Clever, standing off to the side, felt her vision turn completely glazed and vacant as she stared at the dense array of formulas, variable metrics, and geometric magic models scrawled across the open pages of the textbook.
Expecting a child to memorize this staggering level of academic theory by absolute rote—is this the reality of high-end private tutoring within the elite circles of the Scarlet Devil Mansion? The sheer educational standard was simply terrifying.
What's even more profoundly terrifying was the fact that Flandre hadn't committed a single linguistic or mathematical error throughout her entire presentation. One had to understand the exact timeline of their journey: Clever knew perfectly well that Patchouli had only handed this massive tome to Flandre two days ago while they were traveling on the open road. It had been given to the child for the sole, pragmatic purpose of keeping her entertained so she wouldn't make an energetic fuss within the cramped interior of the moving carriage.
Yet, absolutely no one had anticipated that Patchouli would suddenly call a surprise pop quiz on the material today.
After watching the young vampire flawlessly conclude her recitation, Patchouli offered a small, thoroughly satisfied nod of her head. "Not bad at all. You have retained the core theoretical models of these Magic formulas remarkably firmly. Let us immediately transition to the next stage of your application physics."
The grand magician tapped the page lightly. "Hypothetically, you require a specialized spell capable of completely vaporizing a solid, spherical piece of target metal possessing a radius of exactly one centimeter. The target is stationed at a fixed distance of five hundred meters, and you must guarantee absolute precision without letting the kinetic discharge affect the immediate surrounding environment. In this scenario, what classification of spell must you deploy, and how should you structurally modify the baseline magic model to achieve this exact localized effect?"
Flandre puffed out her small chest with immense, unbridled pride. "That is incredibly simple! A distance of five hundred meters rests entirely within the passive boundary of my tracking ability, so Flandre simply needs to lock onto the target coordinate and crush it into—Ow!"
Before the child could finish her boast, Patchouli casually brought the edge of the closed textbook down in a gentle tap across the crown of her head.
"You are strictly prohibited from utilizing your innate, absolute conceptual abilities for this exercise," the magician lectured calmly. "You are permitted to rely exclusively on standard Magic formulas, and you must restrict your methodology to the systemic parameters detailed within the text!"
"Oh..." Flandre murmured, her enthusiasm instantly deflating as she began to deeply ponder the problem. How on earth was she supposed to execute the prompt relying solely on the rigid formulas outlined in the library book?
When a perfectly simple, direct solution existed right at her fingertips, she couldn't fathom why adults insisted on utilizing such needlessly convoluted systems...
Nevertheless, she put her remarkably clever brain to active work, her thoughts rapidly filtering through the arcane directories until a sudden inspiration struck her mind—the Specium Ray technique. Well, to be academically precise within the structural rules of the text, it was simply a highly condensed Lightning Strike.
The primary complication lay in the fact that five hundred meters represented a remarkably awkward strategic distance for a standard spellcaster. Water-type Magic formulas were immediately out of the equation, as Flandre hadn't invested a single hour into studying that particular elemental school. As for Fire-type Magic, a standard projectile would inevitably bleed nearly half of its thermal energy to atmospheric friction over a five-hundred-meter flight path; such formulas were fundamentally optimized for large-area, long-range artillery bombardment where splash damage compensated for degradation. In a scenarios requiring a surgical, point-blank kill, the heat would mostly dissipate into the wind halfway to the target, rendering precise structural destruction virtually impossible.
Of course, for powerful entities like Flandre and the senior members of the mansion, brute-forcing a total miracle through sheer, overwhelming output wasn't impossible, but doing so would fundamentally violate the intellectual essence of Patchouli's test.
Wind-type Magic suffered from the exact same physical limitation; after traversing a five-hundred-meter expanse, even a highly compressed blade of wind orb would inevitably be dispersed and frayed by the ambient air currents along the trajectory. Consequently, even if the core struck the target, the resulting shockwave would bleed into the surrounding tiles, yielding an incorrect answer according to the prompt's boundaries. This wasn't a question of the caster's underlying competence; it was a rigid, unyielding barrier of physical science.
Therefore, after running the geometric calculations back and forth in her head for several minutes, Flandre ultimately selected the fastest, most violently destructive, and historically most difficult-to-control elemental school: Electric-type Magic.
While a five-hundred-meter gap represented an insurmountable chasm for slower, projectile-based spells, the transit time for a directed bolt of lightning was effectively instantaneous. Crucially, the spatial impact radius of a concentrated Lightning Strike was inherently minuscule and highly localized, aligning flawlessly with the precision requirements of the test. All that was required of the caster was the absolute, microscopic control over that split second of discharge to ensure the structural stability of the current didn't arc outwards.
Having successfully mapped out her strategic direction, the child quickly reached for a scrap piece of parchment and a quill, rapidly charting the modified Magic array and the precise structural adjustments she had made to the core model before proudly sliding the answer sheet across to her instructor.
Patchouli accepted the parchment, her analytical eyes scanning the neatly drawn diagrams before she offered a definitive, approving nod. "An excellent derivation. You have officially passed the assessment. You are fully permitted to amuse yourself without further academic obligations for the next several days."
Flandre finally let out a massive, dramatic sigh of relief. "Whew!"
Scrambling away from Patchouli's side of the bench, she happily repositioned herself to sit right between Hong Meiling and Clever. Watching the interaction unfold, Clever quietly leaned over, her voice dropping to a low, anxious whisper. "Do they truly subject you to this style of rigorous examination on a regular basis?"
"Mhm! Patchy absolutely never lends her library books out to people without a strict condition," Flandre explained cheerfully, looking completely unburdened by the academic weight. "Aside from ensuring you return the physical copy in pristine condition, you must also flawlessly answer whatever technical questions Patchy decides to extract from the text. But she usually restricts her queries strictly to the explicit contents written inside the pages, so it really isn't that difficult to pass."
Despite the child's reassuring words, Clever found herself breaking into a sudden, profuse sweat.
Her mind raced back frantically to a crucial detail: out of sheer, suffocating boredom during their long hours on the open road, she had also casually borrowed a historical volume from Patchouli's collection entitled Secret Chronicles of the Sarkaz Demon King. She had merely utilized the text as an entertaining piece of extracurricular reading to pass her leisure moments. Although the rare manuscript had originally been sourced from the ancient archive of a legendary Lich, she had genuinely treated it as a simple storybook.
Now, realizing with absolute clarity that she would be subjected to a terrifying, high-tier academic examination the exact moment she attempted to return the volume, a cold sweat drenched her spine.
Her anxiety escalated dramatically when she subconsciously raised her eyes and locked gazes with Patchouli across the carriage. The grand magician merely offered her a gentle, knowing nod accompanied by a small smile, an action that only served to pile an immense, suffocating mountain of psychological pressure directly onto the librarian's shoulders. Clever hurriedly lowered her head, pretending to be remarkably busy checking the straps of her boots.
For the remainder of the afternoon's journey, whenever their eyes accidentally threatened to meet across the interior cabin, Clever would subconsciously jerk her gaze away in a panic. The repetitive behavior eventually led Patchouli to quietly wonder if she had unintentionally performed some social faux pas that had deeply frightened the intelligence operative.
Unable to comfortably question Clever directly regarding her sudden skittishness, the magician could only quietly instruct Flandre to probe the issue indirectly during their rest break.
The moment Flandre cornered the librarian and extracted the true, terrified reason behind her avoidance, the young vampire found the situation so thoroughly hilarious that she collapsed onto the floorboards, laughing so violently that she could barely draw breath.
Clever's cheeks flushed a deep, embarrassed crimson as she stammered defensively, "What on earth is so incredibly funny about it?! Can a normal person not simply experience a healthy amount of academic terror?!"
Following the lighthearted joke, the lingering tension within the cabin completely dissolved, and the shared bond between the traveling companions grew even closer.
By this point in their journey, the carriage had officially crossed the invisible border, entering deep into the recognized sovereign territory of Kazdel.
Gazing out through the carriage windows at the desolate, unyielding wilderness passing them by—a landscape entirely choked with jagged, black volcanic rocks and shifting dust storms—the companions fell into a solemn silence. Even though every single one of them had read extensive accounts in historical texts detailing how the baseline living environment of the Sarkaz race was profoundly harsh, physically witnessing the sheer scope of that desolation was an entirely different reality.
"Hiss... is it even biologically possible to cultivate a single agricultural crop within this soil?"
Hong Meiling stepped down from the carriage during a brief halt, squatting low to grab a handful of the dark earth. As she rubbed it between her fingers, the soil instantly disintegrated into a bone-dry, powdery ash that was immediately caught by a gust of wind and carried away into the wasteland.
Even taking into account that the seasonal calendar was currently at the height of summer, the local terrain shouldn't be this intensely arid and dead. Under such catastrophic environmental constraints, what did the civilian population trapped within these borders even manage to consume to survive?
"Of course it is impossible to grow anything of value here," Clever replied, her tone turning deeply pragmatic. She had spent significantly more time operating within the proximity of Kazdel and understood the brutal survival metrics of the region better than anyone else in the group. "That is the foundational reason why any strong, able-bodied Sarkaz individual immediately leaves the territory to find employment abroad as a mercenary. Although they must spend their entire lives with their heads on the line, surviving day by day on blood money, that dangerous path remains infinitely superior to waiting around in these wastes to slowly starve to death."
"As for those vulnerable demographics who lack the physical capacity to escape the borders..." Flandre murmured, recalling the grim sights she had witnessed during the initial days of her awakening on Terra, letting out a quiet, uncharacteristic sigh.
"Ordinary citizens are forced to subsist on boiled tree bark, small desert rodents, or trek for days toward the southern mountain ridges just to harvest handfuls of wild green grass," Clever continued grimly. "They won't necessarily starve to death on the spot, but their stomachs will never know the feeling of being full. If a traveling family happens to discover a fresh animal carcass or a fallen traveler along the roadside... heh, that is considered an absolute feast by local standards."
The librarian adjusted her collar. "Of course, aside from venturing abroad to work as independent mercenaries, there is also the primary option of joining the standing military forces. The Military Committee constantly organizes campaigns to invade and plunder the surrounding foreign nations; although the casualty rates are astronomical, those soldiers who manage to survive the front lines are at least guaranteed a steady supply of rations."
Beholding the sheer, unyielding bleakness of the landscape, Patchouli couldn't help but sigh softly at the immense, historic tragedy defining the lives of the Sarkaz race.
According to the extensive historical chronicles she had analyzed, the systemic warfare waged between the grand coalitions of the various Terran nations and the Sarkaz factions had been actively burning since the very dawn of recorded history. The two sides had been locked in a brutal cycle of conflict for tens of thousands of years. It could be argued that every single clash was a desperate, total war—a mutual battle for the absolute survival of their respective species.
Yet, in almost every major historical era, the Sarkaz ultimately lost the war. They had gradually been stripped of every fertile valley, prosperous trading node, and resource-rich territory across the continent of Terra, pushed back into this volcanic wasteland.
But even in the face of such systemic destruction, the Sarkaz tenaciously maintained their existence upon the land. Outside the borders of Kazdel, one could encounter their mercenaries and wanderers operating within almost every sovereign nation on the map. Their collective racial vitality was undeniably more resilient than that of a cockroach.
Reflecting on how they had been subjected to countless crusades, yet the Sarkaz still managed to preserve their own independent capital and sovereign territory, Patchouli also began to form a clearer understanding of what kind of character defined the historical grand coalitions of Terra.
Although the specific political details were deliberately omitted from the official imperial textbooks, she found it remarkably telling that every single time the foreign coalition supposedly achieved a total victory and returned home in triumph, several of the participating nations or factions would immediately transform into mortal, blood-soaked enemies, fracturing the alliance.
Therefore, in Patchouli's analytical view, the geopolitical relationship binding the nations of Terra and the Sarkaz was infinitely more complex, codependent, and hypocritical than it appeared on the surface.