Time passed by quickly, Jun kept up with his training and started visiting the Shidou house every once in a while.

He was now ten years old but looked at least thirteen. Much as he had feared, he looked like a true pretty boy and middleschool girls giggled conspiratorially and whispered to each other when he crossed them in the street.

Jun didn't mind the admiration but he really wished he looked a bit more manly. Right now, he was far too much of a pretty boy for his tastes.

Irina now, had a full blown crush on him, due to his looks, his more mature attitude and the fact she knew he was actually as powerful as her father's subordinates really played a big role in that. Unfortunately, she was still far too young to arouse Jun's interest.

Not only that, with his body not yet reaching puberty in spite of looking like it, he really lacked that physiological drive. Not to mention he was fully focused on getting strong enough to take care of himself for the time being.

On a second note, Jun was not bothered by Kawamura, or any exorcists anymore for that matter, which made his impression of Touji rise considerably.

Moving on to other matters, with his basic skills as a magus fully mastered and further improved, he took steps to make Kuoh more secure for him.

First, he found a mostly abandoned building with two underground levelz and put its legal owner under his thrall. Once Jun got older, he could then have him sign over the property to himself.

The reason for this move was to create a workshop to practice his magecraft, something indispensable for any magus.

He created a nice enough living space above ground while he focused on making a nice workshop underneath. Hypnotizing people to give what you want was pretty easy with magecraft, it made Jun wonder why more magus families didn't do it but there were probably reasons.

With multiple boundary fields to enhance the structure, warn against intrusion, keep people away through subtle influence, block attacks and dispose of intruders, it was truly a small fortress capable of taking a missile and, inside that territory, Jun could take on people considerably more powerful than himself.

Such was one of the advantages of a mage's workshop. Facilities to create magical items, magic circles to help with various tasks and other things were also put in place.

Jun also caught several stray cats and some birds and made them familiars to keep watch on the whole of Kuoh so that he wouldn't be caught unawares by any occurence in the city.

Also, thanks to the great differences magecraft had with local powers, this surveillance network was nearly undetectable by most.

Needless to say, most of these things were enhanced by runes since that had been the main focus of Jun's magecraft studies for the past three years.

Although he had the potential to wield Primordial Runes to their full potential, Jun was still far from being able to so at this point, even still, his runes were quite a bit more powerful than those of a modern Nasuverse magus.

But that was far from being his only growth as his training of other skills similarly progressed a great deal.

*

Name: Haikami Jun

Race: Human

Gender: Male

Parameters:

    Strength: ->E-

    Endurance: ->E-

    Agility: ->E-

    Mana: E->D

    Luck: EX

    Magic Circuits: EX

    Affinity: True Void

Skills:

Scion of the Void (-/UEX)

Kalaripayattu (E->D)

Pankration (E->D)

Ascetic (E): Resistance to basic needs like hunger, thirst and sleep. Slight resistance to exposure. Strong tolerance to pain and injury.

Breathing and Walking (->E): The ideal way of breathing and walking. No movement or energy is wasted. Level of attainment that allows for physical strength, stamine, agility, reaction speed, thought speed and endurance above those of even a highly trained human. Despite this, it is still beneath the level of being able to reproduce Mysteries by the virtue of this state alone.

Magic Resistance (E): The lowest level of Magic Resistance. While it does not cancel spells, it does somewhat reduced damage taken from them.

Magecraft:

Reinforcement (C->B): Can reinforce one's body to a great degree including more complex body parts like the eyes and auditory system and even the brain. Objects can also be reinforced even those that are very high grade in terms of mystery.

Magic Bullet (C->B): Smooth and quick activation with full control and efficiency even when used at high power. Slight self harm occurs if maximum power is used repeatedly, otherwise it is limited to some discomfort. Power can range from that of a handgun to that of a medium caliber cannon.

Magic Burst (D->C): Smooth and quick activation while maintaining near full control and efficiency. efficiency becomes worse the more power is put in but control suffers little.Striking power and speed greatly increases.

Mental Archive (C): No memory is forgotten and can be easily accessed. The user's resistance to memory altering effects is significantly increased.

Thought Acceleration (D->C): Thought processing is greatly accelerated.

Memory Partition (C): Three partitions with tetration allowing for 27 thought processes.

Memory Manipulation (E->D): Allows for deeper alteration of the memories of normal people only. Can temporarily confuse a supernatural being so long as their power is not too high. Can brainwash a weaker magus through repeated heavy use and regular reapplication.

Rune Magecraft (D): Inheritance of the rune magic system originating in Scandinavia. Allows for the use of various runes for diverse effects with solid proficiency despite not yet reaching the level of a master with these rune being able to be drawn mid air with magical energy. Can also make use of Gandr for direct attacks without drawing runes.

(I didn't see the point of putting in the other basic stuff.)

*

With his increased physical abilities, if Jun used Reinforcement magecraft, he could temporarily reach the E rank in his physical parameters, this could be further boosted by the use of runes, making him a force to be reckoned with against being up to and including mid class in this universe by virtue of just his physical prowess.

After all, these parameters were on basis of an heroic spirit that, even if a mere E rank in strength, can use a harmless blunt ceremonial dagger to rip a person's arm off. As such, under Reinforcement magecraft, Jun was now quite beyond the domain of a normal human.

His footsteps could punch holes into the ground and his strikes could wreck buildings, fell large trees and tear apart normal humans, specially when he used Magic Burst.

His continuous use of Tempering magecraft did not only raise his base physical attributes, it also finally granted Jun basic Magic Resistance which was a start.

Jun's skills in terms of martial arts were also upped by one rank for each of his practiced disciplines and even his Breathing Method saw some breakthrough.

The most basic of his spells that relied on a pure application of magical energy improved one rank but considering they were not too shabby in the first place meant the actual improvement was quite significant.

On the matter of his mental spells, only Thought Acceleration saw improvement while the others remained much the same. It was not that strange since they were spells that got exponentially more powerful and thus difficult at higher ranks when compared to things like Reinforcement.

Still, with Thought Acceleration, the basis of it all being improved, Jun expected the others to rise it turn with more practice.

His studies resulted in a solid grasp of Rune Magecraft but Jun wanted to refine it to at least B rank before moving on to something else so it remained its focus when it came to magecraft. He had already branded most of his clothes with runes that enhanced their toughness and his own abilities.

Naturally, all of this training in magecraft resulted in Jun's ability to properly draw out and control the power of his magic circuits to be increased, thus raising his Mana by another rank but he was still extremely far from fully drawing out his potential in that regard.

With his abilities increased and a safehouse workshop established, Jun was more confident about making his own moves and while before, he was hesitant to try and acquire the sacred gears of Issei and Saji, the former in particular due to his proximity and closeness to the Shidou household, now, Jun was more willing to do so.

As such, he began drawing plans to get Issei alone, put him under a powerful mental suggestion, extracting his unawakened Boosted Gear and then, if it all went well, repeat the process for Saji.

It should not be too hard. According to Ahsaka, with no resistance, the process was quick and easy so catching them alone and getting it over with should be easy enough.

Jun was somewhat worried whether the souls inside the sacred gear would be able to resist the process but once again, Ahsaka assuaged his worries, claiming that with the sacred gears unawakened, these souls would be dormant and unable to interfere, even lacking awareness.

With these assurances, Jun made up his mind and decided to execute his plan and see the boons that could be obtained by using the Akashic Converter on these powerful sacred gears. Well, Saji's was actually not that powerful . . .

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P.a.t.r.e.o.n is officially up!

The link is: https://www.p.a.t.r.e.o.n.com/lusoba  without the extra dots of course.

You'll get to read up to FOUR week ahead, a full month, but I'll still post here.

There's also my other novel Archon of DanMachi, do check it out!

I would greatly appreciate any support since this is going to be my breadwinner.