Chapter 277 — Worth Studying
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
Camille proposed a solution involving a high-power long-range weapon. In Gao Yang's view, this solution might not completely solve the "artillery" problem, but at the very least, to a certain extent, it could fill the greatest shortcoming of the current Cecil army.
Cecil's combat soldiers already possessed extremely powerful individual armaments, standing in a position of absolute superiority on the traditional battlefields of this era where soldiers fought to the death. But for Gao Yang, who carried memories of Earth, without heavy weapons that could thoroughly transcend human strength and influence the balance of the battlefield as a whole, a modern army could hardly be called fully formed.
Facing the monsters of the magic tide, the power of "human waves" was ultimately unreliable. Only more powerful artillery fire could bring humanity the hope of survival.
However, even if Camille's solution proved feasible, Gao Yang had not given up on the idea of creating a solid-projectile weapon. This world had far too many magical materials with bizarre properties, and the Gondor wasteland held far too many unpredictable threats. A single type of weapon could hardly cope with the ever-changing battlefield. For the cautious Gao Yang, kinetic weapons still gave him more peace of mind.
After summarizing the various problems that had emerged during this defensive battle, and after finalizing the details of the troops' post-battle adjustments, training, and propaganda guidance, Gao Yang let out a breath and turned to Hetty: "How is Rebecca doing?"
"Nothing serious. She just overexerted her spiritual power, so she'll sleep for half a day," Hetty said, her expression somewhat strange—impossible to tell whether she wanted to cry or laugh. "Since she was little, there have been very few times when she overexerted her spiritual power. That child's spiritual power and mana reserves both far exceed ordinary people's. I've never seen her tired after throwing a hundred fireballs in a day. This time she was truly too reckless."
In this world, spiritual power and mana reserves were two of the important metrics for measuring a person's magical talent, and their functions differed. To put it in the simplest and most direct terms: spiritual power was the ability to control magic and sense mana, determining a person's spellcasting skill and the stability of consecutive casting; while mana reserves were the power consumed when actually casting a spell, determining the total energy expenditure of spells a person could release within a certain period. Generally speaking, these two metrics developed in sync—it was rare for a person's spiritual power to far exceed their mana reserves, or vice versa.
Of course, exceptions did exist. Take that second-rank arcanist Santis on the territory who was currently serving as a teacher—he was an example of mana reserves far below spiritual power.
Although Rebecca was a strange girl, her "development" in these two metrics was quite normal—even considerably stronger than an average mage. It was simply that she was born with few "spell slots," which caused a casting defect—the equivalent of a mage with a screw loose.
So when Rebecca recklessly used the magic net to serve as her own mana reserves, she ran into a situation where her spiritual power was overwhelmed—and severely overwhelmed at that. But this could not be blamed on her. After all, the magic net itself was a completely new thing. When did an ordinary mage ever have the chance to control such a vast energy source? For a normal mage, holding a mana crystal and casting a few over-limit spells was already considered an act of the nouveau riche, while the territory's city-level magic net could overload who knew how many mana crystals...
Fortunately, the silly roe deer's skull was truly hard, and humans also had a self-protective mechanism of "fainting when they can't take it"—otherwise, something serious really would have happened...