2, Month Fall-Quatre, Year Elizabeth 402

06:52, Claude Mansion

 

Alice stood in the middle of the pond, her eyes closed. The water was shallow enough as it only reached around her knee. Despite not seeing anything while in the middle of the forest, she felt as if she was at home. The gentleness of water and had calmed her tired soul and her fatigued body.

If there was some doubt about sage Khun’s word in her mind before, it was all gone now. The current feeling was all the confirmation Alice needed. Her unique physique was real.

The magic began gathering in her body without any of her intervention. It was as if all the water essence in the pond got suck directly into her body. It did not feel forced, it was natural as if this was the way of thing from the start.

After failing a breakthrough, it was common for a mage to be out of commission for several days. Some even severely injured but Alice had none of that right now. In fact, she felt invigorated and energized.

The exhausted mana in her body replenished as if all of what was happening before was but a dream. Alice smiled as she began to draw more magic power in to begin the breakthrough process. What actually surprised her was that her magic power inside her body slowly split into parts itself, all without her involvement at all.

“This…?”

It was a phenomenon that Alice had not heard about before but—strangely—it did not feel weird at all. The way her magic power split and circulate was perfectly inclined to all the theory she knew. In fact, it even surpassed it. It did not follow a regular rhythm. The way mana circulate resonated with something. Something that Alice suspected was the law of the world.

While magic seemed to define all logic in the world, it was, in fact, not. All magic power had to follow along with the rule of the world, and mage was one that spent their life study said rule. As a humble mage apprentice, Alice did not know anything about the law of the world yet. She looked at the way her magic power moved curiously.

And then she noticed something important.

Her magic power was split into, not 3, but 4 parts. This made Alice bewildered. Then, she noticed that these 4 parts were actually much more powerful than the 3 parts she made herself. So powerful that even one of these could easily surpass all of the 3 combined. She decided to let mana continued by itself and focus on gathering more magic. The magic parts all began to split up and established themselves in 4 corners of her magic passage.

Mana started to congregate around her body. There were ripples after ripples in the pond with Alice as the center, the air around her started to form a vortex. The beast in the surrounding roared and the forest shook violently.

Alice felt that a huge amount of mana had entered her body, it was so much that it was as if all the magic element in the forest got pull in. Her body felt hot as the passage in her body began to form. A line began to connect between the four nodes, forming a perfect square inside her body.

Boom!

A deafening sound occurred. The air around the girl trembled. The pond, especially, around her body got rumbled into a huge splash. But while the world around her got such a major event, Alice herself paid no attention to any of that. More and more mana rushed inside her body. Some headed straight inside her—now forming—magic circle, another just circulated around her body, enriched her physical body while there were at it.

Her muscle, bone and her internal organ were getting reforged. When mage got to succeed in making a breakthrough, not only would their magic power got strengthening, their body also got transformed. They became stronger not only magically but physically as well. This was what was happening to Alice right now. Her body still appeared the same, but it was now much tougher.

While in normal people the element essence that entered their body is just a mixed element, Alice sensed that it was different for her. Her—now heighten—perception pick up that a huge portion of her magic element was water in the majority with ice followed along.

The water-ice twin head dragon physique…

The name of her physique that sage Khun told her surfaced in her mind once more. Alice could not help but marvel at the vast knowledge and insight he had. He only had to listen to her problem once and he already knew the answer.

Before she was just trusting him but now sage Khun had officially taken place as something akin to a god to her. The trust she had in him probably borderline a blind faith at this point.

Boom!

Another boom occurred, but after this time all that followed was silence. The tranquility of the forest had recovered. The stillness returned to the pond though, some water had turned into mist surrounding the young girl, creating a rather mystified sight.

As for Alice herself, she had transcended the barrier of mage apprentice and mage. Not only that, she skipped the triangle phase and headed directly into the square phase. If before she was the last place, she was now undoubtedly the number one in class. She even surpassed most, if not all, of those in the next grade.

Alice looked at her hand, stupefied. The feeling inside her right now could not easily be described in a word. It was a mix of happiness, gratitude, shock, pride and some other emotions.

Her body that had been transformed was also unbelievable. Although her hand looked tiny and tender as before, she could easily crush some rock to powder with just her physical strength alone. Her right arm could easily bear the weight of 500 kg. This—of course—was not normal for the square phase mage as they would only reach around 250 kg at most. Alice was after all anything but normal.

“So this is the supreme grade water-ice twin head dragon physique.” Alice mumbled softly. The name was a little funny to say at first but it had a nice ring to it. She thought to herself while slightly shaking her head, mimicking the action sage Khun usually did.

Her perception also became much greater than before. She could hear some knight patrolled restlessly in the forest. Probably, her family had already noticed her disappearance. Alice felt bad for them so she decided to wrap up for now and got back first.

Only then she noticed something approaching from the air—

“Alice!”

Looking up, she saw a couple rushed across the sky from the forest. They were flying with the help of a flying artifact that looked like a boat. One on the boat was a beautiful middle-aged woman in a simple dress. She looked as if she just got out of bed but her beauty still shone through. Her skin was white which the black dress complemented perfectly. She looked like a mature version of Alice but her hair was in dark blue color. The other one was a stern face man around the same age. He also looked a bit unkempt but his dignified aura helped negate that flaw. His hair was in the same blonde color as Alice.

They were duchess Marine and duke Ryan, her parents.

The worried in their face were was visible even from a long distance. They looked at their daughter and landed beside her.

“Mother! Father!” Alice greeted them, her face filled with guilt. She was prepared to get scolded by them. But what she got when they landed was a hug from her mother instead.

“You silly girl! Why are you disappearing like that?” Duchess Marine hug her daughter tight as if afraid that she was going to vanish again. Alice felt the warmth and the worried from the hug and her eyes became moist. She felt like today was probably the most emotional day in her life.

“Mother, I am sorry. I just have to make a breakthrough no matter what…”

“You… I already told you that it is fine. Don’t listen to what other people say, okay? As long as you are happy, it is already enough for me and your dad.” Marine said. Her face filled with a hint of pain and sadness. Not only was she bitter that her daughter had an unfortunate condition, but she also blamed herself for failing to comfort her.

“Alice… Wait. Your magic…” It was only then that her father, duke Ryan spoke.

As a taciturn guy, he was just going to wait until the mother-daughter pair finished their moment but that was then he noticed a powerful aura from his daughter. As Marine was currently quite emotional, she failed to notice it at first. After hearing her husband’s word was when Marine noted the difference in her daughter. Her face filled with shock and disbelief.

“Wait! How…?”

Alice smiled back at her parents, her face regained her former pride of the genius she used to be.

“Mother, father, you don’t have to worry about me anymore. It is okay now...” Alice answered them. Her eyes unconsciously looked back to the shore, where she had placed the tablet.

“A great sage has already helped me.” she continued, her voice filled reverence, with a slight hint of fervent.

 

---

2 September 2021

19:58, No Good Apartment

 

I have no idea that I could spout this much nonsense before.

I guess you never know anything until you try.

The saying true after all. When humans are backed to a corner, adrenaline will rush out and help them do things far beyond their normal capabilities.

Hmm. That’s for a life and death situation?

But this is exactly it!

This is a life and death situation!

Maintaining a straight face while talking nonsense like that nearly chokes me to death.

Die from playing make-believe with a chuunibyou girl?

That is probably some of the most saddest ways to die.

Anyway.

Now I am waiting for her to come back while chatting with other viewers. It was some random chatting as everyone also curious about the girl and want to wait for her first.

It was then a question came to my mind.

Who is exactly is LittleSnow?

Not in the sense of what her name is, but in the sense of her individuality: her trait, her personality, her goal, etc.

As a Vtuber with a group of small but dedicated audiences, I always keep track of my viewer.

This way I know what could I say so that I don’t offend them too much. This also helps me choosing a perfect reply when I answer their question.

For LittleSnow…

I close my eyes and imagine this new viewer that I have.

The image of LittleSnow that I have in my mind is that of a girl getting on the internet for the first time in her life.

She was sitting in front of her computer, alone, in a dark room. The light of her monitor flickers in her—now red from tiredness—eyes. She probably skipped school for 2 days straight just to coop in her own room. She wore her same T-shirt—which had not been washed—for the last two days and a pair of loose pants. She only ate a meal when her parents took it to her room. She did not speak to them, of course, only opened her door to get it when she has made sure that they left.

Hmm…

I would say that this is probably at least 90% accurate.

I leave some margin here in case of some error, there is nothing 100% in this world after all.

But I am pretty confident about this odd.

Why?

As I said before, she was just too easy to understand.

Right?

But what exactly is making a breakthrough that she was speaking about?

…

To be honest, I have no idea what she is doing right now.

But for some reason, an image of a girl doing some occult ritual in her bathroom, in the middle of the night, come to my mind.

Wait. Why is it getting colder all of a sudden?