Chapter 35: Efficient Casting

Karl sat on the balcony of his room with a stack of textbooks, trying to determine if there would be some surefire way to help Hawk advance from the Awakened stage to Ascended without a large delay. From what he knew of the Windspeed Hawk, their progression usually came from improved skills with [Rend] along with an increased ability power level. The mana infused monster blood should help with the second part, and they were doing daily training, which no wild Hawk would ever have a reason to do. Mostly because they hunted for food, not for sport, so they wouldn't use their skills a hundred times a day. That gave them some sort of advantage over the wild growth rate, but there had to be more that he could do than just grind their skills over and over. Hawk had already learned the [Wind Barrier] from the Headmaster's Wind Beads, so the Windspeed Hawk could absolutely learn new things from mystic resources, he just had to get his hands on them. A knock on his door distracted him from his confusion, and Karl went to open the door, finding Dana with a smile and a bag full of books, plus a small plate of food. "I brought a gift for Hawk. Someone told me that they had them around their house in the farmlands, and the Hawks really liked these, so I asked the kitchen to find one." She greeted him. That caught Hawk's attention, and he flew in from the other room to land on her shoulder and check out the plate. It was a small animal, skinned, but intact and raw, but to the Windspeed Hawk, the smell was divine. "It's an Iron Jaw Mole. They're farmland pests, as they dig huge holes for their nests. They've got great jaw strength, as you would expect, but that's it. Unfortunately for them, they're even weaker than the Earth Mice in the fields outside the Academy, and they've got no ranged attacking power at all." The trio walked back to the patio and Dana set the plate on the table, where it was immediately attacked by Hawk. "Mind your manners, I don't need you getting blood splatter on the textbooks." Karl reminded him. In response, the Hawk pushed the plate to the far side of the table, but didn't slow his pace, happily tearing the small animal to bits. "What are you working on today?" Karl asked as Dana set out a pair of notebooks, but no reference text. "Mana control. According to the teacher, I still use too much for every spell, and that inefficiency is why I'm having trouble with multiple spells and my channelling speed. For now, they've asked me to just focus on Magic Missiles and Fog, and not to expand my spell repertoire yet, or I will ingrain bad habits into new spells. So, I want to get my efficiency increased as quickly as I can." Dana explained. Hawk looked up with interest. That topic sounded like it would be useful to him too. He could kill more water balls that way, and taunt the mages. Taunting mages was way more fun than Hawk had expected it to be, especially when they weren't allowed to attack him directly. "That sounds like good advice. I need to find a way to keep Hawk progressing now that he's reaching full growth. All this good food and the handful of special items they could find that were suitable for Hawks have brought him up to full-grown in record time, but he is going to hit his natural bottleneck soon, and then it's up to training whether we can make the leap from Awakened to Ascended before the first semester is over." They studied in silence for a few minutes while Hawk finished eating, and then the bird flew up into the trees and brought them back a singe pear, perfectly ripened. Karl remembered this one from the guidebook. It was supposed to help refresh the body and remove stress. A common enough effect for magical plants, but useful when studying. Karl cut it into thin slices, and Hawk took one small bite before ruffling its feathers and turning away. The pear smelled incredible, but it was too sweet, not at all to Hawk's liking. The humans could have it. Karl laughed at the Hawk's disappointed look and cut the pear into slices for them to snack on. Then, Hawk stepped across the table and directly onto Dana's notepad. "What are you doing, little man? Have we ignored you too much?" She asked, and stroked his head gently. Hawk preened at the attention, then shook himself and focused. He raised one claw, and created a [Rend] blade in front of him, then decreased the intensity to almost nothing, before bringing it back up again. Then down until it was almost invisible. [Tell her about the waste.] Hawk demanded. "He wants you to understand that the harder you push yourself, the more mana you waste. Try what he's doing with your Magic Missiles, and I think you'll see, hold it in place and keep decreasing the power. The mana cost drops exponentially." Karl explained. Dana looked skeptical, but she did what he asked. The first few Missiles nearly fired out across the Academy Grounds, as she had never before tried to hold them in place, but after a few minutes, she could hold and guide them where she wanted as she slowly reduced the power from the default full activation to barely a glow of light. "How did you know to do that?" She asked as she mimicked Hawk's cycle through the power range. "It's instinctive for Hawk, and he taught me. By the logic of a Windspeed Hawk, you should hunt with just enough power to take out your prey, so you don't waste more energy than you get back." Karl explained. "So that's it. This is a huge breakthrough. I can see where I was going wrong, I was just focusing on the spell activation sequence, and letting it go. I thought that I was doing well by controlling the direction, but if I focus on the mana flow, I can do so much more with it. There are likely so many things that we can learn from magical creatures that we have never thought of ourselves. The teacher's directions aren't even this detailed, and I've never seen another student actually reduce the power of their spells. They just increase their endurance and cast everything at full power every time, but with better control as they grow." Karl thought about that for a moment and shook his head. "No, the senior students have learned to control and split the power as well. I guess they just thought that it would be too difficult for a new mage? But it makes casting spells way easier. Even if you do it at half power, you should be able to cast at least five missiles for every one that you could before."