Chapter 4 Status Lenses, Outing And Ideals

We arrived to the middle of the forest.

In front of us was 40 meters tall majestic tree.

There is a secret base in this tree that only someone from Ceurie blood can open it.

This secret base was made by a mage from the Ceurie family, a 4th circle information specialist mage. This mage was a scholar-type mage and his potential was 4th circle, in other words, he was at his limit. He just wanted to research in silence and die. Therefore he made a base in this big tree.

Anyway, i told Lucy to prick her finger. She looked at me with a questioning look but did it anyways.

After that, i told her that smear her blood on the tree, which she did it.

After her blood touched the tree's trunk, the middle of the trunk of the tree opened slightly like a door.

Lucy was curious about how did i know this, i could tell from her expression.

"I found a book about this tree in the library. One of our family members of our came here a long time ago. I thought that coming here would be beneficial to us."

There are thousands of books in Ceurie library, so she wouldn't know about my little lie.

We entered the tree from the door and saw a ladder that goes down.

We climbed down for 5 minutes straight.

It was dark, so i take out my magical flashlight from my storage and lit it.

We were in a single room that combined a laboratory and a library.

I looked around and spotted a skeleton that collapsed to the table.

I walked to the skeleton and looked around at its eye sockets. Fortunately, i found the item that i was looking for and quickly stored them in my storage.

I asked Lucy to clear dust and dirt with wind magic and she happily did it.

After that, i take out our blankets and pillows from storage, made our temporary bed and lay down.

Lucy came to bed after a while. I hugged her behind, kissed her cheek and said:

"Good night Lucy, have a nice dream."

Normally i didn't become this much affectionate with Lucy because we were in the Count's mansion. But right now i can be affectionate freely and make her fully dependent on me. Even though being fully dependent might be a bad idea, it wasn't that much problem.

***

I woke up refreshed and stretched my limbs.

Even though i didn't sleep for about 45 hours as a 12-year-old child, i was fine after 8 hours of sleep.

Lucy was still sleeping so i decided to use the artifact that i picked up.

I take out the artifact. It was a transparent contact lens. It was an incredible feat to make an artifact this size. Inscribing runes on this fragile little thing must be hard.

Anyway, i put the lenses on my eyes and activated them.

======

Name: Kayle Ceurie

Race: Human???

Rank: D

Talent:???

Potential: ???

Strength: E+

Agility: F+

Dexterity: D–

Constitution: D–

Stamina: E+

Charm: ???

Mana quality: D+

Mana quantity: D–

Mana control: C–

===Innate powers and Curses===

Eyes of Revelation: ??? (Dormant)

Situational intuition(passive): B+

??? Of ??? : ???

Curse of affectlessness(weakened): ???

===Compatibilities===

91% Ice

78% Revelation

73% Illusion

59% Blood

44% Sound

23% Space

12% Time

6% Mana

2% ???

======

This artifact was better than i expected.

Though it can't translate unknown gibberish that came from information magic and can't determine ranks when they are higher than [S] rank.

My stats were what i expected it. But what caught my eye were my curse and the other one that full of question marks.

I had expected some sort of curse but i didn't think that curse was higher than [S] rank. That means the 8th rank or higher powerhouse cast this spell. There are hundreds of known 8th circle human mages and two known 9th circle human mages.

There were many possible suspects and it was impossible for me to find them. So i didn't think more about this.

Anyways i looked over at Lucy and activated the artifact.

======

Name: Lucy Ceurie

Race: Human

Rank: D–

Talent: S+

Potential: ???

Strength: F–

Agility: F+

Dexterity: E–

Constitution: F+

Stamina: E

Charm: A–

Mana quality: D

Mana quantity: D+

Mana control: D+

===Innate powers and Curses===

???(passive): A+

===Compatibilities===

77% Information

73% Wind

57% Earth

38% Water

9% ???

======

Lucy's base talent and potential are pretty good. Though she is very weak physically, at least some stamina training is a must.

After i was done looking over Lucy's status, i started to search for important books until Lucy woke up.

Being the library of the scholar information mage's, there were many different books about different magic and affinities.

I separated the important books from the unimportant ones.

After that, i take out ingredients from my storage to prepare something to eat.

I woke Lucy up and we ate in silence. Although for some reason i didn't know Lucy was very happy i didn't think about it too much.

"I found some books about Illusion, Blood and information magic. Thus my idea is, we will stay here for a month. Read books and practise magic and occasionally hunt some beast. What do you want to do Lucy?"

"It would be boring. So you have to play with me daily and hug me when we are sleeping." Lucy said and smiled shyly.

"Sure that's nothing for my sister. But it seems my sister became quite a bit spoiled huh." I said and grinned.

Lucy was embarrassed but her embarrassment didn't stay long.

"Brother spoiled me, so it's your fault. You have to take responsibility and spoil me more!" Lucy shamelessly declared.

I guess i spoiled Lucy too much, which made her a little bit shameless to me. Though it is okay i will spoil her a little more before her 13th birthday. After that, i will make excuses about puberty and i will put a distance between us to prevent false rumors about our relationship.

"I will spoil you, but you will train your stamina. You are weak physically, even if you are a mage, you have to train your basic stamina." I said sternly.

"Brother but-"

"No buts, you should train your stamina. If you don't, you would be killed by some weak wolf because of some exhaustion from walking."

***

(1 month time skip)

"Be ready Lucy we are leaving in 30 minutes."

I called out to Lucy.

For a month we were practicing hard.

I learned new illusion magic and some blood magic while Lucy trained her stamina and absorbed the information mage's notes like a sponge.

We regularly hunted low rank beasts to practice, which worked fine. Lucy can kill [D–] rank monsters rather easily.

We took everything important or valuable.

After that, i took out a hologram map from my storage and began our one day journey to Ceurie city.

After a while, i saw the city and casted illusion magic on us to look like an average looking adults.

"When you speak, voice will come out of the illusion's mouth. So you can talk freely but don't blurt out something important and if someone asks you questions direct them at me."

Lucy nodded and we proceeded toward to city.

Afterwards, we went to a random merchant and sold our mana cores.

We get 60 silver for about a hundred [E] rank and three [D] rank mana cores. Although i didn't know the exact prices, i knew that low level mana cores fetch low prices.

We discussed what we should do right now.

Lucy's idea was to rest in the city for a while. And i agreed to this idea.

Initially, i was thinking to go around the forbidden zone [Abyss forest] to pick up an important artifact.

But after 1 month of slaying the low level beast, i understood that even if we go around the [Abyss forest], not inside. We would die to monster or titan pretty quickly.

Anyway, i postponed this mission to a minimum of 5 years. There wasn't any need to hurry, because the protagonist will pick up that treasure about 9 years later.

After some thought, i rented a house for 2 months and rested for the day.

***

The next morning Lucy came to my side when i was reading and asked:

"I am bored brother let's hang out."

'I am more bored than you Lucy. I don't know why but my every emotion other than boredom is dull. Isn't boredom an emotion? If not, what is boredom?'

"Sure Let's go" i said with a warm smile.

Lucy got enthusiastic but i calmed her down and casted illusion magic to make ourselves average looking kids.

Lucy pouted and i asked her "why?" She answered "I wanted to roam around freely without illusion."

"Nope, we can't do that because you are too beautiful and we don't want trouble with troublesome kidnappers. Right?"

"...yeah." Lucy said quietly.

After that, we take a stroll around the city, looked at shops and bought some food.

While we were going back to our house, we encountered a kidnapping incident.

Some thugs kidnapped a beautiful woman and they were running to an alleyway.

Lucy tried to help the woman with magic, but i prevented it.

It was a good time for her to drop her childish heroic ideals.

Lucy looked at me angrily but didn't do anything else.

'It is a good thing that even if she is angry, she is listening to me. It seems that my importance to her is more important than her idiotic ideals. Breaking them will be easy.' I thought.

We arrived at our home, i made tea for us and sat down next to Lucy.

I made Lucy lay down on my thighs, her face turned to my face.

I slowly started to caress her head and began to speak.

"My dear what you tried to do was a good thing to do but you don't have to do these things."

"Even if you saved that woman from that kidnapper, another one would kidnap her because she was beautiful but normal. She didn't have any power to protect her beauty."

"What matters is power. If you have the power you can do anything. Take something from someone because you liked it, kill someone because you didn't like them, anything. When you have power, you won't have to hide behind some shity illusion magic. You will live longer, more luxurious, and more comfortably. And if you're worried about something, i won't judge you, no matter what will you do. You are free to do as long as we can back it with our power." i said with a cold and steady tone.

Lucy remained silent, she was thinking about things i said.

'I spouted lots of bullshit. But it will work i am sure of it, she is just 12 year old naive child that puts importance on my every word.'

"Brother you said that i can do anything and you won't judge me, right?" Lucy said with a smile. Her smile was strange, but i couldn't find the strangeness of her smile.

"Yeah, i said that. Do you have something in your mind?"

"No, i don't have something right now. I just wanted to confirm one more time."

Though Lucy became strange for a moment, she returned to normal after a while.