Chapter 9 : Adventure Level 2 (2)

Skill window update?
Previously, only the status window and party window existed, so it felt somewhat incomplete, but a skill update?
Do Yugeon cheered and shouted, “Skill Window!”
Really, skills?
From the login term being “Login,” I already felt it was somewhat game-like, but skills are just too game-like, aren’t they?
What kind of entity is the system to like such game-like things?
This isn’t the first game-like update from the system.
The door inside the slime room opened because of an update too.
“It’s a passive skill!”
“Not active, huh. That’s a relief.”
I’m glad it’s not that nonsensical.
If it were an active skill, I would have been troubled thinking about how it activates.
Should I take a look?
“Skill Window.”

[Skill Window]
Basic Skills
◇ Mana Sense―OFF
◇ Presence Detection―OFF

Hmm.
“Basic Skill” implies there are other skills too.
Giving Mana Sense specifically probably means mana detection requires talent.
But what is the “presence” in Presence Detection?
Sound? It doesn’t feel like sound.
[Try activating the passive skill. Shout the skill name and “activate” together.]
The system is a bit unfriendly.
The skill window didn’t even mention which were passive skills, but it tells me to activate one.
If you’ve played some games, you might figure it out, but if you haven’t, you wouldn’t know what a passive skill is.

“Mana! Mana!”
Do Yugeon looked up at the sky and waved his arms.
It seemed activating the Mana Sense skill just now allowed him to feel mana.
“Can you feel mana?”
“I feel it!”
His face was flushed with excitement.
He seems really happy.
Well, I was like that too when I first became aware of mana.
Though maybe not quite to this extent?
He asked, “How do you use magic?”
“You just move the mana.”
“How do you move the mana?”
“Um.”
How do you move it? I just do it, so it’s hard to explain specifically.
How should I explain? Maybe demonstrate?
I created wind using mana.
Leaves and grass rustled gently.
“Like this.”
“…How?”
“Like this.”
I created wind again.
Do Yugeon tilted his head, seemingly not understanding.
Can’t he get the feel for it?
Afterward, we continued talking about how to move mana, but Do Yugeon couldn’t move it.
Sensing mana and moving mana seem to be different domains.

Additionally, I checked the range of mana detection with the Mana Sense skill, and it seemed to be about 2 meters.
2 meters? That’s not even enough to find goblins.
I haven’t measured my own range, but I can effortlessly perceive roughly several hundred meters, so I know how small a 2-meter range is.
The Mana Sense skill itself seems useless.
Still, maybe it can serve as a primer to help people with slightly less talent use magic? Since it can firmly imprint the existence of mana.
Just in case the skill range varied depending on talent, I tried activating my Mana Sense skill.
As I did, an unpleasant sensation of something overlaying my senses washed over me.
Enduring the discomfort, I tried to check the skill’s range, but there was no effect from the skill—only annoyance to my senses—so I couldn’t verify it.
I’ll have to look it up online later.

Having checked Mana Sense, it was now time to check Presence Detection.
“Presence Detection Activate.”
[Presence Detection―ON]
As always when the system intervened, I felt unpleasantness, but I endured it and tried to sense if anything had changed.
Hmm… did something change? I can’t tell.
Using the Mana Sense skill at least gave the feeling of something overlaying my senses, but with the Presence Detection skill, I couldn’t tell any difference at all.
It’s unpleasant anyway—let’s turn it off.
“Presence Detection Deactivate.”
[Presence Detection―OFF]

He approached me.
“How was it?”
“No effect. Did you feel anything?”
He grinned.
Then he said he could pinpoint the location of objects with his eyes closed.
“I can do that too.”
“This skill detects presence, not mana.”
“Presence?”
When I asked if he was hearing sounds, he thought about it and said no.
Pinpointing locations with eyes closed without hearing sounds is completely fantasy… Ah, right, it is fantasy.
We decided to test it.
He closed his eyes, and I used magic to levitate my notebook.
His Mana Sense skill was turned off.
Whether I floated the notebook to the right or left, he pinpointed its location accurately.
Strange. I have no idea how he does it; is this the difference in talent?
However, this method could potentially create sound by moving the air even slightly, so I couldn’t be certain he wasn’t hearing anything.
Presence Detection might just be amplifying hearing.
Is there another way to verify it properly?

While I was pondering, he said, “I’ll guess how many fingers you’re holding up.”
“You can do that?”
“Seems possible.”
Finger movements also affect the air, but that much should be negligible, right? This isn’t an academic study.
I held up two fingers.
“Two.”
I held up seven fingers.
“Seven.”
Oh? I held up three fingers.
“Three.”
Wow, the probability of guessing correctly is 0.1%, yet he got it right.
Then let’s verify more strictly.
“I’ll do it one more time.”
I created a strong wind with magic.
Clothes flapped, and hair flew wildly.
Fallen leaves swirled, and grass bent low as I held up two fingers.
He answered.
Due to the wind noise, his voice was muffled, and I couldn’t understand what he said.
I straightened my messy hair and clothes.
He opened his eyes and asked with a flushed face, “Couldn’t hear properly because of the wind. How many did you say?”
“Two.”
“Got it right.”
“Yes!”

I watched him stand up and pump his fist, then dusted off my clothes.
Dirt got on me.
I tried to create the wind without kicking up dirt, but it didn’t work properly.
With magic skills like these, when will I ever be able to read?
“Hahaha! I really am a genius!”
What’s he talking about?
“Even if you have talent, isn’t calling yourself a genius too conceited?”
“The frog in the well theory again? I’m telling you, we are geniuses. Among them, I’m a swordsmanship genius…”
Suddenly full of himself.
“Ah, yes, whatever you say.”
“But! Even among geniuses, there’s a hierarchy. Comparatively, a swordsmanship genius is stronger than a magic genius. If we fought, I’d win.”
“Really?”
I can’t just let this comment slide.
Obviously, I’m stronger.
I gathered mana, sharpened only the tip, and shot it at a tree.
After several modifications, I concluded this method was fast and powerful.
A hole was punched through the tree, revealing the other side.
He looked at the hole-ridden tree and said, “I meant I’d win in a swordsmanship match.”
“That’s obvious.”
“But now, I could win even with my eyes closed.”
“Oh please, that’s not true. Your conceit is excessive.”
“Wanna try then? There are wooden swords in the Preparation Room.”
He looked confident.
The difference in our abilities is significant, but even so, fighting with eyes closed is too arrogant, isn’t it?
Hmm…
I kept staring at him, but he remained confident.
He’s so overly confident it makes me feel like I might actually lose.
“I’m tired today—let’s do it next time.”

Researching the magic circle is still proving difficult.
I’ve pondered it whenever it comes to mind, but I haven’t found a breakthrough method.
I need to either mass-produce the spellbook or understand the magic circle, but I don’t know how to do either.
Mass production is blocked because I don’t know how to create the magic circles.
Understanding the magic circles isn’t working either; time just passes as I observe aimlessly.
Initially, I could at least identify the structure involving magic use, mana storage, and circle fixation, but contemplating the operating principles only goes so far, and now I don’t even know what else to contemplate.
Perhaps it’s more difficult because I’m researching haphazardly without a proper methodology.
My major wasn’t in science or engineering, so I don’t really know how to approach this.
Feeling stuck, I did some related reading, but only realized that practical experience is necessary to truly learn.
Even if I read up to an academic level, it ultimately remains a hobby; I can’t become an expert.
The magic circle research circled back to where it started.

Is it impossible? It’s not like I’m publishing research for academia, so let’s just aim for a self-satisfying level.
I anticipate getting stuck again later, but I’ll think about that when it happens.
Though, I feel like I made this resolution before, didn’t I?
Giving up on observing or trying to create magic circles, I decided to tamper with the spellbook itself.
I didn’t want to trouble my acquaintance, so I intended to preserve the spellbook, but I also didn’t want to make things unnecessarily hard for myself.
However, just as I was about to tamper with the spellbook’s magic circle, a doubt arose.
Is it safe to mess with this?
It was fine when I first found the spellbook and tampered with it, but is it safe now? Was I just lucky back then?
What if it explodes, or the magic circle runs wild, causing unimaginable problems?
Explosions can be dealt with, but what if the magic circle runs wild and unknown magic activates?
Among foreseeable futures, a magic circle runaway is a serious problem.
If the triggered magic were sensible, it might be manageable, but what if it’s nonsensical?
For example, an airborne infectious disease with a 100% fatality rate.
Add settings like a multi-year incubation period and being a magical disease undetectable by modern science, and human extinction becomes easy.
The gist is whether messing with this spellbook leads to a fantasy outcome or a cosmic horror outcome.

Considering the fantasy situations so far, one could infer a future that, while nonsensical, is manageable, but that doesn’t guarantee this spellbook is also fine.
The fantasy so far might just be the tip of the iceberg, and future events could potentially be cosmic horror.
But it seems only I, or perhaps a very small minority, worry about such things.
Since the addition of the Mana Sense skill, many magic reviews have appeared online.
Among those reviews, many mentioned damaging their spellbooks.
Some, perhaps having accidentally damaged only the magic-using circle, reported finding mana accumulating in their spellbooks without knowing the cause.
As these few success stories emerged, reviews about damaging spellbooks continued to increase.
Although Do Yugeon couldn’t move mana, it seems a considerable number of people, though not a majority, became able to move mana shortly after using the Mana Sense skill.
If they have such talents, I wish they would judge more cautiously, befitting their talents…

There have been no incidents involving spellbooks exploding reported online, and no major events in the news, so I decided to stop overthinking and just tamper with the spellbook’s magic circle.
Things like infectious diseases haven’t been verified, but that kind of thing can’t be prepared for just by being careful myself anyway.
I took the spellbook.
Still, let’s tamper with it in the Preparation Room to avoid causing trouble for my parents.
“Login.”
I entered the white space.
This was the first time I’d come here alone without Do Yugeon, except for when I chased him about a month ago.
Not that it felt particularly different.

I placed the spellbook on the shelf.
Concentrating, I examined the magic circles.
There wasn’t just one, but three.
One conceals the book’s content, the second stores mana, and the third fixes the magic circles to the spellbook.
What I need to do now is disable the magic-using circle—not the fixation circle—to disrupt the balance between mana usage and storage.
Intervening in the active magic circle, I extracted a small amount of mana.
I felt the magic concealing the book’s content disappear.
I didn’t realize it before, but now I know when it vanishes.
As expected, breaking the mana balance caused mana to start accumulating in the spellbook.
The accumulation rate isn’t very fast, but the time spent wandering the forest looking for goblins should be enough to gather a usable amount for combat.
Should I leave it here in the Preparation Room for now and check the maximum capacity and any side effects from accumulating too much?

Just as I decided to log out, the wooden sword near the shelf caught my eye.
Come to think of it, I promised Do Yugeon a swordsmanship match the next time we logged in.
But I haven’t even held the wooden sword once yet.
I approached and picked up the wooden sword.
It had a solid weight but was lighter than a real sword.
Moving to the center of the Preparation Room, I swung the sword vertically.
Everything felt awkward.
I swung it vertically and horizontally a few times, but the awkwardness didn’t disappear.
Do Yugeon said he’d fight with his eyes closed, but I wonder if I might actually lose like this.
Should I secretly cheat using magic?
While I was contemplating what to do, I felt magic activating.
Looking in that direction, Do Yugeon appeared out of thin air.
He habitually glanced toward the weapons, then spotted me.
“Huh? What, practicing without me?”
“Not exactly practice—just had some time, so I swung it around a bit.”
“Practicing won’t be enough to beat me, though.”
“Like I said before, you’re really conceited.”
He laughed.
“How about we find out right now?”
“Right now?”
“Yeah.”
Right now…
Does it matter?
“Okay, fine.”