Chapter 102: The Black Sheep of the Ryu Family (3)

Thus, the three-day crash course in magic began. In the morning, Berald and I gathered at the training ground. After a light warm-up, we planned to jump straight into magic training, but first, I had to check something with him.

“Alright, before we begin, I have to check where your magic skills are at right now,” I said.

“

Umm,

as you know, I’ve never been very good at magic.”

“Still, you must’ve been learning since you were a kid, right?”

Even if he was from a branch family, being a member of House Ryu meant he would likely have started learning magic as soon as he could walk.

Arms crossed, I stood in front of Berald. “First, how many spells have you learned so far?”

“If we’re talking theory, I know quite a few. It’s just... I can’t actually cast any of them properly.”

“

Hmm.

Then try making a Mana Bullet.”

Mana Bullet was a basic spell that formed a small orb of energy in the air. It was foundation-level magic, considered the easiest of all.

Berald nodded. “Alright.”

He began to concentrate, and his soul stigmata lit up. A massive surge of mana swirled around him. Then with a loud shout, he thrust out his hand. In front of his outstretched palm, a faintly translucent orb began to form.

It was the most basic of basic spells, something even a first-year Mage Division cadet could pull off without trouble. It was, unmistakably, a Mana Bullet.

Yet, I stared in disbelief at the tiny orb. It was barely the size of two finger joints. All that overwhelming mana he just unleashed, and this was the result?

“That’s your Mana Bullet?” I asked.

Berald awkwardly coughed and looked away, clearly embarrassed by the underwhelming display. “I did say I’m no good with magic, didn’t I?”

I picked up the orb. “

Hmmm

.”

The orb was not just small; its structure was weak too. It felt like I were handling a squishy rice cake.

“Alright, now try firing it,” I said.

“Firing it?”

I pointed to the wall of the training ground. “Yeah, like an arrow. Shoot it.”

Berald looked hesitant. “

Uh!

”

“What’s wrong?”

“I-I’m sorry, Brother. The thing is... I don’t know how to make it move.”

His reply left me speechless. He could create a Mana Bullet in the air, but that was it. Even then, the result was pathetic, especially considering the amount of mana he had poured into it.

I cursed inside.

Damn it!

For a brief moment, I started to understand why Raios looked down on Berald so much.

Berald practically wailed in frustration. “I told you! I told you I’m bad at magic!”

I narrowed my eyes, still focused on the floating orb. The Great Sage Julius Bastion once said something about magic:

“Learning magic is like painting a picture or singing a song.”

In other words, it was heavily reliant on talent. But even so, could someone be this hopeless? There was an old saying in the Republic: Throw enough mud at the wall, and some of it will stick.

Even if he was completely talentless, wouldn’t he still undergo some improvement with enough effort? I mean, I wasn’t exactly considered gifted either, but I had poured in time and effort, and look where I was now.

But Berald hadn’t improved at all. He had been studying magic for at least fifteen years, and yet he couldn’t even properly cast a Mana Bullet. Knowing Berald’s personality, it was unlikely he slacked off during training. Something was wrong. If he couldn’t cast a simple spell after all that, then something else was going on here.

“

Hmmm!

” I looked at him with suspicion. No matter how I thought about it, there was no way his skills should still be at this level after all those years of study.

Suddenly, I recalled something:

Wait, didn’t he say in my previous life that he lost the ability to use magic due to aftereffects from training in a martial art?

Maybe he was already unable to use magic even before he picked up that martial art, due to an external factor. It could be that something like a curse was placed on him when he was a child.

That was a common trope in hero stories: a protagonist with extraordinary talent got caught up in a conspiracy and ended up having their power sealed away. And House Ryu was powerful enough within the Republic for such underhanded schemes not to be unheard of.

He could have been poisoned, too. Some rare toxic herbs could block magic manifestation. I had only come across a few of them in my travels across the continent over the centuries, but given House Ryu’s deep magical history, it wasn’t unthinkable they could have access to one.

However, if that were the case, he wouldn’t have been able to form a Mana Bullet at all. I stared at the orb floating in the air, lips pressed tight. He could cast magic, but couldn’t control it.

A possibility suddenly struck me like lightning. “No way!”

I turned to Berald. “Alright. Then this time, try using a more advanced spell.”

Berald gave me an incredulous look. “Didn’t you just see me completely fail at a basic one?”

I couldn’t blame him. Asking someone who could barely manage a Mana Bullet to cast a high-level spell? It sounded absurd.

I replied, “Just try casting. I already know, but I want to confirm something.”

Berald swallowed hard and gave a small nod. “

Grr!

Alright. What kind of spell should I use?”

“

Hmm!

You know Fireball, right?”

“I do.”

“Then try that.”

If Mana Bullet was considered a Level 1 spell, then Fireball was about Level 3 in terms of difficulty.

Berald closed his eyes and focused. “

Phew!

”

Once again, his soul stigmata glowed, and an overwhelming surge of mana whipped through the air around him. The amount of mana he had was insane. He couldn’t quite compare to Yurina, but that was only because Yurina’s mana levels were downright abnormal. It wasn’t that Berald was lacking. In fact, in terms of raw mana capacity, he likely surpassed not just other cadets but even most professors.

The problem with him was that no matter how much mana he poured in, the result was a disaster. What good was an overfilled gas tank if the engine guzzled fuel like a maniac?

“

Haaap

!”

With a fierce shout from him, flames burst to life. A fireball, just a bit smaller than a fist, materialized before him.

Sweating buckets, Berald tried to move the fireball. “

Rrghhh!

”

The fireball wobbled precariously, then vanished with a sputtering hiss. Berald let out a low sigh, looking utterly dejected. I calmly observed the entire process, deep in thought.

Once again, the manifestation itself was successful. But the moment he tried to move the fireball, it flickered dangerously and disappeared entirely. He could manifest the spell, but he failed at controlling it.

Magic could be broken down into three main stages. The first was emission: the release of internal mana into the outside world. The second was manifestation: shaping that mana into a spell using magical formulas. The third was manipulation: modifying the spell according to one’s intent.

In Berald’s case, there was absolutely no problem with the emission stage. In fact, he was pumping out so much mana that it was a bit concerning. In other words, he had more than enough fuel to perform magic.

His manifestation was rough, but still functional. He had successfully created both Mana Bullet and Fireball. This was because spell formulas were more or less dependent on memorization.

In my previous life, referring to the formulas required for manifestation, Senior Sophia had once said,

“Perfect theory is the essence of magic.”

Creating or modifying those formulas required true genius. But, as long as the formula already existed, anyone could cast the spell by just memorizing it well enough. At least that was the case for low-level spells like Mana Bullet or Fireball.

As the difficulty of spells increased, this brute-force memorization approach stopped working. To compare it to math, Berald’s current method was like someone blindly memorizing that five multiplied by five was twenty-five without having the faintest idea about why.

Actually, his Mana Bullet had a slightly higher success rate. This was probably because this spell’s formula was far simpler than Fireball’s. But when it came to the control stage, it was a different story.

One could barely manage to brute-force their way through the manifestation stage, but controlling the spell required real-time calculation and computation. Berald couldn’t handle any of the calculations necessary for control.

As the hypothesis in my mind began to crystallize into undeniable truth, my expression stiffened. “So that means...”

Berald leaned in nervously, gulping hard. “S-so? What do you think, Big Bro? Did you figure out what’s wrong with my magic?”

His clenched fists trembled slightly. I squeezed my eyes shut, desperately trying to deny the theory forming in my head.

No. No way! This can’t be!

I then said, “Hey, Berald,

uh

, aren’t you getting kinda hungry?”

“Oh, now that you mention it, it is about that time,” he replied.

I pulled out some bread I had bought earlier at the academy store. Maybe he was starving; his eyes sparkled like stars the moment he saw it.

“Wanna split it fifty-fifty and share?” I asked.

Berald’s expression turned grave. After a long pause, he asked in the most serious voice imaginable, “Then, who gets the fifty?”

The moment doubt turned into certainty, a deep sigh escaped my lips. I sank to the floor and clutched at my hair in despair. So, the reason Berald could never use magic properly, no matter how hard he tried, wasn’t that he had been cursed as a child. It wasn’t because he had been poisoned with some mana-suppressing toxin.

No matter how desperately Berald trained, no matter how much he bled and cried, the reason he couldn’t even properly cast a Mana Bullet boiled down to one horrifying truth.

I shouted, “Hey, you... Y-you absolute dumbass!”

There were no external factors, no outside interference, and no magical blockades. There was nothing he could never overcome with effort or time. It was just that he was too stupid, so impossibly stupid that no amount of work could compensate for it.

I said gravely, “What am I supposed to do with you now?”

And I’m expected to teach magic to this kind of idiot?