ch1-ch20 · 021-ch19

Chapter 19

Hiyori and Mio's training continued.

At the end of the session — the special technique from the other world.

"If you master this, you'll get a lot stronger, and you'll be able to do a whole lot more."

So it began.

"Hiyori-san, Mio-san. How well can you control your magical power?"

"I use Body Enhancement, so I have to — I think I'm pretty good at it!"

"Yeah, I think so too. I'm a mage, so I've got the basics down."

Both answered confidently.

"Then, could you let me feel your magical power?"

With that, Sai held out both hands.

"Wait, what? Let you feel our magical power? That kind of thing... oh, a Healer could do it, right?"

Among adventurers, there was a role called a "Healer" — someone responsible for recovery.

Healers possessed healing power, and it was said that you could feel the warmth of magical power in their healing.

But Healers were few — a rare profession.

"Heh. Both of you, hold out your hands."

The two hesitantly held out their hands.

Their hands were small and feminine, but they also had the calloused, firm feel of adventurers.

Sai touched their hands and sent a small amount of his magical power flowing into them.

"Gyah!?"

"Whoa!?"

Both of them looked surprised, as if they'd felt Sai's magical power.

"Wh-Wh-What was that!?"

"It felt like something strange entered my body..."

Hiyori was openly shocked, while Mio spoke more calmly.

Being told that something strange had entered a young woman's body — that stung a little for an old man.

"...That sensation just now was my magical power."

"That strange thing was magical power?"

"You might have been surprised since it was your first time, but yes, it was."

"Oh my~, Mio-chan, Sensei took your first time♪"

"If you're saying that, Hiyori, then he took yours too, didn't he?"

"Ehehe~♪"

The two giggled and chatted, and their teacher Sai wore an unreadable expression.

Sai was an old man who still didn't know how to handle conversations this candid.

"Let's get back on track."

He cleared his throat lightly and put on a serious face.

"Ahem. What we're going to do now is magical power control training. When I say control, I don't mean flooding your whole body with magic. I mean things like moving a 'lump' of magical power around inside your body, or switching its intensity on the fly. That kind of training."

"A lump... moving it around and switching intensity..."

The two looked bewildered at the unfamiliar terms.

"In short, it's the same as strength training. You put a load on the pathways your magical power flows through. The way you apply the load and how many times you do it — that's how you train your magical power, just like building muscle."

"Ah, so that training is the moving the lump around and switching intensity thing?"

"Exactly. By the way, if you keep this up, you'll be able to control more magical power than you actually possess."

"More magical power than you possess? That's the kind that goes berserk."

"You'll be able to control it, yeah."

"I'm not sure if this makes it clearer... but basically, it means you'll be able to use powerful weapons like magic swords."

Among the magic swords in the other world, there were some truly vicious ones. Weapons that, the moment you held them, would mentally contaminate their owner, attacking them as if trying to devour them. If someone was consumed by something like that, of course they'd go berserk.

But if you could even control that kind of magical power, then a vicious magic sword would become nothing more than a powerful weapon.

Hiyori's face lit up when she heard that.

She seemed to have something on her mind.

"This is training I want you to do every day, even when I'm not around."

"So, how do we go about it?"

"Let's start by trying it together, the three of us."

The three of them sat cross-legged, stretched out both hands, and joined hands with the person next to them.

Sai sat with Hiyori on his right and Mio on his left.

Hiyori seemed curious, while Mio was perhaps a little nervous.

"This feels weird."

"Hiyori, quiet."

"I'm going to send my magical power to Mio-san first. Mio-san, I want you to pass that mass of power from your right hand to your left, then send it to Hiyori-san. Hiyori-san, when you receive it, pass it from your right hand to your left."

It sounded simple, but could it really go that smoothly?

The two felt uncertain.

"Well, let's give it a try."

Sai sent a small mass of magical power to Mio.

"Nn..."

Mio closed her eyes and let out a slightly sweet breath.

She was probably nervous about whether it was working.

The mass of magical power was passed from Mio to Hiyori.

"Hyah..."

Hiyori received the mass of power, but it dissipated at her end.

Since Sai's right hand was touching Hiyori's hand, he could feel the flow clearly.

"Hiyori-san, don't receive the magic with your whole body — receive it with your hand. Focus on passing it from your right hand to your left. Here we go again."

"Mm, got it, Sensei."

Hiyori answered seriously, apparently realizing she'd made a mistake.

Sai sent another mass of magic to Mio.

But once again, it dissipated at Hiyori's end.

"Mio-san. When you pass the magic to Hiyori-san, the mass is getting smaller. Try to just let it flow through you to Hiyori-san as you received it."

"Y-Yes, Sensei."

Sending magical power to another person. It sounded simple when you said it, but it was genuinely difficult.

After repeating it dozens of times, a tiny, tiny mass of magical power finally flowed from Hiyori back to Sai.

"Phew!"

Hiyori, who'd been concentrating, let out a big breath.

"Good. Don't forget that feeling — let's do it again."

To make sure they didn't forget what they'd learned, they repeated it dozens more times.

After training ended.

"Fwooooh..."

"Hah... hah..."

Hiyori was leaning on one elbow from her cross-legged position, while Mio was on all fours catching her breath.

They had been forcibly circulating their magical power throughout their bodies. Pushing that hard — taxing both body and mind through their magical power — it was only natural they'd be wiped out.

Both were drenched in sweat.

Sai, in contrast, looked completely unfazed.

Sure, it put a load on them, but at the end of the day, it was just moving magical power around.

For Sai, this was training he'd been doing since he was a child.

It was like Hiyori and Mio struggling with a one-kilogram dumbbell while Sai trained with ten- or twenty-kilogram dumbbells. Literally, the difference in training years was that vast.

"How was it?"

"I feel super dizzy. Especially my upper body feels weird."

"Me too... I feel kind of sick..."

"I know it's tough, but listen carefully. Like I said earlier, this training is the magical power version of weightlifting. The more you do it, the better you'll control your magical power, the easier it'll be to output, and you'll be able to squeeze out more. Your total magical power will increase too."

"Huh, this kind of thing can increase your magical power?"

The conventional wisdom on Earth was that fighting inside dungeons increased your total magical power.

No one had ever heard of magical power increasing outside of dungeons.

"It's the same as muscle training. It won't double overnight — it only increases a tiny bit at a time. But if you keep at it, it'll definitely grow."

Hearing that, Hiyori and Mio nodded.

They could get stronger.

Mio, who'd been on all fours, sat back up cross-legged.

"Let me explain a bit more. Magical power, when kept inside your body, becomes physical enhancement. When released outside, it becomes magic. You know this, right?"

"Yes, it's in the manual too."

"So basically, people naturally have some degree of magical power control. What we're doing now is making that more conscious and deliberate. If you keep at it, you'll be able to control your magic in fine detail. Think of it like a hose and a faucet. Mio-san, you've got both the hose and the faucet working to some degree. But your hose has holes, so if you prepare ten liters of water, only three liters comes out of the faucet. Hiyori-san, your hose is twisting all over the place inside your body, so it's hard for the water to even reach the faucet."

"I feel like that description fits..."

Hiyori was good at physical enhancement, but bad at magic.

She couldn't use it at all — but she didn't willingly use it either. When she did use it, she had to concentrate hard. Even though it was her own body, this area was fuzzy for her.

"When you're together, I want you to hold hands and practice passing magical power whenever you have time. When you're alone, try circulating your magic throughout your body on your own."

"If we do that, we'll get better at controlling our magical power, right?"

"More than that — you'll be able to do things like this."

With that, he showed them a board made of magical power.

"Huh, what's that? Is there something there...?"

Since it was transparent, it was a bit hard to see.

"Ah, right. Here."

However he did it, the transparent board of magical power took on a faint red glow.

"Ooh. It's some weird thing."

Hiyori poked it with her finger. She could feel the sensation.

"Ooh, I can poke it... Wait, I can feel it!?"

"I want to touch it too! ...Wow, I can really feel it. This isn't earth-element magic, is it...?"

"This is what I used to cancel out Mio-san's magic bullet earlier, and it's also the trick behind my big jumps."

Hearing that, Mio was surprised and let out an "Ah!"

"In the other world, there's a spell called Floating Board. It's just a spell that creates a transparent board for carrying things, but I modified it into something more combat-oriented — a shield, or a small wall. I call it Hexa Shield."

Looking at it, it really was shaped like a hexagon, just as the name suggested. This board could be used for a pseudo-shield bash, and for both attack and defense — one of the most versatile spells out there.

"Amazing. So if I use this, I could fly through the sky..."

"It's more like creating stairs in the air."

"Aw."

"But if I use this, I'll be able to do that big jump from before, right?"

"Exactly."

With that, Sai produced several red magical boards and climbed them like stairs.

Walking up the stairs, Sai's figure appeared above Mio's head.

"Being able to do things like this means you'll be able to move more three-dimensionally."

Mio's eyes, which had been exhausted a moment ago, reignited with fire.

"Hiyori. Can you keep going?"

"Mio-chan, tomorrow! Let's do it tomorrow!"

"No. We need to imprint this in our bodies while we still remember how."

Before they knew it, it was night, and the dojo's surroundings had grown dark.

"Alright, it's about time for dinner, so I'm heading home."

"Sensei, thank you very much for today!"

"See you next time, Sensei!"

And so ended the first lesson for Ichijō Hiyori and Kuri Mio.

"Hiyori, there's no demon exorcism work tonight. I'm not letting you sleep."

"I have school tomorrow! School! Mio-chan, stay! Staaay~!"

Leaving the two (?) who still wanted to keep training on their own, their teacher Sai bowed to the dojo and quickly made his exit.

The magic he'd taught them today was one created by his partner — an elf.

A spell said to have dramatically improved adventurer survival rates.

It would be useful even in Japan, where Shinjuku Tower existed.

Teaching magic from the other world was risky if it got out, but these girls had to fight even outside Shinjuku Tower. Sai didn't really know how strong demons were, but it felt like the chances of something going wrong were even higher than in the tower.

If it increased their chances of survival, he judged it was better to teach them.

Maybe it was because he'd taught them this magic, but he found himself thinking of his elf partner.

He would never meet her again. As he walked home, he thought of her and let himself sink into a little sentimentality.

By the way — Hiyori and Mio apparently kept training after that, and the next day at school:

"Mio-chan worked me to the bone..."

That's what Hiyori was reportedly lamenting.

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Thank you for reading.

Starting today, updates will be one chapter at a time.

Chapters are reserved through Part 1's epilogue.

I hope you continue to enjoy the story.

Thank you very much.