Chapter 248 Misspelled eon
Nero stared intently at the perfectly shaped octagon, with razor-sharp edges and perfectly equal length between each corner. If someone saw it, they would be impressed by Nero's precision, but only if they were unaware that it contained a spell model that was a near perfect fit inside of it. The reason it was near perfect was because Nero discovered that if the container of the spell model is the same size as the model itself, the model will disintegrate. The model can never touch the edge of its container, which means that the container must always be bigger.
It had taken him an embarrassing two and a half days to achieve this, which went over his mothers deadline, but they didn't seem to be mad.
"Great. Now all you need to do is master crafting Earth's Boon and we can work on altering the spell model," Marilyn said, her voice completely even. Nero could obviously tell his parents were impressed, but since they didn't want to mention it, he didn't either.
"Can we take a small break first?" Nero asked. "There's something I want to test out. Evening would be the best time for that, and if we could find a few weak curses, that would be even better. Also, if you could make sure there's no one nearby, that would be best."
Marilyn raised a curious eyebrow, while Edward only chuckled to himself, as if he knew exactly what Nero was thinking.
"You clearly understand how important model alteration is, so if you want to take time away from that, then whatever you want to test out must be important," Marilyn said after a few moments. "You're an adult now - we'll respect your choices. If you need anything else, let me know."
"I'll tell you if I think of something. In the meantime, I'm going to take a nap and get some rest."
Nero lay down in the van and closed his eyes, though he didn't immediately try to sleep. Instead, he shifted his innate card, turning it from Cryoflame to Virtuous Moonlight. He could not maintain both innate abilities at the same time, since despite the addition of Virtuous Moonlight, he only had one innate card inside of himself. At any given time, that innate card could take on one of those forms, but never both at the same time.
Simultaneously, his absorption of the card itself remained the same, no matter which of the abilities was active. So, even when he switched to Virtuous Moonlight, he was still at 29% though he was planning on asking his parents to help him raise that by finding some wild animals to kill.
He went over the card one more time in his mind, trying to decipher what the actual ability did.
Name: Virtuous Moonlight.
Image: A sleek black silhouette stood out, like a ribbon or some elongated object, its form abstract yet deliberate. Near the base of this figure, there was a small circle, almost like an eye or a focal point.
Type: Luminari
Star rank: X
Ability: [The light of the virtuous Aeon graces the world with its brilliance, a flicker of purifying mercy.]
Flavour text: "When the banners of Grimverge fell, when the armies of the the Wardens retreated, when the mysts of Hjorflow spread, all that remained was the memory of a better time," - Karv La Heim
The ability clearly had something to do with light. That much was obvious from its name, the fact that light was mentioned in the ability, and that it appeared in the form of a pale, silver light. But besides that, he could only guess - so guess he did.
The light had pushed away the cursed blood that his flames couldn't even touch without winking out, so one theory was that it could repel cursed energy. The fact that within Lumina, cursed energy was referred to as corruption, and the card's description mentioned purification also supported this theory.
Yet without more testing, there was no way to be certain. The object of the light's purification could just as well be blood instead of cursed energy, or perhaps some other aspect of that daunting curse from back then.
He also looked into the word aeon, since he was unfamiliar with it, but in the dictionary he looked through, he only discovered that it was another way of writing eon - as in a very long period of time.
He could possibly see how the ability was referring to a very long period of time where the general theme of things was virtue, but then aeon did not need to be written with a capital 'a'. His current theory was that it was the name, or nickname, of some powerful ancient being.
Aware that he would have a very busy evening ahead of him, Nero finally allowed his mind to rest, drifting away into a slumber.
Ordinarily, Nero was a very light sleeper. It was something he'd practised, and had, in fact, been trained to do. But as always, around his parents, he could not help but let down his guard.
That is why his short nap turned into a full sleep, waking up only a few hours later when the van was parked in the driveway of another resthouse. The sun was already setting, and a partial white moon hung in the sky, in contrast to the dark moon which was always full.
Nero got out of the van while stretching, limbering up for what would no doubt be a strenuous evening, and possibly even night.
"Did we find any weak curses?" Nero asked as he walked into the resthouse to find his father seriously looking over some documents.
"Wait for your mom, she'll take you to them. I might have to cut my trip short, something urgent has come up."
"Something urgent came up at the pharmacy where you work?" Nero said questioningly, poking at his fathers weak facade of a front. There was a time in Nero's life where he was unsure if his father still worked in Whisper Guard, but that time had long since passed.
Edward gave him an exasperated look, then turned back to his documents.
"If you must know, there's a national shortage of vitamin C tablets. It's affected army rations, and there's a fear of soldiers developing scurvy if it's not addressed. It could literally affect any future wars. I've recently been promoted to head of procurement, but how can I procure something that doesn't exist? It's quite a problem."
Nero rolled his eyes at the cover story and just walked past him. Even if the documents he actually held had information written on them about the pharmacy, Nero knew well that his father could hide other information there. Who knew what he was actually reading? Luminalink really was the perfect ability for a spy.
He looked for his mother, and they quickly made their way out of the resthouse and to a plateau that was a thirty minute jog away.
"I've already cleared the vicinity, but I'll stay by just in case," Marilyn said. "There's a batch of cursed daisies just up ahead. They won't attack you unless you touch them, so they're about as safe as curses can be."
"Thanks," Nero said and drew his dagger before slowly making his way forward. Even if his mother said it was fine, it never hurt to be careful. A single blade of cursed grass had sent him to the hospital when he was a kid, so now that he was literally walking through wild growth, he wasn't about to lower his defences.
He eventually encountered the field of daisies, and they would have made for a picturesque sight, were it not for the countless dead insects and small animals littered all around them. After making sure there were no other dangers nearby, Nero extended his hand and finally used Virtuous Moonlight.
Just as the first time he used it, the innate ability consumed an enormous amount of aether, making it so that Nero could not keep using it for a prolonged period of time. The light extended one metre out from his body before coming to an abrupt end, as if it encountered a wall of some sort.
Nero was about to shine the light on the daisies, but then noticed something unexpected. The light shone on a few blades of grass, longer than the ones surrounding it, and a small amount of smoke emerged from the leaf, as if something inside of it had burned.
He paused, and then slowly lowered his hand so that the light shone on the rest of the vegetation near him, and just like before, a small amount of smoke would rise from it. But what was odd was that there was no burning smell, nor did the plants look worse off than before.
For all intents and purposes, the vegetation which had bathed in the silvery light looked completely identical to how it had before.
He made a mental note of it, and then moved the light to the nearest daisy only to watch it bend as if a servant before a king. The daisy kept bending backwards just before the light could touch it, as far away as its stem would allow it, until it was completely prone on the ground.
Anticipating the sight of the daisy being crushed, he pushed the light a little further. Yet the cursed flower was not smashed into the ground by the light. Instead, when the virtuous light finally shone upon the body of the cursed flower, something else happened.