Part 3

Where did my peaceful school life go? The place where I could temporarily escape all the magical, supernatural, and mystical malarkey, and focus on ordinary problems? Like grades. Or avoiding romance-comedy tropes. Or getting back at Josh for beating me in table tennis.

Well, fine, that last one might've been a bit too specific, and I was still in the lead when it came to our little competitions during PE, but it was about the principle, dammit. Not to mention, he was clearly cheating by abusing his higher base stats due to being constantly transformed.

Ack, dammit! Now we were back to the supernatural again! Seriously, why couldn't we have just a normal school life, without any of these magical power-ups, mystical spy operations…

"How about this one?"

… or after-school illusion magic demonstrations.

I was currently in the arts-and-crafts classroom of the school, ostensibly for remedial classes. In reality, I was only indulging Lord Taika's curiosity about my ability to see through magic, which naturally included her illusionary spells as well.

"Wow! That's so pretty!" Penny exclaimed by my side, and my other sister was also mesmerized by the tiny, lifelike buildings with a series of bridges and stairs connecting them, seemingly made of pure alabaster.

The two of them were with me by chance at the time when I was hijacked by the arch-mage, but I had a feeling they were tagging along just to ensure that there wouldn't be any misunderstandings about me being alone in a room with an attractive adult woman. Not that my girlfriends would've cared; I sent them a message about where I was, and even Judy, famous for her anti-harem counter-measures, had mellowed out a lot lately and didn't seem to mind it at all.

That said, while my sisters might've come with me out of a sense of consideration, they stayed for the pretty light shows and illusionary objects Lord Taika conjured up with seemingly no effort whatsoever. The cute, fuzzy yellow duckling she showed previously was a big winner, and while the building illusion was much less adorable, it was admittedly pretty impressive.

"Oh? Is this like an Escher-painting?" I blurted out as I leaned left and right, and as I did, the various aqueducts and stairs shimmered and moved around to maintain a seemingly impossible structure. It was pretty tame compared to all the non-Euclidian lunacy I regularly dived into whenever I was doing enchanting, but maybe because of that, it had a kind of quaint charm to it.

"Yes," our undercover mage, dressed in her usual teacher outfit, smiled proudly and made the illusory buildings rotate over her palm with a twirl of her finger. "One of the more advanced applications of the School of Illusion is to create semblances such as this. While we are better known for realistic constructs used to deceive the senses, a master of the Arts of Illusion can create anything they can imagine to fool and bamboozle the minds of the onlookers."

"A-Awawa! Why is the water going up? Did the waterfall change direction? Why is everything spinning?"

Seeing that my Knightly sister was definitely getting bamboozled, I glanced at Snowy, and she covered Penny's eyes with her palm. In the meantime, I looked closely at the illusionary structure and had to admit that, just like a good old optical illusion, the magical kind also had a sort of draw to it. Then, just as I nodded with approval, came the sales pitch again.

"So, Leonard? Would you like to learn more? I would be happy to welcome you as a guest to our School, you know?"

"Here we go again," I whispered. "I'm sorry, Lord Taika, but as I've told you already, I'm too busy with everything else going on already to just frivolously visit your School."

"It would be anything but frivolous," a new voice interjected, and we all turned to the door. We locked it ahead of time, to avoid anyone else accidentally catching a glimpse of the magical show she was giving us, yet before we knew it, Lord Barnabas was with us in the room. The dark-skinned man flashed a harmless smile and politely added, "Please excuse the interruption."

"Ah, good afternoon, Mr. Walker," Snowy blurted out in surprise and removed her hand from the confused Penny's eyes. I tended to forget it, but for everyone other than me (with the exceptions of the class rep and Saahira), these people were considered to be teachers first, night-all-mighty mystical powerhouses second.

"Yes, good afternoon!" my other sister followed suit and waited to see how I would react.

"Could you explain that in detail?" I asked, without bothering to greet him again, as if I hadn't already met him a bunch of times during the day.

"You see," he began as he walked over with his hands behind his back, "You're currently not just a student, or a momentarily famous Chimera Slayer, but the representative of multiple major organizations." He paused as he reached our side and gave me a meaningful glance. "You speak for both the Ordo Draconis, the Draconic Federation, as well as the governing body of the Celestials."

"You're sort of correct on the first two, but I'm about as far as you can get for a spokesperson of the Directorate," I grumbled. "I'm also not exactly great at diplomacy."

"Yes, I have noticed," Lord Barnabas told me, and it made me pause. It sounded like a snide comment on paper, yet when he said it out loud, it became a neutral observation. "As a matter of fact, I would heavily recommend educating yourself in the matters of etiquette and diplomatic conduct, as they would serve you well in the future."

"Are you volunteering?" I jested, yet he looked at me like he didn't expect the question at all and had to consider it first.

"It might not be a terrible idea at all."

"Lord Barnabas!" Lord Taika cut in, dismissing the three-dimensional Escher painting in the process. "I've invited Leonard first. Don't try to cut ahead in line."

"I assure you, that wasn't my intention at all," the other arch-mage relented with an amused smile. "In truth, it was quite the opposite; I was just about to recommend that he should accept your offer as part of a diplomatic gesture."

"Truly?"

"Indeed," he nodded and faced me again. "Doing so would serve as a highly visible gesture of goodwill and trust, and would tighten the bonds between our organizations. Any personal benefits would be but a cherry on top, so to say."

"Ah! Maybe you could bring your family along as well," Taika proposed, as if I had already agreed to what Barnabas said, and turned to Snowy. "Your Sigils, especially the ones that grant persistent visual obfuscation, are a fascinating subject, and I'm sure that the scholars of my School would be enthralled to listen to a lecture on them."

"I… um…" My Abyssal sister, not expecting the attention, completely froze up, causing Penny to leap to the rescue, though without much thought put into the method.

"W-What about me?"

The alleged arts teacher with the fake glasses was visibly stumped by the sudden interjection, but the other arch-mage took it in stride and let out a low, melodic chuckle.

"Well, well… While I cannot speak for Lord Taika, the young lady certainly has a knack for foreign languages." That was the first time I've heard about that, though it made some sense, considering she was a globe-trotting Knight until very recently. However, while I might've started out surprised, I was outright bewildered by his next words. "Who knows? Maybe you could put your talents to good use in the field of diplomacy?"

"That's never going to work out," I blurted out, earning me a sudden glare from both of my sisters, for some reason. Penny was one thing, but I couldn't remember Snowy ever getting mad at me before, so I hastily explained, "Listen kiddo. You might be my cute little sister, and you're many things, but 'diplomat' just isn't one of them."

I expected them to argue back, but instead, Penny's eyes opened wide and she excitedly grabbed my other sister's arm.

"Snowy! Did you hear that? Brother called me cute for the first time!"

"Y-Yes," she responded a touch sheepishly. I was also taken aback, as I was pretty sure this wasn't the first time I told her that, yet as if to further my confusion, Lord Barnabas let out an impressed hum by my side.

"A quite elegant way to turn the conversation around."

"I didn't do that on purpose though," I admitted, and it only made him hum even harder.

"In any case, there might be hope for you yet."

"Wait, we're forgetting about the original topic," Lord Taika interjected, and pointed at me to get me to face her again. "Since we agreed on everything, when can I expect your visit?"

"I… don't think we agreed on anything, but even if we did, it doesn't change the fact that I'm extremely busy right now." She looked downright dejected at my refusal, so after some mulling over, I gave in and extended a small olive branch. "Let's wait a bit until everything calms down a bit in Timaeus, and then ask me again."

"I will!" she declared triumphantly, as if she scored a victory, and I couldn't help but sigh.

"Why do you even want to have me as a guest so much? I'm more of an enchanting kind of guy, so I don't know how much I can contribute to the conversation in an academic setting."

"But you have your amazing illusions, don't you?" Lord Taika pressed me. "You also have the Eyes of Tr—" Without warning, Lord Barnabas loudly cleared his throat, and if just realizing that she made a faux pas, she put a finger on her lips and then shielded her mouth before whispering, "You know what I mean."

I wasn't sure I did, but the term sounded vaguely familiar, so I was sure it was yet another misunderstanding I'd overheard during a Far Sight session or another. In any case, before I had the chance to formulate a proper answer, Lord Barnabas let out another soft hum.

"Now that you mention it, I've heard about your amazing talent in the Art of Illusion, but I have yet to see it in person.

"Actually, neither have I," Taika joined in and to my surprise, even my sisters looked intrigued by the prospect.

"Now that I think about it, when did you learn about illusions? I'd never seen you use any of those when we were young. Is it something you learned after you came here? Or were you hiding it from me? Brother? Why aren't you answering?"

Seeing Penny's questions hovering between curious and accusative, and even Snowy seeming expectant, I decided to fall back on my latest standard excuse and told them, "It's a Polemos thing I awakened to recently."

Penny let out a soft "Oh!", which, when unpacked, have probably meant 'Oh, that actually makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it.' Snowy, on the other hand, didn't seem one hundred percent convinced, probably because she already knew I was hiding a lot of things (and powers) in my closet, both literally and figuratively, and so she learned to no accept everything I said at face value. It hurt me a little, but to be fair, it was a bed I made, so I had to lie in it.

"Can you give us a demonstration?" Lord Barnabas asked, and for a second, I froze up.

"Pardon?"

"Yes! You've already seen mine, so let me see yours!" Lord Taika exclaimed a very easily misunderstood stock sentence, but that was the last thing I had to worry about at this moment.

As much as I loved to blame everything on my inexplicable ability to use crazy illusions to retroactively explain my Phasing shenanigans, and it was certainly a very convenient excuse, when put on the spot like this, their request for me to demonstrate it left me completely flummoxed. Should I pull the classic 'I'm not even in the room anymore' trick?

No. That was getting really old at this point, and I couldn't shake the feeling that one of these days, someone would call me out on the trick, and that would put all the previous times I used it into question. It was better to shelve it until it was absolutely unavoidable… but if not that, then what else could I do to pull the wool over their eyes?

Luckily, the answer came to me quickly, and I drooped my shoulders in theatrical resignation, to set the stage.

"Oh, fine. But just a small exhibition. I'm quite tired, you see…"

Saying so, with my every movement followed by expectant eyes, I picked up a pen from the teacher's desk and presented it to everyone. After showing it off, like a stage magician trying to prove that their props were completely normal, I lightly tapped it against the corner of the desk. Then, I raised it to eye level and flicked my wrist.

At the very same moment, I plunged one phantom limb into it, and then immediately used the rest to anchor myself into the rapidly expanding pen-fractal. While attempting a full-on retcon would've been foolish (not to mention, counter-intuitive for my current goal), I still had the other aspect of this power, where I only replaced the original 'asset' with a variant, resulting in a temporal, non-retroactive change in the item. In the past, I haven't even tried to do this outside of a controlled environment, because just attempting it gave me the mother of all headaches, but as my forced encounter with other-me had demonstrated, after increasing the number of my phantom limbs yet again, previously strenuous uses of my abilities, such as repeated Phasing or extensive enchantment-tweaking, became infinitely more manageable, with barely any side effect.

I'd been thinking about dusting off this particular ability and finding a practical application for it, and since this situation provided the opportunity on a silver platter, and shamelessly took it. But anyhow, back to the pen-fractal.

In this case, my goal was to fake a super-convincing illusion. For that, I needed to replace the pen with something reasonably different, and do so 'lightly', for lack of better words, to ensure I wouldn't accidentally do a retcon and get other-me all pissy again. As such, after a quick search, I found a suitable replacement, on one of the many, many branches, and then hastily overlaid it on the image of the original pen.

When I succeeded, I was immediately sucked back into reality, and with an odd popping noise, the standard plastic pen in my hand morphed into a long goose-feather quill. I did all that while flicking my wrist, to hide the exact moment of the change with the motion, kind of like how a stage magician would flick their magic wand to hide the moment it 'transformed' into a small bouquet of flowers. Unfortunately, I didn't consider the difference in diameter, so I almost ended up flinging the feather across the classroom.

Grabbing hold of it in the last millisecond, I let out a satisfied hum, followed by a stifled hiss as the backlash hit me and gave me a sudden headache. It wasn't too bad, but it just showed that, eight phantom limbs or not, this kind of Simulacrum-hackery still wasn't exactly hassle-free.

In any case, once I was done, I presented the feather to the astonished Lord Taika, and the moment she took it from me her eyes opened so wide they threatened to fall out of their sockets.

"Le-Leonard? What is this?"

"An illusion," I told her with a modest smile, trying to ignore the throbbing pain just behind my forehead.

"But… I can touch the…" She paused and after poking the downy parts of the feather, she somehow became even more astounded. "Amadeus was speaking the truth. You truly are capable of fooling all the senses."

"It's only temporary though," I told her, but she was already lost in her own world, and soon my sisters also joined her, handing the quill back and forth between each other with amazed expressions.

"Truly extraordinary," Lord Barnabas noted with a brow raised high, but then it soon descended and he added, "Now I understand why someone as old and world-wise as Lord Amadeus would speak so highly of your ability."

"It's just a small parlour trick, really," I responded with false modesty.

"Can I keep this?" Lord Taika cut between us, holding onto the quill as if she was afraid it would fly away if she didn't grasp it in her fist.

"Of course. It was your pen, to begin with," I told her, and she let out a relieved breath.

"Thank you! I'll have to take this home and analyze it right away, before—"

"Actually," the other arch-mage interjected with a troubled frown on his brows. "I'm afraid that has to wait. I got caught up in the discussion, but the Lord of the island requested our presence for a meeting, and I originally came here to tell you about it."

"But… But look!"

She presented the quill to him, and he shook his head.

"I'm sure Leonard's spell would remain in effect until after the meeting is adjourned. Right?"

That last question was aimed at me, and I nodded, though the truth was that I had no idea how long the transformation would last. When we experimented with this ability the last time using mugs, they held out for a couple of hours, but knowing the old man's penchant for long speeches (it must've come with the territory of moonlighting as a school principal), I wasn't sure that was enough. In the worst-case scenario, I would just make her another one. I needed to practice, and who knew? Maybe she would discover something useful in the process. Win-win.

"Let us not tarry then," Lord Barnabas spoke softly but firmly and glanced at the girls. "I'm sure the rest of your friends are also waiting for you."

That was… actually not far off from reality. While we were here, Angie and Elly were doing some tennis practice. They were accompanied by Josh and Judy, respectively, which meant that Ammy also tagged along, so all of them were still on school grounds. However, this was a last-minute arrangement, spurred on by Angie complaining about missing the morning practice because she overslept (officially because she was studying late into the night, unofficially because her parents were away and Josh was staying over), so… was Lord Barnabas keeping tabs on us?

…

What a silly question. Of course he was; it was half the reason why he was here, masquerading as a teacher. I just didn't expect him to admit it so openly.

Meanwhile, Penny and Snowy got their bags, so I followed their example, and we all left the classroom. On the way out, we even learned how Lord Barnabas got inside, as instead of turning the key like a normal person, he muttered a few words under his breath, pointed at the door, and it obediently unlocked itself. Based on the glow, it must have been some kind of Alteration School spell. Or maybe Transmutation? I still wasn't entirely clear on the minutia of the terminology, but it did make me think.

Could I do the same? Not with magic, but with my phantom limbs; replacing a locked door with an open one, for instance? It could work, and while I still got a headache, it wasn't the same 'knocks me off my feet with a fever for two days' kind of headache as before. Who knew? Maybe getting called out on my self-ascribed illusions today would, in the long term, open up more than just a few avenues in the future…