Reincarnated into a Game as the Hero’s Friend - Chapter 29

When I was researching what magic is, the first thing that came to my mind is the mana recovery potion. The existence of a mana recovery potion itself is strange.

Even if your mana is 0, as long as you drink the small and light mana recovery potion, you can recover enough mana to use magic that can decimate a group of enemies. In a game, it’s a convenient item.

But in reality, even if you argue that the law of energy conservation might not apply in the world of magic, it’s still strange. If the mana recovery potion has that much mana inside of it, why drink it? Why not just throw it to your enemy? It can cause much more destruction.

After that, I began to wonder. Maybe the reason why the potion needs to be drunk is that the mana inside it needs to be converted into another kind of energy first?

Unexpectedly, I began to feel that perhaps this train of thought is right. In other words, maybe there are 2 types of mana.

Let’s call the mana inside our body ‘body mana’ and the other type of mana is ‘nature mana’ which is present in our surroundings.

So whenever someone uses magic, they utilize their body mana to interact with nature mana. The body mana can be recovered by the potion. That means the potion is like an external battery.

In this case, the role of class and skills would be like the smartphone OS and application that finetune the mana into a specific and more efficient path. That’s why for the wielder of [Spearmanship] like me when we use a spear, our fatigue is drastically decreased.

As for which act as an OS and which act as an application, I need more experiments to find out. Well, that can be done later.

Since I already have this hypothesis, I began to wonder how nature mana works. What if many mages activate magic at the same time in a certain small area, will the speed of magic activation become slower? Or will it remain unaffected?

In order to test that, I created this experiment where many people use random magic tools simultaneously in order to consume as much nature mana in this area as possible. Well, rather than consume, maybe the word ‘waste’ is much closer.

And the result of the experiment is that magic can be activated but its powers fall considerably. That means there’s a limit on how much the core of magic, the nature mana, you can use simultaneously in a small area. As for whether that limit is the same everywhere or is there any place that has denser nature mana, that needs more research.

The downside of this discovery is the fact that it also affects the magic used by our own allies. There’s also a possibility that if you continue to waste nature mana, there might be a point where you can’t activate any magic.

As for the merit of this discovery, we now know that the later a magic is activated, the bigger it receives the influence of lacking nature mana. It’s proven by the fact that despite offensive magic obviously should have consumed larger nature mana than activating magic tools, the rate of weakening of the effect of offensive magics is considerably higher than the magic tools.

Most importantly, magic tools can be used by anyone even if they possess no mana. To prevent the opponent from using any magic, all you need to do is either increase the number of magic tools or create a magic tool that can waste a large amount of nature mana.

There’s a need to do more research on the effect of wasting nature mana on a skill. At least I think there’s no need for a field experimental study like this for that research.

Then, according to the game knowledge, the amount of nature mana present in one specific place isn’t much. Because if it is, the hero party can win by using saturation tactics[1].

Maybe the reason why the hero party only has a few elites that can use magic is so they can use their power to their full potential.

I also researched past demon outbreaks and found that demons that use magic in a demon outbreak are few. Even if the demons can use magic, they will only use simple magic, not big-scale offensive magic. It makes sense considering the number of demons present in an outbreak. 

That’s why I thought just maybe this nature mana waste tactic is a key to solving the future attack on the capital event.

The royal palace does have a barrier protecting it, but in the game, it still got destroyed, so I have no intention to rely on the barrier.

Rather, relying on the nature mana waste tactic will be much better since all 4 Heavenly Emperors, including the Heavenly Emperor that will attack the capital, are magic-type opponents, while the 3 Generals are physical type.

Unfortunately, a magic tool capable of using up all nature mana in its surroundings didn’t exist. Despite that, this rather underhanded tactic is still a ray of light in the darkness for me since the opponents are beings that can’t be defeated by normal means.

I need to think and research how to make this tactic usable in future battles.

“A splendid idea, Viscount Zeavert.”

“I agree. It was truly amazing.”

Count Shandel and Mage Fogto came to me and praised me. Here, I need to obediently accept their praise.

“Thank you very much. I am rather glad that everything has gone so smoothly.”

“This is a great discovery. With this, we just need to throw a magic tool that can exhaust the surrounding nature mana to an enemy mage troop to make their magic considerably weaker.”

Fogto-san, the battle against demons is right in front of us, so why are you more concerned about countries’ disputes?

I guess that’s just how politics is, eh. Though even if we do as Fogto said, I’m sure the opponent will be able to create a similar thing in no time. History wise, a weapon that is successful in Country A will immediately be created by Country B.

That’s natural since Country B already has an example that they just need to copy. Unless a genius like Archimedes creates the weapon. In that case, recreating it will be difficult.

For me, I’m more interested in knowing the name of the craftsmen who successfully brought weapons from Archimedes’s design to reality. I wonder if those craftsmen created it after understanding the principle behind it. It’s unfortunate that the name of these craftsmen isn’t well known.

“We need to create a disposable magic tool that can exhaust nature mana in the surrounding.”

“Yes. I will immediately send a research proposal to the kingdom.”

I’m curious where they planned to use that sort of magic tool, but I won’t ask. It’s better for me if a magic tool like that is created as soon as possible so I can use it. I don’t have any ability to actually create it.

“But I am curious. All this time, the subject of the firepower of magic falling in a group battle has never been brought up?”

“Unfortunately, no. In the first place, no verification has been done, so no one has realized it.”

Fogto-san’s answer convinced me. Without having a hypothesis like mine, there’s no way the mages even bother to verify it. Plus in a real battle, the decrease in damage brought by the magic can also be attributed to the opponent’s armor and their defensive magic, so it must have been hard to tell.

Not to mention in the midst of a life or death battle, who has the leisure time to verify it? I have felt in the recent demon outbreak how much stuff you need to do on an actual battlefield.

I also understand if they said that they never thought of using not the equipment but tools and not to defend against magic but rather to obstruct it.

All this time, equipment must be the sole way used to handle magic attacks.

“Anyway, since we have finished the experiment, I wish to start preparing for the group battle training.”

“Ah, that’s right.”

This training is also important, so don’t forget it, Count.

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T/N: Saturation tactics is a military tactic in which the attacking side hopes to gain an advantage by overwhelming the defending side’s technological, physical, and mental ability to respond effectively.