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"Good. Then let me ask my final question."
He adjusted his posture and began staring intently at me.
Hearing that it was his final question, I couldn't help but feel a strange tension, unsure what he might ask.
"Can you swear that, when it comes to anything related to Silver Ring, you will forever remain my steadfast ally?"
I found the sudden dramatic posturing behind that question a bit ridiculous.
To think he'd use an entire question on something like that.
"Yes. I swear it."
But since he'd asked so seriously, I figured I should answer just as seriously.
Whatever I might end up thinking or feeling down the road, I could easily swear to this much right now.
If it helped clear away any pointless suspicion, it made no difference to me either way.
"Good. Then what's your final question?"
At his question, I put on an expression just as serious as his had been a moment ago.
Sensing something was clearly off, the Tower Master's expression tensed up in response.
Looking at him, I swallowed hard once and finally spoke.
"This token... what exactly is the spending limit on it?"
……
"Hahahaha!"
I walked along, following behind Gary, grinning brightly.
The Tower Master's answer had been quite satisfying, to say the least.
"You must have been having a rough time financially lately, I take it."
Even under Gary's sympathetic gaze, I kept smiling happily.
There's no limit at all! No limit!
To think a day this happy would actually come in my lifetime.
"Yes. It was rough. But I don't expect it to be rough at all from now on... hahahaha!"
Sandwiches? Never heard of them. I'm living off nothing but meat from now on.
I hadn't even eaten anything yet, but I already felt full.
"Please wait here for a moment. Is there any particular weapon you need? Feel free to let me know."
A weapon I needed, huh.
Having a top-tier Mana Stone would be nice, though there was no way he'd actually give me one of those.
Since this was the Tower, though, I figured there might be something special here I could ask for.
"Actually... I was born with a constitution that makes it impossible for me to infuse mana into a sword naturally."
At my sudden confession, Gary looked at me, taken aback.
"That's why, even though I'm not a mage, I ended up in the Magic Department... I was hoping that maybe, through a deeper study of mana, I might eventually be able to infuse mana into a sword after all!"
At my somewhat pitiful goal, he wore an expression of genuine sympathy.
"Oh dear... I do hope two years of academy study is enough to help you master mana properly. Unfortunately, if you can't handle mana, moving beyond second year would essentially be impossible..."
That I couldn't handle mana would prevent me from advancing past second year.
This was news to me.
"...Really? If you can't handle mana, do you end up held back a year or something?"
"Yes. Starting from third-year classes, most of the coursework leans heavily practical... so having a certain baseline level of mana usage is considered a basic prerequisite. And since the academy doesn't actually have a system for repeating a year, that would effectively mean immediate expulsion."
To begin with, my body was constitutionally incapable of even holding mana at all.
Given this, I'd probably need to worry less about ranking in the top 100 and more about getting expelled altogether.
Reading my expression, Gary patted me on the shoulder with a few words of encouragement.
"Don't lose hope. You'll definitely be able to handle mana within two years. Though I'm technically in charge of fourth-years, since fate has connected us... please feel free to come find me anytime you need help. I'll do what I can to support the growth of your mana-related abilities."
For now, I decided to set this particular problem aside for later thought.
If push came to shove, I could always just ask the Tower Master for help.
He was my reliable backer now, after all!
"So, on that note... the Tower has all kinds of fascinating items, doesn't it? By any chance, is there a cursed sword, or some kind of sword that can block a mana-infused blade without needing mana infused into it itself?"
I certainly wasn't the only person who'd experimented with all sorts of methods to deal with mana infused swords.
For swordsmiths in particular, it was practically treated as a lifelong pursuit.
I'd heard from a few different craftsmen on the topic before, and apparently, even if you ground down an entire Mana Stone and forged it directly into a sword, once the crafting process finished, whatever mana had been contained within simply evaporated away.
Leaving behind only the mana conductivity rate corresponding to that particular Mana Stone's grade, barely maintained.
But ignoring these limitations entirely, there existed certain special swords capable of independently containing mana on their own, which people referred to as swords blessed by mana, or, more commonly, cursed swords.
These swords could block mana-infused attacks without requiring any particular effort at all, and, on top of that, each of them possessed its own unique special ability.
Take, for instance, the Marionette's Ghost, the very thing I'd attempted to give form to earlier.
The Marionette's Ghost could independently spread an intense aura across a wide area, and any knight caught within that aura found their ability to use mana severely restricted.
Which was exactly why, despite the ghost's owner being relatively weaker compared to the wielders of other cursed swords, he'd still been able to massacre thousands of people.
And it was precisely because of that ability that I, having used absolutely no mana at all, had ultimately been able to kill him.
"A sword capable of blocking mana-infused swords, hmm... something does come to mind, actually..."
"Oh? What is it?"
"There have been actual attempts, even among mages, to artificially create cursed swords. It involved a technique using something called Enchantment."
"Oh, Enchantment?"
"Yes. The idea was to artificially embed a formula into the surface of a sword to produce an effect similar to a cursed sword's."
"...Was, meaning? Did it fail?"
"Yes. Because the moment a completed formula was embedded, the spell would activate instantly, right on the spot, which ultimately caused the whole approach to fail."
'Hmm... so, say, for example, if you tried enchanting a Fire Worm spell onto a sword, it would need to activate at the necessary moment, but since it would activate the instant the Enchantment was applied instead, there was no practical way to actually use it in real combat... is that roughly what he means?'
"So we tried inscribing the shape of the formula onto the sword instead, engraving it, and then attempting to infuse mana into it that way... but for some reason, the formula simply wouldn't respond to mana infused by a person, only to mana coming from a Mana Stone."
I figured this could be understood along a similar logic to how my Talent, Editor, could produce a sword from the flow of mana within a blade, and produce a spell from the flow of mana used to create magic.
"Using a Mana Stone does resolve the issue of triggering the formula properly... but given the limited size of a sword, the level of formula you could actually inscribe onto it was fairly restricted, whereas using a spell even once, regardless of type, consumed an intermediate grade or higher Mana Stone each time..."
So basically, it sounded like it could technically be made to work somehow, but ultimately ended up dismissed as a failed spell due to some practical, grown-up sort of limitation.
An intermediate grade Mana Stone alone would cost at least 50 gold each, so it was pretty clear no one would be willing to spend 50 gold just to launch a single fireball.
"Our research team assumed the reason the formula didn't respond to mana emitted by a human was because the formula had originally been fixed in place within a sword. Knowing that, we tried applying the same method directly to the human body instead, but..."
"...But?"
"The formula did activate, but because the body's own mana clashed directly with the formula's mana, it ended up exploding right on the spot."
Seeing my expression, apparently full of confusion, he continued a bit awkwardly.
"In theory, if you could either continuously supply fresh Mana Stones to a sword engraved with an enchantment, or find some way to work around that issue, you should, theoretically, be able to block a mana-infused sword. That's how it would work, I suppose?"
'Theoretically! Damn it! Way to get my hopes up over nothing!'
"In truth, Enchantment is a type of magic that's incredibly complex and dangerous, yet endlessly fascinating and still largely unexplored."
Just as my disappointment was starting to build up, the Tower Master, having said he needed a moment, appeared and smoothly joined the conversation.
"Just as human imagination shapes the form magic takes, depending on a Mana Stone's inherent nature, wildly different reactions can emerge even from the exact same formula."
"Mana Stones have some kind of inherent nature?"
"That's right. Think of it this way: depending on the environment where a Mana Stone was formed, it gets assigned something akin to an elemental attribute. Now, while a human can only ever extract mana itself from a Mana Stone, an enchanted formula draws directly from the Mana Stone's own inherent power, which means it can pull out even the attribute power contained within it as well."
"Then what would happen if a human were able to extract even that attribute power from a Mana Stone?"
At my question, the Tower Master stroked his chin, eyes rolling upward as if calculating something.
"The value of Mana Stones would increase at least twentyfold... enough to completely overturn the entire existing grading system for Mana Stones as we know it."
Wow, so that meant everyone had only ever been using about one-twentieth of a Mana Stone's true potential up until now?
I still didn't fully understand what exactly this "attribute power" even was, but given my situation, needing to craft and use a weapon made from Mana Stones, I felt it was something I genuinely needed to grasp accurately.
"If you're interested in Enchantment, I'll have my research journal handed over to you when you head back to the academy."
"Tower Master!"
Gary shouted, startled at the Tower Master's words.
I wondered what could possibly be wrong with simply handing over a research journal.
"Wasn't Enchantment research halted specifically because it could become an extraordinarily dangerous form of magic depending on how it's used? And you're just going to show such an important document to a student!"
"Your concern is valid, but I just received a report from the Elixir family's second son a moment ago, and it contained information about this boy. Apparently, he can use Mana Stones like a weapon."
At his words, Gary froze up completely, unable to say another word.
"This boy is clearly already aware of that ability of his, which is exactly why he's grown curious about Enchantment magic. Isn't that right?"
The Tower Master was correct.
Even though I'd found a way to block mana-infused swords, treating Mana Stones like disposable consumables felt like far too great a financial burden.
But what if there were a way to boost a Mana Stone's efficiency by at least twentyfold?
It was entirely possible that a single intermediate grade Mana Stone alone could be enough to complete the ghost.
"And perhaps... this boy, with such a peculiar Talent, might just be the one capable of reversing Enchantment magic's failure. Wouldn't you agree?"
"Yes. I understand. It has been a shame to abandon such magic entirely... but this is still far too dangerous. Please make it a condition that I personally accompany him whenever he conducts any research related to Enchantment."
'Ah, why!'
For a moment, I felt a flash of irritation, but soon found myself accepting it.
Considering how I'd been struggling just to properly understand even the classes students normally attended, having someone available to read through and interpret the journal alongside me didn't seem like such a bad deal after all.
"Well... that's really up to Benjamin to decide."
At the Tower Master's words, Gary turned to look at me with a hardened expression.
The look in his eyes suggested that if I said no, he might just chew me up, bones and all.
"Yes. I'll do that."
"By the way, how did we even end up on the topic of Enchantment?"
At the Tower Master's question, I explained what had just happened a moment earlier.
"According to the reports coming up from the academy, you're supposedly talented enough to reproduce even a spell you've only seen once, correct?"
Well, that was technically accurate.
Though there was the small condition that I had to take a hit first before I could actually manage that.
I swallowed the words down and gave an awkward smile instead.
"In any case, so you need a sword capable of blocking mana right now, is that it? In that case..."
The Tower Master opened his pocket dimension once again and began rummaging through it.
After digging around for quite a while, his eyes widened as if he'd found something, and he pulled it out in one swift motion.
"For now, why don't you try using this sword to tide things over. It happens to be a cursed sword in its own right, you know."
"Good. Then let me ask my final question."
He adjusted his posture and began staring intently at me.
Hearing that it was his final question, I couldn't help but feel a strange tension, unsure what he might ask.
"Can you swear that, when it comes to anything related to Silver Ring, you will forever remain my steadfast ally?"
I found the sudden dramatic posturing behind that question a bit ridiculous.
To think he'd use an entire question on something like that.
"Yes. I swear it."
But since he'd asked so seriously, I figured I should answer just as seriously.
Whatever I might end up thinking or feeling down the road, I could easily swear to this much right now.
If it helped clear away any pointless suspicion, it made no difference to me either way.
"Good. Then what's your final question?"
At his question, I put on an expression just as serious as his had been a moment ago.
Sensing something was clearly off, the Tower Master's expression tensed up in response.
Looking at him, I swallowed hard once and finally spoke.
"This token... what exactly is the spending limit on it?"
……
"Hahahaha!"
I walked along, following behind Gary, grinning brightly.
The Tower Master's answer had been quite satisfying, to say the least.
"You must have been having a rough time financially lately, I take it."
Even under Gary's sympathetic gaze, I kept smiling happily.
There's no limit at all! No limit!
To think a day this happy would actually come in my lifetime.
"Yes. It was rough. But I don't expect it to be rough at all from now on... hahahaha!"
Sandwiches? Never heard of them. I'm living off nothing but meat from now on.
I hadn't even eaten anything yet, but I already felt full.
"Please wait here for a moment. Is there any particular weapon you need? Feel free to let me know."
A weapon I needed, huh.
Having a top-tier Mana Stone would be nice, though there was no way he'd actually give me one of those.
Since this was the Tower, though, I figured there might be something special here I could ask for.
"Actually... I was born with a constitution that makes it impossible for me to infuse mana into a sword naturally."
At my sudden confession, Gary looked at me, taken aback.
"That's why, even though I'm not a mage, I ended up in the Magic Department... I was hoping that maybe, through a deeper study of mana, I might eventually be able to infuse mana into a sword after all!"
At my somewhat pitiful goal, he wore an expression of genuine sympathy.
"Oh dear... I do hope two years of academy study is enough to help you master mana properly. Unfortunately, if you can't handle mana, moving beyond second year would essentially be impossible..."
That I couldn't handle mana would prevent me from advancing past second year.
This was news to me.
"...Really? If you can't handle mana, do you end up held back a year or something?"
"Yes. Starting from third-year classes, most of the coursework leans heavily practical... so having a certain baseline level of mana usage is considered a basic prerequisite. And since the academy doesn't actually have a system for repeating a year, that would effectively mean immediate expulsion."
To begin with, my body was constitutionally incapable of even holding mana at all.
Given this, I'd probably need to worry less about ranking in the top 100 and more about getting expelled altogether.
Reading my expression, Gary patted me on the shoulder with a few words of encouragement.
"Don't lose hope. You'll definitely be able to handle mana within two years. Though I'm technically in charge of fourth-years, since fate has connected us... please feel free to come find me anytime you need help. I'll do what I can to support the growth of your mana-related abilities."
For now, I decided to set this particular problem aside for later thought.
If push came to shove, I could always just ask the Tower Master for help.
He was my reliable backer now, after all!
"So, on that note... the Tower has all kinds of fascinating items, doesn't it? By any chance, is there a cursed sword, or some kind of sword that can block a mana-infused blade without needing mana infused into it itself?"
I certainly wasn't the only person who'd experimented with all sorts of methods to deal with mana infused swords.
For swordsmiths in particular, it was practically treated as a lifelong pursuit.
I'd heard from a few different craftsmen on the topic before, and apparently, even if you ground down an entire Mana Stone and forged it directly into a sword, once the crafting process finished, whatever mana had been contained within simply evaporated away.
Leaving behind only the mana conductivity rate corresponding to that particular Mana Stone's grade, barely maintained.
But ignoring these limitations entirely, there existed certain special swords capable of independently containing mana on their own, which people referred to as swords blessed by mana, or, more commonly, cursed swords.
These swords could block mana-infused attacks without requiring any particular effort at all, and, on top of that, each of them possessed its own unique special ability.
Take, for instance, the Marionette's Ghost, the very thing I'd attempted to give form to earlier.
The Marionette's Ghost could independently spread an intense aura across a wide area, and any knight caught within that aura found their ability to use mana severely restricted.
Which was exactly why, despite the ghost's owner being relatively weaker compared to the wielders of other cursed swords, he'd still been able to massacre thousands of people.
And it was precisely because of that ability that I, having used absolutely no mana at all, had ultimately been able to kill him.
"A sword capable of blocking mana-infused swords, hmm... something does come to mind, actually..."
"Oh? What is it?"
"There have been actual attempts, even among mages, to artificially create cursed swords. It involved a technique using something called Enchantment."
"Oh, Enchantment?"
"Yes. The idea was to artificially embed a formula into the surface of a sword to produce an effect similar to a cursed sword's."
"...Was, meaning? Did it fail?"
"Yes. Because the moment a completed formula was embedded, the spell would activate instantly, right on the spot, which ultimately caused the whole approach to fail."
'Hmm... so, say, for example, if you tried enchanting a Fire Worm spell onto a sword, it would need to activate at the necessary moment, but since it would activate the instant the Enchantment was applied instead, there was no practical way to actually use it in real combat... is that roughly what he means?'
"So we tried inscribing the shape of the formula onto the sword instead, engraving it, and then attempting to infuse mana into it that way... but for some reason, the formula simply wouldn't respond to mana infused by a person, only to mana coming from a Mana Stone."
I figured this could be understood along a similar logic to how my Talent, Editor, could produce a sword from the flow of mana within a blade, and produce a spell from the flow of mana used to create magic.
"Using a Mana Stone does resolve the issue of triggering the formula properly... but given the limited size of a sword, the level of formula you could actually inscribe onto it was fairly restricted, whereas using a spell even once, regardless of type, consumed an intermediate grade or higher Mana Stone each time..."
So basically, it sounded like it could technically be made to work somehow, but ultimately ended up dismissed as a failed spell due to some practical, grown-up sort of limitation.
An intermediate grade Mana Stone alone would cost at least 50 gold each, so it was pretty clear no one would be willing to spend 50 gold just to launch a single fireball.
"Our research team assumed the reason the formula didn't respond to mana emitted by a human was because the formula had originally been fixed in place within a sword. Knowing that, we tried applying the same method directly to the human body instead, but..."
"...But?"
"The formula did activate, but because the body's own mana clashed directly with the formula's mana, it ended up exploding right on the spot."
Seeing my expression, apparently full of confusion, he continued a bit awkwardly.
"In theory, if you could either continuously supply fresh Mana Stones to a sword engraved with an enchantment, or find some way to work around that issue, you should, theoretically, be able to block a mana-infused sword. That's how it would work, I suppose?"
'Theoretically! Damn it! Way to get my hopes up over nothing!'
"In truth, Enchantment is a type of magic that's incredibly complex and dangerous, yet endlessly fascinating and still largely unexplored."
Just as my disappointment was starting to build up, the Tower Master, having said he needed a moment, appeared and smoothly joined the conversation.
"Just as human imagination shapes the form magic takes, depending on a Mana Stone's inherent nature, wildly different reactions can emerge even from the exact same formula."
"Mana Stones have some kind of inherent nature?"
"That's right. Think of it this way: depending on the environment where a Mana Stone was formed, it gets assigned something akin to an elemental attribute. Now, while a human can only ever extract mana itself from a Mana Stone, an enchanted formula draws directly from the Mana Stone's own inherent power, which means it can pull out even the attribute power contained within it as well."
"Then what would happen if a human were able to extract even that attribute power from a Mana Stone?"
At my question, the Tower Master stroked his chin, eyes rolling upward as if calculating something.
"The value of Mana Stones would increase at least twentyfold... enough to completely overturn the entire existing grading system for Mana Stones as we know it."
Wow, so that meant everyone had only ever been using about one-twentieth of a Mana Stone's true potential up until now?
I still didn't fully understand what exactly this "attribute power" even was, but given my situation, needing to craft and use a weapon made from Mana Stones, I felt it was something I genuinely needed to grasp accurately.
"If you're interested in Enchantment, I'll have my research journal handed over to you when you head back to the academy."
"Tower Master!"
Gary shouted, startled at the Tower Master's words.
I wondered what could possibly be wrong with simply handing over a research journal.
"Wasn't Enchantment research halted specifically because it could become an extraordinarily dangerous form of magic depending on how it's used? And you're just going to show such an important document to a student!"
"Your concern is valid, but I just received a report from the Elixir family's second son a moment ago, and it contained information about this boy. Apparently, he can use Mana Stones like a weapon."
At his words, Gary froze up completely, unable to say another word.
"This boy is clearly already aware of that ability of his, which is exactly why he's grown curious about Enchantment magic. Isn't that right?"
The Tower Master was correct.
Even though I'd found a way to block mana-infused swords, treating Mana Stones like disposable consumables felt like far too great a financial burden.
But what if there were a way to boost a Mana Stone's efficiency by at least twentyfold?
It was entirely possible that a single intermediate grade Mana Stone alone could be enough to complete the ghost.
"And perhaps... this boy, with such a peculiar Talent, might just be the one capable of reversing Enchantment magic's failure. Wouldn't you agree?"
"Yes. I understand. It has been a shame to abandon such magic entirely... but this is still far too dangerous. Please make it a condition that I personally accompany him whenever he conducts any research related to Enchantment."
'Ah, why!'
For a moment, I felt a flash of irritation, but soon found myself accepting it.
Considering how I'd been struggling just to properly understand even the classes students normally attended, having someone available to read through and interpret the journal alongside me didn't seem like such a bad deal after all.
"Well... that's really up to Benjamin to decide."
At the Tower Master's words, Gary turned to look at me with a hardened expression.
The look in his eyes suggested that if I said no, he might just chew me up, bones and all.
"Yes. I'll do that."
"By the way, how did we even end up on the topic of Enchantment?"
At the Tower Master's question, I explained what had just happened a moment earlier.
"According to the reports coming up from the academy, you're supposedly talented enough to reproduce even a spell you've only seen once, correct?"
Well, that was technically accurate.
Though there was the small condition that I had to take a hit first before I could actually manage that.
I swallowed the words down and gave an awkward smile instead.
"In any case, so you need a sword capable of blocking mana right now, is that it? In that case..."
The Tower Master opened his pocket dimension once again and began rummaging through it.
After digging around for quite a while, his eyes widened as if he'd found something, and he pulled it out in one swift motion.
"For now, why don't you try using this sword to tide things over. It happens to be a cursed sword in its own right, you know."