Nero was not the only one surprised to hear Marilyn - so was Irene. Of course, Lex’s reason for the surprise was twofold! He couldn’t believe Marilyn had told Irene about Radix Augmentation.
Well, he could understand why she would. After all, Irene had joined the Grant family, and she had not done it at a convenient time either. She had done it in the most difficult time, faced with the greatest amount of uncertainty. If that was not a bold and blatant testament to her character, nothing was. So it was natural that she had earned the right to learn the family secrets.
Still, even if he understood the logic of it, it was still a big decision. He did not think his mother would have made it so easily. Then again, his mother, too, was a bold woman. There was no need to hold onto such formality among family. Furthermore, the absence of such intrigue would keep their family close knit.
Only after dealing with the shock of that did Nero have the mental space to handle the shock of his mother approving tattoos!
Marilyn smirked as she saw the shocked expression on both the kids.
"What? You think I can’t see the benefit of Irene’s abilities? Or do you think I would deny gaining an advantage in combat over petty reasons?" she asked, sounding haughty. "I’ll have you know, one does not become an elite soldier by giving up on opportunities to grow stronger," she lectured.
Nero smirked.
"Well, since you are all sharing, it would be pretty miserly of me to not share a little something too," said Nero. "How long are you guys here? Do you have some time to spare? This will take a while."
"We’re here to see you off to KMA," said Irene. "Once you join, who knows whether we’ll have an opportunity to see you before your five years are up. A lot of officers get enrolled for summer courses too, and I have a strong feeling you’ll be one of those. Once we see you off, I’m heading to Lorilem with your mom for my new posting."
"What’s your new posting?" he asked Irene. Considering what happened to her last time, he doubted the army would make a similar mistake.
"I have a research position in the Spell Model Research Department of the Demon Corp," she answered. "It’s an incredibly valuable opportunity, and not the kind one can usually get during their mandatory service. Normally you have to join the military fully to get access."
"Oh? So how did you get selected? Don’t tell me they’re forcefully enlisting you?" Nero asked, alarmed.
"Nothing like that," Irene said, waiving her hand. "There are some changes happening in the department due to the recent cooperation with Nova. Now some civilian researchers are being permitted to participate selectively. I’ll only be working on the projects that are open to civilians, and once my mandatory service is over, I can transition into a civilian research role if I want to stay involved."
Nero was impressed, and relieved at the same time.
"In that case, since you have a research role, then I have even more reason to help you out. Give me some time... I hope this works," said Nero as he gathered all his card ingredients and sat down in the corner of the room, focusing on his card. .
If he could manage to convert Virtuous Moonlight into a regular offensive card rather than a Luminari card, then that could help out both his mother and Irene tremendously.
Although he didn’t have any cards to augment his card crafting ability, in this situation it was not his crafting that was the issue, but the recipe to generate the appropriate spell model. Or rather, a recipe to slightly alter his innate spell model. Altering innate abilities into different spell models was something he had learned from his father, and was apparently the key heritage of his mothers family, or at least one of the key heritages.
Correctly altering the spell model, holding it so that it doesn’t burst, transferring it into a card... all of these were borderline impossible tasks. If it weren’t so, someone would have discovered how to do just such a thing on their own by now. Yet despite the fact that literally everyone had innate abilities, he’d never heard of someone doing such a thing before.
That was proof of just how challenging this task was.
Yet, for some reason, Nero had a feeling that today would be the day. The presence of his mother, the reunion with his family, the news that they had shared... It had been an emotional day, to say the least. But more important than all of that, Nero’s conviction to grow stronger had never been firmer.
With unsurpassed focus, the kind he could only give when he was absolutely sure he was safe, Nero worked on crafting his latest card. Marilyn and Irene watched him in silence, curious as to what he was working on. He had refused to divulge the details.
Slowly, deliberately, Nero worked, crafting the card layer by layer, without making a single mistake. By now, he had a deeper understanding of why random materials and ingredients could form spell models due to all the books he’d been reading from inside Unity.
As it turned out, every living thing in this world - even unsynchronised humans - had some level of aetheric ability. None living things, in turn, had qualities such as aetheric conductivity, or perhaps something like aether induced reactivity, meaning an abundance of aether caused them to react in certain ways.
When crafting a card, the recipe was actually an ingenious way of combining traits of those abilities and traits, resulting in a stable Spell Model. It made sense, and understanding that helped Nero a lot in coming up with his recipe.
Since he was acting out so slowly, it took him nearly an hour before he reached the point where he could transit the altered Spell Model into the card, hoping that it would remain stable instead of collapsing.
Irene had already grown bored of watching Nero, yet Marilyn continued to watch, so under the curious gaze of his mother, Nero completed the final step, and then lifted his hand, watching the card.
Continuously using Virtuous Moonlight for so long, even if he was not using it externally to any effect, was bound to cause some changes to the colour of his eyes if not his hair, but Nero had already prepared illusion cards to cover up such changes, so he was not concerned.
Instead, all his focus was on the card he had just crafted. A second passed by, and then another, and then another . Such a long time to form a card in the final step was unusual, but as long as the Spell Model didn’t break there was hope.
With bated breaths, under the anticipating gaze of both mother and son, a card finally formed!
Nero smirked confidently, as if he had known this would work all along, as he studied the card. It was quite a bit different from his own Virtuous Moonlight II.
Name: Pale Virtuous Moonlight
Image: A beam of moonlight, shooting down upon an open hand.
Type: Offensive
Star rank: 2
Ability: [ By the grace of Virtuous moonlight, the kingdom of darkness is kept at bay. ]
Flavour text: "Do not ask me to be weak. Ask, instead, to take shelter in my strength," - Nero Grant
Nero blinked once, twice, thrice, but no matter how many times he blinked, the flavour text did not change. That wasn’t what he had said, nor was that what he had been envisioning when he was crafting the card.
Fortunately, that was not the part of the card that his mother was focused on... nor was Irene.
"What does this card do?" Irene could not help but ask as she marveled at the Spell Model. Unlike others, who had to read a card to learn its effects, she was a lot more sensitive to the Spell Model itself. This... this Spell Model was remarkably similar to the card Invictus used. But how was that possible? After all, his card came from a truly... unique source.
Nero smirked. Although he noticed the curiosity in his mothers eyes, and wonder in Irene’s, he did not suspect anything amiss.
"To learn that, we need to find ourselves a curse. Care to take a small trip outside the town?" he asked playfully, waiting to show off. In truth, even he was not sure how effective Pale Virtuous Moonlight was.
These moonlight cards had an annoying tendency to have vague effect descriptions.
"Alright, I’ll bite," said Marilyn, finally withdrawing her Dominion from around the room. "Lets take a trip outside the town. I’m curious to see what you have for us."