32. Aslan Seminar (3)
While Aizel was being harassed by a mage of the Dromian family just before taking the stage, Baek Yuseol, too, was receiving all sorts of attention from above.
“So that’s him?”
“Yeah. That’s what they say.”
“His face has been all over the papers and magazines lately.”
“So what if he caught a few Dark Mages?”
Baek Yuseol had only just become a first-year, but this place was filled with elite young mages in their twenties who already possessed official mage-warrior qualifications.
They had plenty of real combat experience and had probably killed Dark Mages more than once.
To people like that, there was no way Baek Yuseol—who had monopolized public attention just for hunting one or two Dark Mages—would be likable.
“Let it go. Did any of you kill Dark Mages when you were seventeen? You’ve never even faced a 6-Risk Dark Mage, yet all you do is talk big.”
Still, even while most of the participants disliked Baek Yuseol, there were some who defended him.
Not everyone envied a younger, more accomplished genius than themselves.
“Hello. So you’re Baek Yuseol.”
“Yes. Hello.”
A young man in his early twenties, who had just silenced the others, approached and offered a handshake. Baek Yuseol accepted it somewhat stiffly.
“My name is Cheong Param Aidun. We probably won’t have many chances to meet, but I still wanted us to at least exchange names.”
“I’m Baek Yuseol.”
“They’re just jealous of you, so don’t feel too burdened.”
“It doesn’t really bother me.”
No matter how prestigious Stella Academy was, this was still Aether World, and there were any number of elite institutions besides Stella.
There were five elite schools just within Arcanium alone, Stella included.
Geniuses gathered here with absolute pride in their schools, houses, and magical prowess, so they all seemed to think that a common-born first-year Stella student could be crushed easily enough.
“Well, you really don’t seem burdened… You’re truly unusual. Even the smartest and most talented mages normally feel at least some pressure when this much attention is on them. But you don’t seem to feel that at all.”
In reality, Baek Yuseol’s expression was as calm as the surface of a still lake.
The truth was that it was thanks to the [Blessing of Crimson Spring March], but of course Cheong Param had no way of knowing that.
“Anyway… good luck. You’ll probably end up becoming a public target. I have a feeling most of the mages here will use their ‘Critique Opportunities’ on you.”
“Yes. I’ll have to be careful.”
“Then I’ll be going.”
Once Cheong Param left, Baek Yuseol let out a deep sigh.
‘Critique Opportunities…’
Since the Aslan Seminar consisted of around two hundred mages discussing one another’s theses, if everyone was allowed to point out issues whenever they pleased, it would never end.
So each mage attending the Aslan Seminar was given five Critique Opportunities.
Using those, mages could challenge flaws in another’s thesis.
And if the other person failed to answer…
well, there was no direct penalty.
They would simply receive an ugly mark on their career as a mage.
Only five opportunities.
Mages did not waste them lightly.
They always used them at a truly important moment.
When they could strike directly at the core of the other person.
When they had found a perfect flaw in the other person’s thesis.
When they could completely destroy the other person.
And—
when they wanted to ruin the other person no matter what.
Because of these Critique Opportunities, even Flame in the original game had gone through quite a lot.
At the time, she had drawn all public attention because she possessed multiple elemental magics that no other mage had ever managed to wield.
So countless mages—including Selien, the extra villainess from Stella—used their Critique Opportunities on her.
At that point, the player had to consult the “glasses,” pick the correct responses in the moment, and answer appropriately. If they chose wrong, they had to return to a save point and start all over from the beginning, which made it infamous as a deeply annoying piece of content.
This was reality.
There were no save points here.
You simply had to get it right the first time.
‘Will Flame be able to handle it…?’
He was a little worried.
Playable Flame had possessed the glasses.
The real Flame did not.
No—actually, maybe the one he should be more worried about wasn’t Flame, but Aizel.
As the child of the traitorous Morf, she had likely already been targeted far more heavily by mages than even Flame or Baek Yuseol himself.
And on top of that, Aizel still had not fully digested her own thesis.
According to the progression in the original game, Aizel never managed to complete her thesis properly, and during the Aslan Seminar she got dogpiled from all sides until her mentality shattered.
He had helped her finish the thesis in advance specifically to prevent that from happening, but…
even so, whether she could withstand the attacks of all these countless geniuses was another matter entirely.
And in any case, even if he wanted to help, he could not anymore.
From this point onward, the only thing he could do was pray that she managed it herself.
“We will now have the presentation of Miss Aizel Morf of Stella Academy.”
The noisy crowd fell silent all at once.
At last, that name had been spoken.
The traitorous Morf.
What an openly malicious order.
To place the eldest daughter of the Morf family first, of all positions.
It could not have been more obvious that they intended to use her as a shield.
The Hall of the Founder, where the Aslan Seminar was being held, was shaped like a U, with the central space serving as the stage.
The audience sat in tiered seats, looking down at the speaker below.
Standing there, Aizel looked deeply tense, though she was trying her utmost to hide it.
“…I am Aizel Morf.”
“Yes, Miss Aizel. I read your thesis carefully. Your way of understanding ice magic was quite unique. It was interesting.”
Whether others looked at Aizel with hostility or not, General Chair Aryumun spoke in a soft and gentle voice.
“Th-thank you!”
Even if Aryumun was gravely ill, he was still a 9-Class mage.
One of the ten greatest mages in the world had just spoken words of praise aloud, so the start at least felt favorable.
A few mages seemed displeased by the idea of praising the magic of the Morf family, but no one present had the nerve to speak up recklessly in front of an Archmage.
“Then may we look forward to your presentation?”
“Of course!”
Aizel answered firmly, then began her presentation at once.
The magic she had researched was extremely unusual.
“All ice contains crystals. Sometimes they take the shape of bells, sometimes pillars, sometimes branches… and sometimes they take the form of stars or flowers.”
Ice magic was originally a school of magic whose main purpose was to rapidly cool its target to the freezing point and freeze it solid.
But Aizel had not delved into the process of rapid cooling itself.
She had delved into the phenomenon that occurred after freezing.
The crystals of ice.
There was no mage who did not know of them.
But there had also been no mage who ever thought to examine them in detail and then try to reproduce that principle through magic.
“I discovered that, depending on the patterns of ice crystals, ice magic can open up new possibilities by taking on much more varied forms.”
At the tip of Aizel’s wand, a magic circle formed.
It was not the ordinary round circle most mages were accustomed to seeing.
It was a hexagonal magic circle.
Baek Yuseol knew it.
In the future, every single ice mage would adopt that hexagonal magic circle Aizel had developed here today.
Because it was the most ideal and perfect form for ice magic.
But the mages of today still did not know that.
To their eyes, Aizel’s magic circle merely looked…
pretty and unusual, perhaps, but also like the height of inefficiency.
The prejudice that a magic circle must be circular had already been hammered into their heads for a full thousand years.
And as if to prove that fixed idea, just as Aizel was about to begin presenting her thesis in earnest, someone immediately used a Critique Opportunity.
Selien of Stella Academy.
When she pressed the button from one of the higher seats in the terraced audience, a microphone rose up in front of her.
Selien took hold of it and spoke.
“The fact that magic can be manifested with a hexagonal formation rather than a circular one is certainly interesting. But do you really think the ancient mages failed to draw ‘beautiful magic circles’ simply because they were incapable?”
“Th-that…”
Apparently not expecting such a harsh attack right from the beginning, even Aizel—who had steeled herself—found her expression stiffening.
“According to the records in Rigrim’s Records Asleep in Magic, they successfully manifested magic circles of many forms, including hexagons. But in the end, Rigrim never chose to use those other forms. Why do you think that was?”
“…Because mana circulation becomes inefficient.”
“Exactly. Mana delivers effects most efficiently and quickly when it passes along curved paths. An angular magic circle? It’s pretty. Honestly, I’d love to have it drawn as a picture and displayed in my home. But that’s about all the value I can see in it.”
Puhahaha!
At the mocking joke belittling Aizel’s thesis, laughter broke out here and there.
And in truth, nothing Selien had said was incorrect.
She had already perfectly analyzed and dismantled Aizel’s magic in advance, and had even completed her preparations for exactly how to criticize it.
Most mages circulated mana through the brain to gain immense calculation power, but Selien possessed a trait especially suited for that kind of thing—Information Processing Ability, something like a computer.
That was why she could do it.
“But that…”
It was a topic she had absolutely anticipated in advance.
If she thought calmly for even a little, it was a question she could have refuted well enough.
But the moment she tried to recall the theory related to it, something in her mind locked up tight.
Her thoughts froze as though her brain had gone numb.
When Aizel failed to answer, another speaker—taking that as proof that Selien’s attack had landed successfully—immediately used a Critique Opportunity of his own.
Because once five minutes passed after the first critique was used, whether the presenter answered or not, another one could be used.
“Aizel Morf. Your magic contains a very great flaw.”
It was Keika of the Dromian family, once Morf’s rival, but after Morf’s fall doomed forever to remain second.
He opened his mouth.
“Ice magic requires a construction formula that designates the freezing point. That is because every substance has a different freezing temperature. Yet your magic contains no linkage to the freezing point at all. Do you intend to simply pour mana into it and cool things recklessly?”
“Th-the freezing point is…”
Aizel started to say something in self-defense, and Keika pretended to give her time.
But when she hesitated in confusion and failed to continue for several seconds, he seized the opening.
It was good enough merely to undermine the opponent’s magic.
But if he had a comparison point to set against it, all the better.
“As an example, let us take the Dromian family’s magic circle.”
And so, deliberately, he brought up his family’s proud ice magic.
During a thesis discussion, it was perfectly acceptable to demonstrate a magic circle, so no one objected when Keika swept his wand through the air and created a blue ice magic circle.
“Can you see this magic circle? In order to designate freezing points efficiently, the Dromian family has inserted no fewer than eighteen freezing points into a single magical design formula.”
“Ohhh…!”
“That’s impressive…”
Since this was magic meant to freeze a target, the number of freezing points inserted into such a complicated magic circle was one of the principal challenges of ice magic, and had long served as a standard by which superiority was judged.
And yet, the magic circle of the Morf family—which had reappeared for the first time in ten years—
contained not even a single freezing point.
‘How about that?’
As Keika shrugged with a smile that already confirmed victory, Aizel’s expression only grew more rigid.
And riding that momentum, one mage after another began using their Critique Opportunities on her.
“You state that in adopting this hexagonal magic circle, you revived the old abandoned theory of Ordon’s Temperature Transition Point. But what exactly does that have to do with this magic?”
“I have questions regarding the mana calculation formula at the moment of freezing. Why is the consumption rate this low—your verification is completely—”
“You removed the freezing points and created a hexagonal magic circle, but how exactly does that improve the efficiency—”
Even beneath that relentless rain of questions, Aizel stood as if frozen, unable to answer.
…And Baek Yuseol soon realized why.
It was not simply that she could not bring the theory to mind.
It was that they had only just begun, and yet the indiscriminate flood of criticism and mockery had already turned her mind white.
She had lived her whole life being insulted.
But this was a place where people laid bare the very magic that was tantamount to one’s roots, then laughed at it in public.
Even Aizel’s mental strength could not help but be deeply shaken by that.
‘Everyone hates me.’
It doesn’t matter what kind of magic I use.
It doesn’t matter what kind of logic I present.
They have no interest in that at all.
They only enjoy crushing me, degrading me into trash, and laughing at me.
Amid that open hostility, Aizel realized that fact with painful clarity.
At that point, Baek Yuseol thought:
The Aslan Seminar had already begun.
It was impossible now to teach Aizel anything or give her advice.
There was no choice but for her to resolve it herself.
‘How?’
Aizel’s magic and logic were perfect.
There was nothing left for him to teach her or help her with.
If that was the case…
then the only thing to do was awaken her to that fact.
“Aizel. I’ve found a blind spot in your thesis.”
And so Baek Yuseol used a Critique Opportunity on her.
