A Girl with a Screw Lose in the Making

Returning back to the present, Serafall accompanied Ophis and Claire to watch the bloodless war between Orario and Rakia. And although the stall keepers within the free market got together and decided to cover for the little girls, there were still a few Adventurers and other people who had witnessed Ophis' actions, thus a legend after a strange rumor was born.

Thanks to the stall keepers, however, no one could actually confirm this rumor and those few who saw it couldn't believe it themselves.

After losing interest in it, Serafall decided to take Ophis and Claire back to the mansion and to make sure that Ophis wouldn't slip out from under her radar, to avoid another 'tragedy'.

On the way back, she could hear some Adventurers talking about the strangeness between the Loki and Freya Familias, as both of them hardly ever went out anymore from their respective homes and they didn't seem to be taking any missions from the Guild.

Although the Freya Familia already did this, it was even rarer to see a Freya Familia member on the streets or in the Dungeon these days.

These strange actions of the top two Familias worried a lot of people as they thought that they would be in a war soon, even if the Guild reassured them that it was highly unlikely. It didn't help that intense training could be heard from their respective training grounds that would go on for days, which was also highly unlikely.

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A month has already passed since Kisuke had saved Line within the Knossos and currently, Line was buried within a mountain of books, trying to understand each and every one of them. Thanks to the magic glasses that Kisuke had created, it would take Line only a few minutes to go through a book and memorize it.

However, understanding its contents was another story, as it still depended on the reader's comprehension.

The topic within these books mainly focused on Magic, Ki, Anatomy, Biology, basic subjects on the Soul, and basic Sciences and Maths. Although she couldn't understand most of it, the topics were of her interests and that resulted in her going through more than a thousand books multiple times in an attempt to commit it to her subconscious so that she could easily pull out information from it whenever needed.

Of course, this wouldn't be possible with just Kisuke's magical glasses which could let college students go through their entire course materials in just a day. It was also thanks to his 'candies' which replenished her energy and refreshed her mind that it was possible for her to go through the whole day with just an hour of sleep.

Naturally, reading books, studying and practicing magic wasn't the entirety of Line's activities as she was also there to clean up Kisuke's messes and to remind him of the time while also helping him with some random clerical jobs that Kisuke couldn't be bothered to do.

But slowly, due to both of them having no downtime, Kisuke's lousy habit of forgetting his surroundings started to rub off on Line, and the latter didn't even notice it as she really enjoyed and was addicted to learning nonstop with a clear head thanks to the variety of knowledge not known to this world, especially Anatomy and Biology. Line was actually a little afraid of how the authors of these books were able to get such detailed information about the body and other living beings.

With an alarm going off, Line immediately got off her chair, 'It's time to cook lunch.'

After half an hour, Line had finished cooking and took it straight towards Kisuke's lab. Knocking on the door, Line said, "Lunch is ready!"

From the inside, Kisuke's voice could be heard, "Oh. So it's that time of the day. Come in~."

"Excuse me.", she said and after opening the door, the first thing that met Line's sight was a mountain of crumpled and torn-up papers strung across the large room. Line came into this room multiple times a day, but it was always like this whenever she came in.

After placing the food beside Kisuke, who was drawing some sort of diagram, Line started cleaning up.

Setting aside what he was doing right now, Kisuke opened the cover of his food and saw a simple but warm and filling lunch. Even though he didn't need it, Kisuke very much appreciated Line's efforts, as this was one way to keep his mind connected to reality and to not lose himself in his search for the answers he sought, "Thanks as always~."

"Please stop saying that. It's me who should be thankful.", replied Line as she carefully picked up fully crumpled or torn apart papers while not touching papers that were only slightly damaged, "You saved me that day so this is the least I can do... Uhm... Why do we keep repeating this conversation?"

After swallowing a mouthful of food, Kisuke replied, "You're the one who keeps repeating it. I'm just thanking you for the food and work you're doing, which is something everyone should do, regardless of whether or not you are doing it for free or for something else. You're neither my slave nor my servant."

"Ugh...", Line froze for a moment, "But I'm your student."

"That's different."

"Uhmm... Should I call you Teacher or Master?"

"...Please don't."

By the time Kisuke finished eating, Line was also done cleaning up, "I'll also leave the documents here to you."

"Sort it out into three separate parts and encode it in the terminal, right?" Line then took a peek at the documents she had to work on and noticed a few things, "But I still don't know how to put these drawings in."

"Just focus on the data for now. I'll teach you how to do it later.", answered Kisuke before he walked towards the center of the room, where a large white tank stood, and started manipulating the terminal on it.

The first time Line saw these pieces of equipment, she was in awe and thought that she was in an entirely different world. But she soon got used to it and learned how to use the so-called Personal Computer or Workstation with the help of Kisuke, though she could only do very limited things.

Within the room, all sorts of unknown machines were producing various lights aside from the large tank. Line wanted to ask what those things did, but decided against it. And even after studying all the things from the books, she could only understand a small part of the documents she worked on and it was about Anatomy.

After doing her work, Line cleaned up the table before picking up the utensils that Kisuke used before leaving through the door, "Kisuke-san! I'll be leaving."

"You'll be practicing magic after this, isn't it?"

"Yes. I'll be practicing barrier-type magic for today.", replied Line.

"I'll have some free time later so I'll help you out."

Line's eyes widened in excitement, "Really!? Thank you very much! I'll look forward to it!"

In response, Kisuke just waved his hand.

After thanking him again, Line completely left the room with light steps. She was happy because every time Kisuke helped her out, her progress would shoot forward. She wanted him to teach her more so that she could be more useful to him, but Line was already satisfied with Kisuke's short and occasional tutoring.

Kisuke, on the other hand, could spare more time to teach Line magic, but he thought that it'd be better for someone like her to learn on her own first and just guide her enough so that she wouldn't fall into bad habits of magic control that could hinder her progress.

And after a few sessions, Kisuke knew that his decision was correct as Line would always think on her own and innovate depending on her observations. In fact, her progress was far beyond Kisuke's expectations, especially on the topic of healing magic.

Of course, it wasn't just about Line's talent, but also Kisuke's stance of leaving her to her own devices that most teachers wouldn't even consider, as it might accidentally kill their students.

Since Kisuke was letting her learn magic on her own, Line would also experiment with it and most of the time, the result was her magic running amok and exploding, injuring herself. Despite knowing the result would end up like that, Kisuke didn't give her a single warning.

As Kisuke wouldn't even heal her, Line had to do it herself which resulted in her acquiring more proficiency. And sometimes, if she was feeling adventurous, she would experiment with her healing magic, resulting in more accidents. But thanks to those experiences, Line could learn a lot more rather than just following what the book said.

If Serafall could see this, she'd immediately stop this as Line was inheriting the worst habits of a magic-user. Instead of a magic-user, this was the habit of a researcher, which was incredibly dangerous if applied to magic learning.

Hence, their daily lives within this isolated space continued in peace.