Starting Business

--- Seth's POV ---

Our conversation was interrupted by the ring of the bells, marking the start of the first period. Lien sat up straight and stopped leaning on my shoulder, making me start missing her warmth on my side.

“Is it first period already?” she sighed. She seemed to enjoy school as much as I did… well, or everyone else, basically.

“That seems to be the case, also, do you know what? I think that we don't have to quit school, even if we do as planned,” I said, reconsidering my original plans.

“And why would we stay then?” she tilted her head to the side.

“I think that our parents would be pretty worried if all of a sudden their children got a lover and then dropped out of school to live and work together. Doesn't that sound like what foolish teenagers would do? Although I never get into something I’m not sure of and my parents may believe me, what about your father? He’d surely feel worried for you,” I tried to reason with her as I stood up and put my bag on my shoulder.

“But if our little business actually started working, I’m pretty sure our parents wouldn't worry that much about us,” I added.

Thinking about my reasoning and finding no fault in it, she nodded her head. “That sounds right.”

It was more secure if I sold my spells through the internet and even if it failed for some reason, we could continue living our lives as if nothing happened. We’d have no losses, except for a bit of the money I saved, which I’d have to use to make scrolls and advertise my spell. Scrolls were mana imbued papers that contained a formation and in that formation, the copy of a spell could be placed. It could contain the details of any spell there was and the scroll would be usable only once.

This meant that unless people wanted to tutor others and teach them the old way, everyone had to buy a copy of every spell they wanted. Since noble clans had money, they usually bought scrolls containing the same spell in bulks to distribute it among their clansmen. If I stored the details of a good spell in a scroll and some people bought them, I could earn money without having to go out of the house.

Well, I’d have to get scrolls to imprint the details of a spell in it, but nothing else was necessary. There were banks and other management related sites on the internet, so I could deal with that without going out as well. Life became pretty convenient in the modern era! If I ignored the monsters, of course.

Upon leaving our classroom, we took a turn to the left and quickly navigated through the crowded corridor of the school. Upon reaching the wide stairs leading to the ground floor, we took a turn to the right at the bottom and stopped at the end of the corridor, which split into two ways.

“Well, we go separate ways from here,” I said as I let go of Lien’s hand, a bit disheartened.

“Aww, why the long face? Haha, we’ll meet in a bit,” she laughed as she turned her back on me and went to the right, towards the girls changing room.

Following her example, I turned to the left, towards the boys changing room. I really wouldn’t have minded going in with her, but the other girls surely wouldn’t have appreciated my presence. After taking a few steps, I couldn’t help but stop for a moment to take a quick look behind my back, only to find her doing the same.

“Why are you looking back?” she chuckled.

“I could ask the same,” I said smugly. Her pupils expanded quite a bit while looking at me, which made me rather proud of myself. I wasn’t sure why, though.

Rolling her eyes, she quickly turned her back on me and continued walking as if nothing happened.

“Stupid,” my ears picked up on her mutter.

Hahaha, you’re so cute, my dear lil’ Lien, I mused happily.

This was a rather strange feeling, something new to me. I knew my parents loved me, yet I often felt that I just did things for them out of obligation. It didn’t come naturally. Although I knew it wasn’t a good thing, I couldn’t do anything against the way I felt. One could either accept who they were or they could always struggle to change. I liked the way I was even if I had a few shortcomings, so I didn’t intend to change my lifestyle for now.

But with Lien, it was different. I wanted to know what happened to her, I wanted to know if she felt happy, satisfied, if she had problems, everything. It truly interested me unlike in most cases where I asked others about their troubles out of curiosity and my habit of observing people. I always found it funny how different people comprehended and processed the same things entirely differently.

Upon reaching my locker, I stopped thinking about ‘weird’ things and quickly changed into my clean uniform. It was just a combination of black shorts and white shirts. At least, the white shirts outlined girls’ bodies pretty well, so I always had something to look at, especially now that Lien was around!

But this time, just as I finished changing, two guys from another class stopped next to me. They were a good head taller than me and looked at me with intimidating eyes, so I was pretty sure that they were sent by those guys that listened in on us last week.

“Uwah, the henchmen of the Asuma clan,” a few guys from my class started whispering between each other upon noticing these monkeys.

“Can I help you?” I asked as a smile formed on my face. I found them truly amusing. How could one become a servant of another willingly? I couldn’t quite understand that emotion of wanting to serve someone. Maybe it was because I never looked up to anyone.

“The young master of the Asuma clan wishes to meet you after class, in private,” the shorter one of the two said while the taller one grabbed my shoulder. I couldn't help but think that the taller one was the muscles, while the shorter one was the brain.

“Sure,” I nodded my head.

“Good, then come to the men's bathroom on the ground floor after the first period,” the shorter guy talked again. They were both bald with perfectly round heads and were about two meters tall. If not for the difference in height, I’d have thought that they were clones or something.

Why in the bathroom? Is there really no better place?

“I will,” I rolled my eyes.

As the monkeys left me alone, one of the friendlier guys in the class, called James, said, “My condolences.” He had a bulky body as well, but considering that his trait was warrior, it was no wonder.

“Thanks, but this is no threat,” I chuckled, and then left for the arena. It was a really nice remark…

Not much to my surprise, Lien came out not long after me and told me something interesting through telepathy, “Hey, I have something to tell you. While I was changing, two girls approached me and told me to go to a restaurant to meet with the young master of the Asuma clan. They emphasised that I should go alone and also told me not to tell you this or you’d be hurt. What the fuck is that supposed to be? I kind of wanted to beat them up,” she clenched her fists.

“How did you deal with them in the past?” I raised a brow and asked in a low voice. “I used a wind barrier, so others can’t hear us,” I added.

“I ignored them, though some of them were vicious enough to make my father get fired and stuff, so we had to change location from time to time,” she sighed. Since Mr. Michael worked as a supporting magician after the death of his wife, ‘firing’ meant that he was sent to another region of the country, but supporting magicians always had to be close to the bordering cities and we were in the capital city, hence, Lien had no way to stay here back then. Most likely that was no different in Ushua either.

“That sounds pretty bad though,” I said, feeling a bit sorry for all that she had to go through.

“It is, but I learned to live with it,” she sighed.

“So? Do we ignore this guy?” she asked, returning to the topic.

“Hmm, I’m a bit curious, how come you haven’t decided by yourself?” I asked with a smile. Usually, she seemed to know what she wanted, but these days she often delayed things and heard me out before making a decision. I was happy about it, of course.

“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not that I’m having trouble deciding about my methods. It’s just that this doesn’t affect only my and my father’s life but yours and your parents’ as well. I’m not going to whimsically ignore them and then screw up your lives by chance. It’s bad enough that my father had to relocate about three times because of those bastards,” she said, massaging the back of her head.

“Do you have a headache?” I asked as I put my hand on the top of her head and squeezed it a bit.

“Kind of, from meeting idiots,” she chuckled.

“I say that you go meet the young master and I go to the bathroom as per their request,” I answered her initial question.

“Are you kidding me? I have yet to go on a date with you, I’m not going to spend my afternoon with some prick,” she shook her head.

“What? But you don’t have to. Just show up and listen to him for a short bit and then leave, whatever he wants,” I said.

“Then what’s the point of showing up?”

“The illusion of being in control is one of the most dangerous feelings,” I said with a smile.

“That’s true, it’s just that I don’t get what would you do with a noble kid who believed we followed his commands, even if just for short periods of time,” she replied.

“Honestly? That’s the only way for me to find out more about who we’re dealing with and it’d also give me more time. If we didn’t show up, he’d definitely step up his game and try something more forceful tomorrow,” I said.

Sighing, she slumped her shoulders, “Neither my father nor you taught me to be a meek girl who would kneel just because of inconveniences. My father always told me after the first case like this that I should look for the man I felt happy with and that I shouldn’t care about others, no matter what they bargained for and blackmailed me with. He even told me that I shouldn’t bother with these young masters if I didn’t like them and that we’d move as many times as needed.”

“Yet here I’m preparing to go to my first meeting with one of these stupid brats,” she shook her head in exasperation. “I bet they're going to threaten you if you go there alone, while I’ll be offered something nice.”

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. Personally, I’d rather just beat him up, but I need some time to be able to deal with them if we want to do it the forceful way. And honestly, I don’t want nobles knocking on my door in the middle of starting a business. It wouldn’t do any good for our joint plans. Either way, you don’t have to go along with his games, no matter what he plans to do to you. Just visiting that restaurant is fine,” I replied.

“Ugh, fine. Things are harder when you can’t just up and leave,” she sighed.

“Indeed, my dear, indeed, but that’s life for you,” I chuckled.

If I weren’t who I was, we’d probably have a bad end, luckily, the world was bigger than most people thought. Large enough to give life to existences such as gods and their incarnations, like me. There was only one problem. There were more gods in legends and history, which most likely meant more incantations, though I had yet to hear about any of them.

“You talk like an old man sometimes.”

“Do I?” I raised a brow.

“No, you’re just preaching bullshit,” she laughed.

“Damn you, hahaha.”

“I think you can take on at least one shot from our spell,” she put her hands behind her back and stepped back.

“Hoo? Wasn’t it me who gave you the necessary knowledge to create it?” I raised a brow.

“Are you talking about the knowledge you inherited? Hmph, no big deal, I even had to enhance it a bit to make it stronger,” she refuted.

“Someone is being very cheeky today,” I said as I cracked my fingers, finding these little banters with her amusing. I knew she didn’t mean it, though even if she did, I wouldn’t have minded something like this.

Tim walked up to us and destroyed the mood forming between us, “Seth, Lien, I’ll assign you to other opponents in the last period. Both of you should fight against different kinds of opponents.”

“Okay,” I nodded my head. At first, I thought that he was being unfair, but he gave enough practice time to Lien as well, so she had a rough idea of what to expect from our classmates. It wasn’t hard to do since whenever she took a rest, she could watch other pairs battling and find out a bit about their fighting styles. Well, truth be told, it didn’t really matter. She could beat up anyone but me in the class.

While I was chatting with Lien, Tim introduced today’s schedule, but I had no trouble picking out the important details, even if I chatted with someone else. After sparring, we’d have a meditation period, a group battle period, followed by another sparring period. We waited a few seconds until Tim finally blew his whistle and started the first period.

“Will you be able to refill your reserves if we go at it seriously? I don’t want you to run out of mana in case you have to fight back that bug,” I used telepathy to ask her.

“You don’t have to be afraid. I’m not sure why, but these days my mana has been refilling quicker than before,” she replied, making me remember that I had yet to explore the powers of the ‘God of Sex’ as well… it was a truly embarrassing role.

“Is it because of me?”

“I think so,” she mused, placing her right hand a bit above her crotch.

“I kind of want to do something more fun next time,” I followed the line of her finger, pointing at her private place. Seeing one of our classmates turning our way, she quickly pulled back her hand and I averted my eyes.

“Like?” she looked at me from the corner of her eye.

“What if we were in the open? I wonder,” I said with a grin.

Massaging her temples, she shook her head, “I’m so going to regret this… and I have yet to punish you for picking up my phone at that time.”

“Come on, you loved it, haha.”

“For how long do you plan to keep looking at each other?” Tim dragged me out of our private chat by patting my shoulder. Although talking with telekinesis was quicker than real speech, we took our sweet time.

“I’m sorry, we were just preparing,” I laughed awkwardly. We totally weren’t planning how and where to have sex next time, in the middle of class.

“Honey, if you don’t mind,” Lien mused as she put her palms against each other and then pulled them apart, forming a bolt of flickering lightning in between. But the real problem was that she was creating negative charges in the air in the whole area. Just like at times of thunderstorms, this led to the repulsion of electrons in the earth, giving the ground a positive charge.

“Why the long face? You like it?” she laughed. “I call it the Electric Field, it’s a simple name befitting of this simple spell.”

“Yeah,” I grunted. Basically, I was in a zone where she could ‘create’ lightning anywhere and anytime she wanted or she could just turn the whole zone into one large area of death. Back then when I told her about the knowledge necessary to create negative charges, I used it to create a stronger spell, but this Electric Field was a good one as well. Even more so given that the one to make it was so young.

“Where is the quit button?”

“You don’t have that in real life,” she laughed.

If I created positive charges, it’d only fuel the power of this spell and removing negative ones would take too much time, which meant that I was supposed to run out of this zone before she fired it. Of course, since we were chatting, she finished casting it long ago and could activate it anytime. Thick bolts of lightning flickered back and forth all around me, scaring even our classmates nearby. Since her mana was attached to every negative charge there was, I had no way to take control of the zone.

It had an area of four meters, so if a bolt of lightning with a diameter of four meters struck down on me, I’d be definitely finished. Although she didn’t know about it, I also found out about this spell and added it to my collection while we were apart. The only difference was that she had enough mana to use it, unlike me. It wasn’t the case anymore, but that didn’t change the fact that I was in a ‘doomed’ position.

“This is nice, but it has a weakness,” I said with a smile.

“And that is?” her eyes twitched for a moment. I had a hunch she knew about it.

“Well, if you don’t take control of the positive charges, then it’s easy to counter, I could just lift them up,” I explained, sensing her mana connecting to those as well.

“That’d require twice as much mana, but I planned to use the unsafe version, hoping that you wouldn’t realise,” she sighed. “Now I had to spend even more mana because you noticed, I should have just struck you with it,” she complained.

“What? Would you not feel sorry for me?” I gasped. Roleplaying was quite fun if you had someone to do it with.

“If that was the case, I wouldn’t have chatted with you and just struck you,” her eyes drooped.

“Too much chatting!” Tim yelled at us, not minding the fact that I was surrounded by death.

Switching to telepathy, I asked, “Did you use the safe version at the entrance exam?”

“Yeah, so the teachers had to take on a lightning bolt with a diameter of four meters. It made a hole in the ceiling and the floor got destroyed quite a bit,” she replied.

For a common teenager without the kind of knowledge and experience I had to create a spell like this, she was indeed praiseworthy, not to mention that she used the unsafe version intentionally.

Our little bouts only strengthened and reinforced my thoughts about her. Whatever she said or did, she didn’t want to hurt me and always wanted to give me a way out of it. Whether she did it intentionally or not, I didn’t care. I was pretty sure that she’d go out of her way like that only if she truly loved me, and the way she looked at me pretty much matched the way I looked at her. Really, there were just too many natural signs showing that our feelings were mutual.

“What now? We have to keep the show going,” she sighed. I was quite sure that she’d want to spar against others much more than me because of the way we felt about it. Taking a look at another pair from the corner of my eye, I couldn’t help but slump my shoulders. They both had the warrior trait and they were punching and kicking each other without any reservation, which was the norm.

What did a bit of pain matter to anyone? There were monsters threatening our lives outside the cities. Lien and I made a pretty lame pair when it came to sparring… but I believed it was a good thing, looked at from my point of view.

“Teacher, can we switch pairs now? Seth lost this round anyway,” Lien raised her hand and asked all of a sudden.

“Do you want to do it now?” he asked.

“Yes!”

“Fine by me, well, then Seth, you’re up against Leo and Lien, you’re up against, hmm, someone who’s good at magic,” Tim muttered and after thinking about it for a few seconds, he asked, “Elena?”

Hearing her name being called, Elena, who was taking a rest, stood up from her place and walked up to Lien. After quickly rearranging the pairs, we restarted the sparring period.

Wait, what? I didn’t say I had no way to stop her spell, why did I lose without even doing anything? This is unfair! Well, I don’t want to hurt her, so I’ll accept this ‘loss’, though it’s laughable.

Leo was the one who beat me last time since I restricted myself to three elements and was lacking mana as well, but since my mana pool grew many times the size I had before, I had no trouble dealing with him this time. Although I could accept it, I hated losing, so I made sure to win every round.

But Lien had a similar mindset, so she did the same… and seeing that we were winning one-sidedly, Tim rearranged the pairs again.

No good, if I don’t lose, I’ll have no opponents left and I’ll be matched up with Lien again. She doesn’t seem to want to lose either. Argh, so annoying! I guess I’ll just bear with it and lose to someone… soon. Maybe the next one?

“I see that you’ve improved quite a lot,” fixing his dark brown hair, my new opponent said. His name was James, the one who showed his condolences to me. He was one of the guys in my class who had the warrior trait and was towering with a height of about two meters and bulging muscles. He was quite different compared to me. It was visible that while I trained my body by doing push ups, sit ups, and other similar exercises, he most likely lifted weights.

“I can’t deny that,” I nodded my head.

Cracking his fingers, he took a peek at Lien and then asked, “Is she the one teaching you spells?”

“She is,” I mused.

“Heh, you’ve got a really nice girlfriend,” he hit my shoulder in a friendly manner.

“I can’t deny that,” I replied.

“Well, I don’t think that we’ve been in the same class ever before, but nice to meet you. Remember, no heavy feelings, no matter what happens!” he slapped my back and then made a few steps back.

“I know… likewise.”

“What is your trait? I’ve seen you fighting your girlfriend both in close range and with spells, so I’m really unsure how to deal with you. I don’t want to accidentally kill you if you have no physical strength,” he asked kindly.

“I’d say that I’m a mix in between, but we’ll see,” I chuckled.

“Oh? Good then,” he nodded his head and then took a stance. People owning the warrior trait had very resistant bodies and if trained to the extreme, they could withstand even the hottest of flames or go as far as to swim in lava. Of course, James wasn’t at that level since he was still just sixteen years old and a student, like me.

Actually, I had a pretty good impression of him, though he’d most likely freak out from me if he got to know me, so I was sure to keep him behind that ‘wall’, even if we became ‘friends’. Unless… it turned out that he had a similar mindset.

That was the way I’ve been living my life, I put up a front for those I got to know. I usually said a lot of bullshit and things that made others think that I was foolish, and generally speaking, I was hard to offend, so I could get along with almost anyone, even if I wasn’t enjoying their presence. But truth be told, it wasn’t necessarily a front because sometimes I enjoyed being foolish and not giving a shit about others.

Well, it had a different reason than most would think. People opened up much more in front of foolish people because they instinctively felt that they were no ‘threat’ to either their lives, their reputation, their secrets, or anything of the sort. What did it matter if ‘that silly guy’ heard one or two things? That was how most people behaved around me. It was what made it fun for me. It was quite easy to extract information and secrets out of others by doing that, though I never did anything with them. It was just ‘life experience’ which I tried to learn from.

“The teach is making pairs, so I think it’s best if we start by ourselves and don’t wait for his whistle. Have you fought against a warrior before?” James broke my line of thought and asked.

“I don’t think I did,” I muttered, adding, “And yes, let’s start.”

Nodding his head, he counted down from three and lunged towards me after saying one. With the help of dark magic, I created a black cloud around us and made a hole in the ground in front of me. Since he was sensitive to magic, he noticed it and avoided it, instead of jumping which I was hoping for. He wasn’t just a meathead!

Hmm, this might be more fun than I thought.

Quickly taking a step back, I got out of the dark cloud and made three walls, one behind his back and the other two on his sides. He stepped out of the cloud with his hands in fists and his right arm pulled back. Seeing his large fist flying towards my face, I was sure that I shouldn’t receive that…

One could ask why did I not make the hole beneath his feet, but the answer was simple. He was running at high speed and the time it took to move my mana and combine it with my imagination and my knowledge to form a spell took time. Getting it right under his feet would have been pretty hard, though I was quite close even on the first try.

But this time, it was different. Brains could process only one movement at a time, maybe more with practice, but James probably didn’t have that kind of ability and since he was moving his arm, he’d either have to pull back or fall into the next hole I made beneath his right foot, which was about to land.

Noticing my spell, he cleverly stopped his fist and moved his right leg to avoid the hole, though much to his dismay, I enlarged it. It was just twenty centimeters deep, but if his foot fell so deep in the middle of a punch, he’d lose balance. I never understood why ‘magicians’ in the old novels I read never used the simplest spells to obstruct warriors.

It was all about the balance of their bodies, after all. Magicians only needed flashy spells to deal with each other, not with close ranged opponents. While he was trying to dodge the hole, I used water magic to create a large ball of water, the size of a body, and shoot it towards him. Surrounded by walls and with an enlarging hole beneath his foot, he had no way to dodge it.

If this wasn’t sparring, I’d have used fire magic. As a warrior, he’d have survived even if I did, but I didn’t want to leave him with burn marks for no reason. Since his clothes got wet from the spell, his movements became a bit slower, so I stepped in and punched him in the stomach. I poured quite a bit of mana into my body enchantment and hit a weak point as well, so despite being a warrior, he still leaned forward with a grunt reflexively, which was the perfect moment for me to grab his head and knee him in the face.

I wasn’t sure if that was normal these days or not, but I enjoyed physical battles. They were so much fun to do! Well, the kind of physical ‘battle’ I had with Lien was even more fun… Falling on his back, he laid on the ground for a few seconds before sitting up, holding his nose. After moving around his facial muscles in pain, he looked at me, “That was an unexpected finish. I honestly didn’t think that you’d step in to make a physical attack.”

Holding my hand to help him up, I replied, “I guessed that much, that’s why I did it.”

“Haha, true. I guess it’s better if I expect movements like these even from magicians. It’d be wrong to underestimate them just because my body is resistant. It matters little if they can hit my weak points,” he sighed in exasperation.

The fact that he understood and learned from his mistake after the first battle was pretty amazing. It was the rule of the school that once one side fell to the ground, the other would win. I could have finished him with a few earth spikes or glass spikes the moment he fell, so he was pretty much dead. Most of the time, the one falling first would also be the one to die.

It was so good that I was able to use spells!

“I want to take a rest, I had a battle with Leo before you and the mana I spent on him was more than half of my mana pool,” I said.

“Oh, okay, I’ll take a rest as well. Battling with Mark was tiring enough,” he replied.

This was the way the school worked. We had to fight against all kinds of people with different traits, which made us earn first-hand experience. I heard that in the past, schools were based on nothing but theories and boring concepts of all kinds of things. It must have been very boring.

Although we still had theory, it was only what we need, the fundamentals of using mana to fuel our imagination. But the strength of a spell varied based on numerous things, such as the power of one’s mana, the amount of mana one used, the knowledge they mixed with their imagination, and the clarity of their imagination.

Not long after I took a seat on the sidelines, Lien finished her battle and walked up to me. Taking her place on the bench next to me, she pressed her shoulder against mine without even noticing what she was doing. I was pretty sure that she didn’t realise that she was ‘intruding’ on my private sphere because she started talking instantly. Though, I made it sound like I minded it, in fact, it made me happy.

“So, I’ve been listening in on your conversation with James and I couldn’t help but notice that you told him I taught you spells?” she said through gritted teeth.

“Why is that not good?” I laughed.

“You know that very well. How can you simply point all the attention towards me? Do you have no heart? I don’t want to become some idolised genius, it’s bad enough that the teacher is handling me like that,” she hit my chest with her small fist.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think about it clearly, but don’t forget that we aren’t exactly doing our best to not become famous. We should lose against others or something…” I said.

“I know!” she cried out and then rested her head on my shoulder.

Leaning against the wall, I mused, “The good old question of pride and silent life.” If we continued to perform this well, our classmates and our teachers would start talking about it and once they did that, even more people would bring it up and spread things about us. Once more people heard about us, we’d become famous. It was that simple.

To remain regulars, we’d have to lose, but both of us were struggling with our retarded pride. Pride that should mean nothing. I hated pride, yet I had quite a bit of it. It did have its uses, after all.

Lien closed her eyes and started meditating, so it was the perfect time for me to take a look into her cleavage. It was just too awesome to miss out on, especially because I was able to look at it from above her shoulder! Conveniently, I started meditating with opened eyes. Although it was less effective that way, five minutes would be still enough for me to refill my mana pool.

Raising her head, Lien looked straight into my eyes about two minutes later. “Could you stop breathing on my breasts like that? It’s pretty ticklish and it’s distracting me. Why are you breathing so heavily?”

“As if you didn’t know the answer,” I rolled my eyes.

“It’s not my fault that you spent your time staring instead of meditating-”

“It’s your fault for showing them to me and coming so close to me,” I motioned with my eyes, showing her that she sat so close that our thighs and arms were touching all along.

“It was just an accident?” she tilted her head and raised her hands.

“Like hell!” I laughed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about~”

Shaking my head, I kissed the side of her head lovingly. Once we refilled our mana pools, we continued sparring against our opponents, this time making sure that we lost once or twice. Given my knowledge and the power of my mana, I had to force myself to give up on my pride and lose a match against James in an inconspicuous way. As the incarnation of a god, my mana was naturally powerful and ever since Lien appeared in my life, it’s been growing even stronger.

The bell rang one hour later, signing the first break and my long-awaited meeting with this Asuma guy. After quickly refilling my mana pool, I left the arena and went to the mens bathroom.

As I opened the door, I found those two towering guys and the supposed young master of the Asuma clan. His hair was painted blue, which wasn’t that rare these days and he had natural blue eyes. He had an earring in his right ear and some Chinese text tattoo on his right arm. Combined with his expensive-looking suit, he looked like some kind of top-ranking gangster…

“Well, well, so you came. Good for you,” he said with a smile.

Picking a nice tone, I replied, “It’s only natural that I listen to what others have to say.”

Seeing my politeness, his mood seemed to change for the better. “Mhm, so let me introduce myself. My name is Olaf Asuma and I called you here for a simple reason. I want the girl you’re dating. She’s a real gem! She’s talented and beautiful and after checking out her personal information, I found out that her mother was a noble as well. I don’t think that her genes should be,” he paused for a moment to think.

“Wasted! That’s the word. She shouldn’t be wasted on common people like you. I was hoping that you’d break up so that I wouldn’t have to… go out of my way,” he stared at me as he finished.

That was the kind of shitty society I lived in. Every clan strived to become the strongest and most powerful. For that, they needed talented descendants. As long as that condition was met, the mayor, the police, and every other security department would turn a blind eye to ‘small’ cases like these. It wasn’t like he planned to kill me. He’d just beat me up, make it so that my parents got fired from their workplaces and other similar things.

Sometimes I couldn’t help but imagine that living a life two hundred years ago was much better. There surely weren’t things like these. Well, based on the current history, there weren’t but who knew for sure? Luckily, I didn’t have to fear this prick.

“What’s your answer?” he asked, seeing that I was staying silent.

I’m really not thinking about how to gut you one day.

“Can I spend at least one more week with her before we break up?” I hung my head and made a heartbroken face.

“I’m a bit impatient, but fine,” his eyes twitched.

I was trying my best to stop mine, though. “Thank you very much, I’ll be sure to satisfy your request!” I said ‘happily’. Honestly, I was surprised that he said yes, though I was quite sure that he didn’t mean it. He had a meeting planned with Lien already, after all.

“Mhm, you may leave now,” he played the king and told me to leave, much to my happiness. Whistling happily, I walked up to Lien and told her about what happened, even though Olaf shouted after me when I left and told me not to tell this to anyone.

Of course, I used telepathy to tell her about it, so his warning mattered little to me. On the other hand, he didn’t just appear and used brute force since the beginning, so he probably had some brain. The quickest way to make a couple break up was to fill them with a sense of insecurity and mistrust towards each other.

The easiest way to reach this was to frame one side, which was most likely me, given that he told me so openly what he wanted. Unluckily for him, I trusted Lien and I believed she felt the same way about me. I obviously didn’t have to trust myself, I was more faithful than any dog…

At the end of the day, I put a spell on Lien which would notify me if anything happened to her and with the help of it, she would be able to contact me anytime she wanted. It was a simple Linking spell that used soul related knowledge, though people had yet to ‘invent’ it. Considering that it’d serve the betterment of human life, I thought about making it the first spell I’d sell. Everyone who wasn’t brain dead understood the importance of fast communication, so it had the potential to become the best selling spell! Even in games where you had to rely on view range, better players always spent the effort to increase it.

Though… I may have spiced my Link spell with a few extra effects since the one for sale would be used only for communication purposes.

What people didn’t understand was that Mana wasn’t exactly a thing that humans invented. It existed long before us, it was what made up the rules of nature, something they called physics and chemistry in the past. It was what made up our souls which people had yet to find out about. Long ago when technology consisted of rocks and sticks, there were people who could sense and use mana to some degree.

They were called shamans and whatnot, but in fact, the oldest ones, the first humans with immense knowledge related to mana were called ‘Gods’. These gods experimented with the soul or a given part of nature and honed their skills to their best, which was what gave them the ability to gain power from other people’s beliefs. People’s beliefs fueled their ‘imagined’ spell, which relied on their knowledge of the soul.

They may have been forgotten in the past, but now that mana and magic returned, we, their descendants, were waking up. I believed it wasn’t long before the world changed for the better or for the worse and I wanted to have Lien by my side when that happened!