Part 9

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And time went on at its own fast pace. When you're passionate about something, it flies by. Now I was training with my father in the morning, and then I went to teach Sylphie magic, and at the same time I was honing my skills and improving my reserve. My first experiments with the creation of magical electricity quickly resulted in the appearance of a separate skill. But in the standard school of attack magic does not have a separate lightning magic. Only some spells of water magic are able to summon a thunderstorm and even cause lightning, but not to control electricity as such.

- Said the monter, let there be light!

Lighting white sparks of electricity between my fingers. They dance on my skin, causing a tickle. But, I was hesitant to create something more powerful at this stage. After the test, I noticed that the blades of grass on the ground began to reach for my hands. Electrified palms!

- Will you teach me how to do that? - Sylphiette was interested.

- Perhaps later. It's my individual magic and I'm still working on it. You should learn the standard schools first, at least up to the highest rank.

Aka advanced rank.

- I will.

- So, today I brought you a book on the basics.

- Oh-" She gave her a strange look.

- Yeah, let me guess, you can't read?

The girl shook her head negatively.

- You should learn if you want to do magic seriously.

- Rudy... will you teach me?

- Yes, let's go to my house tonight after practice, we still have books. I'll read them to you... but we'll start with the letters.

- All right! - The girl was excited.

She was interested in coming to visit us.

- Oh! Good for Rudy! Already brought home a girl! - My father gave me a thumbs-up.

- Rudy's bride-to-be! - Zenith looked at us with a smile. - Sylphiette, you're a good girl, but don't take Rudy away from Mum so soon.

Lilia behind their backs grinned miserably and looked away. Strange, what was she doing?

Sylphie, on the other hand, was blushing to the tips of her ears at this moment.

- Sylphie, don't listen to them, they're just adults, their minds are all messed up.

- Aha ha ha ha ha... Rudeus, what are you saying? - Paul laughed.

- 'Ah... mum, dad, do you mind if I show her our books? I promised to teach Sylphie how to read.

- Oh, all right. - Zenith nodded.

Well, we are responsible for those we tame. Although teaching Sylphie wasted time I could have spent on learning magic, I kept at it. Yes and, in fact, it would be hard to study magic all the time, purely mentally, without any change of activity. And so, teaching the girl to read, as well as the magic itself, I rested from my experiments and fencing training.

Seeing that Sylphie was often loitering around and peeping, waiting for me to get free, I decided to include her in the training.

- I don't know if that's a good idea. - Paul hesitated. - She's a girl.

- She's got a talent for magic. - I shrugged. - I don't think it would be a bad idea if she learnt at least the basics of swordsmanship. If you don't mind, Sylphie.

- I don't mind! - She replied enthusiastically.

This girl had been imitating me in many ways, and she was eager to take up the opportunity to train with me. In a way, I was glad, too, because it was boring to do it with Paul alone. At least it would be nice company.

- Nya! - Sylphie squeaked, squeezing her eyes shut.

And swung her sword.

The sword slipped out of her hands.

- Oh.

- May the gods preserve us. - Paul sighed, covering his eyes with his hand.

- Hold your weapon tight, Sylphie.

- Yeah... yeah!

She was even worse at fencing than I was.

But at least she was still making progress in magic. Repeating spells, some of which she was learning to cast without verbalisation. It was obviously harder for her than it was for me, but she was getting the hang of it. So, we went from practising water magic alone to all schools of combat magic, as well as healing magic.

At the same time, I began to make my first amulets, following the instructions of the codex.

Like, for example, a simple wooden pendant in the form of a small wooden board, on which was carved a magic circle. Generally speaking, this brings us back to a type of magic called inscription. It has its advantages as well. For example, if you use an object with a magic circle, the mage will be able to cast some spell instantly, without a verbal form, just by pouring enough mana into the circle. The minus of this method is that subtle changes to the spell cast cannot be made. Its characteristics will be clearly spelled out in the drawing. But, most mages and so simply read the spell without being able to transform it in any way. Nevertheless, this method is outdated and rarely used, despite its usefulness.

I don't need the spell at all, like a crutch is not needed for a person with healthy legs. I can already create simple magic almost instantly with just the power of thought. Though maybe I should think about it in terms of more complex magic. Or back to the idea of replicating the capabilities of high tech with magic.

In the meantime, here we go...

A wooden plank with a mana harvesting effect. It basically speeds up natural mana regeneration, but in my case this amulet was useless. I just have an insane amount of mana and the support of this weak artefact was completely irrelevant. Sylphie, on the other hand, was helped by this amulet at first. But only at first. After all, as it turned out, she was also susceptible to magical progression! Yes, that's right, her mana reserve increases by the amount of mana spent!

Is that really the case with all children in this world?

But this should have been noticed long ago! And start teaching magic to children from a young age. Even if one wanted to keep this effect as an advantage and not tell others about it. No, that just wouldn't work. It was far more likely that it was just my luck that another girl with the same magical talent was born in my own village. Yes, it's a strange coincidence, but it's much more likely than the fact that no one simply doesn't notice the effect of magical progression in children under the age of ten.

A possible answer to this question was given to me by Roxy.

Yes, I continue to correspond with her. I told her about my friend, too. After hearing about Sylphie's green hair, the sorceress suggested that her magical talent might be related to the Laplace factor. She recalled the description of my talent and informed me that the demon god also had green hair. And if magical progression is caused by that factor, then Sylphie might be affected by it as well.

Also...

"I just left and you've already found a second bride, when I get back I'll have a look at her"

It's understandable that she's joking around, after all, Sylphie is still just a toddler and considering her as a bride is silly. But these jokes about marriage from all sides were starting to get annoying. First from my mother and father, now from Roxy. Even when I was visiting Sylphie herself!

"Okay, I'll keep a close eye on her. Sylphie's still young, but she's pretty and will grow into a beautiful bride" - That was my reply.

Did you think she'd get over it? Yeah, she would.

"Just take your time, wait till she gets her period."

That's right, I'm a lollipop man. On the other hand, there's basically no such thing as age of consent in this world. I mean, no one even sees relationships with young partners as something reprehensible. Especially given the fact that, depending on the race, the age difference can reach thousands of years. In general, such things are looked at more easily by the locals.

Also, Roxy asked me another strange question.

"Rudy, would you like to be an adventurer?"

"I don't know, if only to practice my magic, though I was thinking more about a career as an artefactor."

"I see."

She just closed the subject. But, that's when the system gave me a new assignment.

Romantic Dreams of Loli the Sorceress

Form an adventurous team with Roxy and go on an adventure together

Reward: Roxy's undying love

Whoa?

Looks like Roxy had a dream of a romantic adventure.

And with that in mind, I soon suggested to her to form a team in the future.

"Yes! And I already have an A-rank in the guild, so we can start right away with challenging quests!" - The enchantress wrote to me happily.

It turned out that in her youth she had managed to complete quite a few quests as an adventurer. However, what am I talking about? She's still young and beautiful! She's only in her early thirties. That's practically a teenager for a Migurd. Anyway, I promised her an adventure together, though I didn't tell her about the system assignment, as if it were my own idea.

Meanwhile, I was also perfecting my healing magic. Of course, I didn't have a medical degree, but I had watched Dr House! Yes, and in general, the erudition of a person from the world of excess information is somewhat higher than in the Middle Ages, even if the practical skills are lame. Having some idea of how the human body works in general, I was able to create my own healing magic spells. And, although I didn't talk about it much, my abilities in this magic already correspond to the holy rank. The rank of this magic is no longer measured by the scale and pure power of the spells, but by their effect. Basic level, this is the simple accelerated healing that my mother used on me when I hurt my palm or knee as a child. Beginning level allows you to heal broken bones. Medium rank can deal with serious open wounds. The highest rank, on the other hand, allows you to heal even more severe and large-scale injuries, give the target additional strength, even heal damage to internal organs. Royal rank is the level of regeneration of lost limbs. And imperial rank is already closer to such a concept as resurrection. Divine is hard to say.

And I think I was even approaching the royal rank of healing. More precisely, I had thoughts on how I could design a spell that could restore lost limbs. But for now, I remained within the confines of the holy rank. Periodically, I started to visit with Zenith to the hospital where she works. Yes, as it turns out, the village has its own small hospital. And, despite my age, I was welcome there, because I knew healing magic as well as my mother. And with practice, my skills got even better.

I also learnt love magic, though not in the way I would have liked. Namely, using the dark rod to get along better with Roxy had some effects on my body. Specifically, I suddenly started getting acne and growing hair in unexpected places. Seemed like a good thing, just growing up faster, but oh well. My body's hormones went haywire, headaches started, and the system gave me an achic...

Achievement "Charles Darwin Award Candidate".

In the course of carelessly using magic on yourself, you have jeopardised the likelihood of your offspring by prematurely ending before puberty

Reward: Random item.

And while I was baffled, the system dumped a medical reference book on my head.

I didn't even tell Roxy about it, as I was too embarrassed, but tried to figure out the problem myself. And eventually, after months of studying healing magic and the reference book, I had somewhat rectified my overall condition. This spurred my development in this direction, after all, I had so many things in my body to regulate! So, now I really started to grow faster, constantly casting special spells on myself that would accelerate growth in a comprehensive way and in time this should completely straighten out my hormonal balance. But, since then, I've tried to be careful with the practice of altered healing magic spells. Even though the system seems to have exaggerated the extent of the problem somewhat to give me a guiding kick. And for the guidebook, thank you very much to her.

After this episode, however, my thirst for exploration took over again.

- Raaaaah... - I'm just grabbing my head now.

- Is something wrong? - Sylphie was worried when she noticed my crying.

- So many things! Electricity, artefacts, elemental magic, healing magic, martial arts and fencing!

- Ummm... maybe... will you take a rest?

- That's not the point, Sylphie! I'm not tired, there's just so many things I want to do, my head is bursting with ideas! Why is there so little time in the day? Why is there so little time?

- Umm.

It was a small scene.

And even creating a schedule didn't help. When I got caught up in a plan, I couldn't just leave it for later while the idea burned in my head. Thus, I grew in everything little by little, flitting from one thing to another. But if magic was alright, my swordsmanship seriously suffered from such an attitude. I didn't have much talent in it, and therefore such a careless attitude towards training prevented me from progressing in my mastery of sword techniques. I hadn't even fully recovered my martial arts skills from my past life. Magic demanded too much of my attention.

And, in passing, I had an idea on how to compensate for the difficulty of using martial spirit and classical magic at the same time. The secret was in artefacts and magical inscription. Circles don't require spell reading and concentration, they already have all the terms of enchantments written into them. So I carved magic circles into the soles of my boots, which allowed me to create gusts of wind with my feet without any strain, even while using battle spirit. That is to say, I could easily make swift dashes in combat. Although, it took some getting used to something like that. And, in the same way, it was also possible to incorporate other spells into various amulets to use them without having to concentrate mana. Essentially, I'm not creating a spell, I'm just tossing mana into a ready-made form that already gives mana the appearance of working charms.

- Hmm, that looks pretty good..." Paul remarked. - You could make shoes like that for your favourite daddy, eh?

And he smiled stupidly, pointing his finger at himself.

- All right. - Rolling my eyes.

He never got used to that sort of thing, though. After all, Paul was already an experienced swordsman, his skills developed to the level of reflexes. And using such gimmicks would disrupt his sense of combat. It was much easier for him to rely on the capabilities of his body than on artefacts.

Meanwhile, in electricity magic, I learnt how to isolate my own body so that I wouldn't get electrocuted. It was especially effective when I created a sort of electric blanket that seemed to flow all over my body, but didn't interact with it at all. But I was able to electrocute anyone who got too close. And, in the same way, I learnt how to direct streams of magical electricity, creating my own man-made lightning bolts. Using fragments of high-ranking spells, I could expand the capabilities of my experimental magic to the point where I learnt to hurl such powerful lightning bolts that they were almost as powerful as real ones, the ones that strike from the heavens in a thunderstorm and hotter than the sun itself.

The lightning spell consumed a lot of mana, but that was a good thing. I was using up my reserve faster, and lightning was my strongest offensive spell. Though I'm probably overestimating its power a bit because of the wow effect. A normal indestructible fortress, which any mid-ranked earth mage is capable of, can stop and ground lightning. But, if I use constant voltage current, which can even eat up all my mana in a matter of minutes, then even under an indestructible fortress the enemy mage will be killed, he'll just roast there.

Oh, and don't forget that electricity itself interacts with magnetic fields.

So I developed an electromagnetic barrier based on the water barrier spell. A protective sphere that I create around me that simply throws off various objects, especially metal ones. And the more mana I put into the spell, the stronger the effect. The same arrows will break the barrier and bounce off. If a swordsman tries to get close, he'll be fried a bit by the electricity and thrown further away. And if he tried to hit me with a sword, his arm would be twisted and his weapon would be ripped away. Nevertheless, it's still possible to break through this barrier with enough force, generally speaking. In addition, it is inconvenient because it passively throws away from me everything that is not screwed to the floor. And what is screwed to the floor, it unscrews and throws away. This spell is ideal for use in open terrain in combat, but if used in a city, it creates real chaos. However, it beats the same indestructible fortress in that the electromagnetic barrier is mobile and moves with me.

And finally, some sort of magic railgun.

Well, yes, I was inspired to create the railgun spell by watching an anime in a previous life. Lightning is powerful, but it's a plasma charge that works on its own principles. The Railgun spell, on the other hand, is designed to launch a physical projectile.

Creating two currents of directed electricity. Basically, a railgun without rails. And a projectile created with earth magic. The shot is so powerful that the stone bullet is simply wiped to dust immediately. I had to work on the material and create stronger metal rounds. But, the destructive power of this combination turned out to be really impressive. And this was despite the fact that the Railgun spell used dozens of times less mana than the lightning spell, but was even more destructive.

And now Railgun became my strongest offensive spell.

I had even prepared a few projectiles especially for it, which I now carried with me at all times. Just in case. In general, depending on the power of the Railgun, you can use pebbles and coins as projectiles. But for the most powerful shots you need a specially processed purified metal with high heat capacity and strength. I don't even know if such an alloy exists and what it is called, but I have isolated this metal with magic and assembled projectiles from it in the form of bullets. It's got a monstrous penetrating effect. What's a stone wall to him? It can penetrate a hundred of them!

I had made such progress in almost a year of experimenting with a new type of personal magic.

In the end, even Sylphie was able to master simple forms of electricity magic after I explained to her how it worked. But, she was much better at classic water, earth, and wind magic, slightly worse at fire magic, and worst of all, electricity. And, she still needed practice. She and I were just at completely different levels of controlling magic, and that gap still seemed just huge. But, she had no problem reading standard spells, as long as she had enough mana.

And so, during this time I also read the codex, almost wiped it to holes and extracted all the useful information from the grimoire, learning how to create artefacts of different complexity, transfer spells to objects and create the effects of enchantment, that is, which could not be simply reproduced in the form of a spell. Although, it should be clarified that the codex did not reveal some great mysteries of creating divine artefacts, but rather was a guide for beginners.

When I said that it wasn't enough and wanted more....

Achievement "Capricious Pampering."

Reward: Random item.

And a mighty thick book like this was dropped on my head.

It had creepy hieroglyphics on the cover, and inside...

- What's this?

The language was unfamiliar to me. But when I sent a sample to Roxy, I got a translation. It turned out to be the language of demons, aka the language of the evil god. Actually, the translation read something like the following "rules of action of twisting the mouth," but I soon realised that this talmud was an instruction manual for a lip-rolling machine.

Anyway, the system decided to make another joke.

Still, this episode made me think of more down-to-earth skills as well.

"Roxy, can you help me with learning the demonic language?"

A week later, I received an entire textbook with many hand-marked notes from the sorceress. And with that, books on magic that she borrowed from the academy's libraries started showing up in my inventory. Especially valuable, to me, were the books on barrier magic, the defence branch of healing magic. And, it turned out to be a much more multifaceted branch than I had originally thought. Heck, what are barriers that distort the flow of mana and prevent spells from forming! Or simply physical barriers that create an invisible barrier, the nature of which I don't quite understand. Especially since I could not reproduce these barriers. In the book they were described very superficially, as an example of high-level magic, without instructions on how to use it. As it turned out, barrier magic is a guarded secret of the Order of Milis. So is high-level healing magic. Ranoa Academy only has textbooks on the beginning ranks of barrier magic. But that's not bad, there's a lot to learn. Especially since barrier magic goes well with artifact enchanting. At least, what I learnt in these textbooks overlapped with my experience in artifact practice.

Meanwhile, winter had arrived.

- Ya-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!" Sylphie squeaked merrily, rolling down the incline.

I mean, I made an ice slide with magic so she could ride it. So I couldn't resist, so I decided to ride it too. And then I got carried away and grew a whole palace out of ice. Somewhere in the distance, village children were watching the creation of this ice city. And, among them, you could also spot the brats who were bullying Sylphie. It's worth noting that after meeting me, they were afraid to approach her. And they called me the demon king behind my back. What's the big deal? I stood up for a demon, then I called in some mud monsters. Honestly, it's not that I took offence, it's just that I turned up my nose. That's a cool nickname.

- Rudy..." Sylphiette looked at me.

Then she looked at the children.

Yeah, it's like an amusement park in here. Everyone's interested.

- Do you want them to come here?

- Well, it's just here.

- Ha-ha-ha-ha! Yeah, it's my demon king's castle, but you need subjects.

- Yes! And I'm-- I'm--

- And you're my loyal dark servant.

- Yeah!

I've been relaxing a little bit with all the winter fun. And, we did invite the other kids to play in the ice castle. Especially for this purpose I made more slides, a maze, and two smaller fortresses inside the castle. There children could play war, throwing snowballs at each other. I also got into making ice sculptures.

- That's me! - Sylphie was excited.

- Yes, I like to create figures of things that inspire me.

- Ahhh... y-yeah... that turned out great..." The girl smiled embarrassedly.

She was also making ice figures, but she was far from the level of detail I had achieved.

And anyway, I can't say that I got into it because of the child's body. Because the next day, when we visited the ice castle, we found a crowd of men and women from the village sliding down the slides and climbing the maze.

- Rudy, this is just amazing! - Zenith was sincerely delighted by what she saw. - You did it, didn't you?

- Of course I did. I just thought that since it was winter, we could do something like this... the ice figures would last until spring.

- Amazing!

And then there was the extra practice of detoxification magic when half the village started blowing snot. But anyway, everyone enjoyed the ice town creation. As for Sylphie... given the way she looked at me, I wasn't even surprised to find a message in the morning by midwinter that the task had been completed.

Mission accomplished!

Childhood friend

You have won Sylphiette's tender maiden heart by becoming her first love.

Reward: Childhood friend.

And the system immediately delivered the girl straight to my bed.