A mana formula was the sum of methods for accumulating mana in the body.
And to do that, what was the very first thing required?
Naturally, one had to feel mana first.
Since you can't accumulate in your body a thing you don't even know.
That was the first stage and the essential condition, but it wasn't easy.
If anything it was tediously hard.
Which was why it was also used as a standard for judging talent.
By how quickly one first detected mana.
"It seems I'm on the fast side."
"...Exceedingly."
"How long did it take you, ma'am?"
"It took me a full two days......"
Rubian said it glumly.
But inwardly Delam's mouth fell open.
'Insane! It took her only two days to feel mana?'
Normally, the younger one entered upon a mana formula the better.
The truth was that gathering mana young was difficult.
Because concentration is weak and there is no goal.
The heart itself, which must hold the mana, is still unripened.
So the efficiency wasn't especially good either.
But there was an advantage as well.
Namely that feeling mana was easy.
Mana was everywhere in all creation.
In the undergrowth, in the sky, in the earth.
Mana accompanied every breath drawn in and let out.
So growing older meant precisely that one had been in contact with mana longer, and the ability to detect it could only degenerate accordingly.
'Which is why they said entering at around six is best. And feeling mana takes about a month on average.'
The shorter it ran from a month, the greater the talent.
He'd heard that among them the true geniuses detect it in as little as a week.
And Rubian said a full two days......
Could Delam not be astonished?
It seemed he'd have to revise his assessment of Rubian somewhat.
He'd thought her a scatterbrain with a bit of talent.
In fact she might be a genius outside the standard.
'She's in her late twenties and already an intermediate knight to begin with. That alone means she's at minimum a prodigy.'
For reference, what about Delam before regressing?
It took him a full two years to feel mana.
His becoming a senior knight had been purely luck.
No — thanks to desperation.
Fighting every other day the real battles others fought in a lifetime, his attainment couldn't help but rise.
Rubian, briefly downcast like that.
But her expression soon eased.
Come to think of it, having taught him not merely swordsmanship but a mana formula, wasn't Delam now her disciple beyond any wriggling out of it?
An outstanding disciple had come to her, so it was a thing to be glad about.
"If you have felt mana, next is handling it. At first it will not move well. Even so, if you concentrate your mind on the mana and keep projecting your will strongly, you can draw it into your body."
"Understood."
"Then circulate it in the order of the mana roads I shall now teach you. That, precisely, is entry upon a mana formula."
"Yes, ma'am."
Delam closed his eyes and concentrated.
Rubian's mana flowing into his body.
He only [pretended] to turn it according to the mana formula.
Because of the clash of mana formulas.
There was no problem with mastering several mana formulas.
Precisely speaking, there were [ones that work and ones that don't].
What decided it was attribute.
[A mana formula aiming at valor like flame]
[A mana formula pursuing cold clarity like ice]
Suppose one mastered these two together?
With bad luck the mana roads could explode.
The mana painstakingly gathered would simply be lost.
Never mind the mana roads being reduced to rags.
'Still, there'd be plenty to gain from analyzing it, wouldn't there?'
The mana formulas Delam knew were varied.
In his days as Supreme Commander he had conquered many kingdoms.
And the mana formulas siphoned off in the process amounted to a cartload.
The one regret was the [qualitative] part of those formulas.
For the great houses that were each kingdom's pillars, a mana formula was the house's history and its spirit itself.
The majority chose to burn theirs outright rather than have it violated, so there were almost no secret formulas among them.
'Same goes for Vistache's.'
The Vistache mana formula.
As Delam knew it, Vistache's symbol was [strength].
The mana formula was similar.
Among the many attributes held within mana, maximizing destructive power alone to crush an enemy in a single blow was the essence of the formula.
'Whereas my Flurex centers on stability and flexibility.'
Which was why they could not be mastered simultaneously.
But analyzing it should yield a fair amount worth referencing.
What Delam had received was an entry formula, of course.
A portion, so to speak, with the secret formula's confidential parts cut away.
Even so there was nothing to be disappointed about.
However fragmented the shard, in the end it was a result processed on the basis of a single original.
A knight with Delam's experience and insight could, on that basis, glimpse Vistache's secret.
'...Eh? What's this.'
Delam, learning the mana formula from Rubian thus.
And then he soon felt something strange.
Two things, no less.
'This is an entry formula?'
The entry mana formula Rubian was passing on.
And yet that whole architecture of twisting, joining and cutting......
Was tremendously precise and complex besides.
Enough to rival other great houses' secret formulas!
Normally an entry formula was at the level of 20 percent of a secret formula.
Suppose two people train mana for the same ten days.
Then the one who mastered the entry formula gathers 20 of mana and the one who mastered the secret formula gathers 100.
Never mind the difference in power.
'If this really is an entry formula......'
Then the secret formula is five times stronger than other great houses' too.
Which is to say, gathering 500 of mana in ten days!
It was nonsense, of course.
Then why would the kingdom's name currently be [Fior]?
It should have become [Vistache].
There'd have been no need to worry about unifying the continent or a demon invasion.
All of it would have been cut off at the level of House Vistache.
In the end there was one conclusion.
That she had passed him not the entry formula but the secret formula.
'No — has this girl truly gone mad?'
A mistake was flatly impossible.
Since the difference in sheer volume between an entry and a secret formula is enormous.
So it was one of the two.
She was insane... or she had lost her mind.
Cracking one eye open to look, Rubian too was flustered.
Restless, and even sighing now and then.
That was the face of [I've gone and done it, now what?].
'How can this one's way of speaking and her behavior differ this much.'
Delam clicked his tongue.
What would the head of House Vistache do if he knew about this?
He'd probably come chasing after them with a greatsword this instant.
To hack Delam a thousand times over and erase him from this world.
'But, well, that's fine.'
For now, so long as Delam and Rubian keep their mouths shut, nobody knows.
And even if it came out, that would be later.
By then he'd be in a position, or at an attainment, where he could handle a mere head of House Vistache somehow.
Since he was a regressor.
'Next, the second problem... this is a secret formula the direct line learns, so why is it in this state?'
Getting a secret formula was fine.
But even a rough look said it was nothing doing.
There were places standing empty here and there.
And places twisted inefficiently in more than one or two spots.
It was an excellent mana formula even so, of course.
Only, you'd have to say the quality fell well short for something belonging to a great house, which should have been supplemented across dozens of generations.
Not a half, but a two-thirds piece.
'Did she give me one like this on purpose?'
There were occasionally such cases.
To lead a talented person to ruin.
But look at this dolt of a woman in front of him.
The possibility was exceedingly small.
Also, the mana formula had no [trap] in it.
The kind of trap deliberately twisted to make a wreck of a man.
It was simply, purely shoddy.
'At least... because the formula aims at destruction, it doesn't show much on the surface.'
Vistache's mana formula was destructive power itself.
Strike with 80 of force or strike with 100, if the opponent dies it all looks the same anyway.
But even so there was a problem.
Because the difficulty would spike on meeting an opponent who could withstand that destructive power, or on climbing to the next attainment.
'Come to think of it... this girl is saying she got to the verge of senior with this, and she isn't even thirty?'
[Low-grade — intermediate — senior — highest-grade — Sword Master]
That was the division of knightly stages.
Every time one climbed a stage, an enormous overload came with it.
And she'd punched straight through that with a half-piece mana formula?
What this meant was simple.
'She's a truly tremendous genius!'
And she hadn't used a cheat like regression, as Delam had.
A real lump of talent exactly as it was.
For an instant a word flashed through his head.
[Hero]
What was the reason Delam had come to regress?
Precisely because he had killed off every hero on the continent.
Which was why this time he had to keep the heroes alive as far as possible and prepare for the war with the demons.
And Rubian was in no way inferior to those heroes.
Which raised one sudden question.
'Instead of saving a hero... couldn't I make one?'
And on top of that, for whatever reason, she was well disposed toward him.
Enough to hand him her house's secret mana formula.
In which case, raise her well and mightn't she be handsomely useful?
"Ah... ahem."
Just then Rubian quietly turned her reddened face away.
Because Delam's gaze had been far too hot.
***
[Special Duty Corps]
The kingdom army's special intelligence and combat unit.
Naturally, it was treated in an entirely different way from a line unit.
A line unit was shoved onto the battlefield after minimal training, in the spirit of [you can die, there are plenty of people].
The Special Duty Corps was the exact opposite.
Enormous care was put into the men's training.
The missions given were considerably difficult to begin with, and without harsh training accompanying them, achieving them was impossible.
So one passed a three-day training-and-adjustment period, then, after a specialist squad was designated, trained again for two months.
"Cushy."
But the new Special Duty man Delam was different.
Instead of training he was lying in a luxurious tent, murmuring.
For two months already.
Training?
There was nobody to teach Delam.
Having already passed every training with record-setting results, if anything the serving men had to come and learn from him.
So what was given instead was individual training time.
The result of Rubian going to the Special Duty Corps commander and requesting it.
The truth was that from the commander's standpoint it was a thing to resent.
Delam was now unambiguously a Special Duty man.
Knight or no, however much she cherished Delam, telling him what to do with a man of his own command was a serious overreach.
And the reason he permitted it even so was one line.
-I have passed on our house's mana formula.
-If that is so......!
A man with insane skill to begin with, and now mana as well?
This was a tiger given wings.
The mission completion rate would naturally rise, and that credit would clearly return intact to himself, the Special Duty Corps commander.
But a mana formula was a simple [means].
However fine the tool in your hand, what of it.
You have to work with it for money to come out.
Which is to say, having a mana formula wasn't the end.
Only by gathering mana with it did it finally mean anything.
Naturally, a great deal of time went into that.
Is gathering mana easy?
Concentrate the mind, breathe the mana, circulate it along the proper mana roads, and then draw it to your own heart, and only then had a little gathered.
That was why the two months of individual training time were given.
Shut up and go gather plenty of mana.
"Oh, this is good."
Munch, munch.
So Delam was training hard too.
To outward appearances he looked like a man picking at snacks, but he wasn't.
Because mana wasn't what mattered to Delam to begin with.
Why fuss over a thing that gathers just from walking?
'A higher-order realization.'
This, precisely, was what mattered.
And as it happened, he had obtained a toy to trigger such a realization.
Namely House Vistache's secret mana formula.
'Shall I fix this first?'
Sliiide.
Soon the secret formula began to be dismantled.
Inside Delam's head, piece by piece.