Affinities

"Wow…" Blake muttered after taking a deep breath as he basked in the beauty of the scenery in front of him.

The vibrant colors of the flowers and plants in the garden complemented a smile so sweet that he didn't even know such a picturesque expression could even exist on a person's face, and it was now being displayed in front of him, of course, Blake's heart couldn't help but skip a beat or two before finally returning to normal again after the smile receded.

And along with the return of his mind back into his body, Blake could finally realize that the exquisiteness of the house and the garden was not the only thing that could marvel at.

Looking at the surroundings outside the wooden house and the beautiful garden, Blake could still see the same forest that he had been walking through to reach this place.

At first, he thought that the dark circular portal that he saw earlier was some type of teleportation spell that sent him and Vera somewhere away from the forest, but now that he realized that he was in the exact same place as before, with the difference being the house and the garden appearing in the clearing that was supposed to be empty back in the original forest, he knew that the portal wasn't simply a teleportation spell.

Noticing the look on Blake's face, Vera asked,

"What questions do you have now, genius boy?"

Blake smiled shyly as he realized that his face was probably showing off what he really thought about since he didn't even try to consciously control his expression ever since Vera agreed to his offer, but then he continued asking since he was also curious about it.

He told her about what he thought about the similar surroundings and the dark portal, which made Vera nod her head in approvement as he was able to notice something wasn't as simple as it looked just a couple of seconds after he went through the portal even though he had no prior knowledge about the demonic spells back in his world before.

"You're correct, that portal wasn't really a portal. It functions more like a door to my actual home. If you remember earlier, there was nothing in the clearing, right? Do you wonder why there was suddenly a house and a garden there?"

Blake then nodded his head before Vera continued,

"Because there was actually nothing there, and this place right here exists in an isolated space that is still connected with the real world, hence why the environment here is exactly the same as the outside. My affinity is the space element, and I am able to create things like this using the space runes by creating a rune formation."

Seeing Blake's unchanged expression when she mentioned she had space affinity, Vera was convinced even more that Blake did really come from another world and her heart was assured once more with her decision of taking him in with her.

"And if you want to get out of here, you'll have to know the runes to open up the isolated space from the real world. Don't worry, the runes didn't require you to have the space affinity to use it, as long as you draw the runes correctly, the portal will open for you."

Blake nodded once again before quickly raising his right hand.

"Vera, I have another question!"

"Go ahead." She nodded.

"Can you please explain to me what an affinity is?"

Vera stared blankly at Blake for about a full second before she remembered that Blake wasn't kidding about his question and he genuinely didn't know about it. So she released a small sigh before answering,

"Affinity is something that you get when you are born and it can't be changed no matter what you do. You can strengthen your affinity by evolving or by ingesting natural treasures with that element, but changing an affinity is impossible. With an affinity, you will be able to utilize runes that belong to that particular affinity because if you don't have the affinity for it, you won't be able to manifest a spell of certain elements even if you were able to draw the runes for it. For example, even if you know how to draw a rune to cast a fireball, you won't be able to summon the fireball if you don't have a fire affinity."

"But Vera, you said that your affinity is space, so why were you able to cast the darkness tendrils? Isn't it something that is not related to space?" Blake suddenly asked.

"Of course, those darkness tendrils are not of the space elements, they belong to the darkness elements." She replied.

"So you have two affinities? Space and Darkness?"

"Almost all demons have at least two affinities. One random affinity and one other is definitely the darkness affinity. But because all demons have the darkness affinity, we don't actually count it as an affinity, since everyone was able to use it. The only difference was that one's affinity to the darkness element, the element that was the closest to the nether that fueled our runes, could be higher than the others. With a higher darkness affinity means that you are also more tuned with the nether."

"So that means that we could only cast spells with our affinities in it? Doesn't it limit us a lot?" Blake asked once more.

"Not necessarily, every affinity has its own upside and downsides, and it's also up to the person whether they could maximize their potential. But Blake, that doesn't mean that we couldn't use other elements. There are people who excelled in runes, and those people are called runemasters. And they are able to use spells of different affinities that they don't have."

"How?" Blake asked shortly with curious eyes.

"They could use it by drawing rune formations with the blood of a demon that has said that affinities. So, if you want to create the same rune formation that isolates this house, you can do it by using my blood."

"You know? If those rune masters know that I have the space affinity, they would hunt me down and catch me to draw my blood every single day to supplement their experiments." Vera said as she extended her wrist closer toward Blake.

Blake stared at it for a split second before imagining Vera's wrist was cut and blood gushed out of it every single, making him shake his head vigorously before he clenched his fist and made a mental promise to himself as he didn't want such a thing to ever happen to his gorgeously beautiful teacher.

Vera saw Blake shaking his head profusely, causing her to let out a laugh as she took back her wrists.

"Don't worry, you won't find those rune masters here, you would need to descend to the next realm if you want to do that."

"Next realm?" Blake tilted his head.

"Yes, It's the goal of every demon to descend to the deeper realm as the environment was richer in nether and it makes it easier to get even stronger and evolve faster in the deeper realms. And different from the place that we're currently in where demons have to hunt each other to gather souls to evolve, in the next realm, we can go to another world and gather souls there."

Blake was listening to Vera's explanation attentively as he was genuinely curious about how the demon world worked, and how he could raise his strength in this new world where he knew almost nothing about it.

However, when Vera got into the latter part of her explanation, Blake's mind suddenly went blank as he uttered, "Vera, did you say we can go to another world from here?"

"Uh? Yes? But we can't do it from this realm, you need to at least go down one more realm before we can go to another world. Why?"

"Um… I…" Blake stuttered as Vera asked her question. He wanted to say something, but he didn't know how to say the words that were scattered in his head.

Fortunately, Vera took the words out of his mouth as she asked,

"You want to try and go back to your own world because you still have something unfinished there? Or you still have someone you care about?"

Blake was once again frozen as he heard the exact words that he wanted to say come out of Vera's mouth, but nonetheless, he answered,

"Yes…"

"Then get stronger faster so you can do it. I don't know how long it will take you to find the right coordinate of your world, but if you are strong enough then you can do anything you like, both here and back in your own world. Do you want to tie up some loose ends and get your revenge? Or do you want to bring someone from there to live here with you? You can do all of that as long as you have the strength to do it. So get stronger, my dear student."

"Yes… Thanks, Vera, I will make sure to be even stronger than you soon!"

"That's quite underestimating me, but I'll let it slide this time since you need the motivation."

"Alright, don't just stand around here, let's go inside and build your room!"

"Build?"

"Yes, of course, I don't expect I will ever have someone else living with me, do you want to sleep in the living room?"

"No!"

'Just wait for me, Amy. I'll come and meet you soon.' Blake said in his head before he followed behind Vera as they went past the beautiful garden and went into the wooden house.