Detention that ran over an hour — was that even detention anymore?
Dark couldn't help feeling... happy for his Magic Guide Spirits!
What a stroke of luck, having a teacher as conscientious as Ms. Cook!
Dark glanced at the clock and said, "Since it's already this late, why don't all of you stay for dinner?"
"Sounds great!"
Smack!
Camilla pressed a hand down on Diana's head and said with a smile, "It really is getting late. My man's probably already waiting anxiously for me, so I'll pass this time."
Right after, Cyrus and Miss Plante expressed the same sentiment.
Dark didn't press them to stay. He only turned to Diana and said, "Same time tomorrow."
Diana's eyes lit up, and she immediately waved. "See you tomorrow, then!"
Dark lifted a hand and gave a light wave, smiling. "See you tomorrow."
Tomorrow was Saturday, which should have meant the weekend.
But Alvit hadn't mentioned anything about it, so Dark simply decided for himself that it would be a day off.
He hadn't forgotten the promise he'd once made — that once the [Zoo] was successfully Forged, he'd take Diana and Aurora out for a stroll.
As luck would have it, tomorrow was the weekend, the Magic Guide Spirits would also be off, and none of the four tutors would be coming.
The sea was wide enough for the fish to leap, the sky vast enough for the birds to soar!
...
"After all this training and studying, it's about time for a little rest."
Dark saw Diana and the others off from the Duke's estate, then went back inside. He glanced a few times through the classroom door where the Magic Guide Spirits were, and then slipped away, quite pleased with himself.
When dinnertime came, he had a maid invite Ms. Cook to join them.
Ms. Cook, unable to decline gracefully, came to the dining hall.
Dark used the meal as an opportunity to bring up the idea of a mid-month progress test.
Ms. Cook understood at once and agreed on the spot.
Afterward, Dark went into some depth learning about how the Magic Guide Spirits were progressing in their studies.
Since he himself had been busy with his own training and studies all this time, he'd inevitably neglected keeping tabs on their schoolwork.
What he learned from Ms. Cook tonight roughly matched what DemiDevimon had told him earlier.
He nodded slightly and told Ms. Cook to step up her teaching of the Vampire Young Lady and the Phoenix Maiden — and if they didn't behave, not to hold back, just call their guardian straight away!
Since he hadn't bothered to lower his voice while saying this, the Magic Guide Spirits nearby — who were by now getting reasonably skilled with knife and fork — all caught every word. In an instant, every one of them looked on guard, as if bracing for battle.
The Vampire Young Lady especially had her eyes sharpened to blades, as if surrounded by enemies on all sides.
...
After dinner, Dark spent a while carefully working out the details of the mid-month test with Ms. Cook, and finally pulled out one of his own textbooks to recommend to her — Mathematics 1.
Ms. Cook flipped through Mathematics 1 for only a moment before she grasped just how exceptional the textbook was.
Inwardly astonished, she said at once, "Give me some time to prepare my lessons. Once the mid-month test is over, I'll start using this textbook."
Dark smiled, thoroughly satisfied.
Around eight o'clock, he called for the Dragon-Taming Guard and had them escort Ms. Cook home.
These days the capital was a mixed bag of good and bad, and traveling at night was no longer safe. Only with the Dragon-Taming Guard along could he set his mind at ease.
Not until the carriage had pulled away did Dark head back inside the estate.
He sat in his room for a short while, but couldn't hold still for long and soon made his way to the classroom-turned-laboratory.
The past two days had been consumed by Forging the [Zoo], so he hadn't been able to put his full effort into the Driver Armament.
Now that the [Zoo] had finally been successfully Forged, he could finally throw himself into it wholeheartedly.
To get it exactly right, he even called Meowth over specially.
"Meow meow meow!"
Meowth was quite excited too.
Man and cat quickly got the experiment set up.
His failures over this stretch of time hadn't been for nothing — he'd more or less put his finger on the problem, and he had some confidence about tonight's attempt at Forging.
The core of a Driver Armament was, of course, the driver — but that was only true on the surface!
For any kind of Armament card, what mattered most could only ever be the Armament itself.
When Alvit taught the Driver Armament method, she treated not needing to design the Armament itself as one of its biggest advantages.
She believed that all you had to do was picture a concrete model in your mind, then let the driver bring it into being.
That was exactly how she herself had always done it.
But after repeated attempts over this stretch of time, Dark had discovered that a trap lay hidden in that very approach.
Alvit's talent for Forging Armaments was unmatched, and her sense for and ability to construct three-dimensional space was extraordinarily strong — otherwise she never could have developed a fully three-dimensional [Tri-Armed Transmutation Circle] in the first place.
With that innate gift of hers, she could fully construct every rich detail of an Armament's body in her mind.
But other people couldn't.
At least, Dark certainly couldn't — not yet.
That was why he kept running into trouble whenever he tried Forging a Driver Armament.
Even the one time he'd managed it by chance, the resulting Driver Armament had turned out far from ideal.
So after reviewing what he'd learned, Dark decided to abandon Alvit's approach altogether and try a comparatively clumsy method instead — building both the driver and the Armament itself first, and only then Forging them together!
To make sure the driver and the Armament were treated as a single unit during the Forging process, he wove in a kind of "model thinking."
In other words, he took a page from Transformers toy models — by physically building a driver that could "transform into an Armament," he could make this idea work.
In practice, this wasn't especially hard.
The biggest problem was that an Armament built this way would most likely end up looking like a boxy, square robot — not much to look at, and impossible to wear close to the body, with all sorts of shortcomings in flexibility.
So when designing it, Dark simply gave up on so-called "flexibility" altogether.
As things stood, Magic Guide Masters still defined an "Armament" as nothing more than a "shell."
And if it was just a shell either way, why did it have to be worn close to the body at all?
If he built a cockpit into it, wouldn't that solve most of the problems?
No sooner thought than done.
The whole point of Magic Guide technology was to make every possibility a reality.
Dark immediately spread out a sheet of paper and started designing.
His memory held plenty of "giant robots," but those designs had far too much detail — he simply didn't have the time to render them with that kind of precision.
And building something like a "Gundam" or an "EVA" would obviously call for far more complex and rare materials.
The lab had plenty of materials, but they were all fairly basic.
So his first idea was to start with something simple — like a toy.
"Let's start with that one."
Childhood memories from his past life surfaced in his mind, and Dark couldn't stop a soft smile from spreading across his face.
He picked up where he'd left off on the design.
The exact shape didn't need to match perfectly — what mattered most was that the pieces could be taken apart and reassembled.
His ultimate goal was to use the exact same components, assembled two different ways, to build either the Armament or the driver.
As for the final result — the first products of any experiment always came with plenty of flaws, and that was nothing unusual.
It took Dark about an hour to hammer out the rough design, and then he carefully explained his thinking to Meowth.
Once Meowth understood, its eyes went wide — the eyes that were usually half-closed opened round as saucers, and it was clearly fascinated by the whole thing.
Interest was what made someone put their heart into something.
This state of mind was just right.
Dark then picked out a type of "Magic Wood" from the material stockpile as his main material.
This "Magic Wood" was an alchemical product.
At its core it was still wood, but after being processed through alchemy, it became a special material somewhere between wood and metal.
As a result, it had both the pliability of wood and the hardness and ductility of metal.
And as long as you brushed on a special potion after finishing the carving, it could be transformed entirely into a metal-like material.
In terms of strength and rarity, it couldn't compare to "Magic Guide Steel," but it was far more cost-effective.
Dark had been using this "Magic Wood" all these past few days.
And in its spare time, Meowth also used "Magic Wood" to make toys.
So the two of them were plenty familiar with the material.
Once the design was finished, Dark and Meowth began carving out the components together.
The whole process took a full three hours.
From eight o'clock until midnight, Dark and Meowth stayed completely absorbed the entire time, not noticing the hours slip by at all.
When Alvit and Claire got back late that night, they lingered at the door for a moment, then quietly slipped away.
Ollie made round after round of late-night snacks, but every batch ended up in the Magic Guide Spirits' bellies.
...
"Ding-dong."
As the clock struck midnight, Dark and Meowth finally finished carving and painting every last component.
The satisfaction of completing something in one continuous push made man and cat exchange a look and burst out laughing.
Then Dark couldn't wait to start assembling.
First came the Armament itself.
The joints weren't perfectly clean and the overall shape wasn't exactly polished, but the pieces genuinely did fit together.
Dark wasn't holding out hope that the finished product would be anything great — the main point of this experiment was simply to test whether his idea would actually work.
He studied the assembled "robot" for a moment, then took it apart again and reassembled the same pieces into a gun-shaped driver — a gun, and yet not really a gun!
Though this "gun" was only meant to fire something, at its core it was really a six-pointed star emblem of light.
But then again, Dark had never intended a perfect replica to begin with.
Once the assembly was finally finished —
Dark couldn't wait any longer. He picked up the gun and pulled the trigger at the wall. "Bang!"
"Meow meow meow!"
Meowth clung to his pant leg, meowing away.
After the empty shot, he handed the gun over to Meowth, which immediately started playing with it in great excitement.
As for Dark himself, he went straight into preparing for the Forging.
With a finished product in hand, the "Tri-Armed Armament Forging" that followed came naturally.
An hour later.
Dark finished carving the [Tri-Armed Transmutation Circle] above the Magic Guide Card, then used the Three-Flower Technique to rouse his psychic power, applying "mental irrigation" to the circle.
As magic power and psychic power poured in together, streams of shimmering light spread across the transmutation circle.
Dark closed his eyes and focused, pouring in every last bit of his conception and intent for this Armament.
Once the "Mental Furnace" had thus been forged, he had Meowth bring over the gun-shaped driver and began the smelting process.
...
A quarter of an hour later.
The "Mental Furnace" had served its purpose and was pressed down into the Magic Guide Card.
The card kept giving off an alternating red-and-white glow, the reaction inside growing more and more intense.
Dark and Meowth watched tensely until it finally settled and went quiet.
Then Dark rinsed the Magic Guide Card clean, and a halo of light emerged on its surface.
Floating on the face of the card was the gun-shaped driver.
Dark tried channeling magic power into it.
The response that came back made his eyes light up with excitement.
"Let's go."
He immediately waved for Meowth, then grabbed the Magic Guide Card and dashed out of the lab, thrilled.
...
Before long, Dark had made his way to an open stretch of ground outside the estate.
Meowth crouched at his feet, watching the Magic Guide Card in his hand with anticipation.
Behind them, Chief Maid Jasmine and Maid Captain Ollie stood quietly against the wall.
"Looks like the young master's experiment went well?"
The two maids exchanged a glance, both quite curious just what kind of Armament Dark could possibly produce.
Just as they were pondering it, they suddenly noticed Dark had already begun the summoning, and quickly turned to look.
...
"In the name of Dark, Magic Guide Summon!"
As the closing words of the summon fell, a gun-shaped driver appeared in Dark's hand.
Excitedly gripping the handle, he pulled back the hammer, then slowly aimed it at the open ground.
As he pulled the trigger, he clearly felt resistance pushing back, so he kept pouring more magic power in.
As the magic power flowed in, light gathered above the gun-shaped driver — and out of it formed a light emblem etched with a six-pointed star!
Using that emblem of light as the bullet, Dark aimed at the open ground and pulled the trigger, hard!
"Bang!"
The emblem of light shot out in an instant, rolling across the ground at incredible speed, tracing out a massive six-pointed star magic circle.
Almost at the same moment, the gun-shaped driver in Dark's hand dissolved into light and vanished.
Then, from within that six-pointed star magic circle, a colossal robot in a dominant shade of red slowly rose into view!
It looked a little different from the grand entrance he'd imagined.
This giant robot didn't have the classic "transformation" sequence at all — it simply appeared, fully formed.
A towering machine a full six meters tall, master of fire and earth, the Mado King — the Granzort!
"Meow meow meow!"
"It actually worked!"
Dark couldn't help his eyes going wide.
Sure, the machine standing in front of him definitely differed from the "Granzort" he remembered.
But as long as he could summon the "Wish-Granting Divine Sword" and shout out, "One slash, two halves — Wish-Granting Divine Sword!" he'd consider it well worth it!
As for whether this machine was actually strong, or impressive in a fight — did that even matter?
Dark clutched the Magic Guide Card tight, his expression full of excitement.
Then, all at once, a rather important question occurred to him — how was he supposed to get in?
In the original animated show, the hero always rode in on a hoverboard, rushing into the cockpit during the Granzort's transformation sequence.
But there was clearly no way he could pull that off now.
"Surely I'm not supposed to just... climb in?"
Dark stared at the "Granzort," which had stood perfectly motionless ever since being summoned, and fell utterly silent.
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