Russell was suddenly overjoyed.
Knowing that his strength had skyrocketed was one thing; earning his teacher's approval was another.
He tried hard to suppress his excitement and began casting cantrips with great seriousness.
Carpenter also set aside her somewhat heavy feelings and focused on the battle between her brother and himself.
Then, the little girl's excited, expectant expression slowly turned calm.
Her gaze kept shifting between sneaking glances at Hilbert and amused, teasing looks at Russell.
With her eyes darting about and one hand unable to resist covering the corner of her mouth, Carpenter was genuinely worried that her brother, who had already started rolling his eyes at her, would suddenly lose control and rush over to beat her up.
Russell's spells were actually cast quite well, but he had forgotten to consider how the spells would affect one another.
When casting them, he should not have followed their schools, but the interactions between them.
So when he cast the Transmutation School spells one after another, even placing them after Evocation School spells that had already created some chaos, the environment made his casting far more difficult.
Ordinary spells that had originally required only 0.5 mental power had, by the end, become nearly as difficult to cast as spells requiring 1.
Then he had placed Illusion, which required delicate casting, at the end... Although illusions did not demand much total mental power, they required precise control over how much mental power was distributed to every point in the runes.
While many Mages did not have high standards in this regard, Gilbert would never let Russell muddle through with illusions that looked fake at a glance.
And at that moment, Russell no longer had the capacity to think about anything beyond casting.
Yet he still persisted to the end, stamping his