We were now on our way back towards Crown Capital City on Emilia's ship.
Unfortunately, Ardi would not be following us back as she and her crew would be going somewhere else for another job of theirs.
There weren't any tearful farewells, since I've come to learn that it was natural for people to separate and meet all the time in this World. Thus all we had to do was to look forward to our next meeting again.
Speaking of which… This was supposed to be a relaxing vacation yet I never thought we would end up getting ourselves involved in so many weird problems.
At least things seemed to have calmed down now and I even decided to join Delmare in her lessons with Mary.
"Now, try to focus on your magic and imagine the effect that you wish for it to achieve. How do you feel right now?"
"Umm… Nothing?"
Mary smacked her shoulder with a rolled up book, causing her to wince more from surprise than pain.
"You aren't concentrating on what I'm asking you to do. I know Young Mistress is worthy of more attention but please concentrate on this first. Try again."
"Unnn… I don't know what I'm doing wrong…"
"Remember the feeling you get when you are singing using your magic. Concentrate on that feeling first and get a grasp of the flow of your mana."
Delmare shut her eyes and tried to concentrate while Mary turned her attention to me, ignoring Odeta who had wanted to join us but ended up falling asleep.
"Young Mistress, I believe for your case, Somatomancy should be a relatively easy magic to learn since it focuses on changing your body. As you are already familiar with Electromancy and even Umbramancy, you have some experience in letting magic flow both inside and outside your body as an armour of sorts. What you should learn now is how to do both of them at the same time. Remember the feeling of using [Body Current] and [Shadow Wall]. Concentrate on combining both together and create an image of how you want your body to change in your head."
The fact that Mary could adapt to each of our unique circumstances in order to teach us that magic was already impressive. But not only could she understand and figure out what would make the most sense to each of us, she was also adapting her own teaching methods to guide us properly as well.
No wonder Katsuki improved her skills so quickly in such a short amount of time.
Hmm… Let's see… Mary mentioned two spells in particular that I should concentrate on.
[Body Current] is an Electromancy spell that enhances my muscles to temporarily boost their capabilities which allows me to jump higher and even punch harder. [Shadow Wall] on the other hand uses mana to create a cloak of shadow around my body to blend myself into the darkness and make myself appear invisible.
So if I were to combine the feeling of both of them together…
I would need to think about having mana flow through both inside my body and the outside of it.
Luckily, I have experience in controlling my mana to do whatever I want it to do so this was something I had no trouble with.
The only thing was trying to imagine what I wanted to transform and how.
Hmmm… Let's start with something simple first.
If I'm right, the magic is only able to imitate things to start off with so I won't be able to transform myself however I want until I get used to the magic more.
Since Mary was right in front of me, I guess I could try changing my face to match hers to begin with?
So first I just need to visualise the shape of her face, the contour of her chin, the length of her hair, the pigment of her skin, the colour of her eyes, the size of her lips, nose and eyes, the curvature of her ears, the…
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Wow, Somatomancy is actually harder than I thought it would be… There's so many things you need to consider just to transform yourself into someone else… I bet it would be more difficult to try and change your body without referencing someone or something else at the higher tiers…
Whoops, better not get distracted. I need to concentrate on Mary's face to try and learn this spell.
With the image of Mary's face in my mind, I tried to let my mana flow towards my head to envelope both inside and outside it.
The moment I did so…
[Skin Mimicry]
I felt the surface of my face move, as though someone was pushing and pinching my skin.
Mary clapped her hands together, "As expected of the Young Mistress, you managed to grasp the magic so easily on your first try. Well done, indeed."
Delmare gasped, "Wow!! You managed to do it Aster! I can't even get it even after trying for several days!"
Mary then handed me a mirror to show that I had indeed transformed my face to match hers.
However, the moment I saw that, my concentration slipped and my face quickly changed itself back to my original look.
Ah… If I recall, this spell required you to maintain your concentration to keep the form that you have transformed into. The moment you stopped concentrating, the spell would break apart and stop working.
The Somatomancy spells that would work without needing to be channelled are only available at higher tiers of the magic.
Mary turned to Delmare who seemed to be looking down at her tail, "No need to worry, Miss Delmare, Young Mistress is a special case. Normally others would take months to even grasp this concept. But since Young Mistress has been practising magic since a very young age, she is able to learn magic and understand it much more easily as compared to others. I will make sure that by the time we reach back home, you would at least be able to change your tail into legs."
The Siren seemed reassured by Mary's words and continued her attempt in manipulating her mana.
"As for Young Mistress, congratulations on managing to learn Somatomancy. You just need to continue practising it until you become more proficient in it should you wish to master it."
Ehehehe~ Let's see my stats~
[Name: Aster Nilm
Title: Young Mistress of Nilm Family, Dragonslayer, Most Adored Young Mistress, Lover of Sweets, Lisa's Soulmate
Race: Meslatar
Gender: Futanari
Stats:
452 Strength
437 Dexterity
451 Endurance
482 Magic
Skills:
Hunting (Tier 2), Cooking (Tier 2), Alchemy (Tier 1), Navigation (Tier 1), Sailing (Tier 1), Martial Skill-(Dagger Proficiency (Tier 2), Unarmed Proficiency (Tier 2), Bow Proficiency (Tier 2), Sword Proficiency (Tier 2), Polearm Proficiency (Tier 1), Axe Proficiency (Tier 1))
Magic Skills:
Mana Management (Tier 2), Umbramancy (Tier 2), Electromancy (Tier 2), Lumenmancy (Tier 2), Pyromancy (Tier 2), Hydromancy (Tier 1), Aeromancy (Tier 1), Geomancy (Tier 1), Iatromancy (Tier 1), Somatomancy (Tier 1)
Unique Skill:
Mind Shield]
Yep, there it is~ Somatomancy tier one get!
I'm hoping I can get Hydromancy, Aeromancy and Geomancy to tier two before the year ends at least, though it's no big deal even if I wasn't able to since I'm in no rush to do so anyway.
Besides, that's what school is for, right?
I turned to the Trasif maid, "So all I have to do is just keep casting this magic to improve it?"
Mary nodded at me, "If Young Mistress is interested in mastering it, you could continuously cast it whenever you are able to, try and see how long you can hold on to the transformation before it breaks. This would also help you with maintaining your concentration as well. For some Somatomancers, they have trained themselves to be able to hold that concentration for an entire day."
I blinked at the Trasif maid, "An entire day? How?"
"You would need to split a part of your mind to concentrate on the spell. It's actually a skill by itself where magicians train themselves to be capable of parallel thought, it's how some of them learn how to multicast using this skill too. Although I have to also inform Mistress that most magicians who develop this skill also end up developing alternate personalities and most of them are seen as eccentric because of the way their minds work after that."
"Eh? Then… Then shouldn't I avoid learning this?"
"On the contrary, Young Mistress, I believe you would be able to handle the mental strain and not be affected by it."
I'm not sure whether her confidence in me was based on something concrete or it was just because of pure belief on her part.
For me, I also believe that I should not be affected by it thanks to my [Machine Learning] and [That's Mental] boon, although I have yet to receive the latter for now but that's just a matter of time.
Following Mary's instruction, I casted the magic again and transformed my face to match hers. The ripple I felt on my face told me that the magic did take effect but I still used the mirror that Mary had given me beforehand to make sure.
Sure enough, my face had turned into Mary's and I could see no imperfections in the reflection which meant the magic was executed perfectly.
Unnn… Maintaining this is going to take quite a bit of concentration…
Right then, Lisa returned from her short walk around the ship, only to stop dead in her tracks when she saw me.
Whatever she had planned to say when she came back was thrown out the window as she immediately rushed up to me excitedly.
"Aster!! Are you interested in doing selfcest play with me?!"
…
What the heck Lisa?