Chapter 154: Logical Error
Unedited Chapter. It will be edited soon.
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The smoke coming out of the room filled the hallway and courtyard, alerting the staff.
Hardrial was arriving at that moment. He paused for a moment because of the thick smoke coming out, but when he saw his two students flying out the door, he rushed toward them.
"They’re not seriously injured, the damage was only material," he thought when he saw them.
There was so much smoke that he had to cast several wind spells to disperse it forcefully.
Soon Louis and Laura began to cough, coming out of their momentary state of unconsciousness. Hardrial was staring at him.
"The tournament starts tomorrow, but here you are, trying to hurt yourselves by creating spells you can’t." He said, helplessly.
Louis smiled a little apologetically. "We wanted to see if we could create a level 5 spell," he said.
"I understand that you are both talented; you have managed to reach level 4 magic in a very short time. Others would be envious of such achievements, but performing level 5 magic is not so simple. Besides, that’s when it’s most likely to create a Logical Error. So stop doing such dangerous things without the proper knowledge; creating a Logical Error is as dangerous as it is deadly." He said and helped them up.
"What exactly is a Logical Error?" Louis asked. They had touched on the subject before, but he hadn’t understood it well because it had only been mentioned in passing.
Now that it had come up in conversation and seemed to be something to take seriously, he had to ask.
Hardrial didn’t answer him right away. He headed toward the hall and...
Most of the seats had exploded.
"This will cost over 1 million Jens to repair," he said, touching the base that had been damaged.
The thing is, almost the entire room had exploded, the glass and windows were broken, the blackboard was shattered, the floor was cracked and badly damaged. The lamps were destroyed.
Practically the entire classroom was in pieces, so he sighed.
"This is a logical error. When the fabric fails in a peculiar way, or when the theorem being investigated is misunderstood, it can cause the threads to collapse. This can lead to explosions or massive destruction. Death is sometimes the least of the problems, as it could even create incredibly strong natural disasters that would affect an entire city," he said and tried to sit in his chair, but it shattered at his touch.
Louis and Laura looked at each other in shock. So incredible and absurd at the same time?
Hardrial noticed their questions, so he shrugged and pulled out a makeshift chair for each of them.
"It’s even more dangerous. You were lucky that the Logical Error wasn’t so serious, because once a man created a Logical Error that destroyed a city," he said. "Almost as big as Velharthe."
"S-so dangerous?" They both swallowed hard. Hardrial nodded.
"And it was with level 5 magic, just like you. That’s why creating magic above level 5 presents such an immense problem, which is why there are so many Level 4 Mages who don’t dare take that step," he said, but then smiled.
Well, not everything bad is because of that. There’s another concept, even newer, called Energy Pollution. The little theory we have about it tells us that misuse of elemental powers can lead to the birth of terrifying monsters from the carrier’s body, because it would be opposing what the Elemental Conceptual God dictates. This is more likely to happen from level 5 onwards, so many are afraid of it."
After saying this, Hardrial looked at the damage in the room and sighed again. "This is going to be expensive. I wonder how much of it the academy will cover," he thought, sighing in frustration. He should have explained this to them earlier so they wouldn’t have any problems.
In fact, in this regard, he had failed as a teacher, because this could have killed his two students.
Of course, he was also confident that even if they made a logical error, it wouldn’t be serious enough to kill them, because they could control it. In that respect, he had been right, but it was still his irresponsibility, so he couldn’t blame them.
At that moment, Louis got up and walked over to him, handing him a few low-level money cards he had bought in town. Each one allowed for 1 million Jens, and there were 7 in total.
"Professor, use this to repair the damage, and you can keep the rest for whatever you want. I apologize for the damage caused," he said, before retreating to his seat.
Hardrial looked at the money cards and was stunned. ’That much?’ He looked at Louis.
"It’s not necessary. The academy will pay for a good part of this, and if they do well in the Tournament, they might even pay for it all, or some sponsors might contribute money, so don’t worry about the money. Save that for yourself and your expenses," he said quickly, trying to return the cards to her.
But Louis smiled. "No, I was taught that I should pay for the things I break, so I have to do it. That will cover my payment and Laura’s," he said with complete sincerity.
"No..." He tried to shake his head, but Laura signaled that it wasn’t necessary.
She had seen how rich this boy was recently, and he also has a good friendship with the Priestleys. Perhaps he is one of the richest men in the Empire, and no one has noticed.
Where he got the money from right now was beside the point; the reality was that he was immensely wealthy at a young age, so seven million didn’t seem like much to him.
That left him stunned. He still tried to refuse, but Louis’ insistence made him sigh and nod.
"Well, then I’ll make this place much better for you and build you better training facilities," he said, smiling.
He looked outside and noticed that many people had come to see what had happened.
"I’ll go clear the people out and talk to the director. In the meantime, read the tournament rules. It starts tomorrow, and you should already know them, but it’s always worth reviewing them," he said and left them with some scrolls with rules and little else before leaving.
After seeing him walk through the door and start clearing the people out, Laura sighed with relief.
"That was really dangerous," he said.
"Haha... I didn’t think it would explode like that. It even knocked us unconscious for a moment, even though I tried to avoid the explosion," he said, sighing in frustration.
"Tsk, I think if we hadn’t suppressed it, we would have died."
"I agree."
They smiled. Despite how dangerous it was, they had no regrets. They hadn’t hurt anyone, and they had tried to create a spell that, if successful, would give them one of the highest statuses in the empire.
They could even join the Mages’ Society as important people!
That’s why they were happy.
Well, Laura was happy about that. Louis was just thinking of a way to make sure it didn’t fail like that, and rather than happy, he was a little frustrated by the failure.
After they were alone, they began to read the scrolls of rules.
--
Hardrial walked to the principal’s office and when he arrived, he noticed that the principal was watching the smoke rising from the distant lands that belonged to his department.
"A logical mistake, right?" he said and looked at him. "I didn’t think that the great wizard Hardrial, the best teacher at our academy, could still make mistakes in magic," said the principal, smiling ironically.
"Haha, it was just a failed attempt at something I was teaching the kids. No lives were lost, only material damage," he replied "sincerely."
Obviously, he wouldn’t tell this guy that it was his two students who had created that. This guy was one of those who repressed him at the academy and was the main opponent of him teaching many more subjects, reducing him to teaching only the subjects he wanted, with Armamentalists.
He was not someone he trusted.
The director shrugged and sat down. "How much damage is there? Can it be repaired quickly?" he asked.
"It’s over a million in damages," he said.
"Puff..." The director spat out his tea and looked at him. "Over a million?! Did you destroy the entire main hall?!" he asked with a shout, standing up suddenly, angry.
Hardrial smiled sheepishly. "Something like that."
"Something like that, you say? Do you think we have infinite wealth?! We just spent 50 million on remodeling the training areas!" he shouted.
Hardrial stared at him. "That’s strange, I don’t remember seeing any improvements to the training areas in my department. How did you spend so much?" he said.
The director swallowed his words and frowned.
"You don’t use your training areas much. There are only three of them, so it’s understandable that we focus on the other departments that have dozens or hundreds of students," he said, sitting down again.
Hardrial sighed. It had always been like this, ever since his department was created, even before he became a professor. Before him, there was a professor, also an Armamentist, who taught him things before he died. He wasn’t lucky enough to have him for long, as he was murdered by people who, until now, remain unknown.
’And now it’s still the same. The resources for Armamentists are being stolen by this bastard,’ he thought.