The Road of Magic Is Long and Arduous

The guild had been even livelier than usual lately.

Because a troublesome new member had joined the guild—Natsu, who ate fire.

That brat alone was as destructive as ten grown adults. Rumor had it that Natsu had even burned down the boys' dormitory.

That day, the guild master had held Natsu up and berated him for ages, warning all the boys that if they damaged the dormitory again, it would not be rebuilt.

But Natsu was practically a demon child. He could fight Gray seven times a day, and he had burned down parts of the guild several times, making Makarov so angry he was practically losing his hair.

This chaos continued until... Erza returned to the guild after completing a job.

"You two! Get along properly! Do you understand!?"

"Y-Yes, we understand..." x2

"No more using magic in the guild! No fighting! Understood!?"

"U-Understood..." x2

Two big pig-headed idiots knelt properly before Erza, not daring to so much as breathe loudly.

"Good children. From now on, learn more from Aibo. He's younger than you two, yet he's far more sensible."

Off to the side, Cana found it terribly boring as she watched Erza cure the two pig-headed demon brats in an instant. She had originally wanted to join forces with the three of them and overthrow Erza's iron-fisted rule, but it seemed there was no chance now.

"Sigh, Erza is just too overpowered. Laxus is probably the only one who can beat her. Maybe not this year, but next year, he'll definitely become S-Class. An S-Class mage at sixteen or seventeen... I'm so jealous."

"He's older than you. In a few years, Cana, you'll definitely be able to do it too..."

Aibo sounded somewhat distant and distracted. He had been extremely busy lately. Ever since learning Celestial Spirit Magic, he had become a little obsessed.

Aibo scribbled and drew in a small notebook, while Cana sat beside him with a pink "puppy" in her arms, one with a round head, round face, and drill-like nose.

This pink puppy was the Celestial Spirit of Canis Minor. It had signed a contract with Aibo that allowed it to be summoned at any time, seven days a week. The magic power required to maintain it was less than what Aibo naturally recovered, so he simply kept it around as a pet.

A few days earlier, after successfully summoning a Celestial Spirit, a skill had appeared on Aibo's panel: [Celestial Spirit Magic LV0: 1/1000]. It seemed that as long as he maintained the summon, it would gain experience.

But the experience grew at an unprecedentedly slow pace. Several days had passed since then, and it had only gained 4 experience points, despite him repeatedly summoning Celestial Spirits and constantly maintaining Canis Minor.

This could only mean that his compatibility with Celestial Spirit Magic was extremely poor, or that he was practicing it completely wrong.

It did not matter if magic was difficult to learn. Aibo had cheats, after all.

He directly invested 1,000 Inspiration Points into it, and then... something terrifying happened.

Celestial Spirit Magic split apart and vanished.

[Celestial Spirit Magic LV1] → [Space Magic exp+1000] + [Link Magic LV1] + [Star Magic LV1] + [Time Magic LV1] + [Contract Magic LV1] + [Soul Magic LV1] + [Heteromorphic Magic LV1]

The sudden change had completely stunned Aibo. He had never imagined that a single Celestial Spirit Magic skill could pull off something so huge.

So the system was saying that Celestial Spirit Magic, which anyone could learn, was actually a super-composite magic made up of seven profound forms of magic!?

Aibo was utterly blown away. Who would have thought? Who would have dared to think it? He had spent only 1,000 Inspiration Points and learned six types of magic he had never encountered before.

But that also meant that if he wanted to master Celestial Spirit Magic, he might have to spend seven times as much experience!

Space Magic needed no explanation. Summoning Celestial Spirits from another dimension definitely involved advanced Space Magic. Link Magic formed a magical connection between a mage and a Celestial Spirit. Star Magic was magic that used the power of stars.

The effects of these three types of magic were all very obvious.

But Aibo had no clue about Time Magic. After testing it, he discovered that he could only turn back the "time" of inanimate objects, and even then, the effect was limited. He had no idea where Celestial Spirit Magic even used Time Magic.

Contract Magic was straightforward. In this world, it often existed in the form of contract documents and was common in merchant guilds, though ordinary mages used it less often.

Soul Magic was a pleasant surprise for Aibo. He had planned to learn Thought Projection, a clone spell, after some time. Thought Projection was a kind of Soul Magic, so now that he had learned Soul Magic in advance, learning Thought Projection later would surely take half the effort.

As for the final Heteromorphic Magic, he was completely in the dark. He had never even heard of it. Aibo suspected that even the name had been made up by the system based on his own imagination.

He tried using and sensing the magic, only to find that it could convert the attributes of magic power. For example, it could turn fire-attributed magic power into ice-attributed magic power, though energy was lost in the process.

For the time being, Aibo did not understand how this magic should be used. He guessed it might convert the power of stars into magic power?

There was so much information that Aibo felt like he was about to grow another brain. Yet he also had the feeling that he had accidentally uncovered some incredible secret.

That was why Aibo had been organizing knowledge related to Celestial Spirit Magic lately. If he did not sort out the relationships between these various types of magic, then creating Summoning Magic would be impossible to even begin.

After all, who could have imagined that Celestial Spirit Magic, which had seemed ridiculously easy to learn, was actually a hidden boss? It had scared the kid half to death.

Still, compared to Aibo's gains, these little troubles were nothing.

Leaving aside the six types of magic he had gotten for free, as Aibo pondered Celestial Spirit Magic, all kinds of inspiration came flooding in. His Inspiration Points soared, returning the 1,000 points he had spent tenfold.

Aibo had learned more and more magic, but he did not have enough time to practice them and gain experience. His skill list remained filled with a large number of LV1 skills.

As for force-feeding skills with Inspiration Points? Don't be silly. Aibo now felt that he did not have enough Inspiration Points, because he had discovered that upgrading Meditation could increase the rate at which his magic power grew.

He needed to save Inspiration Points to upgrade his Meditation skill.

Aibo's current situation was that he lacked Inspiration Points, lacked time, and was even a little short on brainpower. He was very anxious.

It felt as though countless treasure mountains stood before him. He could dig up huge amounts of treasure with just a little time, but there were simply too many mountains. He did not even know which one to dig first, and the stress nearly made him cry.

Aibo now felt that he had been too conservative in the past. He could have been more extreme, fully integrating the act of practicing magic for experience into every aspect of his life long ago.

Aibo planned to completely abandon the pointless act of "walking" next. He would learn Wind Magic or Gravity Magic to make himself fly, staying airborne anytime and anywhere so he could constantly train magic and harvest experience.

After that, he would try eating without using chopsticks, writing without using his hands, training magic control, bathing with Water Magic, dressing with Requip, sleeping with Meditation...

Aibo's Meditation skill had now reached LV3 after being boosted with Inspiration Points. Its effect of increasing his magic power limit had doubled, and Meditation also restored his mental energy and magic power.

Meditating all night without sleeping was still a little difficult, but Aibo felt that he was heading in the right direction.

Aibo planned to save up one million Inspiration Points and raise Meditation to LV4 first. Then surpassing Erza in magic power would be just around the corner.

After spending more than a hundred thousand points, he still had over five hundred thousand Inspiration Points left. He would probably save enough in less than a year.

So next, Aibo needed to familiarize himself with the power of Celestial Spirit Magic, learn Wind Magic and Gravity Magic, help Cana create entirely new Summoning Magic, find an opportunity to learn Dragon Slayer Magic, study, train, update, and cuddle with his big sister...

Ah! So busy! He wished he could grow six more brains and become seven Vegapunks.

After learning Celestial Spirit Magic, an entirely new door to the world of magic had opened before Aibo. This was the second time he had received such a huge shock since coming to this world—the first had been when he used Telepathy Magic.

Where would Aibo's path of magic lead next...?