Enji Challenged

Chapter XVI

Enji Challenged

“Try it like this.” Enji passed a stone slate to Silma. He had switched to slates because they were easier to write on than the wooden tablets he had been using.

She chanted the spell, and a tiny flame formed over her palm. “Without referencing the Gods, it takes less time to cast.” Silma extinguished the flame and returned the slate to him.

Enji changed the incantation. “Let’s test this.”

After the flame appeared in her hand, she remarked, “It’s even shorter!”

Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen were incorporated into the new chant using only their symbols. Enji had taught her which elements corresponded to the words in the little flame spell. “Keep practicing it like that until you memorize it.”

Enji unfurled the parchment left to him by Galakei. What would work instead of ‘gather’? ‘Should I use ‘input’ or ‘let’? ‘What about ‘attach’ and ‘vestment’... I have no idea. “Uhmm. ‘Hear me’ must be a ‘rem’ statement...”

“You said something?” Silma turned on her seat to face him.

“I was just trying to figure out something.” Perhaps we should try it this way...

With quick strokes of the chalk, he wrote a shorter version of the flame spell on the slate and handed it to Silma.

“I don’t understand the meaning of these words.” Silma looked at what he had written, confused.

He explained what each of the Basic commands stood for in the spell. “Some of these commands might not work for the intended purpose. I’m basically making wild guesses at this point.”

“Fine. I’ll start.” Silma filled her lungs with air and began the chant, “Rem little flame.

“Open Program [Sug]

“Get Carbon

“Get—eep!” She jumped, startled when she noticed Skia standing next to her.

So concentrated were they both that they didn’t realize that Galakei and Skia had entered the room, or was it a stealth ability of the vampire kin?

“What are you doing?” Galakei asked.

“We are trying to shorten the spells’ casting time,” Silma replied. Giving Skia a side glance as she rested her hand over her chest, trying to calm her racing heart.

Galakei drew closer and examined the slate. “Why are you utilizing these phrases?”

“It’s a programming language from my... land, called Basic.” Enji scratched the back of his head as he smiled. He almost slipped ‘world’ in his reply.

“By programming, do you mean a series of steps or instructions?” Galakei took the slate from Silma’s hands. “And the words herein are from a tongue called Basic?”

“Yes.” Enji nodded.

Galakei chanted the spell as written on the slate, but nothing happened. “It didn’t work,” she stated the obvious.

Enji twisted his lips, but quickly reached for another slate. “We tried this version earlier...”

“For what I can see, the problem lies with the handling of the [sug].”

“Yes, I haven’t found a command to harness it.”

Galakei set the slate aside. “Let’s pursue this later. I bring important tidings you must tend immediately.”

“What is it?” By her expression and the tone of her voice, Enji felt a sense of foreboding.

“That fat pig incited his son to challenge you to a duel. They formally made a written demand.” Galakei gave Enji a rolled parchment with a wax seal.

“What? A duel? If that little pig wants to taste my knuckle again, I’m ready to oblige!” Enji took the parchment from the mage and, breaking the seal, unfurled it.

“I’m gleeful that we agree that they both are members of the swine’s family, but it won’t be as straightforward as a spar with fisticuffs; they demand a magic duel in an official arena with combatants separated by the minimum distance of forty-five [rods].”

“Doesn’t the one being challenged get to choose the conditions?”

“What gave you that idea?” Galakei cocked an eyebrow.

I guess it’s different here. “But I can’t use magic!” Enji looked at the written demands on the parchment. Nilsei had taught him this world’s measurement units. He converted ‘rods’ to meters and realized that twenty meters was not a distance that he could sprint and reach the opponent before they finished their spell. “Can I refuse?”

“Not only would you need to apologize and be whipped, but you would also have to surrender your claim of Lady Silma and pay a compensation fee of one thousand small pieces of gold. It is stated on the challenge document.” She pointed at the parchment in his hands.

Claim? Enji glanced at Silma, who had blushed at the mention of her name. “I’m going to kill that pig!” He pounded his fist against the other hand.

“Killing a lord is punishable by death unless it is in a duel.” Galakei made a gesture of getting hanged.

“Is there some magic that can change my appearance so I can flee to another country?”

“Don’t be so theatrical! You don’t have to fight; a proxy can go in your stead.” Galakei sat on the stool next to Enji.

“I’ll be his sword!” Skia stepped forward. “I’ll kill that pig for my betrothed!”

Galakei shook her head. “Very commendable of your devotion to your lover; however, that little pig can cast a fire curtain a lot quicker than you could rush him. Neither you, the twins, Popa, nor Nilsei has a chance of beating him.”

“Then I should be the one who duels him. I was the one he insulted,” Silma stated, her face still red.

Galakei shook her head. “Your magic level is low mid compared to his being high mid, and in addition, he can maintain a barrier while casting his fire spell.”

“Oh! It doesn’t matter! How much time do I have to get ready?” Silma asked with determination.

“Fourteen days from now, of those, we need two for travel and one to sort things when we get there. Incidentally, Enji, you just earned your token to the capital.” Galakei smiled in her peculiar way.

“What do you mean?”

Galakei leaned closer to Enji. “The duel will be held in the guild’s training ground, and when I say the guild, I mean the place where a certain Long-ear is posted.”

Enji’s eyes grew wide. “Tona...”

Silma grabbed Enji’s hands, her face close to his. “Enji, you have to teach me to cast faster!”

Enji blushed. “I’ll do all I can. I promise! We must start immediately!”

“Forget him for now, girl. He needs to improve his skills. Meanwhile, you need to enhance your barrier proficiency. Come to the courtyard with me!”

“But it’s still raining!”

“Having your tail wet wouldn’t impede your training.” Galakei jumped from the stool and walked out of the shop with Silma right behind her.

“What are you going to do now?” Skia had placed her hand on his shoulder.

Enji looked at her. He felt confused. Two days ago, she despised him to the core and was ready to kill him. Now she seemed friendly. She might still kill him if she found that he had touched Elpinia, though. “I need to practice my magic. Would you lend me your ‘sug’?”

“Sure.” Skia sprang and hugged him.

“!” Having a girl embrace him would have been the most fervent of Enji’s wishes, but it happened so unexpectedly that he was paralyzed and didn’t know what to do or say. Finally, after an eternity, he didn’t want her to let go of him; he said, “Skia, I won’t be able to do anything like this.”

“Then let me hug your back.”

“Wait! Wait, just grab my arm for now!” She did as he asked, her face inscrutable. He couldn’t fathom whether she was serious or jesting. I won’t be able to concentrate at all!

***

When the storm subsided, the visiting lord sent bird messengers to his domain, requesting horses and help in transporting the injured adventurer. And, luck might have it, two carriages arrived that same afternoon. They had left early and braved the storm, having not received news from their lord when the storm started. Who knows if it was from devotion or fear of their lord; some might be inclined to believe it was the latter. Good riddance!

After the domain lord had left with his family, Sol and Pol bid their farewells as well and set out on their journey back to the farm.

The only time Enji had to talk to Silma that day was during dinner, as she had been busy training her magic with Galakei.

As for Enji. He didn’t get very far in his experimentation with the borrowed magic from Skia. At least he managed to cast the ‘little flame’ without burning his hand.

He lay in bed, mulling over what he had discovered and the new theories he wanted to test next, while typing the latest simulation that had come to mind into a Basic compiler on his computer tablet. He hurried, wanting to complete as much on the tablet as possible before the battery ran out.

The simulation would work as long as the input was of familiar commands. Still, the magic incantations that Enji was researching used commands unique to this world, and the substitution with Basic commands didn’t work. Unique to this world... Something had resonated with that statement. He retyped new incantations, but there was always a line in the code that evaded his understanding. How do I harness the ‘sug’?

He looked at the battery’s level display. He still had a few hours left. Enji sighed. He wished he had his PC from back home, where it had installed several compilers and simulators. It even had a special I/O interface to program EPROMs for games and robotics gadgets. “That Commodore 64 would have been neat; it even had a floppy drive.” Back in Japan, if he had said the same thing to other students in his classroom, they would have looked at him as if he were crazy. Who in this time and era would be talking about floppy drives when solid-state drives were the norm? Not to mention that an 8-bit computer had less computing power than a modern cell phone. But the beauty of those 8-bit computers lay in their simplicity and, for some people, nostalgia. Who cared about powerful CPUs and GPUs, blinding fast RAM, or ginormous hard drives when playing low graphics games? The simple processor of—

“Yes!” Enji, with eyes wide open, sat straight in the bed staring into the wall in front of him without seeing it. “It is a CPU, a processor!”

He jumped from the bed and stormed out of his room. He reached the girls’ rooms and first pounded on Silma’s door and then on Skia’s.

The first to open the door was Skia, who looked at him with her usual bored visage as she yawned. Silma’s expression was different; with big, wide eyes, she clearly was trying to shake off her sleepiness at what she believed was an emergency.

“What is it?” Silma inquired, her eyes darting to the sides of the hallway as she tried to guess what new peril they had to endure.

“I think I found it! How magic works in this world!”

“Heh? And for that, you woke us up?” Skia leaned against the door’s jamb.

“Don’t you understand? Chants would get shorter, and we’ll be able to incorporate more powerful commands!”

The door to Elpinia’s room opened the same as Lia’s and Maka’s.

“Calm down, you are waking everyone.” Silma tried to hush him when she saw the other girls staring at them.

“But I need to test it as soon as possible!” Enji exclaimed.

“Wait for the morning!” Silma shouted.

“What is this commotion?!” Ulua had appeared at the end of the hallway. “You are going to wake the Mage!”

Enji snapped out of excitement when he saw the head maid, who was obviously angry. He bowed and apologized, “Sorry.”

“And what indecency is this?” Ulua pointed at the girls. “You girls are almost naked in front of a man! Get inside!”

That was when Enji realized that all the girls were wearing the bare minimum of clothes. Some were almost transparent. One door slammed after another as the girls realized it, too. The only one who remained at the door was Skia, who, smiling at Enji, asked, “You want to come inside?”

“Get inside you, immoral imp! And you, corruptor of girls, get back to your room!”

Enji retreated in a hurry. He could still hear the angry imprecations of the head maid when he closed the door behind him.

***

He didn’t catch much sleep after his inspiration the night before; he had stayed awake brainstorming new ideas he wanted to test. Waking late, he missed his chance of seeing Silma or Skia at breakfast. When he arrived at the workshop, Elpinia and Maka were already there.

“Good morning,” Enji greeted as he passed the workbench where Elpinia was playing with some crystals. Maka stood next to her, on guard duty.

“Very good morning, indeed,” Elpinia replied without looking at him, absorbed in whatever she was doing.

“Morning, Lord Hasegawa,” Maka curtseyed.

Enji didn’t bother to correct her; he had already given up on denying he was a noble.

Sitting on his workbench, he took several items out of his school backpack and set them in front of him. He proceeded to erase and clean the writing slates he had used before. Let’s see... He copied from his notes incantations that he wanted to try out on several of the tablets and slates. After a few minutes, he asked the girls on the next bench, “Is Skia not going to come to the workshop today?”

“My sister is training to get her body back in shape; she usually trains till midday,” Maka replied.

And Silma won’t stop her training until Galakei says so... “Maka, what kind of magic do you use?”

“Body strengthening, speed, and attack magic. I can also use low-level spells, the same as anyone.”

Except me! “Elpinia, how about you?” Before Enji asked, she had already stopped playing with the crystal rocks and was looking at him. Perhaps knowing he was going to ask her.

“The Mage had warned me not to confide in others my abilities, but since you are Skia’s betrothed, it shouldn’t be any problem. I can use any magic and any element like the Mage; the main difference is my output, and that I’m not good at memorizing the incantations.”

Huh? That’s some tall claim. Memorizing... maybe she needs a set of ring flash cards.

“Enji, last night you said that you have ideas to significantly improve magic. I suppose you’d like us to try it.” Elpinia smiled at him.

Enji smiled too. Smart girl! He showed the two vampire girls a slate. “This is the shortened ‘little flame’ spell I came up with.”

Enji explained what the names of the elements and compounds stood for.

Elpinia was the first to cast the flame over her hand, followed by Maka.

“It certainly shortens the incantation time and the [sug] flows easily,” Elpinia gave her opinion. “...but learning new words would be difficult.”

Yeah, her problem is memorizing, or perhaps she’s lazy.

“Those new words are like calling water or soil something else; it’s just a matter of getting used to them,” Maka encouraged Elpinia.

Maka was more pragmatic.

“Pinia, can you try this version now?” Enji gave her another slate.

Elpinia trusted her palm out and cast the new spell. “Oh, it’s farther away! Why?”

“I included a position statement; it causes the spell to be slightly longer, but allows you to place the flame anywhere you want.”

“Enji, that’s incredible! I have never seen anything like it—Maka, have you?”

“No, My Lady. I’m as impressed as you.”

Huh? Really? “But, I have seen magic cast over distances. How is that controlled? Even the ‘little flame’ burned my hand because it formed on it; there is no statement in incantation to specify its location.”

“You have to imagine it, and it takes concentration that drains your energy. With your spell, it just happens without wasting any [sug],” Maka stated.

“Still, for my version, the location has to be known and specified, the way you cast, you just think and it happens!” That was a new obstacle for Enji; not only did the ‘sug’ elude him, but now he had to imagine the effect of a spell in his mind.

“You seem to be bothered by something.” Elpinia cocked her head to one side, seeing him deep in thought.

“Argh! I want to use magic on my own!”

“Why don’t you ask Skia to help you with that?” Elpinia was looking past Enji.

He turned around. Skia had arrived undetected using her vampiric stealth, and now she stood in front of him with a broad smile.

“Oi, worm, did you miss me?”