Chapter 21

Bella tapped on the cover of my ritual magic book. “By the way, have you had any luck actually understanding this? I’ve been working through my nature magic book but a lot of it is going over my head.”

“Ehh, yes and no. For the most part I was just reading through it without trying anything and this book is mostly just introductory ritual magic. None of it is really theory or anything. Even some of the basics for each of the magic types are pretty cool though. A basic fire ritual creates fire, no need to rub wood together. Another creates drinkable water. Considering I can potentially use all of these, it’ll make camping and every day life easier.”

“Sounds pretty good. My book has a lot about being one with nature and getting into the right mindset before even casting anything. It’s a little dry but it’s probably good foundation for when I actually get to the spell parts. I know how to read but this is my first opportunity to really study anything without being told to.”

“Do you think it would be a problem to do some magic in the inn?”

“Well, it probably wouldn't be an issue as long as you don’t break anything. I would suggest not lighting the furniture on fire,” she said with a laugh.

I grabbed a cup from the table and set it next to the chalkboard. I then copied the water rune onto it using the magic chalk. I found that drawing the circle and water sigils inside came easily to me, as if I had almost perfect control over the marks I was placing. I get the feeling I did have a background in art in my past life and I’m retrieving some sort of muscle memory.

Once I felt satisfied with my create water magic circle, I tilted it over the cup and was able to pour magic from my body into the rune. The feeling was odd, like stretching a muscle I never knew I had but after gaining illusion and light magic I had the instinct I needed to control some of the magic inside of me. My magic infused the rune and it softly began to glow a pale blue light as it activated. First a trickle then a spout of water poured out of the magic circle as if it was attached to a garden hose. With a little bit of flexing of my new magic muscles, I was able to restrict the flow of water to a dribble or let it pour out of the circle full blast. Needless to say I had made a bit of a mess. I used a towel from the other room to sop up the floor. Once I had released the magic the lines of the chalk burned away with the last of the water.

[Ritual Magic Lv.1 Unlocked - For successfully creating, activating, and maintaining a ritual magic circle.]

Neat, I got the skill for it too.

[Ritual Magic - Common Skill]The Ritual Magic Skill governs the ability to memorize, activate, modulate, transcribe, understand, deconstruct and create new Magic Circles. Higher ranks improves the ease of these tasks and improves instincts related to this skill.

This skill seems pretty useful. It seems that just knowing about magic circles isn’t enough to level the skill, I actually have to put it in practice to improve the skill. Had I not gone through the trouble of translating everything I may have never gotten Sightspeak though, which will be a godsend later so it’s not like it was wasted time or anything.

After that small success I decided to change gears a little and moved on to practicing light magic for a bit. Even with only one level in light magic it wasn’t very difficult to create a glowing ball above my hand. I knew what I was doing right now wasn’t the same thing as a spell, which was more or less like a magic pattern that unwound into an effect. I could tell because I was able to cast Zone of Silence which had several pieces. It took in a fixed amount of mana, had one clear effect, it designated an area of effect, then it cast for a fixed amount of time. It was like using a pattern for dominoes then flicking the first one. It knocked down each one in sequence and the paths branched off to take care of their own piece of the design.

What I was doing right now was different though. Rather than using something as structured as a spell, I was just pushing mana into a ball above my hand. It was so cool that I could just DO this now, I didn’t have to do something crazy to unlock the secrets of magic, I just HAD it now. Though in fairness I kind of stole this ability from Bitch so maybe talking about how easy it is for me may not be very fair.

I moved the ball of magic around the room, it was a bit of a strain to push the mana around with the new magic muscles I suddenly had but I was doing it. After I got a little tired of that I started seeing how I could deform the ball. I squished it flat, pulled it into a long string, made it bigger but less dense, squeezed it all into a small pinprick of light that hurt my eyes and just kept playing with it. I noticed I could fiddle with some of the properties, but it was like trying to do fine work with mittens on. I could tell what I wanted to do but I couldn’t grab where I wanted and I kept knocking stuff over. At one point I figured out how to change the color of the light and I was playing with that so much that Bella even asked me to quit. Apparently my little light show was making it hard for her to read haha.

I had been making the magic do figure eights around the room with sparkly after image trails for about ten minutes straight when I felt that ringing in the back of my head. I opened the notification and saw something super cool.

[Light Magic has increased from level 1 to level 2][Light Manipulation Lv. 1 unlocked - Practiced and experimented extensively with manipulating light mana]

[Light Manipulation - Rare Skill]The Light Manipulation Skill governs the ability to manipulate all aspects of light and light affinity mana. Higher Ranks improves the ease and ability to manipulate light on both larger and smaller scales effectively. It also improves instincts while manipulating light and gives a greater depth of understanding on how to manipulate it.

“Ooo ooo Bella! I got a cool new skill. It’s called Light Manipulation, it makes it easier for me to play with lights.”

“Light manipulation huh? Well it makes sense a skill like that would exist, both fire and water magic have similar skills but I’ve never really heard much about people using light manipulation before. I think most people only use a few premade light spells at most and don’t bother fiddling with it too much. Even mages that can use light magic probably wouldn’t spend much time practicing it since there aren’t many offensive uses with it. I don’t really know what good it would do other than party tricks."

“Nah, light can do a lot. You can blind people, hide people, spot people, if light manipulation is rare around here then I’m pretty sure nobody has scratched the surface of what it’s capable of.”

“If you say so…” She looked unsure but I’m pretty sure I knew what I was talking about here. Lasers were the coolest and I’m not even talking about the hot ones. You can do a lot with lasers.

At level one though I will just have to settle for party tricks, right now I can’t focus the light enough to get a good laser going. Best I can do is a flashlight, which is pretty useful already to be honest. Not that my darksight benefits from it much. I’ll set this aside for now but I’m sure I’m on to something here.

“Where do spells come from? Are they something that's made or something that’s discovered?”

“I don’t know too much about it but most are created by mages and written into grimoires like this nature one you bought me. You can also learn spells automatically when your magic or related class levels up too but a lot of times the spells you learn that way can still be traced back to a creator. I don’t know why but some people learn magic that way pretty easily and others don’t, it seems random to me. A related mage class like Novice Light Mage might make learning spells on level ups more common and spells you use often can be added to your system magic on a level up as well.”

“So it’s possible I could create my own spells too then? Is there a related skill for that?”

“If you stick with using magic I’m sure you’d end up creating your own spells eventually but don’t be surprised if you find out that you created something that’s been done before. I don’t know if there’s a skill for creating spells but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

I yawn and stretch a bit. I don’t know if there’s a cap on mana use or anything like that, I don’t seem to have an MP bar floating around but using a lot of magic seems mentally exhausting if nothing else.

“Lets go grab some dinner and then get to sleep early. We’re supposed to meet those girls in the adventuring guild tomorrow morning.”

“Sounds good.”

She closed her book with a snap and put it back into her bag. We bought our dinner at the inn again and enjoyed it in the tavern area. We chatted a bit about the town and other stuff but didn’t really talk about anything consequential. Since it was just us I figured I would continue eating the meat but I’ll have to set it aside if anyone else is watching. I hate to waste it and the meat tastes just as good as ever but it’s apparently kind of a big tell that I’m not a normal sheep beastkin.

Once we finished with dinner we went back to our room. I got undressed and planned to sleep nude again. I could see Bella blushing as she placed her clothes in a neat pile, clearly planning on joining me nude in our shared bed. I scooted under the covers and lifted the blanket for her to join me once she got close.

I gave her a hug and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m sorry but after last night I think I don’t want to play around tonight. A lot of things happened today and yesterday night was just… yeah.”

“It’s okay Lilith, I understand.” She leaned forward and pecked a kiss onto my lips before turning her head and blushing. “Is it alright if you hold me tonight at least?”

“Sure, why don’t you turn around.” She turned away from me and I pulled her close. I ran my fingers through the fur on her belly and explored the directions of her fur. After letting me do this for a bit she laced her fingers with mine and leaned into me. It was getting a little bit warm under the blankets but it didn’t bother me, it was rather soothing being able to hold someone close like this.

We hadn’t been together long, she was literally the second person I met since coming to this world but I felt like we had grown so close in this short time. Our relationship was maybe moving a little too fast, in some ways we barely know each other. But holding her close to me like this just reminds me how lucky I am to not have to face this new world on my own. I found someone who I can trust and rely on, someone who relies on me. We can move forward in this world together. A small part of me is scared that something bad will happen between us if we continue at this pace but the larger part of me can’t help but get swept up in the comfort Belladonna gives me.

I kiss the back of Bella’s head and squeeze her just a bit. “Thanks for being here with me Belladonna, I’m so lucky to have you here.”

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I… I love you Lilith.”

I felt the weight of her words and I knew this was another step that may have been too early to take but I didn’t even hesitate.

“I love you too Bella, Goodnight.”