_______________

"Law is not something you can touch without sufficient power. Forget it."

"Aw, I thought it was a normal magic thing."

"Chantless magic and magic through imagination are different. Imagination can't bring fiction to reality if you can't link all the concepts and world's laws associated with it to your mind. Chantless magic may look similar but it needed knowledge of the spell pattern and the control necessary to run mana through."

"Ugh, I get it. All the isekai protagonists have it too easy. It's not fair!"

"You say something?"

"Ah! I just say that you can definitely do it!"

Phew! Nearly slip up.

Emily was sitting in the flattened grass next to the table where Elena and a few of the students were having tea. Mari was standing near the tree watching over them while playing with her new weapon. It was a wooden ultra greatsword that had a dull edge provided by the Academy. Emily didn't know anything about martial arts so she didn't say anything about changing weapons.

"Hmph. Maybe."

The vague answer was delivered with a small laugh leaving Emily to her imagination.

After everyone had arrived, Emily immediately tattled on the shadow to her Lady. To her surprise, Elena didn't care one bit and waved it off. Saying something about small fries didn't matter.

She just shrugged and tried to forget the problem like her Lady suggested. Time wasted on worries could be used for training.

And so she was sitting on the grass listening to some small tips on magic. The other noble Ladies just stayed still in their chairs, not even touching their food.

It was understandable. After all, they were in a state of stasis by the magic circles under their chairs. It was like time stopped for them. Her Lady, the Demon King, was inspecting them with a strange spell as she taught her bit by bit of magic laws. Elena was pretty much open about her identity with her maids but she didn’t outright say it. She and Mari also knew better to ask such things out loud.

Emily was still in the infant state, as her Lady often said, so there wasn’t much to teach except controlling and sensing mana. Right now was just Elena teaching her some ‘basic knowledge’, as she said.

“Your progress is good enough. Don’t try to get over barriers that are at the end of the road when you are just starting. Furthermore, magic laws are changed when entering different domains of powerful beings, like gods.”

“Oh… so I may lose my magic when I am in another world?”

“Yes.”

“But then…”

The question wasn’t asked because Elena had answered her with a proud smirk on her face.

“Domain can be achieved by simply being strong enough. Strong in magic, that is.”

Emily was sufficiently intelligent enough to come to her own conclusion.

So if I have my own domain, I can use my own magic with my own law? Or perhaps, realistically speaking, not being affected by the external rules that change how magic works for me? But how strong? Demon King level?

A bright smile with expectation shone on Emily’s face. She was fantasizing about using magic back on Earth when no one had it.

“That being said. If the gods ban magic in a world, then no domain will win against that law. No magic, no fighting.”

Her smile dropped a bit as she was pretty sure Earth had its magic banned. There would be quite a wave if there was magic since the age of information and rebellion were brutal. Unless there were super organizations controlled the world in the dark... This world that she had reincarnated in had magic working but she was still a novice, she really didn’t need to worry about matters of such a scale. Once again, just as her Lady said.

Emily looked at her Lady and used her inspect command.

 

 

It is always baffling to see her status. When did she gain [Stealth]? And [Ruler] goes up to lv.12!? How?

Emily didn't inspect her Lady every day since looking at it made her nervous. The last time she saw Elena's status there were only [Spirit Magic] and [Enchanter] and they were still level fifty-something.

It was insane to level up that much but then again, Emily knew what Elena was. She was a magic-type Demon King according to games. And all Demon Kings were not Bosses for nothing. Seeing the physical skills didn't jump up levels like there would be no tomorrow was telling enough. That meant as long as it wasn't magic-related, Elena would not be a broken Boss.

Even though it is like that, she is still too broken. But [Spirit Magic]? I haven't thought much about it but she doesn't have any other elemental magic like others. Does that means if I have all the other magics, they will become [Spirit Magic]? And that will definitely be a superior skill! Or is it? What is [Spirit Magic]? What is elemental magic?

She had realized long ago that the total level didn't do much since there were superior skills that would absolutely dwarf ordinary skills even with lower levels. Or the system was changing to adapt to Elena's broken records. For one, she knew the [Mana Control] skill series as an example. She wouldn't know of other skills but it was unimportant to her anyway. There was no way she would reach a point where she knocked on the system's integrity.

She looked over the three ladies that were frozen in time. One was the Duke's daughter, Cecilia. The girl had come to seek them out so her Lady had invited her to sit down and froze her in a heartbeat. The next one was a blue-haired girl she had seen at the entrance exam, nothing to note. The last one was a cute little girl with silky golden hair and blue eyes. Emily didn't remember any character like this Princess in the game. Even with her hazed memories, she was sure that someone of this caliber wouldn't be missed.

The blue-haired girl was just a normal human the last time they met so Emily skipped her and inspected the little girl.

 

 

"..."

How did she pick up this girl!?

Skill was not easy to raise or get like in games. Just looked at herself with the boosted exp. She still hadn't had [Cooking] yet despite all the Rare sweets she had made. Only people who cook their whole life or some kind of genius that understood more than they should with how food worked got to have that skill.

Magic related skills were even harder since knowledge was not widespread and only nobles could start learning early.

And here it was before her eyes, a little girl that had skills far higher than even the Court Wizard who was the best in the otome game. Emily didn't inspect her last time since she was busy with getting food and drinks for her Lady and then forgot about it afterward.

This was the third time she met people that defied the game's setting. The first was Cecilia, the second was the katana guy with [Sword Skill] lv.35. Then finally, it was this girl with THREE absurd skills!

Speaking of Cecilia, Emily still didn't consider her any less of a hack.

 

In a way it reminded her of the light novels she had read back on Earth, such nostalgia. But really, she wondered how the hell did Cecilia get this kind of status, she didn't have any boost like the Heroine. Although most of her skills were just average, this feat was too impressive to see otherwise. Her level was nearly equal to Mari's months ago and there were so many weird augmentations like the Yaksha monster. She had seen [Spirit Magic] in her status once but it was only level one so Emily had forgotten about it. Then her idea of how to get it from Elena's status was incorrected too. There were even [Light Magic] and [Dark Magic].

Emily closed her eyes and breathed out, leaving the messy thoughts behind. She needed to find out the meaning of the total level. The otome game had only basic skills so the level could be interpreted as power, but now it wasn't like that anymore with so many strange and advanced skills.

Emily started to relax on the grass and do some practice on her mana control. She needed it to be at a high level to do any meaningful things to people like them. Currently, her cast time was around fifty seconds for [Lightning] and [Telekinesis], which were just starter spells. She was getting faster at each level gained in [Mana Control]. By her estimation, she would cast spells in forty seconds at level fifteen. Her cast time would decrease further with incantation or spirits but her Lady Elena didn't teach her any. In her words: "Weaving the spell yourself is good for training. And chanting is embarrassing."

Emily wanted to cast faster but didn't dare to complain. She had to admit that her skills were really increasing quite fast. What with the many multipliers she was doing together? The complaint was gone. Chanting or using spirits to cast were abandoned.

She had her own notebook now and it was really helpful to do her own research on the system. If this was just an otome game she may not care, but it wasn't. She was scared of the hidden things the world would throw at her that she wouldn't understand. Luckily, the system seemed to still work with the game's logic.

"Ah..."

She was distracted with thinking and the mana ball between her hands flew off right at Cecilia's head. It puffed into motes harmlessly, of course.

"Focus! What are you thinking about?"

"Uwaa, sorry! It's just… about my magic. It takes me almost a minute to weave a spell, although somehow I don't forget the mana pattern, and they are weak too."

"Are they? You would still kill someone if you hit them for a while though."

"Well, it's true. Um, if it takes that long, can I just use a lot of mana like Milady did? To make it worth the time?"

Elena looked at her maid for a moment then laughed.

"You are funny! Yes, yes, your spell will be stronger and it will be worth the time."

She beamed at the answer. Her idea was good after all!

"But can you do it? The speed at which you can manipulate mana is the same but the amount you pull will be huge. It will explode in your face."

Her idea was bad after all.

"Don't rush. When you are a bit better I will teach you some Intermediate spells. They have better effectiveness. At least about ten times the magnitude with the same amount of mana in an Elementary spell."

"Intermediate spells?"

"Ah, it was the magic categories the nations around here are teaching. For their lack of power, the system is very decent. Quite unexpected. This had to be from before the Hero era. My spells fit quite nicely into this system."

A book was thrown at Emily's laps. It was the 'Fundamental of Magic Study'. This book was just taken from the library just now as she had seen the window of the building open and close very quickly.

Her speed and control are amazing!

Admiration rose up in her as she saw the zenith of magic time and time again.

She opened it and read through the pages quickly. Non-students were not allowed to read those books so she couldn't waste any time.

This is all about feeding spirits and commanding them to do spells. Well, unrelated to me. The spell ranking seems pretty strict. Elementary spells are almost everything. Intermediate spells are big, strong and complicated. They could destroy a district at that level, I don't know how big that is but it must be huge. Advanced spells are things like that storm Elena had conjured. The scale of destruction is city to region level and they are mostly dedicated for strategic war operations.

She read on to find out more about advanced magic but except the short expression of how utterly complicated they were and the time it took to cast one was almost a day of incantation to call on the spirits. That was not to mention the tremendous amount of mana required.

The last rank, Archimagick, was only mentioned by name with a word 'legendary' before it. It wasn't even an adjective like the others.

Heh, Archimagick. Reading that makes this feel like a game again. Who made this ranking? Another Earthling?

Even though she amused herself with jokes like that, Emily didn't forget the seriousness of it being a higher rank than Advanced spells that could ruin a region.

After she had been done with the book, Emily took out her notes and a piece of coal wrapped in thick clothes. She wrote her short version of the book for easier reviewing, discarding all the useless spirit stuff, of course.

So, let's see… For default spell: Elementary is the base. Intermediate costs at least ten times more mana, and Advanced costs ten times Intermediate. The cost-effectiveness from mana to power is roughly… 1:1 for Elementary, 1:100 for Intermediate, and 1:10,000 for Advanced.

Scribing out the relations between the mana and magnitude she took a look at it again.

 

The average mana of an Elementary spell in the book was one hundred so she used it. Running the calculation quickly in her head she almost yelled out. The base mana for an Advanced spell was ten thousand and it would yield one million power units, whatever that was.

That's really crazy! How does one mana get that kind of power!? Who thought up these spells!? Who has enough mana to use them!? Each rank is a hundred times more effective than the previous one. Who the hell has such a high standard and why is everyone following them? Can I have a normal gaming experience, please!?

In her mind she knew that in war, there was always a way. Now she understood why the mages and knights at Silver Pass city had so much respect for the Countess, and by extension, to Elena as well. She had to have a lot of Intermediate and Advanced spells in her repertoire. In time, Elena would inherit those spells from her mother. It wasn't like Elena needed it but that was how the logic went and how everyone was thinking.

I wonder how the original protagonist crossed Elena and lived.

A nervous chuckle escaped her as she thought about the many horrible ways the MC could die.

"Oh, you are taking notes. Well done, Emily. Good job."

"Really? Thank you master!"

"Master huh, sure. It sounds better than just calling me Lady all the time. You rarely call me that anyway."

Emily quickly asked her question about the notes before she forgot it.

"But master, how does one unit of mana give so much power? Can it be used like that in the Elementary spells?"

There were three glass orbs of different colors falling before her and laying quite still on the grass. She looked curiously at the apple-size yellow, blue, and purple orbs. When she was about to pick them up she saw a slight swirl inside each of them so she stopped.

"They are the three levels of my own [Fireball] in order from low to high: yellow, blue, and purple. They have the same amount of mana for a basic Advanced spell stated in the book. Feel it for yourself."

Now that she knew, she didn't want to pick them up anymore. Elena had left her on her own and returned to look at the small Princess. There were some guards standing around but they didn't approach them as nothing was happening, and they avoided looking at the Ladies too.

When Emily was sure no one was watching what she was doing, she moved closer to the three balls of death and tried to feel it with her mana sense.

Basic huh. Like hell they are!

Rebut her Lady slightly in her head, she started her analysis.

The first thing she noticed was that they were not glass balls, they were just so round and clean that she had that impression.

I will never be able to do this. What kind of monster control is this!?

She didn't dwell too much on it and continued. The differences were quite clear. The yellow ball was a simple raging flame that burned like no tomorrow, mana was swirling inside it with no leakage so there was no diminishing. The blue ball was also burning but in a geometric pattern. She couldn't trace it all but she understood what complicated meant now. This was like a magic formation inside a spell that would create its own effect using the flame as conduct. She actually didn't understand what she was saying either, but it felt right.

Moving to the purple ball, she had no clue. It looked like a flame but she was not sure. There were also a few formations packed over each other like ball in ball in ball and so on. Something else was running inside but it was just her feeling.

"I have no idea what I am looking at."

She told Elena while pointing to the purple ball of flame.

"Of course you don't. It contains my essence and a program to consume mana as it spreads to its limit, which can be set by the original amount of mana. The mana it consumes will be transformed into Fire Golems to do more destruction to whatever is in the area. This is a really fun spell to deal with smallfries."

"Oh, okay. Smallfries huh."

"So? Do you grasp the differences?"

"Yes. It is not that the Elementary spell has low efficiency but it just uses the mana as fuel. Higher levels use mana to do more stuffs with the spell."

"... That is acceptable. Moving on. You should focus on the Elementary level. The 'do stuffs' part will be after you learn more about formation. Like the blue [Fireball] here, it explodes the whole area within the magic circle that will spread out on impact while the sea of blue flame burns in extreme heat. As a true fireball should."

What is with her and [Fireball]? Her spell are so violent, as expected of a Demon King.

Emily sweated a bit imagining the friendly-fire she could cause in a party with this spell. She was proud of her ability to impress her Demon King, however. She was in a good mood. She wanted to write 'Huge success' in the notes but she managed to hold herself back.

Emily looked at Mari to see what she was doing so quietly the whole time. It turned out the big wooden sword that was too big to be called a sword had been broken in half and was laid down on the ground. Mari was just sitting with her back against the tree and watching the cloud thinking about something.

"I want to beat someone up."

That's definitely something, alright! What the hell Mari!?

Closing her notebook, she stood up and ran to her friend immediately. She felt bad for leaving her friend to play alone now.

"Hey, Mari! Why's the long face?"

"Oh, Emily. It was nothing. Just feeling restless. Like something is going on without me knowing."

The little Demon maid gritted her fists with loud creaking noise. For her lack of fighting skill, Mari was growing far and beyond with her physical strength day by day. Emily was afraid that one of these days, she would have a broken hips when Mari hugged her.

"Hmm, do you want to explore the Academy with me? I will ask the Boss for permission."

"Don't call our Lady like that. You will be scolded if the others hear it."

"Details, details. She won't mind it. There's still a few hours before the evening class so let's go!"

"Hey, wait! We need to protect our Lady!"

Mari stood up and ran after her quickly. Elena didn't even look before giving them the permission and waved them off. Her Lady was quite into whatever she was doing with the other Ladies. With them gone, she would have less distraction too.

Emily held hands with Mari and pulled her off to the unfamiliar roads of the Academy. The three color balls of apocalypse quietly dissipated as Elena pumped their mana to the Dragon Princess to test something. After all, what could go wrong?

_______________

"Where!? Where is it!?"

There was a black thing blurring here and there inside a sparklingly lustrous lake with its incredible speed. The mud at the bottom had completely mixed with the water, making it a disgusting color under the rainbow.

"Grrrrr!!"

It finally stopped its rampage and jumped up on the shoreline of the lake.

"Someone took it. There can only be that damn organization! AAAGH!!"

The black thing revealed to be the Vampire Lord. His malicious red eyes turned brighter as his rage reached its peak. He fired off a malevolent magic blast toward the huge lake and obliterated it completely. The aftermath destroyed the vicinity forest and blackened the land like a scourge.

He was about to leave and search for the traces of his enemies when the air on his skin vibrated slightly. He moved to the side barely in time before whatever that did the thing cut past him and splitted the earth beneath his feet.

“Damn! I just wanted to hunt a few goblins today. What bad luck.”

A young man jumped into view with an exotic curved sword resting on his right shoulder.

“Katana... Who are you?”

“Wow, this is the first time a monster talked back to me! The name is Jin, so what’s yours?”

“Hmph, none of your business.”

The ground erupted with blood-red spikes and spread out like oil on water covering a large area of the ruined forest. But the young man, Jin just phased through it all and delivered a dangerous slash right in front of the Vampire Lord.

The sword cleaved the monster cleanly in half but Jin immediately jumped far back over the spikes field. The two halves of the Vampire Lord shot out meter-long blood needles in all directions before reforming back to his original form.

“Holy shit! You are tough!”

“Hmm.”

Dracul, the Vampire Lord, looked at the dangerous swordsman with contempt. He knew vaguely about Hero and the new 'Goddess' Lumine while in his cell. But that was all he knew about them through the new prisoners. He knew the swordsman before him was related to the Hero, or outright an ortherworlder. He hated it. Had he not used all his power to run away from Lumine, this runt of a human would never stand a chance against a single one of his attacks. However, he was not at a disadvantage currently.

"Alright, I'm calling my pop."

The young man acted fast and blew a whistle loudly. Dracul was stunned by the suddenness but not for long as he had to evade another air slash. This time around the slash was devastating. The earth was parted widely, enough to make a man fall down and die. The cut stretched long enough for even Dracul to feel wary.

The nearly-half-a-kilometer long rift acted as a boundary separating Dracul and the humans. The second man with almost the same face as the first appeared silently with his sword still glinting magical light.

This is bad. That man looks troublesome. How high is his skill level?

Deciding that fighting with these humans would do more harm than good, he planned to retreat carefully.

Doing the same trick he had done with Lumine would not be bad either but he wanted these humans to scam off his back for the foreseeable future. He planned to stay near the capital for a while after all.

Dracul shot a wide area blast of dark magic making the humans evade away from him.

In a blink of an eye, he was already flying away from that place a good distance. But there was still a creature in his last location that looked just like him. The creature was a blood clone with the majority of his power packed inside. It was quite feral.

Blood explosions and magic slashes were everywhere behind him but it was not his concern anymore. If his clone managed to kill them then good. If it died, they would presume he was dead, it was good too. This was his trump card to survive anything he had been through and it never failed him.

With this stun, his power dropped drastically. He needed to be stealthily sneaking around now. Consuming more blood would do the trick for his predicament. He prefered nobles' blood as it was more sanitary and had more mana than the commoners'.

His current goal couldn’t be done so he headed toward the Castle District to restore his power and hide. He also needed to find out where the key to his treasure was. All the dragon blood and demon blood were stored in his treasure vault. If he could get it he would be back to his full power immediately. Just drinking trash blood would never be enough.

Dracul picked the largest land to infiltrate in. Because all the mansions in the capital were destroyed for some reasons, he couldn’t determine whose land was whose. The place he went in was a temporary abode for the nobles here. Even though it was temporary, it was a legitimate medium mansion. That just meant he picked the right place.

First of all, he needed to see the situation around here so he could blend in perfectly for a long time. He crawled on the roof and listened in on the discussion the nobles were currently doing.

“This is too risky. I am against this.”

“But we can’t just sit here and let Mathias do as he pleases! His daughter is in the capital, we can definitely use her!”

The discussion seemed to be very heated. Dracul moved into the ceiling to avoid the guards.

“I told you that girl is bad news! My spies reported that she is capable of Intermediate magic in the entrance examination!”

“She is just one sheltered girl! What if she is powerful? We can just throw a pretty boy at her and capture her quickly. Just hire some bards for this. After we have her in our hands, her father will not be able to act rashly.”

“You are not thinking straight. The Count would not let his daughter be unprotected in the capital.”

“Hmph! That’s why we are here. To find a way to get her. I heard the Organization refused our request. Duke Dovantine may have a hand in this so we need to be quick. Duke Rakes will remain in the Castle for a few more weeks so we are on our own.”

It was just typical politics so he was not very eager to eavesdrop on them. But he did anyway, perhaps he could gain something out of this. Nobles tended to waste a lot of resources on these kinds of things.

"Just avoid anything that would expose our identities."

"Alright, I will test the protection of the girl. A few thugs in the slum should be enough. Then we can go on with the new information."

"What about her maids?"

Another voice in the room asked.

"I heard they are strong."

"Strong or not, they are just some young girls. Fine, you can send another group to separate them. Kill them too if you want."

Dracul was thinking about whether he could use this to get some blood. Thugs were dirty though so he dismissed the idea and just waited for the conflict. He could blame the murder victims on their enemy and vice versa.

"What about the Kane Empire? If they see us fighting each other, they will not miss the opportunity."

“That is…”

“I suggest we do things more subtly.”

“Like what?”

“How about putting sleeping drugs in her drink and bringing her to our dungeon? Making a banquet for new young nobles is simple.”

What a bunch of lowlifes in suits. Perfect. If only the servants here had more mana, I could have a feast right now.

He decided to follow their plan and ruin it all later, patience was important. Meanwhile, he would sniff out any clues about the damn organization that had imprisoned him for so long. Grudge must be paid.

He laid dormant in the ceiling of the mansion to reserve his power, waiting for the right time to kill. He didn’t want to be discovered when he had become so weak. He regretted taunting the Apostle a little, she had grown too strong in the time he was caged.

His mind drifted off to a dreamlike state to absorb as much mana in the air as possible. For a vampire, doing this was not as efficient as drinking blood. It was how his race worked so he had to accept it. Still, the advantage was that his power grew explosively with better blood. He hadn’t had the time to consolidate and made the power truly remain in his body before being killed off by Lumina so he had to build up again. Luckily he had the insight to store a large amount of rare blood in his vault for time like this.

Taking a lesson from the last time, he would not rush to suck up the whole city again. If no one knew about his doing then no one would interfere. Although it would take time and some planning, he had immortality and stealth so everything would be fine.

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End of chapter 17.