Prince August had a dazzling smile as he spread his arms wide and proclaimed, "Very well, in a week, Damien Karles and Head Professor Victor shall duel in the university's arena, and I will be the judge."

Damien cringed watching 'sparkle boy' act so pompous as he knew his real personality. 'I can't believe I used to play as Prince August all the time; that was admittedly a dark time in my past... I started playing the game with the basic characters but got a little bored after a few playthroughs. So after searching online, many recommended I try out 'August Greentail'. So I looked him up and discovered Prince August was a high-level villain with A-grade Necromancy. He was the perfect villain as he was a prince and heir to a kingdom, had many loyal servants, and could do anything he wanted within Kassinki's capital.'

Damien's expression became dark as he remembered many questionable memories, 'The game was also 18+ and allowed players to participate in… some less savoury exercises at August's summer houses. Let's just say I suspect my weird kinks were acquired through my playtime with August.'

'August is also a massive obstacle for Damien Nightshade. In two years, the current King Edward Greentail will fall ill to a plague and die shortly after. Since Edward only has one son and a daughter, the son will obviously receive his position.'

'The main problem with this is that August is both a human supremacist and very interested in vampires as a source of immortality. August hates the idea that someday he will lose his dazzling youth and be reduced to a grumpy old man like his father. Furthermore, just ruling over Kassinki isn't enough for him. He wants both immortality and the entire world under his rule.'

'So in two years, he will not only start slaughtering demi-humans causing the greatest genocide in history, but he will also launch an invasion alongside Oshal into the Kazimir mountain range. His excuse is that he wanted to wipe out a potential threat to his nation's security, but in reality, he just wanted to find the secrets of immortality.'

Damien shook his head and walked past the Prince August in silence. 'Do I create a cure for the plague and save the King? But that may alter the storyline and create a treatment for an A-grade Necromancers curse is no simple feat!' Various other solutions crossed Damien's mind, 'Perhaps I could assassinate August and place the Princess on the throne instead?'

Damien ignored these thoughts and quickly entered the Public Library. He had been here many times in the game, but it was far more impressive in real life. The heavy smell of wood and books, the dim lighting from glowstones, and the low murmuring of students sitting over open books with deep looks of concentration.

Damien quickly navigated the hundreds of rows to find the books he needed. He carefully picked twenty books on various topics and carried them around with Psychokinesis. Due to the number of books, his low level meant manipulating each book individually was far too complex, so he used his gloves to carry a stack of the books instead.

Many students looked up from their reading and gawked at the sight of a floating tower of books that seemed to orbit Damien as he inspected the shelves.

Just as Damien was heading towards the librarian, Fay appeared and tried sneakily placing a book on his pile. Damien quickly grabbed the book from her hand and inspected its title.

Basic Principles of Mana Manipulation

'So she's trying to learn magic….'

Damien looked at her and used Telepathy to read her surface thoughts.

'Dad… no… wish I could learn… magic looks… amazing…' since his skill was still low level, it was only a jumbled mess but nothing about burning him to death, so he was hopefully making progress on fixing their broken relationship!

She seemed sombre, and Damien felt that maybe he could cheer her up by accepting the book.

'Potentially I can get in her good books despite murdering her family? Or is that just insane thinking?' Damien pondered for a moment but realised that this was an excellent opportunity, 'Seeing how she learns magic from this book will help me understand how residents of this world usually learn spells. I have to teach soon after all.'

Damien just put the book on his pile of now twenty-one books and wordlessly headed towards the front counter, where a surprised librarian sat staring at the floating tower of books.

The librarian pushed his glasses up his long nose and nervously looked between Damien and the books. "Excuse me, student, you can only take out three books at a time…."

Damien was confused for a second and looked behind him but realised the librarian was addressing him.

"Oh, I am Head Professor Victor's teaching assistant, I have to do research on material for his classes, so I need these books."

The librarian seemed suspicious but saw Damien's level of control, which should be at C or even B grade and his noble clothes…

Worst case, he would get an earful from the Head Librarian for this. The librarian noted the book titles and raised his brow, reading some of the names. In his opinion, the books seemed random and didn't follow any particular theme; the librarian had no idea how these could help in a lesson.

After checking out the books, the pair also bought enough food for a few days from a stall; Damien started at his pitiful amount of bronze coins that remained. He needed to make some money as his paycheck won't come in until the month's end.

Damien retrieved his carriage from the frightened guard; he promptly threw his badge on the floor and stamped on it once Damien was leaving. Quite odd behaviour, Damien thought as he focused on the road ahead.

Apart from taking a bath, sleeping, and watching over Fay, Damien had a peaceful few days. He mainly focused on reading through his mountain of books.

***

Damien casually floated five books in front of him while sipping on some cheap wine he found left in the servant's rooms. The red wine had a sharp sour flavour, similar to vinegar, and it slightly burned his nasal passages as it went down. It was rather unpleasant, but he enjoyed the atmosphere it created. Swirling the wine in the glass made him feel like a true villain, which seemed to appeal to his soul.

Speaking of soul, he had managed to slowly get control over his body and traits. They were still there but more controllable. He could almost touch things without gloves now, and he could reduce his sleeping to only 12 hours a day. His [Concentration] had only increased in potency, which aligned with Psychic magic. It took Fay more brute force methods to break him out of a trance if he was deep in thought about something. It almost became a joke between them when she had to smash two frying pans next to Damien's ear.

Damien took out his pocket watch with Psychokinesis and snapped open its lid with his mind. He looked at his deathly pale yet handsome face, and with a slight bit more concentration, his status appeared:

[Damien Nightshade]

[Noble Vampire]

Schools of Magic:

Psychic Magic (C+)]

Psychokinesis [C+]

Automatic Writing [F]

Telepathy [E]

Pyrokinesis [E]

Blood Magic [F]

-None-

=Null Spells=

Mana Control [D]

Traits:

[Germaphobe] Unable to learn melee skills / 100% Increased control over ranged spells

[Control Freak] Increased affinity to control skills by 10%

[Lazy] Increased mana regeneration while resting by 20% / Increased exp to learn new spells by 10%

[Concentration] Increased affinity with mental spells by 5%

[Noble Aura] Intimidation increased

His status had changed significantly over the last few days, but he was nowhere near the progress he was expecting. His skills were now grouped under the school of magic or affinity he specialised in.

Damien looked over the list and pondered, 'Since this became a real world, specific game mechanics haven't followed. For example, learning new skills is entirely different. In the game, a player just had to pick up a book that contained the spell, open it, and that was it. They would gain the spell in the book at the F tier. Of course, certain spells couldn't be learned or locked behind restrictions, but usually, a player's character could learn most spells through this method.'

Damien had opened the books from the library and expected to learn the skills instantly. But that was not the case. Instead, he was greeted with pages of diagrams and runes that showed how the spells worked. Damien flicked through the pages and felt utterly lost, 'How am I supposed to understand these diagrams? Chemistry exams made more sense than this shit.' Although the diagrams were confusing, he could only laugh at the runes. It was just a simple programming language written in English.

'It seems I am reading, writing, and talking in this world's native language without knowing it. Only after seeing English as the rune language did I realise I was even speaking a different language. How interesting...'

To everyone else, it looked like some ancient and profound language, but to Damien, it just looked something like this:

Spell Fireball(Size, Distance, Mana)

'Spell is the 'function' call. So anyone planning to use the Fireball spell would first shout out 'Spell' and follow it with the spell name, in this case, 'Fireball'. They then would provide the spell with the expected size, the target's distance, and how much mana. This is all done mentally within the mage's mind.'

Damien leaned back in his chair and sighed, 'So most of the spell construction is done mentally. That's a shame since I understand the language, and it would be easy to beat other mages if they were shouting everything out to me.'

Damien put the book aside and decided to watch Fay trying to practice and read the runes from her book; it seemed genuinely hard for her to read the runes for some reason? Her pronunciation was entirely off at times, and it seemed to affect her ability to manipulate the mana around her body.

Damien was sure he could speak the rune language fluently, which would surprise people. He had tried to see if he could cast spells just by saying them aloud, but it seemed impossible to learn or cast spells that were not of a Psychic nature.

'Surprisingly, Pyrokinesis is under the Psychic category. It is simply basic fire manipulation with the mind. An actual fire spell like Fireball is impossible for me to cast, as I have no affinity for Fire. The only spells I can use or learn are Psychic or Blood spells. Unfortunately, all the books on Blood magic are strictly controlled in the Mage Tower, while the rest are stored in the libraries of Kazimir.'

The only new spell Damien had learned over the last three days was Automatic Writing, a specialised version of Psychokinesis. It allowed him to manipulate chalk sticks or any writing utensil and direct it to write for him. He didn't have to manually move the chalk but just convey words or diagrams, and it would write them out for him. Useful for teaching but not for the upcoming duel.

The five books floating around Damien covered different topics; one was even about world history instead of magic. He was desperately trying to find out how to raise his Psychokinesis to B grade as it was stuck at C+ no matter what he did.

He wanted to learn other Psychic spells like:

Materialisation - S Grade, The creation of objects and materials or the appearance of matter from an unknown source.

Astral Projection - A Grade, The ability to voluntarily project an astral or mental body.

Petrification - A Grade, The power to turn a living being to stone by directing mana into their eyes.

Clairvoyance - B Grade, The ability to see things and events that are happening far away and locate objects, places, and people using a 'sixth sense.

Levitation - B Grade, The ability to float or fly by mystical means.

Automatic Writing - C Grade, The ability to draw and write without conscious intent.

Telepathy - C Grade, The ability to transmit or receive thoughts supernaturally.

The number of skills available to Psychic mages was very limited, but all incredibly powerful. But to Damien's displeasure, all the useful ones were locked behind S, A, and B grades.

Damien was researching how to raise his Psychic affinity grade, but there was little information on it; very few books reached above C grade. However, Damien understood why nations wanted to keep the number of powerful Psychic mages to a minimum; just Clairvoyance alone is enough to win a war, for example.

Materialisation isn't worth mentioning, as there are no S-rank mages that even walk the planet. The King of the Vampires, Kazimir, had been the last recorded S rank in Blood Magic.

Damien saw Fay sneaking glances at him; she suddenly let out a deep sigh and seemed to gather some courage to ask him something.

"M-master… can I ask something?"

"What?" A scowl on his face as his concentration was broken.

Fay gulped but soldiered on with her request, "Since you are so good at magic, could you teach me a spell?"

Damien's jaw dropped for a moment before [Noble Aura] corrected his attitude, and his [Concentration] trait kicked. 'Hmmm, should I teach her a spell? There are definite positives, such as improving our relationship, which would help me with my teaching skills. But on the flip side, she could learn Fire magic and kill me...'

Damien then used Telepathy to read Fay's surface thoughts. Again she was thinking about her Dad refusing to teach her magic, and she seemed surprised that Damien didn't reject her instantly. She also thought about having no talent for magic?

'I expected her to be thinking of what spells could kill me or something? Well, I guess letting her learn a simple lifestyle spell-like Cleaning would be fine... unless she can somehow clean me to death?'

Having reached a conclusion, Damien simply replied, "Sure".

The pros outweigh the cons, and if he discovered her using Fire Magic, he would deal with her before she could threaten his life.