The training room on the 40th floor.
Fran, who had practically been dragged there, let out a despondent sigh.
"I don't know whether I can do in one day what I couldn't do over the past few years."
"You can. But you'll have to trust me completely."
"......What in the world are you planning to teach me?"
"First, stand in a natural stance and close your eyes."
A natural stance meant standing still, releasing all the tension in the body, and letting the limbs hang loose.
It had the disadvantage of slower mana flow than sitting cross-legged, but it also offered corresponding advantages.
'Humans are fundamentally bipedal animals.'
To identify a person's ordinary habits and tendencies, this stance was better than sitting cross-legged.
"Like this?"
"Good. Now circulate mana throughout your entire body."
"......"
Fran closed his eyes, entered a state of absolute concentration, and slowly moved his mana.
Oscar watched him for a moment, then moved.
"Here and here, and over here......"
He pointed out a dozen or so positions along the mana circuits with his finger and spoke.
"These are the sections where your mana is lost during circulation."
"......!"
Fran's eyelashes trembled as his eyes remained closed.
Oscar had identified habits even Fran hadn't known about in an instant.
"When you have many sections like these, the quality of your magic inevitably suffers."
"......Will fixing them let me reach Level 4?"
"You think that'll work? This has nothing to do with your level."
To be honest, someone with enough talent could become a Level 4 mage even with terrible habits.
"In fact, 99.9 percent of mages don't pay any attention to things like this."
"Then why......?"
"But every single member of the 0.1 percent called great mages throughout history paid attention to them."
"......!"
There's always a reason the greatest insist on certain things.
Before beginning the lesson in earnest, Oscar intended to point out Fran's fundamental problems.
"Remember what I'm about to teach you and practice it every morning."
As though giving the answers to a mathematics problem, he began reciting the flaws in each circuit.
"The circuit I'm pointing to now is a sharp bend. Your mana enters too quickly, so it strikes the wall every time, causing a large loss of mana in the process. Pay closer attention to your entry speed."
"This section is the opposite. You're too slow. Push your mana in more boldly and quickly."
"This circuit has 6 entrances, so you need to divide your mana into 6 streams. That will minimize the loss while raising the speed to its maximum."
Fran could never imagine.
Just how valuable the words he was hearing were.
They were teachings that even most high-level mages would struggle to provide.
Only someone who had already planted a flag on a summit higher than anyone else could teach such things.
"......I have to pay attention to all that every time I use magic?"
"If you keep at it, someday you'll do it as naturally as breathing."
Fran looked at Oscar like a monster and clicked his tongue.
"This is the problem with guys who are geniuses...... Anyway, I've memorized everything you taught me."
Fortunately, Fran was fairly intelligent and memorized things after hearing them only once.
Oscar nodded in satisfaction.
"All right, shall we begin the real lesson now?"
Fran flinched at those words and opened his eyes.
"We haven't even started yet?"
"I told you. This has nothing to do with your level."
What they had done so far merely laid the cornerstone for becoming a great mage.
After establishing the most basic framework, Oscar suddenly turned grave.
"Fran Sirius. You said it clearly before we started, didn't you? That you'd trust me completely."
"I did."
"Then show me. The spell you used when you fought the swordsman in the herb field."
"......You saw that?"
Fran let out a deep sigh and shook his head.
"Sorry."
"Was it a lie when you said you trusted me?"
"No, it isn't because I don't trust you......"
The guy avoided Oscar's gaze and muttered in a fading voice.
"I'm scared."
"......Scared?"
A strange look crossed Oscar's face.
There are usually two main reasons a person becomes afraid of his own magic.
"Does the spell cause severe side effects, or do you have a traumatic memory of something that happened?"
"The latter."
Fran's shoulders slumped as he continued.
"I almost died while using that spell once."
"Explain in more detail. Only then can I suggest a solution."
"Ugh."
Fran grimaced and touched a fragment of memory he hated even recalling.
***
Fran Sirius had believed himself a genius from an early age.
He had never placed below first among his peers in any sport or field of study.
"......"
Had he not been a member of the Sirius family, he would have lived perfectly satisfied with that talent.
THWACK—!
"Ow!"
After Fran was struck on the crown with a wooden sword and fell, two boys and one girl gathered around him.
They ignored their youngest brother as he began sobbing and talked among themselves.
"This is serious. That guy, our youngest, has no talent for swordsmanship either. I heard he only ranked 14th nationwide in the latest mock exam."
"Goodness. Who would have imagined someone from the Sirius family would fail to place first in the country......"
"I'm worried. His mind is already on the dull side, and now he lacks talent for physical activity as well."
Looking back, his points of comparison had simply been terrible.
Fran's two older brothers and older sister were monsters famous throughout the empire as geniuses.
"The third son of the Sirius family? Ah, you mean that ugly duckling? Everyone in that family is outstanding, but the youngest falls a little short. It's not as if he's some child they picked up off the street, either."
Even when he overheard someone insulting him, he couldn't run out and get angry.
He was afraid that he truly might be a child they had picked up somewhere and would have to face the truth.
He was even the only member of the family to receive a different result on a personality-type test that had become popular throughout the empire.
"Interesting. Everyone in our family except the youngest received the same result."
"It says we're highly capable but unnecessarily serious, inflexible, inconsiderate, and rigid."
"Nonsense. This test is nothing more than pseudoscience without reliable evidence, so no one should be overly influenced by it."
"Ah, according to the test results, the youngest has many shallow interests, lacks perseverance, and is also rather cowardly."
"I knew it."
"Accurate."
Amid his insensitive family, Fran kept shrinking into himself and found only one thing to rely on.
Magic.
"......Fine. In that case, I'll go to the White Tower."
There, he intended to prove himself in spectacular fashion.
He might be treated as the black sheep of his family, but outside it, people would call him a genius.
But even in the White Tower, widely rumored to have fallen, there were three geniuses more talented than him.
'This can't continue.'
Impatience and anxiety at the feeling that he was becoming a nobody.
The unease pursuing him as if to devour him eventually drove him to a dangerous idea.
'If I could turn my entire body into wind instead of only part of it......'
He naturally understood that it was dangerous.
But the future drawn by his anxious mind overflowed with baseless hope.
'If I somehow succeed, won't it be incredible?'
He imagined being interviewed by famous newspapers and receiving invitations from every corner of high society.
Afterward, he would become the mage who represented the White Tower and naturally earn recognition from his family.
More importantly, that sweet future lay before him like a cookie he could grasp simply by reaching out.
He believed all he needed was a single fragment of courage to extend his hand.
"......Huh?"
But accidents always strike without warning.
The moment Fran succeeded in turning his lower body into wind, his mana slipped beyond his control.
"Wh-What's happening?! Damn it!"
He screamed and struggled to flee the training room, but it was useless.
He no longer had legs.
Even his upper body was rapidly turning to wind and dispersing.
"Huff, huff."
It felt as if his soul were splitting into 1,000, 10,000 pieces and vanishing.
He feared that his very existence would become wind and wander this world forever.
When only his body above the neck remained and he could no longer even breathe properly.
"......Young Fran? Young Fran!"
Had Tower Master Shasha not happened to pass through the corridor and save him, he would have died that day.
No, the annihilation of his existence would have been a more accurate description than death.
After that incident, Fran could no longer use the Unique System magic that had been his sole source of pride.
"Every time I try, I start breathing hard and break out in a cold sweat."
Fran showed Oscar his trembling hands and gave a self-deprecating smile.
"I'm really pathetic, aren't I?"
To some, it would sound like the complaint of someone blessed with too much.
They would think it was nothing more than the whining of a talented guy born into a family that lacked nothing.
"I know my family only seems cold because of their personalities. They're all good people. But...... what am I supposed to do when I keep feeling like the only outsider in my family?"
"......I don't think you're pathetic. Everyone has their own circumstances."
Of course, to be honest, Oscar couldn't quite empathize.
He had lived without parents, digging through trash cans in back alleys, until his master happened to notice him and that good fortune allowed him to become a mage.
Mountains of mages had envied his prodigious talent, but he had defeated them with skill and won them over with character, eventually rising to Tower Master as a living example of triumph over adversity.
Their birth and upbringing had been different from the start, so it was only natural that Oscar found it difficult to relate.
"Anyway, to sum up your story, you want recognition from your family."
"Yes."
"So you want to become an outstanding mage, but the trauma from the accident is holding you back."
"Right."
The fear that his magic would devour him.
That was precisely why Fran could not properly use Wind Lord.
At the same time, Oscar nodded.
'So that's what it was.'
It explained why the guy sometimes seemed to lack self-esteem or crave recognition excessively.
Having solved the mystery, Oscar spoke.
"But you used it perfectly well against the swordsman on the hill, didn't you?"
"I didn't use it. It activated on its own when my life was in danger."
So he couldn't use it deliberately?
After thinking for a moment, Oscar asked.
"Explain the accident in more detail. Why did you nearly disperse into wind?"
"......At some point, my mana broke free of my control and ran wild."
Fran's hands were still trembling when Oscar glanced at them.
He was trying to appear calm, but the memory frightened him merely to recall it.
'Well, no one is unafraid of the annihilation of their existence.'
Hadn't even the proud and imposing great generals of the demons wailed like babies before the annihilation of existence?
Oscar knew that better than anyone, so he first patted Fran on the shoulder.
"Thank you for sharing your secret with me."
"Well, I said I'd trust you."
Fran turned his head slightly and muttered.
"......And I was happy because it was the first time someone said they needed me."
"Hmm? What did you say?"
"N-Nothing. If you didn't hear it, forget it."
Fran changed the subject with an awkward expression.
"So what am I supposed to do now? I'm not confident, but I'll do everything you tell me."
"First, you need to understand that this is a more common problem among mages than you might think."
"......Really?"
"Really."
Greed is always the problem.
The desire to knock on the door of truth at a higher place.
That desire is like a bomb nestled in every mage's heart.
"But the solution is surprisingly simple."
Oscar extended his index finger and pointed at Fran.
"In short, the problem arose because you lack mana control. So we only need to compensate for that."
"......You make it sound easy. But that's a matter of innate talent."
Mana control and perception are commonly described as the sixth sense.
That is because they belong to a realm that must be perceived instinctively rather than understood intellectually.
No one needs to be taught how to hear with their ears or see with their eyes.
"Usually, yes. But there's a way to forcibly increase that ability."
Of course, it wasn't a method anyone could use.
Even in the past, only a tiny number knew this method, and barely a handful among them succeeded.
"......What are you doing all of a sudden?"
Scratch, scrape, scrape!
Fran watched Oscar suddenly begin drawing something on the training-room floor and asked.
"Me? I'm drawing a summoning circle."
"What are you summoning? You're not...... going to tell me to make a contract with a demon or something, are you?"
Oscar smirked at Fran's thoroughly frightened face.
"Are you insane? Besides, those demon bastards probably wouldn't come even if I called them."
They would piss themselves and run the instant they smelled Oscar's soul.
"Then...... what are you trying to summon?"
"A spirit."
Scratch, scrape!
After perfectly completing the summoning circle, Oscar answered.
"I'm going to summon a wind spirit and implant it in your body."