“So, it works. I thought the paper for the painting felt a little different, and now it turns out that it’s a material that can readily absorb magic power.”

Characters weren’t the only structure that could contain ‘meaning.’ If a concept was well defined in an image, then that image could also act as a magic circle. Similar to how it was a school of study, magic was also an art. Magic divination and spells weren’t all based on rigorous logic and theory; magic existed in a plethora of varying forms.

“Alright, with these two items, I’m prepared for combat. If they’re not enough, I can always use my hand skills instead.”

After meditating for a moment to regain his magic power, Merlin entered the [Joint Warfare] testing area with his two long swords in hand. One of the swords was the one that was infused with the fire-related spell, and the other had the ice image imprinted on it.

“Oh! Another user is here!”

“Yay! How long have we waited for another player?”

“Oh, it’s a human! A human!”

“…?”

Surprised by the commotion, Merlin looked around the large waiting room to see three users. Among the three was a man who carried a two-meter-long pole.

“Would you like to join our party?”

“Oh, yeah. It looks like there aren’t many people here.”

“It seems that everyone has already finished their tests. Most people passed the Level 3 test a long time ago; only users who went through a reset seem to be passing by these parts.”

“That makes sense.”

Since the beta testing was running with a finite number...