William still had very little idea of what it was that the scroll did. He was certain it wasn’t a bad thing, otherwise he never would have showed it to Lila. However, the demoness who gave it to him was rather suspect. William hadn’t personally felt any ill intent from her, but Chris’ memory of her from before certainly didn’t shed a positive light on her. That said, as many of Chris’ earlier memories, it wasn’t particularly clear on anything. All that was really certain is that she was around when Chris became a staff, and not how involved she was.

He took out the scroll and read it again. “Convert the soul to power. Destroy the cycle of reincarnation. Shattering of the soul.” It was a frustratingly helpful collection of phrases. It wasn’t instructions of any kind. William didn’t experience the vision of the words flying off the page again. Instead, it was as if it were perfectly normal text. Since it was related to soul magic, William had expected it to have some effect for Lila. However, instead there was no reaction. Upon further consideration, though, it shouldn’t be connected to magic if it reacted to William. Unless he met certain other requirements, and would be able to do something if he could do anything with magic. In that case, it was even more frustrating.

Chris… he could do magic, and the symbols had also flown off of the scroll and into him. Communication with Chris was hard. Besides the fact that he was a staff, William expected that he probably wasn’t a clear communicator before that, either. Alternatively, it could be a side effect. Either way, it was hard to talk to Chris about it. In fact, William had some ideas that he couldn’t even begin to put into words. Except that the “soul magic” he had obtained was not magic. Chris actually agreed with that assessment. However, it was definitely mysterious and like magic.

To support his theory, William showed the scroll to Marius. It was something that should be done eventually anyway, because he intended Marius’ family to be the keepers of this until the generation when the Demon King finally showed up again. Unfortunately but expectedly, Marius’ reaction was similar to Lila’s. He saw rather unremarkable writing, and triggered no reaction.

There was only one other person that William wanted to test it on, because there weren’t many he could trust. Though he trusted his parents and Professor Pierce, as well as a few others among the older wizards, he didn’t think it would be relevant or helpful even if they did trigger an effect. The only problem was, William was having trouble finding him. Specifically, he was looking for Gerald, but he wasn’t at the knight’s training ground. When he asked the other knights where he was, they looked around as if they were somehow embarrassed. “Well, he’s probably…” one of the knights looked at another. The second nodded in some kind of affirmation. “He’s probably at the wizard’s guild.”

William wasn’t sure why he would be there. If he had been looking for William, he would have already found him. However, upon arriving back, he quickly found Gerald. However, in the same place, he also found Lila. She was glaring at Gerald. “Stop following me around like a lost puppy! I already told you I’m not interested.”

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Gerald stood there stoically, and shook his head. “Not until you hear me out.”

“Ugh, just give up already. In fact, why don’t you talk to this instead. Fireball.” Normally, of course, a wizard couldn’t cast a spell with a single word. That wasn’t even really a chant. However, Lila was exceptionally good at gathering mana… and she had learned from William how things actually worked. A fireball the size of Gerald’s torso appeared, exploding over him and knocking him off his feet. Lila turned around and walked away.

William walked over to Gerald’s smoking body and poked him. The response he got was a groan. He looked up at William and said, “I don’t think she likes me.”

“Really?” William looked over Gerald, but aside from some singed hair and clothing, he was pretty much alright. Besides the soot covering his face. “Well, she definitely doesn’t hate you.”

“She threw a fireball at me.”

“Big deal, she’s thrown bigger ones at me.”

“...You duel her in the arena, though.”

“...Outside the arena.” William looked down at Gerald’s confused face, and pulled out the scroll. “Read this for me, would ya?”

Gerald’s eyes flitted across the paper. Then, as if they were somewhat stuck, the letters slowly dragged themselves off, and floated toward Gerald, entering into him. “What… what kind of magic was that?”

William pondered. “Well… what I can tell you is that it isn’t magic.”

Gerald tilted his head questioningly. “It’s not?” Gerald shook his head back and forth, and stood up. He looked down at himself, and although the situation wasn’t pretty, confirmed that he was relatively unharmed. “You’re sure she doesn’t hate me?”

“I can’t say I understand anything about women in general, or even how Lila’s feelings work, but I can say for sure she doesn’t hate you. She might dislike you, though. How long has…” William vaguely waved his hand around, “whatever that was, been going on?”

“Hmm, a few days, but this is the first time she threw a fireball at me.”

To William, this said she definitely didn’t dislike him too much, if it took her a few days to get annoyed at him. Though, he couldn’t say much more than that. “Well, good luck, I guess.”

-----

In the coming days, it wasn’t rare to see a fireball thrown at Gerald in the mage’s guild. Using magic in the halls was technically forbidden, however Lila never destroyed any property that was around. Attacking people with magic was significantly more disallowed, but the victim in question never seemed to get really hurt, and voiced no complaints. More importantly, there wasn’t anyone, with the possible exception of William and Marius, who could actually enforce any kind of rules on Lila. Thus, it just became something that everyone knew about, but nobody really talked about. It just became accepted as one of those things that happened around Lila sometimes.