For the first time, Melody brought back some food with her when she returned. It had been 3 days since the fight with the Master of the Silent Forest, and the moment the two of us returned from the cave she left again. I don’t know why she even brought me back here if she’s not trying to trap me anymore. Surprisingly, I’m not too bothered. As for her leaving, she still needs to eat whether or not I'm the food, I guess. Well, she gave some to me. She brought some back out of pity, I should be grateful. Unfortunately, the food still tastes terrible, It's practically inedible. From what I know about meat, which isn’t much, I'm pretty sure that metallic taste means that it wasn't drained of blood properly before she ripped it up. I'm still eating it , though, even with all of that. I can't actually get sick, after all. I just want to eat the lady of endless suffering again. This meat makes me want to puke. 

Anyway, I decided to call the dragon "Melody" from now on. I haven't addressed her as Melody, so I don't know if she'll be mad at me, but she seemed to like it. I managed to get some sort of status with Melody at this point. I don't want to risk taking it back down. I wonder if I raised a pink flag with her? That's a pretty heroic trope. I’m definitely happy about that even if she’s a dragon. Her human-like form is pretty cute but I don't really want to end up with a dragon. Maybe if it's a haram, though…

"What a vile look you have on your face." The dragon spoke up without warning and the blood rushed out of my face. Hey, I wasn't expecting to need to watch my expressions. She was watching me, wasn't she? Maybe I had raised a pink flag with her.

I put the meat I was holding down on the floor. It's not as if the dust will make it taste any worse. Hell, if there's salt in the soil maybe it'll taste a little better? Unfortunately, I don't think this meal can be saved. From it's conception it was as vile as my face apparently is. 

"It's nothing." I said, writing off what she said. 

"That aside, I wish to speak to you of what we can do to stop what remains of the Master of the Silent Forest. It would be best to achieve that goal more effectively this attempt." With that, she transformed back into her human shape. 

"I am going to teach you the magic that I know." 

She rested her weight on her tail while leaning back, using it as a seat. "I will train you in the dark arts to play a more active role in that fight."

"That'll help?" I asked.

"Yes, well, magic can do a lot more damage than any physical attack can. It's very difficult to do any longer preparation or chants while fighting one on one." She placed her hand on her chin pensively.

"Can't you just give it to me like how you gave me transcendent light heal?"

Melody gave me a look when I said this. She cocked her head to the side for a moment, questioning, I can only assume, where the hell my common sense went. This is why I tried to explain to her the whole "other world" thing. 

"No, no, that's life magic. I'm going to teach you arcane magic." She chuckled. 

"What's the difference? I asked.

"Well," Melody continued, "Well, the difference is obvious! They're just different. Here, watch." With a single finger of her more dragon like hand she reached down and poked at the hard stone floor. Splitting like soft butter, she pushed her claw through the surface while using it to write in deep grooves. Only a few days ago those things, or at least something like those things in another form, were digging into my own sides. It hurts just remembering what happened, even if I was healed almost immediately after and then completely reset at the turn of the day. 

Melody drew two symbols in the ground and separated them with a line. Under one symbol she drew five others in star and under the other she drew two symbols next to each other. They look almost like runes when she laid them out like this. Watching all that go down, I had an off feeling that I'd seen this somewhere before.

She pointed at the symbol on the right. It looked like some sort of fish or something wrapped around two overlapping triangles, the one with two symbols under it. 

"This is the sign for life magic. It's what exists within a creature when it is born. The knowledge with life magic can be transferred to others by the barer. It is the knowledge of the spirit so it can even be passed on through families." She moved her finger to the other side of the line and pointed at the other large symbol. This one was just a pentagram with the same animal shape wrapped around it. I say animal but what I really mean is elongated raindrop with an eye and a little line for a mouth. Actually, now that I look, that's probably meant to be a snake. "This is arcane magic. It's the result of the accumulation of concepts from life magic put into forms that life magic didn't previously take. This can only be learned with study, it is the knowledge of man and beast rather than the knowledge of spirit." She paused for a second while looking up at me to see if I was still following or if I was showing any signs of recognition. I shrugged. 

"These are the attributes of arcane magic, earth, water, fire, life, and death."

"Huh? There's no air?"

"What? What would you do with air? Breath on your foes?" 

That's pretty rich coming from a dragon. I saw you breathing on that other master of the silent forest a lot a few days ago. Besides that, is the idea of pressurized air that foreign to her? I can't do ant wind blades or wind bullets? No invisible attacks for me, not like I would be able to use them properly. 

"Besides that, these two are the elements for life magic: mind and body. Transcendent light heal is mind magic. That's the only one I know, though."

Am I an idiot? Just then, the moment Melody mentioned how many life magics she knew, I realized I had no idea if I knew any life magic already or even body magic for that matter. Though it seems like what I should do, I don't want to go yelling, "magic!" all of a sudden. That might not even be the correct word and I'll just look like an idiot trying to access my character sheet. Actually, the real answer might just be, "Skills!". I'm surprised I didn't already try that. Asking the dragon in front of me, who already thinks I'm a common-sense lacking idiot, feels like it would be too shameful to bear with. I'll have to wait and see when I can try whispering all those words to myself when I have some privacy. 

"Arthur?" After being silent and staring blankly at the ground for just a bit too long, Melody called out to me. 

"Sorry, I was just thinking."

"Did you remember anything after I explained that?" She asked.

"What?" I responded.

"I'm sorry. I don't want to push you or anything. You have been such an understanding helper despite everything." Standing up and crossing her arms, Melody turned away from me. What sort of weird event is this? Is this another pink flag? She brought her dragon-like hand to her pink lips with a worried expression in her eyes. She turned back to me after a moment with a soft but uncomfortable smile. "You will not want to hear this but... I am concerned that you have gone through some sort of trauma that has either damaged your mind convincing you that you are a human or it has wiped your memories of all your terrible deeds you've committed, or both, I can't be sure. A-anyway… the subject we need to address is magic."

Wait, what the hell?! What the hell?! How do I react to that?! How would anyone react to that? Who does she think I am, Goku?! I don't even have a tail, I wasn't prepared for this!

"So, the magic that I wanted to teach you that I know is "Fireball."" Melody continued. 

No, I would like to talk about that other thing you just said, please. Can we go back to that previous topic for a second? 

"The magic Fireball has a very simple and small summoning circle that you can prepare beforehand so you can use it in battle efficiently."

I was still just sitting there blankly staring at the girl. Yes, fireball seems cool and all but… ah, neverminded. I don't even know what to think anymore. It's frustrating trying to convince someone of something they don't have any clue about. I'm, of course, writing off any possibility of explaining it to her for whatever reason.

Melody was carving a new symbol into the ground. This one was just a straight up pentagram inside another circle with a few extra symbols thrown into the star. 

"If you place your hand at the corner here," she said pointing at it. Upon saying this she placed her hand on the edge of the magic circle. Suddenly, a bolt of fire shot up into the air, fizzling out before it reached the cave ceiling. It was almost like a firework from nothing. "Now you attempt it." She offered, gesturing for me to touch the carving. 

    Seriously!? That was really cool! What was I worried about again? Is she really telling me that if I just put my hand here I can make that happen? That healing spell was one thing but that was actually magic just then. That was something created from nothing. Despite myself a smile formed on my face.

    “Amazing!” I said, looking back from the now empty air to the dragon sitting in front of me.

    “Aha, Thank you.” She said smiling and taking her hand away from the pentagram.

I placed my hand cautiously at the edge of the circle. Nothing happened. 

Melody’s expression immediately turned into a confused frown.

"You must put some magical power into it if you want it to work." She insisted, placing her hand down once more on the other side causing another bolt of fire to shoot up. It was the same as before. 

She says I have to put magical power into it as if I know how to put magical power into anything. Doesn't she already think I'm crazy? Bold of you to assume a crazy person would know how to exert magical energy if he didn't even know it existed. I don’t really care though, I’ll try as many times as I need to. It’s real magic!

    Hesitating, my hand hovered over the carving.  It would be nice if I could try this on my own. I don’t like having someone to impress hanging over me like this. This sort of stress is the cause for underperformance. I gulped.

"Why don't you try chanting? That may work to focus the energy from your mana into a true intention" 

So, I tried chanting. By chanting she should mean just saying something out loud along with touching the circle right? 

"Fireball!" Like throwing a roll of streamers at a LARPer I exclaimed that spell with all my might. I felt my face start to blush immediately. Just look away already, Melody. You and your naked self are what are giving me stage fright. 

The dragon snorted, laughing at my pathetic second attempt. Nothing happened again.

How am I so bad at everything even in a fantasy world. God, I don’t want to do this right now. The idea of shooting fire from my hands, from a magic circle, can’t I just… do it? What the hell is the point of 5000 mana if I can’t even shoot one damn fire blast?

Suddenly, a bolt of fire shot up from the ground with an intense heat. It exploded at the ceiling of the cave leaving a notable burn mark. The dragon girl’s attitude immediately sobered up as we both stared at the black charred remains of the magic.