Hello, ITalkToSky here
I have mixed feeling about this chapter. I am really not sure whether Mayumi and Mari were out of character or not. I really have to brush up my Mahouka skill.
You might be unsatisfied with how the story turn out, but bear with me as the explanation for what happen will be coming soon.
00000
"I will give it a try again, just in case." He gave them a reassuring smile, but they seemed to take it differently.
"You don't have to push yourself when you are in pain like that." Mayumi pulled his shoulder, trying to tear him away from the machine.
"That's right. Magic is not the only way of life you know." Even Mari could not stand to not say anything. What that did was making the century old magician cried inside.
'Why are you so mean?! You too, Kirika-san, stop looking at me with that lukewarm gaze. I am just trying again to confirm that I could not use it, so that I could simply move on. Why are they looking like they are persuading me from suicide?!' Lunaire thought as cried even more inside. He wondered why the modern girls were so mean.
"Don't worry, all of you. I am just checking again, so that I can just be on my way. I have other ways to walk, so it is not like this is going to devastate me or something. Why are you looking like you are persuading a person trying to commit suicide? That hurt me bad, you know?" He jokingly stated his mind and approached the CAD after gently pulling Mayumi's hand off his shoulder.
His head was still quite numb from the ordeal, so he massaged his temple a bit before placing his hands back on the CAD screen. After a moment, he pressed on the screen. The pale blue string of numbers started spiraling around his wrist once again. Before he knew it, he was assaulted by the pain again, but more suppressed. Lunaire felt the pain was lower than the first he tried it. The world swayed a bit, as if he was having seasickness all over again. He was grateful he did not have a heavy lunch, even if the amount of the cake he ate was not quite small.
'I will need some tea to do over this headache.' Lunaire thought to himself silently.
His eyes followed the movement of the metal plate. When the strings of number ended, a small convoluted geometric pattern suddenly appeared beneath the plate, sending it forward before the pattern disappeared.
'Interesting. Multiple processed all in one cast, back and forth she goes.'
He amused himself with his internal thought. When the plate came back to stop at his end, he peered at the timer board.
'1643 milliseconds.' He did not know what to make of it as he had not yet heard the benchmark from Kirin.
"Ano…how long was the standard again." He tentatively asked without turned around to look.
"You have tried hard, really, but…" As if she could not bear to see it anymore Mari stepped in closely, preparing to pull him from the machine. Although he did not know, his cold sweat and clenched jaw gave away the amount of pain he felt. Mari did not know what could have cause the pain, but if he was suffering, she was determined to stop it.
"Don't worry about it." Deciding that asking further was futile, he leaned his weight on the panel and pressed again.
"Wait you!" Mari cried.
"Stop it, Lunaire-san/kun!" Mayumi and Kirin's voices blended as one.
The code spiraled to life once again before being absorbed into his arm. This time though was a little bit different for Lunaire. The pain he felt was now reduced to thumping and noise of scraping a glass pane subsided to a more tolerable level. It was at this moment that he started to realize the dissonance he felt while operating with CAD. It was quite obvious to him for this magic to be different from the mana-based magic he is used to, but the feeling was rather new.
At the moment that spiral code appeared and absorbed, he felt the connection to the machine in front of him. From what he had learned, the machine stored the activation code as an electronic code that is converted into psion signal by using user psion particles and induction stone. The psion signal is then absorbed and processed in the brain. Somehow, to Lunaire, the absorption felt like opening an unoiled door or clogged pipe. That in itself was quite uncomfortable, but not outright pain.
The screeching noise and pain assaulted him only after the code almost finished their spiral. It felt like a stirred up pond. As a disciple of magic, Lunaire is highly attuned to his inner state and can easily manipulate his mental state to aid in spell casting. However, the absorbed psion code seemed to have messed up his control. The foreign texture and feeling compared to mana was probably the reason for the pain, Lunaire reasoned.
As he was closing his eyes and concentrated on his magic pathways, he heard the last ringing sound, signifying the end of magic and reopened his eyes.
'1217 milliseconds, faster.' Lunaire acknowledged his gain slightly and concentrated deeply on his magic pathways again. The sound of his breathing calmed him as he pushed his weight onto the device once again.
The processed repeated as his wrist was charged with the spiraling code again. This time he focused on the intruding presence in his mind. It felt like wave and gave a feeling as if he was on a swaying boat. This time, however, he consciously attempted alleviate the swaying. Cutting and thinning out the ripples he felt unnecessary, he felt the burden lessened greatly. Feeling more comfortable, he stretched his right hand forward with his fingers spread wide, his favorite gesture when casting magic.
The plate followed the same routine. At the appearance of blue glowing patterned, the metal plate moved back and forth. What was different though was the number at the end of the lane.
'894 milliseconds.' From his observation of how unhelpful his surrounding seemed to be at the moment, he judged that his best course of option was simply to again press down on the device, while ignoring any words around him.
'614 milliseconds, more keep going.' Somewhere along the line, he found it vexing that there were magic he could not practice and just kept on spamming the button. It seemed that he unknowingly picked up silent pride over the course of his long life studying magic.
'532 milliseconds.'
'476 milliseconds, kind of fun actually.'
'412 milliseconds.'
'372 milliseconds, I want a bit more.'
'334 milliseconds, there is still something…'
"Yes? Just a moment, please." As the poke as his side grew stronger, he instinctively responded with autonomous answer, the way he had been doing to everyone who disturbed his concentration. To his embarrassment, he had been known to say "just a moment" in regular interval for a few hours after Sakuya called him for the tea time when he was concentrating on reading something. Sometimes, a magician's concentration can be very scary.
"Lunaire-kun." The familiar voice of Kirin rang out.
"Yes? Just a moment, please." He pressed down again.
'309 milliseconds…still there is…'
"Lunaire-kun!" Now it was Kirin's voice that jumped up a couple of decibels.
"Yes?! What is it?" He snapped to attention and warily looked around, before feeling sweaty on his forehead. Scouring his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his face, he turned and beheld a half fuming half shocked Kirin. Lunaire quickly wiped his grin that seemed to be plastered onto his face when he was getting result.
"Why are you so reckless? You could have hurt yourself!?" Kirin shrieked and began to dragged Lunaire off the podium with the strength he did not know she possessed and dumped him on the revolving chair in front of some kind of machine.
"That's right. Who knew what could have happened? You good that really bad headache after all." Mari followed up.
"I am alright. I know my limit. After the first time, the pain was getting less. Now I am more or less fine. Isn't that alright, Watanabe-san?" He tried his best to show a disarming smile.
"Fools!" Mari chopped her hand on Lunaire's head, but missed as his twitch reflex kicked in and he kicked lightly on the floor, sending the revolving chair away from the swing. The tomboyish black hair girl lost her balance for a brief moment before splendidly recovered. After that though, she was not amused. Lunaire, sensing imminent danger to his wellbeing, bailed from his feet then started backing off.
The only person seemingly unaffected by childish banter was Mayumi. Her expression was unreadable as her mind worked overtime to explain what she saw.
'Whether it was the initial pain and horrendously long cast time were abnormal, but the decrease in cast time from 2 seconds to 300 milliseconds was utterly monstrous. Although casting speed can improve, there was no prior incident of it increasing with only a few round of practice. There is no way for a person who is so poor at magic to suddenly improve his cast time to a masterful level in a span of few minutes. Who exactly are you Lunaire V. Meister?' Mayumi pondered as she observed her friend chasing Lunaire around, trying to chop at his head.
"Ahem, once again, congratulation Lunaire-kun. The timing you got can qualify you as a rather skillful magician. Although we don't have the equipment to accurately gauge other parameters like interference strength and scale of your magic, at least we confirmed that you have talented. You really worked hard." Kirin finally recovered her sweet and fluffy elder-sister-like tone of voice as she addressed Lunaire after Mari settled down, unable to hit him in the end. It is worthy of mention though, that Lunaire found Kirin's voice very soothing to his ears. Combining her voice with her gentle demeanor, he was sure that anyone with an elder sister like her would be spoiled badly and might develop heavy sister complex, very dangerous.
"But what was that Lunaire-kun. How did you get your time to decrease that much? And is you head okay?" Mayumi concerned voice followed. He turned to her.
"I was just…not feeling well at that moment. Is 300 milliseconds that good of a time?" Quickly switched topic, he turned the attention to his performance.
"What do you mean good? That is some first-rate time you know. A decent magician will reliably perform at 500 ms, but only the elite will reach pass that boundary. Three hundred, Lunaire-kun, three hundred, from two thousand milliseconds. Although getting two thousand milliseconds was quite a shocker as the poorest performer that has the ability for magic usually don't exceed 1500." Mayumi finished her rant in a breath. She somehow decided to follow Kirin and dropped -san off his name.
"Don't know, don't care. If you think too much, you will look old you know." He feinted ignorance and tried to draw away attention by being intentionally insensitive.
"What?! You!?"
"Touché, Mayumi, did you hear that?" Mari, seeing the opportunity, jumped into the mix and teased Mayumi who was flustered.
"Hai, hai! Stop there. Calm down Mayumi-san. You too Lunaire-kun, you DON'T mention the age in front of a lady."
Lunaire gave a small laugh when Kirin stressed the last sentence.
"More than that, can we go take a look at the CAD? I am getting quite excited."
"Is that so? Then follow me."
Lunaire took it as a fast rope away from the splendidly ticked off Mayumi and sped toward the retreating maple-colored hair.
Lunaire was once again lamented at the terrible miscalculation. Not only did his plan of staying inconspicuous shatter to million pieces, the person who witnessed it had to be one of the more influential people in the society. The youkai magician berated himself repeatedly for his blunder.
When they reached the front of the store, he was asked for whether he had preference for certain system of magic. Lunaire read about CAD in depth and knew the difference between general and specialized CADs, a tradeoff between adaptability and speed. Kirin recommended to him that for the first timer, he should stick with the general type as he had not learned of his preferred magic type, in which he meekly comply. It was regrettable that although Lunaire preferred to be getting as much speed as possible, having the option of utilizing 9 spells from a single system was far too limited for his liking.
In the end he picked out a general-type bracelet CAD. It was hard to decide between a cellphone or a bracelet, but when he considered his close combat specialty, Lunaire opted for the bracelet. As for the activation sequence to be loaded, he asked for the simple and common ones required in magic high school setting.
He only requested the simpler ones, which perplexed people. Although it was not uncommon for people to assemble a phenomena from multi-stage spell, consisted of many simple spells invoked in sequence, it is far more common for people to load in activation sequence specialized for the task. It is a difference between mixing the ingredients yourself and having the instant mix in a single bag. Most magician would have both depending on their specialties.
With the simple, elementary spell filling only around a third of the CAD capacity, the real shocker for Mayumi and Mari was the sequences for the rest.
Although Lunaire had his misgiving about asking it in front of the girls following him, he decided not to mind as they probably seen enough already. The two-third of the space left was asked to be packed filled with activation sequences for close range combat, personal acceleration, extrasensory and his favorite type, long-range bombardment spells. Although all spells were legal, it peeved everyone. From the point of view of the two girls, Lunaire's CAD suddenly became much more terrifying, especially considering that they believed that he was only 14.
Although Kirin had her objection, she yielded under his strong insistence and finishing loading in the sequence along with tuning the machine to his psion wave. It was worthy of note though that she wore a slight frown that deepened after she had seen the result her machine displayed on the screen. Due to professionalism, she did not mention anything, but curiosity began to eat away at her mind.
Mari and Mayumi did not have much to say and watched on in silence after they saw that their protest against loading in such activation sequence went unheeded.
"Thank you very much, Kirika-san. I will visit again when the opportunity arises."
"Thank you for your patronage. You will be welcome always. Just don't get into trouble, okay? Just what do you need those sequences for?"
"Self-defense, self-defense." He chimed dismissingly.
"Just who are you defending against, that is a very decked out CAD?" The taller black haired girl inquired. Without stating any further, she was very worried for the boy as many strange occurrences seemed to revolve around him
"Just in case, be safe than sorry. Then I will have to be off, I have an appointment after this." He hopped on his feet and spun around before bolting away leaving the women unable to say anything else.
Lunaire had to admit that be constantly on guard for any blunder he could make the whole day made him tired, so he could not wish for a good hot bath and a good night sleep.
After she send Mayumi and Mari on her ways, she retreated back to her workbench. Tapping the activation code, the CAD tuning computer sprang to life as the blue light illuminated her green irises. Her fingers danced on the keyboard expertly, shifting the displayed about in search for a record.
Kirin was curious as to what caused the pain for the boy when he first used CAD and also the cause that his performance dropped. Since that went well, she decided not to mind it at first, but the resulted of the tuning boggled her mind. Not only the data was strange, it was also mighty hard to tune. At the moment of tuning, Kirin secretly recorded the psion wave data of the boy for analysis later.
Although she did it to satisfy her hidden curiosity, she also did it because she cared rather deeply for most of her customers.
She found the record she looked for and tapped her finger on the enter key and started looking at the rapidly moving shapes and alphabets.
00000
There we go one more suspicion into the mix.
The reason that Lunaire will be able to use psion-based magic will be explained in the next few chapters, so please bear with me for the time being. The hint is that it is in his racial trait as a Youkai Magician.