"You should try it. Rules aren't that hard to learn. If you teach her, she might find it fun and naturally be willing to play with you," I continued persuading. After all, Nicola and I won't always have time, and Reed is even less available. So we must find someone to take over.

"Really?" Cyra sounded doubtful after hearing me out.

"Norma is so serious all the time. She never jokes around. Are you sure she'll be interested?"

"Even if Norma doesn't work out, there are other servants here in the Tivi Palace! Think about how many angels and light elves there are. There must be someone suitable for you. "

I suddenly realized this idea could work. There have been quite a few bored angels recently. Having another recreational activity can't hurt, right?

"That's true..." Cyra thought about it and nodded in agreement. She immediately ran out to find Norma without hesitation.

"Finally got that done..." I breathed a sigh of relief after seeing her off, suddenly feeling a little tired. I plopped down on the bed.

Beside me were the unfinished magic books I had read earlier. I struggled internally for a while before deciding to return them to the library while I was there anyway.

It wasn't that I couldn't understand them or had mastered all the magic in them. The truth is, the few magic books I borrowed from the library recently have been quite useless for me.

The books were full of magical incantations, chanting methods, and techniques to simplify spells and shorten chanting time. They offered limited help to me. I didn't even know if I should keep reading them.

According to the book Introduction to Spell Pronunciation, different pitches and combinations can guide the elements in the body in different directions. But in practice, I found it was not that simple at all. If the tones were even slightly off or I accidentally lost focus during the chanting, the elements would immediately lose direction and disperse entirely. I'd have to start over from the beginning.

So I have to learn to sing first before I can learn magic?

When I practice enunciating every day, I always feel like I'm doing something wrong. Why do I have to force myself to follow the book's instructions, awkwardly going "yada yada" all day without knowing how useful it is? The progress is slow and torturous.

But if I don't chant the full incantation, there's no way to know the full effect of the spell. Anything moderately complex requires long, incomprehensible incantations that must be read out smoothly in one go to work. It's basically like learning an obscure foreign language.

And don't get me started on mid to high-level magic. Simple low-level spells are usually a few dozen to a few hundred words long. Mid-level ones reach a few thousand words, while high-level magic has at least ten thousand words or more. As a result, one thick high-level spell book can only contain one or two spells, with most of its length devoted to convoluted, meaningless incantations.

In the end, the tutorials in magic books are largely designed for humans. Although Aetina said angels use chanting either to get familiar with new magic or as an aid for high-level spells.

But for a newborn angel like me who can't even read the incantations, it took me several days just to self-learn half the pronunciation. I still have a long way to go before I can recite the full spells. It would be much easier to learn from a teacher.

At least Aetina teaches elemental manipulation methods directly in class, along with demonstrations. I can learn on the spot.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"That's it!" I slapped my forehead, suddenly thinking of a compromise. Since the bottleneck is with the incantations, why not skip them entirely?

For example, I could give the books to Aetina and have her demonstrate each spell one by one. Then I can directly observe the elemental flows in her body and easily learn the magic in the books!

But there's one problem. While low-level magic is relatively simple, there's a huge number of them. If I make her chant them one by one, who knows how long that would take? And there's no way I can remember so many spells anyway.

But high-level magic doesn't seem right either. Chanting ten thousand or more words for each spell, Aetina would probably want to kill me if she saw that.

And that's not even considering the impact powerful magic could have on the surroundings. Just memorizing the elemental flows would be extremely difficult. After all, the longer the incantation, the longer the elements move inside the body. If I did that, I'd probably have to stick to Aetina for days.

"Too bad, so I can only pick some mid-level spells?" I lamented. I immediately gathered all the magic books from the floor and started flipping through them one by one to carefully select the most useful ones.

Even for mid-level magic, there were still a considerable number, so I had to be picky. And I couldn't give up on low-level magic completely either. Many were still very useful, like the flash magic I used against Cyra.

This made it extremely tricky. First, the total number couldn't be too low or it wouldn't be enough. But it also couldn't be too high or it would be too much trouble for the teacher...

As someone who frequently suffers from choice paralysis, this felt worse than being led to the gallows.

I sat on the floor, staring at the 5 or 6 books in front of me. I hadn't even read some of them yet. I had no idea where to start, my mind was a complete mess.

In a daze, I unknowingly started drifting off to sleep.

...

I don't know how much time passed, but when I suddenly jolted awake, I realized in shock that I had fallen asleep sitting up.

"What? How could I fall asleep in Edenmere?"

I jumped up in panic and looked around frantically. I was indeed in my room, with the magic books still strewn across the floor.

"My memories don't seem to have any gaps..." I carefully recalled what happened before falling asleep. There didn't seem to be any memory loss, so it probably wasn't a dream.

But I couldn't conclusively decide yet. I had to confirm!

I didn't care about the books on the floor anymore. I raced out of the room and sprinted down the hallway, first heading straight for Cyra's room next door.

"No one's here?"

The door opened easily to an empty room. Since she wasn't in her room, she had to be in the palace's internal affairs office where I sent her to play cards with Norma.

Luckily the internal affairs office wasn't far. Just a couple of turns and I arrived.

Pushing open the half-closed door, the first thing I saw was the two angels slumped over the table, fast asleep, with playing cards scattered all over the floor.

"Cyra, Norma! Wake up!"

I shook them forcefully until the two finally opened their eyes groggily after a long while, blinking at me sleepily.

"Feliciana, why are you here..." Cyra yawned lazily, clearly not fully awake yet. She opened her mouth for a big yawn and lazily asked me.

"You're asking me? You didn't even notice you fell asleep?"

I rapped her head impatiently to make her more alert.

"Huh? What's going on?"

On the other side, Norma also seemed to have just realized what happened. She shot up abruptly, looking around.

"Feliciana?"

Seeing the sudden extra angel in the office, she thought I was causing mischief for a moment.

"Did you use some kind of sleeping spell on us?

"Nonsense! I don't even know that magic yet..." I almost choked from anger. She suspected me immediately. Am I that amazing to hypnotize myself?

Although hypnotism is considered a light-based mid-level spell, Aetina hasn't taught it to us in class yet.

"It's the light element! The light elements in the air have become extremely sparse. Haven't you noticed?"

I had already sensed it on my way here. And seeing them now, I was almost certain this wasn't a dream. The only possible cause was what I mentioned.

"Impossible!"

Upon hearing me, Norma quickly sensed something was off. Her expression changed drastically.

"The light elements in Edenmere are virtually unlimited. In the thousands of years, it has never been this thin before. How could this happen?"

"So even you don't know why? Then this is serious..."

I furrowed my brows tightly, feeling a bit uneasy. From her attitude, this was an irregular situation.

Having just experienced being swapped to the Dark Continent not long ago, I immediately associated it with that. Could it be that the nearby area has been teleported out of Edenmere?

If that's true, then it means the monsters have started openly acting. After all, from what I know, only the Dark Continent has the technology to swap large areas. Of course, I'm not ruling out the existence of even more advanced dark tech...I mean, dark magic!

"Where are you going?"

Cyra was finally more awake at this point. Seeing me turn to leave without another word, she hurriedly called out.