This week has been both extremely fruitful, and downright exhausting.

I've narrowed down the 'perfect' hand signs for Catapult, reducing its cost by nearly fifty percent and making my casting of it basically second nature. Of course, when I'm an adult and a real mage, throwing myself through the air will be pretty impractical compared to flying, given flight is achievable, but for now, this is the best I've got.

Most importantly, I think I've perfected my first real spell!

I think for the name of my first spell I'm gonna go with Personal Space.

Naming needs work.

By simply clapping my hands twice, a perfectly spherical barrier will form near-instantly, covering the target and around one meter in every direction. Kinda mana intensive, but I can dump more or less mana into it depending on how strong I want it to be. At best, it can tank nearly ten strikes from the dummy before I feel it nearly shatter.

A classic spell for both defense and offense! Need quick protection? Boom, bubble. Need to surround and capture someone? Boom, bubble.

Man, I'm good at this magic stuff. My two first offensive spells are still a work in progress, a very very sharp barrier bit and the classic fireball.

Throwing my hand forward with a snap, a small pillar of fire shoots out of my extended index finger, exploding slightly on contact. A fire beam? Maybe. A fireball? Not a chance.

I mean, the spell is fast and hits harder than the barrier bit so far, but I want more of an instant effect rather than a beam. Or am I subconsciously willing it to be a beam? Cause dumping mana into the spell really only helps the oomf of the beam, not fixing the problem at all.

Fuck I need to understand magic more! I'm still only like thirty pages into this damn book, there's just too much information! It's like a shitty novel's info dump but only the boring parts!

Sighing and falling backward onto the floor, I turn my head to the right and take a calm look out the window, the beautiful pale moonlight illuminating my calm backyard. Staring off into the distance helps me relax both my mind and eyes.

Yet, as I keep staring, I can't help but feel it.

That sinking feeling in my gut, the itch on the side of my neck.

The feeling that someone is still watching me.

I've felt it for the past week, but it gets especially bad whenever I look into the forest for a while. As if someone is just drilling holes into the back of my head with their eyes. It's ridiculous, and I know that. No one has entered my room, and no one could even approach the house without Nezu or Rolia stopping them.

Turning away from the window, my instincts still scream at me to do something.

The things I do to stop my paranoia.

Sticking my hands downward, I send a small wave of fire out in all directions, centered on myself of course. Just a little light show to ease my paranoia, couldn't catch the curtain on fire if it wanted to.

As the fire shoots out from my body, it hits every wall with the small, satisfying thud I expected. All except one.

It all happens in an instant. Clapping twice, I surround the thing with a spherical barrier just as the light from the fire fades, leaving only the light from the moon in the room.

INVISIBILITY?! How the fuck did I never consider that!

"Nezu! Rolia! There's something see-through in my room! Help!" I yell, funneling more and more mana into the barrier and flinging myself across the room, away from the barrier and towards my chest.

Throwing the book and closing the lid, I hastily re-attach the lock as Rolia breaks into the room fully armed.

"Is it in there?" Rolia asks calmly, more on edge about the intruder than surprised by the barrier I'm guessing.

"Yeah," I say, slightly short of breath. Close call on that one.

"All Seeing Eyes," Rolia says, as her eyes begin to slightly glow in the darkness of the room. An anti-invisibility spell? Is it really that common of a thing?

I mean, illusion magic exists so probably. Damn, I've been an idiot.

An invisibility spell and an anti-anti-invisibility spell are now a top priority!

"Drop the bubble, nothing's in there," Rolia said, letting down her guard with a deep sigh. Dispelling the spell and looking up at Rolia with a new level of respect.

"Nice barrier buddy!" She says, picking me up with a big hug. "That's super impressive! But how'd you see the bad guy?"

"He made a noise!" I said, holding Rolia a bit tighter to play up the scared kid act.

"Hey, it's alright kiddo, I'm here for ya. Nice reaction speed, but whatever was in there is long gone, so you don't have to worry. You can sleep with me and Nezu tonight alright?" Rolia says, slowly setting me down and looking at me with the eyes of a truly concerned aunt.

"Okay, thank you," I say, looking down and following Rolia into the master bedroom.

Yeah, okay. What the fuck was that.

It was human-shaped, roughly at least, and obviously wasn't harmful. If it wanted me dead, I would have died whenever I passed out today, let alone in the past week, if it's been that long.

Weird, weird weird weird.

Crawling into bed between Rolia and a snoring Nezu, it might be a little hard to sleep tonight.

--- Point of View: Rolia Shamus Cloudkill, Present Moment ---

Haha, Nasim owes me twenty gilded!

'Haha, you owe me twenty gilded.' I say with a simple cast of Mental Message.

'Oh shut up, guess how the little guy found me?' Nezu said mentally scoffing at himself.

'He said he heard you, but we both know that's not possible. So my oh-so masterful thief, how did you get caught by a two-year-old child?' I said with as much mental tease as I could.

'I think he was trying out a new spell, basically a ring of fire around him, and since he's never done something like that before, I was caught off guard. The kid is smart, freaky smart, so I wasn't caught by a kid, I was caught by a future monster.' Nezu said, still mentally sighing over his 'defeat'.

He's such a baby.