"I'm glad to see you're okay and also so happy to know my daughter is the new princess. You don't understand how proud you make me, Yoimiya." My mother hugs me again, this time being a little more honest about her feelings as her tears fall over my tiny head.
"I'm glad you're still alive, Mom. I need someone to help me out with decision-making, you know?" I couldn't help but relax my tense body and muscles to let my mom hug me closer to her as what I said was true; too much responsibility alone felt unmanageable, but with someone like her, I felt much relieved.
While it is true that I think far ahead compared to many kids my age, my thought process still doesn't account for my actual kid desires, which are still to explore things and play around with other kids. I didn't want just to be a leader all the time, which was becoming more evident the more I suppressed those desires.
Yes, I want to be a responsible leader, but I mean, look at me: I was at the age where my mother should be guiding my hand, wasn't I? My thought process might be comparable to an adult's, but my knowledge of people is not as extensive as my mother's, another adult witch who understands witches more than me.
"How were you flying before, by the way? I don't recall that skill in any of the available trees to me," My mom asks right in the middle of the hug, which finally gave me the perfect excuse to make some space between us again since it had suddenly gotten all too emotional.
"I got that skill just now; I think it's called 'Spatial hook,' and it's quite fun if I am honest; kinda feels surreal once you're in the air." As I explained this to my mom, she couldn't help but try and look for it in her options, I assume, just to give me a cold look followed by a sigh.
"I guess that's one of those class-blocked skills. I've got spatial magic, but I don't see the spatial hook tree you mentioned. It's weird." Ariel had dropped some serious information as if it wasn't a big deal, but I caught it even if she thought it wasn't necessary. Had she said 'classes?'
"What do you mean by class-blocked?" I asked Ariel, perplexed since I had no idea what she was talking about.
"You know? The thing that keeps magical users unique and forces everyone to pick a lane eventually? I'm in the civilian class, so the spatial hook is probably related to the warrior class, which is why I can't access it." I didn't know that was how it worked all this time. Was it really true? That would explain a lot about the lack of good warriors, then.
"Can you branch out to both classes?" I ask Mom, who simply answers with a very clear and precise response.
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"Yes, but there are only a few careers that allow you to either choose civilian type magic or war type. The sacrifice is that you can't really be the best at either one, so even those who can end up picking a lane so they can grow stronger." Now, it all made even more sense; if what Mom said was right, then I could forgive the low warrior numbers from this region.
It made a lot of sense now since you wouldn't want to become a hybrid, and if you chose to be a warrior, you better be a good one and get hired by the army or risk starving to death because farming is not a warfare field of magic, it all made sense now, man to think I thought these people were just cowards at first.
"In any case, Mom, can you let me ride your dragon? I've never been in one of those!" Ariel doesn't even hesitate to pick me up and let me sit at the front of the saddle as soon as I mention my request, followed by a cute and clear "Of course baby, why wouldn't I?"
The dragon, however, didn't seem to like me as it began thrashing around as soon as he felt my weight on his back until it finally knocked me to the floor, where I landed face first after being swung around by the powerful creature who made a weird screeching noise once he gets rid of me.
"What the? Hey! Not cool, Yoshi!" Ariel holds her dragon right after it basically sends me flying across the field, and to her credit, the dragon does seem like a sorry dog right after she finishes. Moments later, I simply feel how my mom lifts me from the ground and, this time, mounts the dragon with me in her arms.
Moments like these made me feel the most at ease if I was being honest. It was nice not to worry about what I would do next; I just let the adult take responsibility for things and let it all be in the hands of a more mature person. I liked to be carried around as well; I would not be dishonest about that either.
Still, just because my mom was here now didn't mean I should just relax and let her take over all my responsibilities; it just meant that I would now have a more mature person to ask for advice since Vera's advice could sometimes be even worse than mine and she was supposed to be like twice my age.
You could say that I could always ask Bart or Lord Auri for advice, but let's be honest, I have never seen Bartholomew as my real father. He is more like an uncle figure to me. Lord Auri, on the other hand, only seems to want to extract things that benefit him and his nation from me so that he wouldn't be a good source of wisdom either.
My best option right now would be my mother since she only seemed to have my best interests at hand as well as hers, which would be probably the wisest advice since I had been taking over a more hero role instead of more subtle support, who said I needed to be the main character of the story all the time?
I was clearly not in the same league as everyone else yet, so I should start asking for advice on supporting everyone else better and be willing to fight when necessary.
Defeating Julius is on the line, but to do that, I must learn how to control and harvest as much holy power as possible before heading back to the Witch Forest to extract the necessary amount of dark energy to be able to kill a prick-like Julius, which I was sure would cause trouble if I didn't kill him before trying to reclaim all of the lands that used to be ours.
In this case, Lord Auri would also need to help me with my crusade as he probably knows that Julius will not let his army defeat the Pope since they both work together. For Auri, defeating the Pope means defeating Julius as well, and yet he doesn't back down; that just goes to show the balls on that man.