WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 44

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Magic was made up of three things. That was something Ojo had told me back when I lived on the island.

“If you have enough magical power and the knowledge to match it, you can use any magic.”

He closed his eyes for a moment to gather his thoughts, then said.

“Then why does the power differ? One person’s flame burns a mountain, while another person’s flame cannot even burn paper. That is difficult to explain as a simple difference in talent.”

At those words, I produced a simple spell. A tiny fire bloomed above my finger. Ojo looked at it and continued.

“You have no talent for attack magic. This comes down to a matter of will. When the will and purpose behind using magic are clear, that magic takes on a stronger nature.”

He raised a finger and drew a magic circle. A soft breeze flowed out of it and struck my flame. That tiny fire could not resist at all and went out.

“You lack the will to kill others. I do not know whether that is because of your past life or the nature of your soul, but it clearly determined your talent.”

Without will, magic weakened too. That was what I had been taught as a child.

After that, I lived my life avoiding fights unless I had no choice. Even during the university exam. Over time, my attack magic became even more pathetic.

Maybe that was why I kept failing. I had simply blamed everything on talent, but as Ojo said, it might have been because I lacked the will.

This issue of will also applied to the ego I was trying to create.

I started researching shadows because of the shadow Professor Heisen gave me. It copied me and moved, then even borrowed my talent to move puppets.

When I saw that, I thought the shadow had imitated me until it gained my talent. That was why I had tried to graft a shadow onto a puppet like this.

But through many attempts, I learned that idea had been wrong.

My shadow copying me and moving had only formed a single point of connection. What was truly connected to me was not the entire shadow. It was the tiny stars contained inside it.

From the moment they connected to me, they could borrow everything I had. They simply had not had the strength to handle it before forming a firm shape.

I had misunderstood the order of cause and effect all this time. The shadow itself was not important. So even when I struggled to give it form, it only flowed away because the core did not exist.

That was why Professor Heisen’s shadow was special. No one could easily create that kind of core. That must have been why even a powerful mage like Baun was taking the lecture.

And I was trying to challenge that.

Other mages would definitely laugh their heads off if they heard. A mage from the first floor, one who had only grown a Sapling, was trying to copy a professor’s creation.

I felt wronged too. It was not as if I had started out thinking on such a large scale. I had only been trying to improve magical power efficiency somehow, but as I kept researching, I drifted all the way here.

I had come too far to give up now. In the end, I had to see it through. I spent the past month with that thought.

Granting an ego to a shadow was a kind of enormous magic. Through my earlier attempts, I had learned roughly how much magical power was needed to complete it.

I also had enough knowledge of how to proceed. Magic should have been established with that. Yet this ego creation magic kept failing every time.

It was probably because there was not enough will. I did not mean my own will was lacking. How could I lack will after spending such painful days like this?

What was lacking was the will to be contained in the shadow. I thought back to the time I first connected with my shadow. It had been extremely faint. So faint that, from the outside, it was hard to tell whether it even existed.

Yet through our connection, it kept telling me it was there. Whenever I recognized it, that alone made it happy.

In the end, it created my form because it wanted to resemble me. Those exchanges wove together into a single magic and created what it was now.

In the same way, I needed to use the shadow as a connector and plant inside it a core that could communicate with the puppet, and beyond that, with me. At the same time, it would have to take in my magical power and naturally blend with the puppet.

I kept searching and experimenting to find something suited to that.

And at the end of it, I thought of the one thing that fit best.

I looked into my chest. Inside it stood a tree that had risen high, using my body as its foundation.

It was my Sapling. It had grown enough to fill my entire chest, so it could no longer grow at all.

This was back when I lived in the slums.

The druggies were everywhere, and they did not hesitate to cut down the trees they had cultivated in order to obtain drugs. Since those trees were perfect for use as magical reagents, they sold for a high price.

In the slums, those mage tree stems even functioned as a kind of currency. I also remembered cutting down my tree once.

It was when I had been desperately short on money while setting up the shop. That was why I knew very well how painful it was to cut one out. Back then, I had sworn I would never cut down my tree again.

This Sapling was the most perfect core to plant in a shadow. There was no other option.

I took a deep breath.

All the preparations were already complete. There was no need to hesitate. I moved my magical power and grabbed it. Then I clenched my teeth and tore it out.

A powerful shock slammed through my whole body. My magical power scattered, and the feeling of something being ripped out from inside me surged up. It was not flesh. It was pain like something rooted much deeper, in my soul, was being carved away.

My whole body trembled, and my vision shook. The pain rose until I could not even breathe, but I could not stop my hand. I dragged what I had torn off straight out of my body.

“Keugh!”

A small tree stem burst out of my mouth along with a mouthful of blood. My shadow, which had been waiting, caught it. It planted the stem into the shadow I had prepared beforehand.

Then it carefully moved it and gently set it down in the pseudo-shadow space. Within that strange magical power, my tree stem began taking root in the mana heart I had already made inside the shadow.

Along with it, I felt something tickling my mind. A very faint signal was connecting to me.

At that moment, I knew that a being connected to me had been born.

Of course, its intelligence could not compare to my shadow’s. This faint connection felt as if it might break at any moment, and it had only a very dim will. That was probably because my tree was only a Sapling.

But that alone was enough. I poured a strong will into the shadow. Its mind touched mine, and my soul flowed toward it.

Through that strengthened connection, I finally sensed its existence. It rooted itself in the shadow and took on an appearance completely different from before.

Half mixed between substance and illusion, it was giving off its own magical power, similar to mine but slightly different.

Using that magical power, it was instinctively using one magic. It was not one of the spells I had learned. Nor was it one I had made.

What it was using was a magic engraved into my soul. The only magic that had been with my tree from the beginning, ‘Magical Deep Breathing’.

Through that, it tried to breathe on its own. The breath was very faint, and because it was contained in shadow, it was unstable too.

I kept passing my will to it. It shook as if it might die at any second. Even in that state, it continued to breathe without stopping.

Within that breath, it gradually began to stabilize. The shadow slowly faded, and only the mana heart remained somewhat clear as it released magical power.

Was it a success? I swallowed.

Watching it gave me a very strange feeling. It was separate from me, yet at the same time, it felt connected to me. It continued breathing like that.

But until I connected it to a puppet, I could not know whether this was a success. I placed a puppet inside the pseudo-space where the shadow was located.

Even though my tree stem had been planted in it, it was not the shadow’s owner. Its owner was originally this puppet.

The shadow sensed the puppet, wavered, and approached it. Then it began carefully connecting its body to the puppet.

It had to work. Tense, I slowly watched the entire process.

I did not know how much time passed like that.

The puppet simply stood still.

There was no rejection reaction and no transformation. The shadow scattered that strange magical power as it remained connected to the puppet.

A powerful weakness from released tension struck me, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Up to this point, it had succeeded. This was a reaction I had never seen before.

Still, I held tightly to my mind. This was not the end.

I carefully took it outside. The shadow was woven into the puppet, forming a kind of pattern.

Maybe because it had suddenly entered a new environment, the shadow began thrashing without pause. It repeatedly swelled and shrank as if it would burst at any moment.

I watched it with tense eyes. This was not something I could help with. That was the process of adapting to the world. All I could do was connect my will to it as strongly as possible.

The tree stem inside the shadow’s mana heart began performing ‘Magical Deep Breathing’ once again. Along with it, the mana heart began to beat. The heart slowly stabilized the shadow.

Once the shadow stabilized, it poured down onto the ground. Then it remained at the puppet’s feet and began imitating its shape.

Soon, the puppet moved. It waddled around as if moving felt awkward, and sometimes it even fell over.

It was not me moving it. It was not my shadow moving it either. The puppet was moving on its own. Only the shadow’s magical power was contained in that action.

The shadow moved the puppet, and the puppet led the shadow. They had woven themselves together and grown into a being that could support itself.

“Ahahahaha!”

I collapsed on the spot. Then I hit the ground and laughed loudly.

My chest hurt as if it were being torn apart, but I did not care. I rolled across the ground like that, coughing blood as I laughed.

A success. It was a success.

From the completed puppet, I could faintly confirm an ego. It was connected to me. Yet at the same time, it had become an independent being different from me.

An overwhelming sense of fulfillment filled my body. So much that I could not even feel the pain in my chest.

I laughed as if I were sobbing.

I had no idea how much time passed like that before my mind snapped awake. Then I sprang to my feet.

I could not stop here. I had to weave more puppets, more egos, more shadows. My instinct was shouting that at me.

I had already gained certainty that this would work. So I immediately took out the students’ puppets. The first target I chose was Cassian’s bear puppet.

Among all these puppets, it was the most delicate and the most perfect. If I could give it a shadow, I was sure I could handle the other puppets more easily.

I bit my lip and tore out my tree once more. Pain like my soul was being ripped apart came again. Holding onto my shaking mind, I held the tree stem out to my shadow.

My shadow, which had already finished perfectly treating the bear puppet’s shadow, planted the tree stem inside it. Within the shadow world, the shadow began writhing once again.

Would this one succeed too?

I stared at the shadow with excited eyes. I poured my entire mind into that faint connection. Inside it, the thing also began to breathe.

When I placed the puppet inside it, the shadow connected to the puppet. It was the same after taking it outside. The tree stem that continued ‘Magical Deep Breathing’ connected the puppet and the shadow in a stable way.

“Haha, ahaha!”

I could not hold back my laughter at all.

The whole process was painful. Yet at the same time, it was enjoyable.

My tree was shaved down, lowered, and weakened. But it too gladly offered itself. When I no longer had the strength to tear it out, it even split its own body on its own.

Through this process, I realized one thing.

Until now, I had tried to feed my Sapling more and give it more magical power. After I came to the university, it absorbed that abundant magical power and swelled up to its limit.

But that was its limit. It could not make the leap to the next stage. At the end of that, I had fallen into despair. I thought that was my limit.

But through the process of removing the tree like this, I was able to understand.

This tree was my talent and the crystallization of my will. Cutting off part of the tree and injecting it into a shadow was the same as cutting away part of myself.

Yet that was what magic was.

The magic I had used until now was nothing more than a technique for handling magical power. True magic existed somewhere beyond that.

Reaching the end of magic and advancing to a higher realm was only possible by accepting sacrifice and resolve greater than the thing one aimed for.

Through my tree stem, I connected to the shadow, and also to the puppet. In the process of losing myself like this, I achieved sharing with another being.

Within this flow, I realized that the essence of magic was defining the relationship between myself and magic. Will existed precisely there.

And so, two hundred and one puppets all began moving.

They wandered around the workshop with awkward movements. I watched them and smiled faintly. I had no energy left to move. Even the roots of my tree had all been cut away, so almost nothing remained.

Yet I could feel more connections than ever. These countless shadow egos pulled along my tree, which had grown as weak as it possibly could.

The shadows were no longer puppets that simply obeyed my commands. My will and the shadows’ will were both contained within them, and they had become life.

The will of those puppets remained in my chest and created a tremendous resonance.

Countless wills began breaking down my wall. They advanced, smashed, and devoured. It was something I could never have done alone.

The wall that had felt so high and thick collapsed as easily as sand within that flow.

A tremendous weakness filled my chest.

Just because the wall had vanished did not mean my body was reconstructed or my tree recovered. My tree was still shabby, and it looked as if it might fall at any moment.

But its shadow began rooting itself deeper than ever. Beyond the size it had grown to before, beyond the space where the tree’s roots had originally been, and even beyond my physical body.

The shadow grew endlessly and formed the shape of a huge tree. The puppets’ wills were embedded inside it like countless points. They scattered innumerable lights within that dense shadow.

This was the tree I had newly bloomed. This was the form it had taken as I passed beyond Sapling and reached the realm of Young Tree.

After crossing the realm, I could tell how unstable my handling of magical power had been before.

Magical power was not simple fuel. Magical power had become a medium that held my will now, scattering the shadow of my tree in every direction.

I also understood why this realm was called Young Tree. I had always wondered about that. Why was the stage after Sapling called Young Tree?

Now that I had reached this realm, I understood. It was because I had to keep expanding the tree like this and build my own domain.

I examined my tree. A huge shadow had appeared, but its main body was still shabby. I would have to grow it again.

As my tree was shaved away, the new innate magic that had been almost complete vanished without a trace. It had been swept up in the promotion before it could finish forming.

But I did not grieve. Instead, a newly changed magic was filling that space. Rather than ‘Magical Deep Breathing’, perhaps it would be better to call it ‘Fake Soul’ now.

It was a magic that let the shadow of my tree seep into the shadows of puppets and form a new will together with the shadow egos that were still shining even now. Magical Deep Breathing had changed into that kind of magic.

Since these were only half-formed egos, I gave it the name fake. If I continued developing and came to understand this magic better, perhaps then I could call it real.

I had spent all this time only trying to hold too many things in my hands. I had gathered them all up and suffered because I could not bring myself to set them down.

Only after throwing them all away like this was I finally able to move forward.

Weakness and fulfillment mixed together and pressed down heavily on my whole body. Feeling my mind blur, I closed my eyes.

“Good. I can work you for another five hundred years.”

It felt as if the Professor’s voice was ringing in my ear.

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