling that nobody had ever tried this method of casting spells before. In this world, you could use only spells given to you by the gods. Perhaps, as a way to enforce that rule, there was some kind of contrivance in place preventing anyone without the Spell Weaver skill from coming up with that idea.
Having just produced two different metals, I was struck by a bolt of inspiration. The formulas for lead and iron were 95 percent the same. From that, it seemed natural to conclude that the remaining 5 percent of the formula was what specified the material produced.
… So by adjusting that 5 percent of the formula, can I produce whatever type of metal I want? I thought.
The trouble was that even if I knew which portion of the spell formula to change, I didn’t know how to change it. I didn’t yet understand the language or how the formulas actually worked. There was a way to narrow that down, however.
“I have a request. Can you write down all of the formulas you know, demonstrate them, and teach me what they do?”
I could guess the meanings of two formulas to an extent by studying them side by side, but it would be much more efficient to compare their similarities and differences by seeing them in action.
With a bigger sample of spells to work with, I could quickly gain a far deeper understanding of how the formulas worked.
“Hey, this isn’t going to be easy, you know,” Dia warned.
“That’s all right. After comparing the formulas for lead and iron, I noticed that they’re almost entirely the same. It was only a small difference in the formulas that changed the metal that was produced… If I’m right about that, then if I analyze and compare more similarities and differences between spells, I’ll be able to figure out how magic equations work. I might then even be able to adjust formulas and create entirely new spells. So, please, it’ll help me a lot. As thanks, I’ll do anything you want,” I pleaded.
“… Fine. But I’m not doing it for your thanks. I just think unraveling the meaning of the formulas and creating new spells sounds really exciting. I want to try creating new magic, too.” Dia wrote down the nine earth spells and the seven fire spells she could use. She explained each and performed all of them for me, taking occasional breaks to recover mana.
After she finished, we pored over the formulas together for similarities and differences. Dia’s cognitive ability was impressive—her intuition seemed very well honed. She even spotted a number of rules that I’d missed myself.
While debating the rules of the formulas, we continually came up with new ideas, a process that only served to drag us further into our work. The sun had set before we’d noticed.
Though it had taken a great amount of effort, it was also a lot of fun. Watching Dia’s face light up as she passionately argued her own theories, I suddenly realized how cute she was. I’d never experienced a feeling like that before.
“Lugh, are you listening to me?” Dia asked.
“U-um, yeah, I’m listening,” I stammered out, embarrassed that I allowed myself to zone out while thinking about her like that.
“I think the part that differs between the formulas for producing lead and iron represents numbers. Look at these three formulas here. This section makes sense if you substitute numbers for the characters. If we assume that’s the case, then in the lead formula, the numbers are 11.3, 327.5, and 207.2. Iron is 7.8, 1,540, and 55.8… I don’t know what this means, though. I have no idea what we would even change the numbers to.”
As I thought about what Dia said, it began to help me understand other parts of each formula, too. It was clear enough that the numbers written in the lead and iron formulas were anything but random.
“Lead is 11.3, 327.5, 207.2. Iron is 7.8, 1,540, 55.8… This can’t be a coincidence. Nice catch! Can you make a conversion chart for runes and numbers?” I requested.
“Of course. All right, here you go,” Dia answered, handing me a quickly drafted sheet.
Consulting the chart, I altered the formula for producing lead. I changed 11.3 to 10.5, 327.5 to 961.8, and 207.2 to 107.9. All I did was change the numbers in those three columns, but if my assumption was correct, it was likely to produce the result I was looking for.
Dia began the incantation, cast the spell, and produced a cube of silver.
“Is this silver?! I’ve never heard of magic that produces silver,” she said as she examined the conjured object.
“Just as I thought. These three numbers designate the parameters of the metal you want to produce,” I said.
“Explain that to me in a way I can understand,” Dia requested.
“These numbers represent density, melting point, and atomic weight. Which means all you have to do is change the parameters of lead to silver, and the spell will produce it,” I explained. There were still some points I was unclear on. I thought these units of measurement were created in my original world, but if they were really created by the gods here, then how did they exist in my old life, too?
A feeling that there was a deeper secret hidden within this discovery needled at the back of my mind.
That was the only part of the formula I understood at that point, but I made sure to make note of it. It could very well have been an important key to unlocking how the rest worked.
“Yeah, I’m still totally lost…,” Dia admitted.
My excitement was building. Ignoring Dia’s confusion, I altered the formula two more times and performed the incantations.
“Ha-ha, it worked again. Titanium and tungsten, two metals I never thought I’d be able to obtain in this world… You had spells that allow you to reshape metal, too, right?”
Searching Dia’s list, I found the spell I was looking for. Rather easily, I shaped the titanium into a knife and swung it at a tree in the garden. It proved to be both sharp and comfortably light.
I now had a knife made of titanium in an era where the most common metal was iron filled with impurities. While titanium was harder than iron, it was also 40 percent lighter and very resistant to corrosion. Possessing such a resource gave me enough of an advantage that you may as well have called it a magic blade.
Next up was tungsten. It was a very strong metal with high weight and hardness, and it was known for being very rare.
“Just as I expected, I was able to produce the exact metals I wanted. Dia, you try these incantations, too,” I said.
“All right, I’ll try… Ah, I actually made silver. I can’t believe this!” she exclaimed.
While my theory proved true, something about the situation still troubled me. To successfully write new formulas, you should’ve needed Spell Weaver. If Dia could also use these new spells, I was beginning to worry that I didn’t need the skill after all.
“Hey, Dia. Want to see if we can make gold? I know the parameters,” I proposed.
“Yeah, let’s try it. If you know the numbers, I should be able to do it, too!”
Dia wrote down the new formula with the numbers I gave her and began the incantation. Suddenly, her face turned red, and the girl collapsed.
“Are you okay, Dia?!”
“Y-yeah, I’m okay. I just suddenly got a massive headache and became really nauseous,” she explained.
I looked at the formula. Everything was correct. Dia had written the density, melting point, and atomic weight just as I’d told her.
I wrote down the exact same formula that Dia did, and unlike her, I successfully conjured gold.
… So this is what Spell Weaver does.
If anyone other than me tried to create a new spell and cast it, their body would suffer a kind of adverse reaction to the incantation, preventing them from using it.
If I wrote the equation, however, it seemed that anyone would be able to use it. At the moment, that was only a hypothesis, though. I’d need to make sure.
“Dia, if you don’t want to do this, that’s fine. I wrote down the exact same spell that you did. Try reading it now. This is essential for finding the criteria for creating new spells.”
“You know if you word it like that, I can’t say no, right? I’m too curious now.”
Pale, Dia chanted the formula that I wrote down. This time she got through the incantation without faltering, and she successfully produced some gold.
“That’s strange. I suppose this means I can create new spells, too, just by having you write them down for me. This is really exciting. Let’s work hard to discover all the rules we can! If we do that, we’ll be able to create even more amazing magic!”
“Glad we’re on the same page. We should divvy up the work. The first problem is that our list of spells to sample from is too small right now. I’m going to cast as much water and wind magic as I can in order to learn new spells. Dia, you take fire and earth,” I said.
“Of course!” she agreed.
We firmly shook each other’s hands.
My ability to create new spells was really something I should’ve kept a secret. Enlisting the help of another was something my first self would never have done. Dia was truly skilled, however, so working with her served to speed up my process.
If I was being honest, though, spending time with her was fun. Far more so than anything else I’d ever done. That’s why I asked her to stay, despite my better instincts.
Thus, I took my first important step toward creating spells.
But mindlessly and carelessly creating new kinds of magic would only lead to trouble. I knew I needed a goal to focus my efforts. Today I’d been able to devise a way to create whatever metal I wanted, and I learned how to shape it. If I could learn some sort of explosive magic, I could create firearms.
Bullets would never be an issue because of my large supply of mana. My other abilities would help me ensure an accuracy that would rival the guns of my previous world.
Once mastered, I’d be able to produce a weapon with significant range and destructive force at any time, even while being empty-handed. I couldn’t think of a weapon more suitable for assassination, nor could I imagine a better first goal to work toward.
The thought of how much I could achieve by working with Dia had me the most excited I’d ever been in my new life.
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