Om nom nom nom nom nom…. Phew. Haaaah.

Daaamn, that’s the stuff!

I never thought these words would be coming out of my mouth one day, but I really missed the stimulating taste of food in my mouth.

Not as a means of survival, just as a hobby I frequently indulge in.

Come to think of it, the only hobbies I have are eating and fighting, right…? Meh, who cares about a healthy lifestyle anyways.

Back to present, I’m kinda stuck in an awkward situation right now.

Despite me consuming enough food to feed a small village ten times over by now, the big ball of fire that is called the sun shows no sign of rising at all.

And just like a kid on christmas eve, returning to the physical world has left me too excited to just… sit there and do nothing, I guess.

Also, it appears whatever metamorphosis my soul went through has a bonus of sharpening my perception to previously untold levels.

How did I know? Well, it’s ‘cause I can now feel an outworldly gaze openly peeping at me from light years away, which is quite unnerving.

Actually, I sensed it the very moment I came out of my soul space, and it hasn’t moved a single inch away from my figure until now.

Doesn’t need much brains to realize who’s the owner of said gaze, right? I betcha she’s being awfully obvious with it intentionally in order to have me speak up first.

…But yeah, I’m not really in the mood to have one of our ‘talks’ right now, so I ignored it.

She’s the one at fault in the first place, so why should I be the one to initiate a conversation? I’ll just leave her hanging as a punishment for what she’s done.

I’m throwing a petty temper tantrum, you say? Sure am.

However, that’s the only way I can vent the sheer rage and terror that accumulated inside me during this period of time.

We might have a good relationship, but there’s no way I can go up to an evil goddess, slap her to vent my frustration, and walk away unharmed.

This ain’t one of those brain dead romance TV shows, y’know? If she detects just as much the thought entering my mind, she might directly eliminate me or grant me a fate worse than death.

So it’s better if I just ignore her and settle for the next best thing I can do right now.

Which is to check the new function or authority – doesn’t really matter what you call it – that comes with the Outer Magic skill!

The Magic Studio.

The name itself makes it very obvious what this is all about, but I’d rather not skip to conclusions and get disappointed later on.

Not bothering Sage while she’s focused on her own analysis, I manipulated the W system with my own mental power for the first time since I was connected to it.

I’ve consciously been avoiding doing so because I don’t wanna end up relying on it more than I need to.

Right as the thought of accessing the magic studio came up inside my mind, a new window that’s not too different from those of Sage’s appeared directly in my field of vision.

How should I describe it…  It kinda reminds me of an MMO character customization screen.

Yeah, I believe that is the most apt description.

Right in the center of the window stands an empty, majestic pedestal, backed by a number of enormous golden statues.

Each statue is holding a different kind of weapon in its hands, and each is making a different pose, has a different expression, etc… but there are two things that are common among all of them.

The first is that they all seem to be using some kind of magic whether it’s a fireball for a fire mage or straight up body strengthening for the melee mage guy that gives off the same vibes Barb did.

And the second is that incredible, almost life-like longing with a bit of despair hidden inside shown by their golden eyes as they intently stared at the pedestal.

It’s as if their lifelong pursuit was right in front of those eyes, yet they aren’t and will never be able to reach it and they know it.

However, I know for a fact that this scene is fake.

I mean… Considering my soul is a literal supercomputer, I trust in the quality of my memory as much as I do my intuition.

And that very memory has crystal clear, HD quality images of each and every one of those statues in it– even if they come from different video games.

Gods don’t give a fuck about copyright, huh? They also seem to be too good at using image editing software for some reason…

Just like your regular character customization screen, there’s a bar filled with a bunch of square icons to the right of the pedestal and a few operation buttons to the left.

In addition to those, there’s an empty text field right below the pedestal and a label with the words EMPTY above it.

Lastly, there’s a small box containing a bunch of parameters like MP consumption, required affinity, and many more placed at the top left corner of the window.

As for what those square icons contain? Well, it’s the runes that construct spells included in the W system.

There’s a unique rune depicted inside each square, and a variety of ways to sort them at the top of the bar.

In fact, there’s a freaking search bar at the top!

Then there’s also a little tab with the words Templates marked on it at the bottom of the bar.

Clicking that mentally brought up a menu with all the spells I have access to with my current level of magic and ones I have successfully casted before listed inside.

If you somehow haven’t already realized what this studio’s function is, then let me put it in simple terms.

Create and edit magic spells!

If magic was an extremely convenient ability for me before, then now it has achieved true omnipotence in my hands!

I remember Sage requiring a few weeks to edit the Poison Fog spell before because she could only rely on blind trial and error, along with her own simulations to test it.

It’s a completely different story now.

Me and Sage are sharing the same body and W system connection right now, meaning she can also access the magic studio.

Therefore, she can now conduct all of those tests directly inside the magic studio while keeping a close eye on the top left parameters for stability purposes!

Which means… I can analyze and create whatever magic spell comes to mind on the fly in practically no time at all!

Not only that, but after Sage analyzes all aspects of the magic studio, I should be able to entirely bypass the W system and use those spells anywhere and at any time in the future.

I mean, I would’ve achieved the same result if I analyzed each magic skill on its own, but that would’ve taken me ages to finish.

Like I said before, any second of time saved is very much appreciated.

I’d rather not ascend to godhood without having any offensive abilities to rely on, after all.

My intuition and basic logical reasoning says that’d land me in a very bad situation.

Alkreya might just kidnap me and throw me in the middle of some warzone in another world the moment I ascend, y’know?

Not having access to any spell of substantial significance means that would be a one-way ticket to an early grave.

But while I really appreciate this magic studio gift, I don’t really know how I’m supposed to react.

Frankly, I can see that evil goddess specifically creating this function as a one time effort so that she doesn’t need to spare any thought or effort for future rewards to grant me.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that her laziness helped me a ton this time.

On another note, what kind of evil goddess spends her days disguised as a high school student? Doesn’t she have something better to do?

Truthfully, my intuition has always told me she’s hiding something and from something, but it also told me that asking about it wouldn’t be in my best interest.

Eh, it’s not my problem anyways… at least I hope it isn’t.

I guess I can forgive her for what she pulled off.

Not without an explanation though, and I still won’t be the one to initiate the conversation!

I’m not an easy girl!

For now, let me check how this magic studio actually works in practice.

Pulling up the rune construction of Ember, the level 1 Fire Magic spell, I took my time slowly reading through its parameters and related descriptions.

As a result, I astonishingly discovered this seemingly complicated magic structure actually contains only one rune!

Although it is depicted in different shapes and forms, there’s no doubt about it.

So the W system’s magic is actually a different, more complicated version of Earth's runic magic…?

It would be great if that’s the case.

Runic magic is amongst the minority of magical abilities that have a complete set of rules governing it, making it much easier to get into.

The downside is that it’s incredibly hard to master, though that shouldn’t pose much of a problem for me.

It’s like mathematics.

Begins with simple numbers, then slowly grows into a bunch of incomprehensible formulas over the course of your educational career.

 

When I was traveling around the world back on Earth, I once came across a special nomadic tribe in northern Europe.

Although they were ordinary humans, their souls were different.

Somehow, they could use excess soul power to portray runes and cast a rudimentary form of magic through it.

They weren’t able to do much with it, to be honest. It was even worse than the level 1 spells stored in the W system.

However, two things grabbed my attention.

First, they were able to use extraordinary powers as ordinary mortal humans– which is incredibly rare but not unseen before.

Secondly, and most importantly, the energy consumed by the spells naturally returned to the atmosphere after the effects of the spell faded away.

This was especially surprising considering most other schools of extraordinary power converted that energy into some other form before they could actually utilize it.

Like those Japanese omniyouji folk and their spiritual energy, or those barbaric tribes in Africa and their black magic.

Note that said change is irreversible.

That energy will remain stuck in its new form forever– unless there’s someone or something capable of changing that of course.

The Living Rose is actually the only item I ever found capable of doing that.

It transforms everything back into MA energy, or celestial body vitality as I sometimes refer to it.

Add all of that information together, and you’d find that it’s very reasonable for D to use runic scripts on this planet.

The W system most likely requires a ton of energy to operate by itself.

So if the magic its users can utilize requires even more energy to realize, it would run counter to the original purpose.

D is surprisingly serious when she promises to get the job done, huh? A deal with her IS a deal with the devil, after all.

You will most definitely get what you asked for, albeit at a very harsh price.

Should I start a similar gig of my own…? The profit margin on that type of business is just incredible, to be honest.

Hmmmm… Thoughts for the future.

Anyways, the tweaks my parallel mind has been working on for a while are now done.

Fwoosh!

It’s a grand success!

Instead of the regular tiny two centimeter orange lighter flame Ember can create, a conical shaped, pointy tipped blue flame lance appeared half a meter above the palm of my hand.

Although the magic power consumption has more than doubled, I was able to transform a harmless level 1 spell into an equivalent of a level 5 spell.

It does have a couple of flaws though, so I better leave this stuff to Sage in the future.

All in all, I give it a hundred out of ten.

“The gift is really appreciated, but it can’t erase what has already happened, y’know?” I suddenly monologued out loud.

And in the next moment, a reply came through the speakers of the iconic smartphone which had materialized on the pillow next to me at some unknown point in time.

“Didn’t think you were that into misunderstanding tropes. The more you learn, fufufu~”

Guess there’s no running away from it.

It’s time to hear the much awaited explanation– if there is actually any.

 

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