Mary was sitting under a tree, she was waiting for Lucas and the others to come. She felt proud that soon she would have pupils and would teach them magic. With her was Emma, her personal knight, she had recovered from her injuries.
“Emma, do you think Lucas and the others met the dragon that is slumbering inside the Wallowing Forest?” asked Mary.
“I don’t know, My Lady. They have not told us about meeting a dragon. Probably not, since they would be dead if they do.”
“Well, they are strong and able to defeat an army by themselves. Defeating a dragon will not be a problem for them.”
“A dragon and an army are different, you know that an army sometimes can not defeat a dragon. And they only killed the army’s commander, not the whole army. A dragon power is in a league of its own, maybe the Empire of the old would be the only one able to defeat them”
“The ancient Lilium Empire, isn’t that just a myth?”
“No one knows, My Lady,” said Emma with a shrug.
Not long after that, Lucas and the others came. They were eager to learn about the magic of this world. Mary then started the lecture, she explained the theory of magic. She had explained some to them before when they were in the forest, but she told them again. The magic could be used by everyone, the affinity and the capacity of the magic affect one’s capability to use magic. There are four fundamental elements of magic, water, fire, wind and earth. One could combine the elements and create combination magic, for example using wind and fire, a magician could make a blaze tornado.
“However, combining magic takes a great skill and knowledge of the magic itself, and only skilled magicians are able to do that,” explained Mary.
“Then how do you measure the capacity and affinity of someone?” asked Max.
“To measure the capacity, you can use the measurement tool,” Mary touched an orb and suddenly it went bright. ”by channelling your mana into this tool, you can see how bright it is and the brightness is the measurement of the capacity of your mana.”
“Understood.”
“Then let’s measure yours,” said Mary. She was excited to see how much their mana was.
Each of them took turns to measure their mana, everyone had the same capacity. They had the same brightness, brighter than Mary’s, she was astonished at how bright it was. Then, when Lyra tried to measure hers, the tool was broken because of how bright it was shining.
“Wh-what happened, how could it be broken?” said Mary. She was bewildered by the situation.
“Ah, I am sorry, I will pay for the replacement,” said Lyra.
“N-no, it was nothing. It is just that I have never seen or heard about measurement tools being broken. Not even by the best magician of this world,” said Mary.
“Oh ok.”
“Then, Mary, how did we know our affinity to certain elements?” asked Bianca.
“Well,” Mary put books in front of her. “These are magic books of each element, this one is water, then fire, wind and fire. Everything inside will teach you the theory and how to chant the magic from the elements. By learning from these books, one can know their affinity, if they are able to understand it then they have an affinity with the elements. ”
“So, pretty much, if you learn about the elements you might get affinity for the elements?”
“Well, yes, Lady Bianca.”
“So, everyone can learn all the elements?”
“Well, of course, but those who have the high capacity are the most likely to learn all of it since they will be sponsored by nobles. However, some magicians preferred to learn just one element and mastered it.”
“I see, so gifted individuals are favoured and specialisation is important.”
“Then, let's see if you can learn all the elements!” said Mary excitedly. She had high expectations from her pupils, her eyes were glowing from the excitement.
Lucas and the others took the book and read it. However, they could not understand anything, the theory was very hard to understand and the instructions were impossible to follow. Even Lyra, who was arguably the smartest of them all, could not understand the book. Lucas looked at Mary and saw her excited face, he could not bear to tell her that he did not understand a single thing in the book.
“Umm, Mary, do you have any tips on how to use magic?” asked Lucas.
“Well, my teacher told me to think and feel the mana before I cast the spell.”
“Feel the mana, huh.” Lucas wondered how to do it. He closed his eyes and tried his best to feel the mana on his body and imagined shooting something out of his hand, he imagined shooting a gun with a water bullet.
“Kyaa!!” shrieked Mary. Her face was drenched with water.
“What happened to you?” said Lucas. He was shocked.
“I-if you want to try to shoot a water, aim it somewhere else,” said Mary, annoyed.
“How did you do that?” said Bianca. She was astonished.
“What?”
“It was your magic. You shoot water from your hand.”
“Eh?”
“Stop eh e me. Explain!”
“O-okay, calm down. I just imagined shooting a gun with water.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“That’s it?”
“Yes, try it. If by imagining something we were able to use magic, then magic used one’s imagination to manifest, probably.”
Everyone tried to follow his instruction, and all of them were able to shoot water from their hand. When it came to Lyra, everyone asked her to hold back her power and she did hold back. They were afraid that she could summon an ocean-sized water ball. Everyone tried to experiment with their imagination, Max imagined shooting with a missile and he hit a flying bird, and his fire missile homed into the bird.
“Wow, this is amazing!”
“What a fucking crazy power!”
They were excited by these newly acquired powers. Lucas still could not grasp the understanding of this magic, the fact that imagination could be manifested in the real world was something strange to him. Could the imagination be the core of the understanding of magic, he thought.
Mary could not believe what she saw. Her pupils with just a simple explanation and a day of teaching were able to use the magic to this scale. She was proud of them, she thought of herself as the greatest teacher of magicians.
“To think you don’t have to chant to release the spell. That was amazing, I’m proud of you!”
“Eh? You have to chant?”
“Yes, look.” she hold her arm up and aimed it at a tree, with a finger pointing at the tree. ”waterball.” Water came from her finger and hit a tree.
“Ah, I did not know that. What does that mean then?”
“Well, it does not matter. It means all of you are exceptional!” Mary was excited. She then explained what she taught was just the basic principle of magic. Lucas worried about his teacher that did not pay much attention to something peculiar. She ended the lesson there and went to report the lesson to her father.
A week later, Duke August went into the Knight’s training field. Lucas had told him that he made a new weapon for the army to use, Max was ordered to create the schematic and oversee the creation of the prototype with the help of a blacksmith. When Duke August arrived at the field, Lucas and the others were there. The weapon Lucas told Max to make was a crossbow, a ranged weapon superior to a bow with better range and greater accuracy. Crossbows had better penetration on armour making them deadly even to a heavily armoured knight.
“Welcome, Duke.” greeted Lucas.
“So, is that thing, what you called a crossbow?” said Duke August. He gestured to the crossbow laid on a table.
“Yes, this is a crossbow. A better weapon for arche– no, for everyone.”
“Hmmm, this thing has a more complex build compared to the bow we used.”
“Of course, this mechanism here is used to draw the bolt then it will hold it in place when you aim,” Lucas showed how to draw the bolt on the crossbow. “because the crossbow holds the bolt for you, you can focus on aiming at the target and you can aim as long as you can without worrying of getting tired of holding your arrow on the draw.”
Lucas shot the crossbow to a target 200m away. It hit right on the bullseye, the Duke was amused by the result.
“Let me use it,” said the Duke. He grabbed the crossbow and drew the bolt then aimed and shot the crossbow. He felt no difficulty aiming the crossbow and it was easy when he drew the bolt. “This is awesome. compared to the regular bow the crossbow definitely could be used even by an untrained archer.”
“Of course, even an untrained archer using this crossbow could shoot at the same range or even better than the trained archer with a bow.”
Lucas had considered making a longbow, a bow used by the English in the mediaeval age and had a superior range to a regular bow at that time, however, he decided against it. Training archers to use a longbow would take a long time and it would need a lot of energy and stamina to draw and aim the longbow. Compared to longbows, crossbows were easier to use and could be used by everyone. The energy exerted when using the crossbow was only when you drew the bolt, and when aiming you did not need to hold the draw since the bolt was held in place by the crossbow.
“But, this one took a long time to reload.”
“Yes, even a trained archer would have a slower rate of fire when using the crossbow. But, the penetration, ease of use, accuracy and longer range will definitely offset the slower reload.”
“Alright, then what is this? You didn’t tell me about this.” Duke August picked up a bow on a table. “This looks like a regular bow with a peculiar shape.”
“That is a composite bow,” answered Lucas.
The composite bow was a bow with recurve design and was shorter than the regular bow. The curved shape allowed the bow to have the same or even more energy when drawn compared to the regular bows. Allowing the bow to be used on horseback, and carried and used easily on rough terrain, such as dense forest.
“A composite bow? What is the difference to the regular bow?”
“As you can see, this bow has a recurve design and is shorter than the regular bow. Allowing the bow to be used on horseback.”
“Horseback archery? So you would use a horseman to shoot an arrow.”
“Yes, as you may have known. Speed in warfare is one of the keys to winning a war. If we were to train archers to ride horses or horsemen to use this bow, we will have a mobile firing squad that can be manoeuvred around the battlefield and able to run away from the pursuing enemy’s cavalry.”
“That is true, we could easily take out the enemy hiding behind a spike with horseback archers.”
Lucas would like to have a mobile squad that could traverse the battlefield and immediately support any flanks at a moment's notice. A traditional cavalry squad would be enough, however, he wanted more options, one with a ranged weapon. He came up with the idea of horseback archery.
Horseback archery was used since ancient times, notably the horse archers were used by the Mongols when conquering Eurasia. The horse archers could be used in many different ways, when retreating the horse archers would be able to shoot at the pursuing enemy and allow the army to escape while under cover of horse archers fire. The horse archers could be used as harassing forces when on the battlefield and when doing raids on enemy formations or camps.
The main advantages of horse archers were their mobility and the range of their weapons, however, the enemy’s archers with a crossbow would easily counter the horse archers. But, only Lucas knew about crossbows and the world did not know about horseback archery. It would give them a lot of advantages until the world learns about crossbows and horseback archery.
“Sarah will demonstrate the practice of horseback archery,” said Lucas. Sarah, who had mounted a horse, began to ride around the field with a composite bow and arrows. She rode the horse around the field and shot the target with arrows with great precision. The Duke and the knights who watched were awed, her horse riding and archery skill was amazing. They never saw archers riding a horse and shooting at targets while still in control of the horse.
“This one is much more difficult to do,” said Duke August.
“Of course, the skill needed to do horseback archery is tremendous. It would take a lot of time to train archers or horsemen to do it. But, the result will be worth it and we will have a deadly force that can move fast and shoot fast.” Lucas tried to convince him.
Lucas had considered using magicians on horseback, but he decided against it. The magicians needed a lot of concentration to even use a spell and skilled magicians are not something he could put in a dangerous position and throw away. It would be easier to train soldiers to become horse archers than skilled magicians on horseback.
“Alright, I would order the production of crossbows and composite bows, and I will allow the creation of horse archers. I believe you will be the one to train them, right?”
“Sarah will be the one to handle the training of the horse archers, then for the production of the weapons, Max will be in charge of it. And the crossbows training will be led by Ariana.”
“Wonderful, I will do it immediately.”
Duke August gave Sarah 50 knights to be trained as horse archers to test whether it would be worth it. Sarah told the Duke she would prefer soldiers who were proficient in horseback riding as it would be easier for her to train them.
Duke August decided to replace their bow with composite bows and crossbows, making those two weapons the core of the ranged units. The Duke saw the crossbows’ low rate of fire would burden the army, so he decided to make the trained archers use composite bows and the crossbows would be used as supplement weapons to be used by untrained commoners.