"No." I met her gaze. Her brown eyes flickered for a moment, as I continued. "You providing me with living arrangements is to be expected, since I am offering to help you now. Your payment to me comes later— after the job is finished. Until then, I should be given some sort of accommodation beyond the bare minimum, no?"
She hesitated, and I finally realized something: before, I had assumed Ginah to be some sort of boisterous, inspiring pirate Captain. But now that I finally had a good look at her and it was just the two of us, I realized that she was a lot more hesitant in her dealings with me. She almost looked… stressed. Overburdened by work.
And yet, I put my foot down.
"What do you suggest then?" she asked, gritting her teeth.
I raised a finger, pointing past her. "There," I said simply.
Ginah followed it, and blinked. "You want to sleep on the ship?"
"Yes. I want my own room." I stepped past her, jerking my head in the direction of the small vessel we arrived in. "A proper room. I don’t care where, as long as I don’t have to sleep with a dozen other people I’ve never met."
"I…" she trailed off.
"I’m sure you can get someone to sleep in one of these shared spaces."
"Fine," she said, voice hiding none of her irritation. "I think I’ve changed my mind about you again. You’re… troublesome."
I did not respond. Instead, I followed her as she brought me back onto the ship. After speaking with a crewmember, I soon found myself in my own private quarters. There was still some swaying, as part of the boat was still in the water, but it was unnoticeable. Or I was getting used to it.
"Here you go. Your own room." Ginah was not enthused, but I was.
"Thanks." I bowed my head slightly; I was grateful for it, although I found the fact that I had to push to get it slightly grating on my nerves.
She grunted in affirmation as she was about to leave, but I called out to her just before she shut the door.
"And about my, uh…"
The pirate Captain rolled her eyes. "Yes, your ‘abilities’. I’ll keep it a secret. Not that I was intending to spread it around. I had already told my men to keep a lid on it."
"Right," I said, as she looked at me.
"Is that all? Did you need anything else? Must I fetch you dinner too?" she asked, not sarcastically at all.
"No. I’m good."
"Great." And with that, Ginah left the room.
I slowly settled into the room; it was not the biggest room, considering I was lodging in the smallest ship, but it was good enough for me. The bed was not even a proper mattress, but a thick piece of cloth tied between two sides of the room like a hammock, and there was not even a desk. Still, I had slept in even worse conditions when I was a slave.
I put down my bag, and sat on the bed-hammock for a moment. I glanced up the porthole, into the sandy beach with tables being set up for some sort of party. Contrary to what I had seen written on Ginah’s face, it seemed that morale here was high. Which made no sense— they were going up against a group that supposedly took over all of Luke’s underground in a year and chased them out. Their chances of success probably weren't too high.
But I was here now. And while I was not interested in completely destroying this organization, I did not like what they were doing with the enuim. If this drug was really able to make people… more agreeable… I could see a thousand different terrible uses for it, and not a single good one.
And I did not like what I was imagining.
I stood up, strutting over to my bag after deciding to study to get my mind off any unpleasant thoughts; I was rummaging through my bag, about to pull out the sheets of paper to practice drawing the runes when I paused.
I pulled out The Thauma. One of the first books I was given to learn magic from. It was then I realized I hadn’t been practicing my magic at all since I started tinkering under Gennady. Spellcasting was almost second nature to me, due to the circumstances that resulted in me ending up in this world, but I had been neglecting it.
I was still able to fight well using magic, as seen from the brief scuffle I had with the pirates, but I was not happy with my performance. If I continued practicing magic I could’ve… I shook my head. That wouldn’t have helped much, since I had no more grimoires to learn from. Or maybe not.
I carefully flipped through The Thauma, recalling that it was more than just a book schooling me how to spellcast. I had learned all the most advanced spells in it— Magic Missile, Explosive Orbs, Dispel Magic, Force Bindings, Force Barrier— although these were considered intermediate level spells and not truly powerful ones. It was supposed to be an introductory book, after all.
And yet, something about the book stood out beyond the rest: it was written during a time when magic had not been so rigorously studied by spellcasters. The Demon Lord himself wrote The Thauma almost four thousand years ago. And while these spells were not advanced ones of the current time period, they were some of the more powerful ones back when it was written.
With the instructions on how to learn them, the Demon Lord also offered advice— how to create spells. Or at least, how to experiment with the current spells in a spellcasters repertoire, to possibly upgrade it or even mix spells together to achieve a different effect.
The ideas
