Chapter 72 Could I Really Be a Magic Genius?

While the whole of the European continent was in turmoil and the two great Empires were poised for conflict.

Morin and the others in Seville, the eye of the storm, ironically found themselves with a rare respite from combat duties.

According to the armored airship’s reconnaissance over the past few days, the Kingdom Army and the Britannian Expeditionary Force had completely abandoned any intention of organizing another attack after their crushing defeat.

The Kingdom Army’s 24th Infantry Division, which had suffered heavy losses in the previous street fighting, and the Britannian expeditionary troops, had retreated over forty kilometers in one go.

Seeing that there had been no fighting for several days, the residents of Seville who had fled the city at the start of the battle gradually began to return.

However, when they returned to their familiar homes, they were met with a shocking sight.

Many buildings were reduced to ruins, and collapsed walls and charred debris were everywhere in the streets.

The city was now filled with countless positions and barricades constructed by the combined forces, filling the once-peaceful city with a chilling air of war.

Morin and the other surviving officers were assigned a new task.

A task none of them wanted, yet one they had to complete—leading their soldiers and willing citizens to clear the bodies of both friend and foe from the city.

In battle, a soldier’s death might take only a few seconds.

But the time and effort spent cleaning up their remains was tens, or even hundreds, of times that number.

A large number of carriages and ox carts were temporarily requisitioned.

Stiff, cold corpses were lifted from the ruins, barricades, and waterlogged shell craters.

They were then piled onto carts and slowly transported along the streets of Seville to a designated mass grave outside the city.

Although the maximum daily temperature in Seville in February did not exceed 12 degrees Celsius, the bodies still began to emit the stench of decomposition as time went on.

Morin and his surviving soldiers, with simple multi-layered cotton cloths covering their faces, mechanically repeated the process of lifting, stacking, and transporting the bodies.

Their faces no longer showed the relief of survival, only numbness and exhaustion.

The priest of the church in the center of Seville even spontaneously organized citizens to hold several large-scale collective funerals outside the city for the fallen on both sides.

The priest prayed for the departed souls in a solemn and compassionate tone.

In that moment, on this land soaked with blood, there was no distinction between friend and foe.

There were only the living and the pitiable dead.

Perhaps, for the soldiers who died in pain and terror, death was a form of liberation.

And the living had to bear the weight of it all and continue forward.

The collective funeral was held in an open suburban area.

The newly dug, massive burial pits stretched as far as the eye could see, their edges piled high with bodies recently transported from the city—a horrifying spectacle.

Whether they were Saxon soldiers in gray uniforms, Britannian soldiers in red tunics, or members of the Aragonese Kingdom Army and the International Brigade in various outfits.

They lay quietly side by side now, unable to harm each other anymore.

The priest, reportedly appointed by the Vatican itself, stood by the edge of the pit, holding a heavy Bible and reciting the eulogy, alternating between several languages.

His voice was tired and aged, yet carried a power that could soothe the heart.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

“May the Lord accept their souls, regardless of the nation they belonged to or the ideology they believed in during their lives…”

“On this land, they were all merely lost lambs. May they find eternal peace in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Morin stood at the back of the crowd, silently observing it all.

He did not pray like those around him but quietly watched as volunteers collectively pushed bodies into the deep pits, which were then gradually covered by shovelfuls of earth.

His heart was filled with mixed emotions.

The cruelty of war was far more direct and stark than he had imagined.

In the sand table exercises of the two military academies, before and after his transmigration, soldiers were just cold numbers and chess pieces.

But here, every life lost was once a living, breathing person.

They had families, friends, dreams, and hopes of their own.

But now, everything was reduced to nothing.

Klaus stood beside Morin. The Platoon Sergeant, who was so fierce on the battlefield, was now wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, like a child.

A close friend from his hometown had been killed in the previous street fighting, and his body had only just been found.

After the funeral, the soldiers resumed their cleanup work. There were too many bodies in the city; this task would likely continue for several more days.

Morin forced himself not to think about those heavy issues, putting all his energy into the work.

He personally led his team, burrowing into the half-collapsed buildings, turning over fallen walls, only to search for comrades who might have been buried.

Every time he found the remains of a Saxon soldier, he would carefully check their dog tags and have the scribe solemnly record the details.

This was the only thing he could do for these comrades, who had briefly fought alongside him but were now gone.

---

Night fell, and the exhausted soldiers returned to the temporary camp after being disinfected.

The bonfire was lit again, but the atmosphere was even heavier than the previous days.

No one was talking loudly, nor was anyone bragging about their achievements.

Everyone just silently ate their dinner, their eyes hollow as they stared at the flickering flames.

Morin had no appetite. He just drank a few mouthfuls of hot soup, then retreated alone to the room assigned to him.

The shocking scenes from the day kept replaying in his mind.

He suddenly felt that his previous understanding of this world might have been overly simplistic.

This was not just a stage where he could demonstrate his abilities and achieve fame.

This was a world that was real and brutal.

‘People die when they are killed’ was no longer just a joke.

“Stay alive…”

Morin muttered to himself. Only by staying alive could he be qualified to think about other issues.

Only by possessing enough power could he protect himself or change things he found unacceptable.

With this realization, the confusion in Morin’s heart gradually dissipated, replaced by an unprecedented determination.

He could not continue to be immersed in sadness and confusion.

He had to become stronger… at least strong enough to protect himself first.

Late at night, when the entire camp was asleep, and only the footsteps of the patrol sentries echoed in the silent streets, Morin entered the ‘Spell Study’ state again.

This time, his mind was utterly focused.

He no longer viewed learning magic as a form of torture but rather as a necessary path to self-improvement.

Outside the window, the moonlight fell like water, quietly bathing the wounded city.

And under this quiet moonlight, a soul from another world was quietly accumulating its own power for survival and the future.

By day, he was clearing ruins, moving bodies, and comforting the soldiers.

By night, he was studying all night, researching spell models, and memorizing complex runic structures.

This kind of life—’moving bricks by day, studying magic by night’—would be a double torment for the mind and body of any normal person.

But perhaps it was the stronger spiritual tenacity of a transmigrator, or perhaps the stimulation of war had awakened the potential within his body. In any case, Morin forced himself to endure it.

He discovered that he truly did have some talent for spell study.

The [Shield] spell, which had previously given him splitting headaches and felt worse than advanced calculus, only took him two or three hours on the second night to completely grasp the essence of its spell model, after the first night of ‘forced study.’

When the system prompted 【Shield successfully recorded to ‘My Spellbook’】, Morin even had the illusion of having completed a calculus practice exam…

With this successful experience, studying the second spell, [Mage Armor], went much more smoothly.

Spells from the same school of magic were clearly easier to learn by analogy.

Morin applied the foundational knowledge of Abjuration spell structure he had comprehended while studying [Shield] to his new study.

As a result, in just one night, he successfully added [Mage Armor] to his repertoire as well.

“Oh my. Could I really be a genius?!”

Looking at the two icons that lit up in his ‘My Spellbook,’ Morin unhesitatingly allocated his current 4 1st-Circle Spell Slots and 2 2nd-Circle Spell Slots equally between these two life-saving spells.

Three [Shield] spells, three [Mage Armor] spells.

As his will was set, the system’s backend began automatically ‘preparing’ the Spell Slots.

A light blue progress bar appeared beneath the spell icons, expected to be fully prepared by dawn the next day.

Having done all this, Morin let out a long sigh of relief. An unprecedented sense of security surged through him.

Although he currently had no offensive spells, mastering these two Abjuration spells would significantly enhance his survival capabilities in future close-quarters combat.

However, amidst the excitement, a new concern arose.

He couldn’t hide the fact that he had learned magic forever.

Especially in the coming battles, if the situation became critical, he would definitely use spells to protect himself out of instinct.

When that happened, a previously unremarkable Infantry Second Lieutenant would suddenly transform into a spell-casting Mage…

This situation would look abnormal no matter how one viewed it.

“I need to find a way to ask someone who knows about this…”

(End of this Chapter)