Notary Art
Silvio Ars Notoria watched with a curious expression as his daughter practiced magic in the training ground below, a clear view available from his office.
He felt guilt, thinking of his youngest son.
Shouldn't he be there, practicing with her?
It was rare for nobles of his caliber to be so concerned about their children.
But considering his own upbringing, he couldn't help but want to be different from his father.
'...Maybe I should've just done off with the old bastard.'
He felt regret that he did not apply some sort of tracking spell upon his son before he left.
He was confident in the fact he would survive by himself, but what if an enemy of Notoria captured him?
A boy unable to use magic would not be able to do anything.
But, something told him his son would survive, somehow.
The instincts of an archmage were not something to be ignored.
To begin with, he was already aware something was off with Furio since childhood.
Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, Silvio activated the Notary art.
Looking out the window once more, this time armed with the wisdom of Solomon, he could see the colors of his daughter's soul.
Silvia was still young, and thus a large portion of her soul was still blank.
As for the rest, they were typical feelings found in children.
Hope, happiness, whimsy, and the like.
Although Silvia also had some rather ugly colors, such as inferiority, anguish, regret and sadness.
'Well, those are all things that come with life, I suppose.'
Thinking back to Furio, he remembered the colors of his soul.
Ever since Furio was born, he had been unable to see anything from the boy.
Naturally, he did not think much of this at first, since a newborn child would not have any color to begin with.
But as he grew up, the lack of color persisted.
At one point, he had wondered if Furio was in fact a psychopath who felt no emotion, but this was clearly not the case based on the way he showed contempt towards many of his half siblings.
But after he exiled his son, he started to wonder if the problem was not Furio's soul, but his own mastery of the Notary art.
He was one of the most talented wielders of the art in centuries, yet his ability was still nothing compared to the Wisdom of Solomon.
Bang!
An explosion rang out from below as a training dummy was blasted away.
Looking back down at his daughter, his thoughts drifted.
"She's made some decent progress since reaching the second layer."
Silvio wondered how much more progress she would make before joining the academy two years from now.
"Okay, this is getting ridiculous now."
It had been a month since I had last seen my master.
I knew he was working on something important, but he had taken me here to train and all of a sudden he decided to fuck off.
Wandering around the castle, I found that I could not enter most areas as they were restricted by some magic.
Whenever I asked Larry, a skeleton mage who was basically the butler of this place, if he could help me out, he always said that he lacked permissions.
My daily life was becoming monotonous.
In the mornings, I would train with magic bullet.
I was trying to refine my usage of the spell, improving its efficiency so that I could work towards multi casting.
If I could create multiple magic circles at once, my firepower would increase drastically.
It was an ambitious goal considering multicasting was something typically learnt at the fifth layer, but I had confidence in my abilities.
To begin with, magic bullet was as basic as a spell could get.
Collect a clump of mana, shape it into a bullet , and fire it at high speeds.
It would be easier to learn to multi cast this rather than other more complex spells.
Next...
Well, it's the only damn spell I can use.
Other mages at my level would most likely be able to multi cast magic bullet if they put enough time into it, but who would bother doing that when they could just learn a more powerful spell?
I had no such choice, and thus I was willing to spend my time on the endeavour.
Moving back to my daily schedule, in the evening, I would mostly train with the skeleton knight, who I had now named Skelly.
I would be the first to admit that it was a mediocre name, but considering my master had a undead dragon named Timmy and a mage named Larry, it would fit perfectly around this place.
From my magic and physical training, my swordsmanship had ranked up to E, and the level of my magic bullet had increased from three to four.
Now, I was able to shoot five bullets from a single circle.
I was moving closer to one of my short term goals.
Full auto fire.
My biggest weakness is that after casting one magic bullet, there's about a two second gap between me being able to cast the next.
Two seconds where I could be attacked.
And it wasn't like I could use any kind of barrier or protection spell either.
If I could, then I wouldn't have to worry about physical training to improve the strength of my body.
I could create a barrier around me fuelled by infinite mana.
At that point, wouldnt I just be invincible?
Sighing, I decided to not think about useless possibilities.
I returned to my room and sat down in a meditation position.
'Damn, it still hurts.'
Before sleeping, I would always complete a few circulations of the technique my master had taught me.
Now, I was able to do ten full circulations before reaching my pain tolerance limit.
Unfortunately, I felt as if the benefits had slowed down as of late, probably because I was at the wall between the second and third layers.
Despite that, I still continued utilising the technique to try and increase its proficiency.
When I had first learnt the calamity bursting technique, it was considered by the window as C rank, but now it had upgraded to C+ rank.
"Calm down, just a few more."
I was not talking to myself, no, I was talking to the one inside of me.
Blue did not feel pain from me practicing this technique, rather than that he just found it annoying.
Each circulation would cause my body to tremor in pain, and so for Blue, who lived in my heart, it would feel as if his house had been hit by an earthquake.
My connection with him continued to improve passively overtime, and I could vaguely sense what he was feeling at all times.
Most days, he was sleepy and bored.
I felt a little bad for him, but it wasn't like I had anything to do for him right now anyway.
There wasn't any food I could really offer him, either.
From what I could tell, feeding him a steak would only make him more hungry. He preferred to eat entire monsters.
Bringing him out, I opened my palm.
He was staring at me in annoyance.
"Sorry about that, buddy."
He quickly calmed down, and I decided to ask him a question for the hell of it.
"Hey, you wouldn't know how I could get a small enlightenment, right?"
?
He looked at me in cofusion, and so I let him re-enter my body.
Thump.
Thump.
Right as I was about to go to sleep, I heard a knocking at my door.
Opening it, I saw Larry the mage.
"The master has finished his work. He is the lounge."
'Damn, finally.'
Larry had not given me any orders, but naturally I knew I had to go see my master.
LOG 20 - THE SOUL
A soul contains the essence of a person, their truest identity stripped bare. It is mostly separate from the body, only connected through magic circuits and the voice. This is the main reason why magicians and martial artists call out their techniques before using them, as it allows for their soul to be imbued in their attack. Although this sounds grand, it could be considered the most basic thing for either profession to know. Even a child playfighting with a stick would slightly strengthen their attack if they yelled out a name.
