30 Suns

--- Jon ---

He and his ma both strife to their lefts, as they walked around in a circle roughly three meters apart with a knife raised each.

Their current training was a knife fight of sorts, only rather than trying to pin each other the idea was to-

His ma rushed him and took a step forward before blocking her knife with his own as he stepped around her and to the other side of the circle they were both pacing inside of.

-knock the other one out of the circle, without actually touching each other through a mix of faints, strikes, and redirects. All of which when combined with a subtle tension born from the fact that-

He took two steps forward and half swung his knife before hopping back, as his ma didn’t react to the feint in the slightest.

-their usual fighting style was fairly aggressive outside of hit and run tactics, making this exercise as much about subtle psych warfare as it did about actual knife fights.

(Just have to remain patient and keep at it…) He told himself, before raising his knife to block as his ma rushed forward once more, only to weave to his left and force him to twist and hop away from her out of reflex.

His ma raised one finger before waving it side to side and pointing at his foot, namely the one with its heel outside of the circle.

“Your point.” He sighed, before fixing his footing and facing his mother once more.

Scene Consequences

-Thanks to ma gained 1XP to Knives and Psych Warfare

--Currently: Knives Lv. 3 (5/8) and Psych Warfare Lv. 3 (4/8)

---

While his ma took first shower since she still had work, he decided to take a moment to look through the book he’d bought from the Witches’ Wares the day prior.

(Alright, Contractor’s Creature Compendium… Arcane really do enjoy alliteration.) He couldn’t help but chuckle as he opened the book. (Now let’s see… Should probably go over the introduction before anything else.)

The opening section of the book explained that the Arcane Association used a system very similar to the standard set by Sanctuary to rate the various summons they’d discovered across a number of relevant categories ranging from magic cost and ability to combat threat and general sociability with F representing the worst and S the best. From there they’d then give a general overview of whatever species could be summoned, from any notable history and/or relevance the species may have to the Arcane Association contracting perks and traits that would make them desirable to any would be summoners.

(All pretty standard stuff.) He figured before noticing the next section was a list of recommended summons for beginning Contractors. (I guess that’s as good a place to start as any.)

Pix would probably disagree with that thought, forcing him to read about fairies first, but given how she was currently asleep…

He turned the page to the first recommended summon and found himself staring at the image of an admittedly adorable form of a ball of fur with eyes and a mouth. An image made more adorable by the fact that there were about a dozen of the little furballs staring at the image taker excitedly.

(The Flufflepuff…) He read before turning his attention to a number of letters next to the picture. (“Magic Cost: S+, Sociability: S+, Combat Threat: F-, Magical Ability: E, Protective Ability: F.” So friendly and easy to summon, but worthless in a fight.)

The exact kind of thing you’d want a child to summon if they were first learning magic.

(“Flufflepuffs are one of the most commonly known magical creatures throughout the known realms. A fame owed to both the fact that they are one of the few magical species that can be found regardless of dimension, as well as the fact that no matter the odds Flufflepuffs will find their way to anywhere there is a high concentration of magic.”) He read before frowning. (Then why weren’t there any in Blackwell?)

He found his answer a little further on. (“Thanks to their… less than impressive combat ability and courageous personalities, it is commonly seen by the Arcane that a lack of Flufflepuffs in any given area of high magical concentration is a sign of looming danger and a need for defensive action before the matter can worsen.” That… makes sense.)

This last summer in Blackwell was the most dangerous of his life, and he did not blame a relatively defenseless creature for fleeing. (Hopefully, any that lived there will be able to make their homes there once more.)

(“Thanks to their high sociability, often viewing everyone they like as a member of their herd -commonly known as a Pile o’ Fluff or fluff pile- Flufflepuffs have come to be seen as the ideal pet Contract for beginner Contractors and are even seen as the mascot of the Arcane Association in some areas.

A large part of this owing to the fact that one of the Association founders, Memen, used the summoning cost of the Flufflepuff as a basis for the measurement of a single Arcane MP due to the fact that they are widely recognized as one of the cheapest individual summons.”)

“Huh…” He’d been wondering what the Arcane considered an MP, given how much it’d popped up in some of his magic notes.

“Oh, the next bit is their Contracting traits.” He was curious to see what counted as a Contracting trait, since while mentioned he hadn’t actually read too many details on what they were.

(“Flufflepuffs despite their lack of combat ability possess two Contracting traits that still make them fairly popular amongst Contracting children.

First is their [Swarm] trait that allows multiple Flufflepuffs to be summoned regardless of a Contractor’s actual limits, with the first Flufflepuff summoned being deemed the true Contracted summons.

The second is [Mystic Indestructibility] which makes it so that as long as they have a magical supply Flufflepuffs are borderline indestructible, meaning they can handle even the roughest of child’s play without harm.”)

“Hmm… These guys might actually be kind of cool to get for the kids at camp.” He admitted, wondering why Miss Edna didn’t have a swarm of them dogpiling every depressed child to pass through camp. (I’ll have to ask her the next time I talk to her.)

Scene Consequences

-Thanks to Book Bonus gained 1XP to Contracting and Occult

--Currently: Contracting Lv. 4 (3/10) and Occult Lv. 6 (3/14)

---

Given how he had the day to himself, he decided to test out Pix’s garden by adding a few more plants to it and seeing if the residual magic accelerated it’s growth from the month it’d taken the previous batch to roughly a week like he was hoping.

“Alright, so another Medicinal herb and another poisonous plant.” He told Pix pulling the remnants of said plants from the enchanted preservation jars Miss Edna had given him. “Think you can use your magic to help give these a bit more life?”

Pix eyed the plants a bit before picking up a few bits and pieces while giving him a number of the buzzes and trills that made up the fairy language.

“So you can do it, but they probably aren’t going to be ready by the next time we harvest the garden, huh?” He translated for himself before shrugging. “Eh, that’s fine, the point isn’t really to harvest these two right now anyway.”

The little fairy gave him a curious look.

“I’m just figuring out how long it takes for a plant we add to the garden to take and stabilize.” He elaborated. “Once we figure that out we can focus on growing things other than the plants that we brought with us from Blackwell. I’m sure you’d love something new to play with.”

Pix thought about it for a moment before nodding decisively.

“Alright, well we’ll see what we can do once we know how a city garden handles, okay?” He told Pix as he pat the space between her antenna, earning a faint purring buzz from the little fairy.

Scene Consequences

-1 Mystical Medicinal Herbs of Blackwell and 1 Poisonous Plant of Blackwell added to Garden. (0 Open Slots Available.)

--Note: Due to proximity to Harvest these plants will not be harvested next Harvest.

-*Pix Power Level Up* Nature Manipulation Lv. 4.

---

Once they were done working on the garden and Pix had settled down to watch a nature documentary with Brutus, he started going through his various notes looking for another concept connected to his Moon affinity since he’d been neglecting it a bit in favor of Defender.

While doing so he stumbled upon a loose page sticking out from one of DeSade’s books, one that explained the basics of how to use a concept that he realized was related to his Moon affinity for an offensive defense of sorts.

The majority of the note seemed to revolve around DeSade trying to craft a spell that would reflect all damage upon a target with even greater harm than the initial attack, something that he quickly recognized as a devastating effect for any spell duel if it could be freely used.

Of course as he read over this page and realized both that the information on the page at no point reference him or his affinities as well as the fact that it went off on a long complex stream of Occult terms and formula. (Meaning this wasn’t a note to me, so much as a research paper DeSade forgot was in this book…)

Still even if it wasn’t meant for him it did give him an idea for a Concept he could look into now, as well as the research notes for a game changing spell should he improve his skills appropriately.

It took him a minute, but eventually he came across a section detailing the use of the Concept [Reflection], something that while reading DeSade’s notes he realized the moon’s light technically was. Meaning that even if he ended up having a bit of trouble connecting it to the moon itself, he could still connect it to the moon’s light which was a reflection of the sun’s light.

And while unfortunately at his current level all he could only make an object reflect Light, he felt that like with a lot of the Concepts he’d been learning, he could do some interesting things with this Concept once he finally figured out how to merge multiple concepts together. (And that’s not including if I manage to figure out a spell by the Devil of Blackwell.)

Scene Consequences

-New Concept: Reflection learned 2 tiers below Moon affinity.

--Moon>Moon Light> Reflection

-For learning a new Concept gained 1XP to Occult

--Currently: Lv. 6 (4/14)

-Discovered one of De Sade’s hidden Spell Work in De Sade’s Forbidden Knowledge.

--A new Spell has been unlocked under spell crafting, that can be made once the appropriate skill levels have been reached.