Chapter 16: Fundamentals Like These Pay Off Later

According to Resina, mana-control techniques beneath the level of magic and magic arts—in other words, skills—weren’t generally considered very important. Apparently, most people used nothing beyond physical reinforcement. Why? Perhaps because skills were rather plain.

From my perspective, the existence of skills alone made this world far more convenient than my previous one. Besides basic physical reinforcement, a little ingenuity allowed them to accomplish all sorts of other things too. Admittedly, they were still plain.

Now then. I began instructing Penne in those skills. While Resina and I hurried through all manner of preparations, I intended to thoroughly drill the full range of fundamentals into her.

“I asked you to make me stronger, Crow… Is this really going to help?”

Penne sounded dissatisfied, but once she acquired this skill, its importance would sink in.

We were inside Library, one of my subspaces.

With her right hand, Penne turned pages in a book on a lectern. With her left, she solved completely unrelated arithmetic problems, and on top of that, she marched in place. Yet she was still holding a proper conversation with me. I thought she was quite talented.

“Crap. My head’s getting all mixed up.”

“There isn’t enough mana reaching your brain. Concentrate… Just like physical reinforcement. You can keep going.”

“Th-this is brutal… Hey, Crow, what use is this Parallel Thought skill? I heard the explanation, but I still don’t really get it.”

Hmm. It seemed ordinarily useful to me.

By gathering mana in their brains and continuously burdening themselves through multitasking, the people of this world could learn a skill called Parallel Thought. Commoners who performed a great deal of desk work sometimes acquired it normally, as did mages. In fact, I’d learned it myself by observing the mana inside such people.

Generally speaking, methods for acquiring skills were extremely simple. The starting point was to push yourself so thoroughly that your body learned, “Ah, I should use mana to survive this crisis.” Then, once repeated training made that response feel “normal,” you had acquired the skill.

Naturally, pushing oneself that far made for harsh training. If the exercises were easy, your proficiency wouldn’t increase at all.

In my case, I’d trained desperately to maintain my subspaces, but perhaps Penne needed motivation to continue this training. Let me see…

“To give you an easy example… Everyone stops moving before firing Magic Bullet, right?”

“Yeah.”

“This will let you fire while running.”

“What? That’s insanely strong!”

“That’s why mages often learn it. And your weapon is an axe, Penne. Suppose we turned it into a magic tool. Parallel Thought would let you activate the tool’s functions while fighting at close range.”

“No way!”

Penne became wildly excited and suddenly displayed tremendous motivation. The speed of her reading, writing, and marching all increased at once.

Good, good. At this rate, she might acquire Thought Acceleration and Enhanced Learning at the same time. They looked plain at first glance, but fundamentals like these paid off later.

Incidentally, Resina was already doing the same exercises.

Until now, I’d experimented with training methods solely for the sake of my slow life. This might be a good opportunity to organize them into a systematic body of knowledge. I could find myself training more people in the future.

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Leaving Penne in Library, I exited the subspace and visited a certain mansion.

This was Branch Head Gaccha’s private residence. It looked modest compared to a noble estate, but for a commoner, it was quite luxurious. Then again, if the head of the Gazania Family lived in a shabby house, he wouldn’t be able to maintain appearances.

When I raised a hand to the gatekeeper, he hurriedly opened the gate. Ah, he’d probably witnessed my duel with Galio. From there, I was smoothly escorted to the mansion’s reception room.

“Underboss Candidate. I deeply apologize for our discourtesy the other day.”

The person who appeared with those words was Gatango, the branch head’s second son.

He was ten, like me, and I’d become rather close with the Gazania Family. I wanted to improve my relationship with him too, if possible… but how did he feel about that?

“Come to think of it, your father choked you unconscious. Were you all right? I didn’t see you at the feast, so I was a little worried.”

“…I was placed under house arrest and told to carefully consider how I should conduct myself from now on.”

Ah. So that was what happened.

Galio might have ordered him to do it, but Gatango probing my mana during our handshake had triggered the duel. I’d intended my declaration of no punishment to cover that as well, but perhaps the branch head couldn’t allow the incident to pass without discipline.

Still… this might be an opportunity.

Gatango seemed slightly timid, but he was said to be good at using his head. In the muscle-brained Cineraria Family, that made him a rare talent. If trained from this age, he had the potential to become a splendid intellectual yakuza in the future.

“If you have nothing to do, there’s something I’d like you to help with. I have a project that requires extra hands.”

“…Yes. But after someone as disrespectful as me—”

“Dragging up mistakes made at a feast is boorish. And if you understand that your reputation has fallen, then recover it through the quality of your work. I’m offering you that opportunity. I’ll speak to the branch head.”

Hope lit Gatango’s eyes at my words.

But I was sorry.

—This job was actually quite the disaster project—a death march.

“We’ll discuss the work in detail tomorrow. I have preparations to make on my side, and I came here today for another matter.”

“Yes. What business brings you here, Underboss Candidate?”

“I came to see Garnet.”

When I said that, Gatango’s face reddened slightly.

No, um. It wasn’t anything romantic.

“There’s something I want to do in her workshop.”

“There’s something you want to do in my sister’s workshop.”

“That’s right, but… Hmm?”

“Understood. I’ll tell the household to cleanse every inch of my sister’s body. Please relax here, Underboss Candidate. We’ll polish her to perfection with the greatest possible speed.”

Gatango bowed deeply and left the reception room.

How should I put this… I had a feeling he’d seriously misunderstood me.

Also, was the claim that he was good at using his head actually true? It had started to seem highly doubtful.