Adam didn't know whether this counted as an easy way through the trial, but he had no intention of pointing it out. He was still quite relaxed, after all—no magical beast that could threaten his life had appeared yet, and this was the perfect time to see more species and enrich his understanding of the Mage Plane.
As for whether anyone else lived or died—what did that have to do with Adam?
Everyone relaxed now. After the sun went down, the Mordo Academy raised its defenses again, and the Mage lifted the seal on the cabin, allowing them to eat and rest.
Within a few hours, driven on by the shadow of death, Ophelia finally learned Fireball—but she had only one shot in her, and with her injuries on top of that, if those fools in the organization hadn't volunteered to stand in the most dangerous spot, she would have broken long ago.
After dinner, in her room, Ophelia's mind drifted back to Adam's words without her willing it: "The soul can't bear mana, but that doesn't mean the body can't." The sentence tempted her like the devil himself. She'd had enough of being a burden.
"Spiritual power communes with the void and interacts with ether," Ophelia, unable to wait for a more systematic explanation, began experimenting on herself right away, "forming mana, channeling it into the body."
The process was simpler than she'd imagined, and more painful. Ophelia had assumed channeling mana into the body meant letting it enter the blood vessels or flow through the respiratory tract, but mana's nature was far too overbearing—it followed none of its host's will at all. The instant it entered her body it shot straight for her cells, got inside them, and in place of—
Mana took the place of ATP to power cell division, and cells split with mana as their energy source were far stronger than the originals; this was how mana strengthened a Mage's body.
That part was Adam's simple analysis afterward, drawn from Ophelia's description. In that moment, all Ophelia felt was astonishing pain.
Every last thread and fiber of her body was being mercilessly savaged. The pain came like the tide, one wave no sooner fallen than the next rose, without end, and every second stretched out to infinity inside her senses.
Ophelia felt as though she'd been thrown into a juicer: blood, sweat, and useless, low-grade intracellular fluid were steadily expelled from her body and replaced by mana's products.
Cristel had been drawn over by the screams of agony. She crouched at the side and shakily reached out to support Ophelia, but Ophelia's tormented state frightened her so badly she didn't dare lay a hand on her.
"Adam, Miss Ophelia, she—" Cristel could only appeal to Adam, who had appeared at some point and stood watching coldly from the sidelines.
Adam's gaze never left Ophelia. An ordinary person—even a Grand Knight—would have died of dehydration that severe, yet Ophelia showed no sign of dying from it. Her body was still full and firm, and even the day's wounds were healing.
"She's channeled mana into her body. In this state, she should be undergoing transformation," Adam explained softly. He was deeply interested in the sight. A body-refining Mage, as the name suggests, is a Mage who seeks bodily power; an elemental Mage seeks the soul and uses the soul's ascension to raise his level of life. So what did a body-refining Mage do? Turn the body into a cyborg? A bionic human?
Nearly half an hour passed before Ophelia calmed down and the trembling of her body gradually faded. Seeing that, Adam and Cristel tactfully withdrew from her room, and shortly afterward Ophelia appeared before them in fresh clothes.
Before either of them could ask, she said, "I feel good right now, except that I'm starving. My injuries are more or less healed, every muscle is full of strength—I feel like I could kill that magical beast from before with no trouble at all."
Adam said without any tact at all, "That's an illusion. You aren't stronger at all right now. Mana hasn't changed your essence; it only laid down the barest foundation for you."
Then he laid out his analysis for the two of them. At this point, experience from their respective paths was valuable knowledge, something that could serve as corroboration for their own development later on.
Cristel looked at Adam with something close to worship. She understood none of what he said, but it sounded formidable. Ophelia was the same—and then Adam suddenly remembered what he had said back at the manor.
"Another world... could that really be true?"
Adam gave her no chance to ask. The corpses of the beasts killed during the day were still piled on the deck. At this point, any sliver of added strength might raise one's odds of surviving, let alone magical beast meat, which could directly toughen the body.
Ophelia had thought of the same thing; because her cells had divided so wildly, she was now desperately in need of nutrients.
There was no shortage of clever people. Every apprentice was hauling off magical beast corpses of one kind or another. No one had known there would be rest time at night, and in endless battle no one had had the leisure to care about corpses—but now they were precious resources.
Adam wasn't in a hurry. He didn't need to eat in large quantities, and the path of the knight, or of body refining, was not the one he pursued. Above all, magical beast corpses would be near infinite over the next month or so; there was no need to rush now.
In the short term, Fireball's power couldn't be raised, and the odds of learning a new spell were very low; the business of casting five Fireballs at once, though, had given him a new research direction. That method required fairly harsh preconditions, however, and for the moment couldn't become a standard tool.
Adam stood on the deck watching the magical beasts still packed dense as ever in the pitch-black water. The Mordo Academy's defensive mechanism kept them from boarding; it was easy to imagine that the beasts coming at dawn would far outnumber today's.
Ophelia, on the other hand, headed straight for the beast that had flayed her black and blue. Kill your opponent, then eat it—that was a knight's romance.
But she was one step late. A male apprentice from the organization had already hoisted the beast's corpse with a look of wild delight and was heading into the cabin.
Ophelia frowned and blocked his way, saying coldly, "Put it down. It's mine."
A Grand Knight disdained to rob anyone, but she wouldn't stand by while what was hers was taken from her either—so her tone was entirely matter-of-fact.
The male apprentice clearly thought otherwise. His delighted face went cold at once, and he said in a mocking tone, "Yours? Is your name written on it? Call it—does it answer? Out of the way, don't block the road."
After one day of bloody fighting, the title of Grand Knight no longer cowed anyone. Everyone knew by now that on the Mage Continent, the knight profession was no different from being an ordinary person. Since everyone was the same, why should anyone show her any respect? And the ones still alive were no cowards; on the contrary, their reason had been scraped close to hysteria by all the blood.
"Give it to me," Ophelia repeated.
The male apprentice suddenly stepped back, then announced loudly, "Our Miss Ophelia seems to think this magical beast—which we all killed together—belongs to her. Do you all agree?"
The male apprentice was clever, and he was base. First he set Ophelia on the opposite side, trying to overwhelm her with numbers and force her to give in.
The others did turn their eyes over. In fact they all knew perfectly well what was going on, but getting a better magical beast was, after all, a good thing for oneself—and as for what Ophelia thought, ha, that didn't matter in the least.
Ophelia drew a deep breath. "Tom, you are once again provoking the dignity of a noble..."
The male apprentice was none other than Tom, of the south. He laughed out loud. "Noble dignity, hahaha..." Then his throat worked and he spat a thick gob off to the side. "Bah! Putting on your noble airs on the Mage Continent? Did someone hit you over the head? Can your noble status help you take one more Fireball? Huh? Or make the beasts stop attacking you? Hahaha."
Ophelia's muscles snapped taut at once; Tom's words were a grievous insult. She swept her eyes around and saw that of the three who had also come from Northland, only two remained—and both had their heads bowed deep.
Tom looked at Ophelia with contempt and held out his hand, revealing a ring set with a ruby. "Don't bother looking. That idiot Sam is dead, and this is on my finger now."
Ophelia finally lost her temper. A surge of blood-qi rose from her that seemed fainter than before, and she struck, fast as lightning, a hand darting for Tom's throat.
Bang.
Before Ophelia's hand could touch Tom, she felt searing heat coming in from the side. She flung herself out of the way and saw a Fireball burst where she'd been. The one who had cast it was Quentin.
"Miss Ophelia, though it's rather rude of me to say so, I think he's right. This beast was killed by everyone working together; it doesn't belong to you alone. And I can't simply stand by and watch you raise a hand to a comrade of the organization."
Tom exploded with rage. He raised his hand, pointed the ruby at Ophelia, and hissed viciously, "You—you bitch, you actually dared to raise a hand to me, dared to do it in front of the organization and Lord Quentin—I want you dead!"
The minds of little men are twisted and dark. Tom had first become an apprentice and decided his status was no longer what it had been, only to be rebuked by Ophelia; then he'd fought for his life through the surging tide of beasts; and now, when power was finally in his hands, he'd been "humiliated" once again. He had already made Ophelia into an enemy.
Even Quentin couldn't listen to this anymore—he was a noble himself, after all. "Tom, shut your mouth." Tom retreated unwillingly, still staring hard at Ophelia.
Quentin spoke again. "Miss Ophelia, my apologies, but I really can't hand it over to you. Randy and I are just as..."
Cristel furiously cut Quentin off; she couldn't bear to watch Ophelia be insulted. "You're lying! Miss Ophelia risked her life holding that beast off—that's the only reason you had a chance to attack at all. And you never even hit it. Even if this beast doesn't belong to Miss Ophelia, it should belong to Adam."