Chapter 9: Chapter 9: A Step Out of the Comfort Zone

“So, what do you think?” Will asked Hubert Scolz, his senior and adviser at the Mage’s Guild.

He was one of the few in their branch who actually had a Magic Class. A retired soldier who fought his way up to having several talent points and a Tier 4 Class, he looked a bit older than he actually was. His long beard had long turned white and his face was covered in wrinkles, despite only being 41 years old.

His eyes went over the paper in front of him, before he started to give a self-deprecating laugh. “It’s good. If her theory turns out to be correct, I would even call it revolutionary. I assume the girl wants to put it under the same pseudonym as before.”

“That’s correct.” Will said awkwardly.

“Boy, if you had any ambition at all, you’d have told me that all of these things came from you.” Hubert said, waving the papers at Will in a frustrated manner.

“Would you have believed me?”

“Who knows. I believe you when you tell me the truth, and that is far more ridiculous than any lie could be.” Hubert said, continuing his laughter. “A research proposal, written by a 3-year-old? What has this world come to?”

Scarlet had challenged several of the ideas that the Magic community accepted as fact or at least as really solid theories. Sometimes she was able to point out really obvious flaws in their arguments or suggest experiments that would check their validity.

Last time, she challenged the idea that magic stones were the source of a monster’s mana. She put forward that maybe, monsters didn’t generate mana by themselves and that all mana was just circulated endlessly, not being created or destroyed, just changing forms. Maybe, rather than generating the mana, magic stones grew as a response to the monster absorbing mana, as a way to avoid death from excessive mana density, the same way humans had their Bonds to absorb excess mana.

To test this theory, she had created an enchanted cage that would sap away the free mana inside of it, and had them raise two fanged rats from the same litter, one inside the cage, one in a normal environment. 

After three months, they cut the rats open and found that the rat inside the special cage hadn’t grown a magic stone.

Now, the girl was proposing the reverse of the experiment, using enchantments to force a low grade monster to absorb mana at a faster rate to see if they will grow a larger magic stone.

If it worked, people would be able to safely farm higher quality magic stones using more docile monsters, like the two-headed camel.

It could flip the world of magic tools on its head.

“New types of armor based on threads. New spells. Research papers. All of it from a girl who isn’t even old enough to have a Bond yet.” Hubert said with a tired sigh. “You know, some of the higher ups at the capital branch are starting to get on my case about this. They want to know who this ‘Rebecca Garza’ is.”

“I’m… sorry to have you in the middle of this.” Will said, really feeling genuinely sorry.

“...Don’t be. I’m just an old man who can’t stand that the next generation is passing him by. I can only imagine it is harder on you.” Hubert said, waving the younger man off. “Just make sure you take care of the girl. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for her and her mother.”

In Hubert’s eyes, the tale of Maria Wright was a common and depressing story.

Shortly after a child is discovered to have exceptional talents, their parents are approached by some very eager business investors, who want to ‘help them go places’. One or two shady contracts later, the family is placed in inescapable debt and are left with a choice. They hand over the child into a state of pseudo slavery to work until the inescapable debt is cleared, or rather, forever, or the entire family is stripped of their Bonds and Classes and shipped off to be slaves.

Maria’s story was only the slightest bit more complicated, because her extremely valuable dresses were attracting the attention of the nobility. With the nobles capable of simply buying the girl’s debt if they wanted to have her skills for themselves, Jonathan Wright did the only thing he could do in order to insure that she would remain working for him. He forced her to marry him.

The poor woman held the title of wife, even though in reality she was a slave.

Though sooner or later, the man was going to reap what he sowed. 

He was too focused on the money that selling his daughter’s hand would get into to realize that once the girl was married into high nobility, she could crush his entire existence.

That is, if she even waited that long.

“I’ll handle the grant proposals and patent stuff and have the money transferred into the girl’s account.” Hubert said as he once again looked at the sheet of paper.

---

8 months had passed since Scarlet had received the magic stones for her birthday and started to train her [Arcane Mana Resistance].

It had taken 4 months before she was able to wear the new enchanted clothes without injuring herself, and with all seven pieces equipped, she had a mana regeneration rate of +10 mana every second. A huge step up from before.

However, as she tried to continue her [Healing Magic] training after that, she found that using [Healing Magic] on a target that wasn’t actually injured didn’t grow levels as quickly as one that was.

This caused her to try something a little… unorthodox to say the least.

[Fanged Rat Poison - Deals 2 Health and 2 Stamina damage every second for 60 seconds.]

This might have seemed stupid, and it was, but even if she found herself somehow unable to cast her healing magic, the poison wasn’t strong enough to kill her. So she figured it was safe enough.

But now, 4 months after she started this stupid plan, she was running into a similar problem.

[General Skill: Poison Resistance has reached level 20 | Rewards: +1 Health, +2 Fortitude, +20 EXP]

[9328 EXP to next level]

“Looks like the rat poison isn’t going to have any effect anymore.” Scarlet said with a disappointed sigh. “Should I try to get something a little more potent?” 

It was a possibility, but probably not a good one. The rat poison was easy to get, since they just had some on hand for dealing with rats. And they also had an antidote in case of emergencies, like a child accidently eating it. Getting stronger poison would both be difficult, and would probably be too potent for safe use.

Maybe she should just call it quits on trying to level up her [Healing Magic] further. She had first aimed for it in order to restore her stamina when she got tired from using magic, and it was already doing that job just fine. It was only because of the speed she could level it and its help in getting her [Arcane Mana Resistance] that she had continued to favor it for this long.

[Healing Magic] was her highest level sub branch of magic, at level 81, with [Wind Magic] behind it at level 75.

With two Talent Points being spent in magic related fields, Scarlet’s magic skill levels had gone up fast, resulting in her total EXP from skills tripling, growing her from level 20 to level 26. If she doubled that again, she would be able to get her third Talent Point.

That said, the boost to her leveling was starting to slow down. Since even though a Talent Point could double the ease of growing levels, the effort it took to grow a level seemed to naturally double every 15 levels, after taking into account the more rigorous training methods that the leveling made available.

Scarlet could branch out into more types of magic and level up her other elements to bring them into line with her [Healing Magic] and [Wind Magic], but if she did that now, it would affect what kind of Bond she would receive when she turned 5.

Since Bond Skills were generally cheaper when it came to mana to any General Skill equivalent, having a Bond that could heal or provide some kind of flight would be the best resource she could hope for for the future.

Maybe she should look into methods for training [Holy Magic] as well. Her [Evocation Magic] level was now high enough where she could be able to create holy attributed mana. It would be more expensive than her current healing but it would be an alternative that would still give her the type of Bond she wanted.

Though she still didn’t have any wounded to heal or any demons to smite, so the leveling would probably end up pretty slow. Maybe she could give people her blessings. Would that be good EXP?

She already knew a spell for blessings, from her early experiments with [Holy Magic] when she brought it up to level 17. She didn’t know if repeatedly using the same blessing on a target would always give full benefits to leveling, but she could certainly give it a try.

Her other option was to start to sink all of her mana into leveling up her [Magic Appraisal] skill as high as it would go. Perhaps if she did, she could gain enough of an understanding of the nature of Magic Stones in order to start creating synthetic Magic Stones or even ‘Magic Crystals’, the more powerful version of magic stones found within larger and more powerful monsters.

Her gut told her that learning to make her own stones would be the gateway to bringing her [Enchanting] to the next level.

Though if she went down this route, she would need to do a lot more research in [Alchemy] and [Transmutation Magic]. Perhaps she should ask Will to buy the books and materials she would need with the money they made from the items they snuck out with him.

Being able to spend her own money again was nice.

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It brought her back to those times when she was only 8 years old, when the social worker put in charge of her tried to convince her to give up on homeschooling, saying she would have to interact with people eventually when she got a job.

The prospect of it had frightened her so much that she had started up a pottery business, making and selling decorative clay fish on the internet. At the same time, she had watched a few online classes on web programming and design, and got a job making websites for other businesses, who had no idea they were dealing with a child. 

Three years later, she was buying her own 112 square foot micro condo and was making enough money to live off of, while at the same time finishing her online classes to graduate from the high school curriculum at the age of 11. Then, rather than going to college, she just learned as much as possible about proper investment methods until she was passively making enough money to be stable for the rest of her life.

Some might find it weird that she ended up owning and renting out three small houses but continued to live in her micro condo, but she preferred the smaller space.

The lengths she had gone to in order to escape any possible situation where she might end up having to be in the same room with another person had been mind blowing to the social worker lady. VR had been introduced to her as a means of social interaction without having to worry about anyone being able to physically touch her, with the hopes that it would wean her on to real face to face interaction. It had just turned into her great escape from reality. A wonderful world where touch did not exist.

She had changed a little since then, more willing to be around and touched by certain people, though that is mostly her biology that had changed.

Physiology is half of psychology, so a baby’s body means baby’s psychology.

The feel and smell of her mother had been imprinted since birth and was therefore infinitely soothing for Scarlet on a spiritual level. She always felt like her mother was invincible and that she would always be safe so long as her mother was there with her, even though Maria was only a year older than Scarlet herself, if you included her past life.

To her, Maria was the most amazing person in the world.

Scarlet’s thoughts were interrupted by a knock on her door.

Blinking in confusion, since it didn’t sound like Judith’s usual knock and her mother usually just called out to her when she needed her, Scarlet reached out with her [Mana Sense] to check who was outside.

Then her face began to play.

“Scarlet. Open the door. I have something I wish for you to do today.” Jonathan Wright said from the other side of the door, his authoritative tones making a shiver go up Scarlet’s spine and drawing a whimper from her.

‘I want my mommy!’

---

 

Scarlet had squeezed herself as far into the corner of the wagon as possible, pulling herself into a ball in an attempt to be as far away from all of the other occupants as possible.

Despite her relatively high stats, she had simply gone limp and was dragged out into the wagon by her father, where she was made to ride with a group of guards towards the looming walls of what had always to her been the distant reminder of her father’s evil, the slave camp.

The guards looked at her petty as she trembled.

“You sure it is okay to bring her into the slave camp like this?” One of the guards said. “She’s just a kid.”

“Are you saying that you will not be able to guard her properly?” Jonathan said, giving the man his cold stare.

“Well… No, we’ll be able to guard her just fine. She’ll be completely safe, but…” The guard replied, only to be cut off.

“Then there is no problem.” Jonathan said. “She has been learning magic for nearly a year now. It is time for her to put those skills to proper use.” He then spurred his horse and moved forward, so he wouldn’t have to look at them anymore.

“Fuckin’ ice in his veins, that one.” A younger guard with light brown hair and a large dog Bond that walked beside the wagon said with disgust. “Bloody hell, it's his daughter. Show some compassion.”

“Quiet Thomas, it isn’t our place to question our employer.” The largest of the five guards that had been placed around Scarlet said, his head down at eyes shut. A large bear walked behind him, it’s brown fur matching his hair.

“But Jim…” The younger guard said with a pleading expression.

“We are guards. We keep the peace inside of the camp and escort people in and out of the camp, keeping them safe. Today is no different.” The large guard said, glancing down at the child. “You don’t need to worry, kid. We will keep you safe as can be and no one will touch you. So just take some deep breaths and calm down.”

The guard’s all saw the girl flinch slightly, before her head nodded. She then began to take deep breaths, her body seeming to relax. After a few seconds, she looked so relaxed that they wondered if she had fallen asleep. Though her breathing seemed too deliberate for sleep.

“I’m... sorry that I troubled you all.” Scarlet said nervously as she regained some control over herself. “Please just… pretend I am not here.”

“Al...Alright.” The younger guard said, struggling to look away from the fragile looking child.

Scarlet had regained some self-control, forcing her body to return to a normal equilibrium with her [Meditation] skill. But even if she could fool her body into thinking that things were alright, the moment her subconscious mind caught up it would start to break down again.

She was being taken off the grounds around the house for the first time in her three years of life. She was a shut in being dragged out of her comfort zone by a bunch of strangers and by a father who was worse than a stranger to her. All she wanted was to go back home and huddle up to her mother until the feeling of insecurity melted away.

...But no. She couldn’t think like that.

Sooner or later, if she wanted to level up properly, she’d have to venture out into the world to fight monsters. ...It’s just… Fighting monsters probably wouldn’t involve being so close to other people.

The prospect of a hydra didn’t feel as scary to her as being in this small wagon with these five strangers or the slave camp that they were fast approaching.

No! She couldn’t think about it!

If she did, she would just slip back into panic mode again. She needed to distract herself.

Taking a deep breath, she realized she had stopped using her mana at some point. With the rate at which she regenerated her mana, allowing it to build up was dangerous. Her current mana levels had already surpassed her total mana pool, so she needed to address this problem immediately. 

The guard’s looked shocked as Scarlet began her [High Speed Invocation] and started to release a zone of cool air around them, blasting away the heat of the early Summer morning.

After that, she changed her spell again and ribbons of blue and gold mana came out of Scarlet’s body and reached out to the trees on the side of the road. The water and life mana spell revitalizing the dried leaves in almost an instant. 

After her incantations were finished, Scarlet breathed easier again. The pressure from her mana build up started to recede and she started to let her mana flow more naturally, using it to analyze everything around her with her [Magic Appraisal] skill.

...Hm… The wheels on the wagon seemed to have gone without maintenance and the bearings were starting to rust. The sound it made was annoying. She could probably fix that with some [Transmutation Magic], but that spell usually required touch.

Was there a way to modify the spell to do it from where she was sitting?

Most spells could be parsed into five main pieces; analyzing current state, obtaining energy, creating instructions, delivering energy, implementing changes. Simple spells might have a single run through of this process and require only four or five spell words, while more complex spells might go through it a thousand times and use tens of thousands of spell words.

In that way, it was much like how a computer chip worked. Though there were a few more spell words than there were basic instructions in assembly code. And while enchantments and rituals could make use of a ‘goto’ command and therefore loops, invocations could not. Not that ‘remove rust’ would require a loop.

Though if she wanted to change the range of the spell, both the gathering of energy and delivery would need to be changed, and rust removal wasn’t a simple spell. And it wouldn’t be as easy as just changing the delivery words in the same way each time, as the required delivery words would change based on the instruction that was being delivered.

Like many things in [Transmutation Magic], it required several steps, meaning a long invocation with dozens of different smaller instructions built in. But Scarlet welcomed the challenge and started to dive into the meat of the spell, ready to hack together a modded version of it.

As she dove into her mind in order to puzzle through this latest problem, the guards just openly stared at her.

Not that she even noticed.

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