Sophia was still sick and not feeling well at all. Fen also took a look at her and noticed that she was missing at least 10% of her magic power. It didn't seem to be recovering to her original level, either. Unfortunately, he had no idea what was going on as he had never seen such symptoms before. To make matters even worse, Anna came over and told them that Ari was suffering from something very similar with an anxious expression. The jaguar seemed to be even worse as she apparently had lost her entire magic power.
"Wait, so Ari has the same as I have?" Everyone was still in the couple's bedroom, and Sophia stared at the princess with wide eyes while lying down in the bed.
"You also lost your magic?!"
"Only a part of it, but my other symptoms appear to be the same. I also can barely move because of muscle pain. I feel sluggish and dizzy, and my head's killing me. I have a bit of a fever, too..."
"That is the same!" Anna was confused about the situation. "Except the magic power..."
"Well," Fen looked at the princess. "Our tiger still lost around four times the amount your jaguar ever had."
"Seriously?! Wait, just how overpowered are you, Sophia?!"
"Uhh..." She wasn't sure what to reply.
"No! That's not important!" Anna almost got sidetracked. "I wanted you to help Ari because no one's able to figure out what she has, but if you're suffering from the same... W-What can I do now...?" Despair was written all over her face.
"I'm sorry... What were you hoping me to do, anyway?"
"You can use healing magic, right? With your amount of power, I figured you can brute force whatever Ari has out of her..."
"Ahh... I actually tried that on myself already. It doesn't work at all..."
"N-No way..." Anna looked even more devastated. "B-But what's going to happen to Ari now... The same goes for you, Sophia..."
"I don't know... I do feel a tiny bit better than a while ago. Maybe we really just need a couple of days to get back on our feet?"
"Y-You think so?"
"I hope..."
"Uuh..." The princess didn't like the ambiguity at all.
"I guess Ari can't move at all, right?"
"No, she's as bedridden as you, Sophia, maybe even a little worse..."
"I see. Hmm..." The blonde looked at the two wolves for a moment before shifting her gaze to the cat-girl. "Maya, do you think you can carry me to the castle on your back? I don't think I can walk..." She opted against asking Fen or Aura because riding on them while they're shrunk might look more than a little weird. "I want to see her."
"Why?"
"Yeah, you should really rest!" Maya and the princess weren't a fan of the idea.
"I know... I actually really don't want to leave the bed, either... Just, if the two of us are together, we might remember something? Maybe something did happen yesterday that led to us being, well... like this." She pointed at herself.
"You're right..."
"It might be worth a try." The two reconsidered. "Yeah, I can carry you, no problem. Thanks to you usually burning like a million calories a day, you're super light, after all."
"Thank you. Also, sorry."
"It's fine." Maya didn't mind going along with the blonde's suggestion. "Alright, get outta here, everyone. I'll help Sophia into a change of clothes." She pointed at the door while looking at the group as she said so.
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Roughly 15 minutes passed before Maya, with the tiger, in her usual clothes, on her back, came downstairs and reunited with everyone waiting in the hallway near the entrance.
"Getting carried around's kinda nice~."
"Don't get too used to it."
"No need to worry, I like running around on my own way too much. I can't wait for the muscle pain to be gone!"
"Thanks for caring about Ari so much..." Anna was really grateful that she was forcing herself to visit the jaguar even though she really wasn't in any condition to do so.
"It's fine. Now that I know about her, I'd worry too much else."
Once everyone was ready, the group made their way towards the royal castle. Fen and Aura also accompanied them because they, too, wanted to find out what exactly was going on.
Arriving at the castle after a while, Anna then guided the group to her room, which confused the couple a bit.
"Why are we here?" Sophia, still on Maya's back, tilted her head.
"Well, we were here when her condition worsened. Because she was having troubles with walking and escorting her through the castle didn't seem like a great idea, either, I offered her to sleep in my bed. That turned out to be a good thing because Ari started shivering like crazy during the night..."
"Aww, you warmed her up while sleeping?" The blonde was touched. "You're adorable, Anna."
"T-Thanks..." She got a little bashful.
"Wait, was I shivering, too, Maya?"
"For about three seconds. Then, I hugged you for the rest of the night."
"Ehehe, you're also adorable!" Sophia rubbed the side of her head against the cat-girl's while saying so. "Thanks~."
"You're welcome." Maya gently returned the nuzzling.
"Anyway," The princess couldn't deal with the couple right now and slowly opened the door to her room before glancing inside. "Ari? Are you awake?"
"Welcome back..." The slightly weak-sounding voice of the jaguar-girl came out of the room. "Yes, I woke up a little while ago."
"That's good. Are you feeling better?"
"Hmm, I'm afraid not... Maybe a tiny bit, at best... Sorry..."
"Why are you apologizing?" Anna didn't understand her. "I've brought Sophia with me, but that's making things only more complicated..." Saying so, Anna finally entered her room and also gestured the couple inside. Fen and Aura decided to wait elsewhere for the time being because they didn't want to crowd a sick girl. Not that they didn't do that earlier already.
"H-Hello..." Slightly awkward, the blonde waved towards Ari in the bed as she was carried in by Maya.
"Sophia...?"
"Being sick really is no fun, isn't it...?"
"Y-You, too?!" Her eyes grew wide. "D-Don't tell me I infected you with whatever I have yesterday..."
"Nah, don't worry. If anything, you got my summer cold because I'm an idiot. Doesn't matter that it's almost fall already or whatever."
"l, uhh, really don't think it's a cold that I have..."
"Me neither. I just wanted to lighten the mood." While admitting so, Sophia got off Maya's back and tried to stay on her own. Unfortunately, she still seemed weak and unsteady. "Say..." She glanced at the huge bed Ari was in, or rather, the free spot beside her.
"You want to lie down, don't you?" The black-haired girl knew what was going on.
"Yes! I'm already super dizzy, but standing makes everything turn in circles..."
"I know that feeling... Sure, I don't mind."
"Thank you!"
"Ehh?!" Anna didn't like this development.
"Shut up, princess." Maya nudged her side with her elbow. "They're sick and just want to get some rest. No need to get jealous."
"Urgh... You might've changed a bit, but you're still the last person I want to hear that from!"
"W-Well, they're also suffering from extreme muscle pain. You can't do anything exciting in bed with that."
"You can trust her on that, Anna." Sophia had made her way to the bed and got comfortable next to Ari while making sure to keep enough distance from the other girl. She wasn't sharing the bed with Maya, so she had no cuddling in mind. "She's an expert on that topic. Last time she had sore muscles, she wanted to go for it way too early again, and-"
"S-Sophia?!" Maya interrupted her. "There's no need to tell that story!"
"Understandable. You embarrassed yourself quite a lot that night~."
"S-Stop already! Is your filter working even less when you're sick?!"
"Oh, that wouldn't be good." Ari was the one who answered before glancing at the blonde next to her in the bed, who was currently busy trying to steal some of her blanket. "I can barely keep up with her normal state of mind..."
"Your bed's pretty comfy, princess." The girl in question paid their conversation no mind.
"Thanks?"
"So, with that taken care of, how about a nap? Coming here was pretty exhausting, even though I was carried."
"Oh, I like that idea." As the jaguar was also pretty sick, she instantly took a liking to the plan.
"We haven't taken care of anything yet!"
"You, too, Ari! Don't go along with her so easily!" Their girls had to keep them in check.
"We're sorry." There wasn't even a hint of remorse in their voices, though.
"In all seriousness, though..." Ari's still weak-sounding voice got a bit less playful. "Is your magic also dried up, Sophia? I can still sense it, though."
"I've only lost a portion of it. It's quite a lot, but it shouldn't bother me too much even if it doesn't come back. I'm feeling too hazy to use any at the moment, though."
"I-I see..."
"Don't worry!" Anna noticed that Ari was uneasy because she lost all of her magic to the sickness. "I'm sure it'll come back once you recover!"
"Do you remember anything that led us to get... sick?" She looked at the blonde tiger lying next to her.
"l, uhh... I was hoping you had an idea about what happened." Sophia replied with the one thing Ari didn't want to hear.
"I'm as clueless as you are... We only baked some cookies together and chatted a lot, didn't we?"
"Don't forget the flirting..."
"Shut up, Anna!" More than one girl retorted to the princess.
"Well, I complained a lot about magic yesterday, so I had the idea it might be angry and wants to punish me."
"Okay, we at least know what isn't going on now." Ari was still fit enough to comment on the blonde's stupidity.
"Yeah, why would it punish you, too?"
"That's exactly what I meant..." The jaguar only rolled her eyes.
The two tried to find out what was going for a while longer, but they couldn't find any reason and only tired themselves out over it. Their condition also slightly worsened, and both decided to take a nap for real. After Anna forbade them to warm each other if they felt chilly, she and Maya left the room to let the duo rest in silence. The cat-girl agreed with the princess this time and told the two to call them if they felt uncomfortable. Embracing each other in a bed, no matter the circumstances, was obviously too much for her, too.
A big thank you to
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for supporting the story on Patreon. I'm super grateful for that!
"Oi, magic!" The tiger suddenly started yelling. "I don't know what's going on, but do me a favor, okay?! Let Ari use chantless magic, alright? I'll even help out if you need anything from me! I know that we're missing some crucial elements, but be cool, okay? Thank you very much! Love you~.
Well the crucial elements is tons of magic power and we know Sophia regenerates like crazy.....so 10-15% of her magic + regeneration for a few days is a ton of mana it also takes a little from Ari to do something
i have the same feeling as well, there is no f*cking way its not because of that "request" that out idiot tiger made >.>
Meow
More than the troublemaker duo being cute didn’t happen this time. The next chapter will finally have some answers. Not all of the answers, and maybe not even entirely to the questions you asked, but there will be some answers.
Before maybe raising even more questions~.
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Over 20,000 Favorites now! Thanks for that!
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I’m a little struggling with the school arc right now. It’s not nearly as fun as I hoped to, and I keep getting new ideas about what’s going to happen afterward. I want to get to it already!! I’ll probably end up cutting the school/academy part a little short because of that. I hope no one wants it to happen tooooo elaborate.
There are a few possibilities from THAT comment doing things. and the costs of it doing such.
1. being able to change if a person can use chantless or not is something normally only gods or such could do, and in forcing it due to op magic, Sophia became a goddess, in which i feel bad for the world.
2. using magic to allow someone to use chantless caused her to take up the burden of powering such a thing, and that to even use chantless, it is not the total amount of magic required, it is how fast you regen that means you can use it. which would make sense.
3. Magic goddess said nah, and slapped her on the wrist, which would be funny.
But im going to go with the theory of that to use chantless magic, It costs a base regen of magic to use, say it takes 10 mana per second regen, that regen fuels the backend of chantless magic which is reading your intentions and letting it form "properly" the fact Sophia is down roughly 10% and its not going up or down, could mean its reserving that much mana to keep letting Ari use Chantless, even if she her having access to chantless means she has no mana regen left at all.
To cover the magic oven, the rock that you channel mana into, is a spell given physical form. and not just chantless magic like Sophia things.
@Jessy Expanding on that thought... What if the missing magic power is being constantly consumed/reserved to maintain a passive magic link between the two allowing Ari to cast magic using Sophia's mana pool. Sophia did offer "I'll even help out if you need anything from me!" - That could be interpreted as willing to pay the bill for Ari's magic.
Ari may have none of her own available while the link is up, but if she could cast spells out of Sophia's remaining 90% with Sophia's insane regen, she'd essentially be as OP as Sophia herself. Imagine the implications of that.
@Nyaa That would be funny, but the issue of magical cold like symptoms are still a thing, since they probably have incomparable magic or something like that. something like magical poisoning.
@Jessy We'll have to see. Maybe it's just an adjustment to a sudden drastic change.
If the symptoms are temporary, but the Missing MP takes the form of a continuous drain rather a capacity reduction, I'd imagine it'd also result in some pretty substantial growth as a result of continuously burning through that much MP.
Considering what @kaithar brought up last chapter:
Your magic powers increase a little when you use it a lot, but it's usually not at a point where it's worth emptying your magic every day.
Aura probably didn't take Sophia's insane regen into account when she said that. Sophia has the ability to burn through much more mana in a day than anyone else - considering she's already doing that with the detection magic and this would use substantially more than even that.
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Another possibility: Considering that Aura experienced a major increase after forcibly using magic beyond her means (teleportation), we might have something similar going on here: Ari is undergoing a treatment that simulates overuse of magic to force her capacity to expand. Sophia is actually experiencing overuse of magic due to casting the spell that is working on Ari - She just hasn't been drained completely because her insane regen has been able to keep up with the ongoing drain it after the initial burst took away 10%. When it eventually ends, they'll both be more OP than before.
@Nyaa Her power didnt increase all at once just because of the teleport. She spent 200 years over there, battling a lot etc. that power increase came from 200 years of draining her power maybe once or twice a week.
@Jessy
"...I spent many years hunting all the monsters I never saw before. Compared to here, everything is incomparably stronger there. It was soo much fun~!"
~~
"Is that why you became so insanely powerful?" Now that he was near enough, Fen could also detect the overwhelming power of Aura. "You overdid it!" There was a hint of envy in his voice, too.
"I'm actually not sure about that. Your magic powers increase a little when you use it a lot, but it's usually not at a point where it's worth emptying your magic every day. I think my teleportation used way more power than I had at my disposal and changed something about my capacity or something like that?"
C78
@Nyaa Ahhh, thats completely different from what i remembered, then maybe the "magic" sophia activated is purposefully sucking Ari's magic out to forcefully grow her reserves enough for her to use chantless like you suggested? that would be really funny, but that doesnt explain why Sophia is getting the same symptoms
@Jessy Sophia is real overuse of magic - she just cast a God-tier spell after all. She's probably burned through several times her capacity, with just her insane regen being able to fight it thanks to the longer time period of the spell. Just because her magical capacity and regen can keep up, doesn't mean her body has the endurance for such a big mana burn.
After all, this is just one theory. We've all already floated several different speculations. We'll have to wait and see which one (if any) were correct.
"Oi, magic!" The tiger suddenly started yelling. "I don't know what's going on, but do me a favor, okay?! Let Ari use chantless magic, alright? I'll even help out if you need anything from me! I know that we're missing some crucial elements, but be cool, okay? Thank you very much! Love you~."
Ok so this is the "spell" she cast right? It boils down to "Let Ari use chantless magic, ... I'll ... help out"
And since Sophia didnt think it through, it brute forced it by draining Ari's magic completely to grow her pool, and Sophia paid 10% of her pool to activate the "spell" and it is using her regen to keep it going as needed, so it doesnt probably kill Ari.
If it really does expand her pool enough to use chantless, she will have her lifespan extended really far right? wont that just be really mean? Anna and Ari will have WAY different lifespans at that point right? so Sophia will need to do it to Princess as well, which is serves her right, she has too suffer twice, though watching Ari fuss over Anna would be adorable.
Wait, hang on, how has no one reported Sophia being ill to Ellie yet? wouldnt Ellie want to visit and hug and just be cute? this is a missed opportunity for hugs and cuddles.
@Jessy Well, we've already been spoiled on the fact that Ellie won't feature for around 50 chapters. Sophia just arrived, and I'll just assume that they don't want to worry Ellie.
@Nyaa But i think everyone could do with a whole bunch of cuddles? damn you Teanam
@Jessy
I-I actually have an explanation for that. There's no way that Sophia would even think of visiting Ellie while she's suffering from an illness no one knows about.
@Teanam Im sure that if Sophia can half ass her self into this situation, she can full ass a spell to protect Ellie from what ever is happening.
@Nyaa yeah, I'm sticking with my theory from the last chapter: Sophia's mana isn't recovering because she's fueling a sustained mana burn for Ari, increasing her capacity by force... Obviously, both the forced capacity change and maintaining the magic are stressful for the body, leading to the symptoms