Stellar Echo: Heart of the Myst-Chapter 163: VOL 3 - 1: You’re really a monster.

In a spacious Victorian-style hall, with a vaulted ceiling, towering bookshelves filled with books that reached all the way up, and wide windows letting in the light, Erik was seated behind a beautiful black wooden desk adorned with golden details. All around him, a large number of holographic screens displayed all kinds of information, which he glanced at from time to time before returning to scribble rapidly in the notebook on the desk.

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On Erik's shoulders were Ebonique, a jet black serpent-dragon spirit, and Ignis, a phoenix spirit made of blue fire, both measuring a bit more than 30 centimeters in length. They watched with focused expressions as Erik wrote in his notebook, occasionally offering a piece of advice or an opinion, prompting Erik to make quick corrections.

Meanwhile, to one side of Erik's desk, behind another black desk, sat a beautiful young woman who appeared to be about 18 years old. She had long, wavy hair of a lovely chocolate color and hypnotically deep blue eyes and seemed lost in thought, reflecting deeply as she read a beautiful black-covered notebook on her desk.

At the same time she was reflecting, the beautiful young woman would sporadically attempt to create a magic circle with her mana. Without fail, it would always end in failure; yet, she was not too discouraged by this and would simply pick up a crystal card from her desk and take some notes.

After a while, Erik looked up and stretched comfortably, while Ebonique and Ignis landed on the desk. At that moment, the star-haired young man let out a comfortable sigh before adjusting his posture and turning to look at the girl at the nearby desk, speaking calmly as he picked up the notebook on the desk.

"Well, Liliana, the corrections you asked for are ready."

Upon hearing her 'younger brother's' voice, Liliana turned to him, somewhat surprised at first, but her expression quickly shifted to acceptance, with faint traces of a strange feeling of defeat—though well concealed—before responding as she took the notebook.

"You're really a monster. How do you manage to redesign a spell in just a couple of days?"

"Is it that strange? The spell itself didn't change much; I just had to adjust a few things and recalculate a couple of parameters. Besides, Ebonique and Ignis helped me a lot..."

Erik remarked somewhat incredulously while looking at Liliana with an innocent expression, causing her to roll her eyes in exasperation. She could feel the urge to punch someone in the face surge within her, but after a few moments, the beautiful chocolate-haired girl simply sighed and took the notebook, then focused on reading the large amount of information in it, completely ignoring her irritating 'younger brother.'

Seeing Liliana's response, Erik simply let her be and sat comfortably in his cushy chair, his hands behind his head and his feet on the desk, ready for a moment of rest and relaxation. Ignis and Ebonique landed on his chest, ready to claim their well-deserved payment for all the effort they had put in. After all, 'employees' like them would never let their 'miserly boss' get away with not paying them.

Liliana, for her part, became more and more surprised the more she read the notebook Erik had handed her. Even though they had been working together for almost a month since they returned from the space station, she still couldn't help but be stunned at how ridiculous Erik was. After all, creating a spell was delicate and complex work that depended largely on trial and error—something known to take years, if not decades, or even centuries, to complete.

But the most terrifying part was not that Erik could develop corrections for a spell in just a couple of days. What truly made Liliana think of him as a monster was that he wasn't developing just any spell; what they were working on was something never seen before, and they were doing it through runic-geomantic refinement—something never before used to cast a combat spell.

Developing something like what they were working on would already be a task on "hell" difficulty, but doing it through runic-geomantic refinement elevated it to a level infinitely close to impossible. After all, there was almost no literature on it, and even fewer references to go by. Though it was true that many researchers across the galaxy were studying how to use runic-geomantic refinement to cast combat spells, no one had succeeded so far, and all existing literature was basically a compendium of documents on what did not work.

But true to form for a monster, Erik had not only discovered how to cast combat spells using runic-geomantic refinement, he was even creating the necessary reference literature on his own—the very same that she was using to advance their joint research project.

Truly, that guy was ridiculous, and there was no doubt he would cause a huge stir in the galaxy once he deigned to publish his new achievements—so absurd that Liliana already felt a bit numb about it all. Let the monster do his thing; she would focus on her own progress step by step.

...

Time passed slowly while Erik gently stroked the pampered spirits and the pair of wolves that leapt from his shadow and brazenly sprawled across his legs, demanding attention. The room filled with a symphony of comfortable growls and cute low barks, which were abruptly cut off when a melodious female voice exclaimed, tinged with disbelief.

"This is amazing..."

"Shall we try it then?"

Upon hearing Liliana's astonished exclamation, Erik quickly turned to look at her, asking with a note of excitement in his voice. The beautiful chocolate-haired girl nodded in response before commenting while crossing her arms.

"But you'll be the one drawing the circle."

"Of course."

After responding with a small chuckle, Erik swiftly stood up from his chair. Ebonique, Ignis, and the wolves complained, glaring at Liliana in annoyance, but she paid them no mind and simply focused on Erik, who walked to the center of the hall with a piece of chalk in his hand. He began drawing the circle on the glossy black marble floor in a special area at the center where there were no carved runes.

The reason Erik had to draw the circle was that no one could just conjure a magic circle with the technique of magical formation out of the blue. It required a great deal of practice and training even to conjure the circle correctly, never mind doing so fluently and quickly, which typically involved mental triggers, like the spell's name or something similar.

Moreover, Liliana was a practitioner of Sacred Geometry, so rune conjuration was far outside her field of expertise. Although she had been secretly practicing to avoid the embarrassment of completing the spell only to be unable to cast it, she still had a long way to go in that regard. The difficulty of conjuring a runic-geomantic circle proved to be quite challenging—so much so that it remained a mystery to her how Erik managed to make it look so easy.

After a while, and under Liliana's slightly surprised gaze, Erik finished drawing the runic-geomantic circle on the floor with the special chalk without making a single mistake. He left behind firm, precise lines, demonstrating not only that his hand was steady as a rock, but also that he had complete confidence in drawing it—even though, technically, it was a spell he had just created, given that the modifications now made it quite different from the original.

Following a thorough review of the runic-geomantic circle by both Erik and Liliana, the latter took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself, circulating her mana throughout her body in a slow, methodical way, putting herself in top form, and keeping her mana as steady and stable as possible.

"All right, I'm going to try it. Stay on your toes." With a firm, nearly solemn voice, Liliana looked at Erik and spoke, meeting his gaze. The star-haired boy nodded calmly, though he was clearly more serious now.

"Of course."

With Liliana's words, Erik quickly pulled a notebook and pen from his storage ring, at the same time closing his eyes and moving the surrounding Myst, being careful not to interfere with Liliana. She focused at once and kneeled on one knee, extending her hand toward the drawn spell. At that moment, she channeled her mana with precision and control.

With Liliana's mana, the magic circle began to come alive, glowing faintly with a soft golden color. Soon after, a construction of light began to form slowly above the circle, taking the shape of a torch with runes inscribed on its surface. But then, the magic circle started to flash in different colors, and the mana construct ended up cracking like glass until it completely shattered, vanishing in tiny particles of light.

"Failed again..."

With a disappointed sigh, Liliana got up from the floor and turned to look at Erik, who still had his eyes closed. She chose to remain silent and wait patiently for him to finish whatever he was doing—something she was already used to, given how common it was.

A couple of minutes later, Erik managed to organize in his mind all the information he had gathered. He opened his eyes wide and immediately began writing at high speed in his notebook, making sure not to miss a single detail. After all, success and failure often lay in the smallest of details—the ones so easily forgotten.

Once he finished jotting everything down, Erik reviewed his notes seriously, then handed the notebook to Liliana, who accepted it with a calm gesture. But instead of reading it, the beautiful young woman asked curiously,

"What do you think?"

"Mmm, honestly, it's a bit complicated. The spell is technically correct, and everything works fine until the runes in the mana construction start to kick in. That's when the mana construction collapses in on itself, but I still don't understand why..." Erik answered in a thoughtful tone, bringing his right hand to his chin, prompting Liliana to nod quickly in agreement before commenting, equally pensive,

"Yes, I felt the same. The spell works perfectly fine at first, but soon afterward, the mana in the magic circle starts to become erratic, and even though I managed to keep it under control, the spell fails anyway. Could my lack of experience with runes be one of the causes?"

"That shouldn't be the case. Even if it were, it would still be a failure. After all, what we want is to replicate magical artifacts through mana constructions, and to use a magical artifact, you don't need to know anything about runes." Erik commented calmly as he studied every line of the circle on the floor, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

"You're right about that..." Liliana acknowledged Erik's words with understanding, momentarily losing herself in her thoughts. She quickly regained her composure, shook her head, and asked in a calm tone.

"Then, shall we move on to the next thing?"

***

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