“What’s this?” Ashara asked, holding up the small box that held her present. Her birthnight had finally arrived, and I had crafted the perfect gift for her. “I told you that you didn’t have to get me anything, right?”

I smiled slightly, shaking my head. “Just open it up already, will you?” I teased, drawing a laugh from her as she opened the box.

When she saw the necklace inside of it, a soft gasp emerged from her mouth. She lifted the silver necklace, seeing the pendant of crossed horns. “This… this is…”

“It’s yours.” I finished, taking it gently from her and unclasping it to put it around her neck. “If you want it, of course.”

“Do I want it? Of course I want it!” She called out in a high pitched voice, her arms wrapping around me. I learned from my time in Deckan that things were a bit different here. When they wanted to propose to someone, they did not offer them jewelry. Rather, it was a much less… expensive way of simply asking for someone’s hand.

However, among demons, the mark of crossed horns was the symbol of matrimony. Whether it was on a necklace, a ring, even a bracelet. In some poorer families, they would simply draw the symbol on a note or carve it in wood. In other words… I had just proposed to her. And she had said yes.

“But, what’s this?” She asked, a soft smile on her face, even while her eyes were confused. She had found the black lock symbol drawn into the back of the pendant.

“You know those lessons I’ve been making you do?” I asked, my grin only growing wider. “Tap into the necklace with your mana.”

She blinked in confusion again, but did indeed do as I asked. And when she did, the lock began to shine, before breaking apart. The pendant was still perfectly fine, but a black energy shot out of the necklace, wrapping around her body.

Ashara let out a startled shout, before noticing that the energy wasn’t harming her at all. Instead, it became the same form-fitting armor that I had designed especially for her. “Karn… how did?”

“I discovered a new class.” I explained, before telling her about the different things I had learned over the last couple of weeks. This advanced class was far beyond anything I could have imagined.

The more I told her, the wider her eyes got, until they looked like they might fall out of her head. She wasn’t disgusted with me for my research, as we both knew all along that we had been butchering monster souls in order to create the cards that we wielded on a regular basis. Rather, she seemed proud that I had pioneered the path for not one, but two classes. One of which seemed to link to an entirely new system.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone about this already?” She asked, the scolding tone losing its effect as she fondled the pendant with a soft expression.

“I wanted to let you be the first one to know.” I admitted, reaching up to grasp her hand. “I planned to make a true announcement of it to the committee tomorrow, as long as you liked it.”

Ashara rolled her eyes, seeming entirely too pleased by my answer. “Oh, you… Go! Go make your announcement.” She laughed, pushing me off the bed that the two of us were sitting on. “Knowing you, you had everything prepared days ago, right? Go tell those old guys that us kids can still teach them a thing or two.”

I simply smiled, shaking my head. “Alright, alright. I’ll be back soon.” I told her, standing from the bed and moving to grab a card hidden in my desk, containing my notes about both new classes.

“You better.” She teased, her eyes containing a different sort of happiness now.

Chuckling, I moved to the balcony and launched myself out into the night, moving towards the palace. The queen would be asleep by now, but she had a special aid assigned for any nocturnal visitors. A special precaution taken once it was learned that not all demons could adjust to daylight hours.

The guards above the castle gate didn’t try to stop me, recognizing me as one of the queen’s knights. To be fair, I was pretty recognizable as the shortest demon in the entire planet… I let out a light sigh as that thought occurred to me, flying into the palace itself and moving towards the audience chamber.

Inside was a kitsune male with black hair and a tired expression. His name was Duren, and the two of us weren’t exactly the biggest fans of one another. Because of Ashara and I, he had to change his sleep cycle to become nocturnal. And after that, he did his best to make things difficult, in little ways. Pushing us to the back of a queue when there were other guests and things like that.

One of his ears perked up as I landed, and he glanced at me from his seat at the end of a long table. “What is it, Salacin? Shouldn’t you be off with your woman right now? Or did the two of you have a lover’s spat?”

“Hah, but no. I’m here on business.” I told him, unable to hide my smile even in the face of his comments. I pulled the card with my notes out, and flicked it through the air towards him, letting it land on the table and slide into his body. “I’ve discovered a couple of new classes, as well as a new system.”

He opened his eyes in alarm at my words, hurriedly snatching the card that was falling into his lap. “You’d better be telling the truth about this…” He said, withdrawing the notes and immediately beginning to pour over them. “Spirit Hunter… Summoner… advanced classes?”

He began to mumble to himself as he read the first pages of notes, before his eyes lifted up to lock onto me. “I’m sure that you are able to prove your claims? Summon one of these… Aeons, as you named them?”

“It was the system that called them that, but yes.” I said, closing my eyes briefly. In my body, I had five Aeons sealed, each one a different type of item. “Let’s go with the wind staff.”

I stretched my hand out, visualizing a mark of a tornado in my mind. The same mark appeared in a silver light above my palm, before shattering and expanding to become a long, metal staff. There were no fancy markings or engravings on it, and it looked like just a long pole at first glance. However, the method of summoning it was definitely eye-catching, as it had obviously not been called from a card.

“T-that… And you wrote that these Aeons have special powers?” He asked with a brief stammer, glancing down to reference my notes.

“That’s right.” Once I used the system-unlocked ability Create Aeon, a menu had appeared in front of me that allowed me to properly design the Aeon that I wanted. One of the options listed was the option to add abilities, though the list of abilities were small. And the more abilities it had, the more spirit energy it consumed to create.

The staff in my hand had taken over five hundred points of spirit energy, for instance. And it only had a single function. I turned my hand, rotating the staff from a horizontal to vertical position. At the same time, a gust of wind spread out with me at the center, rushing out to either side of me. “This wind staff creates bursts of wind whenever it moves, though doing so constantly drains my mana.”

“Amazing…” His defiant attitude seemed to have vanished as he heard that, having witnessed the power first hand. “B-but… you mentioned that there are also living Aeons? As wondrous as these items are, we can simply create magical items and store them in cards. Your Summoner class doesn’t offer much special there, aside from maybe extra customization.”

I let out a sigh, clenching my fist and dismissing the staff, letting it return to my body. “When I was making the Aeons, there was an option for how much wisdom you give it. I was also able to create a body type of various animals. Doing so actually seemed a bit cheaper than creating the items, however I chose to stick to this theme with my own creations.”

“May I ask why?” He asked, skeptically. His eyes lowered as he went through the remaining pages of my notes, as if they might hold the answer that he was looking for.

“When you bind an Aeon to yourself, you seal it into your soul. I don’t particularly enjoy the idea of having another creature living inside my soul. You can also bind them to items, but at that point they become little different from our current summoned creatures.”

He gave a small nod, as if that answer satisfied him. “Very well. You can go back. I’m not sure how favorable the concepts of these two classes will be in the eyes of the queen. However, if the stats offered by the class are as you’ve listed them, then I see these ‘advanced classes’ becoming an area of intense study in the future.”

I nodded at that dismissal, turning around to leave. As much as he liked to make things difficult for me, I knew that he wouldn’t ‘lose’ the notes. Not with how important the discovery was. After all, if I ended up going to the queen directly during the day, and she learned that Duren had misplaced such documents… he might lose more than his job.

Once I left the palace, I once again took to the skies, pushing my ki into my wings to carry me back to the balcony of mine and Ashara’s room in the academy. When I got there, I found her waiting for me, her armor removed and sealed back into the pendant. She was sitting at the edge of the bed, her thumb gently sliding over the pendant.

When she heard me enter, her eyes lifted up to look at me. “Well? How was it? I wish I could have been there to see his face.”

I let out a laugh, nodding my head. “It was priceless. What about you? I take it that you figured out how to put it away on your own.”

When I said that, Ashara had a somewhat sheepish expression on her face. “Well… not quite on my own. I tried to take it off, but there were no straps or anything… and I didn’t want to break what you worked so hard for. So I asked for help from Ashley. Apparently, this was amusing enough to her that she told me how to store it.”

I felt a smirk tug at my lips when I heard that. “Really now. Didn’t expect you to ask a goddess for help undressing.”

Ashara’s cheeks darkened. “You didn’t have to put it that way… Even though it’s basically what she said, too.”

I grinned, moving over to sit next to her on the bed. As soon as I sat down, I felt Ashara’s tail wrapping around my waist, pulling me just a bit closer. I turned in time to see her green eyes staring at me, before she pulled me against her.