Carlo and Robert’s educational policy had been decided.
But Ludger still had four students left to deal with.
And right now, Ludger was facing the one among those four who seemed like the biggest headache of all.
“.......”
A girl who kept her lips tightly shut, saying nothing.
Her hair was white, her skin was white. If one looked closely, mana was overflowing around her, emitting a faint bluish glow.
To Ludger, who possessed the memories and knowledge of a modern person, it looked like someone contaminated by radiation.
But as a mage, he could tell.
This phenomenon was occurring because of mana so enormous and vast that a single individual could never normally endure it.
“Mina.”
When Ludger called her name, the girl widened her eyes and looked his way.
She did not panic and run, but she still seemed unaccustomed to the situation.
Perhaps she wanted to run away, but stayed still because she knew it would be pointless.
“Do you know why I called you here like this?”
Mina seemed to think for a moment, then fidgeted with her tiny lips before answering.
“To... have a lesson?”
Her voice was so small it could make one mistake it for an insect crawling across the floor, but Ludger decided to be satisfied simply because she had answered.
“I am going to teach you magic. Seorn is, after all, a place for learning magic.”
“I don’t... need it.”
As if protesting, Mina spoke in her own way with what little strength she had.
Of course, given her small frame and weak presence, it did not feel very forceful at all.
Still, Mina stubbornly said what she wanted to say.
“I can use magic better than the teachers.”
“Better than me?”
“.......”
At that single question from Ludger, the justification and logic Mina had put forward collapsed.
Mina herself knew it.
Through the magic sparring she had with Ludger that day, she had realized just how absurdly incredible a mage he was.
She had also sensed that Ludger had shown a portion of his power precisely to deny the Special Class students any such justification to begin with.
That day, Mina had felt it.
How Ludger had dismantled her magic with effortless ease.
The other students might not have noticed, but she, who was especially sensitive to mana, could tell.
Ludger was an existence on a completely different level from any mage she had ever encountered.
Of course, if she were to say that out loud, no one would believe her. At best, they would vaguely agree, but still think it an exaggeration.
Ludger himself would likely be the same.
To him, his teacher Grander was still the strongest mage.
In any case, having witnessed even a fragment of Ludger’s power, Mina found it difficult to reject his words.
Especially because she was timid and faint-hearted to begin with.
“Mina. You were born with a peculiar constitution. For a mage, that is no exaggeration to call a blessing bestowed by the heavens.”
“...I don’t know.”
“I understand. To Mage Mina, it is a blessing. But to Human Mina, it is no different from a curse. Because of the excessive mana you possess, you must have suffered constant anomalies.”
An excessive concentration of mana was not always a good thing.
One only had to look at the places where Mystic Night occurred to understand that.
When a dragon vein flowed and pooled in one location, what kind of strange phenomena arose?
Similar phenomena occurred in some of the forests that existed within Seorn.
Mina was the same. It was no exaggeration to say that a naturally occurring phenomenon had been confined to a single person.
To be honest, Ludger thought it was a miracle that Mina had even been born and grown up like this.
With mana of this magnitude, most mages would have failed to endure it and died.
The forms that death could take were probably varied.
The body might burst, unable to withstand the energy of such dense mana. Or the physical form might be broken down at the cellular level, unable to endure mana’s energy.
Or perhaps the bodily structure would collapse and melt away. The final ends of mages exposed to mana far beyond their capacity were easily found even in academic papers.
No matter what, the conclusion was always horrific.
In other words, Mina’s greatest blessing and talent was not this vast quantity of mana, but the capacity that allowed her to possess it and still endure.
“You are still alive. That alone is proof enough of your talent. But I believe you are still lacking.”
Those words stirred Mina’s curiosity.
The word she usually heard was “monster.”
It could not be helped. With a body that could injure people just by touching them, it was not strange for children her age to call her a monster.
The next word she heard was “genius.” Most of the time, that came from mages. Of course, as time passed, even they grew afraid of her excessive, prodigious talent and ended up calling her a monster as well.
But one thing was certain: no matter how exceptional her talent was, she had never once been told that she was lacking.
That was something she would never hear for the rest of her life.
But Ludger was different.
He was telling her outright.
That she was still lacking.
If someone else had said it, she would have thought it was nothing more than jealousy speaking words they did not mean.
‘But this person is different.’
This was someone who was, without question, superior even to the Headmaster of Seorn, speaking with absolute conviction.
Mina felt a sincerity in Ludger’s words.
“What... am I lacking?”
To be honest, it would be a lie to say she did not feel irritated.
Being called a monster was painful, but even so, she had taken secret pride in the fact that her mana affinity was second to none.
“You possess an immense amount of mana and have become capable of accepting and handling it. And yet, your state is unstable. You cannot easily make contact with other people. Is that wrong?”
“.......”
“What do you think is the reason for that? Do you still think it is simply a matter of constitution? Absolutely not.”
Ludger forced a reality upon Mina that she never wanted to know.
“It is because you lack the will to fully dominate that mana. Is it because you lack ability? On the contrary. It is closer to the fact that you can do it, but choose not to.”
“Hng...!”
For the first time, Mina bristled.
What do you know about me!
Her young, hostile eyes seemed to shout that.
It was only natural. He was saying that a constitution that injured others—and herself as well—was due to her own inadequacy.
If someone who had no idea how painful it was said such a thing, even the gentlest lamb would snap.
In response to Mina’s anger, her mana reacted.
The mana, inheriting Mina’s will as if it were her friend, overflowed from her body and began to creep outward, spreading through the surroundings.
Sssssss.
Just by revealing her will, a mana mist phenomenon occurred.
And that mist writhed ominously as it approached Ludger, as if trying to swallow him whole.
“That’s why you’re still a greenhorn.”
Ludger responded to the sight with a snort.
Boom!
When he stomped his foot once, a massive shockwave spread out, causing the mana mist to heave violently.
The mist that had been approaching Ludger shrank back as if frightened by something, then returned to Mina.
Mana had erupted from Ludger’s body as well.
Far more ferocious and sharp than Mina’s, filled with killing intent that seemed ready to tear apart anything in its path.
Faced with the appearance of this utterly different mana mist, Mina clamped her lips shut.
The mana that had been released returned to her body once more.
“Did you see?”
As the situation calmed, Ludger spoke while retrieving all the mana he had released.
“Mana that leaks out over nothing more than a moment of emotion, only to be forced back to where it belongs by someone else, not by your own will.”
With the tension gone, Mina collapsed onto the spot with a thud.
She could not say a word.
She had seen it with her own eyes, and felt it clearly.
“I... don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Was her mana running wild because she lacked ability?
If so, did that mean everything that had happened until now was her fault?
Mina felt as though she might burst into tears at any moment.
She surely would have, if a warm hand had not settled atop her head.
“That is not a fault. You were simply young, and you simply did not know how to handle it. I do not call ignorance a great sin.”
This place was Seorn, after all.
A place of learning, where one comes to learn what one does not know.
“Truly great wrongdoing is knowing one’s ignorance and still refusing to learn. Mina, what will you do? Will you run away in that state for the rest of your life? Or will you strive, somehow, to overturn this regret?”
No matter what she chose, the path would be difficult.
Yet Mina found this situation itself strange.
Because in her life so far, the concept of choice had never existed.
No—perhaps it had existed, and she had simply turned her eyes away from it.
“Can I... do it?”
“That depends on how you approach it. It will certainly be difficult, and it may take a long time. But there is one thing I can tell you for sure.”
“What... is it?”
“If you say you will do it, then I will help you with everything I have.”
Mina widened her eyes and asked,
“W-Why... why would you?”
“If a student wishes to be taught, and a teacher is willing to teach, what reason is needed?”
In truth, it was not entirely without reason.
A strong sense of professional duty was one of them, but another was that he no longer wished to watch people ruin their lives due to ignorance.
Ludger knew someone who had died because of an undiscovered constitution.
And he knew someone who had burned their life away, striving their entire lifetime to uncover it.
He also knew someone who had survived as the result of that effort.
And that the one who survived had saved him.
They were people who had now vanished into the flow of time called the past, but Ludger remembered them clearly.
Probably until the day he died.
He would remember them his entire life.
And because he remembered, Ludger had a duty he had to fulfill.
To help people like Mina—those who did not truly understand themselves.
“The choice is yours. Will you do it, or not?”
Mina hesitated, but not for long.
For her, the mere fact that a means to fix her constitution had been presented was reason enough to follow.
“I’ll do it. I want to.”
At that answer, Ludger wore a gentle smile.
As if he found it admirable, as if he was proud.
“Good. You chose well.”
“But then... what do I start with?”
Mina had never seriously thought about her magic.
Because when she wished for it, mana would automatically manifest magic for ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) her.
A strange method that required no chanting, no formula, no magic circle.
Magic that came true simply by wishing—truly miraculous.
She had no idea where to even begin in order to control it.
“Mina. Your magic is far too vague.”
“V-Vague?”
“Yes. The magic certainly activates, but its form is unclear. It’s like a child drawing something they imagined without any detail—everything blurred together. What you used that day was 6th-Circle magic. But did it truly possess the power of 6th-Circle magic?”
Mina shook her head.
After all, it had been blocked far too easily by Ludger, who had used genuine 6th-Circle magic.
“Honestly, even manifesting it that way is absurd to begin with. But thinking about the future, you must not be satisfied there. The way you manifest magic is as if, when you wish for something, the mana around you reacts and takes care of everything on its own. That is certainly convenient, but it is far removed from your own will.”
To truly use magic, one must use it properly, with one’s own will.
“The reaction of your mana just now is the same. It burst out in anger, but immediately became afraid of me and hid away. As if it possessed its own will. That means you are not properly controlling your mana yet.”
Ludger used telekinesis to pick up a fragment of stone lying on the ground.
The stone floated above his palm, and its rough surface began to be honed sharply.
The carved stone became a cube, which was then finely broken down into evenly sized pieces, turning into a fine powder.
“Do not be led by mana. Dominate mana. You are a mage. A seeker who explores the unknown and makes it your own.”
The fragments that had been reduced to powder were drawn by telekinesis once more, reassembling into their original cubic form.
It was mana control that defied belief, even while watching it happen.
“Correct your low posture of asking mana for favors. You do not even need an equal relationship.”
Ludger crushed the object in his palm with a hard squeeze.
“The master of your will is you alone. Therefore, suppress and dominate mana. That is the mindset you must have as a mage.”