WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 7

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Nothing special happened on the way back. I got a little bored, so I nudged the guys collapsed by the roadside with my foot. I wanted to drag these bastards back and put them to use.

Should I secretly haul one or two away? Even rotten junkies like these were still mages in name. If I used them as materials, they would be extremely useful. I couldn't actually go through with it, though.

These guys were practically the property of the Sword-User Alliance. Every day, they extracted their own mana to buy drugs. They were the gang's aphids. If I killed them carelessly, the sword-user bastards would definitely go berserk.

Far off in the distance, I began to see a sign that read <Evron's Puppet Workshop>. It was the home I had built over ten years. Aside from the center of the slums, it was probably the most intact building around.

How much had I suffered to take this building? My heart still trembles when I remember those damn sword-user bastards threatening me with blades.

I opened the door and went inside. Seeing the interior packed full of all kinds of puppets calmed my mind and body. First, I headed to the reception desk. A puppet that resembled a monkey lay sprawled on top of it. I tapped it with my hand.

It wasn't broken. I injected mana into the puppet as it was. The puppet straightened its crumpled body and quickly sprang to its feet.

Standing on the reception desk, the puppet began staring blankly at the shop entrance. It was the reception puppet that managed the shop in my place. Yesterday, I had done nothing but drink as soon as I came back, so I had forgotten about this guy.

I made a round through the shop and checked whether anything was malfunctioning. Since two weeks had passed, there might have been some unexpected error. Fortunately, everything was perfectly normal. Mm, as expected of a puppet I made. Absolutely perfect.

I left it there and headed down to the underground workshop. Then, should I repair the puppets that had broken during the exam?

This exam had been a duel-type exam, so it had been rough. For someone like me, whose only attack magic was exploding puppets, it was far too harsh a trial.

Out of the thirty sparring matches held over two weeks, I only won twice, and even those were narrow wins that used up every puppet I had. After all my puppets were blown away, I just rolled around and shouted that I surrendered.

No, combat really isn't my specialty.

I truly had rotten luck this time. I had prayed and prayed that it wouldn't be a duel exam, but that was what came out. Next time, I will definitely pass.

I took out a spatial pouch from inside my robe, hidden within the steel belly band. This tiny pouch had space expansion magic cast on it, enough to fit about a hundred puppets. My puppets, no, perhaps this was a treasure more valuable than my entire fortune. I had obtained it through a fortuitous encounter.

It was not something that belonged in these slums. If anyone saw it, blood would certainly flow that very day, so it was a treasure I always kept tightly hidden inside my belly band like this. When I turned it upside down and shook it out, a pile of puppets broken during the exam poured out. Seeing their wretched state made me sigh.

Ah, my heart aches every time I take an exam. To think I have to put these children through this.

From the wreckage, I first began sorting out the ones that were still somewhat intact. The most important thing was the mana heart. As long as the mana heart remained, I could repair a puppet by attaching a new body.

No matter how hard I searched, though, only three puppets had living hearts.

The rest were all broken. There were especially many hearts sliced cleanly in a straight line. It was the sword-user's work. That wicked bitch, chopping up someone else's puppets without a shred of care.

At first, I looked down on her a little because she was a woman, but the moment the sparring match began, her eyes flipped, and she started cutting up my puppets like crazy. The fact that this exam was ruined was all that bitch's fault.

I set aside only those three and threw the rest into the incinerator to burn them. They had already lost their mana and become simple chunks of wood, so they had no value. Even if I recycled things like that, they would only become useless junk, so it was better to deal with them this way.

Seeing those puppets disappear as firewood made me feel pointlessly sad. Kuh, to think that as a father, I have to send you off like this. I am so sorry. Next time, I will give you stronger bodies.

I also took the flying insect puppets out from my chest. Originally, I carried several hundred of these guys around too, but they had all broken during this exam, leaving only about ten. Again, that sword-user came to mind. I had made up my mind and combined about fifty flying insects to create a multi-self-destruct spell, but she blocked the explosions with just a few swings of her sword.

Damn sword-users. Savage bastards with nothing in their heads but fighting!

Grumbling like that, I used mana to place the puppet materials scattered around the workshop on the workbench. Today, I should strengthen my foundation. Let's improve the smashed puppets and make them anew.

First, I felt the wood. It had been soaked in mana until it had become a lump of mana itself. Mana smeared between my fingers and flowed like liquid. Mm, perfect.

My irritation-filled head rapidly calmed down. No stray thoughts could intrude while making puppets. I had to focus only on the puppet itself and fully capture the power held by the material.

I pushed all thoughts and emotions to one side and awakened the tree in my chest. Mana seeped from the leaves on the sapling and formed a steady flow. Soon, it traveled along my fingers and created a strange pattern on top of the mana-soaked wood.

I began shaping the wood along that pattern. The pattern gently swayed as if breathing. How much practice had it taken for 'Magical Deep Breathing' to become this mature? I had kept making puppets, practicing carving, and cutting day and night to find the grain of life force the old man had spoken of.

Only when I finally came to understand the grain of life force through that bone-grinding training did my innate magic also grow one step further. No, it would be more accurate to say I realized something new that I had not known before.

Like that, the magic flowed along the grains of life force and mana, breathing faint life into the puppets.

The mana contained in the wood was sucked into those patterns. I made all the dozens of pieces of wood I had brought the same way.

While the patterns absorbed the mana, I removed the mana hearts from the three broken puppets. These hearts, shaped like small trees, were withered as if they might die at any moment.

Their condition is serious. I should transplant them immediately. I stood several pieces of wood I had been keeping an eye on beneath the mana hearts. They were the ones with the most beautiful, thick patterns. The magic engraved on the mana hearts vibrated faintly and resonated with the wood placed beneath them.

Then the patterns of the wood and the hearts tangled together as if alive and began exchanging mana. The hearts received mana from the wood and raised themselves again.

Very admirable. I guided mana and helped their fusion little by little. But I could not lead the entire process. If I did, the mana hearts would become scrap. Just like mages, these mana hearts had to stand up on their own.

The mana hearts quickly recovered their strength and seeped into the wood. Like this, the centers of the new puppets were made. Based on this, I had to make bodies that suited them. I carefully examined the wood they had seeped into and began rummaging through materials that matched it.

Did they instinctively realize that they had died and come back to life? The mana hearts revealed firmer tastes than before. One guy created a completely wild grain and circulated mana powerfully. Another wrapped the grain densely around itself like armor and hid. The last guy was scattering its grain in all directions without a care.

I named them First, Second, and Third.

This kind of thing happened from time to time. Mana hearts combined with my innate magic revealed a sort of taste as they accumulated experience, and those that came back from the brink of death showed that tendency even more strongly.

Yes, yes. This daddy will dress you in clothes that suit you perfectly. Imagining the forms they would have, I shaped the other pieces of wood that would make up their bodies.

First should wear the clothes of a wild beast full of feral beauty. Would a leopard-like form be good? No. The wildness this child had could not be handled by something like a leopard. Then what should I make?

How about the form of a monster like a burrow-catcher? The form of a powerful bird like a five-colored eagle? None of them satisfied me. First's wildness was violent to a degree I had never seen before.

I needed a stronger creature. The strongest creature on this entire continent.

What was the greatest creature I had ever seen?

The moment I thought of that, one creature came to mind. Turtle! A turtle. It was twenty years ago, when I was wandering the continent on an airship. At the news that a turtle was moving, the airship immediately descended to the ground and hid. The mages lay flat as if dead, without moving even a single speck of mana.

Just what was a turtle? Since I had never seen a turtle before, I acted very bravely. I looked toward the sound of the earth shaking. And I saw the turtle.

At that moment, I understood their fear. When the turtle moved, mountains were trampled. Mountains that had soared high into the sky were driven straight into the ground. A giant lake vanished. In front of the turtle's foot, even a lake that was deep and wide was nothing more than a puddle.

The turtle smashed everything apart like that and headed in the direction the airship had come from, toward the sea. After that, I blacked out and lost consciousness for about ten days.

The turtle was a powerful lifeform that roamed the land and sea. A strong body that no being of that bizarre sea could dare approach carelessly, a violent wildness comparable even to a dragon. It could be called a kind of natural disaster in the shape of life.

Yes, that was the perfect form to give First.

But First alone felt lacking. First's wildness was certainly unrivaled. But that was all.

At that moment, a flash went through my head. What if Second wrapped around that guy like armor?

My goodness, could anything be this beautiful?

Then I couldn't just leave Third alone either. Third would serve as the bridge connecting them and as their second heart. When these three hearts were linked to create one core, the true turtle puppet would be complete!

Amid inspiration pouring down like lightning, the harmony of these three came together. I shivered just from imagining it. On top of that, what if I made a shelter inside Third's body, which would form the turtle's interior?

It would become my own moving workshop. Why couldn't I imagine this before?

My thoughts kept going. If these three were not enough.

I could just put more hearts inside. If I connected hearts with individual traits and made them harmonize, the turtle would take on an even more complete form.

I kept carving bodies that suited them.

I piled up a great amount of wood and kept drawing the knife across it, then took out all kinds of rare materials and embedded them.

Let's pursue the most perfect form.

How many days passed like that? After working without eating or drinking, I realized.

Ah, it was a failure.

I failed.

And at the very, very end, no less.

Each mana heart had its own individual trait. Just like a mage, each possessed a kind of completeness.

The turtle's body was complete.

When I planted the three in each part and connected them through my 'Magical Deep Breathing,' I was sure I had succeeded.

But within that enormous mana flow, they lost their completeness and were dyed into one. Then they were thrown out of the puppet.

I should have expected this.

I reflected deeply. I had not stayed calm enough while making the puppet. I had gotten too excited, dug into a mistaken realization, and in the end, I had failed like this.

But a failure had to be left as a failure. Since becoming a mage, I had experienced countless failures. This was only one of them. I forced myself to calm down and took a deep breath.

The three hearts had been dyed by the most comprehensive flow, Third.

Being dyed like this did not make Third especially stronger. It had only temporarily come to contain stronger mana than before. As time passed, it would return to its original state.

Strength left my whole body, and I sagged limply. I had created a turtle puppet so huge it filled the workshop, yet there was no pilot to move it.

I stared blankly up at my painstaking masterpiece. I had poured in almost every material I had piled up in the workshop. Its back like a mountain range, its heavy feet that advanced while crushing mountains, even its mouth like a void that inhaled mana like mist.

The traits of the turtle I had seen in the past were alive in even the finest details.

Was this really going to end in failure? It was too regrettable. All I needed was a mana heart that suited this puppet. Then this turtle would come alive and move.

But the three hearts had already merged into one. Since I had made the puppet only to suit those three, no mana heart other than those three could move it.

It had become nothing more than a giant sculpture that looked nice.

At that moment, a slight vibration rose in my chest. I hurriedly sank inward at the intense wave that began from the tree.

Inside my chest, the sapling was shaking its body in great excitement. Following that movement, the leaves on the sapling shed mana and created one enormous spell.

'Magical Deep Breathing.' The tree was casting that magic on itself.

A flash went through my head. No, it was a revelation from the tree that began in my chest.

Mana heart!

The source of every mana heart I made was the tree inside my chest. Even if each mana heart had its own individuality, if I traced those roots upward, my tree existed at the end.

That meant this tree contained the possibilities of all those hearts.

I placed a hand over my chest. I could feel the tree wanting to come out at any moment. Yes, I just had to take the place of the mana heart myself. No puppet could surpass the potential of me, the original.

"I will become the turtle."

Whispering that, I connected the grain of the tree inside my chest to the grain of the turtle. A powerful pressure began to rush in. All the mana the turtle possessed dug into this new passage and began tearing my body apart.

My bones shattered, and my blood vessels burst. My body swelled like a balloon about to pop.

I hurriedly drove my roots into my flesh. The roots that had previously only seeped into my bones and muscles went further and began replacing them.

Only after the framework of my body had all become roots did the flow of mana stabilize a little. Cracks ran through every part of my body, but it was still more bearable than before.

The roots that had deepened like this greedily devoured the turtle's mana. The sapling refined the mana it had absorbed and sent it back out, and that mana flowed back into the turtle along the flow connected to it.

What a beautiful cycle this was. I was becoming one mana heart and melting into the turtle. Soon, the turtle and I achieved complete unity.

In the strange sensation of feeling both my flesh as a human and the flesh of the puppet, I focused a little more on the turtle's.

I lifted a leg and took one step forward. The workshop floor could not withstand the weight and sank. This overwhelming mass. This was exactly what I had pursued. I trembled with deep satisfaction.

The sapling inside my chest also trembled with joy. Mana more powerful than ever before was melting into the sapling. Using the enormous puppet called a turtle as its foundation, the sapling began to grow rapidly.

The sapling, which had grown nearly twice as large as before, emitted stronger mana and drew out 'Magical Deep Breathing.' As it did, the bond between the turtle and me grew even stronger. The two separate beings began merging into one.

But that was as far as it went.

I instinctively knew that I could not go any further. My realm was too weak to advance beyond this. If I went further, I would lose my reason and become a part of the puppet.

To have a deeper realization right before my eyes but be unable to advance was deeply painful as a mage. Still, I should be grateful that I had confirmed the path I had to take. I calmed the tree and naturally withdrew from the turtle's body.

When I checked my body, it was full of hairline cracks, as if broken pieces had been glued together. From those cracks, I felt an unease like I might shatter at any moment. I would have to rest for roughly two months. I am absolutely not leaving the shop.

Between tremendous fatigue and fulfillment, I lay down on the turtle's back. I was so tired. The moment my back touched the floor, I lost consciousness.

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