Chapter seven: the girl known as genius

It had only a few weeks since Sherry began studying magic under myself, but her progress couldn’t be described as anything less than blisteringly fast. In less than three days she managed to master the finer control of magic to such a degree she could hit a small tennis ball from other three-hundred metres away. She was like a sponge that absorbed anything I taught her almost instantly; her repertoire of spells had become staggeringly impressive for a five-year-old. I couldn’t help but think of how amazing she’d become if I kept teaching her more and more powerful spells. Indeed, somewhere down the line I also had a great deal of fun just seeing what she could do.

The system known as ‘magic’ was largely similar to the one I remembered from the game, or at least how I used magic didn’t change much from back then. Typically, all spells were layered in tiers; there were six tiers: elementary, intermediary, advanced, master, grandmaster, and at the top was the mythical ‘sage’ tier. As the complexity of these skill tiers increased, the more things a mage was able to conjure up, therefore characters focused around magic were also classified in these tiers. If I were to rank Sherry, she would be nothing less than an intermediary tiered magician, although at the pace she’s going it wouldn’t be too long before she could conjure up advanced tier magic. From what little research I had done – over the internet – most people capable of magic eventually bottleneck around the advanced tier as well, heck there were some people who couldn’t get past the intermediary stage even through adulthood. So for a five-year-old to be capable of this much was incredibly impressive.

However, there was one other thing to magic that made things a little more complex, and that as the existence of ‘elements’. There were three primary elements: ‘fire’, ‘ice’, and ‘lightning’, along with two auxiliary elements of ‘light’ and ‘darkness’. On average, magic users typically focus on one or two elements, yet even then they’d focus on one and have the second element only as a backup. Sherry, on the other hand, had shown herself capable of using all three primary elements along with the darkness element.

“This is quite amazing,” I was left speechless by her talents. There was simply no other word to use; I was almost shaken up by the thought of how exceptional these ‘Pures’ were. Initially I only assumed they were mildly more talented than the average person, but this was on a completely different level. With proper guidance they could reach heights that would be a pipe dream for most. Of course, even the mighty ‘internet’ has scarce information on Pures, and with a sample size of just one I could only make conjectures.

“Eh?” she didn’t seem to quite understand it herself how special she was. “Is it that amazing?” she asked while playing around with a Frost Bolt. “But, Corentin is much more amazing for being able to teach me all these spells!”

“Huh? Ah, no, no. My case is a little different. Still, I’m glad you were able to absorb all the things I’ve taught you so far so quickly.”

Incidentally, learning skills was also one of the methods to gain experience points needed to level up in this world. Subsequently, just around the 29 to 30 mark. Her magic and wisdom stats shot up all the way to 347 and 299 respectively, with here mana just short of 6000. To put into perspective on how monstrous that was, there were some adults in this world still that couldn’t break past 20 range, and most people seem to be comfortable and even content around 30 to 35. That said, with a lack of any real combat scenarios in this modern world I could see why there wasn’t such a huge importance on levelling. Speaking of which, my father’s level was also fairly high, though I guess we could attribute that accomplishment to his lifelong service in the military.

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Also, this ‘level’ thing was something only I could see, the concept didn’t exist outside of video games in this world. The numbers I assigned were simply my estimates using research from online.

“Hey, hey, Corentin, what are you going to teach me today?” she looked up at me with those expectant eyes filled with excitement. Being honest, I was a little scared that I was making her too much into a monster, though that didn’t stop me since it was interesting in its own way. Unfortunately, once a magician hit a certain point, unlocking grandmaster and sage tier skills required a special ceremony to continue, and I wasn’t quite sure if those ceremonies could even be done in this world. That wasn’t to say staying at master tier wasn’t impressive, but it did feel like a waste of potential. I had to figure out a way around this issue, or some way to do the ceremony. Well, if I even knew the meaning of restraint, I shouldn’t teach her past advanced magic until she was older just due to the sheer power and destructive capabilities of that tier of spells.

“Maybe we should take a small detour then?”

“A detour?” she repeated.

“There are still a few intermediary spells I’d like you to learn before moving on to the advanced tier, namely ‘support’ magic. However, these spells are a little special.”

“What’s support magic?”

“It’s as its name implies, a type of magic used to support others and yourself in combat. You can form different armours based on elements, augment your own attacks with them, and a whole lot more. Since you’re better at dark magic, it might be easier to learn offensive augmentation.” Body strengthening, speed increasing, hostile aura, were some of the kinds of things dark element users were capable of doing.

“I don’t understand what any of that means, but that sounds amazing! Let’s do it! Let’s do it!” she jumped up and down.

“It does, doesn’t it? However, support magic requires something else along with mana to use.”

"And that is?"

"Stamina."

The moment I said that her face soured almost immediately. "Ehh… doesn’t that mean like moving around and stuff?"

"Correct." As much of a genius as she. Was there were things even she was terrible - almost atrocious - at, and that was physical activity. She had a dangerously low stamina reserve, even amongst the children her age. "Well, if you say you don't want to learn it then we can forget about it."

"Uuuu… but, but…" she was struggling between torture and the love for magic. "Uuuu, fine. I'll do it! I just have to do it right?!" She said with the fervour of a child struggling against being told to eat her vegetables.

"Come on, don't make that face. Physical exercise will be good for your body in the long run as well." Unlike ordinary magic, because support magic requires concentration to maintain the effects for a lengthened duration, stamina was important. However, I could also see why she would be so against sok g strenuous physical exercise, so in order to make it more palpable, perhaps I should distract her from the fact that it's exercise. Like disguising vegetables by grounding, them up and serving them with meat to trick the child. "Okay, how about this Sherry. It won't just be exercise for the sake of it, but I'll also teach you some other skills that's not magic."

"Not… magic?"

I summoned two small wooden swords from my inventory. Sherry has seen me take out items from there and hasn't questioned it before, so I felt comfortable doing it. Of course, I told her not to tell anyone anything I did. "I'll teach you some swordsmanship."

She seemed rather ambivalent about the whole idea. She didn't appear to be against it, but I guess it was just outside her area of expertise that she didn't know how to interpret it.

"Hmm."

"I can see you have some doubts but rest assured; what I'll be teaching you isn't ordinary swordsmanship, it's magic swordsmanship!"

"Magic… swordsmanship," her expression almost immediately improved. "That sounds cool!"

"It is! So, what do you say? Feeling up for it?"

She nodded furiously, "yes, yes! I want to learn!"

"Okay! Let's go to the nearby park, there should be some space we can use." After agreeing on it we headed downstairs to leave. "Mother, Miss Anne, we'll be playing at the park," I informed them and left with Sherry.

"Don't come back too late, okay?" I heard my mother shouting from the house. "And be careful around strangers!"