A Weird Monster

Since this time around I didn't have any mana left for Body-Strengthening, running back to Abut from that place was really exhausting.

I managed, but I was huffing and puffing by the end of it.

With every muscle sore, I climbed through my window and plopped down on my bed.

"How... the hell... are you not exhausted in the slightest?!"

I playfully glared at Ispra, who had climbed onto my chest and curled into a ball.

How was this tiny, puny, little thing so strong and enduring?! It didn't make any sense!

It was also kinda hard to breathe with her on my chest like this. Even so, I didn't have the heart to disturb her.

I just closed my eyes and went to sleep.

***

!!!

I woke up from a bad feeling in the back of my head.

My eyes instantly locked onto Jagon who was reaching for Ispra. Ispra was awake and hissing at him.

I immediately sat up and put myself between the two of them.

"Calm down, Jagon. I know that this is a monster, but she doesn't have any bad intentions towards me. Let's talk before doing anything drastic."

Jagon chuckled.

"You're the one who should calm down. I wasn't planning to do anything bad, y'know?"

Ah right, Jagon isn't the kind of person to just kill Ispra like that. I was the one who acted without thinking.

'I acted without thinking...'

I side-eyed Ispra, but then just sighed.

"Alright, let's talk."

I faced Jagon with Ispra in my lap. He sat down on the chair as he usually does.

"So, what is that?"

"This is Ispra, she is the cat I told you I met when I woke up in Zelen. Yesterday night I went out for a walk and found her. She didn't attack me, didn't do anything to me, so I just started petting her. Eventually, she started purring. She then bit my finger and made a contract with me."

Jagon intently listened to every word.

"It's pretty weird that you just went ahead and petted Ispra like that. Aren't you a cautious man?"

"Yes, I'm cautious, but she's a cat."

Jagon stared at me for some time.

"...What? That's it? Just because Ispra is a cat?"

"Yeah. What else could it be?"

Jagon sighed and rubbed his temples.

"Didn't know you had such a soft spot for cats... but whatever, I get that. But what do you mean by contract? Contracts are agreements in physical form. It's something done between people. Does Ispra have enough inteligence to make a contract like that?"

'What? Contracts don't exist in this world? Then... what the hell did Ispra do?'

"No, that's not the type of contract I'm talking about. Like, she connected my consciousness with hers? That's the best way I can explain it. I can sense her emotions, and she can probably sense mine. Not only that, I feel connected to her, and if something bad happens to her, I would be able to understand that no matter how far away I am from her. That's the kind of thing that's happening here."

Jagon just stared at both me and Ispra with wide eyes.

"That's... Is something like that even possible?! You're not kidding are you?!"

I shook my head.

Jagon took a deep breath to calm down.

"Alright, I have an idea of what happened. Faun, take off your shirt and turn around."

I did just as he said.

Then, I could feel his two hands pressing on my back.

I knew that Jagon probably needed to be concentrated for this, so we sat there in silence. Even Ispra didn't meow.

After ten minutes, Jagon took his hands off. I turned to him.

He had the most shocked expression I had ever seen on him to date.

"So? What is it?"

"Ispra... connected your souls together."

...Huh?

"Wait, so that's like Soul Magic, right? And that means Foundation Magic, right?! You mean Ispra casted a Foundation spell?! All by herself?! With no help?!"

I looked at Ispra. This seemingly normal cat... was probably one of the most dangerous creatures in the world.

Jagon was even more shocked than I was, which made sense. He probably witnessed how hard it was to perform Foundation Magic first hand, and yet this seemingly normal looking cat had performed it all by itself.

"How... how is this possible? You'd need so much mana for that! Even if you were extremely proficient, you'd still need... I can't even comprehend that number! And not only that, all the calculations you'd need to make!"

Jagon looked me straight in the eyes.

"Faun, you... you have picked up something unnatural. I... I don't even know what to do. I would like to research it..."

Jagon's eyes filled with fear for the first time.

"...But I'm afraid of what it might do in retaliation. Faun, Ispra has taken a liking to you, which means she probably won't do anything bad to you. Still... you can never be too careful. Just... make sure Ispra doesn't go on a rampage."

I slowly nodded. I too was still in shock, but I had no other choice.

'What kind of pet have I picked up?! Is Ispra some God's cat?! Is that why she's so strong?!'

But then, the purrs slowly calmed me down and I started thinking rationally again.

'Perhaps with Ispra... taking on the country level threat is possible.'

Just like that, a small seed of hope sprouted in my heart.

Which I promptly destroyed. Getting hopeful wouldn't do me any favors. For all I know, Ispra could've used practically all of her mana on that Soul Magic, so she didn't have any more to spend on anything else.

'Right. Just because you did something impressive once, doesn't mean you are impressive. It's only after you do multiple impressive things that you become truly impressive.'

I wouldn't go as far as to call it a fluke... but perhaps it was a kind of trump card that needed a long time to recharge. I shouldn't rely on Ispra to get me out of bad situations.

Because at the end of the day, the only person you could truly trust was yourself.

I petted Ispra and smiled. No matter how strong she was, she was still cute. I kinda wanted to hug her so hard her bones would break.

For some reason, in the corner of my eye I could see Jagon's face slowly transition from fear to thoughtfulness.

"Yeah... perfect."

He smirked and slapped me on the back.

"Welp, you take care of Ispra! It'll be funny to see you dealing with such a strong monster!"

He laughed while leaving the room.

I continued petting Ispra, distracting myself.

***

I sat at my desk, staring blankly at my textbook.

I was not Thinking, I was just trying to escape from reality.

I shook my head to set my mind straight.

I clicked the pen and opened the empty textbook.

"I'm a lucky guy to have an empty textbook, eh? Wait, no, it was not luck. I was the one who took an extra notebook everyday for emergencies. It was me, not luck."

With that, I started writing.

I had to prepare, I had to do something about the country-wide magic circle.

But I was not strong enough. Not physically, nor mentally.

Maybe I will become physically strong in some time, but I cannot rely on something that is so far away. I had to be strong right now.

Luckily, my definition of strength was weird.

In my mind, strength was the ability to achieve goals. The way didn't matter, your personality didn't matter, nothing mattered except for the capability of achieving goals.

So becoming stronger didn't just mean hurling bigger spells, hitting harder, or being smarter. It meant increasing your ability to affect the world around you in your favor.

Money was strength. Smarts were strength. Cunning was strength. Negotiation skills were strength. Manipulation was strength. Connections were strength.

I was no good in all of those areas unfortunately, but that didn't mean it had to stay that way. I had the strength of knowledge after all.

If I tortured my brain enough, I could come up with more things from my old world that I could make here. And if I introduce those ideas to merchants... well, money will come flowing in.

If I suck up to some nobles, I would inevitably gain connections.

'I am fine with being stepped on. I just don't want to worry. I don't worry to worry... about people I care about.'

My hand stopped writing in the middle of a sentence. My whole body froze.

'...Becoming Faun isn't easy, huh?'

Faun only worried about himself and his well-being. The fact that I was even thinking about doing something about this magic circle in the first place... it proved that I was not yet Faun.

But even so... I could not just do nothing. That would weigh on my heart too much.

'―――'

If I did something about it, I would stray away from becoming Faun. If I didn't do anything about it, my heart would break from leaving all these people to their fate.

This conundrum didn't leave my mind. I was stuck in place, not able to think.

Frail hope was rising in my chest.

'What if... What if it's just a defense mechanism for the country? It isn't something bad. Yeah! Why did I jump to the conclusion it was bad in the first place?!'

I crushed that hope all the same.

'The one who hid this circle's location is a mad person. There's no way it's something good.'

I grasped at my hair and started tugging at it. But I was controlling the tugging. It wasn't painful, but it still required attention.

I slowly started paying attention to the outside world again because of that slight self-inflicted irritation.

"Just be stupid. Do both."

I'll become Faun and stop this crisis.

So what if it wasn't logical? Humans weren't logical species, and were never meant to be.

My hand continued writing every single thing I could do to become stronger.

***

I sighed.

"It's... time for my morning run."

I didn't want to do it, it would hurt my heart, but I couldn't neglect it.

With that, I started running circles around the village.

One, two, three circles. I may have turned off Natural Body-Strengthening, but I was still way more muscular than I previously was.

And that was pretty impressive, considering that my legs were stronger than most even back then.

Still...

'Yeah, it definitely hurts.'

I would randomly look to my side, expecting to see someone. Memories that were pretty recent were surfacing in my mind, making me remember how much more fun morning runs used to be.

So my heart couldn't help but be shaven away at this missing piece. It was small, but it was still a constant that is no longer here.

"But that's just life. And I'll have to get used to death either way, so let's say this is good practice."

Because making even his death practice is what that training maniac would've wanted in the first place.

***

My head tilted.

"That's a bit much to learn, isn't it?"

In a textbook I had decided to dedicate to magic, I had written all the chants for begginer spells.

I had memorized them, but only barely. I felt like I wouldn't be able to recite them tomorrow without more practice.

It was a lot to memorize. I couldn't help but grumble.

"If it rhymed it would've been ten times easier. Why do humans always have to be so efficient?"

When things rhymed, the words flowed effortlessly into each other. Here, you just had to strictly memorize it.

It wasn't even funny like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis! If it was something funny like that, I would be able to remember it easily.

But it was just a lot of words, and even in an order that felt wrong sometimes. No, scratch that, the Light spell's chant literally had a mistake in it!

Like, what do you mean, "light the everything up"?!

In hindsight, that mistake probably made the Light chant easier to memorize compared to the others. A mistake is much easier to remember than a well-structured sentence.

That said...

"Lightning is not the strongest for nothing, huh?"

The chant for lightning was long. Thrice the length of all the other ones, along with its shape similarly being more complex. But it's strength wasn't anything special. You'd probably get more firepower by just saying the Fire chant two times. Which would take less time.

I couldn't help but wonder why lightning was considered the strongest despite that. Would have to probe Jagon for that some other time.

But even considering the weirdness why lightning was considered strong, light was the weirdest out of all the types. Which should've been obvious from its chant having a mistake.

It was just... pathetic. It was not pathetic in the sense of requiring a lot of mana, or being too complicated... no, it was pathetic in the sense that it was too easy to understand.

The moment you cast the spell... you can understand it. You understand what it will do, where it will go, what consequences it will have.

And your opponent understands too. As long as the opponent can sense mana, they too understand exactly what the spell will do.

And not only that, it has a slight delay. Every other element has immediate effect, but light seems to stutter a bit before working.

In the end, it is a completely predictable attack that always gives the opponent the chance to react, no matter how good the mage was.

Light Magic was quite literally useless in combat.

'It's not completely useless outside of combat though.'

Just like I at first thought, magic circles existed in this world. As long as mana is given to a magic circle, it will do a spell.

From that, lamps are not too hard to make with said Light Magic, so it was not completely useless.

...

'I wonder if I could make a flashbang spell. No, a sun spell would be more useful.'

I wasn't talking about making a whole new spell, I wasn't that good, but I was wondering whether I could modify existing spells to get what I wanted.

A flashbang spell is pretty stupid, because a person would just have to block their sight for a split second and they would be fine. I wasn't quite powerful enough to take advantage of only a split second.

But a sun spell could be fun.

If I made a huge ball of light behind me, my opponent would be blinded while I wouldn't be. It could be useful, especially against monsters.

'...But magic circles exist, huh? I wonder... how can I mess one up?'

***

"Eat your fill. Don't rush."

I say that as I pet Ispra. She was happily munching on some meat.

She was a very cat-like cat.

She spent most of her time sleeping... maybe even too much. I've owned a cat before, and Ispra slept way more than that one did.

Maybe my theory about her soul connecting thingy being a trump card was right, and she was recovering from using it.

"Cats are so freaking cute! I don't even care that I'm getting less money because of this!"

With a final pet, I let her eat in peace.

In the meantime, I take some poison out of my backpack and drink a small amount.

I feel my muscles relax, but I manage to stay awake. It is a bit hard for me to put strength into my muscles, but not impossible.

"Sonus poison... a strong thing. I got completely knocked out the first couple of times."

I was building antibodies against all poisons. Ones that kill you, some that make you sleep, others that paralyze you.

Every single kind of poison that existed, I needed to have immunity against it.

I had bought the most potent of each type that I could find from travelling merchants. That should be enough for the short term.

'―――'

I could feel the cold poison bottle in my hand, and I was listless because of its contents. My muscles were sore from all the training I was doing. I had a pounding headache from learning magic. My mind was full of static.

I cracked my neck.

"Bring it on."

I cracked my knuckles.

"I haven't broken once yet, y'know?"