Chapter 339: Chapter 306
Surprisingly, Lev hadn't come to try and talk to me in the past few days.
That's not to say he hadn't been watching me. I'd seen him on many occasions, but he never struck up a conversation like he did in the infirmary. Rather, he kept a careful vigil, never approaching but noting my every action he could. I was starting to think he was also worried about his own position coming under fire.
However, he was in a much more secured position than I was.
If we started blowing whistles, he would have the support while I would be cast out without a second thought.
So, I had to play this smart.
Just keep deflecting everything he tried, and don't cause any big problems. It also helped that I'd shown myself to be reliable in the Director's eyes.
"Alright everyone, gather around." I clapped my hands, grabbing the attention of my new team.
Yup, my team.
I was the Leader of the B-Team. Olga made it official the other day when we finally finished up with the basics she wanted to cover. However, they still had plenty of studying and lectures to attend that were run by the staff, but it was the point where Olga stepped out and handed things fully over to others, mostly me.
"Whatcha got there, boss?" The Texan asked.
"Glad you asked, Samuel." I liked him, a polite and hard working guy. He mentioned that he worked on a farm for his early years even though he comes from a wealthy family. Reaching into the box, I took out a glass sphere. "We're going to begin learning your first spell."
Seeing their eyes lit up was honestly heart warming.
How happy was I when I first walked away from my old life? Did I have a child like joy about the simple fact I could wield magic?
"Now, at this point, you all have your Circuits opened, and everything that this entails." The process was not pretty, lots of trial and error because it's not the same for every person. "Before we jump to that, I want to see everyone activate their Circuits like you've been taught." I paused, waiting for them to get to it.
The fastest took about 30 seconds, which wasn't.....bad considering how new they were to this. But it was far longer than what they needed to be at if they ever went into an active situation.
And it was Samuel who was the fastest.
"Now, usually you'd spend months practicing with your Circuits. Opening them and closing them to the point where it barely takes a conscious thought. But since we don't have much time, we're going to be multi tasking. I expect you all to be continuing this exercise whenever you have free time. Give it a week, and if you can't make any progress, there are other means we can employ, but there aren't a sure fire answer to any problems."
Self Hypnosis wasn't a perfect fix. Some people were just too resistant to their own attempts for it to always work. Or those people who are too stubborn to believe that they're capable of doing it. As weird as it was with how little whimsicality that Magi seem to have with Magecraft, you have to believe without a shadow of a doubt in everything you do, otherwise there adds an uncertainty with any spells or mystical phenomena you try to perform.
"Uh, Boss, is it still supposed to hurt?" Samuel asked.
There were some other murmurs of agreement to his question.
"Yes." I said bluntly, activating my own Circuits and pulled up my sleeves for them to see. "It's going to hurt, and you're going to have to get used to it. There's no other way to say it nicely. Every Magus deals with it every time they start using Magecraft. Unfortunately, we also learned when we were children, so you don't have the novelty of growing up accustomed with the lingering pain."
It would be a good reminder that Magecraft was dangerous as well. It's not something natural and our bodies actively reject the usage of it through the pain of just flaring our Circuits.
"Alright, moving on." I tossed the glass orb in my hand up and down a few times. "Samuel, catch." I tossed it to him. He stumbled slightly, but caught it gently. "Tell everyone what that's made of."
"Glass?" He blinked in confusion.
"Correct. Do you think you could shatter it with your hands? Maybe throw it against the ground and break it?"
"Yeah?" He looked at it more closely. "Feels pretty brittle. Think if I accidently dropped it, it'd break."
"Good." I nodded, taking it back from him. "Now watch." I cast a simple Reinforcement onto the orb, right infront of their eyes. They could see the visible phenomenon, but I didn't explain it just yet. I reeled my arm back and threw it at the ground. I could see them slightly stiffen, anticipating the break, but instead, it bounced off the ground a couple times before coming to a stop. "The first spell you're going to learn is Reinforcement."
One of the most basic spells that any Magi learns. Though, not all of them learned how to use it to its true protentional. It's mostly used a training exercise for children, to learn how to push their Magical Energy into things without breaking them.
It trains their fine control and such. However, they should have an upper hand in this regard being adults with much more life experience.
Realistically, this would take months to learn and many more months to learn how to use Reinforcement viably in a fight. But, we don't have that much time, so I'm going to have to cut some corners.
"How will making things harder help us?" I looked at who spoke. A French gentleman, I could easily pick up on the accent, not to mention his name was Pierre. Unfortunately, my background didn't cover my proper English heritage – that being the many decades/centuries in my past life that I lived in London. So I could not to my duty as an Englishman to insult his heritage like it so deserves. "You said we were supposed to be getting into fights."
"Good question. Who said it merely makes things harder?" I reiterated with my own rhetorical question. "It Reinforces the concepts inherent in objects that it's used on. A sword, for instance, would both get harder and sharper. The Glass orb I just showed you, it got harder, and if you wanted to test it, it would have become more see through comparatively than before." I mainly focused on its durability, however. "And to follow that up – what makes you think you can't use it on yourself?"
That certainly got their attention.
Now to give them something to work towards.
I reinforced my arm for them to see, but ironically, I had to lower my strength as I slammed my fist into the floor, shaking the ground beneath them. "You see? Now, let's begin with the very basics! Learning to not break things." I started handing out the Orbs as I would begin the long process of explaining how the Spell works. But first thing first. I held up A Glass Orb again. "Now imagine that this is a part of your body." I overloaded the spell, shattering it for them to see as their eyes widened in realization. "I don't believe I need say how dangerous this is, yeah?"
[***]
"Fuck it, I'm going to start marking these hallways, I know for a damn fact that someone made this shit intentionally a maze!"
Atleast I had been to Roman's office a couple times to know where it was – relatively speaking. Walking there, and taking the next person because he didn't know the way.
Though, when I got up to the door, I smelled smoke.
Which definitely shouldn't be the case. I quickly pushed the door open, only for a familiar girl on the other side to make a surprised noise. In the confusion, she threw what seemed to be a cigarette across the room.
It kinda took a moment before either of us made a response.
"W-what are you doing here, Shimoda?" The Director straightened herself up. "And don't you know it's rude to suddenly barge into a room!"
"Erm....it's the medical bay, coming and going without notice is mostly assumed?" I scratched the back of my head. "And I smelled smoke, so I assumed the worse and quickly came to investigate."
The Director flushed slightly. "I suppose I can't get angry at you for doing the right thing."
".....I don't care if you're smoking." I pointed out. "I'm not your parent, and you're an adult. Not to mention, any damage they cause is easily reversable by virtue of Magecraft."
She eyed me for a moment before letting out a sigh. "Look, I would appreciate it if you didn't spread this around. I don't want people to look at me and think...well, that I can't handle things and I'm resorting to something like this." She walked over picking up her discarded cigarette.
"Hey, I understand. It's a stressful job and you have to balance what's probably some very unique personalities while also preparing to save the world. I can give you my word that I'm not going to run my mouth about something like this." I reassured her.
There was the smallest hint of a smile forming. "Thank you, Shimoda." She said quietly, taking a deep breathing. "I'm glad you understand."
"Just one question." I was a little curious. "Why are you doing it in Roman's office slash medical bay?"
She flushed a little more, I think she was embarrassed by it because she wasn't making eye contact any longer. "It's one of the only places I can find privacy that has the ventilation needed." She pointed up to the ceiling showing certain vents.
"Privacy?" I blinked, gesturing to who's room it was.
"Roman was needed for an urgent matter on the other side of the complex." She said with a completely straight face.
"Well, I guess it couldn't be helped then." I played along.
"Indeed." She sniffed. "It is a much better use of that lazy man's time anyways."
I chuckled a little. This side of her was a lot more endearing than when she was.....on the clock, so to speak.
"I'll leave you to it then." I didn't want to bother her if she was trying to have a peaceful moment to destress.
"Wait." She called out. "You came here for a reason, what did you need?"
"Oh, we were just running low on the glass orbs I requested. I wanted to see if we had any more available and Roman was the only person I knew who I could find that kind of stationary. This place is still a maze, so I was going to see if he could point me in the right direction"
"Glass Orbs?" She repeated. "Explain."
"I'm teaching the B-Team Reinforcement."
"Reinforcement!?" Her eye's widened. "They're complete novices! How could you start teaching something that dangerous!"
"It's not like I'm just throwing them in the deep end, Director." I quickly tried to calm her down. "And I do have a reason for doing so"
She huffed, taking out another cigarette. Clearly at ease with doing it infront of me at this point. She lit it up, taking a drag before breathing out "Explain it to me, Shimoda. I made you the Leader for a reason, don't make it out to be a mistake."
"Look, we're short on time, and it's not like we can teach them any meaningful spells to help them if they're actually forced into a situation where A-Team Fails."
".....I agree with your assessment thus far."
"So, their biggest asset is staying alive. And their best way to do that, is to have the means to run away from things that could threaten Servants."
"So you're teaching them Reinforcement in order for them to be better at running away." She twiddled with the cigarette between her fingers. "I don't like that this is the situation we're force into, but.....I can't argue with your logic. Explain to me the process you're using, because it sounds like you're skipping completely over Structural Grasp, which is an integral step before learning Reinforcement on oneself."
"They're barely able to activate their Circuits with no stress involved." I breathed out with a little relief since she was hearing me out. "I won't lie and say this is the most optimal course of action, but I don't really have something to base my methods off of. I'm cutting as many corners as I feasibly can to get them up to standard. Right now, I'm having them learn how to push their Magical Energy into objects without breaking them. I'm going to slowly change the objects themselves, and then we're going to start working on human anatomy and focus on their lower bodies."
"So you're basically weaving the essential process that structural Grasp provides into the learning of Reinforcement. Do I need to tell you that this is a very sub optimal method? Even if they learn Reinforcement this way, it would be....lesser than if they learned the steps properly."
"Do we have the time for the proper methods?" I shot back.
She scowled, not really at me, but more so at the situation. "Very well, I won't disagree with the attempt for now. We'll revisit it in a couple weeks to check their progress then revaluate where we go from there. Unfortunately, this also means that it will require more resources to get them to the point of being able to reinforce themselves." She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I will authorize what you need if you submit me a report. Within reason, Shimoda."
"I won't let you down, Director."
There was the faintest twitch at the corners of her lips. "See that you don't." And there was a hint of warmness to her tone that wasn't there previously. "And....thank you again. I am....pleased to have you join Chaldea, Shimoda. Continue with the good work."
Taking the little win, I left it at that. "I won't intrude any longer, Director." I gave her a wave as she nodded at me.
Stepping out of the room, I realized that I was starting to enjoy my time here. It was much more relaxing than what I was getting up to before. Is this why Scáthach enjoyed teaching so much? I can't wait to see the progress they'll make in the coming weeks, it's very exciting.
Granted, I'm kind of winging everything as I went, but I did have people looking on in case I made a bad decision.
Perhaps I should call Scáthach too, ask her for some tips? I mean, I want to call her anyways, I missed all of them, but I would always welcome advice from someone experienced in this field.
It also made me forget the reason I came here in the first place. I had a few leads to check on, but moving around is difficult while still being such a new face. I really needed to take the time to explore and meet everyone, so I was not suspicious if they saw me somewhere I was allowed to be, and especially if they saw me somewhere I probably shouldn't be.
Though my mood quickly changed as I heard a shriek coming from up head, right past the doors into the training room I was using for my team.
I quickly bolted forward, pushing past the doors to see several faces other than the ones belonging to those who I expect to be here.
The quickest glance I noticed Lev was off to the side, and our eyes met only for him to flash me a grin.
I didn't keep my focus on him for a second longer as my eyes were forced to the source of the pained shout.
It was Samuel on his knees with someone I didn't recognize hovering above him.
Slicked back hair with some noticeably pointy ears, wearing glasses with bright red pants and a black dress shirt with matching black gloves. He had a very pale complexion with a vicious smile on his face as he held the wrist of Samuel in a tight hold.
I pushed past the people who were just standing there watching. The man looked surprised as I grabbed his own wrist with a bit more strength that I normally would. He flinched slightly as I pressed down.
"Remove your hand, or lose it." I growled out.
"Who are –"
He relented, but I didn't give him a chance to finish as I gathered my strength and pivoted my foot, throwing him across the room and into the nearby wall.
[***]
Decided to speed things up a little bit. So, canon isn't going to come along a little quicker than I originally intended.
Anyways, if you want to read 7 chapters ahead or support me, visit my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / astoryforone
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