Time slipped through his fingers like sand, and in the blink of an eye, a year had passed.
A somewhat dreary season descended on Roа, and Eris was about to celebrate her tenth birthday, an extremely important occasion in her life.
Over the past few days, the atmosphere in the House Boreas Family seemed to have grown tense.
Rudeus was formally informed that, apart from her indispensable noble etiquette lessons,
all of Eris's swordsmanship and magic lessons were suspended so she could devote herself to preparing for the birthday banquet.
That also meant he had plenty of free time to use however he pleased, to delve into the magical subjects that truly excited me.
Over the past year, he had practically become a ghost haunting the study.
Whenever he had a spare moment, he buried himself in the mansion's vast library.
He had begun compiling an ambitious work, attempting to systematically record all the magical knowledge and swordsmanship theory he had grasped over the years through modern ways of thinking.
Casting magic itself went without saying. He had become so proficient at it that it was as instinctive as breathing.
But that mystical experience, rooted in bodily sensation, was hard to describe in precise words.
So for the most part, he had only recorded the effects, training methods, and corresponding incantations of various spells.
What had truly consumed his efforts was [magic circles].
That was the truly rigorous, vast, and fascinating hardcore knowledge of a fantasy world.
Only the day before yesterday had he managed to finish the Compendium of Commonly Used Basic Runic Magic Circles.
Looking at the finished work on the desk, thick as a dictionary and fragrant with fresh ink, Rudeus felt a nearly spine-tingling sense of accomplishment.
He had painstakingly deconstructed its contents using the logic of his previous life, turning them into something like "Thirty introductory lessons in C programming."
It was all the fruit of his own hard work, the crystallization of wisdom from two worlds!
After bringing his study of magic circles to a temporary milestone, he rubbed his aching neck and turned his attention to a more profound and difficult subject, one that in his previous life could have sat at the same table as "computer applications"-[summoning magic].
This was another superb subject with an extremely low floor and a ceiling high enough to pierce the heavens.
In this world, summoning magic was roughly divided into two broad categories: "demonic beast summoning" and "spirit summoning."
The essential difference between the two was perfectly clear when explained through basic programming concepts:
[Demonic beast summoning] was equivalent to running a predetermined program that had already been packaged and compiled by the laws of the world.
Wild demonic beasts, ready-made abilities, fixed stats-all the underlying settings had been provided in advance by Mother Nature. All you had to do was input enough mana to activate and summon one.
[Spirit summoning], on the other hand, was another matter entirely.
It required the caster to be the long-suffering creator, personally editing every setting of the summoned being.
From personality traits and appearance modeling to special abilities, all the way down to the number of pores on its skin and the material of its hair!
As long as your mental strength and processing power could handle it, there was nothing summoning magic couldn't construct, only things you couldn't imagine.
To realize his grand dream of "a completely handmade DIY beautiful girl spirit" as soon as possible, he was now in the stage of grinding away like mad.
He was voraciously learning all kinds of ancient, obscure demonic beast summoning techniques from The Grimoire Accompanying the Deity.
He stared intently at those complex summoning circle patterns, frantically analyzing their differences and underlying logic on scrap paper.
Every circuit node they shared, and the specific parameters represented by different runes during summoning...
This stuff was a whole dimension harder than ordinary magic circles!
Just sorting the thousands upon thousands of runes, which looked like incomprehensible scribbles, into logical categories was enough to leave him scratching his head in frustration, his scalp tingling.
Because he knew very well that he was summoning living, breathing beings. In a sense, this was "creating life."
This wasn't simply 3D printing and modeling, but high-precision micro-carving at the most fundamental levels of thought, memory, and even the soul.
"Whew... I've got a long road ahead of me. Feels like I'll have to start by losing hair for three to five years before I can even reach the threshold of DIY summoning."
Scratch, scratch, scratch...
In the quiet study, the only sound left was the scratching of a quill against rough parchment.
Suddenly-creak.
The tightly shut mahogany door was gently pushed open.
A middle-aged woman in a proper long dress walked in.
Her usually stern, rigid face was now full of worry, as though shrouded in dark clouds that wouldn't lift.
She walked slowly over to Rudeus and sat down across from him, looking somewhat drained.
"I'm terribly sorry to interrupt your academic research, Master Rudeus."
"It's all right, Mistress Edna."
Rudeus set down his pen and gave her the gentle, considerate smile of a junior:
"What happened? You look terrible. Perhaps if you tell us, we can all share the burden."
Edna rubbed her temples and let out a long sigh, her voice full of helplessness:
"I did run into a very thorny problem today. You could even say it's utterly disastrous."
"Please, go ahead. If it's within my power, I'll do my best."
The woman raised her head and looked at Rudeus with a complicated expression, as though he were her last hope:
"Lady Eris... she's skipped class."
"Skipped class?"
Rudeus raised an eyebrow and couldn't help chuckling:
"Isn't that just like her? What exactly caused it?"
"Sigh... everything was going well enough at first."
Edna explained with a worried frown:
"Lady Eris could still be patient with the individual step practice over the past couple of days."
"But starting yesterday, whenever she began rehearsing the whole dance in sequence, she became unusually agitated."
"She couldn't hit a single beat, and her movements were as rough as if she were dueling her dance partner."
"After two days of trying without making any progress, Lady Eris seemed unable to bear the blow of failing again and again."
"Today she simply overturned the sheet music and ran off, leaving the dance instructor stranded in the rehearsal room."
"So it's only a little thing like that? Heh..."
Rudeus laughed in spite of himself and calmly closed his thick notebook, speaking with unquestionable confidence:
"Please leave it to me, Mistress Edna. I promise you that before the sun sets today, Lady Eris will have learned the complete dance."
"Really, Master Rudeus?"
Edna sprang to her feet, a flicker of hope in her eyes, though there was more doubt than hope:
"You aren't just trying to comfort me, are you? This concerns the House Boreas Family's reputation and Lady Eris's social debut. It absolutely can't be treated as a game."
"Don't worry. Surely you can trust me?"
Rudeus winked and gave her an exceptionally sunny smile:
"You can go straight to the dance room and brew a pot of black tea, then wait for my good news~"
With that, Rudeus rose, pushed back his chair, and promptly left the study.
He already knew that young lady's psychological defenses and hiding habits inside out.
He crossed the courtyard with a clear destination in mind, heading straight for the stables behind the castle, where the air smelled of hay and leather.
Sure enough, on a tall pile of hay dappled with golden sunlight, he quickly spotted a striking flash of fiery red.
The future Mad Sword King was lying on her back in the soft hay, without a care for appearances.
With her hands tucked behind her head and her eyes somewhat red and swollen, she stared blankly at the wooden eaves overhead, where light leaked through...