"Fragments of the Weave"

Aoko Aozaki recalled an amusing incident from her childhood with Touko while looking in the mirror, and could not help laughing out loud.

Who would have thought that the well-read, sensible, and exceedingly polite budding genius mage she knew now—nineteen-year-old Touko Aozaki—had once been such a rotten person as to use suggestion magic to prank her three-year-old little sister, who had only just learned to speak?

Ever since she had been born into this world, Aoko Aozaki had never stopped training herself.

She made use of her advantage as a "prophet," constantly accumulating every possible advantage and resource for herself. She knew that countless trials and obstacles awaited her in the future, including major incidents that would drag the entire world down with her if she failed.

Among all those difficulties, the most pressing was her relationship with her elder sister, Touko Aozaki.

More specifically, it was the succession rights to the Fifth Magic, wielded by her grandfather, the old man who was the Fourth Magician.

Touko Aozaki, who had spent more than a decade wholeheartedly growing up to become the Magician's heir, would suffer the greatest blow of her life tonight. The old man would change the heir from Touko Aozaki to Aoko Aozaki.

If Aoko did nothing, this would lead to a desperate battle between the sisters two years later. One of them might even die completely.

Aoko Aozaki refused to accept such a future.

That was why, when she was five years old, Aoko had asked her grandfather to teach her the Aozaki family's magecraft, just as her sister had. After all manner of shameless pestering and wheedling, the old man of the Aozaki family had finally sighed and agreed to Aoko's request, making her Touko Aozaki's junior disciple.

Touko's talent for magecraft was undoubtedly unmatched. Even Aoko, who was similarly gifted, had to admit that. The magical puppets Touko created possessed astonishing performance, and she had achieved that despite the Aozaki family's field of research having nothing to do with Creation magecraft.

Touko had always disdained the strange little spells Aoko tinkered with herself. Tricks such as "creating a translucent giant hand to do chores for herself" were things Touko never cared much about, and she would occasionally mock them with a cold sneer.

From that time onward, Aoko deliberately began approaching her aloof elder sister. She constantly used petty pranks—the sort of antics an elementary school boy might pull—to tease Touko and draw her attention. Then, whenever Touko could no longer stand it and was one second away from exploding, Aoko would yield and act weak, becoming a well-behaved little sister.

Through this, Aoko thoroughly mapped out the limits of her stubborn, rotten sister's patience and basically grasped all of Touko's weaknesses.

Of course, pranks alone could not completely forge a strong sisterly bond between them. Aoko also used a skill inherited from her "previous life"—her superb cooking—to conquer her sister's stomach.

Delicious pastries from every country and dishes they had never seen before completely won over their parents. Even Touko, a woman who cared about nothing except becoming a Magician, was gradually corrupted by the appetite awakened by all that delicious food.

Of course, all those methods were merely supporting factors that increased her chances of success. The ultimate reason she could stop the sisters from fighting to the death could only be Aoko's own overwhelming strength.

Peace won through struggle endured; peace sought through compromise perished. Aoko Aozaki had always remembered that.

Today was Aoko's graduation ceremony from the middle school division of Asagami Private Girls' Academy. She would deliver a speech onstage as the representative of the graduating class.

With the knowledge from her "previous life," attending middle school in Japan in this world was exceptionally easy. Even though she had to devote a great deal of time and energy to learning magecraft and other things, taking first place in the school's overall deviation score was effortless.

As a private aristocratic school, this middle school, funded and built by the Asagami Group, covered more than 335 acres and had a floor area of 110,000 square meters. It had every imaginable facility, and even its uniforms were adorable. (This was Aoko's main reason for choosing Asagami Academy. Rumor had it that worn uniforms from the school could sell for an astonishing price on the black market.)

In addition to regular classes, the school offered many specialized courses available only there, such as German, Chinese, and life education.

To conserve her energy, Aoko chose Latin and German, which would help with her study of magecraft, as well as Chinese. In Chinese class, she naturally dominated the subject with an accent even more authentic than that of the teacher in charge of the course.

However, since Asagami Private Girls' Academy was located next to Misaki Town, she had no choice but to get up at six every morning to prepare for her commute to school.

That forced Aoko, who needed to maintain eight hours of exquisite sleep every day, to go to bed before ten at night. In a roundabout way, it compelled her to improve her work and study efficiency each day.

As for why she insisted on eight hours of exquisite sleep, that involved Aoko Aozaki's deepest secret.

Deep within her soul lay a fragment of the Weave from Kingdom Tianyu.

At this point, some clever readers might ask: if a fragment of the Weave had been stuffed into her body, would she not become a living nuclear bomb like that wizard who slept with the goddess of magic and was later dumped by her?

Aoko had worried about that as well. But after prolonged verification and experimentation, the fragment remained incredibly stable within her soul—so stable that she sometimes doubted whether it was truly a fragment of the Weave.

Ever since childhood, whenever Aoko fell asleep, her consciousness would enter that "fragment." It was a dimension beyond description. All mortal language became pale and powerless before the scenery in the depths of the Weave. Still, if she had to sum it up in one sentence, it was as colorful as eating poisonous mushrooms.

Ultimately, believing it to be a fragment of the Weave was merely Aoko's wishful assumption. So far, she had no intention of investigating it further, because she lacked the ability to do so.

During her night after night of wandering through the Weave, Aoko gradually acquired a vast amount of knowledge about Weave arcana. She forced herself to memorize it with her photographic memory, then copied it into her spellbook after waking.

Aoko checked her watch and confirmed that she still had plenty of time before leaving for school. She took a book with an exquisite leather cover from her imaginary-number magecraft space.

The book's cover was made from "dragonhide," a material she had only obtained after shamelessly pestering the old Magician for a long time. Its pages were paper made from wood pulp mixed with specially formulated alchemical potions. They were not only exceptionally tough, but also highly suitable as a base material for scrolls.

So-called "dragons" had once been Phantasmal Species in this world. These beings, which modern scientific theory could not explain, had been unable to survive due to the decline of Mystery on the planet's surface and changes in its laws. Most had retreated to the Inner Sea of the Planet. Only the corpses of a few unlucky ones remained on the surface as residual cursed materials, collected by magi as magecraft ingredients.

With her intelligence and a little help from the old man, Aoko created this spellbook. Considering that she might learn more and more spells in the future, she had left plenty of room for possible expansion and upgrades when designing it. The book currently contained one hundred pages, meaning Aoko could copy one hundred spells into it.

As her lifesaving "cheat," Aoko naturally poured an enormous amount of effort into studying and practicing Weave arcana. Under the condition of keeping it secret, she spent a great deal of time and energy learning and practicing arcane magic. At the remarkably young age of fifteen, she had gained five wizard levels and learned a large number of Weave spells.

If she had been born in Kingdom Tianyu in this life and received a proper wizard's education, Aoko might have possessed a higher wizard level than she did now. Unfortunately, she had not, and this was not Kingdom Tianyu. Everything she had achieved so far was the result of self-study. Only she understood the hardships involved.

Incidentally, this world had no company called Wizards of the Coast, nor did it have tabletop rules called Dungeons & Dragons.

Aoko opened her spellbook and entered meditation, preparing the spells she might need today.

Aoko was currently a level 5 wizard, which meant she had three 1st-level spell slots, two 2nd-level spell slots, and one 3rd-level spell slot.

That might not sound impressive, but one should never underestimate a level 5 wizard. After gaining a 3rd-level spell slot, the first 3rd-level spell Aoko learned was the Evocation spell Fireball. As the iconic ability of wizards, Fireball was famous for its low cost, high damage, and wide area of effect. It was an essential spell for home, travel, murder, and robbery.

In addition to the extremely important 3rd-level spell slot, a level 5 wizard could also gain an extra feat. Aoko chose the feat: Alert.

Because she currently had limited offensive spells and could only use up to 3rd-level spells, improving her alertness was the highest priority if she wanted to prevent others from ambushing her. After all, there were quite a few scheming bastards like Kiritsugu Emiya in this world.