BXBX NOVEL Chapter 459 458: Renewed Appreciation
Her mana coiled around her palm, and a small bud sprouted from the wood, before blossoming into a vibrant yellow flower.
"Small, unimportant. Something few would waste their time on spare for some very specific situations. However..."
More mana seeped into the thin stem and yellow petals, stimulating the flowers growth as it began to blossom even more, its petals lengthening and becoming blotched with other colors, while the stem sprouted additional flowers.
My eyes widened in surprise as I noticed that the flower was an herbal one, and a rather rare, difficult flower to find at that.
"See? Something made entirely with simple magic that any beginner of the Nature Element could learn. Now, obviously it\'s different for Fire, since you cannot \'make\' something with it, but the consolidation and improvement of the simplest spell could turn a dandelion into a Golden Solium. If I was... well, if I wasn\'t like this, I could take this further and evolve the Golden Solium into a Daeva\'s Perennial, which only sprouts once a year inside three dungeons. That is the advantage of perfection, compared to adequacy.
An above average Fireball could, perhaps, melt the surface of a steel shield and push it back. A perfect Fireball would punch through the steel and envelop the person behind it in flames, guaranteeing the kill. And when you manage to reach your Mom\'s level - not if, but when, Leone, because I know you can..."
Plucking the Golden Solium from her palm, the wooden Elf gave me a tired smile as she handed the flower to me, before leaning back and resting her head against the trunk of the tree.
"Nowadays, Mages want to practice flashier magics, thinking that they can win battles because their magic is more complicated and looks stronger, but the spells have no substance. Sure, a high level spell could certainly deal a lot of damage, but why bother wasting that much excess mana when a simple spell could do the trick? That\'s something that has slowly been phased out of existence with each generation...
It makes me realize just how old I am, because half of the magics I see today weren\'t even possible to be cast when I was just a girl. We practiced the foundational magic with a few advanced spells here and there, and that was all. Some of us got powerful enough to cast those basic spells without runes, like what I just did. Try to learn that, Leone, before learning to cast any new kinds of magic. It saved my life more than once..."
She reached forwards and stroked my cheek, before yawning and shuffling over towards the tree, melding into its bark as she began to rest.
Looking down at the Golden Solium in my hands, I nodded to myself as I gently rubbed its smooth petals, thinking.
Watching as she grew a flower that was an important ingredient in so many mana and arcane empowering potions from just her own raw mana...
And how she could have taken it from a rare, yet still obtainable flower to one that couldn\'t even be purchased with entire chests of platinum was incredible.
I hadn\'t slacked on the fundamentals, as they were such a large part of each and every spell that I ever wanted to make, but I had - foolishly so - believed that I had reached a good enough level that I was allowed to pursue the more interesting, newer magics that had been popping up left and right recently.
Obviously, I was still going to pursue those magics - Blood, Moon, and one that I had been slowly understanding more of for years - albeit slowly - Ash - on top of more advanced Fire Magics, but I was certainly going to place greater importance on bolstering the basics of my magic.
Especially since I now knew that my True Vampire form boosted my prowess so much; being able to cast a simple bullet spell without any runes would be devastating for my enemies, and if I could further diminish the size of my Ritual Circles by combining more and more runes together, consolidating everything as much as I could...
My mind was whirling with the possibilities, especially since I had found a way to embed Ritual Circles into Ritual Circles for far more complex spells; this would make those far easier as well, and the power behind them...
"So? Realize how potent and beautiful the basics of magic are?"
Mom placed her hand on my shoulder, a soft smile on her lips as she looked towards the tree that Aunt Theresa was resting in.
"Yes... Yes, I have. Aunt Theresa made this in mere moments... a flower that takes years to blossom in only certain conditions, yet it took her just some mana and seconds."
"You would have been shocked to see what she was once capable of then. Large swathes of forests that grow inside our Empire were grown by her hand... Entire ecosystems changed because she willed them to. What was once a desolate plain became a verdant forest teeming with life, and she did so without any problem whatsoever..."
Melancholy tinged her features as she looked towards the sleeping Aunt Theresa, before she looked down at me and ruffled my hair, gesturing for me to walk with her.
"Your siblings are coming back soon. Dante, Roman, and Vienna will be with Fen, while Monica, Misa, and Lisa will likely be studying privately. Ask your sisters about their magics, learn from their experiences... Lorelei can only teach you so much about the lower levels of magic, since she herself does most of her fundamental spell crafting unconsciously now. Your siblings might have better insights into it, as they aren\'t on her level yet, but... Well, Monica might be, but Misa and Lisa certainly should be of help. Alright?"
I nodded, wondering what my siblings would be like; I hadn\'t seem them in a long time, and I was curious about how similar they were to their Mother\'s; if they were similar, I feared for Anput, Jahi, and Kat as Roman and Vienna might only spur on Aunt Fenryas...
"Don\'t worry about your spouse, Leone. Fen is one of a kind, though Vienna has certainly copied much of her Mother\'s attitude... hence why she\'s still a bachelorette. Roman is entirely different from Fen, much to her chagrin."
A smile tugged at Mom\'s lips as she spoke, and I grew more curious about my siblings, but for now...
Finding Mother still pouting at the kitchen table, I sat beside her and began to question her about some things, discussing foundational theory while Aunt Igna cooked, the Dragon humming to herself before beaming at Mom when she hugged her from behind.
The Sanctum was as warm and welcoming as ever, and I grew determined to find a way to replicate this feeling in my own house, for my own family...
A thought that made me blush slightly as I envisioned a family with Anput, Jahi and Kat, but one that made me feel incredibly pleasant as I wondered just what that life would be like.
A life that I sadly wouldn\'t get to experience until a few decades from now, as the changes of the world made this a terrible time to want to start, but...
It was a thought that I wanted to come true, and a thought that I would cherish.