Chapter 207

"So," I said to the twins. "The real question is what do you think we need the most?"

"What do you mean?" Morrigan asked.

"This book gives me the building blocks I need to create whatever basic spells I need as long as I can power them at the same time as [Light Scribing], but there's too much here for me to try and invent spells on the fly. So instead I figure we identify where we're lacking the most and use this to fill in the gaps."

Torien tapped on her chin in thought. "Normally, ritual magic is mainly used for utility things. Most spells are for simple stuff like finding water and starting campfires. Since you can use ritual magic without any additional tools by using light magic instead, you can speed that process up significantly. I think you may end up being forced into using this magic creatively, it's a poor substitute for something as simple as throwing fireballs."

"I think I disagree. Well... mostly," Morrigan said. "If you think about it, ritual magic is similar to wild casting. Like Theo taught us on our trip, there are a lot of magic spells that can change in power drastically simply by swapping out the kind of element they draw their power from. The benefit of the approach Lilith is taking to ritual magic is that she's essentially treating ritual magic the same as wild casting."

Morrigan leaned forward and pointed at one of the partial circles in the book. "This is a component that gathers fire. If you swapped this part out for a component that gathers water, you would get a similar but different effect. Even if all you wanted to do was cast a fireball, casting it this way would allow you to make fast changes on the fly."

"That wasn't my point though," Torien replied. "Most ritual spells do things like 'gather water' or 'gather fire' I doubt any of these rituals are as direct as 'shoot fireball' even if you want to shoot fireballs in this way. I think you'll have to be creative to even do something like that."

"Mmm, I see what you mean," I said. Flipping through the book there were a lot of components for different things but the circles weren't categorized in the book much at all. "I think the first step to figuring out how much we can do with this book is sorting things into different groups and then coming up with some sort of framework for inventing new magic from there. How creative we have to be to get the effects we want will become evident from what kinds of pieces we have to go on."

I handed the book to Morrigan and got up from the bed. "Let me go grab Mimi real quick, I want to grab some stuff from my chest."

When I stepped out of the room Silva was waiting near the door for me. She looked a bit embarrassed, not very much like her usual self. "Hey, Lilith... Did Torien tell you why she's been avoiding me?"

I took a few steps away from the door and leaned on the balcony railing. "No. She's been quiet about it. Either she doesn't fully know what she's mad about or it's not something she wants to talk with me about. Also, it's hard to tell how much of it is you and how much of it is her, the two of them aren't completely back to normal after being freed from slavery. The steps I wanted for them to take to help them accept that they're free has been delayed."

"What did you have in mind?" Silva asked.

I sighed. "Well, clothes shopping to start. Even if we don't completely replace their servant uniforms, they need to be adjusted to not look as weird without a collar being visible. I was also hoping to push them into keeping and spending a little bit of money on their own but I'm not sure if they would accept that yet."

"Right..." Silva looked away and scratched the back of her head.

"I don't think you should push too hard. I'm not telling you to avoid her too but maybe try letting her come to you first. I think she needs a bit of time to process things, it's been a crazy couple of days for all of us."

"Yeah," Silva grunted out.

My eyes trailed down at her new glossy black fur. "Why black? Your fur that is."

She looked down at her black rabbit feet. "I'm tired of the blood staining my fur..." For a brief moment, a wash of complicated and conflicting emotions pushed through the bond and I frowned even as she clamped down on the bond to hide them from me.

I sighed again. "I'm sorry. There's a lot we probably should talk about ourselves. I'm not sure if you can tell through the bond yet but I don't think our relationship is completely okay either. I still feel a bit pissed off about how much you kept from me, about yourself and the Order of Lilith. I can understand why you did but it still upsets me."

Silva's brow furrowed. "Then why did you accept me into your family?"

I scratched my horn and frowned. "Because even though I was unhappy about it, you're still my friend and I want to be able to trust you again. You've done a lot for me in the short time we've known each other so it sucks that I feel this way."

"Would it help if I promised not to lie to you anymore?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No. Not yet. I'm sure you'll win my trust back, but it's going to take a little time first."

"...Okay," Silva replied.

"I will try to help you with Torien though. I hate seeing her mad at you when you normally get along so well. She really needs a friend that isn't me or her sister and I think you've been good for her so far."

Silva gave me a sad smile. "Thanks, Lilith."

I nodded and stopped leaning on the railing. "I need to go grab Mimi though. The three of us are working on some new magic."

"Even Torien?"

I chuckled. "Yeah, surprisingly. She was more interested than I thought she'd be."

Mimi was idly chatting with Cecilia, Sibyl, and Raya but turned to me the second I came in range of her bond.

"Hey, Mimi. Do you mind coming upstairs with me for a little while?"

"Sure!" Mimi jumped up and hugged herself around my neck. "Carry me up!"

I laughed and wrapped my arms around her. "Woah, where'd this come from?"

"It's fun!" she said matter-of-factly.

Because of her body, she was a lot heavier than she looked but luckily I also had plenty of strength to make up for it. Raya was laughing at Mimi's antics as I walked through the room with the Mimic girl hugging herself against me. I felt a strong sense of love and affection coming from Mimi right now, it seemed she really enjoyed being hugged and doted on. I probably didn't do it enough. I adjusted Mimi's weight as I went up the stairs but didn't dream of putting her down yet. She was more happy that I was indulging in her silliness than actually being carried.

I leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the lips which caused her to giggle.

Awkwardly I reached out and opened the door before bringing her into the room. The twins looked just as amused as everyone else had been by the time I sat down with Mimi still in my lap. "Enjoy the trip, Mimi?"

She was grinning ear to ear. "Yep! Now what do you need?"

"I need my trunk. I have some chalk and chalkboards in there, plus that magic book."

"No problem!"

Rather than spawn the entire chest Mimi materialized the chalkboards and the container of colored chalk into one pile and the book in her hand. "Is this the one?" she asked.

I took it from her and looked it over. It's been a long time since I looked at this. "Yup! The Book of Recollections. We found it in the dungeon, you said that I'll be able to remember anything I write in here as long as I hold it open."

"You sure, Lilith?" Morrigan asked. "I remember that you said it was soulbound. I can see the value for what we're doing but it's probably worth a decent amount of gold too."

"I'm sure," I said. "I've actually been saving it this whole time for this. The ability to remember everything I've written in the book combined with the ability to cast rituals using [Light Scribing] seems like a powerful combination. That's worth way more than I would get for this. I do need to make sure it works the way I'm hoping it does though."

"What do you mean?" Mimi asked.

"When you identified it for me you said that 'anything written in it' can be perfectly remembered. I don't know if drawings count or not."

"And there's only one way to tell," Morrigan said with a sigh.

I laughed. "Yeah. I think this book would be helpful regardless but I'll still be a bit sad if it doesn't work for what I'm trying to do." I rested my hand on the front cover of the book. "Here goes." I pushed my mana into it and filled it up. The moment the book was flush with magic I felt a connection snap in place a little like how the bond feels when that connects for the first time.

I opened the cover to the first page and looked at the off-white color there. "Okay, what should I try it with?"

Torien chuckled. "You actually attuned to it without having a plan for what you're going to test it with?"

I shoved her a little bit while laughing. "Quiet you."

"How about this!" Morrigan said while pushing the ritual book over to me.

Torien peeked over my shoulder and gasped. "They have a ritual for that?"

I looked down at the ritual she was indicating. It was one of the complex ones near the back of the book, made from some of the more intricate circle components. It would be a challenge to copy in but if it worked then it would be amazing. "Detect hostile creatures," I said out loud.

Morrigan nodded. "The book says that the most effective way to use this one is to come with it pre-prepared on wood tablets or slips of paper. Normally that's pretty expensive but if you can replicate it using your light scribing magic, it would be great for all kinds of things."

I nodded. "Okay, I'm going to need to practice on one of the chalkboards first though." Unfortunately, we only had one copy of the book so the twins spent time teaching Mimi how to read using the other book we had gotten from Sorsette while I hogged this one. It was pretty cute seeing the two of them help Mimi. Mimi seemed to have a photographic memory, or something close to it, but the moment she had to assign sounds to different groups of letters she started to struggle a lot. At one point Morrigan realized that Mimi had remembered an entire word instead of putting the letters together herself so Morrigan and Torien had to rethink their strategy. Interestingly, it seemed that the reading part was going to be a lot harder than the writing part for Mimi.

After a while, I had my first chalk copy of the intricate ritual circle. As in the book, it had a slash down the middle to stop it from accidentally activating. "Okay, I'm ready to try and cast it."

Torien looked back and forth from the book to the chalkboard. "What does that prove?" she asked.

I closed the ritual book. "If I can cast it while looking at my copy then I should have made a good enough copy to reference. If it doesn't work I messed up the copy without realizing it."

Taking a deep breath I activated [Light Scribing]. Lines of magic burned through the air above my outstretched hand as the spell constructed the ritual magic above my hand. After a moment the spell had finished forming and I held it there unactivated.

Morrigan squinted at it before looking back at the book and comparing the two. "It looks pretty close to me, I don't see anything obviously different, but I honestly don't know enough about ritual magic to know if you messed something up somewhere."

"Okay, I'm gonna try it," I said. I activated the spell and the glowing magic circle in my hand disappeared. I felt mana pulse around me in a roughly five yard sphere through the building and in every direction. I frowned at the result.

Torien looked at me seriously. "Is someone nearby hostile?"

I chuckled. "The problem is, I can't tell if it worked without knowing for sure if something hostile is nearby... I didn't get any readings from this at all."

The four of us collectively facepalmed.