"Even a Liberal Arts Major Doesn't Feel Sorry in Another World"
After weeks of countless repetitions, the once lush rear garden—where summer flowers had bloomed in full glory—was now nothing but churned-up dirt and scorch marks.
Cleio, indifferent to landscaping, gave Behemoth a triumphant thumbs-up. The cat thumped its tail against the ground, its expression deeply satisfied.
"Now I'm getting the hang of it. So this is what a Level 4 spell feels like!"
"It's a pity you stopped just shy of Level 5, but yes—you can finally say you've cast a real spell. Flailing ether around your circle like you're sweeping dust with a broom? That wasn't magic, that was primitive ether tantruming."
"Seriously, I get it now. What I used to do wasn't even magic. It's all thanks to you—repository of wisdom, my ever-illuminating mentor, the noble Behemoth."
There wasn't a single gram of exaggeration in Cleio's flattery.
If you'd been born human back in my old world, Behemoth, you'd be one of those Daechi-dong star tutors. You'd already have three buildings to your name.
"Hmhmm! True words. Now, adjust your internal ether channels. This should do it!"
"I'll follow your guidance, master!"
"Good attitude."
Cleio closed his eyes.
He focused on the flow of ether circulating through his body. Then, like shutting doors one by one, he gathered it all toward the center of his heart. Finally, he blinked twice—his designated signal.
That should do it, right?
Somehow this moment was even more nerve-racking than casting a spell.
After steadying his breath, Cleio reached for the glass resting atop a garden ornament. Inside sloshed a punch of rum, black tea, and lemon liqueur.
He took a big gulp.
Cool, tangy, bitter—watered-down summer cocktail perfection.
Yes!!!
He was happier now than when he'd nailed his offensive spell earlier.
The past month had been torment for Cleio, a man who loved his drink. Food he could manage by eating bland, but alcohol—every scent of ethanol had been a noxious assault.
"Uuugh, this is heaven…."
He drained the glass to the last drop, almost tearing up from joy. Behemoth, lapping its share of punch from a shallow dish, smirked.
"To think you've survived without that taste."
"Right? I thought I'd go insane…."
"Well, now that the real problem's solved, repeat the same spell combination as before. If you can reproduce it perfectly, it's truly yours."
"Got it!"
Cleio, his face flushed with the return of alcohol, stood tall and spread the circle.
A twenty-meter-wide ring expanded instantly. Ether overflowed, surging like firelight until the circle resembled a giant crown.
He drew the wand from his belt—a shaft carved from lightning-struck ash wood, costing an eye-watering 25,000 dinars. His greatest indulgence of the summer.
It was plain, barely the length of his forearm, with a shallow groove for grip—but it refined ether control with exquisite precision.
I thought spending this much on a glorified baton was stupid, but wow, what a difference.
With his free hand, he dug a bronze mana-ore chip from his pocket.
The spell pattern flared on the ground—an intricate lattice combining [Elemental Amplification] [Duplication] [Throw] [Acceleration]. It looked more like a clockwork schematic than a magical design.
Cleio tossed the bronze chip skyward and leveled his wand.
Blink—blink. Perception re-enabled.
Then he chanted:
"He who bears countless calamities rages—
Let the sharpened bronze spear descend!"
The fragment, hurled weakly by Cleio's human arm, was swallowed by ether and shot upward, resonating with the incantation. The [Elemental Amplification] flared—turning it into a massive spearhead of bronze.
It split into four via [Duplication].
Then all four spears [Threw] themselves from midair, boosted by [Acceleration].
Even with Perception maxed out, Cleio's eyes couldn't track their speed—only blurred streaks of light.
SweeEEEESH—BOOM—
Kwooooom—
Thud—
KWA-AAAAANG!
Four colossal spears plunged from the heavens to the ground—each precisely where he'd intended.
The earthen yard trembled. When the ether dissipated, only deep craters remained.
I made it, but damn, that's terrifying… What a journey it's been.
All those sleepless nights forcing ether through his veins had paid off.
The body's ether "vessel" grew like a rolling snowball—the more you expanded it, the faster it could grow again.
As his internal reservoir enlarged, he could feel every vein-like channel of ether through his body.
It really did feel like a wuxia thing—like clearing meridians one by one…
Of course, the vessel couldn't expand forever. Once you hit the limits of your innate ether sensitivity, growth stopped—and so did leveling.
But my sensitivity's infinite, thanks to that cheat item.
Cleio smiled, stroking Promise.
Reaching Level 4 had only taken two weeks.
But the joy of unlocking a fourth spell slot was short-lived.
He had to train casting all four simultaneously—and learn coordinate adjustment from scratch. That devoured more time than he cared to count.
During that phase, Behemoth called me a dimwit every single day…
While practicing spatial calibration, Cleio memorized all two hundred spells from Grimoire of Magic Volume II and studied the applied cases in Volume III.
That's when the next mountain appeared.
Offensive magic using physical catalysts had the greatest destructive power of all.
Yet even Volume III only mentioned the possibility—it gave no formulas or working examples.
I thought, "A true Mage should rain destruction from the sky!" and jumped in headfirst. Ended up suffering for it.
When he begged Behemoth for references, the cat offered a soul-crushing reply: the only useful tomes on attack magic were hand-copied manuscripts locked away in the royal archives.
"Magic, fundamentally, isn't suited for combat. Even a low-rank swordsman can kill a high Mage easily. All it takes is cutting their throat before they finish the incantation."
"Still, if something like last time happens again, I can't just stand there helpless. I can't pick up swordsmanship overnight, so this'll have to do."
"That's fair. You can't even stand holding a sword, after all. At least jog around the garden every day."
No way around it.
He ran. Honestly, earnestly, daily.
Between complaints, Behemoth—placated with wine and snacks—helped him test combination after combination, striking out weaker formulas and refining the potent ones.
It was a long road, but for once, Cleio felt like both a scholar and a Mage.
In the end, he settled on the combination of [Attribute Amplification][Replication][Throw][Acceleration].Considering the incantation, he chose bronze as the medium.
Confirming the formula was only the first step. To achieve proper implementation, he needed long, tedious practice.
He started by learning how to draw out a spearhead from the bronze itself.
Because mana-ore bronze inherently carried the properties of weaponry, the [Attribute Amplification] spell resonated well with it—but reshaping it as quickly as he wished took time.
At first, he couldn't even throw a single spear to the desired location.It took him another three days just to adjust one properly.
Only after pushing the speed of [Attribute Amplification] to its limit could he move on to [Replication].
From there, he gradually increased the number of spears in each test. No matter how hard he tried, four was the limit.
Any more than that, and the power of each spear weakened, while the accuracy of their trajectories collapsed.
He also had to determine how to use as little of the precious mana-ore bronze as possible while maintaining efficiency.
After countless trials, he discovered the minimal effective amount—a piece about the size of a coin.
And that too, he had to refine himself.
All magic stones and mana-ores were impossible to process using ordinary tools; transformation could only occur within a magic circle, through the use of ether.
Some Mages processed mana-ores using ether-infused anvils and hammers, but Cleio, who feared wrecking his wrists, had no choice but to rely purely on etheric power.
Fifteen kilograms of corroded bronze antiques and scraps, once filtered through [Purification] and [Refining] spells, were reduced to nine kilograms—and the iron to barely five.
'I should've just paid extra and asked Dione to process it.'
He'd been thrilled at the low price, but the labor of making magical mediums devoured time and energy alike.
After much fumbling, he molded the bronze and iron into ingots, cut them into uniform sizes, and stored the finished mediums in his subspace pouch. Alongside his wand, they would now serve as vital weapons he had to carry everywhere.
By the time the spell was complete, the dark circles under his eyes had sunk down to his knees.
Only Mrs. Canton fretted endlessly. The slight bit of weight Cleio had put on during vacation had vanished completely.
But whether she worried or not, Behemoth and Cleio hit it off so perfectly that they spent night after night locked in the study together.
No servants were allowed inside, so soon the place became a wreck—iron and bronze fragments scattered everywhere, and the pair themselves looked just as ragged.
Among the piles of trash were scraps of paper scrawled with and erased upon repeatedly—by-products of his incantation crafting.
After wasting dozens of sheets, the resulting incantation turned out to be rather formidable.
The aim was off, but the destructive power was unquestionable; even Behemoth, who rarely showed surprise, had his cat tongue loll out in awe after the first demonstration.
"How did you manage to come up with such a convincing incantation when you don't know a lick of classical literature? And oddly enough, it resonates well with bronze as a medium, too."
"It just… happened while I was experimenting."
Of course, that wasn't true.
While composing the incantation, Cleio had practically worn out Promise's Scroll of Memory, spinning it again and again.
'For lines like these, nothing beats a few verses lifted from ancient epics full of blood, battle, and rage.'
No one in this world would recognize those phrases anyway—as long as they sounded convincing, it didn't matter where he borrowed them from.
Fortunately, his mind held an endless archive of such material.
Once upon a time, books had been everything to Kim Jung-jin.
'All those useless books I devoured back then—never thought they'd come in handy like this. Life sure is unpredictable.'
His mother had drifted from fishing village to fishing village, raising him as she went.For a boy who never stayed in one place long enough to make friends, there had been nothing but books.
In a town with barely a handful of TV channels and not a single PC café, all young Kim Jung-jin could do was read.
There had been no pattern to his reading. He read whatever landed in his hands—mobile library books, classroom shelf novels, or even boxes of volumes left behind by a landlord's college-aged grandson.
It wasn't an act that earned him praise.
But the world built of letters and words is kind to those who read it. Unlike reality, here language holds overwhelming power.
'You could say this world is the transfiguration of every humanities major's grudge.'
Perhaps that's why he found it so easy to grow attached to this alien world.
As a child, he had always dreamed of escaping into the world inside the pages—anywhere but here, anywhere but now.
He'd imagined being someone unburdened by his dead younger brother, crushing poverty, and an absent father.
All of that had been a desperate wish—but one long since past.
'Maybe that wish just came true late.'
Lost in thought amid the torn-up garden, Cleio was snapped back to reality when Behemoth nudged him.
"Hey, stop spacing out and focus, you fool. To this great Behemoth's eye, that spell of yours is truly original. Are you not going to name it?"
"Does it really need a name?"
"Naming is how a new spell is inscribed into the fabric of this world. A name is essential—and it must be a good one."
"Then how about [Spear of Achilles]?"
"Hmmmm. You and your habit of dragging out strange names with no source or precedent. Where do you even get them?"
'No precedent? He's the hero of the oldest epic there is.'
Watching the cat with the name of a demon twitch its ears, Cleio smiled quietly.
...
And thus, after all those twists and turns, his ultimate move was complete—the [Spear of Achilles].