Episode 353

“Why are you doing this?”

Alsicle looked at Yumidihus with blank eyes.

“Alsicle Pengelrin. Do you know what these reagents are?”

“Sir Yumidihus…”

At his teacher’s utterly absurd question, Alsicle trailed off as if he pitied him.

“Are you saying you don’t recognize what kind of reagents these are…?”

“……”

Yumidihus considered beating his disciple senseless for pitying him but held back.

“…I’m not asking because I don’t recognize them. It’s horn of frost stag, ice-cold mountain, eternal snow, and snow yellow pill, right?”

“Then why are you asking?”

“Your finances can’t be that good—are you sure you want to use these? You need to do your own research, too.”

The biggest issue with learning cold element magic was the property of the cold element itself.

Lifeforms naturally emitted heat and repelled cold.

No matter how cold and harsh you made the surrounding environment, it wasn’t easy for a living magician to accept cold into their body.

So cold element magicians would use reagents to convert the properties of cold.

Retaining the chill of the cold, but turning it into cold that wouldn’t damage the magician’s body.

Of course, this wasn’t an easy task and required expensive reagents.

The more expensive and rare the reagent, the better its performance, so Alsicle pulling out such expensive reagents was not a bad choice.

…If only it didn’t look like Alsicle was using his entire fortune.

‘Oops!’

Alsicle finally realized the situation he was in.

Yumidihus sighed at the pathetic sight of him hesitating and glancing around.

“Even now…”

“Surely Sir Pengelrin just doesn’t need such reagents anymore.”

“……”

“……”

Yumidihus and Alsicle both looked at Lee Han.

However, Lee Han continued speaking with no change in expression.

“A true magician does not choose his staff.”

“Well, that’s true, but what Alsicle is trying to do…”

“Isn’t that right, Sir Pengelrin?”

“O-of course.”

Alsicle nodded at Lee Han’s question.

“To me, those reagents are more like decorations… I could just go outside and pick up a snowflake and it’d be enough, I guess…”

“I knew you’d say that. Please proceed.”

“……”

Yumidihus decided that he must never leave Lee Han alone with Alsicle.

At first, he’d worried that Alsicle might bully Lee Han, but now, if the two were left alone, Yumidihus wouldn’t be surprised if Lee Han just devoured Alsicle.

• * *

Whoooosh!

Although it was inside a sealed magic tower, a snowstorm colder than the snowy mountains outside began to rage.

The surprising thing was that this cold blizzard had no effect at all on Lee Han’s body.

Cold, yet not cold snow.

A phenomenon possible only through magic.

“The cold element is hard to use unless there are special conditions.”

Alsicle waddled over and pointed at the ceiling.

A massive magical core set into the top of the tower was spreading cold.

Of all elements, cold was the hardest to maintain naturally, so unless you used such natural environments or magical devices, it was impractical in reality.

For a master magician, such inconveniences didn’t matter, but the issue was with those learning for the first time.

Alsicle rummaged in a corner and pulled out a staff, wearing a face full of pride.

“Here. Look at this. See?”

“This is…”

“Right. It’s the egg of a Frostagon.”

The large insect egg set in the end of the staff radiated blue chill and glowed mysteriously.

A staff with such cold attributes was a huge help for novice magicians.

“This staff is so valuable that at an auction gathering of cold magicians in the North—where it came from—three people were seriously injured and seven more wounded.”

“…?”

Lee Han thought to himself.

Why were there injuries at an auction?

“I’ll lend you this staff, Wardanaz. Someone as t… as… um… as talented as you would suit it well.”

Alsicle could neither say Lee Han was more talented nor less, so he settled for a roundabout expression.

“Thank you…”

“Wardanaz. You should have the stone given to you by the King of the Frost Giants.”

“……”

Lee Han cursed himself for not sending Professor Voladi outside.

‘Damn. That was careless. I shouldn’t have let my guard down.’

Professor Voladi had a knack for ruining the atmosphere, even during someone else’s lecture.

Alsicle, not yet understanding the situation, blinked and asked,

“The stone given to you by the King of the Frost Giants?”

“That’s… um…”

No matter how skilled Lee Han was at talking, there was no suitable thing to say in this situation.

Helpful as ever, Professor Voladi answered instead.

“There is a stone from fighting the King of the Frost Giants embedded in his staff. It’s better than the Frostagon’s egg.”

“……”

Lee Han could see tears welling up in Alsicle’s eyes.

Alsicle briefly turned his head and snuffled before returning. His expression was noble, but his eyes were red.

“Then… you don’t need the staff, I suppose.”

“That’s right.”

“…Can’t you wait outside? Voladi Baegrek?”

Alsicle said to Professor Voladi in a deeply sulky voice.

But Professor Voladi replied seriously.

“If there’s a mistake in the lesson, I must point it out.”

“Grr…”

Alsicle could not refute Professor Voladi’s words.

Unlike Voladi Baegrek, who had considerable experience teaching as an Einrogard professor, Alsicle had none.

Of course, Lee Han was dumbfounded.

‘I knew you had no conscience, but this is amazing!’

To blatantly lie like that just because no one can testify about Einrogard.

“…Concentrate on conjuring cold.”

“Freeze.”

At Lee Han’s incantation, cold energy gathered at the tip of the staff.

The surrounding air became even colder and Lee Han’s skin broke out in goosebumps.

“You have the basics down. Let’s start with form transformation. Cone shape.”

“Cold, become a cone!”

“Arrow shape.”

“Cold, become an arrow!”

“…Now a shield shape.”

“Cold, become a shield!”

“……”

Alsicle fell silent, so Lee Han wondered if he’d made a mistake.

“…You’re learning cold magic for the first time, right?”

“Pardon? No. I’ve learned from Professor Voladi.”

“What!”

Alsicle shouted, his face brightening.

“Then you should’ve said so! You scared me!”

Alsicle had been shocked thinking Lee Han had picked it up in one go.

He suddenly felt much warmer after finding out it wasn’t true.

Professor Voladi, who had been watching, spoke up.

“He’s never practiced such various form transformations…”

“So, what’s the next lesson?”

“Projectile.”

Alsicle swung his staff.

An ice shard floating in the air flew off with a piercing sound.

Clang!

“That’s probably why Sir Yumidihus had you learn cold element magic. Water isn’t well-suited for projectile magic.”

“But isn’t it fine if you use it operationally?”

Lee Han asked curiously.

‘Projectile’ and ‘operational’ seemed similar, but the principle was different.

What Alsicle had just demonstrated was to calculate the trajectory exactly and inject powerful force once to shoot off the ice shard.

In contrast, when Lee Han used water or metal beads, he directly controlled each movement and targeted them himself.

You could make fine adjustments, but it required an enormous amount of practice before it was truly usable.

“Why go to all that trouble? Just learn projectile magic with another element.”

“…To react quickly in an emergency?”

At this, Professor Voladi nodded.

But Alsicle didn’t understand Lee Han’s reasoning.

“Would you really run into such situations? Wouldn’t it be better to act so you never end up in such situations? If you try to prepare for everything, you’d have to prepare for everything, right? Besides, it would take too long to make operational magic powerful enough.”

“……”

Lee Han reflexively looked at Professor Voladi, who stared back, puzzled.

“If you want to use it in combat, it’s better to learn the attributes suited for combat. Let’s take a break, then practice projectiles.”

“Ah, I’m fine, though.”

“No. Even if you feel okay now, you’re definitely using up your mana.”

Alsicle pulled the cork off a mana recovery potion and took a swig, then tossed one to Lee Han as well.

“Drink it to recover your mana. Cold element uses more mana than you think. If you treat it like any other element, you could get really hurt. Hoo hoo. You didn’t know that, did you?”

Alsicle was clearly very excited to be able to teach Lee Han.

“Usel…”

“Thank you. I’ll drink it.”

Before Professor Voladi could unnecessarily lower the room temperature any further, Lee Han quickly changed the subject and drank the potion.

Of course, it had no effect.

• * *

‘Projectile’ was a concept used in many elemental magics.

Flame arrow, frost arrow, rock arrow, etc.—if you wanted to shape and launch something, you had to learn this projectile attribute.

Of course, learning this wasn’t simple.

You needed basic sense of distance and direction, and also had to learn how much mana to inject for the right force…

Clang!

“Did I hit?”

The ice shard Lee Han shot penetrated the target exactly.

Projectile attribute wasn’t easy, but compared to operational magic—which was far harder—this was relatively easy for Lee Han.

Alsicle’s mouth hung open.

He’d practiced form transformation, but as for the projectile attribute—it definitely shouldn’t be this good…

“Ord…ordinary. Just average.”

“Is that so?”

Lee Han was puzzled.

He didn’t think he made any mistakes, but to be called ‘average’?

“What do I need to fix?”

“…Didn’t I say the water and cold elements are closely related? One of the reasons is this.”

Now Alsicle had to stick with what he said.

Crack!

When he waved his staff, the ice shard stuck in the wall evaporated and sucked up the surrounding heat.

Then, the chill surrounding the ice shard explosively spread.

“If you combine it with the evaporation attribute, you should be able to pull off something like an explosive ice arrow to earn higher marks.”

As he spoke, Alsicle glanced at Voladi Baegrek.

Even he knew he was talking nonsense.

Even regular ice arrow projectile magic was 3rd Circle, but adding an ‘evaporation’ attribute to it?

Given the difficulty of the evaporation property, it was one of the hardest even among 4th Circle magics…

Crack!

When Lee Han cast, the flying ice shard hit the wall and evaporated, dealing damage.

Lee Han was delighted to succeed on his first try.

He’d learned the evaporation property for water magic, but was surprised at how easily it translated to the cold element.

“I did it!”

“Ah… ah… still just a l-little lacking.”

“Is that so?”

Lee Han was starting to feel suspicious.

Isn’t this already above average…?

‘Are the standards for cold element magicians just too high?’

“Professor. Was cold element magic always thi… Um, never mind.”

“?”

Lee Han gave up quickly on asking Professor Voladi.

There was no point in asking him anyway.

“Understood. Then what should I fix next?”

“You need to be able to compress all the steps and cast it in one go!”

Alsicle shouted, face brightening.

He had finally thought of a plausible condition.

Indeed, to prove proficiency, you needed to be able to cast the magic in one go, not separated into steps.

“That would take me some time, for sure.”

“Right? Right?! Right??!”

Alsicle nodded enthusiastically, delighted.

‘Is this really something to cheer about?’

Professor Voladi spoke up from the side.

“I’ll help.”

“Haha. It’s alright.”