Chapter 25: Slime? Is It Edible?

A year passed, and Su Na’s life within the academy had thoroughly settled onto a regular track.

At the academy’s training grounds, a strong, scorched odor hung over the entire area. However, it did not draw any complaints from the students waiting in a long queue, though their expressions betrayed varying degrees of nervousness.

In the center of the grounds, Su Na closed her eyes to concentrate, her lips moving slightly as she muttered an incantation. At the tip of the wand raised before her, a ball of fire materialized out of thin air, crackling to life.

As Su Na funneled more of her mental power and magic into the spell, a growing elemental tremor erupted around her. The flame, originally no larger than a lighter’s spark, suddenly flared as if fueled by an accelerant, expanding into an orange-red fireball the size of a basketball. Under Su Na’s direction, it streaked toward a wooden target not far away.

With a loud bang, the wooden target shattered into pieces. The fragmented wood was ignited by the high temperature and drifted across the grounds, sending up plumes of acrid black smoke.

Clap, clap, clap…

The testing advisor watching from the side clapped gently, offering praise: “Very good. Both the magic infusion and the mental bridge were highly stable. You have essentially reached the standard expected of an intermediate mage. Assessment passed!”

Su Na’s lips curled up. She bowed politely to the advisor and stepped back.

Moving to the side, she observed the assessments of her classmates.

Generally speaking, the pass rate was roughly around twenty percent. The rest either suffered from unstable magic flow—where a flame would flicker into existence only to immediately sputter out with a puff—or lacked concentration. In the latter case, their fireballs flew wildly across the sky and ground, appearing everywhere except on the target. It was entirely a matter of luck.

The Fireball spell was one of the most fundamental incantations for a mage, but its power was not static; it scaled alongside the caster’s ability.

Su Na could cast dozens, even a hundred, of these basketball-sized fireballs in a single breath, so the raw power was not the focus. The advisor’s main objective was to test the students’ control.

By Su Na’s estimation, the combat capability of a mage at this level was roughly equivalent to an armed infantry squad from the World War II era, capable of occasionally unleashing a powerful spell to act as fire support.

The drawback was that the more powerful the spell, the longer the casting time required. Mages were also highly susceptible to external interference, such as violent elemental fluctuations or high mental stress.

Once a mage reached the rank of an advanced mage, however, they truly stepped onto the grand stage. Rich theoretical knowledge, combined with years of accumulated magic and mental training, allowed an advanced mage to transform into a high-mobility, fully-armed human artillery piece.

Because humans are not cold machines—they possess intellect and know how to use various combined spells to create geographical advantages for themselves and obstacles for their enemies—a flexible, heavy-firepower output point was exceptionally troublesome.

According to Su Na’s rough calculations, given proper planning, an advanced mage had a high probability of decimating an entire tank battalion. Simply clogging the tank barrels with mud, sinking them into swamps, or bending the barrels would be enough to ruin a tank crew’s day.

Fortunately, the rank of advanced mage was a major bottleneck. Starting from this level, the number of mages dropped drastically. Even the Royal Magic Academy only produced a few dozen advanced mages each year, and in years with poor student quality, that number could drop to just over ten.

Furthermore, advanced mages had not transcended their biological limits; they still possessed lifespans of only about a century, so their total numbers in the world were never very high.

Only those who reached the level of Great Archmage could live up to three hundred years, while Saint-level mages possessed lifespans of around a thousand years. These two tiers could be counted on a single hand.

This was good news for the quiet plans forming in Su Na’s mind.

Or rather, this was a sense of crisis unique to those of her previous homeland—always feeling as though some villain was plotting their demise! Consequently, no matter what she did, she always planned for the worst-case scenario with a Plan B.

For instance, while she was promoting the industrialization of the steam engine nationwide, she had already begun to consider what she would do if she ultimately failed to defend this technology.

Relying on her father was out of the question; the Regent had been systematically stripping the regional lords of their authority, causing their military strength to plunge off a cliff.

The regular armies of the lords had been constantly downsized and integrated into the kingdom’s central forces. Stripping military power and dispatching administrative supervisors to take over governance was a classic one-two punch. Consequently, most lords had resorted to employing private guards or simple militias.

Since she couldn’t rely on her father, she could only rely on herself. This was why Su Na’s developmental path always tilted toward heavy industry. Ultimately, she wanted to ensure that if the situation deteriorated rapidly, her industrial base could produce what she needed at the fastest possible speed.