Chapter 180: Dead or Lie [2]

"What is it, sir?"

Ilya had found himself dragged into Professor Hakon’s office and directed toward one of the chairs in front of his desk.

Hakon closed the door behind them and took his own seat without offering any explanation for why this conversation apparently required the privacy of his office.

"It’s about your abilities," Hakon finally said. "I’d like to help you cultivate them properly."

"...Pardon?"

"I’ve been observing you since the semester began, Belozersky, and after the Hunting Grounds, I believe I’ve seen enough to make a reasonable judgment."

Hakon leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.

"Among the students in your year, you are probably the most promising prospect I have seen in terms of combat ability. Not magical talent specifically, mind you, but the ability to actually fight."

Hakon stared at him without the slightest embarrassment.

"In other words, this is favoritism."

"...You’re remarkably open about that, sir."

"I see no reason not to be. Professors invest additional time in promising students all the time, regardless of what pleasant language the academy prefers to use when describing it." Hakon shrugged. "I think you’re worth that time, so I’m offering it to you."

That was certainly one way of putting it.

"I don’t understand one thing, though."

Hakon tapped a finger against the armrest of his chair as he studied Ilya.

"I’ve heard enough about your time in the Knight Department to know how you were regarded there, and frankly, I don’t understand why someone of your caliber was ever considered untalented. Whatever they were looking for, it clearly wasn’t the same thing I’ve been watching for the past month."

"I wasn’t exactly considered incompetent," Ilya eventually said. "They thought I was too rigid."

"Rigid?"

From what he remembered, practically every instructor who had ever taught him swordsmanship had eventually arrived at the same conclusion.

That he was rigid, inflexible, overly dependent on what he had been taught, and far too reluctant to deviate from established forms whenever a situation demanded something different.

Ilya had never been particularly bad with a sword, and even his harshest instructors rarely found much fault with his fundamentals, but executing what he had been taught and adapting beyond it were apparently two very different things.

"And do you think you were rigid?"

"Probably." Ilya shrugged. "But I didn’t have much of a choice, sir. I couldn’t use Aura, and—"

"Hey. What do you think differentiates Aura and mana?"

Ilya stopped.

The sudden question caught him off guard, although the answer itself seemed simple enough.

"Aura strengthens the body, while mana is used to cast magic."

"That’s the answer I’d expect from a first-year."

"I am a first-year."

"Unfortunately."

Ilya frowned, but Hakon continued before he could complain.

"Your answer isn’t necessarily wrong, but you’re describing their applications rather than their actual differences."

Hakon leaned forward slightly, resting his arms against the desk.

"Aura is naturally suited to the body. A knight circulates it through himself, reinforces what is already there, and eventually learns to extend that reinforcement beyond his flesh and into whatever weapon he happens to be holding."

Ilya nodded. He had spent most of his childhood watching exactly that happen, even if his own body had stubbornly refused to cooperate whenever he attempted it himself.

"But mana is different," Hakon continued. "It isn’t naturally bound to physical reinforcement in the same way, which is why a wizard doesn’t become stronger simply because he possesses more of it. We circulate mana, give it structure, impose a function upon it, and use that function to produce a phenomenon. Fire, wind, force, light, reinforcement, whatever the spell happens to demand."

"Reinforcement?"

Hakon smiled.

Ilya immediately realized that had been the word the professor wanted him to notice.

"There’s no law stating that mana must leave your body before it becomes useful, Belozersky. In fact, you’ve already proven that yourself."

The Ring of Fire.

He had become so accustomed to circulating the technique that he barely thought about it anymore.

Mana moved continuously through his body, following a constructed path and producing heat without ever needing to manifest as a conventional spell outside him.

Hakon noticed the change in his expression.

"You’ve thought of something."

"...Something like that."

"Good. Then you’re beginning to understand my point."

Hakon picked up the pen from his desk and rolled it slowly between his fingers.

"Aura reinforces the body directly because that is what Aura naturally does. Mana does not, which makes using it for the same purpose much more complicated, but complicated and impossible are two entirely different things."

Ilya’s eyes narrowed.

"So you’re saying a wizard can imitate Aura?"

"Not quite, and you already know why."

Ilya did.

Aura and mana were fundamentally different energies, and no amount of talent with one guaranteed even the slightest aptitude for the other.

Aura originated from the body and was naturally suited to reinforcing it, while mana was accumulated and circulated through an entirely different system before being structured through Circles and given purpose through magic.

That much was elementary.

It was also why Ilya’s complete inability to awaken Aura had never contradicted his talent for magic.

His body had simply never possessed the aptitude necessary to use Aura, whereas mana had responded to him almost absurdly well once he finally began studying it, particularly when it came to circulation and control.

But Hakon wasn’t trying to teach him any of that.

He was making a different point.

"You know the difference between them academically," Hakon continued. "What I’m telling you is that you still fight as though that difference doesn’t matter."

"...."

"For years, every example of supernatural close combat you’ve ever been exposed to came from knights. Your father, your sister, your instructors, practically everyone around you used Aura, so naturally, whenever you think about surpassing the physical limits of your body, you think in terms of what Aura would have allowed you to do."

Ilya couldn’t immediately disagree.

Even after becoming a wizard, he still measured certain physical limitations against the same standard.

How much faster could he have moved with Aura?

How much stronger would a particular strike have been?

How much easier would it have been to withstand an impact if he could reinforce his body like Anastasiya could?

He knew mana wasn’t Aura.

Perhaps the problem was that some part of him still wanted it to be.

"That’s what I want you to get rid of," Hakon said. "Not your swordsmanship, not your training, and certainly not years of experience. I want you to stop treating Aura as the missing piece that would finally make all of that complete."

Hakon picked up the pen from his desk and rolled it between his fingers.

"You could use reinforcement magic. There are spells that strengthen the body, reduce damage, improve movement, and accomplish plenty of things that superficially resemble what knights achieve with Aura. But if you spend your time trying to reproduce Aura one function at a time, you’ll always be using mana to imitate an energy naturally better suited to the task."

Ilya understood where he was going now.

"You want me to approach the problem as a wizard."

"Exactly."

Hakon pointed the pen toward him.

"If you need greater acceleration, don’t immediately ask how you can strengthen your legs. Ask how magic can make you reach the other side of the room faster. Maybe the answer is reinforcement, but perhaps it’s force, wind, reduced resistance, or something neither of us has thought of yet."

He placed the pen back onto the desk.

"If you need to survive an impact, don’t start by asking how an Aura Knight would reinforce his body. Ask how you can prevent that impact from doing what it was supposed to do. Reinforce the point of contact, disperse the force, redirect it, interrupt the attack before it lands. The objective remains the same, but you have no reason to arrive there through the same method."

Ilya remained silent.

"If your sword needs greater cutting power, the obvious answer for a knight is Aura. For you, that answer doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean you need to find the closest magical substitute and settle for it."

Hakon leaned forward.

"Reduce the resistance against the blade. Accelerate the weapon during the final portion of the swing. Alter the force behind the impact. Build a spell around the movement itself if that’s what works."

The result might look similar from the outside, but the method would be completely different.

Something about that explanation bothered Ilya, mostly because none of it was information he didn’t already know.

In fact, he was already doing most of what Hakon was describing whenever he fought seriously, from using external force to propel his movements to manipulating the battlefield in ways that allowed him to compensate for the physical advantages he lacked.

The problem was that almost all of it came from Niflheim.

The Blizzard could propel him forward with enough force to compensate for his lack of Aura, change his direction in ways his body normally couldn’t manage, and add momentum behind movements that would otherwise have depended entirely on his physical strength.

In other words, Ilya had already stopped fighting like a conventional knight a long time ago.

But perhaps Hakon’s point went further than that.

Ilya had become so accustomed to using Niflheim whenever his ordinary physical abilities weren’t enough that he had never seriously considered how many of those same problems could be solved through conventional magic.

Whenever he needed explosive movement, he called upon the Blizzard, and whenever he needed to control the battlefield, Niflheim was almost always the first answer that came to mind.

That was convenient.

Perhaps too convenient.

Niflheim was powerful, but it wasn’t something Ilya particularly wanted to depend upon for every serious battle, especially what continued use of it was doing to his body.

If ordinary magic could reproduce even a fraction of the utility he currently depended on Niflheim to provide, then he wouldn’t need to open his Domain every time an opponent pushed him beyond what his body could handle.

"Sir, do you perhaps—"

"You have a Domain, don’t you?"

"...."

Ilya slowly leaned back in his chair.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Of course you don’t."

"I’m glad we understand each other."

"We don’t."

Ilya clicked his tongue.

Hakon didn’t look particularly triumphant about catching him, nor did he seem surprised by Ilya’s immediate denial. If anything, his expression suggested that he had expected exactly that response and had already decided it wasn’t worth arguing over.

"I don’t know what your Domain is," Hakon continued. "Nor am I particularly interested in forcing you to tell me. If you’ve chosen to keep it private, then I assume you have your reasons."

"Because I really don’t have a Domain."

"And I’m not a Professor."

"...."

"...?"

For several seconds, neither of them said anything.

"Belozersky, I teach Practical Casting."

"I am aware."

"I watched you throughout the Hunting Grounds."

"I am also aware."

"And you have a habit of suddenly accomplishing things that don’t correspond particularly well with the spells I’ve watched you cast."

That shut him up.

Hakon rested an elbow against the armrest and continued before Ilya could manufacture another denial.

"Your movement is the most obvious example. There are moments when your acceleration changes without the casting sequence I would expect from a movement spell, and there are other moments when your body changes direction in ways that clearly involve an external force. I’ve watched you cast enough times to recognize your habits, and whatever you’re using in those moments isn’t part of your normal repertoire."

Ilya said nothing.

That still wasn’t proof.

Even then, Hakon smiled, as if convinced he was right.

"In any case, Belozersky. I don’t need to know what the phenomenon is called, how it works, or what conditions you need to satisfy before using it. What matters to me is that there is clearly something you rely upon whenever ordinary magic stops being sufficient."

He paused for a moment.

"And I think you rely on it too much."