The Expanding Demon King Castle

Magic was an enormously vast field of study. Simply being able to listen, speak, read, and write any language did not mean one could perfectly master it. At the very least, as Eve had said, his casting gestures were wrong.

Don't think that was a trivial matter. Incorrect gestures were inefficient, slowing the weaving of runes and reducing their accuracy. The result was slower casting, and it could even affect a spell's effectiveness.

But Pei Renli didn't understand any of that. Aside from searching the library for books on the subject, all he could do was try asking a teacher and see whether they would teach him.

The library closed at night, and Pei Renli didn't have much time to look for a book on casting gestures. He could only register Practical Rune Magic: Standard Spells, Volume One and borrow it back to his dormitory to read at leisure.

Incidentally, the library's attendants were not human, but human-sized mechanisms shaped like adults. Put simply, they were magical versions of robots.

They were called golems. They were relatively cheap to make and were often used in places where employing people would be wasteful, yet someone was still needed.

Given the high value of knowledge, the library's security was extremely tight. Taking books out without permission would get you strung up and beaten by the golems, though the borrowing procedure itself was not troublesome.

Hand the golem your proof of enrollment and the book you wanted to borrow. Its eyes would verify the authenticity of the seal on the document like a banknote detector, and the registration was complete. Just remember to return the book within seven days.

Hugging the book, Pei Renli skipped all the way toward the dormitory as if he could not feel tired at all. But instead of going upstairs, he turned a corner and came to an open area behind the dorms.

Every twenty-odd meters stood a large black stone embedded in the ground. At first glance, there was no telling what they were for.

The black stones were actually obsidian. This kind of stone possessed a certain resistance to magic—in other words, it could block damage from spells.

Because of that property, obsidian was often used as a target for practicing magic. So the place he had initially failed to understand was actually a small spell testing ground.

Testing spells in an enclosed environment carried certain risks. It might not be obvious now, but if he developed bad habits, he would definitely suffer for them in the future.

While the sun had yet to set, Pei Renli opened the book and quickly flipped to around a third of the way through.

After glancing at the rune patterns on the page, he raised a finger and wrote three connected runes in the air.

The three runes meant "tracking," "force field," and "sphere," respectively.

As the final stroke ended, the runes hanging in midair twisted into a flash of magical light. An oval sphere burning with arcane energy flew from his fingertips.

In the blink of an eye, a crisp smack rang out as it struck the obsidian target not far away.

This was a spell that virtually every mage knew: Magic Missile. Its greatest feature was its built-in tracking ability.

One success could be called coincidence. Two, or even three, could not.

Though the power of Magic Missile depended heavily on its user's skill, leaving Pei Renli's current version with practically no killing power, this was already an enormous success.

Encouraged, Pei Renli closed the book and wove the runes again. This time, however, he made a slight change to the type of rune.

Previously, it had been "tracking," "force field," and "sphere." This time, he replaced it with "high speed," "force field," and "sphere."

Only one rune had changed, yet the resulting effect was completely different.

This time, the "Magic Missile" fired from his fingertips like a pistol shot. The slight recoil flicked his fingers upward, and since he had been completely unprepared, his aim went wildly off. The spell struck beside the obsidian target and left a shallow crater.

Unlike Magic Missile, which came with tracking ability, this one was called Force Ray. Put plainly, it was a Magic Missile stripped of its tracking ability and enhanced in speed and power. Both were beginner-level spells.

One major feature of rune magic was that developing a new spell only required altering existing runes or creating new ones. That was its advantage.

Of course, alterations could not be made recklessly. They had to take one's own conditions into account. If a spell failed to activate properly, that would be one thing—but if it exploded in his own hand, he might cough up blood and collapse at best, or die on the spot at worst.

So Pei Renli did not dare experiment too wildly. Still, there should be no problem with practicing spells he had already succeeded in casting.

Thus, on the spell testing ground, Pei Renli could be seen hurling Magic Missile and Gunshot Ray at the targets over and over, occasionally mixed with Light or Flash spells.

Being able to learn a spell did not mean one could use it proficiently, much less apply it flexibly in battle. There were no shortcuts in this regard. He could only keep practicing until it became muscle memory.

And the result of that frenzied training was Pei Renli toppling over stiffly like a log, unable to move even a finger, his face hitting the ground first.

Magic might seem unbelievable, but it was by no means something created from nothing. No matter how powerful or weak a spell was, casting it inevitably consumed mana.

Pei Renli had practiced himself into a frenzy and possessed no common sense at all. Once his mana was exhausted, he was practically paralyzed.

In fact, it had already shown during the teacher's earlier lesson. When many students tried Light, they had slumped onto their desks, unable to move at all. That was because they had so little mana that merely attempting Light a few times drained them dry.

Clearly, Pei Renli, caught up in his excitement, had not noticed that.

Carefully avoiding everyone else's gaze, Lavna carried Pei Renli back to the dormitory. She had even thoughtfully anticipated that his muscles would certainly be sore, so she had Puni gather medicinal herbs in advance and turn them into an ointment.

Since Pei Renli could not move right now, she simply applied the medicine for him herself.

It feels like every part of me has been seen.

Setting aside that somewhat embarrassing process, once she had finished applying the ointment, Lavna said, "Demon King, this subordinate has several matters to report."

"Ah?"

Pei Renli nearly fell asleep on the spot. His stamina and mana had both been squeezed dry, leaving him with absolutely nothing left. But he could not sleep yet, because he had not eaten dinner. He still had to get up and go to the cafeteria later.

"There have been some changes to the rooms in Demon King Castle. According to my observations, your room has expanded by several centimeters."

The so-called Demon King Castle was really just that cave. There were only six rooms left in total, and that count included the toilet.

"My room expanded? When?"

"I do not know exactly when. I only noticed it after returning yesterday."

If Lavna had not been intimately familiar with everything around her, she likely would not have realized that the room had grown by a few centimeters.

But then again, why would a perfectly ordinary room suddenly become larger?

Lavna said that Demon King Castle had originally been nowhere near this small. When the Demon King of Tyranny was still around, Demon King Castle had been a colossal structure with nine floors, each one packed with labyrinthine traps and monsters standing guard. Only after the Demon King of Tyranny vanished had it become what it was now.

Put simply, Demon King Castle was closely tied to the Demon King himself.

Which meant...

Considering the change had appeared yesterday, it had nothing to do with what Pei Renli had done today. There was only one possibility he could think of.

Reputation.

Yesterday, Pei Renli had made an imperial broadcast, raising his maximum reputation from 0 to 5. Perhaps once his reputation matched that of the Demon King of Tyranny, Demon King Castle would return to its original form.

At present, Pei Renli knew only a very limited amount about the Demon King System. Almost everything had to be resolved through guesswork.

Whether the expansion of Demon King Castle was directly related to reputation would be easy enough to verify. He only had to wait until his reputation increased again and take a look.

Compared to something so unimportant for the time being, what Pei Renli cared about most was still how to survive the next Demon King Arena.

Thus, his daily routine became grueling.

The moment he opened his eyes in the morning, it was a 1,500-meter run, followed by all sorts of physical training, weapons training, wilderness survival training, and more.

After school ended, he would drag his utterly exhausted body through magic practice and pore over spell materials. But he also had to make sure not to study too late, because he had to get up and run laps before dawn the next day. To keep up with the training, Pei Renli also had to ensure he got enough sleep...

This life of constant pressure, so intense it could be called squeezing every last drop of potential from himself, repeated day after day. But it had to be said that some people truly possessed remarkable potential. Pei Renli was actually beginning to keep up, little by little, and gradually getting used to it.

During that time, he remembered to check the Demon King System every night before bed. After an entire week had passed, only a thin layer of sand had fallen in that massive hourglass, showing that there was still plenty of time to prepare for the next Demon King Arena. It was one of the few pieces of good news.

And after a week of that tense routine, things began to change.

Adventurer training school was much like a vocational school. Everything it taught was a practical skill useful in adventurer activities, rather than purely theoretical knowledge.

So staying at school all the time simply would not do. They had to arrange plenty of internship opportunities, actually go out into the field, apply what they had learned, and build up experience.

And adventurers' work was, naturally, commissions.

The commissions assigned to the students were all issued by the Naspar town authorities. Nor were they unpaid labor; there were rewards to be earned. Ten percent of the total reward had to be handed over to the school, while the remainder was divided among the students themselves.

Back when the school had been at its peak, there had been no such profit-sharing rule. But now, with the school struggling even to stay afloat, they had no choice but to add it.

Honestly, the students did not mind having part of their reward taken at all. If the school went under, they would not receive their graduation certificates—in other words, their adventurer qualification certificates—and all their efforts would have been in vain.

Everyone was somewhat interested in this kind of internship, and Pei Renli was no exception. After being drilled for a week, he could finally get his hands dirty himself. He could not help feeling a little anticipation.