Every single time I think about women, I am afraid of being sexist. To be honest, I’m not even sure what sexist means anymore. In my experience, being sexist is meeting a girl with colored hair from Columbia that screams at me because I didn’t know about her protest on misgendering language.

That’s why I am very careful when I ask the landlady, whose name is still a mystery to me, my next question.

“Do Elves favor men over women?”

It’s a passing thought but, at the same time, it’s something you would expect from a medieval society.

My host, whom I can now see a bit more clearly, raises an eyebrow and laughs.

“Humans,” she shakes her head. This is probably the first genuine mirth I’ve seen on her face. “No, kid. Elves are more versed in magic compared to your flat-eared kin. That means women have fried more than one handsy [Warrior]. In our history, you can even find [Queens] who gutted their treacherous husbands. We are far from a matriarchy, but we are no men-dominated kingdom.”

I don’t think I have ever asked which kingdom we were in and who these queens and kings were. Or maybe I did. And then I forgot. Considering my weird sleeping patterns, there’s a good chance that I could have already heard some name.

“May I know your name?” I ask tentatively with a tiny smile. I don’t want her to be offended by my wide grins.

“Agostina, kid,” she sighs as she puts down a tea and some biscuits.

“Beautiful name, milady,” I feel a bit more daring now that she’s been less hard on me. “And thank you for the tea and biscuits.”

I want to say stuff like ‘you didn’t have to’ or ‘you are an amazing host and a landlady I could only dream of’, but I don’t want to be thrown out.

You have to read your crowd. This lady was old school. Even if she allowed some measure of tomfoolery from me, she wouldn’t stand for too much of it.

So, I tone down my usual antics to ‘cute’ instead of ‘overwhelming’.

“Kid,” she says while pouring me some tea, “can you tell me how you were casting that spell? Even if you are training unusually, as you claim, I could give you a hand to avoid blowing yourself up.”

At that moment, my brain spaces out because I realize something.

The book is a wonderful tool, but it’s probably similar to an untrained AI, right?

Ok, wait.

Do I know how they train AI?

Huh.

Not really.

Ok, it’s probably similar to how I think they train AI. It doesn’t take into consideration human error, meaning that it doesn’t prevent me from making the stupidest choice. And if an [Archmage] made it, the Mulligan fellow, he probably didn’t even remember what the most common mistakes were. Or maybe not the most common mistakes, but edge cases that idiots like me would turn into reality.

I definitely need to ask the book if it can learn—

“OUCH!” the older Elf jabs her wand into my stomach.

“Were you daydreaming?” she asks with a frown.

“It’s just that your question made me think and I forgot to answer,” I say massaging the tender spot she poked. And no, it’s not because I’m soft. She really gave it all with that damn poke.

“Care to answer now?” she says and then takes a sip of her tea. “Mm, good stuff. I need to ask that idiot merchant to buy more of these leaves.”

Elves drinking tea.

Truly an abomination.

I wish I could go back in time and kill that British degenerate and burn all tea plantations in the world.

But let’s answer before she pokes my eyes out next.

“I just traced the matrix, as you do, but I forgot to do it farther from my eyes.”

I look at her sharp eyes behind the teacup. See, the ‘as you do’ part is something I’m absolutely not sure of. But I do have to pretend I know what I’m doing and that whatever I’m doing is the normalcy, don’t I? So, I’m trying to understand if she’s onto me or not.

“Describe what you mean with ‘traced the matrix’,” she goes on.

“Well, the squiggly lines, you know? You use three points and then start tracing the matrix in the air with your mana. Once you get through the scribble, boom, magic done, right?”

Now, she even forgets to drink from her cup. And that tells me that I’m probably practicing something fairly unusual, aren’t I?

“You mean that you visualized the full matrix very vividly before materializing it?”

Huh?

What?

“Maybe?” I cringe.

“So, you are overcharging your spells by taking more time than needed to impress the spell matrix?”

Impress?

What?

“I—I don’t know what I’m doing, to be honest,” I shrug with a bitter expression. And it’s true. I see a truth-stone on the table turning green. She’s not the kind of person who needs to be subtle about these things. “Would you mind teaching me how to materialize the [Light] spell?”

I’m curious to know whether I’m casting spells differently from the rest of the population. Is it so far-fetched to think that maybe my spellcasting method could be superior to theirs? Is that the reason my [Light] spell was so powerful?

So, I fully expect her to show me some shabby version of the spell. I wouldn’t mind feeling like I’m a genius of sorts.

“You really don’t know anything about magic, do you, kid?” she snorts. “How someone recreates a spell is a well-guarded secret. Even a [Light] spell is usually something that stronger mages don’t want to trade since it would give insights in how they use every other spell. I asked you because I figured you are newbie without secrets to give away. In fact, there are exceptions, like wide-spread knowledge at the academy or direct disciples of [Archmages] and so on, who will learn in exchange for a magical contract. But unless you want to be my disciple for the next twenty years of your life, I fear I’ll not be able to explain you my [Light] spell.”

Well, why am I surprised?

This is exactly what I should have expected from this world.

What, you thought I could just be a secretly overpowered mage and lord my superiority over others from the shadow?

Hell no.

These motherflippin’ pieces of biscuit don’t share their knowledge unless I go to some nine-damned academy or something.

I exhale and leave it at that.

Come on, Lady Luck, you could be merciful from time to time.

Even a masochist needs some respite!