This still amounted to little. Fluctuations of this magnitude remained within a reasonable range, one Little Fairy could currently withstand. Ruger enjoyed his Sour Mushroom Wine, now carrying a faint hint of sparkling wine, and glanced over from time to time. Ice cubes made from that slightly viscous sparkling wine kept the Sour Mushroom Wine mildly cool, a temperature Ruger could also tolerate. It brought out the wine's sourness better, and this was precisely the taste he had been craving these past few days.
When the mental power fluctuations within the wineglass ceased to be noticeable,
the real test began.
Ruger drank in silence. He had experienced that emptiness that seemed to come from the soul, an indescribable sense of something missing. He preferred to call it hunger of the soul.
That was the price of opening a spell slot. Fortunately, he had only needed to endure it for an instant.
Little Fairy, usually so flighty, had to keep enduring it, and as that sensation grew ever more intense, settle down and complete the construction of a highly difficult spell model.
At a time like this, perhaps it was fortunate that it still possessed a fairy's stubbornness and tenacity.
A pure, wholehearted devotion to a single goal.
Ruger glanced at Serious Mouse. Like this large mouse with its inexplicable love for the Inn, fairies were sometimes incomprehensible to humans. Yet viewed from another angle, they seemed the easiest creatures to understand.
That was how Ruger saw Little Fairy.
He had not tried to dissuade it, merely offered some guidance and a little help. Whether it could succeed was for it to judge.
If it could be dissuaded easily, that would only mean it was not a true fairy, or that this matter did not mean much to it.
But from