“I like how you said when the time comes and not if the time comes,” Aleister pointed out. “Really helps to boost my ego, even though I’ve done nothing but fail so far.”

“Of course I said that because, no matter what,” Syn paused, shifting her eyes to stare directly into Aleister’s, “you will become one. There is no choice for you anymore.”

“Dramatic—but,” Aleister paused for a moment but with a more determined look than ever said, “it’s not like I left myself a choice in the first place.”

Syn’s smirk transitioned into more of a hopeful smile. “Good to hear.”

“Now then, uh,” Aleister stammered before letting a curse. “Damn. I wanted to ask a question, but I forgot about it. Whatever. I’ll just go with, how exactly do I start learning arcane magic?”

Syn uncrossed her legs and stood up from her chair. “Well—”

“Oh, I remember now!” Aleister said, interrupting her. “Sorry, but I wanted to ask, which type of magic is the strongest? Just from names, it sounds like divine and primal are much stronger, but arcane has to be difficult to learn for a reason, right?”

“Good assumptions. You aren’t actually too far off. Divine magic is technically the strongest of the three, but that isn’t because the other two are weak. All three are good enough, because no matter what, you cannot extract the most out of them. But divine magic has the inherent property of being divine, giving it an innate advantage. Primal is essentially a more focused divine magic. Which leaves Arcane last. Of course, it also has its advantages as the deeper your understanding becomes, the more power you can draw out. This gives it a high ceiling, but also the low floor, as it is easy to mess up.”

Aleister nodded. What Syn said made complete sense. Having to rely on your own understanding and the external world around you had the difficulty built into it. With divine magic, there of course would be your own understanding of the powers you were bestowed, but you didn’t have to create them yourself, just recreate them.

“To add to what I was saying earlier,” Syn spoke after a few moments, letting the information sink in, “Upon reaching divinity, it doesn’t matter what type of magic you use as it all become divine magic. Hopefully, I don’t need to explain why that is the case for you there.”

“Nope, it seems pretty self explanatory.”

Syn nodded before tossing the book before she withdrew towards him. This caught him off guard, and while he managed to catch it, it wasn’t without a little bit of fumbling around.

As he held the tattered book in his hands, he could only feel the absolute weight of it after a few seconds. It only took a couple of seconds before he started to feel his hands lower and his shoulders droop down. “What is this?” he asked.

“A book,” Syn answered.

“Wow, really? A book?” Aleister said, rolling his eyes. “I would never have guessed. Thank you for enlightening me oh great one.”

“No problem.”

“Yup, thanks.”

Syn and Aleister looked at each other for a couple of seconds in the most awkward of moments of silence. Feeling unsettled, Aleister opened his mouth to speak, but Syn was faster. “Before you ask, yes, it is a spellbook.”

“A spellbook?”

“Yes, it is an ancient relic of the past. I actually stumbled upon one not too long ago.”

“I bet not too long ago was like one-hundred years ago or something for you,” Aleister joked.

"Wow, I can't believe you would think I'm that old." Syn sighed. "Not too long ago I actually meant last month."

“Last month?” Aleister looked at her in disbelief. “First of all, I’m supposed to believe that you aren’t even one-hundred years old, and then on top of that, I’m supposed to believe you just conveniently stumbled upon a spellbook just last week?”

“Yes,” Syn said. But before the situation could become awkward again, she waved her hand in a horizontal line. The surrounding environment distorted, and he found himself inside Syn’s library. “And to answer your question before you ask, that isn’t the first spellbook I’ve found.”

“That does make more sense,” Aleister said as he lifted the book and placed it on the table next to him. “You have to have one that won’t break my back, or one that isn’t in an absolute disaster of state, right?”

“Of course I have ones that fulfill those requirements, but you can’t have them.”

“Why not?”

“Most of them were written in too complex of a manner for you to understand,” Syn said while brushing her fingers across the spines of several books. Paying attention, Aleister realized that they gave him a certain feeling of otherworldliness, but it wasn’t one he could quite put into words.

“Most of them? Then what about the other ones?” he asked.

Syn pushed his question aside whilst grabbing some of the books. “You seem to have misunderstood what I said when I found a spellbook last week.”

Aleister looked confused as he asked, “Hm? How so?”

“The spellbook you have isn’t the one I found,” she said. “It’s actually the spellbook I used to use before I became a Contractor.”