Two days had passed since Kusaka Shinka went to Raymond's house.
Now he was walking calmly through the streets of his town to get to his ordinary school. However, his mind was at work.
By this point, he had already managed to develop his explosion magic.
Of course, even though Raymond mentioned this as something very easy and simple, it was not at all.
'Maybe if human magic were like that used by other supernatural beings, it would be substantially easier...' He thought, remembering how what he had created worked.
Explosion magic required four essential things to function.
It required space, fuel, an oxidizer, and heat.
Space, because in the end, to cast a spell, you must conjure a magic circle.
Does magic exist that can be cast without magic circles?
Apparently yes, but simply the magic circle doesn't manifest due to the caster's skill, or invisibility magic combined with the circle.
Raymond explained this well.
Originally, magics like binding spells must have their matrix hidden through invisibility magic or complicated concealment steps, like being incredibly redundant so that an expert mage cannot understand it due to its complexity and dead ends.
Of course, invisibility always wins over complexity. And anyway, there aren't many people capable of making an intricate magic circle just to hide the matrix. The few who did it, did so only to show off skill.
And with good reason, Shinka had to admit.
You can conjure magic circles on any part of your body with the necessary knowledge. Normally, the circle will appear attached to the part you conjured it with, but everyone increases the appearance range a few cm from the skin.
That's the problem. Creating a spell quite far from the caster's body is more demanding, both in knowledge and mana.
That left Shinka having to find a solution to the fuel.
He couldn't put gasoline on his hands and do magic. He'd blow his arms off.
The solution was to make the air itself the fuel. That way, he could conjure the spell away from his hand, or at any other distance by leaving the circle pre-charged, waiting for the moment, and it would feed itself with the air.
Mana, being an external low-entropy energy source, can be configured to interact with matter in certain ways.
He made the magic follow a two-step order.
1. Vacuum friction, also called heating: Mana vibrates N2 and O2 molecules at extreme frequencies, increasing their temperature to the ignition point of the gases themselves.
2. Ionization: Mana strips electrons from air molecules, converting the gas into plasma. The recombination of those electrons generates an explosive release of light and heat.
Of course, this magic wasn't something any human could do. Surely other methods of explosive magic existed, but this was one highly modifiable and adaptable to any situation.
The greatness of things lay in their adaptability for different tasks.
Shinka couldn't help but laugh inwardly with self-criticism.
'Extremely expensive laboratory equipment, constant resource exploitation, years of research and thousands of people, only to be able to do something that with magic is substantially easier... Humanity is truly light-years behind.'
It was painful to see all the applications magic had to improve life. To expand the world into a different horizon that many were unaware of.
All the good that magic could bring to the human world, but being monopolized by other races and another handful of humans.
'It doesn't seem fair to me, but what could I do, being so weak?'
Certainly, he was.
Before, he thought that "Supernatural" in his system was the standard measure of all strange beings in the world.
Just like with human classification, he thought low, medium, and high were the peak, once he finished with Supernatural High, the next thing would be something crazy like Divine, right?
It turns out that "Supernatural" is like the lowest in the supernatural world. After that rank, there was "Supernatural Medium," and Shinka was sure that Supernatural High and Very High existed.
He understood the variety of strength when he finally got to see Raymond's statistics.
If Shinka was a monster to humans, to supernatural beings of low rank but with high strength within their category, Raymond was a monster.
All his stats were "Medium" in the "Supernatural Medium" rank. If combined with the strength increase from magic reinforcement, he was about to enter the realm of Supernatural High.
A human with such strength, what was he doing relegated to a town as innocuous as Takido?
Perhaps it was because of his ambiguous relationship with the church, or it could be many other factors. Either way, he had no idea.
Pock, Pock.
Two steps were heard behind him.
"You finally showed up. I thought you wouldn't go to class today." The boy turned around with a slight smile.
Kaede and Shizumi were there.
"It was a bit hard for us to get up on time today."
However, Shinka could only be astonished to see that the two girls had two guitar cases on their backs.
"Did you join the music club?" He scratched the back of his neck with some confusion.
"Only you and Shizumi are in the club!" Kaede tossed the case towards Shinka.
As soon as Kusaka received it, he realized it was heavier than he imagined.
"This doesn't have a guitar in it, does it?"
"That will be the case for the swords from now on. It's better to carry them with us because of everything that's happening." Shizumi replied calmly.
"I understand. But I don't use swords. You should keep it, Kaede, I'll look for a flute or something. I understand you'll use the music club as a cover."
The expression of both girls tensed slightly.
"Don't you remember? I said I didn't want to be an exorcist anymore. I'm giving you my sword. Even if you don't use it, it has certain abilities that will make your life easier. I think you're the only one in all of Takido, besides my sister and my father, who can use it. From now on, I don't belong to the hidden world."
Shinka was astonished for a few moments.
'Are you serious...?'
However, he realized that it was all just an illusion for her.
'You must know well, that once you enter this world, it's impossible to leave... But if Raymond agrees to let you experience having a normal life, everything must be fine.'
"Well, that's a shame. I'll have to delete one more person from my contacts." He said, as he fastened the case properly to his body.
"Bastard, don't you dare delete me!"
"It's dangerous to interact with people outside the hidden world. Isn't it natural? The Kaede from the past would tell me I'm doing the right thing."
"You're an idiot, Kusaka Shinka!"
Shizumi could only laugh, because she knew neither of them was serious.
And yet, Shinka's mind remained unsettled.
Each passing day, he could only think about one thing.
This unfair world is only controlled by others, limiting the virtue that humans could have and the power they could possess.
Humans imprisoned by fear and a future that no one promised, but which undoubtedly was the one society should have as a species.
He watched as the sisters interacted with each other.
He discreetly looked around him.
People walking, the slight bustle of a developing town. Cars passing on the street, other teenagers walking towards school.
Everything was part of something.
A plan was brewing in Shinka's mind.
'Even if it's slow, I'll go step by step... Even if it takes my whole life.'