After the girl's words ended with a light laugh, a chill instantly spread across Damir's entire body.
By instinct, the young Genius Mage didn't hesitate for a moment. Completely ignoring his dignity, he immediately performed a sideways roll, putting some distance between himself and the little girl.
He rolled across the ground.
The first thing Damir did after scrambling to his feet, covered in dirt, was let blue light blaze in his eyes and raise the Magic Barrier again while taking an attacking stance.
"Who are you?" Damir demanded coldly of the smiling girl standing opposite him.
He had finally realized it, too.
Indeed, things had seemed a little off from the very beginning. What ordinary pauper would see the appalling state of the inspection checkpoint and still foolishly sit there in a chair?
Then, the girl opposite him opened her mouth.
Only—
She opened it, but not completely.
That was how it appeared in Damir's eyes.
"Alright, other me, stop fooling around." The little girl spoke first in a reproachful tone.
Tch, what a bore. I was still planning to scare him a little.
Then, for no apparent reason, the other girl's tone grew heavier, as though she were getting angry.
"Now isn't the time to play!"
Hmph, why are you being so fierce?!
Suddenly, the chilling sensation that had made Damir feel cold vanished from the girl's body.
In the blink of an eye, she seemed to have turned back into the simple, rustic country girl he had first seen.
"Um... I'm really sorry about that just now!" Vivian, having returned to her original personality, apologized to Damir first.
The girl then took out the Fire God Token again.
"May I ask... do you recognize this?"
At first, Damir remained extremely wary, constantly on guard against the girl opposite him.
However,
the instant Vivian began pouring magic power into the wooden token in her hand—
Whoosh!
It was as if a super-tier forbidden spell had exploded inside his mind.
In that moment, within Damir's world, it seemed that only the girl opposite him remained between heaven and earth.
What did it mean to be a genius?
A genius was someone different from the rest, someone who could keenly detect things others could not.
The fact that he could sense the evil aura coming from Claw Forest despite being all the way in Huodian City showed just how extraordinarily sensitive Damir was to magic power.
Naturally, when Vivian tried to awaken the wooden token and began circulating the magic power within her body, Damir finally sensed the little girl's level of magic power.
Then—
Plop.
This Child of the Version, the main-story NPC who would lead countless players in the future, the youngest Genius Mage in Huodian City, and the sole disciple of the Bishop of the Fire God Cult—
Damir, a third-tier Professional and an Elemental Archmage, dropped onto the ground on his rear.
A blazing crimson light flickered across the wooden token in Vivian's palm.
Sacred and pure.
Yet in Damir's eyes, no matter how dazzling the Fire God Token's radiance was, it still paled beside the halo of magic power emanating from the girl's own body.
Was Vivian's magic power simply vast?
No.
Although it far exceeded Damir's expectations, his mentor was the Bishop of the Fire God Cult, a transcendent fourth-tier powerhouse. Compared to that, Vivian's total magic power was still considerably lacking.
What truly left Damir stunned, even somewhat enthralled, as though he were gazing at an exquisitely crafted and peerlessly beautiful work of art, was the purity of the magic power within Vivian's body.
It was refined.
Even those two words might not be enough to express it.
If Damir had to describe it, it was as though there wasn't the slightest impurity on the girl opposite him. It was as if, from the moment she was born until now, all her growth had been focused entirely on magic power.
The world—
How could such a beautiful person exist in this world?!
Yes, a genius's way of thinking was always somewhat different from that of ordinary people.
The standard ordinary people used to judge a pretty girl was incredibly shallow: fair skin, beauty, long legs, and a big chest. But Damir wasn't interested in any of that. The only thing that could arouse his interest was magic. In his eyes, women were nothing more than mobile chunks of flesh.
Of course—
Unless—
Unless that woman was the embodiment of magic!
Damir had always been passionately devoted to magic, exhausting his heart and soul in its study. As Harvey, the commander of the Huodian Knights, put it, he was destined to have children with parchment scrolls in the future.
At this moment, the young Genius Mage felt his little heart thump hard.
Then it thumped again!
And again!
It simply wouldn't stop!
Thus, from this moment onward, magic was no longer everything in Damir's world.
A certain human instinct he had forgotten for a very long time gradually began to awaken in secret.
"Um... are you alright?"
Vivian's worried voice finally pulled Damir back to reality.
The little girl had already stopped sending magic power into the Fire God Token. She had come to where Damir had fallen and was waving her little hand repeatedly in front of his eyes.
"Ah, I-I'm fine! Very fine! Um, I... I..." Damir stammered anxiously, trying to say something.
That mouth, which could fluently and rapidly recite several sets of complicated, cumbersome, and obscure incantations, had completely ceased to obey him. It was utterly out of control, making him sound like a stutterer.
Damir hurriedly tried to stand up.
His mouth had stopped working, but his brain was still functioning. He didn't need to think to know that lying on the ground like this was absolutely humiliating.
"Um, I... I'm Damir. I'm the honorary mage of the Huodian City Knights. My mentor is Maggie, the current Bishop of the Fire God Cult. I also have an uncle I'm very close to—a shameless one named Harvey. Ah! Don't let his shamelessness fool you; he—he's also the commander of the entire Huodian Knights Order. And then, then... oh, right! I'm a senior student at the Royal Academy, and I also work part-time as the Vice President of the Student Council."
Damir had only intended to give a simple self-introduction after getting up from the ground, but under his extreme nervousness, the young Genius Mage nearly announced his home address as well.
At last, whether Damir had finally run out of things to say or had noticed Vivian's increasingly flustered and awkward expression—
"Anyway, I-I'm very, very happy to meet you!"
"C-can I know your name, miss?" His heart was pounding wildly. This was the first time Damir had ever taken the initiative to ask a girl for her name.
"Vivian."
"I'm from Nuoqi Village, and... and I'm a villager. My profession is a tailor?" The little girl thought this was a city-dweller's etiquette, that people were supposed to introduce their origins and identity when they met.
However, after struggling for a long while, the girl couldn't come up with a string of distinguished identities like Damir had. She could only say that one sentence, then imitated him and added,
"I'm also happy to meet you?"
However, before the girl had finished speaking—
"Vivian? My heavens, what a beautiful name!" Damir engraved those three words into his DNA in less than half a second.
Yet that wasn't all.
The truly explosive part was still to come.
"A tailor? My god! That's amazing too! To be honest, I've always had a dream. It's to—"
"To become a tailor!"
Vivian: "..."
Vivian, is there something wrong with this guy's brain?
Vivian: "M-maybe?"
I got home a little late today. I'll post another chapter later.
Before you continue