"Impossible!" Constantine replied instinctively.
He rushed over in something of a rage. Bruce raised the thick tome covered in dense writing and held it between them. Constantine staggered back two steps as if he had been punched, clutching his forehead. "No, don't show me that. But there can't possibly be anything wrong with my Magic Circle."
Sitting opposite Bruce, Constantine clenched his hand into a fist and tapped the table with his knuckles. "A magician's power may be borrowed, but there's plenty of skill in how that borrowed power is used. Those young hotheads nowadays borrow power and squander it as they please. Some of them are even too lazy to chant spells—they just wave a hand and fling raw energy itself as an attack."
"What sets me apart from them is that I've mastered nearly every existing method for improving magical energy efficiency. Chanting, talismans, magical artifacts, Magic Circles—I know the most sophisticated techniques in all of them."
"That's why I've borrowed money all over Heaven and Hell without ever paying it back, yet I'm still alive. I can achieve the greatest effect with the least energy. My energy efficiency is at least five or six times theirs. If those idiots who can't recognize a single rune tried it, they'd have gotten themselves killed long ago."
"But the two Magic Circles you drew in front of me that day really were inefficient. Add fewer than four general-purpose transformation runes, and the energy conversion speed could be increased by one and a half times."
"Hiss..." Constantine sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. He glared at Bruce. "Big words. I'll get some paper, and we'll derive it from the beginning."
Constantine stormed upstairs and returned with a stack of blank paper and several pens in different colors. He spread the