I will strive beyond this cursed bloodline!

It felt…weird.

 

Elizabeth wasn’t quite sure what it was, but something was…Off.

 

Was it because she had been coming only to the half of the blonde asshole? She didn’t think it would be that, but her [Soulscape] somehow felt…Closer to her. She was feeling the connection to the shadows more strongly than before. It was almost as if the shadow energy was permeating more strongly into her [Soul].

 

She was sorely tempted to try and use her [Identify] backed up by her [Idea] to try and search for the reason behind this weird feeling she was having. But a quick look into her mana still hovering just above the 1% of mana stopped her.

 

After her father left her with the weird sports drink to keep drinking, she just lay on her bed once again while drinking it. She decided to go and relax on her soulscape while asking Alexa a few questions on the magic side.

 

But soon enough after coming here, she got this weird feeling, her only plan was to see if she could relax in the meadow of the little girl… But now she was curious.

 

Her father had said to not use her [Skills] since that could put a strain on her [Soul]. But her connection with the shadows was still there in the background. If anything the weird connection to the other skills felt... Strained.

 

She couldn’t even use them to [Identify] her hands, and she tried it…With father present ready to shove more of the weird sport’s drink into her mouth if needed.

 

So instead she was here, and she felt at peace. Almost as if the shadows were embracing her, as such she didn’t notice when she arrived at the library.

 

Sure enough, the little girl was running from here and there jumping all over the place, so while trying her hardest to not stare too much into the weird shadow energy leaking all over the place she called for the attention of the little girl.

 

“Hello…?” Said the blonde girl, getting the response in the form of a hugging tackle from the little girl. As always this little girl was overactive.

Before getting to what she was coming here she…Took a sip from her sports drink?

 

Wait.

 

“How did I bring this here?… Granted my clothes come with me but weren’t they a physical manifestation of the image I have of myself?”

 

Thought the blonde girl while taking another sip from the drink.

 

And sure enough, her mana kept going up. The only weird thing was that the weird connection she felt with the shadow energy in the atmosphere was getting weaker.

 

Perhaps she was imagining things after all.

 

If anything her stress meter stopped going down after she started taking sips of the drink inside her soulscape. What was that about?

 

The connection to the shadows stopped getting stronger, her stress meter stopped going down. But her mana started going up and her connection to her other skills started returning slowly.

 

“Yeah…I need to work on some spells, so I will just use one of the terminals if you don’t mind.” Said the blonde girl while walking towards one of the stations in the library.

 

She took an obvious route to where she had felt one of the shadow rifts that was leaking shadow energy. Ignoring the weird wince the little girl did.

 

“Oh sorry about the mess, we had a leak.” Said the little girl while running towards one of the buttons in a wall and started spamming said button.

 

She was quite aggressive with the poor button.

 

“The what?” Asked the blonde girl while standing on top of where she had felt the rift before. Yep, sure enough, her stress meter started going down once again. And she felt the connection with the shadows getting stronger once again too.

 

“Oh…Nothing, don’t mind me!” Said cutely the little girl, right...She was going to ignore that.

 

Could…Could the little girl perceive these cracks that she could see when she focused her shadow energy in her eyes? Either way, she just took another sip from her drink and kept walking towards the station. She would go outside her [Soulscape] where she arrived the first time and see if she could feel the connection stronger there.

 

If it helped her stress meter go down it would be a nice trade-off. For now, she would focus on spells!

 

She needed more, and while she hadn’t studied that much extra after the first time, she had gotten inspiration nonetheless.

 

“Say Alexa…Any way to get schematics for higher tier stuff?” Asked the blonde girl while navigating the repertoire of pre-made spells she had. A few healing spells here and there got her attention. But if she was going to work with Rossie…Yeah, no way those would be useful with a dedicated healer on site.

 

“Hmm….I mean…You got past the first threshold…So it should be fine…?” Said the little girl while dropping a rag that was somehow dripping something, but she couldn’t quite focus on what it was…

 

It was like something was forcing her to not think about what it was, a few sips later she found herself seeing how it was normal…water? It was water?

 

Sure enough, there were a few puddles here and there, right…Alexa said there was a leak before…

 

Most of those puddles were somehow a few centimeters away from where she had felt the shadow energy leaking in though. Weird.

 

Either way, the little girl gave the bucket and the rag to one of the mechanical insects and came towards the station where she was.

 

“How did brother say it was…” Mumbled the little girl while trying to work in her station, for her part the blonde girl was under the station trying to not look weird while one of her feet tried to stand in one of the smaller cracks where she could feel shadow energy leaking.

 

“TEI!” Said cutely the little girl while grabbing one of the nearby mechanical ants and using it as a bat to hit the PC…

 

“Amm…I think we should call your brother…” Said the blonde girl while looking warily at the PC, after freezing and rebooting she was wondering if she would need another station to work in. This was the only one with a crack under it so she didn’t want to leave it.

 

“No, it's okay. Brother said that if I was having trouble to do this to reset it, he said that it was a sure and tested method from germania.” Came the answer of the little girl who was puffing her chest with pride.

 

She was about to say that her brother had lied, but after resetting the pc was working as if nothing. And sure enough, she now could see more categories…

 

“Motherf…” Mumbled the Elizabeth while the little girl smiled and returned to direct the mechanical insects in their holy crusade to deal with the puddles.

 

Not all of them had the smell of shadow essence though…

 

“I Wonder if Alexa would look at me weirdly if I ask for one of the buckets with essence…” Thought the blonde girl while scrolling through the new catalog.

 

She could see a few interesting spells too.

 

“Hey Alexa, this summoning spell…I thought they taught it in second grade only, why is it here?” Asked the blonde girl while pointing at the spell in question. There were even a few warnings about using it.

 

“Oh yeah…Why is it there?” Asked back the little girl, after which, she frowned and started focusing really hard on something for half a minute only to open her eyes and point directly behind her.

 

“YOU CHEATED!” Screamed the little girl at something behind her.

 

“YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO COME FROM THIS SIDE!” And continued arguing with something behind her.

 

“What?” Was all the blonde girl could say.

 

“Huh? Eli-Eli called you? That shouldn’t…” Started mumbling the little girl while writing something quite furiously on her tablet and then threw said tablet into the face of a poor mechanical spider that was nearby.

 

“Eli-Eli…Did you sign a contract with a demon?” Asked suddenly the little girl.

 

Was this a trend? Why has everyone asked that nowadays?

 

“Of course not, mama was quite adamant that I didn’t try that without her around.” Answered the blonde girl wondering what the little girl was going on about.

 

“Then why is that snake sticking on your shadow?” Asked the little girl pointing at her feet.

 

Elizabeth looked down and sure enough, she could see a couple of eyes looking back at her.

 

“Nyx?” Asked the blonde girl and then the little dragon came out from her shadow.

 

Would you look at that…

 

“This? He came from a subset skill I got after tweaking around and giving form to one of my shadows…” Said the blonde girl, was this thing supposed to come from a summoning spell?

 

Didn’t the skill say that the [Minions] weren’t alive?

 

“Aren’t summons alive? My skill said it wasn’t alive.” Asked the blonde girl. For her part, the little girl kept glaring at the poor dragon while answering

 

“The summons are alive…Only by the measure that they take some of the [Mana] of the caster to be alive while summoned. If you make a contract with a [Dweller] then that changes things. They are [Things] that live outside our plane. And usually most refer to them as [Demons] or [Gods].“

 

That was interesting, so one could summon things alive or summon things that were only alive in the broad sense of the word.

 

“That thing was supposed to come from the summoning spell!” She said while pointing at poor Nyx.

 

“But I got him anyway so no problem…?” Elizabeth tried to placate the little girl.

 

For his part, Nyx was just flying around the library being smug about something.

 

“I mean…yeah…But now god knows what [Restraints] [The World] stuck into him! WE HAD THIS WHOLE PLAN” Said the little girl while grabbing a pillow from god knows where and started screaming into it.

 

After which she ran away into a metallic door that Elizabeth was quite sure wasn’t there before, and since said door disappeared after she stopped looking at it. She wasn’t sure where or how that little girl had disappeared.

 

“You aren’t going to give me trouble are you Nyx?” Asked the blonde girl towards her shadowy dragon.

 

The little dragon for his part just looked at her as if she was asking something incredibly stupid. And in a way he was right.

 

“Right…Dragon’s made of shadow energy can’t talk…” Said the blonde girl while returning to work at the station.

 

She had plenty of space left!

 

Like 18 spots left for spell nodes and 10 spots for magical circles.

 

The question was… Did she want to disguise her other skills or not… The world thought she was a space-attributed magic girl disguising herself as an Elementalist. So perhaps she could sneak by a few space-related spells?

 

And use them as a ‘Triumph card’ for emergencies…

 

She didn’t think they would be that powerful… Well…Her spell-casting power should be feeding into her intelligence and wisdom stats if the status her mother had were something to go by.

 

So perhaps since she had quite a bump into them since last time they would be more powerful?

 

For now, she would add those and work into what else would be useful. She was getting quite giddy at the idea of all the nice things she would be able to add now that her catalog of spells was bigger.

 

She just needed to make sure to stay away from the summoning category. If Alexa was intending to direct her first summon toward Nyx…Perhaps there was something she didn’t want her to summon. So it was better to leave that alone for now.

 

Also, she would have a harder time explaining how she was doing something that they hadn’t taught them yet…

 

If for some reason Akira found out about that…She could feel the headache already. No.

 

She was getting enough attention on the powered side as it is. She would wait till the ‘Genius’ on the magical side to do their summoning and then summon with the lesser students.

 

Wonder what Rossie would summon… Probably a fairy…. The blue-haired smart-ass was going to end with a water sprite or a Nymp…Perhaps an undine?

 

Not that she would be too interested in that, her only concern was him not being a creep with the spirit. She had heard Mother rant about high-ranking mages being creeps when they managed to summon high-grade spirits… Especially since the branding of the summoning circle included that obedience command.

 

She got shivers from thinking about that.

 

So she got into working her new spell list to distract herself from that. In the end…The little girl didn’t return. So Elizabeth spent the rest of her time sipping from her sports drinks to restore her mana and a few hours floating by in her soulscape.

 

She found that quite funny, since she turned herself into an asteroid orbiting her soulscape. Just hugging Nyx while being soothed by the shadow energy permeating her [Soul]. She could feel how the shadow energy was permeating her soulscape. Looking for ways to get inside, that was a somewhat funny sight since her soulscape only allowed it in a few spaces. Most were on the powered side managed by Alexanders.

 

But she was wondering if the shadow energy wanted to permeate her magical side for her [Origin]?

 

She would add a few shadow spells before leaving completely. But for now, she would sleep. This was a really comfy place with the soothing energy from the shadows embracing her. And Nyx…Nyx was quite a nice hugging pillow…She….would….replace….Rossie…with…him….Was….Nyx…. a…. Him?