Ja Yun checked, double-checked, then triple-checked her notes to be certain she hadn’t made any mistakes. If someone had told her a year ago that she’d have found employment cracking xiantian level spells—from the royal family, no less—living abroad under the same roof as a princess with whom she shared a semi-amorous relationship, and raising a child with a loving girlfriend...she’d have either fainted on the spot or woken up from her dream.

Sometimes she still expected to wake up to discover the last year of her life had just been some crazy fever dream, and that she’d cracked under the pressure of military life as a failed scholar. But no—it was all real, and lately Yun was even growing comfortable enough to accept it.

Which meant that the blob of slime slowly dripping off the ceiling behind her was also real. Iseul found the weirdest ways to entertain herself.

“Iseul, if any disconnected bits of your body lose cohesion, I’m not helping you replace that mana.”

The little elemental paused for a moment, then released another droplet to join the puddle beneath her—which was also her—apparently having made peace with the threat. Weird kid.

Yun put aside the thoughts of her adopted daughter for a moment to refocus on her work. It was...solid, she had to admit. It had taken her months of work, and no small amount of cooperation from Lee Jia just to decipher a single one of Princess Seong Misun’s simpler spells but...it was done.

The spell—or rather the theory, since she didn’t have the resources on hand to actually scribe the monstrously complex magic onto a talisman—was without a doubt her greatest academic achievement. Of course, she’d cheated extensively. Yoshika’s perfect memory snapshots and the framework of Do Hye’s extradimensional formations gave her an incredible frame of reference—plus she was just recreating someone else’s spell, not actually inventing anything new—

Ja Yun shook her head and cut off that train of thought. She’d been through this with Lady Xiulan—no excuses. This was a great accomplishment—something she could be proud of! She had successfully reverse engineered Seong Misun’s windwalking spell, and she was excited to finally share the results of her effort with Lee Jia.

Iseul dropped to the floor behind Ja Yun with a wet plop, then oozed her way up the leg of the table to look at Ja Yun’s work. Once, Yun might have been worried that the mud elemental would mess up her papers, but Iseul was actually very careful not to leave bits of herself behind. Most things she ‘slimed’ actually came away drier than they started.

It had taken a few incidents to get her to stop sucking all the ink out of the paper, though.

Iseul rearranged her arms to face Ja Yun while she continued reading—a decidedly inhuman configuration of limbs, but Yun was used to it—and began signing.

You finished the big spell?

Ja Yun nodded and smiled proudly. She did her best to sign along as she responded, but Iseul’s sign language was not made for solid hands.

“I did! What do you think?”

I am still trying to analyze the ultimate function of the spell.

Yun smiled wryly. Her daughter was a bizarre creature—genius intellect in some places, but as dumb as she’d expect of any toddler in others. She wasn’t even a full year old yet.

“You already know what it does, Iseul. It’s the same windwalking spell Princess Seong Misun used on us a dozen times during our travels.”

The result of the spell is not the same as the function. There are a theoretically infinite number of ways to achieve the same result—I am trying to analyze this one.

Somehow, even without a voice, Iseul managed to sound cheeky. Yun prodded her in the cheek and pouted.

“Don’t be such a smartass! So what’s the verdict, my little genius? Does it get the Iseul seal of approval?”

Iseul burbled irritably as she signed her response.

I have no such seal, but I am forced to admit that this working is beyond my comprehension. I can understand how each piece logically flows into the next, and I am unable to find any faults, however the full scope of the theory is too large for me to grasp.

“Well, you’re only in the first stage and your age is measured in months, so let’s not be too ambitious.”

I do have one question—why does the spell waste so much efficiency by drawing a second? Why not simply draw the final spell in the first place?

Ja Yun smiled. It felt weird answering the same questions she herself had asked back in college.

“That’s called spell-scribing. It’s a trick for fitting really big spells into really small talismans. It takes more time and effort to make the spell, but it beats carrying giant heavy scrolls around on your back like ancient mages used to.”

Why make talismans in the first place, instead of commanding the mana to move as needed?

“Well, my little slime ball, we’re not all made out of mana like you are, so that kind of fine aura control doesn’t come naturally. Besides, creating a spell like this takes enormous concentration, which we can’t really afford in the middle of battle.”

Iseul tilted her head, bits of her ‘hair’ dripping off of her head, only to rejoin her feet.

Haeun could do it. And so can Yoshika.

Yun rolled her eyes.

“Not counting one-in-a-million prodigies, it’s not something that humans are generally capable of. Even Yoshika only does it with really basic spells like sound barrier. Lee Jia’s favorite lightning bolts still use talismans—even if she scribes them like an utter maniac.”

“You have a problem with my calligraphy technique, Ja Yun?”

Jia’s voice startled Yun so badly she nearly hit the ceiling. She’d been expecting her, but Jia and Eui were both so quiet when they wanted to be—had they forgotten to knock?

“N-no! Of course not! Using ki infusion and the precise movements of martial arts to quickly inscribe talismans is inspired!”

Ja Yun felt as if she was going to wither and die under the intensity of Jia’s golden gaze until An Eui wandered in from behind her, rolling her eyes and scoffing derisively.

“Relax, Yun, she’s just fucking with you. We know how weird our techniques are.”

She relaxed as Jia broke character and chuckled, but she couldn’t help but notice that there was still a tension in the air as the two of them sat down.

“Are...you two alright?”

If she wasn’t mistaken, they would have just come from a therapy session with Lin Xiulan. Yun knew just how intense those could get sometimes. Iseul signed furiously at her.

I may have limited empathy, but even I can tell from their posture and attitudes that they are under emotional distress. What was the point of that question?

Ja Yun frowned and signed back quickly, choosing not to speak her words as she did.

I’m being polite, you goober! It’s just a way of opening the option for them to talk about it without being too forceful.

Jia chuckled and shook her head.

“I appreciate the gesture, but right now I think we’d both rather just let ourselves get distracted by talking shop. What’s all this? Did you make a breakthrough?”

Ja Yun blushed—she’d forgotten that Jia knew their sign language. Still, she recognized the opening to move on and jumped on it.

“Yes! Princess Seong Misun’s windwalking spell—fully reverse engineered, though prohibitively expensive to actually produce. I wonder how she has so many of them?”

“You’ve been inside the royal palace—I don’t think acquiring resources was ever a concern for her.”

That was a fair point. Jia quickly looked over the notes, flipping through Ja Yun’s work deceptively quickly. She was probably using that ridiculous mental technique of hers to instantly memorize it all.

“Do you think we could modify it to reduce the cost? This is a generalized technique, but what if we made it more personal?”

Ja Yun sighed. Lee Jia was, generously speaking, not very good at spellcraft. She had her own personal brand of genius, not unlike Iseul’s—absolutely brilliant in some areas, and completely moronic in others. Yun cleared her throat and tried to respond as diplomatically as she could.

“While I’ve learned an enormous amount from studying this technique, I still only barely understand the fundamentals behind it. Any tiny change in the spell matrix could disrupt the entire thing unpredictably. It’s theoretically possible, but in practice we’d be better off trying to invent a new spell from scratch.”

An Eui snickered.

“You don’t have to sugar coat it, Ja Yun. A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed. Jia just wants to arrive at her destination in a big dramatic bolt of lightning.”

Lee Jia flushed a bit and put the papers down.

“No I don’t. Shut up...”

As intimidating as they could be—they really were an adorable couple. Ja Yun took advantage of the lighter mood to deliver some good news.

“There’s one other thing I should mention—with this breakthrough, I’m a lot more confident in analyzing some of Do Hye’s work, as well as the ancient formations you stole from the Sky Hall—”

Jia shook her head in protest.

“We didn’t steal anything! Nobody told us we weren’t allowed to look.”

Not memorizing and deciphering ancient secrets from the royal palace seemed like the kind of thing that was just tacitly expected to Yun, but she didn’t press the point.

“Right, anyway, I don’t think it should take as long to figure out the next ones, and from there to start developing our own spells.”

Lee Jia nodded along happily.

“That sounds great! But first, don’t you want to try this one out?”

Ja Yun blinked.

“Um, what? We can’t. Even if we had the materials to scribe the spell, the amount of mana it would require to charge a talisman is—”

Jia held out a hand and unceremoniously dumped a small pile of barks, hides, stones, and other precious materials onto the table, which Iseul flowed over excitedly.

“Pretty sure some of these are charged with enough air mana to work as materials, and we don’t need to make a perfect talisman, just a functional one. We may be running low on cores, but we’ve still got plenty of other stuff from our time out in the wilderness.”

Right. Ja Yun always forgot just how insane Yoshika was. Two years lost in the untamed wilds, with a ‘benevolent’ demon herding beasts into them the entire time. Even at the third stage, they should have died a thousand times over—some of the creatures they’d killed were xiantian!

Still...it did sound like fun, and there were few things more gratifying than successfully casting a newly developed spell for the first time. Ja Yun looked out the window to check the time—they had a few hours yet before Eunae and Rika were expected to return from their date.

“Alright, let’s do it!”

Eunae rested her head contentedly on Rika’s shoulder as they ascended the steps toward their current home. Though it had been snowing all day, it hadn’t made their date any less pleasant. It wasn’t always easy for Eunae to let go of the creeping dread that their relationship was temporary, but Rika had the uncanny ability to make Eunae forget that she was a princess while simultaneously treating her like one.

She sighed, squeezing Rika’s arm tighter against her side.

“I don’t want today to end.”

Rika chuckled and kissed the top of her head.

“As much as I’d love to keep you all to myself, you did promise Yoshika to help her out today.”

“Tsk, I know that. I wouldn’t dream of neglecting such an appointment, but you could at least let me—”

Eunae’s words were cut off as an unnatural blast of wind swept away all of the snow surrounding them. Her hair whipped about in every direction as the vortex resolved itself into the form of Jia and Eui standing on the steps ahead of them and grinning like maniacs.

Behind them, clinging to Jia’s arm in wide-eyed panic, was Ja Yun. On a second look, Iseul was there too, as a puddle at Ja Yun’s feet. Rika immediately burst out laughing, but Eunae leveled an unimpressed glare at Jia as she fixed her tousled hair. She trusted that their empathy would be enough to communicate her ire through the veil.

“Don’t let my sister see you using that, Yoshika. She might actually kill you.”