I Am Not Goblin Slayer
Chapter 24: The One-of-a-Kind Bottom-Rank Adventurer

"Magic Missile proficiency +1"  

Ring 1 Spell: Magic Missile lv1 (4/10)  

"So tired."  

Successfully cast a spell once.  

This time, it was better than the last when his mana was completely drained; at least he wasn’t paralyzed, but his spirit still felt very fatigued.  

If the fatigue from multiple failed spell attempts is rated as 1, then the fatigue from successfully casting a spell that heavily consumes mana is about 5.  

He lay down to rest.  

After resting for over half an hour this time, he finally felt the chaotic, mushy exhaustion in his mind subside.  

His intelligence attribute of 7 was still working.  

His spiritual recovery was not comparable to ordinary people. That kind of symptom might require a normal person to sleep a full cycle to regain energy, but he only needed a short nap to recover.  

Moreover, his mana was steadily increasing daily, albeit slowly, but it was stable.  

Increasing little by little every day was very reassuring.  

Unfortunately, even though his mana continued to grow, it was still too little for the level 1 Magic Missile at this stage.  

He had only awakened his mana for about a week, at most, and needed more time to fully digest the advantages brought by his spiritual attribute.  

"Is there a way to reduce the mana consumption of Magic Missile?"  

Since he couldn’t quickly increase mana intake for now, Gauss had to think about cutting back on expenditure.  

Actually, he felt the full power of the Magic Missile was a bit excessive for him, and a lot of mana was wasted.  

Take goblins for example. Not to mention killing ordinary goblins, even the large goblin could be overwhelmed by the Magic Missile’s power.  

Gauss suspected that 30-50% of the Magic Missile’s power would be more than enough to kill that large goblin.  

As for ordinary goblins, maybe just 10% power would suffice.  

Of course, this was just his intuitive judgment, and he wasn’t sure how accurate it was.  

Why not try to see if it was achievable?  

Even if he limited the mana output power to 10%, or even 80-90%, it would be fine, as long as it could slow the exhaustion and emptiness from heavy mana consumption in a short time, allowing faster practice cycles.  

Otherwise, the current training cycles were too long.  

He rested again for a while.  

Once the mana in his body slowly recovered, Gauss began to act.  

He closed his eyes and concentrated again.  

Since he had just successfully cast once recently, this time finding the spellcasting feeling was smooth.  

However, he didn’t rush to complete the entire casting path along the intuition; instead, he actively cut off the process as soon as the mana started flowing.  

It sounded easy, but in reality, the act of cutting off was far more complicated than it sounded.  

Once the spellcasting started, the magic flow seemed to move forward with some inertia, and interrupting this process required very strong control.  

Fortunately, his spiritual attribute was strong again, and he succeeded in cutting off the flow on his first try.  

Next, he needed to finely control it.  

To crudely put it, a spell was like a pre-designed program. Normal casting only required finding the correct spellcasting feeling—inputting the right commands—to make the program run automatically.  

The difficult part of magic was building this spell "program" in consciousness according to the books and teachings left by predecessors, following their "tutorials."  

But this presented a problem: if one relied solely on this magic "black box," the mage could not finely control the spell itself.  

"I want to intercept some mana the moment I prepare to cast."  

Gauss had a sense of this.  

Just as he could cut off the mana flow, he naturally could intercept some.  

The difficulty was how much to intercept, whether the timing was right, and doing so without interfering with the normal spell operation.  

Keep going!  

From then on, Gauss continued the cycle of repeated failure, persistent attempts, rest, mana recovery, and practice.  

When the sun set and the afterglow dyed the grassland, he barely managed to limit the Magic Missile's output power to about 95%.  

For now, he could only intercept 5% of the mana.  

Intercept a little more, and the mana wouldn’t flow smoothly.  

Though 5% seemed small, it was a huge improvement; at first, it was only 1%, and after continuous attempts, it slowly reached this level, proving he was on the right path.  

His idea was feasible; now he just needed to keep working in this direction.  

Rubbing his sunken stomach, he packed his belongings and turned toward the town.  

...  

In the blink of an eye, five sunrises and sunsets passed.  

Gauss went out early and returned late every day.  

Patiently, he practiced spells silently.  

The Magic Missile proficiency steadily increased under his diligent training.  

Magic Missile lv2 (1/20).  

Besides the proficiency upgrade, his mana had grown significantly.  

If he took the mana consumed by a full-power Magic Missile at the very beginning as one standard unit, his previous mana reserve was roughly at that one-unit level.  

Now, his mana reserve quietly reached 1.5 standard units, a full 50% increase.  

Of course, this was just a rough estimation he made himself, relying on personal feeling; it might not be very precise but was roughly accurate.  

As for the power limitation training of Magic Missile, he could now only reach 60% output power, which he called 0.6 standard unit mana Magic Missile.  

With his mana reserve, he could roughly cast two 0.6 standard unit Magic Missiles and still have 0.3 standard units of mana left.  

The later it got, the harder it became to limit power.  

Because casting Magic Missile required a certain mana threshold.  

Using Gauss’s past life knowledge as an analogy, it was like a fuel car; no matter how much engineers optimized the engine to reduce fuel consumption, it always required a certain amount of fuel, and the harder it was to optimize as time went on.  

"Practice will pause for now."  

Ending this short training akin to a cultivation retreat, Gauss breathed a sigh of relief.  

The five days of training passed quickly but were exhausting.  

Every day, he continuously consumed mana, fatigued his spirit, recovered, and consumed again—truly a repeated mental torment.  

He had promised himself to rest after finishing the Birch Village commission task,  

but in the end, he only made himself more tired.  

Gauss couldn’t help but laugh helplessly.  

Fortunately, this stage of training was effective, and the suffering was not in vain.  

Though he complained outwardly, he knew in his heart this exhaustion was worth it; every drop of sweat now would become strength in future crises.  

Now, through training, he had initially gained some ability to kill powerful enemies.  

A 0.6 standard unit Magic Missile was enough to easily kill the large goblin from before, and he could use this attack twice.  

If he could return to that night, he definitely wouldn’t be so helpless.  

Having some self-protection ability relieved much pressure in Gauss’s heart.  

In fact, ever since he transmigrated into this world, an underlying sense of urgency had been pushing him forward.  

It was precisely because of this unease that he desperately wanted to master various magics and blades to arm and protect himself.  

Now, the reserved Magic Missile was enough to give him a certain sense of security.  

With the powerful destructive force of Magic Missile, just from an offensive standpoint, he should be unmatched among unpromoted low-level adventurers.  

Evaluating his combat power, Gauss, who had been steadily practicing magic for days, felt an itch to fight.  

Why not find a few goblins to practice on? Test the results of his training?