Sorcerer Wants to Enjoy Poya Poya - Chapter - 6
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TL : Satva
Editor : Tetrax
Volume 1: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Chapter – 6 : Preparing for the Magical Tree Hunt
Ricardo returned to the mansion, went to the attic and threw himself down on the bed. He was quite exhausted, both physically and mentally.
Soon it was time for dinner, so he went downstairs. He was so tired that he had no appetite, but he forced himself to eat.
Massimo was also eating together. He was eating with a miffed expression on his face.
Sometimes he turned his dark gaze toward Ricardo, and Ricardo could only act like he didn’t notice it.
“Hey, have you learnt to use any magic at all?”
Massimo asked. Riccardo nodded.
“I can use [Ignition] and [Flame Shot].”
When Massimo heard this, he laughed as if Ricardo was a fool.
“Fool! You are going to hunt a tree in a mountain covered with forest. How can you even think about using fire magic?”
It’s best to refrain from using fire magic in the mountains because of the risk of forest fires. It’s a common practice for sorcerers.
Ricardo already knew that. But before talking about forest fires and burning the prey, it was important to not get killed in the first place.
When the meal time was over, Massimo went upstairs while Ricardo cleared the table, bathed, and returned to the attic.
He reviewed the spells from the earth-based magic system and racked his brain. He also considered an improvement plan based on [Flying Gravel] and [Earth Javelin].
The next day, Ricardo headed to the thicket with the powder from the fangs of the demon-faced rat.
He first decided to check the power of the spell.
In his left hand, he held a wooden tube containing a catalyst of earth magic and pointed his right hand to a large tree. He sprinkled the catalyst and released his magic power.
“Amrir, fagus, japonica” (Earth, let the stone fly)
At the same time he chanted the spell for [Flying Gravel], a stone the size of a fist appeared and flew towards the big tree. Its speed was comparable to that of a professional baseball player.
It hit the trunk with a crunch. The accuracy of the hit was high as the stone followed the same path as what the sorcerer imagined, but the power was a bit low.
The stone disappeared in the air as if it had melted.
“Unless I hit a vital point, it’s difficult to even kill a wild rabbit, let alone a magical beast,” Ricardo mused.
This time, he tried [Earth Javelin] spell.
“Amrir, sepia, spellogoma.” (Earth, turn into a spear and go forth)
A stone javelin about eighty centimetres long appeared and flew with such force that it directly hit the tree it was aimed at. The tip of the javelin pierced the trunk and stopped after penetrating into the tree about 10 cm deep.
The power was decent, but the catalyst required was about twice as much as [Flying Gravel]. [Flying Gravel] required the catalyst in a No. 1 wooden tube about the size of a pistol shell, while [Earth Javelin] required a catalyst in No. 2 wooden tube about the size of a small rifle bullet.
By the way, the amount of catalyst that could be stored in the No. 2 wooden tube was about the amount that could be extracted from one fang of a demon-faced rat.
He decided to try his magic on a magical beast.
Ricardo walked around the thicket looking for a beast. However, he did not go much deep into the thicket because there were more powerful monsters than the demon-faced rat.
After about ten minutes, he found a demon-faced rat. Fortunately, the rat hadn’t noticed him. Ricardo fired the magic [Flying Gravel] at the demon-faced rat.
The stone created from the spell flew toward the beast and struck it in the head. There was a clicking sound and the body of the rat rolled over a few times, but that was the only effect it had on the monster.
Ricardo ran over and stabbed it with his warpick.
He quickly collected the fangs of the demon-faced rat and looked for his next prey.
He used [Earth Javelin] as soon as he ran into another rat. A javelin made of stone flew through the air and with a “pop” pierced the body of the rat.
“The power is enough, but I’m not sure if this will work on the Erbil tree.”
To kill an Erbil tree, one just had to crush the aneurysm on its head. The aneurysm was called tree liver and contained a special kind of oil. Without this oil, the tree would be unable to move and eventually die.
(TN : Aneurysm is a type of highly localized swelling in an artery. Imagine the hump of a camel, it’s a bit like that.)
Its liver was protected by a hard mass, which was known to be so solid that it could not be pierced by an arrow.
In addition, the Erbil tree was four metres tall, and the tree liver was difficult to destroy in close combat.
“Should I focus on practicing [Earth Javelin]? But… There is not enough catalyst for that.”
Ricardo tried practising [Earth Javelin] by fighting demon-faced rats. But the accuracy was lowered while fighting.
He soon ran out of the catalyst, so there was no choice but to fight with the warpick afterwards.
As he walked through this wooded area looking for more demon-faced rats, Ricardo came across a young beast hunter fighting two demon-faced rats. The boy was about two or three years older than Ricardo, and he was wielding a sword without any additional equipment.
“Ha!”
The boy looked very enthusiastic. And Ricardo noticed that there was a pattern in the behaviour of the demon-faced rats.
When the boy swung his sword, it would quickly retreat, and when he closed the distance, it would jump at his feet or neck. The distance between them was about a metre and a half, and the boy had just stepped into it.
The fight between the boy and the demon-faced rat was soon settled.
“‘Are you here to hunt magical beasts too?”
The boy seemed to have noticed Ricardo. He retrieved the fangs and looked at him.
“Yes, that’s right.”
The boy looked tall for his age, but he was slim and didn’t seem very strong.
“Is the shield your only defensive equipment? You’d better get yourself some leather armour.”
Ricardo was dressed in thick, loose-fitting trousers and a black, short-sleeved shirt, with a shield and warpick in his hands and a backpack on his back, so he looked like a novice beast hunter. No matter how one looked at it, he didn’t resemble a sorcerer a bit.
“I’d love to, but I don’t have the money.”
“Having a hard time, huh. You can buy a set of armour cheaply at the leather store Illumina on Second Avenue.”
“Oh, yes. Thank you for the recommendation.”
Ricardo parted from the boy without giving any introduction and wandered through the woods looking for the beast.
Suddenly, he was taken by surprise by a demon-faced rat. The next thing he knew, it was jumping at his head and its fangs were right in front of him.
“Whoa!”
Ricardo screamed unintentionally.
He reflexively used his buckler to block the fangs and bounced off the body of the giant rat. The demon-faced rat landed and started moving around left and right, looking for a gap.
Ricardo set up a gap between the buckler and the warpick and stepped in. The rat dived at Ricardo’s feet. Ricardo was expecting it so he stepped to the right.
Not only did he think about the timing of the movement but also pushed the warpick towards his back. The timing of the steps, the direction of his feet, and his stance gave him a plethora of opportunities to attack.
Yesterday Ricardo had only found a single chance to attack it, and that was when he caught the enemy with the buckler.
Today he had found a few more tricks, such as when it attacked the enemy’s feet or when it tried to get behind him. He found out that it was easier to beat them if he was aware of these opportunities.
Ricardo decided to go deeper into the thicket. He had been only wandering around in the shallow parts of the thicket, but as soon as he went one level deeper, he encountered a group of demon-faced rats. It was a herd of two or three rats.
They seemed to have built their dens in the roots of chestnut trees and made the surroundings as their territory.
As soon as Ricardo stepped near the burrow, the rats attacked in groups. The way of fighting was the same as when they were alone, but sometimes they attacked in unison, which could be dangerous.
Sometimes they attacked him at the same time and Ricardo got some injuries. Fortunately, all the wounds were minor. He gathered some herbs from the thicket, crushed them with stones and applied them to the wounds, fixing them with improvised bandages made from thin strips of rag.
The herb was called “Yaminie” and was effective in sterilising and stopping bleeding.
An old man in the village of Unius had told Ricardo about it. Of course, there was no knowledge of germs in this world. Ricardo came to this conclusion because he once said it would become difficult for pus to form.
Ricardo wanted to make a record of what he noticed in his fight with the weakest magical beast of all, the rat. He wrote down the fighting patterns, evasive maneuvers, habits and spacing of the rats on the paper he had bought with him. He also jotted down the best way to deal with their attacks and its counterattack, and the best move to deal with multiple beasts as well.
The more he fought the rats, the more his body seemed to adapt. It was not a matter of leveling up or gaining experience, as in games, but the potential of Ricardo’s body… At this point, it seemed to be a talent.
After hunting 22 demon-faced rats, he took another step deeper into the thicket. This was the middle area of the thicket, where many nests of head-butting rabbits could be spotted.
The undergrowth made it a little more difficult to walk through, but it was no different than the area where the rats had nested.
He listened carefully to the sounds echoing around him. The grass rustled nearby. He tightened his grip on the buckler and focused his attention in the direction of the sound.
Suddenly, a black mass jumped out of the thicket. It was a beast the size of a medium-sized dog with long ears.
Ricardo took on the headbutt using his shield. The buckler collided with the rabbit’s hard forehead with a loud thump. Ricardo felt a strong impact on his left arm, and he reflexively clamped his right hand close to his body. The sole of his feet scratched the ground as his body was being pushed.
Once it landed on the ground, the rabbit jumped back and used its light footwork to get away.
The force of the headbutt left Ricardo no time to fight back. If he was a grown man, he might have been able to pull it off, but a nine-year-old boy with a thin body couldn’t.
Ricardo thought that he couldn’t take its attack head-on and wondered if he could control the rushing force and use it to guide the landing point of the head-butting rabbit.
He then tried to catch the head-butting rabbit with his shield, trying to find the right angle and the right amount of force. Eventually, he succeeded in getting the rabbit to land at a point within a metre of his back.
It was possible to attack it from there.
The next time the rabbit jumped, he swung his warpick down from behind it and caught it at the perfect angle.
“Pigi!”
The sharp warpick pierced the rabbit’s throat.
“Haa…haa… I’m dead tired. Let’s call it a day, it’s enough for today.”
Diego told him to drain the blood out of the edible magical beasts. So Ricardo cut its head off with a dismantling knife, tied its hind legs together with string and hung it upside down on a tree branch.
In the meantime, he set fire to dried Giselle grass to keep beasts away from the smell of blood. This was the herb that was planted around the city to keep away magical beasts.
After the blood had been drained, he removed the hard white scales from its forehead. These scales would be used as a catalyst.
Of course, he also stripped the fur and meat to sell them.
Ricardo went back to the city, feeling his heavy backpack filled with the materials from the head-butting rabbit.
He sold the materials at a butcher and a leather shop, and used the money earned to crush the fangs of the demon-faced rats and the forehead scales of the head-butting rabbit into catalysts.
By the time he returned to the mansion, he was exhausted and almost collapsed.
There was about an hour until meal time. When Ricardo lay down on his bed, he felt like he was about to fall asleep. He leaned against the wall and spent his time in a daze. Gradually his head started to feel fuzzy.
The strange state felt very comfortable. Riccardo allowed his consciousness to drift into his mind. Now that he was able to use magic, he was aware of his mental framework, which he called his soul.
He knew that in this state, his magic power would recover a lot quicker.
At this time, he was only drifting on the surface of his mental framework.
Ricardo felt a power in the depth of his mental framework. He didn’t understand why it was like that so was a little worried. He shifted his attention to the back of the framework to check it out.
Ricardo’s consciousness began to move deeper into the mental framework. There was a feeling of resistance, as if he was moving through gelatin. If he lost his concentration, he would be pushed back. Ricardo should have felt tired, but for some reason, as he approached the presence in the depth of his mind, he felt a surge of strength and his consciousness moved further in.
The mental framework was filled with all the memories of Ricardo Unius and Mikio Mato. Even the things that he didn’t remember anymore were there.
Ricardo could not go any deeper towards the source of power. The resistance became stronger and so he was pushed back.
His consciousness returned. It looks like he was in a state of meditation without being aware of it. The feeling of fatigue in the body disappeared and his magic power was also restored.
“I am not sure if it’s meditation, but it feels nice.”
Ricardo called this meditation ‘probe meditation’, as this feeling was akin to exploring the spirit.
He went downstairs and looked at the clock to see that it was time for dinner. A woman from the neighbourhood brought the meal. Her name was Orta and she was about forty years old.
She was about the same age as Mato before transmigration, so he felt uncomfortable calling her aunt. Therefore, Ricardo called her Mrs Orta.
“Thank you for everything, Mrs Orta.”
“No problem. It’s all right, I’m only doing it to make money for the family.”
She looked like any other woman.
Dinner consisted of boiled and salted mole potatoes and a root vegetable soup. Ricardo preferred mole potatoes to hard black bread.
Ricardo spent the month leading up to the tree hunt battling demon-faced rats and head-butting rabbits. It was a great way to make his body stronger while increasing his magic power at the same time at the same time.
There were two ways to increase the amount of magic power one owned by nature. One was to choose the [Magic power increase] option after defeating the first magical beast, and another way was to use up all the magic power and recover it.
The first method was a lot faster than the second one.
If his magic power at the beginning was 10, then it was about 20 now. The average for non-magic folks was about 10. Ricardo had heard that the average number for a middle-class sorcerer was 50, so it seemed like his magic power was still in the development phase.
By the way, the amount of magic power was based on the amount of magic power required for [Ignition], which was the simplest magic, and it seemed that the amount was measured twice or three times as much.
When there was only one day left before the hunt, Ricardo prepared the necessary catalysts.
He prepared three catalysts for water magic in No. 1 wooden tube, three for fire magic in No. 9 wooden tube and nine for earth magic in No. 2 wooden tube. For water magic, he used the skin of the white catfish, a magical beast living in the lakes. As the name suggested, white catfish was a one-metre-long catfish-type monster. Ricardo also wanted to purchase the charcoal made from another kind of magical tree, Trill, which was a small monster with a body length of about one and a half metres. But due to the lack of funds, he had to be satisfied with cheap charcoal.
Ricardo used the money he made from selling the fur and meat of head-butting rabbits to buy the catalyst. Thanks to this, he was now penniless.
The necessary preparations for the magical tree hunt had finished.
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