People do love with when you ask them about the progress regarding certain things, don’t they? 

Unfortunately, Marcel is one such person. He loved to tell anyone willing to listen what he was up to, especially Alverona.  

They discussed his progress in various fields, eventually landing on the topic of his magic training experience.  

“I’m doing just fine!” He explained. To Alverona, however, his answer sounded more like that of a dead creative who’d run out of ideas. After all, magic is the substance of life, the embodiment of one’s creative genius, beliefs, dreams, and desires. To call your progress with such power ‘just fine’ makes it sound like something is wrong. 

Indeed, Marcel did feel like learning more magic sounded like a 'meh’ idea, especially after he acquired a firm skill level in Spatial Magic and learned about Natural Power. After all, he’d been bombarded with in the past couple of years, and also, quite recently, he was feeling a little tuckered out by the force he bore an endless affinity to as well as abundant magic power.  

Alverona, seeing this, thought of Marcel’s current disinterest in magic as an opportunity for some scheming. 

“But there’s so much to do, dear Marcel~! You could learn magic that creates life from nothing, more awesome than the composite magic used to create that rune artifact friend of yours…” Alverona purposefully made herself sound a bit disheartened that Marcel wasn’t learning more, eagerly awaiting his reply. 

Marcel continued to show indifference to her pleading, “I’ve learned quite a lot about magic from your brother, most of which I’ve yet to show anyone, so no, I’m not going to… right now, at least. I’m taking a break, especially while I’m still not finished with ‘that’.” By ‘that’, he means uncovering more about the world of mysteries surrounding Natural Power that Advisor Charles introduced him to quite recently.  

Alverona continued, “Boohoo! I’m quite sad that you don’t want to learn more magic, like unlocking the mysteries of my dragon race’s special draconic magic…” She sighed, a look of disappointment having formed across her beautiful face as she ‘felt pity’ for her race not getting the honor of helping nurture his skills, even if he doesn’t become one of them in the end.  

Marcel’s interest was piqued by her earlier words, “Hey, I did not say that!” He practically yelled. He wanted to learn dragon magic like she knew he did. He was practically begging for the knowledge. 

And here’s where Alverona played a trick on him. 

Hearing him say that and being the cutie he is, Alverona pretended to relent,  

“Ha, fine! Since you don’t want to learn the whole thing right now, how about some simple magic permeating through runes in our draconic script?” She asked. Marcel nodded eagerly and she made her next move. 

The Dragon Empress made a scroll and then handed it over to Marcel. Inside it was a draconic script written rune. On the surface, it looked like nothing much in comparison to the power of what Gwendal could make before he fully awakened his soul, however, when one peered deeper into it, one could feel a hidden, scary intent that caused the soul to be shaken; almost like a roaring dragon. 

“Our runes focus on embedding emotions and other concepts into other kinds of magic…” Knowing the consequences of using the rune on Marcel herself, she instructed him to interact with it, then draw it on the back of his hand.  

Examining the rune, Marcel felt something strange about it, like the very core of the rune, was alive. The moment he copied and drew the draconic rune on the back of his hand, he felt the spirit Alverona had imbued within it leap from the scroll unto his lower left arm.  

It just sat there without any problems and Alverona heaved a sigh of relief when the rune's spirit successfully attached to Marcel’s hand. It really was fine if she got Marcel to do it instead of forcibly letting the magic latch unto him. That’s a loophole she can exploit, hehehe~! Oh no…! 

The Dragon Empress, due to this new development, was nothing but ecstatic. Finally, she had found a way to protect Marcel as well as boost her constantly weakening magic power and dragon essence being sent to and purified by Marcel’s body. She could just do this, feeding him rune spirits to protect him, and hopefully, someday, his body will learn to accept them; something she figured it must have done with his witch bloodline. 

As for the rune spirit that she let latch on to Marcel’s body, she might, through it in the future, be able to figure out how to make use of Marcel’s ‘dragon essence’, acquired from purifying her Dragon Crest, and the magic power she constantly sent his way to accomplish her other goals. Her given blessing had been mostly purified, but it still fulfilled its original purpose: maintaining a connection between herself and her favorite human-ish cute boy-man. 

Yes, it’s a bit weird that Alverona has made it her mission to ensure that she successfully traps Marcel at every opportunity she can find, but, um… what’s a Dragon Empress to do with her free time and her ever-increasing affection for a dense young lad who automatically defined their relationship as foster mother and son. 

Anyway, after Marcel was done imbuing the rune into his arm, he, quite obviously, asked Alverona what it was he’d just allowed to come close to his fussy body. 

“Just a defense rune! It should easily block the attack of an S-class if they intend to harm you.” She answered, leaving out the ‘boosting her dragon race’s influence inside his body’ part that was almost as vital as the protection the rune brought him. Yeah, what a shrewd empress she is! 

Marcel, meanwhile, felt nothing but gratitude for the unexpected gift. After all, he’d just come to visit, only to receive the gift of knowledge regarding the excruciating pain of evolving into an S-ranked existence and a protective draconic rune. He thanked Alverona for the sweet gift, extremely so, in fact.  

After all, Marcel hadn’t been thinking about the S-rank for the longest time, you know, since he was still just a B-ranked existence with miles of roads to traverse before he reached that particular place. But still, today’s earlier discussion and what happened with Enya and the three S-ranked dungeon beasts had gotten him a little on edge.  

Like everyone else, Marcel had been thinking of what he'd do if he found himself in another such situation without any aid, but also, he knew how good his luck was. He would certainly make it alive from one such situation. He didn’t know about the ‘how’, however, and then suddenly, he receives this? It's almost like something is monitoring his every worry and finding solutions to them. Hm... weird! 

Still, as a B-rank and from what he heard earlier, Marcel found it absurd to be thinking too much about the S-rank, especially as he currently was. Surely, imbuing him with an invisible shield or whatever is going overboard when he will be facing mostly B and A-ranked enemies. 

Alverona certainly didn’t think so, since he’s had to face much stronger opponents beyond his power quite recently. She thought it of the utmost importance to prepare for any more unexpected boulders that might be approaching. 

To do that, she got on to explaining the draconic rune she had Marcel put on his body, 

“I probably shouldn’t have to say this by now, but your body will naturally start to weaken and absorb the rune spirit inside the protective rune you put there, since it bears some trace of my energy, as its creator and all. It isn’t a permanent solution to the matter of you always being in danger, but hopefully, it lasts until you reach the S-rank when you can better protect yourself.” 

While she was saying this, Alverona also hoped that he didn’t reach the S-rank too soon, since she wanted to protect him almost as much as she currently does. Yes, quite contradictory! 

As for the draconic rune itself, she explained that it was imbued with a command to protect him that manifested based on her original intent as three orders.  

‘Dragon Cannon’, the first one, summons her dragon essence pouring into Marcel through the Dragon Crest as a counter to a life-threatening S-ranked attack directed at him. 

‘Dragon Aura Wall’, the second order, builds an aura barrier around Marcel’s skin, making him capable of withstanding yet another life-threatening S-ranked attack thanks to her aura. It was almost like a blanket made of Alverona’s oppressive aura protecting him in the face of danger. 

Last was ‘Draconic Scales’, you know, for the times when the first two orders aren’t exactly capable of doing the job. It’s the last order of the rune and its final mission. With it, Marcel should be able to survive one fully-powered attack from a triple s-class almost unscathed should the situation ever call for it.  

This, the last rune order, entailed the rune spirit within the rune sacrificing its very life made possible by the essence of the Dragon Empress and converting it into the Empress’s impenetrable phantom scales. It’ll be his literal salvation but the rune will completely disappear afterward. Obviously, because of this, Alverona never told him of the last and final order or the fact that she had imbued life inside her rune. Typical! 

Marcel, having listened to the details of the supposed ‘two only rune orders’, thanked her excitedly with a hug and uttered, “Still, I hope it never gets used! I’ll be very careful.” 

And right there, guys, is what we’d call… a jinx. Damn Marcel jinxed his future! Now let’s just hope that it isn’t the usual cliché that leads to his doom in a week. 

After that, they continued to converse like they usually did. Alverona, like everyone else, also brought up the topic of his new beau, Enya. 

“Ugh, not you too…” He replied before he was pestered by the empress to reveal everything about her new love rival whom she planned to find and confine for thousands, hopefully, millions of years, so she can console and sweet-talk Marcel with the extra allotted time into making her his number two instead of ‘some wild freak who had the audacity to violate his sacred body’. Um, her thoughts, not mine! 

Okay, before we leave, let’s check into next week real quick, and… 

Whew! Marcel’s completely fine, at home, and has not been doomed. Looks like he got annoyed with Alverona trying to pry more information about Enya out of him and thus, came home early.  

Everything is fine! He isn’t in danger because of what he said at Alverona’s; the jinx, I mean. It seems we’ve avoided that old cliché… for good! 

Whew! That really is a relief… but if that’s so, then, oh no…