Cursed Heroine

Chapter 26: Making friends

My consciousness begins to stir the next morning, snapping me out of oblivion. Due to the fact that I’m still bound, I can only make that assumption based on the fact that my curse is indicating that Sophia is about to awaken. She must have fallen asleep last night without releasing me.

“Mistress. Misss-stresss. Mistress!”~me

“Mmm, wha..? Why are you so noisy this morning? Let me sleep for five more minutes.”~Sophia

“Good morning, Mistress. Did you sleep well?”~me

“Except for the rude awakening, yes.”~Sophia

“Well, that makes one of us then.”~me

“...OH, MY, GOD! I’m soooo sorry. I really didn’t mean to leave you like that. Before I even realised it, I had already fallen asleep. I’ll get you out of that immediately.”~Sophia

It doesn’t take long to release me, as she has become adept at using my attire menu. I take a minute to heal myself and gave both of us a stamina boost before inquiring about the spell used last night. It’s just as I had suspected before I was interrupted from having any further thoughts by Sophia’s intense affections.

“So, I can see that the spell you used managed to induce me to lactate and fairly quickly too. Might I ask why you decided that it was a good idea to do that? Did you read some sort of book about motherhood and wanted to experiment?”~me

“NO! I’ve already told you that I won’t even consider such things for at least one hundred years. It was a romance novel I’ll have you know, about a mother and her child’s wet nurse. Wet nurses are extremely common for elves, we just don’t produce much milk naturally. After some time, a mage developed a spell to induce lactation. For some reason, they decided to include that spell in the book using magescript. I already knew the runes and just wanted to see if I could use a spell learned through magescript without first writing it out as runes. When you got nosy about what I was doing, I decided that you needed a bit of punishment. Trying the spell out on you was a thought that only occurred at that moment. However, I didn’t expect it to be so tasty…”~Sophia

“Ugh, dropped a rock on my own foot there. It’s nice to know that even spells can be taught with magescript though. That gives me a good idea of how to restructure your mage lessons. I guess ‘tasty’ means that the spell will be a frequent event during our nights together?”~me

“Oh, yes! It had a delicious nectar-like sweetness that caused my whole body to become hot and full of energy when it reached my stomach. The consistency was like hot honey that tantalized my tongue and soothed my throat. Basically, it was simply a very luxurious snack! There’s no way I could deny myself that. What is your idea for my mage lessons?”~Sophia

“It was probably my vampire and blood demon bloodlines that cause you to feel hot, a result of increased blood circulation perhaps. Dragon bloodline probably gave it the thicker consistency and dryad probably made it sweet. The nutrition value is undoubtedly absurd, probably why you fell asleep so easily last night. I’ll jot down my idea about the mage lessons and let you know when it’s completed. It won’t really do you any good to think on it for now. Just focus on your current lessons.”~me

What I want to do with the mage lessons is to compile runic almanacs for each stage of runes and a grimoire for each element of magecraft that details the basic spells for all stages of that element. Each elemental grimoire would include at least one spell at the appropriate stage for each rune of that type to demonstrate the usage of them. The almanacs would be indexed with page number and alphabetised using the elven translation for each rune. An entire page would be dedicated to perfectly depicting each and every rune. Grimoires would be written with magescript replacing the runes in each spell and include detailed descriptions of what each spell is intended to do and how each rune affects it. This would drastically reduce the amount of magic ink that is used when creating mage spell books. It would be a simple matter to create specialized grimoires this way for things like household magics, auxiliary spells, crafting essentials and so on. The basic lesson would include a primer for the six basic elements and how they interact with each other: fire, air, water, earth, light and shadow. Intermediate level would be focused on individual elements at the higher stages leading to specific spell branches: earth terrain magics, water healing, sound spells, etc. Advanced would start to introduce multi-elemental spell branches such as: illusions, magma, explosion, swamp, etc. Master level would be tri-elemental or even more complex magics: lightning, ice, nature, mind, etc. This way a mage can learn theory long before they have the actual ability for the stage of magic they have learned opening up the more advanced magics to be analyzed and theorised by a much larger number of people.

I had planned to start creating the books for my reorganization of the magic system during Sophia’s lessons, but I ended up being volunteered by the culture instructor to participate. Student participation is not what he had in mind however and Sophia had agreed before she found out what had been meant. Tea server is my role in today’s etiquette lesson. I’m to prepare and serve tea to the class in order for them to practice proper mannerisms for a tea party. Sophia wanted to object, but I told her that it was too late and improper to recend her agreement. I didn’t want her to be criticized for such a small matter even though I can tell that the instructor had planned this by his smirking face. As expected, he started to barrate me as soon as I started serving tea. Something about serving the most powerful person in the room first was his reasoning. Sophia took great pleasure insulting him while telling him how very wrong he was.

“Teacher, I don’t think that you are the most powerful in the room, not in raw power or prestige unless you are saying that your position as teacher places you higher than the rest of us.”~Sophia

“Nonsense! I am the nephew of a current city lord of one of the capital’s satellite cities.”~teacher

“Oh wow. City lords must be very influential. So I don’t make another such mistake, could you tell me how my status as the granddaughter of two previous council members including a high council member and the council’s magic advisor compares?”~Sophia

“Uh, well...that would definitely be the highest prestige of anybody in this room, but raw power is what a servant that doesn’t know the status of people being served should decide the order by. I am the highest in this regard as a peak third stage mage. The mana levels I can sense from the rest of you is mid third stage at most.”~teacher

“If raw power is the deciding factor, then Lilia can serve in whatever order she likes or at least in whichever order I decide. After all, she is a fourth stage mage and as my servant, she can be considered to be an extension of my own power.”~Sophia

“FOURTH STAGE?!!!”~the whole class

I completely unsuppress my strength which results in many wide eyed exclamations and I watch on as the teacher fumbles with his next words before finally admitting his defeat. With the battle of words being won and Sophia adequately appeased with a smug smile on her face, the rest of the lesson proceeds smoothly without any further attempts to belittle the servant, whom they have now discovered to be much stronger than all of them. When I overheard one of the boys muttering something under his breath about his task of courting a certain girl being much harder now, I take special note of the individual and warn Sophia about his intentions via our link. The next lesson on math goes smoothly. I can be considered one of the most talented people in this world in regards to math just due to the memories I’ve retained on the subject. I can feel that I once knew even more advanced math, but everything that hasn’t yet spread in this world was erased. What I retained has allowed me to tutor Sophia well beyond what the instructor is teaching the class.

Sophia is ‘snipe invited’ by the other four girls from her culture class to have lunch together. Unable to give any good excuse to turn them down, we make our way to a nearby restaurant together. The girls asked many questions, some that somewhat annoyed Sophia: “How did you get such a powerful servant, was she a gift from your grandmother?” “Did you have to spend a lot of time training her?” “Does she know any tricks?” “Why haven’t I ever heard her say anything?” “Could I buy her from you?” “Can I touch her ears?” Sophia is turning red in anger and embarrassment.

“Now now, Mistress. Don’t get too angry at them. Their questions may seem rude, but I can sense no maliciousness from their intents. They really are just curious and a little bit jealous.”~me

“Fine! How do I answer their questions, though. Some of them are personal for you.”~Sophia

“Answer the first simply saying that I trained and that I’ve been cursed to either be a servant or suffer being as weak as a baby forever. The next one can be answered with a simple yes or you could even be suggestive with your answer by saying that you spent many nights training me. I know many tricks to make you happy and satisfied. Mute curse and unable to be sold. As for the ears, I’ll leave it up to you. However, if the answer is yes, I suggest you invite them over during one of the days off from lessons instead of allowing it here. We may not be on time to our next lesson if they’re allowed right now.”~me

The girls are somewhat saddened when they’re told about me being cursed which lets Sophia release some of her earlier anger. Surprisingly, she followed my advice to use the much more suggestive phrasing which puts many glimmering stars into their eyes. Much more relaxed than before and right after telling them they can’t pet me right now, she invites them all over during the next day off. With matters regarding myself out of the way, Sophia managed to enjoy her lunch while chatting about various other topics such as fashion, the latest romance novel and which shops have the best things.

The remainder of the day breezed by. It would seem as though word has spread that Sophia has a fourth stage guardian by her side and not to mess with her. We only had to deal with a few incidents of pests that are too dumb to matter anyways. Sophia was ready to let me have my way with her that night as an apology for the previous night’s matter. I ask that it be moved to another night of my choosing and tell her that I just want to cuddle for tonight and get some much needed sleep. She agreed and we soon arrived in dreamland while holding each other.