WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: LilGuyBlastoise
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Made Magic Easier by Changing the Formula ◈
Chapter 1: The Genius of Absolute Memory Awakens
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There is a library in my head.
I never forget anything I have seen even once.
Not a single letter, picture, or even a smear of ink.
* * *
“This month’s interest alone is 10 silver. We haven’t even touched the principal...”
My mother’s sigh settled heavily over the room.
A ledger I had glimpsed once, three days ago.
[Carter’s Fabric Shop, April Settlement]
Income: 11 silver.
Expenses: 27 silver.
We were in the red.
My father hung his head like a criminal, fidgeting with an innocent spoon.
“I’m sorry, Hans. You wanted to study so badly, but... the Academy entrance fee is beyond us again.”
“It’s all right, Father. Library work suits me, too.”
The Special Collection of the Third Library of Rowen.
It was an archive attached to the Imperial Academy.
Its shelves were packed with spellbooks and classics, and only the children of nobles could enter.
Commoners were not even allowed past its threshold.
There was just one exception.
Someone had to dust the bookshelves, mop the floors, and reorganize messy stacks.
Nobles would not lift a finger for such lowly work.
Assistant librarian.
More precisely, it was a job closer to that of a cleaner.
Still, it was the only position where a poor seventeen-year-old commoner could get anywhere near spellbooks.
* * *
The Special Collection of the Third Library of Rowen.
Bookshelves covered every wall.
They held volumes one would never see in an ordinary library.
“Fundamentals of First-Tier Mana,” “Introduction to Second-Tier Fire Element Arrays,” “Revised Second-Tier Barrier Engineering,” “Introduction to Third-Tier Cryomancy”...
As usual, I began dusting the shelves in the corner.
The hand holding the duster was slow, but my eyes were quick.
Third shelf, fourth book from the left: “Revised Second-Tier Barrier Engineering.”
‘A revised edition? The contents only changed in one place this time.’
The section titled “Interference Phenomena in Multiple Barriers and Their Cancellation Formula.”
Seven lines of formulas, two diagrams, and four footnotes.
One passing glance was enough.
The contents had been copied perfectly into the library in my head.
I had been in the Special Collection for two years.
I had read every book on these shelves.
From first tier to third tier.
Not one had been missed.
“Hey, you lowborn bastard!”
Something struck my back with a thud.
What had fallen to the floor was leftover bread crumbs.
When I turned around, three or four noble students in flashy silk robes were snickering.
At their center stood Felix, the son of Count Bergen, one of Rowen’s great houses.
“Why haven’t you cleaned my desk?”
Felix narrowed his eyes as he asked.
I hesitated for a moment before answering.
“There were parchment sheets and mana crystals on it... I thought they were important research materials, so I didn’t touch them. I did neatly stack the books you were reading to one side.”
His desk was covered in formulas and calculation marks.
There were ink smudges where he seemed to have rewritten things again and again, along with used-up mana crystals cracked from complete exhaustion.
Felix glanced down at them and scoffed.
“Important research, my ass! It’s garbage.”
“...What?”
“A clueless commoner like you wouldn’t understand, but I burned through three mana crystals on this damned formula and still failed.”
He waved a hand as though he couldn’t be bothered.
“Damn it! I can’t stand looking at it!”
The stack of books I had organized beside him collapsed.
Crash.
Spellbooks scattered across the floor.
Knowledge that could only be learned by paying expensive tuition.
Did that bastard know?
Every word in those books was already shelved in the library in my head.
“What are you staring at? Want to get fired? Clean that up right now!”
He was taking his frustrations out on me.
“Yes. I’ll clean it up immediately.”
I forced down the urge to ram into him.
I was furious and humiliated.
But what was even harder to bear was the fact that he could research magic so casually.
Those books had taught me one thing.
Memorizing magical theory alone was not enough to use magic.
You also had to be able to spend expensive mana crystals like water.
In other words, magic was money.
Whenever I memorized another magical theory, despair only grew stronger.
For someone poor like me, it was a realm I could never reach.
“Throw this away too, you lowborn bastard!”
A crumpled ball of parchment struck me on the head.
“Hehe... Bull’s-eye.”
Felix laughed, miming the motion of tossing trash into a bin.
“What are you doing? Pick it up. Or do you want to get fired?”
“Where should I put this...?”
“Take it to the incinerator behind the annex and burn it. I can’t be bothered to go myself.”
“Understood.”
“I’m leaving, then.”
He walked out of the library, snickering.
I picked up the parchment.
Out of habit, my eyes took in its contents.
[Second-Tier Formula: Barrier Repair]
[Result: Failure]
A record of failed research.
But...
‘...Huh? Why is the mana circuit arranged like this?’
If he was using a heat-producing formula, what was he thinking, tangling the mana acceleration loop like this?
‘Of course the mana overloaded and scattered. So that’s why he failed even after burning three mana crystals. How pathetic.’
Then a shock like lightning flashed through my mind.
‘...!!!’
Until then, I had thought the only reason I couldn’t use magic was my lack of mana.
But that wasn’t it.
‘He wasted mana because he’s stupid. Magic was never meant to be this inefficient.’
A realm nobles who could smother every problem with money would never know.
The flaws in formulas full of waste were visible only to me, a desperately poor person who couldn’t afford to waste even a single unit of mana.
‘If I sealed every one of those holes...’
I stuffed the crumpled parchment into my pocket.
My heart began pounding as though it would burst.
‘This... I can fix it.’
The humiliation had already faded, replaced by a strange thrill racing up my spine.
* * *
That night, in the attic.
I spread Felix’s terrible formula across my desk and picked up a quill.
Whenever I remembered the humiliation I had suffered at the library, the quill scratched more harshly across the page.
‘Magic built on money is nothing but waste.’
Magic had to be a formula of efficiency.
The multiple-circuit structure on page 147 of “Revised Second-Tier Barrier Engineering.” The restoration spell on page 92 of “Second-Tier Mana Condensation Theory.”
I could already see how to fill the gaps Felix had ruined.
‘Untangle the mana acceleration loop.’
Separate the points where it conflicted with the heat-producing formula.
Block the leaking sections of the circuit using the multiple-barrier method.
How much time passed?
Felix’s [Second-Tier Barrier Repair Formula] finally lay complete in my hands.
‘...Perfect.’
It would operate steadily with just one mana crystal.
If I brought it to Felix, it was the sort of result that would have him clapping over his immediate success.
But...
‘What use is this to me?’
I set the quill down on the desk with a tap.
This was a second-tier formula.
To someone like me, who couldn’t even cast first-tier magic, it was nothing more than a neatly organized page of formulas.
‘...Wait.’
A thought suddenly crossed my mind.
‘Does it have to be second tier?’
My fingertips trembled slightly.
What Felix wanted was restoration, filling the cracks in a damaged barrier.
Then the essence of this formula was the principle of joining together what had been split apart.
Tier was not the essence of magic.
It was only the amount of mana consumed and the scale of its output.
Then...
‘What if I keep the principle but lower only the tier?’
The minimum mana circuit from page 83 of “First-Tier Mana Operation Theory.”
The compression spell from chapter 12 of “First-Tier Basic Element Arrays.”
I extracted only the core principle from barrier engineering’s multiple-circuit structure and compressed it to a first-tier scale.
‘...I think this could work.’
I tore Felix’s second-tier formula apart once more.
This time, it was not revision.
It was recreation.
[Step One: Completely remove all unnecessary mana-output sections]
[Step Two: Compress the spell to a first-tier circuit scale]
[Step Three: Eliminate mana crystal dependence and convert it to direct use of the caster’s mana]
A short while later.
Felix’s [Second-Tier Barrier Repair Formula] was reborn in my hands as something entirely different.
The same principle. A different tier.
A new kind of magic that had never existed in this world.
I could name it anything I wanted.
[First-Tier Magic: Tear Mending]
It was household magic.
‘It can perfectly mend torn and frayed clothes.’
I decided to see whether it really worked.
Test materials.
Two scraps of torn cloth happened to be lying in the corner of the room.
‘Can I join those two pieces together?’
The problem was the amount of mana I had.
It was an amount any mage would laugh at.
‘Still, there’s a way.’
I could draw a magic circle.
I copied Tear Mending’s magic circuit directly into a magic circle.
‘All I need to do is put a little mana into it.’
Mana, thin as a thread, seeped into the circuit.
Ssszt!
It flowed along the path I had designed without leaking anywhere.
Because the circuit I had drawn was perfect.
Hummm!
A transparent energy bloomed with a faint vibration.
‘Please, join together!’
A flash of mana filled the split and joined the two pieces of cloth into one.
‘Did it work?’
I lifted the cloth and pulled hard in both directions.
‘!’
It held firm.
The pieces had fused perfectly, as though they had been one piece from the start.
There were no loose threads and no traces of stitching.
Only a smooth surface remained.
“Ha... haha.”
A hollow laugh escaped me.
A second-tier formula Felix had failed to cast even after burning three mana crystals.
I had remade it as first-tier magic and cast it without a mana crystal.
‘Then wouldn’t other things be possible, too?’
What if I could reduce a first-tier fire formula into household magic?
What if I transformed the core principle of a second-tier barrier for another purpose?
What if I compressed third-tier cryomancy to a first-tier scale...?
Countless inspirations arose as though they had been waiting.
All sorts of strange magic began combining in my mind as if dancing.
They were theoretical formulas, of course. Whether they would actually work was another question.
A new possibility had opened up.
For me, a poor library cleaner who had done nothing but secretly learn from stolen knowledge.
‘Until now, I only memorized things.’
But not anymore.
‘I’ll change them and create something new.’
The formulas.
Magic.
My life, too.
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