Power of Falna

As Alex and Julis walked back to his room, his eyes went onto his PC desk.

His computer was still here, but it was a mere shadow of its former self…

It had one of the first flat screens and that was still barely 17 inches!

With a tired sigh, he went to his bookshelf and started pulling out relevant books for Julis.

The girl in question was slightly embarrassed for the sole reason that she was in a boy's room!

She thought that it would have been a messy place with clothes all over the floor, but to her small shock, it was not!

While Alex was picking out the books, she was looking around and noticed that he was an actual history nerd. There were several maps on the walls, not of modern times, one of them were of the Roman Empire and the other one was of the Eastern Roman or the Byzantine Empire…

After checking the maps, she looked around for more details on his personality, after all, he pretty much knows quite a lot about her, so it's reasonable for her to want to find out more about him as well.

"So, I got the relevant stuff you would need, which is some cold war stuff, and the fall of the Berlin wall, since it's your 'homeland', you should know this kind of stuff." He explained, as he showed a few books and took a world map with him, he even took some modern stuff.

"We should watch some recent movies as well, just to know certain pop culture references." He started to add stuff from the top of his head.

"You should already know that I am not good at interacting with lots of people at once," Julis said with a bit of annoyance, she started to realise just how much work is left to be done.

"Like it or not, we will be the centre of attention for a couple of weeks," Alex said with a similarly annoyed look.

"Since we are both transfer students AND coming from Europe, specifically to study here." He said with a slight frown, now, if Sirzechs has such a fund group, why…

Yeah, probably because Alex has easily fallen onto his radar…

"For the guys over there, it will be a big thing, and on top of that…"

Julis' shoulders dropped each time she heard him add something, until he stopped mid-sentence and she looked at him.

"Well, because it was a girls only academy, the current school population is about 80% females, and…" Before he could finish the pink head was already next to him as she grabbed his hand.

Her behaviour was quite weird, but not in a bad way, the more hugs he got, the better.

"Since we are supposed to be… a couple, they will want the 'details'." He said with a sigh.

Julis stopped in her tracks and she looked at him.

"D-Don't they have anything else to do? Instead of gossiping?" She asked with a half-angry, half-embarrassed look.

"This is not Asterisk, Julis, but even they gossip in that place. It will be much worse here." He said half-jokingly, which made Julis direct her gaze at him.

"Anyways, we can talk about this tomorrow, for now, we have some things to finish." Since she already took his hand, he started gently pulling her back to the living room.

Once there, he put the books on the table, Julis got comfortable on the couch and grabbed the first one to read. It was in Japanese, and, for some reason, both of them can read it.

Well, it was more surprising that he could since Julis already knew this language beforehand.

He got comfortable next to her, and pulled out his phone.

His eyes widened for a second because his phone was not affected by the 'overwrite'.

Meaning, he still has his S10 Samsung!

Going through the folders until he found the one dedicated to Asterisk and going into the Julis pictures, he selected one and decided to put it as his background picture.

"What do you think?" He showed it to the pink haired princess.

Julis' eyes widened, she instinctively moved her hands to grab his phone, but Alex has years of experience in keeping his phone away from other people's hands.

"Nope, it's my phone, Julis." He smirked at her, and the girl growled with embarrassed blush.

"J-Just change it into something else! W-Why do you need to put my picture as the background!?" Realising that her actions are a burst, she decided to ask instead.

"Julis… why are you embarrassed? You are my girlfriend, so, of course I would have an entire file dedicated to you." Alex said with a smile, as this idea is an incredibly nice one.

Then, he instantly heard the very famous word which most tsun tsun girls love to say.

"B-Baka!" 

She then quickly moved her head away and continued reading the book.

Alex just chuckled and focused back onto his own things, for now, he decided to wait until Julis finished her reading. Then he will pull out his last card and access his falna; it was his only proper power at the moment.

But for now, he decided to check out the curriculum of the school he will be going to…

~~~~~~Couple Hours Later~~~~~~

"Done!" Julis closed her book, and Alex lifted his eyes from the Japanese history book he was reading.

The content here is much more detailed than in his country, which is obvious now that he thinks about it.

They only teached the bare bones of distant Asian countries, the same could be said about here as well!

That's why he was so into it! The juicy details and in-depth stuff from the Sengoku Jidai and the stuff which happened next, all of that in detail.

"That's great! Why don't we eat something?" Alex said while getting up from the sofa, he then started to walk towards the kitchen.

He opened the fridge, and started picking out the ingredients.

Julis observed him closely, wondering if he could actually cook?

"Julis… a quick question," Alex asked from the kitchen side.

"...ask." The pink head quickly lowered her head as she pretended that she was reading her book and was not paying attention to him in the kitchen.

"Do you like mild or spicy?" He asked curiously.

"MILD!" the girl practically shouted from her seat.

"Oh, sorry, I have some bad memories from eating spicy curry in Seidoukan!" The Princess quickly explained her reason.

"That's good, I don't stomach spicy stuff too, I believe it's an Eastern European thing, most of the stuff we eat is with potatoes and pork all most every time" he explained to her and Julis slightly got relieved hearing that she was going to be living with someone who has similar tastes in food as her.

"Yes, now that you mention it, it is true." She had a thoughtful look for a second, she remembered all the times she got her tongue and mouth burned when she tried out the new stuff once she started attending Seidoukan.

She was, after all, on the other side of the world, and just like most of the people, she was curious, and the dishes were not properly explained.

So, from stomach problems to burning mouth, her first months over there were not great.

Hearing that her taste buds are similar to his, he continues to do his thing in the kitchen. Seeing that Alex was not paying attention to her, Julis continued to look at him.

The longer she looked at him in the kitchen, the more she believed that he knew what he was doing.

"D-Do you often cook in your home? I mean back in your previous world before this whole thing happened?" Julis asked curiously.

"Not at first, I just got tired of waiting for mom or even dad to cook so I started doing it myself, at first, I just did simple things like frying eggs with sausages," Alex said as he started to spread out the products before pulling out the cutting knife.

"Then I started cooking more difficult dishes, until I reached the point that I started experimenting with food and coming up with something on my own, you can thank one of the animes I've watched for." He lightly chuckled remembering Food Wars.

Her eyes slightly widened for a second, did she just end up with someone who can cook!?

She then noticed him quickly slicing veggies, preparing salads, and the longer he was in the kitchen the more things he started to do!

By this point, she stopped caring if he was going to notice her watching him.

And around thirty minutes later, Julis was already sitting at the dining table, she helped to set up plates. In the end she was slightly embarrassed that the only thing she did was watch.

Alex prepared something healthy-looking, which somewhat impressed the girl for the simple reason that the guys usually love eating junk food, or maybe it's just her thinking about the male population.

"Some salad done with olive oil…" He put a bowl of salads on the table, "and this is the Eastern European variant of a meat soup with small cubes of pork, but mostly vegetables and seasoned spices, the spices are a combo which I discovered some time ago, and it seems it has travelled with me here." He explained to the girl who observed the two things.

"...are you...really just a guy who likes to cook?" she asked with a gulp, what she witnessed reminded her of her family chefs!

"Yes, now let's dig in." He just smiled seeing her reaction, then he motioned for her to start eating.

~~~~~~Later~~~~~~

After a satisfying meal, the both of them returned to the sitting area, Alex pulled out his phone and accessed the Lottery App.

He then pressed on 'Card Deck' and found only a single card remaining. Without wasting much time, he pressed on it.

[Do you wish to summon this card?]

[Yes] [No]

Alex pressed 'Yes' as the screen glowed and a royal purple card manifested above his phone.

This time he was not jumpy anymore. No, he was just slightly on guard.

Julis, instead, looked at this with a curious look. She was sitting close to him, in a way, it's training as well, for her at least, Alex doesn't mind that she is sitting so close to him, no, in fact, he likes it very much.

He inspected the card closer, it was the same size as the other two, he then focused on it the same way he did before, and the card shattered like glass and Alex whole body glowed.

And instantly, foreign information started to invade his mind, he learned of the power of 'Falna', how to grant it, how to upgrade it, and the ins and outs of it.

It's an incredible piece of magic which doesn't require much magic at all, and it's bound to his very blood and intent.

It can be classified as a growth type of magic because... well it's a fantasy-style levelling system.

"Well? What did you get!?" Julis asked very curiously, her face was closer to him, she was seeing if there were any changes to his looks.

"I got a growth type of magic." He said so simply that it took several seconds for her to process that.

Instead of saying something silly like 'magic is not real', or 'prove it!' Or something along those lines instead she asked...

"How does it work?" she asked with an even more curious look.

Instead of answering her question, he decided to show it to her.

"Wait a moment, I need to get something…" Alex left the couch and went to his room.

He pulled out a single sheet of paper from one of his drawers and went back to the living room.

After getting comfortable on the couch, his right-hand's index finger glowed pure white, he then brushed it on the paper.

Letters soon started to appear on it.

[Alexios Komnenos]

[Lv 1]

[STR: I 0]

[VIT: I 0]

[END: I 0]

[AGI: I 0]

[MAG: I 0]

[MAGIC: POWER OF FALNA]

[SKILLS:]

Alex had an indifferent look when he saw this, it was more or less what he knew.

He gave the piece of paper to Julis, who read what was written on the paper, before she could ask him for an explanation though, he started to explain.

The more she heard about this power, the more shocked she was at just how overpowered this ability that Alex got was!