CHAPTER 120: AGGRESSIVE FABRICS AND PASSIVE FABRICS

While this was happening, Louis didn’t miss a single day of school. He was learning new things. How to use certain runes, how to employ them, what they were used for, the divisions of each rune...

Basically, Hardrial had already started with the actual, practical classes.

In addition to levels, Power Runes (Arkanometric Fabric) are also divided into Categories, depending on their usefulness.

There are two main groups: Aggressive Fabrics and Passive Fabrics.

Each main group has four subgroups, which correspond to the Arkant Gods and are known as Elemental Aggressive Fabrics. Basically, Aggressive Fabrics are all those that have the peculiarity of consuming mana in one go and in large quantities.

Passive Fabrics, on the other hand, which also have the same number of groups and only change the name from "Aggressive" to "Passive," are all those Fabrics or Runes that consume mana as time passes.

They are not divided into whether one is offensive or not, but rather into the peculiarity of their mana consumption. This is because it is not the same to control mana consumption that occurs suddenly and without warning as it is to control consumption that is smoother and more manageable.

That is why one is Aggressive and the other is Passive.

Almost all Attack Fabrics fall into the Aggressive Weave category, which makes sense, as attacks need to be created quickly. But some belong to the Passive Weave category, which are even more powerful than all Aggressive Fabrics.

They are called Final Attacks.

And they are so rare that very few magicians, even among the most powerful, have them.

This is because not just any attack is a final attack. It requires more than understanding; it requires the creation of new Fabrics and a deep understanding of how you want to use your mana.

According to Professor Hardrial, they haven’t found any Armamentalists with a Final Attack so far, but there are some in the other groups.

After all, getting a Final Attack is easier said than done. Even though Hardrial has spent many years researching it and trying to create one, he still hasn’t seen any signs of one.

However, these Final Attacks fall into the category of Passive Fabrics because they cannot be cast immediately. They require a process. You have to recharge a lot of mana inside yourself and spend some time channeling it, constantly expending more until you create it.

The end result should be an amazing attack, capable of performing impossible feats.

That’s why the principle of Passive Fabrics is so impressive and exciting, and one of the most studied precisely because of this.

Another type of attack that falls into this category is those that can be used for protection. Martial artists are specialists in this, as they cover their bodies with Passive Fabrics that constantly consume mana to protect themselves from attacks.

These two large groups encompassed all types of Fabrics that existed and had to be studied carefully.

This week, Hardrial devoted himself exclusively to learning about Aggressive Fabrics.

Any fabric that only needed a single portion of energy to form. It practically had a "fixed" type of damage (although that is false, as it is not fixed, but depends on the user’s magical power), this damage could not grow beyond what the user’s magical power allowed.

This type of attack is the most useful for them, as they are Armamentalists. Generally, they are known among Mages as Assassin Mages.

Learning it wasn’t that complicated. Louis simply made great strides, quickly learning how to make these fabrics. This increased his speed significantly, and he even tried to start making second-level fabrics.

However, he realized that it was too difficult.

There is a huge variety of strange fabrics at that level. Even for him, creating his first weave would take some time. That’s why he didn’t try to create a mission for it.

And speaking of missions...

This week, creating missions has been complicated. As he has been moving around a lot in the southern area, he has been able to create many missions, including ones related to everyday life.

However, most gave him between 1 and 2 coins, while a few didn’t even give him 1, but half. Yes, he could receive missions worth 0.5, which accumulated when he received the points.

Despite that, he has managed to earn 15 stat points during this busy week. A decent amount, considering they pay him peanuts for each mission.

Even so, he can practically create missions just to go to the bathroom. He can’t complain either.

Most missions lately aren’t that good, and Professor Hardrial won’t let them go to the Tower, so he has to make do with it.

Something that has been a bit annoying is the academy itself these days. They are causing Professor Hardrial to lose a lot of teaching time, bothering him over every little thing, or simply creating unnecessary problems for him.

Even Louis and Laura noticed this, seeing that he was the first teacher to arrive and the last to leave.

Even so, there’s nothing they can do. Rumor has it that they simply want to prevent their students from preparing well so that they fail in the tournament, but what they don’t expect is that Hardrial is simply such a good teacher that he has prepared for it.

He sleeps less, but prepares better classes to teach in record time and even leaves magical recordings to explain complex topics.

In addition, his students are simply top-notch geniuses. Even if he doesn’t teach them anything, they will find a way to learn it themselves.

In addition, he found out that Louis has Grimoires, which makes it much easier to teach them.

Simply put, the outsiders’ plan was working; they were distracting Hardrial. But at the same time, it wasn’t working, because what good was it to distract him if, in the end, his students weren’t affected?

In fact, thanks to Hardrial being so busy, Louis has learned a lot from Laura.

Things about the city, its mysteries, and things that seem to have a lot of background behind them, which have helped him better understand each district.

He wasn’t aware of the struggle between districts until she mentioned it to him. Then, he supplemented that with information Hardrial provided them, and he also started reading the local newspapers more.

Unlike the newspapers on Earth, these provided much fairly good information. As far as he could remember, the newspaper guys on Earth tended to be very alarmist.

Here, although they are alarmist, it is not as much, and they usually just give information without resorting to alarmism. It even seems that they don’t really care what happens, the city or the wars. They just do their job of bringing information to everyone without creating controversy, except on a few occasions.

For example, recently, newspapers have been covering the story that Paul Borne may have been murdered in the south by an unknown entity, and speculation began. They didn’t report it with alarmism, but with excitement.

They seem to believe that if a war were to start, it would be exciting to watch.

It’s a very... strange form of journalism.

Perhaps they benefit from wars... he doesn’t know. But he found it interesting.

He also learned that the Runes of Power have a price in the city. In fact, they’re not as easy to make as these three make it look.

Hardrial’s examples about how quickly they can be made are unrealistic. Not just anyone can create runes in seconds or minutes. Only a very small percentage of the empire’s magician population can do so.

Because of this, power runes are quite expensive, even level 1 ones. Level 3 ones can cost astronomical amounts, depending on what they are.

Because of this, Louis felt the need to go see the place where Laura sold her runes, since that was what she did for a living.

Surprisingly, he thought she belonged to some great family or something, given her talent and peculiar lineage capable of creating the anomaly of an albino.

But before that, Louis needed to buy bullets.

He had spent the entire week using bullets to improve his aim and train his energy/mana intensively, which was now depleted.

Therefore, when he woke up and completed his morning missions, he went to Mr. Gon’s "hideout." The place he had been using all this time to work.

When he arrived, Mr. Gon was moving everything to some carriages.

"Are you finishing the move, Mr. Gon?" asked Louis, approaching from behind.

As soon as he heard him, he turned around. He was still completely covered and not much of his body was visible, but from his behavior, Louis could tell that he was excited.

The other workers who were helping him were also excited to see him. He was well known these days.

"Haha, young lord, I didn’t expect to have you visiting so early. Yes, we’re almost done with the move. Well... we should be finished by tonight."

"I can see you’ve created a lot of things." He looked at the contents of the boxes—weapons of all kinds and different magical tools. There were also bullets.

He had a whole arsenal there. He wondered how he had been given permission to create all these weapons and use them as he pleased.