— Three Years Later —
Over these three years I achieved mastery in all six arts and became a master of fire magic. They learned about me, and for veelas I became their king, whom they worship and beg to give them a child. Using knowledge from the book, I made veelas much stronger, and we began conquering France.
Ah, I wish it were so, but NO.
Everything is much more prosaic — as I was at the basics level, so I remained. No, there was progress, but insignificant. I can change facial features and hair color, strengthen myself twice, briefly leave my body, my brain works better and faster, plus I'm slowly approaching absolute memory, and in love magic I can seduce... well, my mom to kiss such a sweet me on the forehead. Though I could do that before too.
It's just that all veelas turned out to have quite high resistance to mentalism and empathy, so I couldn't really test my powers. But squirrels, hedgehogs and other peaceful animals are crazy about me.
I sit like Snow White, and various animals run around me and nuzzle, amusing. Apolline constantly asks me now to summon some cute animals, and it's not difficult for me, I love animals myself. Well, those that don't try to bite your head off.
In wand magic everything is much better, and I learned spells for the first three courses and a couple books of household charms. Generally, wand magic differs from Sumerian like driving a car from assembling it from scratch. From complete scratch, when they showed you a mine with ore and told you to dig it up and smelt a car.
Now, I think, it's clear where such mastery timeframes come from. With fire magic it was better than with the six basics, but worse than with wand magic. And that only because I started training control with telekinesis, which helps develop it in general. I can now throw fire, or not throw it. Cool, right?
Joking, I can now change form to simple ones, compress or expand fire, make it hotter, and basically that's all. Well, mana costs decreased, which is also good.
I wasn't saddened by my achievements. Better slow and good than fast and in the grave. If I do get a childish desire to blast something harder, I go to the lake, create the biggest fireball I can, and throw it in the center. If there was fish in this lake once, there isn't now. Joking, it was never there. Probably…
And so I'm meditating, learning zen, when suddenly I hear a cry for help from afar. Enhanced hearing caught the approximate direction — about two hundred meters from the village border. I, not being a fool, didn't go there. Who knows, maybe it's some trap? But I warned the adults that someone was crying for help in the northern direction.
If this were a human village, they might have told me I was imagining things. But not in Veilon — that's what our settlement is called. Two girls and Ariel went with me to that place, and we immediately found blood traces. Mother quickly covered me, and the girls, transforming into harpies, began examining the surroundings from the air and quickly found a barely alive boy, a werewolf apparently.
I remembered him — saw him on my birthday with his father when he entered before us. One of the girls waved her wand, closing the bleeding torn wounds, then lifted him into the air and headed toward the floo connection point.
That's the only inconvenience — you can't send the wounded quickly. Though it's not far here, he won't die.
As it turned out later, the boy was kidnapped by criminals to sell his organs on the black market. Werewolves are quite valued in terms of ingredients. But they didn't expect agility from a little werewolf, for which they paid.
He literally gnawed out one of their throats with his teeth and escaped, getting hit by a couple charms from the second. So he crawled to the nearest settlement, that is, to us.
True, from blood loss he lost consciousness, and if not for me, he would have died. That's how I got an acquaintance who, learning who saved him, decided to get to know me.
"Hi, so you're the one who saved me? Thanks!" — a sturdy for his age brunette looking about 8-9 years old shook my hand so firmly that I had to use yoga so it wouldn't hurt.
— "And you're strong, though you wouldn't say so by looking."
"Know our kind! Many underestimate veelas," — should I tell him I'm a guy? Pff, I don't trust him.
"Now I'm in your debt, if not for you, then..." — the boy began, but I interrupted.
"Forget it, I heard you by accident. And it wasn't me who saved you, but these two girls," — I pointed to the women who saw the recently saved boy and decided to greet him.
This happened near my house when I was about to leave for training, so I continued on my way, but alas, they caught up with me and brazenly offered to be friends! What horror!
"I'm called Patrick, and you?" — the boy asked.
"And I'm Arthur. Listen, I'm going to training," — I tried to make excuses, but...
"Cool, I train in the clan too, let's go together!" — probably half of Veilon heard my heavy sigh. However, I quickly realized I was wrong to refuse.
…
"Let's go again!" — wiping bloody mess from my mouth, I said, getting up.
"Maybe we shouldn't? You are a girl after all!" — Patrick doubted, who just recently made such a throw that I flew a couple meters and ate dirt.
"We should, Patrick, we should. You asked for it!" — and I ran at him, trying to use my agility and hit from the blind spot, but how strong and fast werewolves are! He blocked two of my strikes and answered with a counterstrike to the stomach, making me slide on my feet.
You couldn't think of a better sparring partner for yoga! An adult would hit too hard, and my peers too weakly.
Without stopping, I rushed from the spot and made a sweep, knocking his knees. Got it, he lost balance and fell. Now a strike to the head — and I stop an inch from his eye, turning my fist into a palm, which he, hesitating, accepted.
"Not bad, not bad at all. Are you sure you're not a werewolf?" — the boy laughed.
"Definitely wasn't this morning. Unless you bit me! You didn't bite me, did you?" — I squinted my eyes and, seeing his amusing facial expression, laughed.
"Well, if you need to scratch with fists, then come."
***
Patrick always considered veelas strong beings, but thought their strength was in charms and fire. Today he changed his obviously mistaken opinion, meeting the strange girl Arthur, who refers to herself in masculine form.
His nose couldn't deceive him, even though he didn't see how she used fire or transformed, but he felt the beast in her, and his instincts simply screamed that before him was a strong opponent. Possibly much stronger than him. And this stirred his blood.
***
About metamorphism I lied a little. Yes, without spells I can do little. But in metamorphism there are only two of them — matrix removal and transformation. And today I removed my first human matrix. Before this I took them from animals, but was afraid to transform into them, since I might get stuck in such form forever without experience.
The ritual of binding spatial storage, where my real body will be during transformation, I already conducted. It was painful, but not as terrible as when creating the emblem, that is, bearable.
The moment for real magic has come.
***
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