There was no clock or watch to tell the time, but as someone who had sleepless nights due to the pressure of getting a decent grade, Mireille could estimate the current period. Around one to two in the morning.

She watched her sleeping friend on her lap.

You flee from the religious body. If the church is hunting after you, that means you did something profane.

I wonder what those things are. You said that you met a succubus, so maybe a member of the church caught you interacting with the sex demon. If you were curious about me because I didn't behave like the real vampire you expected, then I wanted to know what on earth was your business with that semen-milker devil.

Outside, you look innocent, but inside, you're probably a dirty woman. Moira, if you can read my thoughts while you're sleeping, sorry if I sound offensive. I hope my assumption to you is false. Please, prove me wrong. Well, this is my first impression of you. 

Anyway, let me check out this book of yours. 

Mireille inspected Moira's book. Sepia covers and yellowish pages. Pocket-sized and compact. No text was printed but a black circular symbol on each cover. No lock or anything like straps to secure the content.

If this was a personal diary, why would Moira give this to her so easily? She was given a quill and a bottle of ink, which meant her friend wished to formulate magic and pen it down into this book. If they both were developing magic, then this book must be a grimoire.

She opened the book and a writing system made her mouth agape. It had a resemblance to Southeast Asian orthography. As a foreigner, the writing script sophisticated her. Neat penmanship. She wished Moira would teach her this, so she could write and communicate better.

However, she talked with her language without any problems. Well, that was good. It was convenient for her. She had to not worry about the spoken language barrier and learn it the hard way. All she needed to do was to get by heart this gorgeous writing script.

She skimmed through the pages of the book. Even though she could not read a single thing about it, some pages had bold scripts that took out the most space. Several contents had symbols she was familiar with, like pentagrams and crosses. A few even had numerals in them.

Heh. You have math here. Anyway, you wrote this to fire energy waves? Kamehameha! Or, maybe, nuke nations to kingdom come? Explooosion!

The content was plenty, but it only took a little more than a quarter of the book. The rest were all blank sheets of paper. 

So, in the meantime not to get bored waiting for her friend to wake up, she dipped the quill into the bottle of black ink. On the last page, the first thing she did was write a couple of sentences in Latin script. "If you can read this, then please bring back the internet here." She would not benefit from it, but it would be great if she could meet with a person who was in the same boat as her. 

She flipped to the next page. This was like a grimoire, so she should compose magic by writing a sort of formula. As she was thinking of it, she pointed the tip of the pen on her chin at what she would write, but she forgot it was the soft feather of a bird. It tickled her a bit. 

What would she pen down to formulate one? A phrase for firing a fireball? Maybe, an energy wave? A magic that could enhance all attributes? Perhaps teleportation magic? Before she would write something, she thought of a little prank.

She rubbed the smooth feather into Moira's nose. She chuckled from a face that looked like someone was about to sneeze a good time. She did it again and the dreaming doll got annoyed, sweeping her hands away.

Hahaha! I wonder what you're dreaming of right now. Maybe, you're cursing the cotton demon. Let me do it a third time. 

HAHAHA! Alright, I'll stop. I almost woke you up. Wait, you snore?! Oh my! You old hag!

Okay, so... what shall I write here?

She stared at the blank sheet of paper for a minute and had no idea how to formulate magic. She scratched her head, and she did not know what format she would use if ever she composed one. Would it be in paragraph or phrasal form? Write it like a poem, so by stanzas? Maybe, construct symbols and write the function of it? 

So, she composed an incantation of a ball of water in phrasal form. As she read a few fictional works, she believed that "Magic is the fruit of one's imagination." 

After she wrote her made-up magic, she read it aloud, but not noisy enough to wake Moira up. She expressed the line with her hands up in the air like some prophet. "O' Water Spirit, heed me. Awake those before me and grant misery. Orb of cosmic nature, Hydrophobia!" 

Eeewk! What am I doing?! I never knew I had inner chuuni! Heee! What a goofy ahh cringe chant! Someone please skin me and toss me into the sea! I want to die!

There should be a ball of water materializing out of her palm and falling into Moira's snoring face. There should be! She imagined it hard and even had waves on the surface. She even visualized a planet composed of water and appeared right in front of her as a mini globe.

Yet, nothing came out.

Well, she was not disappointed, but she cringed inside when she voiced out the incantation she made up on a whim. Her attempt at developing the magic got her. If Moira listened, she would bleed her lips from acute embarrassment and be stubborn to never say it again.

If evoking words did not work, then would creating symbols with functions or descriptions do the trick? The book had shapes and characters with paragraphs along the way. Though, she did not know if those were captions, lores, or methods. Any of those, what if she also did the same? 

If she drew a figure of fire and wrote the descriptions of it, then that spell she created should cast a flame heating on her palm. If she made a series of characters or shapes like pentagrams and stars, then the result depended on what she intended to write. Maybe, disabling one's flow of magic.

So, she opted for the familiar concepts first. She drew a symbol on the blank page that should read as the "drop of water". Similar to what she saw from playing a stylized open-world game. She drew another one and it meant the "wave of the sea". They were both water magic, but the output should be different.

Next, she wrote a purpose for the drawn symbol. "To awaken the slumber. To baptize the soul. To purify the sin." After she wrote these, however, she stared at nothing but air, having doubts if these phrases even made sense or if she was doing the right thing.

And now what? How would she execute it? Should she place her palm on the page and say the written words? Moira did not utter a single word when healing her impaled neck. If that was how to release it, could she do that too?

She drowned her face in the book and sniffed the pages.

Ah~ Is this new? Smells so good! But it looks old and yellow, like those papers in the depths of the storage room for a long time.

Okay, seriously, I don't know what I'm doing. I mean, how to do magic? How does it work? For example, when I searched for coconut fruits, I ran so fast, yet I sensed no strange feelings like a sort of energy surging through me. That was as if I was born for that, a normal thing to me, and ingrained with me. 

I'll be disappointed if I never did some magic here. Okay, last chance. If this does not work, well, that's still good. At least I try.

She readied her mind to make the magic she wrote come to fruition. "To form magic, create a mental picture of it." Recollecting what she learned from reading a few novels, she racked up her brain to imagine her blood as a "magical blood", a secondary "blood", rushing into her hands.

She did not know if that term made sense. She made it up, but this made her understand better as "magic" tended to be the essence of one's soul. Physical blood could not be controlled, so she wanted to know if there was a kind of blood that could be manipulated. 

Well, she did so and nothing happened.

Oh my gosh! I'm twisting up my brain and nothing came out! I thought that sniffing the book would do wonders! 

Failure! Disappointment! Haiyaa! What are you doing, self? You're wasting time and you look stupid trying to create a single drop of water. Oh mah ghad! 

She stopped her attempt to cast magic, but she would not give up. There was no way she could not do it. If she could run almost 100 meters per second and break a hard coconut shell like an egg, then there must be something to make her achieve that strength. 

She put aside the sepia book. There must be some magical formation that only Moira could use in the content of it. If that assumption was true, then she could only provide more ideas to expand the spells. Magic should be full of possibilities. It would be no surprise to ask permission from the author of the book to use it. 

Speaking of which, when she drank all the blood, she killed Moira and went back to life. Would that suggest that this human must be impressive? 

She sighed. How could someone like Moira run away from the church? Restoration magic to bring back from death. Illusion magic to hide from outsiders. Enhancing magic to strengthen the structure of an aging cabin. With these crafts she had, how could she not fight back? 

This is another world with magical energies in it. I'm not giving up. I'm a vampire that shall be terrifying when manipulating magic. They are always depicted as powerful ones, right? And so do I.

Back to casting the magic, she could not get over not realizing it. When talking about vampires, the first thing that would come to one's mind was "blood" as they were always associated with that. So, then, her forte in magic should be something to do with blood. 

Blood knives. Blood threads. Blood swords. Magic should be limitless. Magic was one's fruit of imagination. Magic defied logic. It was an absurd concept that forced common sense to understand.

She bled her right thumb with her sharp nail and a deep crimson fluid dripped through her palm. Now that she had it, she imagined the figure of a small knife. 

It did. 

Holding off her excitement, she visualized the image of a spoon. 

It did.

She pictured her father's belt, a permanent memory embedded in her mind when her buttocks got whipped by that ultimate weapon.

It did. 

She got pumped up and commanded her blood to return to her body. The open wound she cut healed right after. "Yes!" She made sure her lips could only hear her voice and hold off from jumping into the air. If she trembled in elation, she would wake Moira up.

Why did I not think of this from the start?! Ugh! I looked funny trying to cast a ball of water!

Oh well. It's not like I'm a scholar. Or, is it because I don't see myself as a vampire? I see myself as a girl who's determined to learn all possible magic. Maybe, I'll ask Moira to be my teacher. 

This was what she talked about. Her secondary blood, her magical blood. To manipulate it on her will, she became her boss. 

Meanwhile, the sleeping doll on her lap snored.

Hahaha! Why do you snore like a pig? I mean, you're too young for that.

So, I've finally done some magic, what shall I do? There are still more hours before the sun will rise. Shall I draw some here? Maybe sketch Moira's sleeping face? M'kay, I'll do sketching. 

Talking about vampires, I wonder if the sun will turn me into ashes. Or if the sun is merciful, it will burn me for eternity until the night comes.

I hope it's not true. 

Before Moira would wake up from sleep, she spent her time writing on the book. In one whole page, she drew everything she knew. She was hoping to provide her friend with more ideas and expand her crafts.

She even wrote a chapter of her isekai novel that was never published online! Because her vampire's body never required sleep, she filled many pages with her scribbles. Well, she had not to worry about being read since all of it was just doodles of what was on her mind. Nothing about it was about her identity.

Moira said that magic emerged three months ago. That was too short for a world to change into a new era, yet within that period, this girl sleeping on her lap already developed magic spells that should be achieved by scholars.

Was Moira the daughter of a noble, if not, an affluent family? Meeting with demons, she must be taught with knowledge of how to encounter them. Yet, because of curiosity about different beings, she was chased by the church. 

Moira said to me, "With your existence here…" I wonder if there are other beings aside from demons and aside from me. Maybe elves exist here too? Maybe dwarves too? Maye dragons too? Maybe alraunes too? Maybe beastmen too? 

Beastmen?! If they exist here, I hope to meet felines and rub their furs! 

Ahhh! I'm impatient! Please, world, let them exist!