Cliff the Genius

The mixed magic classroom was on the second floor of the building reserved for special students. It was half the size of a regular classroom, but much better equipped. Every desk held a magic power meter, an elemental separation prism, and a thick stack of experimental paper.

When I entered the classroom, Cliff had already claimed a seat, just as I expected. He was in the very middle of the front row, with three notebooks open on his desk, their pages crammed with formulas and diagrams of magic circles. He lifted his chin when he saw me.

"Rudeus, over here."

I sat down beside him.

"How did your talk with Zanoba go yesterday?" he asked, flipping through his notes and running a finger over the rows of formulas.

"It went fine. We agreed to work together."

"On dolls?"

"Yeah."

Cliff snorted and turned to another page. "That doll fanatic Zanoba? I've seen his work. The craftsmanship is intricate, but the joint design is a complete mess. Not that I'm interested in dolls."

"What are you interested in?"

"Mixed magic." He patted the notes on his desk. "Especially the theory of elemental cancellation. Did you know that under certain conditions, fire and water elements can resonate instead of canceling each other out?"

I was just about to answer when the professor walked in.

He was a middle-aged man with graying hair, dressed in a faded academy robe. He wrote a line on the blackboard: How can fire and water magic be used together?

"That's today's topic." The professor turned around and glanced across the classroom. "You have ten minutes to think."

The room fell quiet. The dozen or so special students bent over their notes. Some drew magic circles on scratch paper, while others frowned at the blackboard.

I gave it some thought. Fire and water canceled each other out. Normally, putting them together would only weaken both. But what if they were released in layers instead of mixed directly?

For example, I could first use water magic to create a sealed space, then release fire magic inside it, using the convection produced by the temperature difference to strengthen the effect...

Before I could finish sorting out my thoughts, Cliff raised his hand.

The professor nodded.

Cliff stood and cleared his throat, his eyes shining like a magic circle freshly charged with magic power.

"The key to the problem of fire and water elements canceling each other out is their mismatched magic power wavelengths." His voice wasn't loud, but he spoke quickly. "Fire-element magic power has a high-frequency, short wavelength, while water has a low-frequency, long wavelength. Mixing them directly causes the crests and troughs to cancel each other out, resulting in an energy loss of over seventy percent."

He went up to the front and drew two wavy lines on the blackboard, one high and one low. Then he drew a third line: the two waves combined into an almost flat line.

"But what if we introduced a third element as a medium? Earth, for example. Earth-element magic power has a wavelength between the other two, so it can serve as a buffer layer." He drew another wavy line with a middle frequency and inserted it between fire and water. "Fire → earth → water, a three-stage transfer. The wavelength decreases at each stage, reducing the loss from cancellation from seventy percent to less than twenty."

The professor nodded repeatedly.

"And that's not all." Cliff spoke faster and faster, his fingers flying across the blackboard. "If the earth-element medium is dense enough, it can also produce a self-repair effect. Earth-element magic power has a particular property: it automatically gathers at damaged parts of a structure to fill the cracks. Incorporate that property into the three-stage transfer structure, and in theory, you can create a self-repairing mixed-magic material."

He spoke for nearly ten minutes straight, moving from matching magic power wavelengths to the principles of elemental cancellation, from buffer-layer design to the mechanism of self-repair, each point following logically from the last. Most of the class could no longer keep up. Some had stopped taking notes and were simply staring at him in a daze.

Cliff finished, turned around, and raised an eyebrow at me.

The professor clapped twice. "An excellent analysis, Cliff. Particularly your idea of using the earth element as a buffering medium. No one in academia has yet studied that approach systematically."

"That's because most people aren't smart enough," Cliff said quietly to me as he returned to his seat. "But you're different. Your earth magic is the most precise I've ever seen. If you can use silent casting to precisely control the density and distribution of the earth-element medium, this theory can become reality."

I looked at him. The guy's eyes were practically glowing.

"Have you ever thought about combining earth and water elements?" he asked, lowering his voice. "In theory, you could make a self-repairing material. Your prosthetic hand-if you used that material..."

I was taken aback.

My prosthetic hand? He was right. My current hand was something I'd hastily molded using pure earth magic. It was precise enough, but not tough enough, and it could easily shatter on impact. If I could make a self-repairing material, the hand's durability would improve by a whole level.

"Let's go." I stood up.

"Where?"

"The laboratory."

Cliff grinned. He grabbed his notes and walked out of the classroom with me. Behind us, the professor called, "You two, aren't you staying for the next class?" Neither of us looked back.

The laboratory was at the far end of the special students' building, and hardly anyone used it. I closed the door and took a few basic magic crystals and a lump of experimental clay from a shelf.

"Explain the theory first." I set the clay on the table.

Cliff opened his notebook and pointed to a diagram densely packed with magic circles. "Here's the basic idea. When you use earth magic to build the base structure, embed a tiny water-element magic power circuit at each microscopic node. The circuits remain dormant normally, but as soon as a crack appears in the structure, they activate and guide the surrounding earth-element magic power to gather at the crack and repair it automatically."

"So it's like giving the material an immune system."

"Exactly!" Cliff slapped the table. "That's what I mean! I knew you'd understand!"

I got to work. An earthy yellow light shone from the fingertips of my prosthetic left hand, and the clay began to squirm on the table. Following Cliff's theory, I first built a simple cubic structure, then embedded a tiny water-element circuit at each node. This step required extreme precision. The water-element circuits had to be kept under a millimeter in size. Any larger, and they would affect the structure's strength; any smaller, and they couldn't effectively guide the repair.

The first sample was complete. I picked up a magic crystal and gently tapped the surface of the cube. Its hardness was good. Then I used my fingernail to make a shallow scratch on the surface.

Three seconds later, the edges of the scratch began to squirm. Earth-element magic power gathered from the surrounding area and filled the scratch like water seeping into sand. After five seconds, the scratch had vanished completely.

"It worked!" I said.

Cliff leaned in, his eyes wide. He reached out and touched the repaired spot. It was as smooth as ever.

"It worked..." His voice trembled slightly. "My theory... it really worked!"

He straightened up, took a deep breath, then broke into a smug smile that made me want to hit him.

"See? This is what happens when two geniuses team up!"

"You're the genius. I'm the one who puts it into practice." I placed the sample on the table. "We complement each other."

"Complementing each other is a genius trait too!" Cliff folded his arms and lifted his chin even higher. "Rudeus, do you know why so few people study mixed magic?"

"Why?"

"Because most people aren't smart enough." He looked at me, something very serious in his gray eyes. "But you and I are geniuses!"

I looked at him. Honestly, the guy was so full of himself that I kind of wanted to punch him. But what he'd said in those ten minutes really was the most valuable magic theory I'd heard since coming to the university.

There was probably no one else in the entire university who could explain the relationship between the magic power wavelengths of fire, water, and earth so clearly.

This guy... he's so full of himself that he makes me want to hit him, but he really does know his stuff. Now I can improve my prosthetic hand, and Paul's prosthetic limb too. Great.

"When's the next class?" I asked.

"The day after tomorrow." Cliff was already gathering his notes. "But I come to the laboratory every day. If you want to make more samples, come find me anytime."

"Okay."

We walked out of the laboratory together. Sunlight streamed through the corridor windows, warming the flagstone floor.

A figure in men's clothes was walking toward us. Short white hair, sunglasses, and a slender build.

Fitz.

Cliff's eyes lit up at once. He hurried over. "Fitz! Your silent-casting magic is amazing! Would you like to join our research?"

Fitz paused. His eyes swept over Cliff from behind his sunglasses, then turned away.

"Sorry, I don't have time."

His voice was soft and flat, betraying no emotion. With that, he hurried away.

Cliff stood where he was, watching the short-haired white figure disappear around the corner of the corridor. Then he turned back, the anticipation on his face giving way to a strange, thoughtful expression.

"That Fitz..." He paused. "So cool."

I said nothing.

Sylphie... is this how you've been turning people down at the university all along?

The corridor was long. The afternoon sun stretched our shadows all the way to the stairs at the far end. Cliff was still chattering about his research plans, saying things like "next we should try getting six elements to resonate at once" and "if it works, we can write a paper and submit it to the Magic Guild."

I listened to him, nodding occasionally.

The sample of self-repairing material in my hand was still warm.

Cliff kept talking.

"...Then we can apply for a joint research project. I've already thought of a name: the Greyrat-Grimol Mixed Magic Research Project. What do you think?"

"The name's too long."

"Then let's call it the Twin Genius Project."

"...I refuse."