Basic Magic is a pretty interesting class.

Of course, Jiang Cha doesn’t mean that there’s anything fun about dry spell models. Learning is against human nature, no matter what world you’re in.

No matter the species, slacking off, giving up, and doing the bare minimum are all instinctive. Even a species full of research fanatics only enjoys the moment their work pays off—and the rewards afterward. The part in between, spent scratching their heads and tearing their hair out, is just as painful for them as it is for anyone else.

The only reason this class was interesting was its instructor: a Grand Witch named Carol, with healthy, sun-kissed skin and a fiery, voluptuous figure. She was dressed in next to nothing. Her only bottoms were a pair of hot pants, showing off her long, healthy, springy legs. Her top was even more scandalous: just a distressed denim strip wrapped around her chest, leaving her breasts exposed to the air.

This was the Grand Witch named Carol, their Mentor for Basic Magic.

“Yo! You little brats miss me or what?!”

As soon as she walked in, Carol leaned halfway over the lectern. Her breasts looked ready to burst under the pressure, and from Jiang Cha’s angle, she could even see Carol’s raised backside. Damn, that was hot!

“Today’s lesson is this! The spell model for the second-tier spell Fireball... Lina, don’t you roll your eyes at me! I know your innate magic is Chain Fireball, so you don’t need this one. You’re still learning it! I’ll check everyone before class ends. If you can’t cast it, you’d better think real hard about what happens next!”

What made the class truly interesting was Carol’s teaching style. She already looked incredibly young, with a youthful, voluptuous body and a pretty, tempting face that made her look no older than twenty-two. She spoke in a very down-to-earth way, too.

She felt less like a Mentor and more like your own exasperating big sister.

The kind who acts all delicate and helpless outside, then comes home and cracks your skull open with her bare hands.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just Fireball, right? Sheesh.”

Unlike Lightning Bolt, Fireball was a second-tier spell. It used more magic and packed more power, and its spell model was correspondingly more complex.

At a glance, it looked like a geometric pattern made up of various irregular shapes.

Of course, after all the extra studying she’d done, Jiang Cha knew it wasn’t a pattern. Those were inscriptions.

The inscriptions did have meanings, but they weren’t a language or incantations. Instead, they were things built and derived through mathematical knowledge—a process known academically as Magic Analysis.

The Witches of the early days didn’t have nearly so many spells to learn. Most commonly used spells had been copied from individual Witches’ innate magic through Magic Analysis. It wasn’t until the second half of the twentieth century that Witches figured out the basic principles hidden within magic constructs, turning ordinary magic into a field of study that could be modified, optimized, and even created from scratch.

As the Little Witches racked their brains, trying to use magic to draw the spell model, Mentor Carol kept teaching. There was just a rather gleeful edge to her voice.

“Fireball has the simplest spell construct of all the second-tier spells. Just wait until you have to learn higher-tier magic. Those constructs are so complicated, just memorizing them will make your hair fall out.”

“Heh-heh. Take your time suffering, you little brats!”

The fastest way was definitely to understand the inscriptions first, then memorize the spell model based on their meanings and the rules of the construct. Any halfway decent Mentor would start by teaching them what the inscriptions meant.

But Carol wasn’t an ordinary Mentor. On the very first day of class, she’d assigned memorizing the inscriptions’ meanings as homework.

That was pure laziness.

As for Lina...

She hadn’t memorized a thing!

With those complicated construct rules, dizzying array of meanings, and insanely concentrated magical contamination, anyone who tried to memorize all that would be screwed! She wasn’t planning to create her own magic, so why put herself through it?

As long as she could memorize a spell and use it, that was enough. She could build up her skill through hard practice!

—That was how most Combat Witches felt about magic. Academic Witches were usually the fastest learners, but Combat Witches had stronger practical skills and more experience adapting on the fly.

So the little blonde loli’s eyes darted around before she scooted over to Jiang Cha with a grin. “Cha Bao, Cha Bao, do you understand it?”

“More or less.”

Jiang Cha hadn’t memorized the meaning of every inscription, either. She’d only learned some of the common basic ones while previewing the textbook Introduction to the Fundamentals of Magic.

She still had plenty more to learn. It had only been a short time, after all, and she wasn’t in a rush.

She’d learn bit by bit.

As it happened, though, she’d already learned the inscriptions and construct rules used in Fireball.

—It was one of the spells used as an example in the textbook.

“Teach me~”

Who could say no to a blonde loli looking at you with sparkling eyes and begging cutely?

Jiang Cha certainly couldn’t. So, under He Qin’s helpless gaze, she quietly began explaining it to Lina. “According to the first and third rules of spell construction, the Fireball model can be divided into four sections. This outermost ring is the first.”

The girl quickly drew the Fireball spell model on a sheet of paper. Then she grabbed a different-colored pen and casually drew a few lines to divide the model into four irregular sections. “According to the eighth basic law of construct theory, the outermost inscriptions stabilize the spell itself. So we can work out what they mean.”

“[Circular]?”

He Qin’s attention had been drawn over. At first, she’d stayed quiet, but now she couldn’t help blurting out her realization. “Oh, I get it!”

“Yeah, it means [circular].”

“Once we’ve worked out the meaning of the first section, we move on to the second and third. Those two describe Fireball’s basic properties, so this one means [scorching], and the third means [ionic]. Then we have the core inscription. What else could Fireball’s core inscription mean? It has to be [explosive]!”

In terms of problem-solving, it was a bit like a combination of fill-in-the-blank questions and physics problems from Jiang Cha’s “common sense”: first figure out which theorem or formula to use, then use the surrounding context to infer the next layer of meaning.

It was practically identical.

“Cha Bao, you’re definitely going to be a great teacher someday! Love you~ Mwah!”

Lina excitedly kissed the girl on the cheek.

Then she flipped her little hand, and a ball of blazing fire appeared in her palm. She looked toward Carol, utterly pleased with herself.

“Well, look at that!”

Mentor Carol raised an eyebrow from the lectern.

She knew exactly what Lina was capable of. A second-tier spell model wasn’t too complicated for her. Even if she just memorized it by rote, she could learn the whole thing in two hours—but there was no way she could’ve mastered it in less than twenty minutes.

So Carol looked at the pretty girl sitting beside Lina, who wore an innocent expression and still had a pen in her hand.

Then she glanced at the sheet of paper on the desk, covered in a diagram.

“You’re Jiang Cha, right?”

Ignoring Lina’s childish, sulky display, Carol went straight to the mastermind behind the “case.”

“Yes, Mentor.”

The girl nodded. She didn’t feel guilty, either. What was there to feel guilty about when she was just helping a classmate study?

“Can you cast Fireball at its full potential before class ends?”

Magic at its full potential.

This term was generally used to test how well a Witch had mastered a particular spell. A spell’s full potential was the strongest form it could reach.

The spell model itself imposed limits. If it wasn’t stable enough, it couldn’t withstand as much magic, which meant less power.

Only when you could construct the model perfectly and combine it with three casting techniques—Empowered Casting, Multi-Casting, and Instant Casting—could you say you’d reached a spell’s full potential. That meant the Witch had mastered the spell as much as possible and didn’t need to keep practicing it.

“Well...”

The girl looked a little troubled.

“Cha Bao hasn’t learned Multi-Casting yet, Mentor Carol.”

Seeing trouble coming, the little blonde loli immediately jumped in and shielded the girl.

Strictly speaking, the fourfold Lightning Bolt Jiang Cha had cast on the dueling field that morning didn’t count as Multi-Casting. Proper Multi-Casting started at five spells at minimum.

It was perfectly normal for low-tier spells to reach several dozen or even a hundred casts. Jiang Cha had used a trick at the time, forcing a single Lightning Bolt to become four with her powerful magic and incredible control.

“Oh, Multi-Casting? Basically, you construct several spell models at the same time, then release them all together... How many of your thought circuits have you developed?”

“Cha Bao only enrolled yesterday...”

“I wasn’t asking you.”

Bang!

Thud!

Carol impatiently swatted her without a second thought, sending the one-meter-thirty blonde loli flying over ten meters. She ended up embedded in the wall, stuck so fast no one could pry her out.

Carol was one of the Mentors in charge of the Battle Club, and she knew Lina well. She also knew how tough this one-meter-thirty blonde runt was, despite looking so delicate.

So she didn’t bother holding back.

Gulp.

The girl swallowed.

She wasn’t nearly as tough as Lina, so she immediately straightened up and answered respectfully. “Around thirty in normal casting. I can reach eighty at my limit.”

“Oh, you joined the Battle Club, then?”

But Carol didn’t seem like she was about to hit anyone. If anything, her expression looked... a little gentle?

“Y-yeah! But I’d rather pursue a secondary profession, so...”

“Come see me at the Battle Club this weekend.”

Jiang Cha tried to explain, but Carol didn’t listen at all. She tossed out one last sentence and turned to leave. “What are you all looking at? Have you memorized the constructs!? Can you cast them properly!? Keep staring and I’ll stick every last one of you in the wall!”

Jiang Cha: “....”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

Seeing the troubled look on the girl’s face, He Qin—who didn’t like fighting either—asked with concern, “Mentor Carol’s actually pretty easy to talk to. If you don’t want to, Jiang Cha-chan...”

“It’s not that bad.”

Jiang Cha sighed.

She didn’t actually dislike fighting. After learning about the state of the Witch World, she’d become eager to go out and see the sights. And in this dangerous multiverse, you couldn’t exactly travel without being able to fight.

“It’s just... Hey, does it hurt when Mentor Carol hits you?”

“What?”

He Qin tilted her head, unable to follow the sudden leap in the girl’s train of thought.

But Jiang Cha sighed again and didn’t say anything more.

She just hated getting beaten up by people way stronger than her.

—Picking on noobs is the worst!

........