A Training 2

“You don’t know about synchronization magic?”

Rosalia shook her head, indicating she had never heard of it. El seemed to go quiet for a moment, deep in thought.

“Errr… El?”

Since El remained silent, Rosalia called out to him.

“Sorry. I was thinking about something. About synchronization magic … have you just never heard of it or do you truly know nothing about it?”

Rosalia shook her head again, this time more weakly.

“I’m not sure. Spirit magic isn’t exactly my specialty.”

She tried recalling anything remotely similar, but nothing came to mind.

“This is troublesome.”

“Eh? Why?”

Rosalia looked surprised, startled by El’s frustrated tone. She hadn’t expected her ignorance to cause such a problem.

“No, it’s not about you. I just arbitrarily assumed synchronization was a common thing. But it seems that’s not the case.”

Rosalia sighed in relief. She had thought she was the problem, but it didn’t seem like it.

“I see… That’s a relief. Then what’s the issue?”

“I’m just wondering whether it’s alright for me to teach you about it.”

Rosalia tilted her head slightly, starting to grasp what was bothering El, though she didn’t fully understand why it would be a problem.

“Is it really an issue if your assumption was wrong? Just because I don’t know about it doesn’t mean everyone out there doesn’t, right?”

“You’re awfully confident for someone who screamed and cried after realizing she awakened Saintess powers.”

“Ugh.”

Rosalia’s expression immediately twisted, like she’d just bitten into something bitter.

“Y-Yeah. I-I guess that… does need to be considered carefully.”

She stammered, trying to find something to say.

El sighed at the sight.

“I only meant that in the worst case scenario. I just want you to be cautious, so you don’t go using it carelessly. Just like how you’re trying to keep your Saintess powers hidden.”

Rosalia swallowed hard, feeling slightly nervous at El’s warning.

“S-So… we’re still going to do it? That synchronization thing?”

El flew toward Rosalia’s side, close enough but not to the point of touching her.

“We’re going to do it. Let’s practice directly. Try chanting the basic offensive spell you mentioned earlier.”

“Mhm.”

Following El’s instruction, Rosalia then tried to chant the small fireball spell she remembered.

The key to magic was chanting and control. So she chanted while concentrating on controlling her magic power.

Since it was just a basic spell and Rosalia only cast one, it didn’t take too long and a small reddish-yellow fireball immediately appeared in front of her.

“D-Done. What’s next?”

“Just throw it into the river over there as far as you can. Do that repeatedly until I say stop.”

“O-Okay.”

Rosalia was a little nervous with the strict instruction, but she still did it.

She then threw the small fireball, about the size of her fist, toward the river as far as she could.

The distance between her and the riverbank was about 10 meters, with the river being narrower than that. So Rosalia could easily make the fireball cross the river.

Just as she intended, the fireball passed over the river and landed not far from the opposite bank.

She then looked toward El, thinking he might give a comment.

But El remained silent.

Seeing that, she decided to continue chanting the second spell and repeated what she had done before.

She did it a second time, a third, and again and again until...

“Stop!”

Hearing that, Rosalia then stopped right after throwing her thirteenth fireball. More than she had expected.

She then looked toward El, as if waiting for his next instruction.

“Do that once more. But do it faster.”

“Eh? Just like before?”

El didn’t say anything else after that, so Rosalia followed the instruction and did it again just like she had done earlier.

Exactly one minute later, El then told her to stop for a moment, before telling her to do it again.

She kept repeating it over and over without stopping, continuously throwing fireballs across the river without understanding the purpose of doing it.

The longer she kept doing it, the more her magical power was drained. She also began feeling bored and mentally exhausted, which caused her concentration to drop. As a result, the number of fireballs she could cast decreased with each round.

“Okay. That’s enough. You don’t need to keep going.”

Finally, after almost an hour, El instructed her to stop.

She slowly lowered her body, wanting nothing more than to sit and rest. Her breathing was heavy, and her entire body felt hot and sticky from sweat. She was truly exhausted.

She steadied her breath by inhaling as much air as she could, then exhaling it.

Once she felt calmer, she looked toward El.

“What were we actually doing?”

Rosalia really didn’t understand what they had just done. All she had done was cast the same spell repeatedly for nearly an hour.

“As I said, training and improving your combat.”

Rosalia gave El a skeptical look. Aside from draining her mana, she didn’t see how this could be effective.

“Did you forget? I’m your contracted Spirit. No matter how much magic power you use up, I can refill it.”

“A-Ah. That’s right.”

She had completely forgotten that part. Then, just like before, the sensation of El channeling mana into her returned.

Because of how overheated and tired she was, the refreshing feeling now felt several times more intense than before.

It was cool and invigorating.

It felt like a breeze from forest trees washing over her body.

Rosalia closed her eyes, trying to enjoy the sensation more deeply.

“It’s surprising you can accept this much mana. Do you know that’s not normal?”

“Really? I remember reading that the amount of mana received from a Spirit is usually limited, depending on a person’s mana absorption capacity. So that does make sense.”

Now that El mentioned it, I really was good at using magic tools.

Rosalia had always been adept at using magic tools, something that shouldn’t be all that common either.

She had ignored it all this time since it was simply convenient for her, but now that she thought about it carefully, she think maybe there was a specific reason behind it.

“Maybe I’m talented?”

She said it casually, then felt a little embarrassed for sounding so confident.

“About talent, that might be true. Whatever the reason, this is a very good thing.”

Rosalia nodded, agreeing with El’s.

Then, in just a few minutes, all the mana Rosalia had drained over the past hour was fully restored. Not only that, she felt more refreshed and energized than she had before they started.

“A-Amazing. Is this the synchronization you mentioned earlier, El?”

Her eyes sparkled as she checked her light feeling body. In just minutes, not only was her mana back, her fatigue had vanished too.

“No, no. This isn’t synchronization. This is just regular magic channeling.”

“Eh?”

Realizing she had guessed wrong, Rosalia was surprised.

“Then what is the synchronization you meant?”

Rosalia was now even more intrigued. At first, she had pushed herself to trust El’s method, but a part of her remained skeptical.

Now that she had felt for herself how incredible El’s magic channeling was, she couldn’t help but be interested in what else he could do.

“Heh, now you finally see how capable and useful I am, huh?”

“Yes! Yes! El, you’re amazing! You’re the best!”

Rosalia raised her arms, cheering for El. It clearly wasn’t empty praise, she truly felt that way from the bottom of her heart.

Like a puppy, she stared at El eagerly, as if impatiently waiting for what was next.

Seeing that, El chuckled softly.

“Alright then. Let’s try synchronization.”

“Yes!”

“Let’s start by doing the same thing as before.”

“Ye-, W-What?”

Rosalia’s excitement vanished in an instant. She looked at El in confusion, not expecting to hear that.

“Err… by the same thing, you mean throwing fire magic?”

“Yes.”

“Over and over again?”

“Yes.”

“F-For a whole hour?”

“Maybe? That depends on your ability.”

Rosalia stiffened. She wanted to ask a few more questions, but after thinking about what happened earlier, she ultimately went along with it.

“Alright.”

El simply nodded at Rosalia’s confirmation, as if there was nothing wrong with that instruction.

Rosalia felt a little disappointed, but quickly pushed the feeling aside.

Turning her gaze to the other side of the river, she began doing what she had done earlier, chanting the small fireball spell.

“Ah, I forgot to mention, don’t chant. Just release the magic.”

Just as Rosalia was about to speak the first line , El interrupted, telling her not to chant.

“Eh? Chantless magic? I can’t do that.”

Chanting helped with control. By the laws of magic, chanting were words bound to this world, one of the core principles directly tied to the magic system itself.

Not using chants didn’t make magic impossible, but it consumed more mana and required far more advanced control.

“Just do it. Release the spell as if you’ve already chanted and controlled it.”

What do you even mean by that?

Rosalia wanted to say that El’s instruction was pointless, she couldn’t use magic without a chant.

But when she did exactly what El said, something surprising happened.

A small fireball suddenly appeared before her, just before shooting across the river on its own.

“Eh?”

Before she could even react to what had just happened, another fireball appeared and launched itself to the river.

Eh? What’s happening?

Her eyes widened in disbelief, she was speechless.

She hadn’t uttered a single word, yet fire magic was appearing and launching without her control.

“What are you spacing out for? Keep it going.”

“Eh? That was me?”

“I’m helping from here. So practically, it’s both of us.”

No, no, no, no. What does that even mean!?

She was too shocked, too overwhelmed by the thoughts rushing through her mind to properly hear anything El said after that.