After handing the glasses off to the girl, Celestina, Aiden's day proceeded through its routine with nothing special, save perhaps the girl's overexcitation over her newly acquired sight, which ended up exhausting her before even the end of the day. This, in turn, caused the whole routine to accelerate, leading to Aiden being led to his room earlier than usual, which quite suited me.
When escorted to his room, I considered taking over to avoid the usual ruckus. However, seeing how calm Aiden was today, I decided against it. Docilely, he got changed and climbed into bed, all without causing a commotion. It was a sight that stirred conflicting emotions within me—pride and a hint of bitterness. Without even needing to try all that much, Aiden fell asleep, and a few minutes after he did, I could tell the caretaker took her leave.
After ensuring she was truly gone, I, having taken over the sleeping Aiden, slipped out of bed. This window of time Celestina unintentionally bought granted me the perfect opportunity to carry out what I was planning to do without impacting Aiden's sleep schedule. As Dungeon Master 02 reminded me the other day, a good sleep schedule is essential for children, and yet here I am planning on taxing two hours of it to Aiden. Today, thanks to Celestina, I'll be able to keep it to a minimum, but tomorrow... Well, I'll see tomorrow.
Blueish moonlight filtered into the room through the glass window, illuminating the space without the need for candles or any other light source. Right then and there, I accessed the ring, which I believed might have been temporarily requisitioned by the caretaker for inspection, only to realize midway through they didn’t even even entertain the thought. This is one of their policies perhaps regarding children or perhaps regard. I couldn’t tell at all, nor did I bother trying to.
I opened a rift from which I retrieved three items. The items were respectively labeled [Runic Sheet], [Node Inscribing Quill], and [Purified Manacyte Sample]. The first was a very fancy sheet of paper, the second a highly-fancy looking quill, and the last, a blue marble-like item.
Staring at the blue marble-like item, a smile crept onto my face. With the smile still lingering, I walked to a small desk corner of the room to proceed with my plan. Placing the three items on the table, I was about to take a seat when I realized something. I promptly walked up to the drawer and used it to access the glass window, fully opening it. Once that was done, I climbed down and activated my ability [Spawn].
A thick, dark, odorless fog seemed to seep from the ground, but it actually emanated from my sole. It manifested circularly around me, pooling there for a couple of seconds until it reached enough volume to submerge me up to the knee. Only then did it gather up to form a large bird-like shadow creature. As its form became clearer, it slowly shrunk to reach a crow-like size, emitting a low "caw."
The shadow creature was none other than "Crow," as I had grown accustomed to calling it after hearing Aiden refer to it that way. It was the only shadow creature that I didn't lose control of after the reinitialization I went through.
While initially extremely skeptical of my ability to respawn him after actually unspawning him, I kept Crow on active summon for a long time, hiding him away from curious gazes day and night. However, upon acquiring my first shadow creature summon since the reinitialization I went through, I realized that perhaps my skepticism over being able to resummon Crow might have been unfounded.
After careful consideration and deliberation, I decided to unsummon Crow for the first time in a very long while.
After my last big mission, I had mostly used him as Aiden’s playmate, to not say plaything. It had been years since the last time I unsummoned the shadow creature, so it was with great relief that upon doing so, I realized that I was still able to summon him back.
Heaving out a sigh of relief, I walked up to the desk where I left the item I retrieved from the spatial ring. Holding onto the [Node Inscribing Quill], I began to write—or perhaps the right word, from the cryptic look of it, was inscribe—onto the [Runic Sheet].
The sheet was an artifact that allowed pretty much anyone with the proper prerequisite skills to manually manifest an operational magic circle without the corresponding skill. Well, to be exact, in my case, it was using a skill: Memorial Magic—a skill that was innate to me, just like my spawn abilities.
Normally, this is a skill that can rarely, very rarely, be found in humans, for it was a skill found exclusively among elves, it was one of the innate class-granted skills of the Memory Keeper, Arcane Sentinel, Sylvan Enchanter classes and several high-ranking cryptid elvish classes.
The skill is, if I were to compare it to a commonly known skill, akin to a better version of “Identification,” which allows the wielder to perceive information such as properties, abilities, and other hidden attributes within non-animated objects such as weapons, spells, and magical artifacts. But Memorial Magic, as the magic section of the name implies, is a magic-based skill, and all magic-based skills rely on one common thing: the use of magic circles.
Memorial Magic allows me to compute and, as the first part of the name implies, memorize magic circles. This means that in theory, this skill should allow me to replicate and use all types of magic without having the actual skill. However, it will forever remain theoretical for me. Unlike other wielders of this skill who acquire it innately due to their class, I was only born with it and not the class-bestowed ability it normally pairs with, which is either [Magic Circle Casting] or [Echo of Arcana]. This makes the skill, one can’t help but complain once one thinks about it, potentially broken, as it would have allowed me to replicate all skills that involve magic circles, meaning all forms of magic. But instead of being born with either of the two skills, Memorial Magic usually comes along, I was born with the lame [Memory Manipulation] ability. Truly ironic.
However, the truly ironic part is that the one who complained the most about this "defect" wasn’t me, but instead Theta, whom I failed to inherit the proper ability from—no, what am I saying, it was she who failed to pass the ability to me, not the other way around. And yet, she’s the one who complained the most about what could have been.
Sure, just like her, I found it regrettable, but not to the extent where I would passively, let alone actively, lament over it. There was no point to it. I couldn’t change it, nor was there anything I could have done to change it. So not only did I accept it, I quickly overcame it.
Without the luxury of [Magic Circle Casting] or [Echo of Arcana] skills, the only choice left for me was to do without them. I was able to do just that. While I lacked the ability that normally allows elves of Memory Keeper, Arcane Sentinel, Sylvan Enchanter classes to manifest magic circles into reality, I was left with no other choice but to rely on artifacts like the runic sheet and node-inscribing quill I was currently using to do it.
With these two items, I was able to manually do what both skills do.
Sure, it’s nothing comparable since one summons a magic circle with a simple mental command while the other requires me to manually inscribe the magic circle onto a runic sheet like someone drawing on paper would. But hey, it gets the job done. In fact, it got the job done so well that in the span of a decade, I was able to level up [Memorial Magic] to level 6, and I was able to reach level 10 in half that time upon discovering the ultimate method to level it up.
It was that very method that I was currently trying to use here. Yes, leveling up [Memorial Magic] back to what it used to be is my current objective.
If I really plan to go down that adventurer path I've set out for myself, I need to make sure that I'm at least useful. And to be useful in that position, I need to be strong. I was strong, but after what happened, let’s face the truth, it’s no longer the case.
Right now, even if I wanted to, I doubt it would be possible to immediately become an adventurer. After all, this body is that of a child. Compared to our old world, this world is still barbaric, but not to an extent where a literal toddler would be able to become an adventurer. Which means that luckily, I have some years ahead of me to regain that strength before then becoming an adventurer.
But truth be told, even if I didn’t have that talk with Dungeon Master 02 and still didn’t consider this prospect of becoming an adventurer as Dungeon Master 07 once proposed, I already planned on regaining my strength. That's why I had Dungeon Master 02 bring the ring to me in the first place. Having spent a little over 3 weeks in this body, in this condition, it has been enough time for me to realize how weak and therefore close to useless I've become. It's imperative that I regain my strength, which is depressingly the only thing I can boast about myself.
While [Memorial Magic] wasn’t exactly a skill that actively participated in making me “strong,” as I mainly relied on my spawn or, in most cases, my battle-focused skills for fighting, it was a skill that I still found best to level up due to its plethora of possible uses and applications. After all, it was basically a skill that allowed me to copy all forms of magic-based skills, with the only downside being the fact that I had to take the time to manually scribble the magic’s magic circle.
The fact that I’ve managed to successfully level that skill up to level 10, suggested that I had my fair share of exposure to various forms of magic in Fiendfell. And I had. Remarkably, despite the reinitialization, I very much have retained all memories associated with that, which made it that consequently, among all my available skills, [Memorial Magic] stands out as the one I can readily enhance first.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
After about ten minutes or so, I was finally done manually inscribing a magic circle on the runic sheet. Putting the quill to the side, I took a moment to behold my handiwork, taking a deep breath as I massaged my shoulder. I genuinely wondered, “Was doing this always this tedious?”
Right after, I reached for the last item I retrieved from the spatial ring and had not yet used: the [purified manacyte sample]. It was the final component to what I was up to. Ironically, here in Fiendfell, magic operated not in mysterious ways but rather in very patterned and logical ways. In a unique, if not outright "strange" way, thanks to the system, it could be paralleled into how electronic devices in our old world worked—long story very short, magic is the device, magic circles were all the fancy inner components of electronic devices, and the status known as M.P was the pool from which the electricity used to power up the device was drawn. Thanks to the new era of groundbreaking advancement Fiendfell found itself in, it was not so uncommon to replace the energy drawn from M.P for something more tangible, and that something was the manacyte—in my case, a refined manacyte.
I wanted to use it to activate the magic circle, or rune as that’s what it was at this point. Having an assigned M.P myself, I could have used my M.P to activate it, but for the sake of this experiment and the current state of my M.P, it was really for the best that I relied on a refined manacyte sample instead.
I was just about to put the marble-like artifact onto its designated nodes on the now inscribed runic sheet, which would have the effect of activating the rune, but then realizing what would happen next, I stopped. Leaving the desk, I brought the runic sheet and put it on the ground in a spot that could loosely be called the middle of the room. It was mostly a corner with nothing around. Upon doing so, I finally placed the marble onto the designated node, thus activating the magic circle.
As the marble made contact with the designated node, a subtle hum filled the air, and the runic symbols etched on the sheet began to glow with an otherworldly light. Gradually, as the runic sheet started to get consumed by what acted like a fire, the rune transformed into a fully activated magic circle, its intricate patterns gleaming with a mesmerizing luminescence.
I took several steps back, my eyes fixed on the unfolding spectacle, which seemed a little dragged out to my taste.
I don’t remember it being this slow? Is it my low level doing that? I couldn’t help but wonder inwardly.
“Caw,” I heard from Crow, to which I replied, “no, not yet.”
The magic circle, hovering in the midair, expanded, freeing itself from the runic sheet it was initially drawn on, its radiant lines stretching and pulsating with ethereal energy.
In the center of the circle, a manifestation began to materialize—a canine summon, its form enveloped in a ghostly blue aura. Despite its spectral nature, it bore the distinct features of what I exactly wanted to summon: a familiar summon.
As the ritual reached its climax, the magic circle pulsed with a final burst of energy, illuminating the room with its brilliance. And then, as quickly as it had appeared, the circle dissipated into nothing, leaving just me, Crow, and the wolf-like form in the room.
<“Wolf” successfully appraised>
________________________
[ Wolf ]
Race: Familiar
Type: Wolf
Level: 1
________________________
Suddenly, sensing my attempt, the wolf-like familiar finally noticed my presence. Its spectral form tensed, and a low growl rumbled deep within its throat. Despite its apparent hostility, I couldn't help but smile. This was precisely the reaction I had anticipated. This was the consequence of using an alternative like refined manacyte instead of my M.P.
There was nothing binding me to what I created with it—in this case, a familiar. Likewise, there was nothing binding the familiar to me. It was a natural outcome, one I had fully expected. As the familiar took its first stride toward me, I welcomed its response with a call, “Crow.”
“Caw!”
Wasting no time, Crow, whom I called the name of, atop the one of the two parallel placed bunk beds, had its form twisted and expanded, casting a looming shadow over the spectral wolf. The crow, fueled by darkness that seemed drawn from oblivion, grew in size and strength, its wingspan stretching ominously.
The wolf-like familiar recoiled, sensing the imminent threat from the monstrous crow. Its spectral form flickered with uncertainty as it faced the looming darkness that engulfed it. Despite its spectral nature, the familiar seemed to understand the danger posed by the monstrous crow.
As the monstrous crow descended upon the spectral wolf, the battle unfolded with breathtaking speed, if one could call that a fight; it was more like a one-sided massacre.
The monstrous crow, engulfed in dense shadow, closed the distance with an almost supernatural swiftness. In the blink of an eye, the crow's shadowy form engulfed the wolf, rendering it silent and defenseless.
The spectral creature, unable to make even the faintest noise, succumbed swiftly to the overwhelming power of the monstrous crow. The crow's gaping maw closed in a series of rapid, ghostly bites, tearing through the ethereal form of the wolf with ruthless efficiency.
With a chilling silence, the battle reached its abrupt conclusion. The spectral wolf vanished into the engulfing darkness of the crow's shadowy embrace, leaving behind only a fleeting echo of its presence.
The crow, triumphant in its swift victory, loomed over the empty space where the wolf once stood. Its shadowy form pulsed with an aura of dominance, while paradoxically displaying an aura of subservience as almost immediately after engulfing the familiar, it began returning to its crow-like size, which it reached in less than two seconds, before flying to my side on Aiden’s bed.
“It was a little messier than I would’ve liked it to be, but well done.”
“Caw. Caw.”
“I hope you really do,” I said, walking to the spot where the wolf had been summoned less than a couple of minutes ago, yet there was not a single sign of it anymore. “This is the only skill I can currently level up and the best method I have for it.”
There are many type of skills in Fiendfell, with many ways to categorize them, but broadly, they can be grouped into several categories: magic skills, psionic skills, combat skills, physical and magical enhancement skills, knowledge and utility skills, and a variety of other type that don’t fit into these. Despite their diversity, a common thread runs through many of these skills—they exhibit a pronounced inclination towards violence. Whether wielded in overt conflict or more subtle forms of confrontation, most skills seem designed to “overcome” “adversaries,” often serving as a means to acquire experience points (XP), akin to what GP harvesting used to be for us.
This predisposition towards violence has led to a curious phenomenon wherein skills tend to level up primarily through the act of harvesting XP specifically with the skill in question. For instance, skills like swordsmanship naturally progress more efficiently when employed in battle, where they are honed and refined through combat experience. Of course, there are exceptions, but this is usually the rule.
Now with that established, there is, however, amidst the predominance of combat-centric skills, skills that defy the trend. These skills, while not directly conducive to combat, possess their own unique paths to advancement.
Consider skills like [appraisal], [identification], and other non-combative abilities like memorial magic which I supposed under normal circumstances, with the skill it usually spawns along, qualify as combat-centric, but on its own, it is no different from appraisal and identification, basically harmless—while they may not be wielded on the battlefield, they nonetheless have the capacity to develop and evolve through alternative means.
These alternative means can be training or repeated application in non-combative scenarios. Take, for example, the skill [identification], which flourishes not through the clash of weapons, but rather through exposure to diverse magic, artifacts, and environments. Wielders with a keen eye for detail and a commitment to unraveling the mysteries of their surroundings find that repeated instances of identification, such as deciphering ancient runes or analyzing magical anomalies, steadily advance their skill growth.
Similarly, appraisal, a skill invaluable in discerning the uniqueness of each individual, can thrive outside the battlefield. Wielders who dedicate time to appraise people, creatures, entities should see their exponentially skill level up.
In my case, Memorial Magic posed a unique challenge for leveling up. Typically, this skill should progress alongside the other skill it comes along. However, since in my case, it stood alone, I found myself forced to level a skill that was missing its other half. The unconventional method I devised to make up for what I was missing involved inscribing a magic circle that I’ve copied, computed with [Memorial Magic] on Runic Sheet using a Node Inscribing Quill, thus creating runes that the interface deemed a form of training—in other word a legitimate means to advance the skill.
For my experimental trials, I opted for familiar summoning runes. Yet, I soon realized that, much like appraisal couldn't be raised to level 10 by repeatedly appraising the same person, it was futile to expect Memorial Magic to advance simply by summoning the same familiar repeatedly. The system proved smarter than that, resisting attempts at easy exploitation. It was then that Theta's suggestion sparked a realization—I could use a pure manacyte to fuel my familiar summoning rune instead of my own M.P. While this severed the link between the summoned creature and myself, the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks.
This approach yielded a dual advantage. Firstly, I could exploit this method which this time allowed me to summon the same type of summon multiple times, to level up another skill, [appraisal]. By using this method which dissociated the summoned creature from myself, I once successfully leveled my appraisal to level 06 without the system recognizing the parade. Secondly, the method served the purpose I initially intended—it contributed to the progression of my Memorial Magic level.
Admittedly, the process didn’t outright push my level up to level 2. That was within expectation. Leveling it up required numerous attempts, if not a dozen, to even reach level 2. Perhaps summoning something more sophisticated than a mere level 1 dog familiar would make the process faster, but my options were very limited in this place, compelling me to scale down my experiments.
Turning to the window, I considered taking my experiment outside.
The muffled caw of a crow echoed through the air. After a brief moment of contemplation, I shook my head. "Not just yet. This idea has potential, but let's settle on this for now," I declared, approaching the desk to draw another familiar summoning rune. "Just make sure to take down the next one cleanly and silently. The night is going to be a long one."