Belkan Style Magic

I looked pretty good.

But that was no different from saying Hayate looked good.

Hayate really was quite pretty.

Then no problem.

Wearing their newly bought clothes, they went to buy panties next. After all, Huo Lin couldn't wear Hayate's.

Bras... a nine-year-old didn't need those yet. A little cotton camisole would do.

The underwear store was, without a doubt, another ordeal. Even if the shopkeeper and the other customers saw nothing wrong with it, Huo Lin herself did. She had stepped into a place her own moral code told her she shouldn't enter.

Hayate knew about it too.

"Hayate, you must be laughing at me, right?"

"No, why would I laugh at you? But I do like you this way, Huo Lin."

Hayate really wouldn't laugh at her. All she felt was guilt. She had always believed Huo Lin had ended up like this because of her, that she had made a complete mess of Huo Lin's life. If there was anything she could do to help Huo Lin, she would do it.

Still, deep down, Hayate rather wished she had an older or younger sister.

Huo Lin now fulfilled that dream. Going out and shopping with her little sister felt like a dream come true. It really was wonderful.

They were blood relatives, a bond no one could sever. They would be together for life.

By the time they returned home, the sun was setting. They hadn't spent that long shopping, yet Huo Lin felt exhausted in both body and mind.

"About dinner tonight..."

"I'll make it!" Hayate volunteered.

"Let's not."

"You never trust me, Huo Lin."

Even so, as a "former college student," Huo Lin could hardly let Hayate, an elementary schooler, do the cooking. So ever since they had moved out, Huo Lin had prepared all three meals each day.

Her cooking wasn't necessarily amazing, but it was edible, and with practice, it had become fairly decent. She could vary the menu too, switching between Japanese and Chinese dishes.

She could even make sushi, which counted as high-end cuisine for ordinary people in Japan.

She had learned from the owner of the sushi shop next door. Minors couldn't take part-time jobs, but there was nothing wrong with "the kid next door coming over to help." The sushi shop owner was a good person, and some of the Yagami House's living expenses came from this sort of "helping out the neighbors."

"How about sushi tonight?"

Hayate was tempted, and a little hungry for it, but she still declined.

"It's too late. Besides, if we go to the market now, the fish won't be fresh anymore."

The second part was the key. Freshness mattered most when making sushi. So they could only use the ingredients in the fridge to make curry omurice.

After dinner, Huo Lin finally got started on what she had been doing lately-studying magic.

The Book of the Night Sky was an out-of-control magical device, but before that, it was also a book, containing knowledge of all kinds of magic.

Initially, every page of the Book of the Night Sky had been blank. That was why Hayate had always thought it was just an ordinary notebook, even though she had owned it for a long time.

But when Huo Lin had poured magic power into it two weeks ago, its contents had begun appearing, page by page.

It was an encyclopedia of magic. The only problem was that Huo Lin couldn't read its writing. It wasn't any script from Earth.

That was what had troubled her over the past two weeks. She could only try her best to study the illustrations in the book, things that resembled magic circles, but she had made very little progress. Looking at pictures alone left her understanding practically nothing.

Occasionally, one of those magic circles would activate, but she had no idea what it did and didn't dare use it recklessly.

The real breakthrough had come yesterday. During her tireless research, she had finally gotten a response after trying a certain magic circle, and she had immediately understood its effect.

That spell was called "Language Proficiency."

Things were looking up. Everything was looking up!

Huo Lin's only complaint was that a spell like this was clearly the "key" she needed at the very start, so why had it been placed so far into the book?

Still, whoever had written this magic tome probably hadn't imagined that its reader wouldn't even understand the script commonly used in the magical world.

She had slipped through the cracks of compulsory magical education.

In fact, Language Proficiency hadn't even been among the spells originally recorded in the Book of the Night Sky, for the same reason scientists didn't annotate their papers with phonetic guides.

It was a distinctive spell collected by a later inheritor of the magical device during their travels around the worlds. A ritual spell that could be powered by magic power alone, it could translate the writing of almost any civilization whose cultural continuity had remained unbroken.

Huo Lin didn't know how it worked, nor did she need to. Being able to use it was enough.

In any case, she could finally read the writing in the magic tome. What a cause for celebration. If Hayate hadn't needed to go for a follow-up examination today, she could have stayed holed up in her room all day!

This was magic! Aside from her family-Hayate-nothing mattered more than magic.

Having magic power without knowing how to use it was truly frustrating. It was like sitting on a gold mine while having to beg for a living.

Now, at last, she was like a fish in water, a tiger returning to the forest. She could finally explore the wondrous world of magic.

She gradually began to understand the things she hadn't been able to read before, as well as the magic circles in the illustrations that she hadn't been able to make work. Most of the magic recorded in the Book of the Night Sky was Belkan Style.

It was a school of magic, a counterpart to Mid-Childan Style.

Mid-Childan Style magic mostly used circular sacred emblems symbolizing nature to construct its magic circles. It was also the magical world's current mainstream form of magic, suited to long-range bombardment and wide-area suppression.

Belkan Style magic was comparatively older, specializing in explosive power and high mobility. Much like knights of old, it used sacred emblems of triangles and cross-shaped swords to construct its magic circles.

To Huo Lin, the difference between the two was roughly that between melee weapons and firearms. And as the "melee weapon" option, Belkan Style had demanding learning requirements, placed strict demands on its users' physical fitness, and was complicated to cast. As a result, it had gradually faded away in modern times, replaced by Mid-Childan Style, and was classified as a form of ancient magic.

However, the Book of the Night Sky described an ingenious method of creating magical ammunition from special materials. With this, Belkan Style could unleash almost brutally destructive power.

But that held little appeal for Huo Lin.

Amplify magic power?

My magic power already had no upper limit. How was I supposed to amplify it?

So she paid little attention to the methods and techniques for making Magic Bullets recorded in the book. Besides, she didn't even have a magical device.

Speaking of which, only now did Huo Lin learn that magical girls could change outfits when transforming with a magical device. Just like the magical-girl anime she had watched in her previous life, they could conjure beautiful battle outfits amid dazzling light effects.

The reason she hadn't changed outfits before was that the Book of the Night Sky was an out-of-control magical device.

Moreover, its true owner wasn't Huo Lin but Hayate, which had caused Hayate's earlier critical illness.

So the Book of the Night Sky didn't count. If she wanted to transform into a magical girl and fight, she would need a magical device that truly belonged to her.

But how should she put it? Huo Lin wasn't particularly interested in fighting and killing. To her, that wasn't where magic's appeal lay. Its appeal was magic itself.

So she skipped those sections and immersed herself in the countless strange, noncombat spells collected in the book over the years.

Three days later, Hayate knocked on Huo Lin's bedroom door.