(Written while listening to: "My Soul, Your Beats!" by Lia on YouTube)
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It happened the very same day when Laito created Steve.
While Laito got busy with searching the internet for a school that would accept his peculiarities, Steve began his search for flying mastery.
But just after an hour Steve was interrupted by familiar whispers of the Nightmare Spell.
[Your current research is complete]
[Choose the next Tome of Magic]
'Wha?' Laito got confused for a moment, making Steve perch on some random cornice and then, just after a few seconds Steve's consciousness was sucked into his Soul Sea.
Not Laito's Soul Sea, but Steve's.
It looked just like Shadow Slave's novel described normal Seas of Souls should look like.
A lively, serene, seemingly endless sea of undisturbed water with radiant Spirit Core shining high above, like in an image of a sun.
Laito was stunned at the completely unexpected view he got to experience.
'I… have a Soul Sea… within my Soul Sea… I should have expected that to be honest. Apparently my Avatars come with a full package.'
Because there was nothing much to admire there Laito turned his attention to what Spell wanted from him.
What he considered for a long time was if he had researched fully the Tomes he possessed, how could he find more?
After all in his meta-knowledge there was not even a sliver of a mention of them even existing.
But now the question got answered.
Steve was Laito's only current Avatar. He was created using Tome of Radiance which was fully researched… even if Laito himself didn't remember ever researching it.
All the relevant knowledge was just somehow already within his mind when he woke up back then at the feet of The Gate.
Now The Nightmare Spell somehow offered the choosing of the next Tome for the one that held the complete one.
The part of Laito's consciousness that inhabited Steve's soul saw a phantom of two other Tomes.
He instinctively knew he could choose from them.
Unfortunately, Laito didn't know anything about them except how they looked, their names, affinity and tier.
Both of them were tier 1, Order Affinity Tomes, just like Tome of Radiance.
One of them was called: Tome of Faith. It looked like a leather-bound notebook, wrapped in a rosary-like golden relic.
The other one was a Tome of Zeal. It looked very, very similar to Tome of Radiance, but more… rugged and instead of a single spear of sunlight piercing the sun in the middle entirely, there were smaller four "spears" that pierced the glyph in the middle.
Outside of that information Laito had no idea about the contents of said Tomes.
'Faith and Zeal… If I had to guess… zeal is more aggressive? Tome of Zeal feels like something paladin-like, while faith would be for clerics…' Laito tried to take uneducated guesses.
'I already have Tome of Radiance, which is a purely offensive Tome, so I will go with faith.
Laito focused on Tome of Faith which under his scrutiny has ceased to be transparent and fully emerged into existence, opening itself with a sound of unlocking, while Tome of Zeal faded and dissapeared… for now.
[You have discovered a new Tome of Magic: Tome of Faith]
Avatar's Tomes of Magic:
Tier 1 Tomes: [Tome of Radiance(complete), [Tome of Faith(Researching).
Steve parsed quickly through the pages of his new source of power, but got quickly disappointed.
Inside, he saw only gibberish. It would take him months of constant reading to decipher even one Spell… and the Spell mentioned could be a dud as well.
It wasn't that bad anyway. Laito still didn't have the occasion to use, not even to say master, all the Spells from his already owned Tomes, so there was not much he could do.
Steve retracted from his Soul Sea and returned to his practice. After all, he would get busy in a week.
[Back to present]
Which brings us back to the present. With Steve completing his delivery missions and Laito pretending to listen to classes, while stealthily reading the Tome of Warding in hopes that he could get at least one new Spell, before the Winter Solstice came for him.
With all the initial preparation set up in place Laito and Steve entered a quite monotone period consisting of training their bodies(mostly for proficiency reasons) Tome research and other smaller preparations like asking his dad whether they could find a way to more conveniently "preserve" Laito's body while he will be out.
All other plans and possible schemes went into the background. Facing immediate threats was far more important.
Months passed and nothing much changed.
Laito still was far away from getting a new Spell from either of his incomplete Tomes, his dad managed to get into a contact with some commercial research facility that agreed to make a prototype "pod" that could preserve comatose patients for a prolonged periods of time(Laito heavily advised to invest a lot into that project as it could turn into a gold mine in the near future).
Steve on the other wing was flying here and there, observing, learning and remaining inconspicuous by pretending he is a mostly normal city pigeon.
Funnily enough it was Steve who managed to get a small breakthrough just a week before the date of winter solstice.
'When did that happen?' Steve looked at the runes of the Spell, while confused. His bird head tilted to further showcase his bamboozlement.
He remembered very well that the Spell described him earlier as "Dormant Beast" proving that Laito's Avatar had the same rank as him and used one of Laito's Existence Core as its own.
But now, despite Laito still using only one of his Cores on Steve… Steve's runes read:
Avatar's Class: Dreamer.
No changes here… but right below it?
Avatar Class: Monster.
And indeed, within Steve's Soul Sea there were now two radiant Soul Cores shining high above, instead of one.
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[16 months left until MHA plot beginning]
[Chapter End] The story is not over yet
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