Sylvia started to show a big interest in the magic, which Elise was using daily. Each morning Elise filled up the water reserve tank on the bottom floor of the house by using her spell Conjure Water. The young queen decides one morning, after much observation, to ask Elise to help her learn magic. After some thought, Elise starts to talk more in-depth about the topic. She states that magic spells are quite hard to learn and very dangerous if not done right. A small misstep on where or when you place the mana needed for the current spell and it could go haywire. This could injure or even kill the caster. Not many were confident enough to take this risk. The next problem would be to find a reliable teacher, which usually is quite expensive. In addition, all mages are drafted for military service when the kingdom is attacked.
Elise could only teach the three spells she knows herself and doing so without informing a government official would be highly illegal. On the other hand, they are already in trouble for harboring a non-human species in their home …
The Darius kingdom in which they are living right now is a human supremacy country. It doesn’t value other species and has the philosophy that every other species besides humans must be eradicated. This caused the flight of most non-human races, such as elves, dwarves or half-breeds a long time ago. The Holy Western Church has a strong foundation in the Darius kingdom, which has a militaristic stance. Elise and Mark believe that the stance of the kingdom is nonsense and try to distance themselves from it. Elise strongly believes in the peaceful coexistence of different species and has infected her husband with her ideas.
After informing her adoptive daughter about the risks and challenges involved with learning magic, Sylvia decided to learn it anyway. With this decision, her magic courses begin, in which Sylvia applies her enormous learning speed. This continues for a couple of hours until they make a huge discovery. The Sylv Queen, as a synapse creature, has a natural talent for forming mana into the right forms at the right time. This helps her enormously to learn new spells and to minimize the associated risk. As a synapse creature, she is already able to intuitively arrange mana in extremely complex constructs at the perfect timing, as the Hive mind connection is based on these principles.
The main two points Sylvia must work on are therefore the chant and the understanding of the principles behind it. The last part is significantly easier when she has a better education in general. This fact and the ‘We can’t send Sylvia to school because she is not human’, leads Elise to think about starting to give general education in parallel. Erik could also participate and get a head start when he visits elementary school later. The main drawback would be the amount of time Elise needs to spend tutoring the kids. That means that she will be no longer able to do jobs from the adventurer guild in Westerville, which in turn decreases the income of the family. Before she decides, she would like to present her idea to Mark and discuss it with him.
Elise plans to have the talk after dinner, looks outside the window –> sees that it is dark already –> decides to prepare dinner right now. When dinner was nearly ready, she sent Erik and Sylvia to fetch their dad. Some minutes later they come back with Mark and sit down at the table in the living room, talking about how their respective day went. Spinny, the hive drone, was eating in the stables as usual. Another minute went by and Elise appears with a soup pot, which is placed on the table. Mark stands up to get some bowls and spoons, while Elise is occupied with the hot pot. She places the pot on a small rack to protect the table from heat damage.
After everything is prepared, Elise distributes the soup among the bowls and passes them to the others. They gratefully accept and wait until everyone has something to eat in front of them. At a signal, they all start at the same time. Sylvia is no longer fed by Elise and has learned to eat by herself with the spoon. It still looks a bit odd when the Sylv queen lifts the spoon to her mouth and rows of little razor-sharp teeth appear, trying to eat the contents of the spoon without consuming the wooden spoon itself. For most meals, Sylvia is also successful in doing so. On the other hand, the forks of the family are made of metal and therefore safe.
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After the soup is consumed, Sylvia gets a special dessert, which she asked for herself. This consists of a raw piece of meat, preferably from a creature from which she has not yet collected too much genetic material. Today there is a special delicacy, which Elise recently found in the forest during one of her missions. It is a Karanter, a frog species that can spit strong corrosive slime at enemies. The acidic slime is extremely effective against metals and can melt through metal armor in seconds. The only positive thing is the size of the frog, so the amount of acid it spits is quite small.
Elise has some doubts if Sylvia can really eat such a thing. The potent acid inside the frog makes it very dangerous to consume. Even after the Karanter is dead and washed extensively inside out to neutralize the acid. The hive queen has already spoken to Elise about the issue. According to her, she instinctively knows that as a Sylv hive queen she can consume ANYTHING organic, without any risk. Sylvia somehow knew that any normal acid or poison she eats through her mouth would be neutralized by her body, before doing any serious damage.
However, there is a chance that her instincts are wrong or that it is not a 'normal' acid that she can neutralize quickly enough. After Elise places the deadly frog in front of her, everyone holds their breath in anticipation. The hive queen's entire demeanor changes to meet her first real challenge ...
She gives the frog in front of her a deadly stare and gathers her courage for her attack. With a leap, the Sylv Queen dashes forward and swallows the whole frog in one bite! Everyone is shocked, processing what just happened. Just to be sure, Elise already starts her spell 'Lesser Healing', even if it would hardly help Sylvia in the worst case. Mark and Erik on the other hand, watch the young queen mesmerized as she chases the frog through her teeth as if through a shredder, then swallowing the remains. Mark would never have thought that Sylvia is able to eat a whole frog at once.
With a victorious smile, Sylvia examines her surroundings, a little bit of blood dripping from her mouth. “I survived and beat the dangerous frog.”, she thought, then Elise’s ‘Lesser Healing’ hits her. The spell does nothing because she is already in full health. A moment later the hive queen notices the distress of her new family and she quickly tells them that she feels healthy. This calms them down a bit and Mark asks in a confused tone, “Wouldn’t it be safer to eat only a little piece first to test how safe it would be to consume the whole frog?” Sylvia is stunned for a moment when the revelation hits her and she responds in her high-pitched voice, “I was controlled by my instincts.”
This was the first time that Sylvia fell victim to her Sylv instincts, which were only helpful thus far. She suspects that it was due to the tension and her fear of the outcome. In the end, she can’t explain what happened. Sooner or later she must learn to control her instincts to avoid such risks in the future.
Elise nevertheless rushes to her adopted daughter and examines her to make sure she is okay. After ensuring this, she hugs Sylvia tightly and only lets go of her slowly after several seconds. In a worried voice, Elise speaks, “Please be more careful with your body, I was so worried about you!”
Sylvia promises to control herself better in the future and to be more careful. Afterward, she checks whether the undertaking was at least worthwhile. It turns out that she was indeed successful and managed to gain a new Strain, called ‘Acid slime ranged attack’, which is most effective against metal armor. This complements her other ranged attack, which she acquired in the past. The Sylv queen is now able to produce ranged warrior Strains which are focused against heavy armor and ranged warrior strains which are focused against light armor.
What would happen if she combines both Strains? She tries to do just that and acquires in addition the “Acidic spines ranged attack” Strain. This enables the creature to shoot hollow spines filled with strong acid, which gets released after contact. This ranged attack is an allrounder, it is good against every kind of armor, but at the same time, it is perfect against none.