Chapter 24: The One-and-Only Low‑Rank Adventurer
"Magic Missile Proficiency +1"
Tier‑1 Spell: Magic Missile lv1 (4/10)
"I'm so tired."
He successfully cast the spell once.
This time, it was better than the previous attempt where he completely drained his mana—at least he didn’t become unable to move—but it still left him mentally exhausted.
If multiple failed casting attempts yield a fatigue level of 1, successfully casting a spell that greatly depletes mana brings fatigue of around 5.
He lay down to rest.
After resting for about half an hour, he finally felt the fuzzy, drained feeling in his head subside.
His 7 Intelligence stat really paid off.
His mental recovery ability was something ordinary people couldn’t compare to. Ordinary people would probably need a full sleep to recuperate, while he only needed a short nap to recover.
Moreover, his mana was gradually increasing every day—in small increments, but steadily.
Gaining a little mana each day was quite reassuring.
Unfortunately, even though his mana continued to increase, it was still too little for casting a full-powered Tier‑1 Magic Missile at this stage.
He had only awakened his magical ability for about a week—not even a full week—and he needed more time to fully digest the advantage granted by his mental attribute.
"Is there some way to reduce the mana cost of Magic Missile?"
He couldn’t quickly find a source of more mana, so Gauss turned to thinking of ways to conserve.
In fact, he felt the full power of his current Magic Missile was a bit excessive for his needs—much of the mana was wasted.
Take Goblins for example.
Not to mention killing a normal Goblin—even against that Large Goblin, the full-power Magic Missile was overkill.
Gauss suspected that using only 30–50% of its power would easily kill that Large Goblin.
As for a normal Goblin, maybe just 10% of the power would suffice.
Of course, this was purely his instinctive judgement—he wasn't certain of the exact numbers.
He decided to try to see if he could make it happen.
Even limiting the mana output to 10% would be great—but even if he could control it to 80 or 90%, that’d still help.
At least it would alleviate the fatigue and emptiness that came after consuming large amounts of mana, and let him start the next practice round faster.
Otherwise, the practice cycles were too long.
After resting for a while longer…
Once his mana slowly recovered, Gauss began to act.
He closed his eyes and focused his mind again.
Because he had just succeeded a moment ago, this time he found the casting feel very smooth.
But instead of rushing to follow that instinct and complete the full casting process, he deliberately cut off the process as soon as the mana began to flow.
It sounded easy, but actually interrupting the process was far more complex than it seemed.
Once a spell was initiated, the magic flow would move forward with a certain inertia. To interrupt it required very strong control.
Fortunately, his mental attribute came through again, and he succeeded on the first try.
Next, he needed to finely regulate that flow.
To give a crude analogy: a spell is like a pre‑designed program.
With normal casting, you just need the right feel—input the correct instructions—and the program automatically runs.
With magic, the difficult part is constructing that spell “program” in your mind following the textbooks and teachings of predecessors.
But that also poses a problem—if you rely solely on this magic "black box," wizards can’t finely control the spells themselves.
"I need to intercept some mana at the moment of initiating casting."
Gauss felt it keenly.
Just as he could interrupt the mana flow, he could logically intercept part of it.
The challenge lay in how much to intercept, whether the timing was right, and doing so without disrupting the normal operation of the spell.
Onward!
Next, Gauss continued the process of constant failure, constant attempts, rest, mana recovery, and continued practice.
By the time the sun set and the twilight stained the grass, he had barely managed to limit Magic Missile’s "output power" to around 95%.
For now, he could only intercept 5% of the mana.
If he tried to intercept just a bit more, the mana wouldn't flow smoothly.
Though 5% seemed little, it was already a huge improvement—he started at just 1%, and only through repeated attempts did he reach this point, proving he was on the right track.
His idea was feasible—he only needed to continue working hard in this direction.
Patting his empty stomach, he packed his belongings and turned back toward town.
……
In the blink of an eye, five days and nights had passed.
Gauss left early and returned late every day.
With patience, he quietly practiced his spells.
Through his diligent training, the proficiency of Magic Missile steadily improved.
Magic Missile lv2 (1/20).
Besides the proficiency upgrade, his internal mana had also grown considerably.
If he took the mana consumed when casting a full-powered Magic Missile at the beginning as one standard unit, then his total mana back then was roughly one unit.
Now, his mana reserve had quietly risen to 1.5 standard units—an increase of 50%.
Of course, this was just a way of describing it—a rough measurement unit he made up himself, based purely on personal feeling. It might not be very precise and could have slight errors, but overall, it wasn’t far off.
As for his Magic Missile power-limiting training, at present he could only reduce it to 60% output, which he called a 0.6-standard unit Magic Missile.
With his current mana reserve, he could cast two 0.6-unit Magic Missiles, and still have 0.3 units left over.
The further he went, the harder it became to lower the output.
That was because casting Magic Missile itself required a certain base level of mana.
To use an analogy from Gauss’s previous life, it was like a gasoline-powered car—no matter how much engineers optimized the engine to reduce fuel consumption, it would always need a base amount of fuel, and the more you tried to optimize, the harder it got.
"Let’s pause the training for now."
Ending this short session of secluded training, Gauss let out a sigh of relief.
These five days passed quickly, but were also very exhausting.
He constantly depleted his mana, fatigued his mind, recovered, then depleted it again—a repeated mental torment.
He had clearly promised himself to rest after finishing the Birch Village commission.
Yet in the end, he made himself even more tired.
Gauss couldn't help but smile helplessly.
Fortunately, this phase of training had paid off—the hardship wasn’t in vain.
Though he complained, deep down he knew this fatigue was worth it. In future moments of crisis, every drop of sweat now would turn into strength.
Now, through training, he had acquired the initial power to harm strong enemies.
A 0.6-standard unit Magic Missile was enough to easily kill that Large Goblin from before, and he could use it twice.
If he were to return to that night now, he definitely wouldn’t be so battered.
Having gained some self-defense ability, Gauss felt much less pressure.
In fact, ever since he crossed into this world, he had always felt a faint sense of urgency pushing him forward.
It was precisely due to this instability that he desperately wanted to master magic and weapons to protect himself.
Now, his hidden trump card, Magic Missile, gave him a certain sense of security.
With the powerful destructive power of Magic Missile, purely in terms of offense, he should be one-of-a-kind among low-rank adventurers who hadn’t advanced into a Class Rank.
Assessing his combat power, and after a few steady days of magic training, Gauss felt a little itchy to test himself.
Should he go find a few Goblins to spar with?
Test the results of his training?