"I don't know. There's a chance they might never forgive you."
"Then…"
He shrugged. "You can't satisfy everyone. The important thing is how you feel."
She smiled wryly. "That's just like you, brother."
"Don't worry. I'm on your side."
"Thank you."
"What about your injuries? Should you be out of bed right now?" he asked.
"Now that you mention it…" Her voice trembled.
"We can talk later. You should head back for now."
"Alright."
When she closed the door behind her, Freon heaved another big sigh. He could not tell how deep Nassandra's scars were. Not the physical ones, but emotional ones. Those were the hardest to deal with. If this experience inflicted a greater trauma than before, it might genuinely break her spirit forever. That was not something Freon wanted to see. Unfortunately, it was not up to him to decide. He could only hope that his sister would be okay.
"Prove me wrong, huh?" he mumbled.
To be honest, he thought she would have been hiding somewhere waiting for rescue. For her to attempt to escape with two other people, one a child and the other an elderly woman, was a shock. It was hard to express how impressed he was. Compared to her, Freon travelled and fought in a gigantic group of nearly forty people. They had weapons, armors, and supplies. Not to mention, some were Grand Knights and Arcane Knights! Their great combat power helped ward off the fear and nervousness Freon would have otherwise felt. Even when they were separated, he had Elizabeth with him. He could only imagine that had he been by himself, his mental state would have suffered a lot harder. And yet, Nassandra, who was effectively fighting by herself deep underground, managed to do just that. All that to save two people she did not know. Her courage and kindness were truly admirable. Freon could not say he would do the same in her shoes.
"You already proved me wrong."
He touched his burn wounds and winced. They came from the violent collision between his fire spell and the lava salamander's final attack. His hair was a burnt mess, including his eyebrows, eyelashes, and the hair on his arms and legs. Although he acted strong in front of Nassandra, it really hurt when she hugged him. Fortunately, she did not seem to notice. It would have added to her guilt. Looking at his numerous bandages, he deflated. His recovery would take a long time. In his Core, there was a small drop at the center of a dense cloud of Magic Energy. This meant Low Condensed Drop, except that drop showed signs of instability. The edges blurred, almost like it was on the verge of unravelling. Because of his backlash, he came very close to falling out of Low Condensed Drop. It erased months of hard work, putting him right at the beginning again. His Channels received heavy damage too, though not on the same level as Elizabeth. He could still cast spells.
There was nothing to do, so he reviewed the battle in the caves and determined his areas of improvement. First was his combat system. It was overwhelmingly offensive-oriented, with little development in the other aspects. The five aspects of a combat system were offense, defense, movement, investigation, and recovery. He had three offensive spells: Infernal Dragon, Thirty-Six Falling Stars, and Cleansing Snow. They were flexible and powerful. For defense, he had Infernal Gate and Three-Pointed Barrier. They could use some work. Finally, Spring Step for mobility, Verdant Apathy for recovery, and nothing for investigation. These were his main weaknesses. He vividly remembered how hard it was to run through the forest without a Martial Perception, how he could not recover his Magic Energy when it emptied, or how finding Nassandra after she ran away was near-impossible. If he had a better method for any one of these three, it could have changed everything. He placed his focus on this. His new goal was one spell for each.
Since he was bedridden, testing a movement spell was out of the question. In addition, a recovery spell could have unknown side effects, which may worsen his injuries. That left investigation. Investigation methods had two varieties from what he knew. Either it could improve your Martial Perception or your Magic Perception. The latter was rare, because the minimum requirement to extend a Magic Perception outward was Condensed Drop Core Level and less than ten people in the Zino Kingdom had that. A Magic Perception could only detect Magic Energy, so it begged the question for how useful it could be in the human world where a tiny fraction of the people were Arcanists. Despite that, Freon preferred a spell for his Magic Perception. It was better to play into his strengths.
He began drafting out his new spell. Every spell had a unique Magic Circle, which governed the flow of incoming Magic Energy. To cast a spell was to invoke its Magic Circle, so being an Arcanist essentially meant memorizing Magic Circles. Freon had ten spells that he could comfortably recall in combat, then another twenty that he was unfamiliar with. To make a Magic Circle and thus a spell, one needed to consider runes. Runes were the building blocks of Magic Circles, akin to words of a sentence. A Magic Circle could have as little as one rune, though typically they had many more. The quantity of runes was generally related to the capacity or 'strength' of the spell. For example, a Low Gaseous Fog spell had between one and five runes, a Medium Gaseous Fog had between five and ten runes, and so on. Change one of those runes, and the entire spell would change, often times with disastrous results. It was a matching game to figure out the ideal combination, if it existed at all.
The Zino Kingdom had discovered around a thousand runes. They were public knowledge that anybody could find in books. However, rumors had it that the Engelsheft Families kept a small amount of runes secret. This enabled them to create spells that nobody else could. As the saying goes, knowledge was power! Ten Dawn Runenda, one of the two surviving Ten Dawns from the Xingyuu Empire, was unironically called the 'Grand Archiver of all Runes', because she had a near-perfect memory of every rune and spell in the Zino Kingdom. She was a living archive! Compared to her, Freon remembered far less. He needed to review them again.
It helped that this mansion had servants, because he could ask them for materials. An hour later, they delivered what he needed. A wooden tray rested on his lap coupled with paper, ink, a brush, and many thick books for Arcanists. It would have been nicer to sit at a desk, except his body was still in a poor state. He had to tolerate staying in bed. Picking up a brush, he listed his requirements for the new investigation spell. It needed to interact with his Magic Perception, have a wide range, and the ability to focus on targets. Ideally, he should be able to concentrate his entire Magic Perception in a single direction to explosively increase his range and accuracy. Having interactions with his Bloodline Ability would be great too. It was a straightforward improvement over using his normal Magic Perception. With that settled, he moved onto the next step.
His brush moved swiftly. From time to time, he consulted the books on the side. This was not his first time creating a new spell. His pain-dulling spell, Verdant Apathy, was his own creation. And in fact, the magic academies taught everyone how to do it, so he had plenty of practice. By dusk, twenty Magic Circles were drawn up. They were not the final product. Not even close. Rather, they were incomplete spells containing two or three runes. The idea was to test the rune combinations using the least runes and Magic Energy possible. If any failed at this point, then the damage was minimal. He could shrug it off, even in his wounded condition.
Using a new wand, he cautiously controlled his Magic Energy according to the Magic Circles. The first four broke apart immediately. Despite the streak of failures, he remained calm. This much was normal when creating a new spell. The fifth one was stable for three seconds. It might work better by changing one of the runes. Sixth to tenth failed. On the eleventh, the Magic Circle floated elegantly above his wand. He inspected it closely and saw no problems. It was usable! The fifteenth, sixteenth, and nineteenth Magic Circles showed some promise too. In the end, only five of the twenty Magic Circles worked. That was an abysmal one in four. This was obviously not enough to create the spell he wanted. He had to test more rune combinations. Yawning, he realized how late it was. It would have to continue in the morning.