Agostina, Domitilla, and Julia start asking questions about my magical training.

“Yeah, no I’m still practicing some exercises before I dive deeper into spells.”

Domitilla seems to know some magic, apparently. She’s being tutored by her aunt.

“Oh, you are going through the 23 Cantrips?”

My brain kind of stops there.

No, really.

It kind of does.

“Come again?” I ask with a frown.

“You are practicing the 23 Cantrips, right?” Domitilla asks again.

23?

I’ll censor myself for a second while I silently take it out with the book.

Just know that if you could read in my head and see my thoughts, you would probably be quite shocked by the number of profanities a person can come up with in a few instants.

“I’m still practicing the first one,” I venture. I realized before that I have to be careful when I lie since there are so many truth-stones lying around this place.

“Oh, the rotating [Lights]! Yeah, it took me a few hours to get through that one.”

Now.

What the f—

“Oh, I think it will take me a few days to get through it,” I scratch my head, embarrassed. Ok, maybe I’m not that talented, am I?

It’s also nice to know that apparently the Cantrips are still being used. I thought my tome might be a little outdated.

“You know that the 23 Cantrips have been around for millennia? They get passed down as the initial assessment for talent. The fastest students can complete them in three weeks. Those are very talented people. I’m still around the fifteenth and it’s been a month.”

Don’t I have 333 days for 529 Cantrips?

And she said she took hours for the first? Does that mean that the difficulty will scale dramatically?

I think it shows that I’m a bit down now and Domitilla suddenly looks like she’s feeling bad for me.

“Oh, Joey, don’t worry. It doesn’t matter if you take a bit longer.”

I mean, girl, it kind of matters. If I take too long, I’ll get literally zapped to death. How about that?

“You want to be a [Baker], right? You won’t need much magic for that! And look, I can show you how my first Cantrip looks like, it might help you gain a better understanding!” Domitilla flashes a bright smile at me while wildly gesturing with her hands.

“Domitilla, you know that you shouldn’t show random people your magic,” Agostina looks coldly at her niece.

“Oh, come on, it’s the first Cantrip. What is Joey going to do, conjure a [Meteor] out of looking at my two [Lights]?”

Domitilla goes straight for the magic and conjures two small pale—

Wow, those [Lights] really suck.

They are barely luminous. They wouldn’t be able to light up pretty much anything, even in pitch-dark.

Domitilla focuses her gaze on the two and squints her eyes.

Now, the two [Lights] start slowly moving around with jerky movements and they barely do one full circle before they break down.

“Ta-dan!”

Have you ever wished you had some kind of mechanical clock in the house that ticked really loudly? Why? Well, in my opinion, it fills the silence with a beautiful ‘what the hell did I just see?’ thing when you suddenly go mute.

“Well, that’s something!” I say aloud, smiling charmingly toward Domitilla.

“Show me what you can do now! I can help you!” Domitilla volunteers.

Show her what I can do? Yeah, sure, let me just show you how a random Human can summon two [Lights] brighter than a flashlight and then move them smoothly in one direction. Sure, why not? It’s not like your aunt wouldn’t start peeling my skin one layer at a time to discover where the hell I learned to do that.

“I’m a bit shy,” I smile and get an idea. “Maybe you can come later to my apartment and with some privacy, I could show you something.”

Hell, I even add a wink.

This should save me.

First, I fully expect to be thrown out by either Agostina or Julia after this bout of sexual innuendo. Second, this smoking-hot girl would never come alone after I said something like—

“Sure!” she smiles brightly.

Goddamn, I’m too charming, aren’t I?

This girl did one circle with two crooked [Lights]. I’m not even sure she used the same approach I have to move magic! I think she was just tossing the [Lights] around with her natural instinct. You can’t do that, can you? I mean, it doesn’t count, does it?

“Joey, if you lay one finger on my niece,” Agostina starts saying before her sister shushes her up.

“They are adults, Agostina. Don’t be a prude! And he doesn’t look half-bad for a human! Hell, had I been younger, I would have tapped that!” Julia waves her off like nothing.

I am not entirely clear on what’s happening, to be honest. I know that the food I was chewing entered the wrong hole and is now trying to choke me.

When I recover from Julia’s comment, I’m still trying to understand how Domitilla can think that she completed the first Cantrip. You have to rotate the [Lights] for a minute without interruptions in their movements. She barely did one spin!

Am I actually talented? Or is it the book?

A warm feeling starts spreading throughout my chest.

Am I talented?