Chapter 6 The Gift Of Sentience

While sitting in class, something stuck out to him: the feeling of being watched. He sat closest to the window, obviously, feeling eyes on him through the glass pane.

'Somebody's watching me, but who? Did I let somebody slip through Absolute Hypnosis? No, definitely not,' he thought.

As he perceived this, the unseen grimoire conjured itself, flipping to the desired spell he wished to use before he invoked it:

["Absolute Sensory."]

Glancing at the window towards outside, setting his sights on the far-stretching, pale-blue sky that sat above the affluent cityscape, a subtle expansion of his own mana spread itself far-and-wide. It encompassed most of the city in an instant with a flash of crimson that was unseen to the naked eye.

It was only for a split-second, but there was indeed somebody sensed that was watching him from afar, atop a nearby building, yet they vanished the moment they were registered in his sensory.

'...That's not normal. Whoever that was, they have abilities like me, too,' he realized.

There was a serious look worn on his face as his eyes held a look of bloodlust at the thought of an unknown factor existing, but it was quickly swept away as his sleeve was tugged on.

"Hey, Noah? Is everything alright?" Emily asked with a look of concern.

"Yeah, I'm fine…Just didn't get much sleep last night," he answered with a smile.

Though he held a gentle expression, what swirled in his mind were thoughts of the complete opposite spectrum:

'Whoever that was, I'll wring out whatever motives they have, then eliminate them,' he thought.

As his classes came to an end, he for the first time in his life felt disappointed that school was over; it had become much more thrilling with a wide variety of friends in his corner now.

"I've gotta head to practice now so…I'll text you tonight!" Emily said in a hurry.

"Alright, good luck," he replied.

They had just left the premises of the school as the pale-blue sky had turned to a soft hue of orange.

"Head's up!"

Yelling out to him, the warning came a second prior to a football nearly hitting him in the head, though he caught it with pinpoint precision before even turning around to see it. For a moment, there was an annoyed look on his face, thinking it was an attack, but he turned to see Jacob clapping his hands together, gesturing for him to toss it back.

"Nice catch, man! Right here!" Jacob called out.

"--" Noah looked at him for a moment.

It was still difficult to fully adapt to the stark difference in the way people treated him, none more jarring than the one who once treated him as less than human, now being as affable as can be.

Still, he obliged with a smile, tossing the football back as it drilled through the sky before Jacob caught it, though letting out a sharp exhale as it smacked into his chest.

"Ghh…You've got a helluva arm on you, man," Jacob laughed, brushing it off.

After that encounter, he left the front gates of the school, but didn't go his usual route home as he instead took a detour to a secluded off-section of a small park. If he could avoid it, he'd rather not have eyes on him while casting spells beyond the boundaries of reality. Though it would be a simple task to invoke [Absolute Hypnosis] again, it had its own problem of getting knotted in a convoluted thread of lies.

'I've been meaning to get a better idea of what I have to work with. For now, I'd like to see if I can streamline walking home,' he thought.

Conjuring his Creator's Grimoire, it flipped through pages before revealing to him just the sort of spell he was looking for: ["Spatial Warp"]

As he etched it into his mind, he understood it at a fundamental level; it allowed him to bend space in such a seamless way that he could instantly bring himself from one location to another. However, this was more accurate only in close-proximity as he needed a complete understanding of the space around him.

This had a workaround however, when using it in tandem with another spell:

["Absolute Sensory."]

Invoking the recon spell, he was able to imprint the structure of the affluent city into his mind, location his neighborhood, block, and pinpoint not just his house, but its internal layout as well.

Next, it was simple:

He held his hands together briefly: ["Spatial Warp."]

A small wormhole opened around him, engulfing him in a cosmic hue as a sense of weightlessness took over for only a moment before he found himself standing in the middle of his room.

"It worked," he said with a surprised smile.

The sudden manifestation of the blinking wormhole that disappeared with his arrival caused his dirty clothes to scatter across his room along with disorganized papers.

'I should really tidy things up around here. I mean, now I have a girlfriend after all and friends of my own to bring over,' he thought.

Following his will, the grimoire hovered in front of him, revealing its seemingly boundless pages to him before giving him a spell that worked according to his desire to 'tidy up' his room.

"Hmm. That's not a bad idea," he said with his hand to his chin, reading the opened page of the mystical grimoire.

It was a spell different from those he'd given a try to thus far, and it required a 'catalyst' or 'base' of sorts, which he looked around his room for. The state of his room was picture-perfect of a teenage boy who didn't put much thought into a clean or responsible image, but as he was now, he wanted to start anew.

As he scanned his posters and shelves, he found action figures of video game series and 'anime' displayed.

"Hmmm…" He thought to himself before settling on one that caught his eye, "That'll do."

Grabbing the six-inch figure of a red-haired maid, "Melly Treyfas", from one of his favorite anime series–"Super Maid Warriors"--he cleared a space in the middle of his room before preparing the spell.

The grimoire hovered in front of his hand as he honed the invocation towards the small, inanimate figure.

["Sentience Bestowment"]

With a snap of his fingers, the reality-altering invocation of his will was brought forth as a magical seal spawned on the wooden floorboards of his room, glowing a vibrant, purple hue before empowering the maid figure.

As the process heightened, the figure that was no larger than his hand expanded, growing to the height he had in mind, canonical to the character in the series at just shy of five-and-a-half feet with the PVC shifting into living skin as her complexion was undoubtedly lively.

"...It's really her," he muttered.

It was perplexing above all to witness a fictional character come to life as the figure in the salacious maid dress with black leggings and flowing, scarlet hair blinked at him with her shiny, amethyst eyes.

"Greetings, Master Noah. What shall I do for you today?" Melly asked with a soft smile, bowing.