8 Chapter 8: the Silver household (4)

"I give I give! It's your victory bocchan"

Gail said, releasing the grip on his giant sword and raising his hands up above his head, signifying surrender.

Hearing this Markus distanced himself from his opponent and also stabbed his sword into the ground for he no longer had a use for it.

""It was an honour facing you Gail-san, I hope you'll continue to take care of me in the future""

Showing the common courtesy a swordsman would need to show to their opponent after a duel, Markus bowed respectfully to Gail.

"Same same!! But I gotta say, though the test was to try and land a hit on me, I didn't expect yer to beat me like that, how did yer do that? Was it perhaps...no wait, forget it"

Gail was trying to say something but held his tongue for some reason.

"Now I'd love to talk more but you should probably move on to the next test"

Gail gestured to Zen seemingly trying to get a message across.

"Yes, I wouldn't want to keep lord Markus here for too long"

Zen said having received Gail's message.

((Oh great he's calling me lord now, was that demonstration a bit much?))

Markus noticed the change in the way Zen addressed him and wondered the reason for this sudden change.

((Also what was Gail-san trying to say? I feel like they're hiding something from me...))

As a person who values information above all else Markus wondered what exactly was Gail trying to say before he stopped?

((In the game Zen and Gail were just side characters and nothing about them was said outside of Gail being the guard captain of the Silver household and what's more Zen only had a character model with no lore written about him))

Because he already knew Gail before hand, even though seeing his gigantic figure slightly scared him, Markus didn't pay that much attention to Gail which was one of the contributing factors as to why he wasn't particularly worried during their duel despite Gail's prowess.

But Zen on the other hand was only a decorative NPC in the game whose only job was to take Markus to the estate, he didn't even have any dialogue lines so that's why Markus was worried when Zen knew his name and appearance despite never meeting him before, this unknown factor introduced by the melding of the game with reality caused Markus to be cautious of anything that didn't have any information written about them in the game such as Zen, this was only amplified by Zen's scrutinisation of Markus's past whilst they were in the carriage.

"Please come this way master Markus, we will conduct your magic test over here"

Zen guided Markus towards an area with a lot of training dummies around for target practice.

((His demeanour was definitely shaken by what Gail was about to say, hmm...interesting))

As a person who is a fusion of two very intellectually developed people, Markus's intuition is rarely wrong and that intuition is now telling him he needs to find out what's going on, because he had a feeling this could affect him deeply if he didn't investigate it.

((I'll have plenty of time to find out later, lets just play along for now))

"Here is where we'll test your magical power, master Markus"

Zen said pointing to the dummies ahead of Markus

"The frame of these training dummies are made from a very special alloy that's highly resistant to magic under so even if you burn off all the straws the internal metal frame will remain…"

Zen explained.

"So please by all means don't hold back, you have magic related classes don't you?"

Zen told Markus to display one of his spells.

Markus didn't hesitate to step into position as he still had things to do so he wanted to end this as quickly as possible.

((A spell huh? Let's see here if I were too destroy all 12 dummies present here, the most effective and mana efficient spell would be...))

Holding up his left arm magic began to flow from Markus's core to his left hand causing a yellow magic circle to appear on his palm, on the circle were various indecipherable dancing letters and symbols inside of complicated patterns.

((Magic in the world of "fires of Valentia" works like this: in this world there exist beings called "cores", in the game the "cores" are basically the in-game avatars of the game devs but in the lore of the game itself a "core" is a being whose existence is above any and everything else including the gods of "fires of Valentia", they are not really "beings" per say as they don't exist in the same way we do rather than "beings" the more correct term to address them would be "living platonic concepts" or "sentient abstract fundamental functions of existence", as the core (pun intended) functions of basically everything in the universe the cores exist at all places across past present and future and can do things like warp reality, change the plot of the game, flip the power system, delete existence itself etc. and when a being no matter where, no matter when is born or created, a piece of the core's power sparks inside of that being, a fractal "reflection" of the higher existences that dictates everything so to speak and by attuning the "reflection" inside of you to look more like the specific core you're trying to draw from, you can harness an infinitesimally small part of that core's power, we call that power "mana" and depending on the specific core you drew this "mana" from you will be able to alter the world around you with that core's natural function, for example the core of "life", Gaia gives you the ability to heal living things, resurrect the dead, gain immortality and even create life in extreme cases where attunement is at the maximum while the core of "death", Shuriva gives you dominion over death doing things like negate healing spells, afflict strive and pestilence whenever you go and create undead beings, the most extreme case is being given the ability to kill immortals like gods and demons to name a few))

Markus focused all of his mind into two things: creating the spell's formation drawing from both his memory as Markus and Kazuki and attuning his core to draw on the specific type of mana that he wanted.

Above the mansion the sky began to fill with pitch black clouds swirling around a spot above where Markus was standing.

"Hey...wait a minute..."

Feeling nervous due to the mana in the air Zen tried to reach out to Markus but refrained due to how focused Markus was right now.

"Amazin' no verbal chants too...his mother must have taught him well"

Gail watched in awe as he tried to gauge the density of the mana Markus was outputting right now.

((Back when "fires of Valentia" was still a game I myself have participated in multiple events held by the cores (game devs) that only happened once per year if at all and every time the aftermath of the event is always far reaching on a cosmic scale like having the map and battle system change or changing items that were overpowered to useless in the course of a day this was a way for the devs to introduce major updates and expansions to the game in a fun and exciting way))

Markus thought once again being reminded of his past.

((In the game in order to cast magic in both PVP and PVE matches not only do you need to press on the icon of the spell but also need to physically draw the symbol of the spell with your controller and play a random mini game every time you cast, although this seemed tedious at first professional gamers found it to be challenging in a fun way as some of the mini game's puzzles required real calculations and planning to complete and if you fail the spell will do less damage or have its area of effect reduced, to make this easier to achieve in a game with such fast paced combat the devs built in a function that slowed down time whenever a player was drawing a spell, this made professional PVP matches very interesting as the more time you spent in slo-mo the more time you also gave to your opponent to cast their own spells and strategise against you, although there was the option to turn that mechanism off))

Kazuki's extensive arduous playthroughs of the games gave him a perfect infographic memory of nearly all 6567 spells present in all 3 games including the ones added in the newest updates, this coupled with Markus's vast training with magic amplified the potency of the spell by many folds.

(([swift lightning]))

Markus chanted in his head.

Three arcs of lightning bolts forming a trident shape came down on the field causing a loud explosion when they hit their target, both Zen and Gail had to cover themselves from the shockwave and smoke.

When the smoke cleared only one dummy's metal frame remained and even it was already half melted by the lightning, the rest were reduced to ash in a smoking crater.

"Gah..."

With his jaws dropped to the ground Zen couldn't help but be in absolute silence.

"..."

Gail had pretty much the same reaction, looking at Markus as if he was looking at a monster.

Markus however had the opposite reaction.

((Huh? Isn't the potency a bit weak? The area of effect and damage is significantly smaller then when I was playing the game, even if that was just a beginner level spell, the altered symbols, patterns and complex calculations I've put into it that spell should've had the same power as it did when I played the game not a single frame would be left standing even if it was 20 or 30 dummies, did I mess up the attunement? Or maybe I overestimated Markus's specs?))

Markus was quite disappointed by the spell's power so much so that he forgot that he was comparing his current self (who is a 9 year old) to the adult Markus in the game so of course the power outputs were vastly different, although anyone can attune their core to the "cores", the more experience you accumulate in your lifetime the easier and more efficient the act of attunement becomes, that's why the older someone got the larger their mana pool became and from the perspective of those his age his mana pool is already ridiculous.

((Nevertheless, that should be an adequate result for now...er...maybe it was a bit too adequate))

Markus thought once he noticed the stare both Gail and Zen were giving him.

""Erm...how did I do""

Trying to cut the awkward silence between everyone Markus tried to make a confused expression and speak in a childish voice but as always he failed spectacularly.

"Ahh!... yes, that was a splendid display lord Markus, the Silver house will be honoured to have you"

Being snapped out of it by Markus, Zen said hurriedly causing him to stutter here and there.

((He's calling me lord again (sighs)...it's gonna be a LONG day isn't it?))

After that a banquet was held to celebrate Markus's arrival to the household, it took great patience for him to wait until everything was over and sneak away to Starfell lake.