He starts to look at the various titles of the books that are on the floor. Shockingly, he can read most of the titles. He learned from an early age that knowledge can help you survive, in a world where you are unwanted.
So with the growing abandonment of books for ebooks Ghost could find a couple of the least liked genres of literature. Especially any of the for dummies books since tutorials are everywhere on their modern day internet.
Books are a great way to learn important things, so he starts to sort the various books into three categories. The first category are books that aren't that important for his current predicament. Which are books about heroes, politics and other useless things.
Hero's may be exciting but it's often exaggerated and tends to be the same in the end! A boring story where the hero kills the demon king and the end.
While in reality even if the hero successfully killed a demon king then what happens afterwards is what everyone really starts to wonder about after reading it so many times.
The second category are how to books. They ranged from how to hold different weapons all the way to how to identify different types of plants.
The third category are books that he still couldn't read even with the auto translation. He hopes that they are about powerful magic and that who ever was translating the language for him thought that he should learn how to read it naturally.
His only hope is that Liz had some knowledge about these books and didn't just keep them for collectors purposes.
The history books are easy to determine thanks to the title and most looked like they were not handwritten.
The how to types of books were not as easy to determine. Some are like the books for dummies, while others look to be handwritten notes from researchers. The special books are the easiest to find because he couldn't understand them at all.
The first thing that he does is put all the books from the first category into the empty bookshelves that the tiny hut is filled with. -Might as well read and wait till Liz wakes up-. He thought while he opens up a book about how to treat different wounds.
-Is she ok the sun is going down yet she is still laying there asleep.-
He gets up from reading on the floor and heads towards the sleeping Liz. "Miss are you ok?" He asks with no reply so he starts to shake her a little bit being worried about her old age.
"Hmm, what is all the loud ruckus for?" Liz finally manages to open her old tired sapphire blue eyes. "Lad don't you know it's rude to wake up a sleeping lady?"
"You have been asleep since I got here, so I was worried something was wrong with you."
"Oh really, how long were you waiting for me then?"
"I don't know how time works in this world! All I know is when I came in the sun was still high in the sky, but now it's getting dark and my stomach is telling me I've been here for a while." He immediately starts to complain without thinking like the young child he is.
"This world?" Liz ponders for a little bit. "Ah, I see you're the product of that ridiculous magic circle that is in the castle.” She seems visibly happy and even claps after figuring out who he is.
”You know kid I never trusted that magic circle. Now I have proof I was right and that arrogant king was wrong." A grin of pure bliss appears on her old faded lips.
"Uhh, he was right I just kinda got dragged along with my sister who he calls the hero. He also told me that you would take care of me while my sister is of being a hero and such." He corrects her about his sad predicament while scratching his head.
"So he is already using the favor from the bet huh."
"Uh, what bet miss." He asks her while his face screams of young curiosity.
"Nothing much just a bet if the summon works or is a hoax. You here are living evidence I was wrong and he was right." She dejectedly says.
"So do you understand what those books over there say?" He points towards the books that he can't read wondering about their contents and completely changing the subject.
"Yes and no can I read most of them yes, but I can't really comprehend completely what everything says. I am also not one hundred percent sure about the more complicated books." She replies with a glint of sorrow in her old eyes.
"But aren't you some grand arch mage that the king asked to come here for advice on the summoning circle?" Since he was young he always dreamed of magic and thought it would be his way out of the hell that he's been living in for what feels like eternity.
"Nope! I'm just a old lady that finds magic interesting, but sadly has no talent for it. I kept collecting these books because I hoped I had some special magic that appears once every blue moon. But no turns out I have no talent for it zit nata nothing." She shatters the fantasy that every old person in a fantasy world is secretly a powerful person.
"But you can teach me how to read basic magic right?"
"Of course I can. Why? You want to learn how to use magic too?" A spark of fire finally starts to appears in her old almost lifeless eyes.
“Yes the only magic that existed in my world was for party tricks and stealing which no one would ever teach a orphan like me about. The magic of this world is probably a hundred times cooler than the fake sleight of hand from my world.”
"Well fine, I'm stuck with you anyways, just don't get your hopes up it's my first time teaching anyone after all." She slowly gets up from lying down on a couch that’s in a random corner of the hut.
"Thank you miss!" He hugs her out of excitement which knocks her back into the couch.
"Just call me Liz everyone does anyways."
"Ok Liz!"
"Now let's see where is that book." She pauses for a moment and looks around in confusion. "Wait! Did you pick up all of the books off the floor?"
"Yes, is something wrong with that granny Liz?" He calls her granny out of instinct thinking that he ended up doing something terribly wrong.
"No I'm just shocked, because I can finally see the floor it's been awhile since I could do that." A mischievous grin flashes.on her old face for a second.
"Also it will probably be harder for me to teach you. Seeing how I have no idea where the correct books corresponding to the magic text are."
"Wait, what do you mean by that?" He seems to not understand that she’s just playing with him, but that's to be expected from a little kid no matter what he's been through.
"Well, you see I had written down notes in a journal for each of the books that I could understand, but you separated the two of them. It may have looked like a mess in your eyes, but in mine I could probably find anything and everything that you would ever need. Oh well. More work for you I guess."
She gets up off the couch again and starts to slowly head to another room.
"Wait! You aren't helping me with this?!" He seems shocked about how she seems to not care about finding her own journals and is treating it as only his problem.
"Nope consider it a challenge! You may even learn your precious magic faster this way and if not then you will learn that not everything comes on a silver platter.”
“You have to work hard to get what you want and if you are born with a special magic let me tell you this."
She stops for a second and looks out the cracked window. Her eyes look like they are looking far into the distance. Almost as if they were looking directly into her past.
She then snaps out of her daze and continues explaining. "You're going to have to work twice as much compared to an ordinary mage. From my research if you have a different ability than everyone else you have to find how to use it yourself." She then continues off into the other room.
He inwardly curses his urges to do something when he’s bored and makes a promise to himself that he won't clean things without permission. He looks over all the books that he already confirmed were about magic with pain knowing that he had a lot of work ahead of him.
He decides to ignore the magic books which probably hold vast amounts of knowledge and goes to the history and legends pile. He double checks if any of the books were actually research notes and to his surprise Liz liked naming some of her research notes in vague terms. It might even be encrypted with a hand made code.
He stares at the weirdly written book with a annoyed expression before going to where Liz is to ask her about them. "Liz are some of your research notes in code?"
"Hmm? Oh yea the lesser magic books are. I was paranoid at the time, so the first couple books were written in code."
"You at least remember how to decode it right?" He asks for help while knowing that she probably won't help him with this at all. She probably doesn’t even remember that she wrote some of these in code and will use it as a excuse for more training.
"Nope! But I already know the information, so I can figure out the code whenever I want to. Let me tell you what. You figure out the code and I'll tell you if you choose the right book to go with those notes."
"Sounds like the best option I have right now." He sighs while cursing the old lady under his breath about all the tests she’s asking him to do.
He probably wouldn’t be so against it if she was strong, since different people tend to get different treatment no matter how you put things.
"Well then better get busy if you're really that curious about magic."
He immediately goes searching for books that make no sense at all, but can at least read the letters. There are probably hundreds of books here, but there should only be one coded research notes per beginning magic guide. He quickly finds a couple weird books out of the pile and starts making a separate stack.
He gets faster as he goes on thanks to being familiar with her code and title naming habits. He also started to find which books were hers and which weren't because of her distinct handwriting.
After all that work is done he seems to have to sort them from coded to uncoded, because he need the coded to understand the basics. If he learn the basics then he might be able to understand her other notes.
"Huh? Granny it's nearly impossible to tell whether it's coded or not!"
She comes out of another room. "What do you mean by that?" She asks while she picks up one of the books.
"I mean I don't understand the code nor the complex stuff, so how am I supposed to differentiate between the two."
"Well, that is easy the complex stuff, as you put it, will actually have something to do with magic. The coded will not seem like it has anything to do with magic. Isn't that why I coded it in the first place?"
She decides that it would be wise to at least teach him some simple logical things, since she thought he’d already be able to put those two things together.
"I never thought about it like that. You're right I'm sorry for not thinking it through." He almost hits his forehead because of his inability to think of something so simple.
"Oh no dear, you just need to learn to look at the world not only through your eyes, but through others as well."
He starts to realize that even if this old lady is weak she still has a lot of knowledge to teach him and that he’s been a bit rude for not listening to her.
And it turns out that she's right! Now that he starts to look at these notes like she said to it starts to become easier to see which are which. "Done! Liz I'm done sorting out the coded and the complex."
"Good, but you shouldn't get too focused with work you were complaining about hunger when I woke up, but now look it's much later and you still haven't eaten a thing."
As she says that he starts to realize that his stomach has been yelling at the world and his nose has been smell something delicious.
"Good thing while you were sorting I decided to cook up an ancient family recipe. Cooked slime!" She says with the straightest face that Ghost as ever seen in his life.
"Just kidding, even though I have heard of crazies in the guard trying to eat slime before. Just a rotisserie chicken that I tend to cook to make broth out of later will be enough to fill out empty bellies."
She takes out a glistering brown chicken with it's fatty skin still attached. She then takes out a knife and cuts out a generous portion of it for Ghost.
When the aroma of the chicken hits his nose he finally realises how starved he’s lived his life. It smells heavenly, but then again he’s stomach may have just overruled all of his other senses and might just be playing tricks on him.
He eats his portion of the meal as fast as he could without thinking of all the stomach problems that may happen from overfilling his starved belly. He finishes his first ever home cooked meal before he can even get a real good taste of it.
"Wow, you sure were hungry."
“Yeah! That’s the first home cooked meal I’ve ever had before. Go ahead and eat your portion granny I don't need any more, because I think I might of overstuffed my stomach.” He says while holding his upset tummy and holding in a couple of hiccups.
The foods put him into the fabled food coma state where he just wants to go to sleep and rest it all off.
“You can eat more of it I really don't mind. I don't need to each much food nowadays thanks to my older age, while you on the other hand look so skinny and pitiful. I was so shocked when I first saw how skinny you were and short for a ten year old. I thought you were only eight!”
Ghost starts to break out crying from the sudden feeling of care and motherly love from this old women that he doesn’t notice some obvious errors in her excuses. “Oh my. Please forgive this old lady I seem to have forgotten to ask you what your name is dear.”
"Sniff. My name is Ghost Shinigami and don't feel bad granny. You're the first person to treat me so kindly besides my sister.” He visibly tried to hold back his tears like a dam holding back a river.
“You're also the first person who cooked a actual meal for me and you didn't even care that I ate it so quickly."
He can't hold in his tears any longer, a dam starts to break in his eyes and the tears won't stop flowing out down his cheeks soaking the floor with their salty contents.
"It's ok." She suddenly gets up and starts to hug him while whispering in his ear. "Hush, I'm here for you know. Now come with me you should get some sleep it's been a long day." She takes him into his new bedroom where a inviting bed awaits him to sleep on.
"Yawwn! Good morning world!” He wake up in a small room that could barely fit the bed that he’s currently laying on a dresser and a desk.
He seems to be letting the feelings of waking up in a bed and home settle into his body as he takes his time before he decides to finally get up.
He eventually gets out of bed and change into a new pair of clothes that was left for him. They don't fit him that well and are a little too big, but Ghost seems to be back at the same point of almost crying again thanks to her sudden gift of new clothing for him.
After getting dressed he exits the small bedroom and see his new granny sitting at a desk with eleven books awaiting for him to read on it. "Ahh! You're already awake. I decided that I was being too overbearing on you, so here.”
She gives him the eleven books."Here these are the first eleven you should learn and here is the corresponding notes. I decided I was asking for the impossible by not at least giving you the basics."
"Thank you granny Liz! But don't tell me you stayed up all night to get this ready for me. You shouldn’t spend so much work and waste your sleeping schedule about something so small and unimportant. You could’ve just taught me the basics and I would’ve eventually figured out the code."
"No, no don't thank me this is the least I should of done and it was easy to copy over some basic notes that I already read a thousand times.”
“You made me realise that you and your sister are still children even if actually have the power to save this world. I was thinking that thanks to you being summoned you would, probably, have no problems with solving my code." She admits that she was having overly high expectations for a ten year old child.
Ghost begins to realize that everyone is treating him differently from a ten year old child and seems to have the wrong idea about the summoning circle that randomly appeared in their world.
He happily takes the eleven books while being careful to not drop them and mix up their order. He then brings them over to warn out desk and put the books into eleven different stacks.
“Now let's see here.” He opens up the first book and its corresponding notes to see that the actual magic book looks way older than the brand new look notes.
He probably doesn’t realize that Liz couldn’t remember for the life of her the previous code she used and also wanted to make sure that the books covered everything he’d need to know so she just rewrote all of them.
“I see, magic seems to exist in three eternal categories.” The first being elemental magic which uses the power of fire, water, earth, air, dark, light, space, time life and death. There is also some sub elements of various elements such as ice and lightning but they all are made up of those ten core elements.
The second category is pure mana control, but the notes just casually mentions it, you need to read book five to learn the basics of this. The third category is again only mentioned a little bit. It's special magic that is seen as magic yet it actually doesn’t require any mana to use. These aren’t mentioned in depth nor is their any go to book to learn more about them.
"Miss Liz" He decides it would be a good idea to ask Liz about it, but she's seems to be ignoring him. He move away from the desk to where Liz is laying down on the couch again and decides to change how he’s calling her. "Granny Liz?"
"Yes, what do you need?" She replies after he called her Granny.
"I was wondering why it barely talks about special magic and there isn't a second book covering it."
"That's simple silly, no one with special magic revealed their secrets so there is no book about it. There are speculations, but that's the best you're going to get. Also it's so rare that I doubt you will have any ability to use it.”
“But they all have one thing in common that we have figured out about them. They can’t use any other magic besides their special magic and they all seem to have unique bloodlines."
"That makes sense, thank you Granny. I'm going to go read the other ten now." He get up to leave, but Liz's hand stops him.
"On no you don't. You need to eat some breakfast, because I don't know when your going to put those books down again." She sternly yet lovingly starts to lectures him about the importance of having the energy to learn and not just the drive to learn.
"Fine" He quickly eats his breakfast so he can go back to reading.
The other ten books primarily talk about the origins of each element and what they do. Such as fire burns, water makes you wet, earth is hard, wind is invisible, darkness hides the light, light reveals what hides in the dark, space is the empty portion of the universe, time is omnipresent and exists everywhere, Life is where everything begins, and death is where everything ends.
The rest of what they talked about was warnings about elements that the other element shouldn't fight.
Fire and water cancel each other, earth stops wind, wind and water are neutral, water softens earth, fire and earth are neutral and fire feeds on wind. Light and dark collide against each other to fight for territory, while life tries to protect organisms from time and death. Space is just there void of everything besides death, time, and itself.
Wind tends to lack in defense, but it makes up for it with speed and the ability to choose what hits you, while earth tends to lead to heavy defence with slow heavy attacks. Fire has explosive power but they lack the stamina to continue the attacks without something to feed on. Water is the calm that stops everything, but can also explode with rage when needed. Time plays by its own rules and can be in any time flow that it wants to be, while space creates an area that’s hard to fight in.
Life saves others and tries not to take any lives, but that doesn’t mean it can’t kill when needed. Death wants everyone to die and unlike life can't really heal anyone of their ails. Light works at a incredibly fast speed, but it's nowhere near as physical as wind and tends to lack in punch. Darkness is everywhere and can hide itself in a separate dark version of the world. They can teleport from shadow to shadow and is mostly used by assassins.
There were also minor spells in each of the books with their chants. He decides not to try them until he gains a better understanding of magic as a whole.
"Granny Liz I finished the ten books, so can you give me the original copy of the notes. I want to crack your code."
"First let's eat some lunch. We can't have you be locked up in this old dusty house all day."
------------------------------
Chapter 2 part 2
"Are we going to go outside?" He asks her in anticipation, while imagining about how the world could be different from his own world. For instance he hasn’t yet seen enough to tell if there are two moons or weird and exoctic beasts.
"Oh my and here I thought you didn't have any interest for our world besides magic." She says sarcastically. She probably noticed that whenever he took a short break he would look out the cracked window.
"It's not that I have no interest in seeing the outside world. It's just that I have to be useful in something, so I can travel with sister and protect her. She’s a idiot who doesn’t have the best brain, but she’s really good at doing physical things so it feels weird being without her.”
"You really care for your family. Fine I will not be constantly bugging you, but you gotta eat food and be a little social, ok?"
"I wanna see the city!"
“Being the home of a king that ruled ‘the world’ the city is huge with four different sections based off of class and status.” Liz starts to explain about the inner workings of the city while preparing their lunch.
“While my hut may looks poor and run down that’s only because of my old age and not being able to take care of it.”
“I’m actually very comfortable with living in this small hut, but it really needs a new touch up if I’m going to have a permanent guest.The king so graciously gave me the land surrounding this small hut to live in and I could have made anything that I wanted. I just find living in a environment like this as comfy and homey.”
She finishes explaining about the reason for her living conditions, while also finishing packing up their lunch and starts to head outside. She continues her explanation about the district, so Ghost doesn’t get into trouble if he adventures outside.
“The rest of the houses are more like mansions. Everything here works with magic, since we take great pride in our magic abilities. The street lamps and any other lamp really, works with light magic.” Everyone who they passed on the streets looks happy and cheerful wearing bright colorful clothes and furs. A truly rich feeling comes out throughout the capital.
Sadly seeing people isn’t exactly common since their isn’t that many buildings throughout the area and it feels a lot more open than the normally crowded capitals.
Liz takes Ghost towards a very lush open field for a picnic. The difference between here and where he lived is huge. There isn’t any science in this world as everything has been replaced by the easily moldable mana.
As mentioned before it's hard to imagine a city that has so much empty space between different houses and doesn’t have any tall skyscrapers to block your view.
“This world is so much prettier than the world I lived in before. The world I was in previously might of never gotten dark at night thanks to various artificial lights, but in reality it always felt so dark and stale. It feels so much more bright and fresh here!”
Ghost can't help but exclaim while he naively believes there could be such a great world after only seeing bits and pieces of it.
They eat their lunch in silence as Liz doesn’t want to ruin Ghosts new outlook of his new world and Ghost simply is taking his time to enjoy this meal unlike his other two.
The time flies by and the food quickly disappears and Liz decides that it's time to show him a bit more of her world.
"Now that lunch is done, how about we go meet some old friends of mine?" She says while putting away the silverware into the picnic basket.
"Sure meeting people will be nice for a change. The only people that I’ve met are you and that arrogant king." He excitedly gets up at the prospects of seeing more of this bright new world.
"Then let's go my little hero." After we leave the field Liz takes him to a popular market that is being held by bored nobles.
Over the many long years she’s lived here most of them are her friends and are the best people to introduce Ghost to.
She takes him to a tiny stall that looks handmade with the thought of easy to put away in mind instead of being a permanent structure.
"Hi Alex, how’s your luck with fishing you catch any bites?" Liz asks a lean but muscular man who’s black hair is in a ponytail. Behind the stall owner is a assortment of different still wet and fresh fish.
"They can't help but grab onto my new bait! It feels so good when you catch one that’s worth keeping!” He takes out a couple different fish and puts them on the counter. “Now who is this young lad I didn't know you had children much less a grandchild."
She sighs while thinking about the kings idiotic decision of using the foreign summoning circle to summon a pair of kids.
"He isn't my relative the king called in a favor. He was also summoned with the hero. Have you met the other one?"
Ghosts ears perk up at the thought of hearing information about his sister as she hasn’t even visited him yet.
"No ma'am the king must of been anxious to start training her. He probably wants these unknowns gone as fast as possible!”
“I haven't heard a peep about her from anyone. Heck he didn't even mention that the summoning was a success. You should probably keep your mouth shut about him" He says while pointing at Ghost, but then he realizes who he was advising and shuts up.
"Well if she ever comes to this district tell her that I am taking good care of her little brother." She starts to leave the fish stall to head towards another stall when a big warlike man comes in the stall to probably buy some fish.
"Arthur how is your wife and kid doing these days?" Liz asks a big warlike man who suddenly entered the stall.
"There doing great Liz. May I ask, what the young lads name is?"
"Ah this is Ghost, the big man over there is Arthur a average sellsword till he met his wife. The man in purple is Alex a noble who has a hobby of fishing and selling his gains from fishing to the locals.”
Each of the men introduce themselves to Ghost as she is speaking, while Arthur seems to be visibly mad at her calling him average. He seems to manage to calm down his inferiority complex when she mentions his wife.
“Ghost was summoned here with his sister Jana, who’s the hero that the king brought to us. Arthur's wife is a mage who was brought to this lovely district to examine the summoning circle.”
“Arthur of course followed her and thanks to her contribution to understanding the summoning circle Arthur and his wife successfully managed to become nobles."
"Now, Liz you don't have to bring up the boring past what's more important is right now.
"Yea, Arthur's right, for once, don't bore the poor lad with our life stories he should be living his life not reliving ours."
"Hey what do you mean for once! I'm right more often than you ever are."
"As you said let's not bring up your boring past in front of the kid."
"Fine but this conversation isn't over!"
"Well it's nice meeting you Alex. I would love to meet your family Arthur. I'm interested in talking to your wife about magic."
"Oh, Liz you're teaching the lad about magic even though you refused to teach my wife and daughter."
"He was under my care to begin with and wanted to learn, so I thought it would be good if he found something to do!”
“He also really needs an ability to protect himself with. It is a harsh world out there and I'm sure he wants to go out and see it."
"Yeah any real man would want to go out and see the world even if they're completely useless. If you can help this young man find his calling to lead him forward in life and adventures. Then I won't mind you teaching him after denying everyone else to.”
“Seriously my wife was fine with it, but my daughter was heartbroken. She thought you thought of her as useless and a untalented mage."
"Well I'm not the best teacher, Ghost can vouch on that part, and I didn't think I could do a good enough job teaching your daughter, Arthur. I'm sorry if I caused you or your family trouble over that."
Granny Liz says with while looking completely embarrassed about the predicament she created for herself.
Ghost quickly gets his new grandma out of the predicament she created for herself by interrupting the conversation before it gets any worse.
"I think it's about time granny Liz and I get back to studying. Bye Alex, I hope these fish turn out to be amazing. Bye Arthur be sure to introduce me to your family some time."
He waves goodbye to the two men while carrying the bag of fish Alex gave to them as a gift.
"Bye Ghost get stronger for that sister of yours and your welcome back anytime."
"Also, come visit my house from time to time my daughter doesn't get to meet people her age enough.
"They are nice people aren't they Ghost?"
"Yeah, in my world kind people like them are rare. Most just ignore us and live on with their lives. Others wanted to use us for their own personal gain. There are some jobs that only a child can get away with in our world." Liz immediately hugs him after hearing him talk about his sad yet normal life.
"It's alright, now you have Alex, Arthur and most importantly me. Arthur's daughter isn't that much older than you. Maybe you and her could become friends."
"Really!"
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"Yes my dear she's around your age and is also very interested in her mother's profession. She’s already taking lessons from her mom. If I remember correctly she is only eight, so treat her like a older brother would you hear me?"
Granny Liz starts to lecture him on the proper way to treat the young lady that he has yet to meet and that just because she is a girl doesn't mean she has any weird germs on her.
"I know Grandma, I know."
"Good now let's get back home, so you can return to your studies. I don't want you to embarrass me in front of them you hear me! They wanted to take me in as their master and I rejected them for you, so you better show your worth to them. "
"What about fixing your house?" He asks while still thinking that he would have to help her fix it.
He still hasn't realized that she only wanted to fix it up because of her new guest and that it can be easily fixed with a spell or two.
"I will have Arthur and Alex ask some of the people they know to fix it. Don't worry there is a really useful magic that can almost instantly fix it.” She says while patting his head. She also gives him a stern look that pretty much tells him that he isn’t allowed to watch it happen.
After they got back home Ghost immediately starts to study various spells and tries to understand the magic code that has to be written to cast magic.He gets so zoned in to studying that Liz has to force him to stop studying to eat and sleep.
The days continue onwards without him changing his schedule as he slowly studies each different element of magic. Sadly no matter how well he understands the theories on magic he can't seem to put them to practice.
"Ghost! Arthur invited you to his house for a visit. You haven't gone out since you met him and that was a while ago. His daughter can show you live magic, so it's not a loss on your education either. As your master and caretaker I command you to go out today."
She looks over at Ghost while wondering if it's okay to let a kid spend most of his days inside reading.
She knows that it's probably best for him to spend his time like this, but it breaks her heart a little to see such a serious look on a child's face.
"Granny you didn't have to force me I want to see magic. It's one thing learning all these theories but it's another to see it!" He ignores the worried look on Liz’s’ face and heads outside to see a black horse drawn carriage.
"Make sure you treat their daughter with the care and respect a young lady deserves!" Ghost hears Liz start to give him last teachings about how to treat their daughter as he enters the carriage.
"I know! You’ve already told me this lecture like a thousand times by now." He yells back at her while entering the large carriage in front of him.
"Good morning Arthur. I didn't expect you to personally come and pick me up." Ghost says while failing to get into the carriage without tripping.
Arthur smiles and starts to laugh as Ghost barely manages to catch himself on the seat, before he fell face first into the carriage.
"Well I thought that I should talk to you before you meet with my family." His laughing expression turned serious in an instant.
Ghost sits down on the opposite section of seats from Arthur and waits for the over protective dad lecture to commence.
The carriage starts to move as Arthur starts explaining about his family. "My wife may seem a little odd at first, but she means well and would never do any type of experiment that would kill you. As for my daughter.“
He stops for a second wondering about how to explain his daughters problems to Ghost without talking bad about her or Liz.
“She might be a little bit rude to you at first, considering how Liz didn't teach her about magic and then decides to teach you, a nobody, about it. But she means well and if you get to know her she will probably lower her grudge."
Ghost seems to understand that in her eyes he took away her opportunity to learn from someone who even her mom wanted to learn from.
Even though in reality he did nothing wrong and it was because of Liz’s boredom that she let him borrow her notes.
"Ok sir, I won't judge any of them from my first impression, no matter how bad it might be."
"Good lad, oh looks like we are here."
Ghost looks out the window to see a medium sized mansion that wasn't the biggest nor the most luxurious of the mansions he had seen when he was walking about with Liz.
They head on inside to see a women with electric blue hair going down to her waist and modest sized mounds, wearing a black dress, comes down some stairs in high heels.
She looked like someone you would see in a movie or a queen married to her king. "Miss, you didn't have to dress up I'm not anyone really important. I'm just a student of Liz's that's all."
She stares into his blood red eyes with her nearly black eyes and says.
"Sweetie you are not only the first student that Liz has ever thought about teaching, but also might also be our future savior. I think you deserve me dressing up a little bit, silly.”
She takes a deep breath before starting to talk for some reason. “Now then I have a couple questions I would like to ask you. How did the summoning feel? What is your world like? Does it have magic. If not tell me how your people managed to live without such a convenient thing?”
She stops her firing off questions to take a breath of fresh air And drink some water. “And finally are there any other sentient life forms on it or are there just your people? For instance there are many different races on our world, but I’m curious if that’s the norm or if we’re abnormal."
She finally stops her rapid fire questions and lets Ghost think about the answers to her various questions. But unfortunately the only thing that happens is Ghost's eyes start to spin while trying to figure out the answer to all of her various questions.
"Mom! Don't you think you're asking him to many questions? How do you expect to get an answer if you don't let him talk?"
A girl who also has electric blue hair like her mother's, but a childish face with grass green eyes like her father's attempts to save Ghost from his predicament.
"And what about you young lady, not even greeting this young man who came here to mostly see you?"
Ghost is visibly confused by the sudden claim of her mother, but decides that it would be best for him if he just plays along. He is still trying to figure out all the answer to her various questions after all.
"Oh yeah and why would the great disciple of Liz Magi want to come and see little old me?"
"Because he was interested in you silly. He hasn't met anyone his age since coming here and here you are almost completely ignoring him!”
“Now if you were in his situation would you be willing to help a ungrateful little girl with her current problems?" She sternly gets rid of the smaller girls arrogant attitude towards Ghost.
It seems to work as the little girl is visibly more aware of the problems she ended up causing with her sudden outburst.
"I'm sorry for ignoring you Ghost my name is Alicia Emantsal.” Ghost seems surprised about how quickly she changed her attitude towards him
He thinks about it for a bit and decides that he’ll forget her previous outburst since it managed to get her mom to stop asking him various questions.
"Apology accepted. I think that we both got off on the wrong foot because of a misunderstanding. Master isn't teaching me because she expects great things out of me. It's more because the king forced me onto her."
The first thing that he decided to do is clear up the misunderstanding between him and her, since misunderstandings shouldn’t be something that you build a relationship off of.
"Really she isn't teaching you because she saw some amazing talent in you?" Alicia asks him with a very confused look in her eyes, while tilting her head to the side for a bit.
"Nope it's been the opposite as of lately. I haven't showed any talent for magic, but the language is fun to learn." He starts to tell her about the various spells that he’s tried to cast and also about how much of the magic code he’s learned.
Normally someone at his level of knowledge should at least be able to cast the most basic of spells effortlessly without caring for elemental affinity.
"Really you have no talent for magic?" This time Alicia's mother chirps in which makes Ghost realize that he still hasn’t answered any of her various questions.
"Well I can store mana, but it seems to not like the magic spells. All I learned how to do in the six months that I've been here is this."
He opens his mouth and urges the mana to come out, which proceed to turn into a blaze of fire instead of mana after making contact with the air. "I can breathe out more, but I don't think that that's a good idea."
"So all you can do with you mana is breathe fire, as if you’re a dragon?" Alicia's mother asks him while wondering why he can't use fire magic if it naturally wants to turn into fire after escaping his body.
"Yes, that's the only thing my mana seems to want to do. I can't even use regular fire magic. It only wants to leave through my mouth. Even though I can't use any actual magic I still know a lot of theories about mana and magic, so I can still help you Alicia.”
“There is also a reaction from the dark type spells, but sadly I can't seem to get the mana to escape from my body without breathing it out." A look of disappointment flashes on Alicia’s face, so he tries to comfort her with help from this useless hero.
"Ok! There is a portion of the backyard made specifically for magic practices, you can teach me in there. Is that ok mom?" She seems to be feeling better after knowing that Ghost can still help solve her current problems and looks towards her mom for her permission to use their training facility.
"Of course why would there be a problem when I'm also learning from Ghost. What I'm not that old and even if I was can't you still teach an old wolf new tricks?"
Ghost doesn’t seem to find the saying abnormal, but maybe they just don't think of wolves as wild animals where their all from. Ahem let's continue, she looks excited to learn something new for once.
"Uhh miss, master said you're strong enough as is and I shouldn't tell you anything. Something about your mana already being used to whatever bad habits that I would point out and if you tried to fix them your magic will degrade instead of upgrade.”
“Then why are you allowed to teach my daughter magic of you can't help her mother?” Alicia's mom seems to be ready to throw a adult hissy after being denied knowledge yet again!
“Alicia over here’s magic is like a blank canvas to paint on, while your magic is a completed masterpiece trying to fix any errors will just ruin it."
"I think Ghost is right let the two of them have time together to hang out, like a playdate.”
“Your also already so powerful sweetie. How would a brat who hasn't been learning magic for very long help you out much."
"Aren't they a little too old to have a 'playdate'?" She seems to have calmed down after thinking about nearly acting like a child in front of her daughter.
Alicia’s mom makes a strong argument to her husband, who doesn’t seem to be worried about his young daughter being together with a older boy.
"Fine they are strangers learning more about each other to become friends since they have similar situations. Most of the time their parents aren't involved in this type of manner."
"Fine, you win, Alicia and Ghost go off and have fun by yourselves." She looks depressed but Arthur has successfully managed to get her permission for them to be alone without any adult supervision.
She probably didn’t actually care that much about two brats hanging out with each other and instead wanted to learn some new knowledge from Ghost.
"Let's go Ghost!" Alicia runs off in the direction of the training hall, while Ghost stares at her blankly while thinking about how he never got to answer her moms questions.
He eventually decides that he can answer all of questions when they eat dinner, so he ends up far behind the much faster Alicia while yelling, “wait for me!”
So the magic training facility turns out to be a open area with four magic runes on each of the surrounding parts of the mansion's walls.
With Ghosts larger than average knowledge of magic runes he figures out that it's pretty much a barrier magic surrounding the area of earth elemental affinity. "So what do you want to learn about first?"
"I want to see a fully charged fire breathe!"
"Fine but you will have to give me some water afterwards. I don't have it mastered to the point where it won't hurt my throat."
He takes a deep breath of oxygen, even though it's not really needed, and urges his strange mana to come up his throat from an area near his heart.
As he starts to exhale unneeded air a fireball big enough to be the size of a small child comes out. It dies out three feet in front of him leaving a trail of fire in its path. "There...hap..py now..get me some..water please."
She completed her chant that she started earlier after Ghost said he'd need some water. A water ball appears over Ghosts head like magic.
Well actually that was magic my bad. Ghost seems to be able to see a magic circle encoded with various runes while she was chanting.
"Here drink I can't keep it like this for long with my mana supply." He starts chugging down the water as his throat cools down.
Perhaps he is missing something important with the ability he found, since your body should normally already be adapted to a natural ability.
"So you are a water mage?" Mages usually specialize in one element then, if they have the talent, try to learn the neutral element to the element they already know.
"Yes and no I'm naturally inclined towards water and fire, so I am a water and fire mage. I’m as good at using fire as I am with water"
"Great! You're already learning two elements! Try to gain proficiency in all the elements, even the ones you suck at. It gets harder to learn another element the older you get, so right now is the best time for you to become familiar with the other elements.”
He stops for a second and starts to drink some more water before continuing on teaching.
“Another thing you should work on, is to stop using excess mana for tasks that could've been solved using a much simpler method. You didn't have to hold the water into a sphere in front of me you could've just forced it into my mouth. Also you could’ve put it into my hand which would've eased mana consumption.”
She nods her head as if understanding and wanting him to continue explaining. So, he decides to continue onwards, “you also didn't need the full amount of water that a water ball produces. Of course you were worried and too much water isn't usually a bad thing. Still you poured in too much mana to keep the balls form. Now you're mentally exhausted from a simple job.”
He stops while trying to think of a scenario where it would be a good thing to have perfect control over mana usage.
“What if you are stuck somewhere and you have no idea how to get out? Your mana reserves are the only thing that can help you in this situation. If you run out of mana then you have nothing to use to protect yourself with.”
“If a wild beast attacked you when you had no mana it would be able to kill you in a single blow. On the other hand if you had mana you could use a spell to kill it yourself. That's why it's always important to be aware of your limits, ok?"
She stops and thinks for a second then a look of fear appears on her face. She is probably thinking of the situation and how terrible it would be if she ever found herself in such a situation.
"Yea Ghost, your right. As expected from Liz's disciple. I never heard of learning elements at a young age being easier than when you're older. Also, you can change the mana output of spells? I thought that you couldn’t change the spell you just say the chant, pour in the mana and it, you know, happens."
She starts to reveal her terrible lack of control over her mana and her ignorance about how various spells actually work. Most magic spells are highly customizable as long as you understand the code that’s used to write the spell.
As long as you understand the code well enough you can even begin to create your own spells! Sadly it seems that Alicia has no talent in the creation of spells as she hasn’t even tried to modify a basic spell.
“Well when you are younger your mana is still changing much like your body and as you get older it starts to become more and more permanent. It's a lot like learning a new language it gets harder the older you get. It's the same concept with learning a new element. Another element to your mana is a brand new language for it to learn and explore.”
Ghost ignores her lack of mana control while not understanding how much of a major problem it actually is, because his strange mana doesn’t really need any control to move the way he wants it to move.
“Honestly it's still possible for people like your mom to learn a earth spell, but she will be heavily limited by her mana.” Honestly it doesn’t seem to be a bad thing that mana slowly starts to lose it's adaptability considering how focusing on one thing is always better than focusing on two things.
“Take for example my ability to only breathe fire it comes from my mana refusing to do anything but that. It's a rare case, but some mana can only do one type of element no matter how hard you urge it to do anything else. This of course could be looked at as a minus, but it also can be a very good thing.”
“For instances if your mom could only use water mana then water spells would cost less mana yet have a higher output than yours. It is almost as if that element cherishes its user like its own kin.”
“Teacher said that I might be able to use magic in a different way if only a dragon would be willing to teach me, but going and asking a dragon to teach me is nearly suicide.”
“It also doesn’t help me that they are rare even in this world. Most are only spoken of in legends, so I’ve long since given up on that idea.” Alicia has a depressed look on her face, so he changes the subject back to her current problems.
“But you should be able to learn a little bit of each system and since you'll start at a younger age than most it will be closer to your fire and water magic.”
“Now the main thing I want to help you learn is the magic code for various elements. This will help you immensely and is something you should memorize even if you don't want to learn any other element.”
“The magic code is what mages use to write out their spells and is something you’ll use constantly even if you don't know what it means. Even you summoning that water ball was using code to write a well code for a already premade waterball. These codes were designed by our predecessors and are what eventually turned into modern day magic spells.”
Alicia’s excitement drops dramatically after Ghost starts to mention about the magic code. She seems to have some basic understanding of it, but she doesn’t seem to like learning about it.
“Ghost mom already tried to teach me about this, but I simply couldn’t understand the gibberish that she was talking about. I really think we should try to learn about something else besides this.”
“You sure that you don't want to try to learn this? This isn’t something you can casually abandon if you want to be a respected mage like your mom in the future. Every great mage will end up modifying all their spells so they can perfectly suit them.”
“You’ll lose a ton of adaptability and control if you don’t understand how your spells work!” Alicia seems to be a bit hesitant after hearing all the pluses to learning the different language.
Ghost quickly realizes that he almost forgot something very important and starts to speak before Alicia can give her answer. “There is something even more important than just merely increasing your spells strength and control.”
“It’s actually even more important than the fact that you can create your own spells as well. To become a S ranker you need to be knowledgeable about the magic code, since they don't have to chant anymore to use most spells.”
“Speaking of chanting! It is actually something that isn’t needed in our profession. It only exists to make the already hard to learn magician class easier to learn. It is simply translating the magic code into another language, while diluting some of its effects. Since magic has its own language then it naturally should be chanted in that said language instead of any other one.”
“This is why some races are stronger at casting magic as a whole. They have a language that’s more suited to write the magic code. There is a even better step than simply chanting out in the magic language, which is to use the mana to write the code with your will. This is much faster than commanding the mana with words and lets you perfect your different magic circles.”
He stops explaining for a moment because he sees a certain parent peeking in on their class. Teaching someone how to chant using the magic language is still one of the major things that can't be taught to stronger people.
“I'm pretty sure if you ask her for them she will give them to you since they have no use to me or her. We pretty much memorized those books already.”
“Sounds like a good idea. Thank you again for helping you even though I wasn’t that nice to you when you arrived.” She tries to do a cute princess curtsey bow, but nearly trips over her feet in the process.
“It's ok. You just wanted to learn more things about magic, but you got denied by teacher and I didn't so of course you would be mad. I would be mad to if I got denied, then someone out of nowhere came along and was suddenly being taught.”
“Really?”
“Yea I like knowledge and in my world whenever someone wouldn't teach me something I ended up stealing a book about it. No one would help us no matter how much we begged, so we stopped begging and started to live on our own. It was just my sister and I in that cruel dull world, but now we’re here and learning about a world where anything could happen. It's also a lot nicer here then in my world.”
He starts to realize that he hasn’t visited her in months and she hasn’t done the same, so he finally starts to worry for her safety. Instead of thinking something stupid like she doesn’t actually like him and has abandoned him now that she has the opportunity.
“Well I'm sorry that you had to live such a hard time, but as of now you're part of our world" She ignorantly and cheerfully tries to make Ghost feel a bit better.
“Yeah I kinda don’t want to leave this world and go back, but you know I'm probably not meant to stay here forever.” Ghost begins to convince himself that his sister will be fine thanks to her being with the king and his guards. She’s their new hero so she should be the safest person in this kingdom right now.
-------------------------------------
Chapter 2 part 3
“Kids it's time to eat!”
“Coming mom! Let's go Ghost!”
“Yeah!”
They hurry to the main dining hall. Alicia and Ghost enter through the big door that lead to the area. On the table are various dishes with each dish being different and unique in its own little way.
There was a salad for Alicia, a sandwich packed with meats for Arthur, another salad for Alicia's mom but instead of green leaves their purple, and that's it looks like they didn’t know what to make for him.
"Sorry Ghost I didn't know what you like, so I didn't prepare a dish for you. If you want something specific you can ask me or Alicia to cook it.”
“She isn't as great as me but if it's for you I think it would turn out great." When she mentions Alicia ability to cook Alicia blushes faintly while being confused about why her mom suddenly threw her under the carriage.
"Mom what do you mean if it's for him it would turn out great." She speaks in an irritated and embarrassed voice. "He just gave me pointers on magic that's all that happened."
"Did I say anything else happened? No I just thought you might think that if you feed him it would be a good way to make up for how you were behaving earlier."
"Well fine Ghost what do you want to eat I will cook it to the best of my abilities." She says while not being to happy that she has to cook.
"Uhh, I can cook for myself. I had to for my sister and for some jobs."
"No we insist you are the guest of this household, so we should be the ones to cook for you not yourself." Alicia’s mom jumps in while squashing her poor daughters only ray of hope.
"Fine, but I wasn't planning on eating a lot. It's only lunch so I was planning on eating a little bit of fruit and maybe some type of meat. So how about this Alicia, you can make whatever you want and I will eat it for you.”
He seems to be able to read into Alicia's unwillingness to cook food for him, so he asks for something she’d be happy to make.
She goes into the kitchen without even touching her own food. She was probably feeling so rushed and confused that she forgot that she was hungry! "So why have you been giggling since she left? Oh and I never got your name."
"How terribly rude of me never mentioning my name to you. My name is Sophia Emantsal. I am sorry if whatever she feeds you turns out to be the worst thing you’ve ever eaten. She hasn't been learning long." She tries to hide bright smile, while laughing in her hand.
"Then why did you call her a good cook?"
"I was teasing her I never thought you would actually accept my proposal. You were the one that caused her to have no choice, but to admit she was a bad cook or actually cook something.”
‘I bet she was so nervous she even forgot to eat. The worst case that I thought of was she saying I don't know, but my mom does. But no you had to go and ask her to make you her favorite thing to cook."
She can’t hold in her laughter anymore, because of the unexpected situation. "It will be fine! How bad could it possibly be?"
They wait a little bit for Alicia to cook whatever meal she was cooking. Alicia comes through the door holding a platter with a lid.
Hiding under the platter is a pasta with ingredients that I have no clue what they are. He takes a bite of the mystery food without asking what it was.
Trying to not embarrass her for any longer, which seems to backfire since whatever was in the food causes him to faint on the spot.
"Ugh, why am I on the floor? How long have I been here?" He say while he tries to shake off the groggy feeling of forgetting something important.
"Just ten minutes, how did it taste?" Sophia is the only one still in the dining room as Arthur is away consoling his depressed daughter.
"Ten whole minutes! How did what taste! I don't remember eating anything at all and everything that has happened for a while is just a blur!"
"I'm sorry Ghost I should of made something easier." Alicia ends up coming into the room from the large door with red eyes and Arthur in toe.
"Or you could've just told me your mom was exaggerating and you can't cook at all. As punishment you're going to have to show me every spell you know how to do. Let's go before I remember what I ate.”
He unconsciously shivers since his mind may have forgotten the taste, but his stomach and body seem to perfectly remember what happened as he doesn’t feel hungry anymore.
"Ok.” She looks a little more cheerful after hearing about showing off to Ghost about something that she’s actually good at doing.
"Can I go to this time? I mean you already should've given her all the advice she should need, right now, and I know even more magic than her." Sophia stops them and then starts to beg, while craving for more knowledge.
"Fine, but I'll need to talk to Alicia, alone afterward. I can point out everything you do wrong, so she doesn't copy your bad habits."
They go back to the magic training yard and Sophia immediately forms a water ball. Showing that she’s already begun to master writing out the code for the lower level spells.
She puts Alicia's attempt at the spell to shame. Her water ball looks just like a ball and didn't even have any ripples in it like Alicia's did.
"Hmm, I take it you are a pure water mage unlike your daughter." He sees that she has nearly perfect water mana coming out of her body instead of it being diluted with any other type of mana.
It also doesn’t take her long to transform her in born mana into water mana, which usually takes a bit of time if you know any other elemental spells.
"Yep, I can only use water magic. I decided that if I focused on water magic alone I would be able to walk further down the mage path. I don't know if I'm the strongest ever, but I'm confident that as of right now no one is stronger than me with water magic."
"And yet you damage your own daughter's pride by showing how much better you are at it." He shakes his head in frustration at how she’s still competitive in front of her own flesh and blood.
"Don't worry about how well you can control water as of right now. Make it your goal to do better than your mom at both water and fire. Also make it your goal to do just as well as what you just saw with wind and earth."
"Ha, that's impossible to do with both fire and water much less two elements she can't even use."
"Don't you know when you're as young as her you can learn to use the other elements and all of them can grow as high as you want them to?“
He gets angry at her for unknowingly shooting down her own daughters hopes and dreams. He mutters a vow underneath his breath to make this little girl in front of him stronger than her own mother.
“The reason why I knew you were a pure water mage was, because there wasn’t any other mana in your spell. There is many benefits to learning a different mana at a younger age.”
“Your daughter doesn’t have any problems using both a fire and water spell, because of her young age” As he argues with her mom Alicia’s face perks up from being depressed after seeing her mom’s magic.
“The only people who are limited to one element are people who are so loved by their element that it doesn't let them use any other element.”
“If you are like that you should be using water magic as if you were breathing, but you aren't so I guess you could have learned another element if you really wanted to. On the other hand it is wise for you to stick with water magic and just perfect your control.“
He finishes lecturing her, but Sophia doesn’t look like she believes what he said at all. Which is normal seeing how Ghost’s age is many times lower than hers and doesn’t have any experience in using actual magic.
"So if what you're saying is true then you should be able to use other spells besides breathing fire, but aren't you living proof that the theory of yours is just a false hope that you created?"
She tries to counter Ghost’s argument even though it isn’t his theories but a person who she wanted to take as her masters.
"Nope my mana isn’t of any element! That's what master told me and not something that I created to make myself feel better. It's just not a element but a racial ability! It follows under the category of something that doesn’t need any mana to create. It only requires concentration and mental energy.
“These types of abilities tend to need something foreign to use and mine needs some mana that doesn’t have a element to breathe fire."
"Ghost do you really think that I can become better than mom?" Alicia asks with a hopeful glint in her eyes.
"Of course you can become better at anything if you work hard at it. Take your cooking for example if you work hard at it I'm sure you can cook something not only edible but delicious."
"But what if I have no talent for it?"
"Talent is like a booster it helps speed up the process, but in the end if they don't increase their skills through hard work then someone who works extremely hard can catch up and pass them.”
“The true people who you should worry about are not people with talent, but the people who have the talent but they still work hard."
"Sophia can you show us your strongest magic or is that too dangerous to use here?"
"Yeah mom if I'm going to pass you I'll at least need to know your full capacity for water magic." Alicia’s eyes brighten up at the thought of surpassing her mom and reaching the apex of magic in her country.
"No my strongest spell is too dangerous to use here. I can however show you my third if you want me to."
"Sure any magic that you can show us is fine."
"Ok then let's do this. I call upon the fabled ocean to give me its mass quantities of water." Before she even begins to chant a magic circle appears in front of her with three magic runes on it with one of the runes representing a portion of the magic code already lit up!
"I call upon the great lords of water to give me control over it. Lastly, I call upon the god of water to give me his blessing and let my water destroy whatever is in its path. Water cannon!"
All the runes light up and then the circle transforms into a siege cannon made out of water. Then all three runes grow around the watery cannon.
You can see the water flowing throughout the cannon and finally the three original runes form into one grand rune.
"Mow down my enemy's water cannon, burst!" A rune glows on the cannon then three gallons of water gushes out of the cannon at a velocity that ends up curing the magically reinforced wall..
"Whoops I might of made that a little too strong."
"Wow mom that was amazing and it was only your third strongest spell. I'm scared to see what your other two spells can do."
"Yeah that was impressive for your third strongest spell." Sophia bareilly fools her overtrusting daughter into thinking that wasn’t her strongest spell.
This room was obviously made for her to practice magic in, so it should be strong enough to handle all of her spells besides maybe her strongest.
"Question whenever you or someone else uses magic can you see the magic runes on a circle written in the magic code?" He asks a question that's been bothering all of us for a while!
"No, do you know how boring that would be if ever mage could eventually known what spell you're using? Why can you seen them?
She look at him and then looks like she realized why a non mage was asking about seeing a magic circle.
"Yea, I can and during that last spell runes lit up as you were activating them, I guess."
"I don't know a lot about dragons, but that's probably from your mana or another weird ability you have."
"Yeah well, can you leave so I can point out your problems to your daughter? You have a lot of them you know." She leaves while looking depressed.
"Now Alicia do not show off like she did. Also, she has the same problem about excess mana, so be extra careful about the amount of mana you use
“Lastly when you use your spells make sure you're one hundred percent focused, unlike her who was paying more attention to us then the spell she was trying to use.”
"Ok thanks for the advice and for telling me to keep trying."
"No problem I'm glad I could help you."
A horse drawn carriage takes him back without Arthur this time. The sun starts to set as Ghost finally gets home and gets to take a good look at the new and improved hut!
"I'm back granny!" He yells as he opens the freshly repainted and fixed door. You can't even tell that it would nearly fall off its hinges just half a day before.
"So did you make a new friend?" She asks me while sipping on some type of tea. There is a refreshing smell coming from it that’s living up the room.
"I hope I did we actually had a lot in common. She wasn't that nice at first, but she got a lot nicer as the day went by."
"That's good you friends are a very important existence. It's no good being locked up in your room all day. I understand that you need to get stronger for your sister, but sometimes you should put your needs first."
"Yes Master. I found out that I could see magic circles while the mage was casting the spell. Misses Emantsal told me it probably just in my nature to see them and it wasn't a natural thing."
"Interesting and I told you not to call me master but granny instead. Now go take a bath, but not for long then go to bed. Wait did you eat dinner at Sophia’s house?" Liz was going to force him to go to bed early but then hears his stomach yell at her.
"No, it wasn’t that late when I left and it still isn’t that late, right?"
So, she makes a quick simple meal and metaphorically forces it down his throat, then throws him into a bath. After the much needed bath he heads to his new bed early after realizing how tired he actually is.
Time flies by again as he tries to find something useful about himself to help his sister with. He eventually makes the decision to harm himself even if it goes against some of his naturally instincts to see if he has healing magic!
Sadly the healing magic attempt doesn’t work at all and he slowly realizes how much of a idiot he was for trying to do this on himself.
While he was contemplating on how to explain this to Liz he feels like he can control the blood that’s dripping out of his tiny cut.
He thinks of the blood forming a tiny needle and it compiles as if it was natural for his blood to follow his will.Then the needle of blood shoots out and pierces the wall in front of him.
There isn’t even any need to use any mana to make it shoot out like that! All it takes is some concentration on his part and some mental energy.
“Ghost are you ok? You look like you're out of breath.”
He takes a moment to catch his breath and then ease her of her newfound worries.
“I’m ok that just took a lot out of me. I feel like it should get easier with more practice. Do you have any bottles or tubes like for alchemy?”
“Yes I have a couple, but you have to tell me what happened before I give them to you.”
“I discovered something special about me.” He tries to tell her about his shocking discovery!
But Liz interrupts him while already guessing what type of magic he found inside of him. “More draconic magic?”
“No, It's something completely different. It feels weird, but it feels like blood just naturally just follows my commands. It feels like as long as I have a clear image it will turn into it.”
He uses the blood that was dripping from his cut that he completely forgot about and turn it into a very tiny blood rose. “See?”
“That is amazing. Is this why you were summoned? Ghost!” She can't help but wonder if he was the actual hero that was summoned instead of his sister.
When she was about to tell Ghost that he might be more of a hero than his sister is Ghost starts to fall to the ground to tried from making the rose.
He eventually wake up on the floor again and can't help but hope that this won't become a common occurrence for him “Ghost are you ok?”
“Yeah, I wasn't in a stable condition when I made a needle then I made a delicate rose it was just me being stupid.”
“You should get some rest and don't push yourself to this point again, ok?” She says while wiping the tears off her wrinkly face.
A week goes by of Ghost experimenting on what he can and can't do with his new ability. What he learned is that it gets easier to use the more you use it especially after you hit your limit, but Liz always managed to keep a watchful eye over him and always stops him from going too far.
Slowly it gets easier and easier to control, but the amount of blood that he has to carry around is a bit abnormal.
"Ghost are you ready to leave for Alicia's house? I’m sure Sophia will be excited to see what you can do now. "
“I'm going now the carriage has arrived. Bye!” He enters into the same carriage that he hasn’t entered in while thanks to his new research subject.
He opens the entrance door and for some strange reason no one’s there. “Anyone home!?” He can't help but yell out loud as his voice starts to echo throughout the empty house!
A faint voice can be heard replying back. “We are in the magic courtyard.” The rest to faint to hear, so he decides to go towards the magic courtyard
He probably would of went to show them his new power anyways.“Why are you all over here?”
“Alicia wanted to try out a original spell, so I had to supervise her and arthur couldn't help but watch.” As Ghost enters the courtyard.Sophia explains why they weren’t waiting for him at the entrance.
This also shows that Ghost wasn’t the only one advancing in his studies while he was studying.
One he fully enters the Magic courtyard the first thing he notices is that the damage Miss Emantsal did last time has already been fixed. “So how did the spell turn out?”
He questions Sophia even though he’s pretty sure that it failed judging by the depressed face of his friend.
“Failed and if I wasn't here it would probably have killed her. On the brightside it only failed because of her control. If she had enough control she might just be able to cast the spell as it is.,
“But, the amount of control it should take to actually use it is huge and there's no telling how long it might take.” Sophia excitedly replies.
“It sounds amazing I wonder if there will be day that I can see it.” He carefully look around, but still don't notice anything that could tell him about the new spell she was trying to use.
“Who knows there might be a day that you get to see it, but more importantly you said you have something to show us as well?” Alicia looks up from the ground a little less depressed with a glint of anticipation.
He nods and then without saying a word blood starts to surround the yard and dye it crimson red. *I want to test the power of my ability. Do you mind if I accidentally destroy this formation?”
“Sure.” Sophia says without thinking because she was too shocked to really understand what Ghost just said and would probably not let him try to destroy their expensive formation.
The blood starts to slam against the walls, but the magic formation stops it. With each slam the formation gains more and more cracks a few more hits and the whole thing would break, but he stop their seeing that if he could destroy if he wanted to.
The blood starts to gather around him and enters the various tubes that he hide around his body. *Phew, that takes way more concentration than I thought it would.”
Sophia breaks out of her daze while the others still look starstruck. “Is that what you meant by being loved by a element?”
“I guess it's sorta the same, but unlike when I breathe fire this feels limitless. I don't feel any loss when I use it beside the concentration it takes me to use it. I was wondering if you had any idea about this?”
“I have no idea. I never saw anything like this in my life. I’m sorry Ghost none of us can help you with this and I thank you for not destroying this barrier.”
“It's the first time I’ve seen it this damaged. Even if you send my water cannon against it the whole barrier wouldn't collapse and is easy to fix..”
“I think I should go back home. I mean after what happened to Alicia and now this, I think everyone deserves a time to rest.”
“I also think you should go.” Sophia agrees with him and he decides to leave as he realizes that he ended up making Alicia even more depressed compared to earlier.
He heads back to the carriage, while Alicia is too depressed to say anything as he leaves and Arthur is to scared to return with him.
A couple days after he showed Sophia his ability *Knock Knock!* “Who’s there?” He walks to the door and open it.
“I'm the king's messenger.” A small man that you could call a dwarf or a midget in Ghost’s world answers.
“The king threw both of this houses residents out of his castle, so what would he want to say to either of us.”
Ghost is visibly angry at seeing the kings messenger after thinking about how he hasn’t seen his sister in a very long time.
“The message is for a man named Ghost does he or does he not live here?” The messenger ignores Ghosts angry tone and continues with his job.
"I’m Ghost, speak what is this message?" He slowly gets curious on what the king wants of some trash he threw out.
"The message says that he is sorry for not realizing that you are the true hero. Furthermore the unknown tried to assassinate the king yesterday. They failed but Jana's was sadly burned to ashes by a fire spell. We are dreadfully sorry for your loss, but please end this war as our hero.”