Noelle is Terrifying!

Noelle runs through the Wisefang garden right at the limits that you'd be able to expect a 10 year old to run. I actually have to put some effort into keeping up with her. She holds her wooden sword like a baseball bat and swings it at me, an extremely easy attack to block.

I hit her sword with my own and swing her attack off to the side. I really don't want to hit Noelle in the face so I hit her in the upper chest instead. I'm holding back of course, but my blow still sends her tumbling to the ground. Oh, I hope no one gets angry at me for that…

"Arrrrgh! How?!" Noelle yells as she picks herself up off the ground.

"You telegraphed your attacks way too much. If I did that with Ruse he definitely would have beaten me for it. Now stand up and I'll show you what to do instead."

Noelle gets up and holds her sword out. She's wearing more casual short sleeves and durable pants, not something you'd expect to see on a noble lady. She's bulked up a bit too. Not anything extreme, but still more muscular than you'd expect any 10 year old to be.

"See, you're doing this." I hold my sword like a baseball bat. "What you want to be doing is twist your wrists like this and keep your hands in front of you. Hold the sword to the side and strike openings from that position."

Noelle holds the sword as I showed her.

"See, you can keep swinging like this and hit from below, or you can move your arms and wrists again to attack from above or around and the other side, or you can keep swinging in a straight line and hit the side."

"Right, I see…"

"Now, I think we should do a few practice rounds like this. I'm not very experienced with the sword since Ruse taught me the scythe, after all."

"OK, that makes sense. Alright, let's go." Noelle says, looking up at me and holding up her sword.

"Begin!" I yell.

Noelle takes a step towards me and holds her sword like how I told her. She swings it down and up at me, which I have to put a lot of effort into blocking. When her sword is on mine, I slide my blade all the way down to Noelle's hand guard, and fling upwards, launching Noelle's sword into the air. I swing my sword down onto her shoulder, ending the fight.

"No fair! What was I even supposed to do there?!"

"Keep your sword down, for one. This might be a bit unfair, I'm definitely a whole lot stronger than you. Maybe you should try going down a path that relies on strength less? But you are young, so you're probably going to get a whole lot stronger in the future, so I'm not sure."

"What a wonderful teacher you are, Kiaran." She says, with a completely blank face.

"Hey, I wasn't taught this! How am I supposed to teach it to you?"

"I don't know, it's your job to figure that out." Noelle's attention suddenly turns to something behind me. "Ah! Azariah! You're finally here!"

I turn around and Azariah's walking through the garden toward us with a book in hand. Noelle runs up to her and Azariah appears to flinch a bit.

"Alright! I've been doing sword training with Kiaran for a bit now! I'm starting to make real progress! Can we start on my magic now?! Please?!"

Noelle is practically jumping up and down and Azariah's clearly having none of it. Alright, I'm her boyfriend now, so I guess I should jump in.

"Alright Noelle, calm down. Azariah's really shy, remember?"

"Ah… right. I guess it can't be helped then." Noelle says, backing off.

"Well, you seem to be getting the basics down well enough. We'll have the days that Azariah shows up be magic learning days and the days that she doesn't be sword learning days."

"Alright then! Let's get started! Go on! Get on with the lesson!"

"Y- yes… You have a connection with Beira… right?"

"Mhm!"

"And that's it?"

"Mhm!"

"So… you have that one ice creating spell, right? That's all you can do?"

"Mhm!"

"OK… tell me how you do it then. Be detailed, I need to know this."

"I can do that! I imagine Beira in my head as a being made out of sheer cold. Then I start telling her about how weak I am and tell her that I want to borrow her extreme power to help other people. Then I just imagine that mana flowing into my hand, it bunches up together and the ice just forms."

"Alright…" Azariah stays quiet, probably figuring out how to approach this. "You have how you're meant to interact with Beira down. You just have to work on expanding what you can do with that connection."

"Alright, I'm listening."

"Do it again, imagine forming a solid shape. Um… try a cylinder first."

Noelle looks confused at first, but then switches to determination. She closes her eyes and holds her hands out in front of her.

"Alright, I'll try. This might not work though, OK?"

"That is fine. This is practice. You can fail all you want during practice, as long as you're getting better."

Cold air forms around Noelle's hands. It slowly condenses into ice. It looks like it's trying to take some sort of shape but it doesn't seem able to. It starts shaking and Noelle seems to be having a hard time with it. Eventually she releases the spell and a large chunk of ice half formed into a cylinder falls to the ground.

"H- how'd I do?"

Azariah looks at the chunk of ice on the ground, thinking to herself. "You seem to struggle with precision. Are you struggling with getting much ice out as well?"

"Yeah… it's really difficult."

"Hm… We'll try practicing then. First I want to make sure you can summon a lot of ice relatively quickly. Don't worry about speed for now though. Just create as much ice as you can."

"Mhm! Got it!"

Noelle takes the same stance again and tries to summon more ice. Ice starts forming in her hand and it gets to the point it's about as much as a basketball. Then as more ice gets piled on, she looks to be in pain.

"Um, Noelle-" I start.

"Eheh?! Lady Noelle, you really don't need to-" Azariah starts.

Before she finishes whatever it was that she was saying though, the spell stops and Noelle collapses to the ground. Both of us stand still for a couple of seconds, unable to process what happened.

"Azariah! What happened?!"

"I don't know! She's out of mana!"

"Does this happen when you run out of mana?!"

"I don't think so! I get super tired whenever it happens to me, but I've never fainted!"

><><><><

"Please do not worry. A quick healer's examination proved that Lady Noelle just needs to rest and make a full recovery. Neither of you will be held responsible either, unless Lady Noelle wants to punish you of course, which I highly doubt…"

Kiaran and I are sitting in a rather small room, listening to a well endowed woman in a maid outfit, with some extremely anime looking hair. Like, seriously, it's literally magenta. It's so weird seeing in real life. I don't think it's dyed, either. Her roots aren't a different color, and this doesn't seem like the kind of job that would allow hair dye.

"We're really sorry, Virginia. We were both about to tell Noelle to stop, but we weren't able to in time. Were you able to figure out what was wrong?" Kiaran asks.

"Yes, she wound up using all of her mana during Ms. Azariah's training. That combined with her young body wound up causing her to faint. She should be fine in just an hour or two."

"Umm… Virginia, right?" I ask slowly.

"Yes, that is my name. What is it, Ms. Azariah?"

"Well… Lady Noelle hardly used any mana at all. Was she using magic at all before I showed up?"

"Not that I'm aware of, no." Virginia tells me.

"I haven't seen her use any magic all day either." Kiaran says.

Ohh… that's bad. She made a few chunks of ice, and an entire day's worth of mana got used up? Her mana capacity would have to be incredibly small then. I know mine is large compared to the average person, but if we were comparing Noelle's capacity to mine hers would have to be around… it would have to be a bit less than a tenth of a percent of mine.

So, my mana capacity is about… 30 to 40 thousand times greater than Noelle's… Checking Kiaran's soul with Mana Detection, his capacity is about… 8 to 10 thousand times greater than Noelle's.

How would she even be able to use magic in a combat scenario? That basically makes all of Adad's spells impossible. That also gets rid of all other mana intensive spells like flight and "Thrill on Death's Edge." What would I even do with such a small mana capacity? Thinking for a bit, using my new Mana Detection that Lucidna recommended would run through it all in less than 20 minutes.

I mean, I know that using your mana, grows your capacity, but she'd have to use mana so much before she even got it to a usable amount. I'm an otherworlder, too… Noelle's mana capacity is probably going to grow far slower than what I'm thinking, since I only have myself as a reference.

"Um… there's something I need to say…" I say really quietly.

Kiaran and Virginia seem to get the message and quiet down. I explain to both of them in detail my conclusion. I tell them both everything except the fact that being an otherworlder is throwing my estimates off a bit.

"Hm… I see. If that is your honest conclusion, I'm not sure just how to break the news to Lady Noelle."

"Azariah? Are you sure that isn't some sort of mistake?"

"I'm sorry. It's just what Mana Detection is telling me."

><><><><

I wound up getting roped into being one of the people to explain Noelle's condition to her even though I really didn't want to. Apparently I'm supposed to put it into terms she can understand even though she's apparently really smart…

Arrgghhh, I hate this. I don't want to crush a little girl's dreams! Do you want to crush my spirit?! Let Virginia do it!

Virginia leads Kiaran and I to Noelle's. I don't know what kind of condition Noelle is in since the door blocks Mana Detection. Virginia opens the door, and- Noelle's prancing around the room? I was under the impression she wouldn't make a full recovery until another hour at least.

"Um! Lady Noelle, you really shouldn't be walking just yet!"

"Ah! Noelle! Are you OK already!? That's so impressive!"

Noelle completely ignores Virginia as she smiles at Kiaran.

"It's really nothing. I just woke up in bed a while ago and I was pretty much fine. What happened? I remember training with Azariah but after that everything kind of cuts out."

"Um, well Noelle," Kiaran begins explaining how Noelle collapsed in the middle of our training, but I tone that out as I use Mana Detection. I just want to look at her soul, I'm just curious.

I close in the radius where Noelle's soul is supposed to be and-

"Huh?! How?!" I accidentally yell out. Everyone looks at me in surprise, thinking something's wrong.

"Um… Noelle? Lady Noelle? Can you cast a spell real quick?" I mean, everyone's attention is already on me, might as well go all the way.

"Hey, Ms. Azariah. Lady Noelle really should not be using mana right now."

"Alright."

"Eh, eh, eh, eh?! Lady Noelle?!"

Noelle closes her eyes and holds her hands out. I keep Mana Detection locked in around her soul. She funnels the mana out of her spell for the piece of ice she's making. As soon as the last of the mana leaves her soul, her mana starts to recharge. In an instant as far as I'm concerned, her mana is back at full capacity.

I'm sure my jaw hangs open at that. That's so much faster than what my mana recharges. My mana always takes about 24 hours to recharge, assuming Noelle's is supposed to recharge as fast as mine it should take two or three seconds to recharge completely. It doesn't take that long though, as far as I can tell it's actually, literally just instant…

Well, she seems to stop generating mana whenever she's casting a spell, so that still renders spells with constant activation impossible, but this is… this is just too much for me to process. I know it can't be instant, it has to be recharging too fast for me to measure, that has to be it.

"Azariah? What's wrong?" Kiaran asks me.

"Her mana…" I start to say. It takes me forever to calm down from that surprise but once I do I try my best to explain just how fast Noelle's mana recharges.

"Is that… is that even possible?" Virginia asks.

"That's great! Noelle's mana capacity is tiny, but if it recharges so fast, that could make up for it. Have her specialize in fast casting smaller spells and she could become quite the effective mage." Kiaran says

"Really?!" Noelle says, a huge excited smile on her face.

"Yes… as long as she makes sure she doesn't use all her mana in one spell so she doesn't faint… she could… probably keep casting spells forever…" The words don't sound right coming out of my mouth but I can't think of anything I'm missing that would prove that wrong.

Man… I know it's my job to teach her but… if she managed to figure out a fighting style with that recharge rate, she'd be terrifying to fight against. She's going to be a monster in a few years if she keeps a regimen up…

><><><><

I walk through a new store I have not set one foot inside before. Along the walls are what appear to be hang gliders, but much, much smaller. They have wings, tail fins, places to rest your feet and hold onto with your hands, to put it simply, these are tools meant for flying.

The wings of each of them have all sorts of different shapes, from sharp and intense to round and flat. They also have all sorts of different painted patterns on them. Some flame decals, pictures of clouds, rainbows, they remind me of kites, honestly.

Of course, they can't let you fly on your own. You'd definitely crash if you tried that. You already have to be an experienced enough wind magic user, to the point that you're able to fly on your own to use them. No, they aren't meant to make you fly, they're meant to help you fly. From what I could gather, they're meant to help maintain lift so that your mana usage is drastically decreased.

Even if my mana capacity has increased by a lot during that week of hell, that's way too appetizing of an opportunity to not take. I walk up to the front counter, to ask to buy one. The cashier is a guy, and his only traits that I could think of to mention are depressed and boring.

"Um… your cheapest wind glider?" I ask.

The cashier just sighs and gets up from his seat. He leads me to one of the walls and grabs an extremely plain looking glider. It looks like its made of normal wood, its wings… are certainly wings, and it isn't painted at all. Oh well, I'm going for cheapness more than anything here.

"How durable is it?" I ask. Focusing on cheapness is one thing, but this thing is supposed to be keeping me from falling to my death, this is a question I need to ask.

"Don't do any tight maneuvers, don't let it get hit by anything, don't get it wet, don't bend it in any way, and it should last a year before it breaks on you. If you're worried, keep checking the strings that attach the wings to the wood. When those start getting thin, you'll need to get a new one."

Alright, so I'm probably going to break it long before it breaks on its own, good to know. "How much is it then?"

"2 gold and 4 silver coins."

"Eh? That's a lot… are you sure this is the cheapest one?"

"It is."

"A- alright then, I'll take it.

><><><><

I fly through the air over Heafdes on my new wind glider. It's hard to describe just how much easier it is on my mana. It took me a bit to figure out, but now I know how to work it. What I normally do to fly is imagine grabbing all the air around me with mana and pulling up, with the wind glider though, all I have to do is grab the air around the wings to achieve the same effect.

Before I I went off to the monster congregation, I could probably have kept up flight for about 20 minutes as long as I didn't do anything extreme. After that whole ordeal I could probably afford to be a little extreme and still fly for about half an hour. Taking advantage of this wind glider though I could even go for 2 hours and still have enough mana for a few mana heavy spells.

I'm probably about… 4,000 feet up in the air and it's a mix of sheer thrill and chilling terror. If I fall I absolutely will die, that isn't even a question. I definitely have a huge surplus of mana, and I'm strapped into this thing securely, but my instincts won't let me relax at all.

Although, looking down at Heafdes like this is honestly kind of amazing… Everything looks so tiny and fragile. All the buildings at this point are so far away they kind of blend into splotches of color. It makes me feel so… so powerful~ Ah ha…

I shake the thought out of my head. I don't want flying to unlock a new fetish, that would be really weird, even for me. I mean, I can keep flying for 4 times as long as I was before, that has to unlock a whole slew of new options. Let's see… I definitely have over one and a half hours of flight left, let's try flying in one direction for about half an hour and see where I end up.

Let's see, the Monkcaster river runs through Heafdes, and flows from the Antisor mountains. I'm not very good at navigation yet, so I'll follow the river downstream. That way I won't get lost.

><><><><

After half an hour of straight flight I wound up in a village around 20 miles outside of Heafdes. Let's see, if I just flew and didn't use mana for literally anything else, that would probably amount to 80 miles in one day, over the two hours I'm able to fly.

I can only do that once a day, so if I kept that up… I could have flown from Heafdes to the monster congregation in just two days. I could probably take my time too, so I would have mana to spare when I actually get to where it is. That's a third of the time it actually took all of us to get there.

I mean, I would need a map, but that's enough to navigate the entire country in just a few weeks, right? That's like, really overpowered.

If I could do that, why bother staying in Heafdes? Why not head off to other areas of the country and see how life there is? I'd have to bring Kiaran with me though, and I'd be leaving quite a few people behind…

Actually, no I wouldn't. I can cover 80 miles in a day now, I could always visit whenever I wanted. Heafdes is right in the middle of the country, there's no way I'll never be more than a few days away from there.

Right, so I'll work on getting money for now, and then we'll see about getting a permanent place to live with Kiaran. Ahhh, living with my boyfriend, ahaha… Oh… there'll only be one bedroom, he, a guy, will desire my physical company so much, I'll hardly be able to leave the house, one thing leads to another and I wind up getting pregnant, which leads to him marrying me- Aaaaaahh! I want it! I want it! I want it!

Actually I really shouldn't be thinking of that. Well… Kiaran did say I was allowed to have any fantasies that I wanted about him, so… I do actually want to check if he wants to live with me first before I start saving up for an actual house. I doubt he'd say no to that, though.

><><><><

I walk through the adventurer's guild with my wind glider strapped to my back. This is actually the first time I've walked in here, and everyone's staring at me. There aren't many people who can use a wind glider so I kind of stick out carrying one around like this, even if it is really plain.

I walk up to the receptionist at the front of the guild and string my words together. "I would like to enroll."

"Of course ma'am," she says. "It'll just be an application form and a small fee and you'll be ready to go."

"Of course." I pull out a silver coin from my pocket as the receptionist pulls out a form for me to fill out.

Name: Azariah, Place of Birth: Alibas Domain: Adventure Experience: Participated in Monster Congregation. It's a whole lot easier to write than it is to talk, so I fill the thing out really quickly.

The receptionist looks at my form, surprised when I hand it back to her, but she doesn't say anything. She hands me back 5 copper coins, and smiles at me.

"As of now, you're enrolled as an adventurer in the Heafdes Adventurer's Guild. As a newcomer, your rank is "wood", the lowest rank. Take whatever quests you like from the quest board, but you won't be allowed to take any quests two ranks or higher than your current rank."

><><><><

The power to destroy this weird maned wolf creature and claim the reward! I want it! Give it to me!

My lightning bolt strikes the monster I was "fighting" and kills it instantly. By "fighting" I really mean flying above all the monsters and shooting them with lightning from a distance, one shotting them without giving them a chance to fight back.

Honestly, it's so easy that my prayers to Adad are really starting to get lazy. If this goes on, it's definitely going to influence my firepower in a pretty negative way. Well… I guess that I'm strong enough that I can afford to do a few experiments.

I need to expand my range of attacks anyway, so this should be a good way to do it, since as long as I have a large surplus of mana, and no particularly dangerous monsters show up out of nowhere I'm for all intents and purposes invincible.

It's not like I have any shortage of opponents anyway. Spring apparently brings a large influx of monsters but summer's where that starts really getting felt. Also, apparently a large influx of the super powerful adventurers got plucked up by Uclait to go fight Nilus, and the ones that are still around are kind of being kept on standby in case anything major happens. Like Nilus showing up out of nowhere or the Demon Lord invading for instance.

That means that there's a lot of monsters going around right now causing a lot of issues, and it's being left to adventurers who aren't really used to handling that. This is where I come in. Since I can cover so much distance with my wind glider, I've basically become the Heafdes Guild's errand girl. I take up all the quests that are normally several days away, come back real quick, and then go and do another one.

This also means they kind of bent the rules a bit when giving me my rank. Normally there's a certain amount of time you have to be in the guild before you can rise to a certain rank, but they're kind of looking the other way since I'm so useful and so that I can take some high ranked quests.

There's also the added bonus of being able to work at night and having to interact with barely anybody. By night, I of course mean 3 in the morning when I get off of my real job. Honestly, this is more of a fun little activity instead of a bunch of quests. The fact I make so much money off of it is also nice.

Okay, this is really useful to everybody else but this really isn't all that difficult. I'm going to do what I can with making new spells. This is a chore to me anyway, might as well put in some practice for a bit while I do said chore.

Alright, I need to organize this, so I'll keep a little mental list as I go on. Here we go.

Using Ctothis' connection to constantly keep flight up without any input so I can focus on other spells: Mostly successful, I have to be stationary though, throwing in any movement at all will cause me to crash.

Making launchable daggers of ice: Successful, can hold them in the air and launch them just like wind blades. Also able to manipulate their shape.

Using Beira's connection to cool down air and launch wind blades through it - Works as expected, wind blades created like this have a chilling effect that can freeze water on the spot.

Making several rotating wind blades around me to use as shields - Can't get the wind fast or sharp enough to work as intended, though a semi effective shield for simple projectiles. Will practice.

Making a bunch of ice, using constant wind blades to break it apart, and swirling it around me to create a shield of cold - Creates a shield of cold, but also creates a lot of chilly mist that's difficult to see through. Can use Mana Location to see through. Being in the mist for too long induces hypothermia.

Shaping lightning bolts into blades - Requires a lot of focus, but can do a decent amount of damage in a short amount of time and less mana. Armored enemies should be able to handle a few of these, but a lot should bring most things my level down. Have to shut down other spells just to focus hard enough, though.

Making a tornado using wind magic, as well as mixing my cool air with the warm summer air: Successful, but impossible to control at my current skill level. Will probably do more damage to allies than enemies. Will bench for later.

Manipulating Kari's and Beira's connections very gently while it's raining to make snow: Successful, has no combat uses at all, but I can make it snow during summer, so…

Using Adad's connection to create an aura of supercharged air around me, that I can fire a lightning bolt inside of anywhere and at a moment's notice: Successful, but drains through my mana way too quickly. Like, the entire capacity in a minute quickly.

Using a mixture of Ctothis' and Beira's connections to create handfuls of packed ice that explode into shards at my command: Successful, but requires so much focus I can only have two or three up at a time. Also too harsh for my tastes, it's like shrapnel.