Leaning against the wall next to a winding staircase, Lucy looked idly at the system panel in front of her.

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Swiping her hand across the items, four marbles with intricate designs carved on them fell into her other.

Each marble had a clock without hands. Instead of the hands, each marble had exactly what its name would suggest.

One had a staff. A stick with a lightly glowing gem at its tip.

The next was an Orb, with a similar glow to the gem, a crystal ball spun and spun.

Then a short ceremonial dagger which acted as the small hand to the clock, the Athame.

And finally, a book that flipped through an infinite number of pages through an infinite amount of time. The tome.

Blinking and activating her Third eye, Lucy curiously examined the items.

“These are genuine articles of Coven Emblems. If that’s the case, whatever this system is or whoever created it is, at minimum, the same strength as Mother. Not to mention it was able to perfectly replicate my Mana signature…”

Hearing footsteps coming down the stairs, she decided to temporarily put the items back into her inventory.

Covens were groups. Consisting of a minimum of 5 members to fill each roll that the emblems dictate.

The leader, which in this case would be Lucy.

The Staff, the leader’s absolute sword who fells the leader’s enemies.

The Orb, the leader’s voice who keeps relations clean for the leader.

The Athame, the leader’s shadow who accomplishes the things that cannot be done in the light.

And the Tome manages the funds and territory of the Coven to make sure that after a long night away, the rest have a home to return to.

The emblems themselves are things that can only be created by a Grand Witch or someone equivalent, and they grant whoever holds it and the leader of the coven mutual information over each other.

Things like their location, what they’re doing, if they’re in danger or sick. The list goes on.

It was a sign of trust for a Witch. Their coven is the most important thing in the world.

“Yo, you finally decided to show up. Did ya have a nice chat?” Lucy questioned with a smile, seeing as Zone was attached to Lily-rose like a parasite.

Without releasing her ability, Lucy narrowed her eyes at the half-Xin girl.

The amount of mana she emitted was huge, surpassing what Lucy had when transformed, but it failed to travel properly through her body. Only half of her body had mana in it. The fact that such a large amount of mana being contained in such a small container should cause the container to spontaneously combust aside that was like only having blood in half of your body.

‘How is she alive? Just what is the biology of the Invaders like?’ She wondered, disabling her ability before it made her headache any worse.

“I’m sorry we made you wait long.” Lily-rose apologized with a bow.

“Meh, 20 minutes isn’t that long. Anyways, let’s go. I have some stuff I wanna look at in the library.”

With the others in tow, Lucy began walking further in.

Right away, Lily-rose couldn’t help but continue to be astonished by all the things that Lucy owned. Right by the stairway was an entire gym with nearly all the workout equipment you could possibly imagine.

Continuing through a door, they reached a sleek silver room. With every step they took, the ground sunk a little before returning to its original position.

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‘Just what is this place?’

“It’s a simulation room. It’s the newest technology that I stol.. Ahem… Borrowed from the Church’s Demon Bane group a couple of weeks ago. It simulates the destruction of terrain as you fight so you can spar in realistic conditions… Although I don’t really have anyone to spar with. I’m simply too weak for anyone in my family to care.”

“T-to weak? Just who is your family?” Lily-rose asked.

“Oh, that’s before I became a Sentinel. With this power, I could probably last… 2 minutes against my cousin? Oh! Speaking of her, I’m gonna ask her about helping me remove your ban after school. Would you mind meeting with her if she says yes?”

Lily-rose hesitantly nodded. She trusted Lucy enough at this point, even if many would consider it to be too soon for such trust but part of her couldn’t help but shake the feeling that her ban wouldn’t be able to be removed.

She didn’t know a lot about magic. Hell, she only figured out how to use what she knows now by accident, but she didn’t see her mother as someone who would lay something so easy to get rid of on her. She was far too careful for that.

“Will she be able to remove it?”

Pausing her steps, Lucy looked back with a confident grin.

“When it comes to the technical aspect of magic. There might be one person who’s more skilled than Diana. If we work together and still can’t remove it, no human, witch, priest, or even Magical Girl would be able to remove it.”

‘Plus. I’ve already deciphered the Glyphs. If I weren’t injured, it’d be easy to do it myself.’ Lucy mused, ending that train of thought.

“Uh… Sure… I don’t have any other plans anyway.” Lily-rose agreed.

Nodding as they continued to move, one more door stood between them and the Library. As Lucy opened the door, everyone in the group was once again shocked by just about everything they saw.

A library that was larger than Lucy’s entire house so far.

“This is… The same technology Utopia’s hospital uses?” Nell inferred, looking around in amazement.

“Yup. This room alone is probably around 5 or 6 times more expensive than the rest of the house. Even a small expansion like Utopia showed us would cost a few million USD. Makes you very curious about his real identity, doesn’t it?”

Pretending not to hear anything about the absolutely ludicrous numbers Lucy is casually talking about for the sake of her sense of value, Lily-rose looked at a number of the books that were near the entrance.

“The Difference Between Ice and Frost Magic. The Complications of Demonism. Is every single book in here related to magic?” Lily-rose mused.

Every book she looked at had a similar title relating to a specific affinity or application of magic.

“Wow, that’s two for two. You guys are good at this, huh? On that topic, though, your affinity is Spirit Magic, right?”

Not even surprised that Lucy could tell exactly what her affinity was after seeing her utilize it once, Lily-rose simply nodded.

“Second floor, row 18. I honestly don’t know much about Spirit magic, but I do have some tomes on it. Feel free to go check it out. You don’t need to worry about putting it back, either. The moment you finish reading it’ll return to its original position. Nifty, right?”

“Woow! You must really like reading, Lucy!” Zone cheered happily.

“Aha… That’s certainly one way to put it. Now then… Where is it?”

Looking through her many books and tomes, Lucy hummed to herself as she sorted through countless miscellaneous novels and guides until she landed on one with the title A Deep Dive Into Magic Circles & Glyphs.

As she flipped through the book, it quickly became clear that the contents of the piece of literature were exactly that. It explained the intricacies of how those symbols that are placed in magic circles, glyphs, function in tandem with each other to create all the different effects that spells have along with numerous different theories regarding them.

“Ah, this page.”

Scanning her finger over the text, it read, “Glyphs have an uncanny resemblance to the nomadic languages of the Vikings and seem to have a common origin point, but current results are inconclusive. Further research is required.”

Unfortunately, the paragraph ended there. Still, that was enough for Lucy as it confirmed the information that the system gave her upon gaining the Scribe specialization.

‘A common origin, huh? Despite how similar they are to Glyphs, they couldn’t be further apart.’ Lucy thought.

The information given to her by her specialization consisted of a set of basic runes and a vague explanation of what they did. It wasn’t possible to display the differences yet, as she’d need to experiment to truly get a solid grasp on them, but she had some ideas.

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“Southwest… That’s not good.”

Pulling out her phone to look at the time, she let out a sigh.

8:09 AM.

“20 Minutes to deal with the Invander on the other side of the city and get to school. Yeah, seems simple enough. Nell! Let’s go!”

“Right!”

Jumping onto Lucy’s shoulder the two were about to run out the door before Lily-rose briefly stopped them, giving Zone enough time to also jump onto Lucy’s shoulder.

“Did a Xin appear? Do you need my help?”

“No, we’ll get there slower if I take you, and I’m on a time crunch. Next time, maybe.”

Taking a few more steps, Lucy’s eyes widened.

Grabbing one of the emblems out of her inventory, she tossed it to Lily-rose before continuing to run.

“If you leave the house, keep that close! It’ll let me know if you’re in danger!”

Little did Lucy know, upon Lily-Rose touching the emblem, a translucent panel appeared in front of her eyes…