Class Advancement Options Available!

  - Mage (Generalist): To walk the path of a mage, one must learn all spells there are to be learned. Generalists are the jack-of-all trades, master at none, yet flexible in everything.

  - Fire Mage: Life is sustained and destroyed by temperature. To be a fire mage ensures the mastery of control over heat and cold, and thus, the mastery over the pillar of life.

  - Earth Mage: The soil and world we all walk upon is our greatest treasure. Bend it to your will, and you shall create the finest structures and sculpt the landscape to your needs and desires.

  Marcus explained the options that he had to both Stella and Siris. After warning Stella earlier to maybe ‘draw down’ on withdrawing from the bank if she wished to keep her stealth up, the two returned to their hotel, going straight into Stella’s suite.

  There, the two waited until Siris came back out after she rested. Immediately, Marcus, of course, jumped the gun and began asking questions from his new ‘mentor,’ first prioritizing the problem he had with his class assignment.

  The great spirit calmly held her chin while silently contemplating Marcus’s question about the optimal route to take, all while she floated near Stella. Stella, on the other hand, who was calmly sipping tea, lowered her teacup on her saucer as her eyes brightly widened.

  “Don’t you like [Rock Barrage]?” Stella asked, a hint of excitement in her voice. “You know, if you like maximizing physical damage, earth magic specialization is the way to go.”

  “Hold it,” Siris interrupted, her red eyes narrowing as she stared down at Marcus, who was silently munching on a piece of bread after he explained his part.

  “Young man,” Siris continued. “You’re already very good at dealing physical damage to people, no?”

  Marcus quickly swallowed the food he was chewing before speaking. “Yeah? I can practically cut anyone and anything that I want.”

  “Now that you say that, you focusing on [Rock Barrage] does feel a bit weird,” Stella pointed out.

  “Eh. It’s a stopgap spell while I suck. I said I wanted to try magic in combat, but right now, I can’t control my spells well. So rock barrage it is.”

  Besides, I only ever used it on a packed battlefield with abundant hostile targets. It might be a bit of a hard sell to use [Rock Barrage] if there are civilians or allies in front of me.

  Marcus remembered the grizzly result of his work in Eisenfeld. Those poor cultists didn’t stand a chance, and they all died in quite the nasty way. Being cut or stabbed sucked, but it was probably better than being hit by multiple fast-moving rocks and bleeding out with your intestines gutted open.

  Either way, dying while lying on a puddle of your piss and blood sucked, but [Rock Barrage] sucked extra. Marcus would prefer dying to a fireball in an instant over that.

  “In that case, you seem like you’re not yet ready to take a specialization route,” Siris declared. “You don’t trust your skills yet, do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “In that case, you should take a generalist route for now. You can change that later anyway as your [Mage] rank rises. Once you’re more comfortable and knowledgeable about magic, then you can specialize.”

  “Huh…I see…” Marcus nodded. That was good advice, he thought. Previously, he was leaning towards becoming a [Fire Mage], because fireballs and all that. He thought that with specialization in fire magic, he’d have superior control over fires.

  Then, he could burn his enemies without the fear of accidentally burning Stella, which would be embarrassing, and internally, he didn’t want to burn her beautiful clothes just because he was a mongrel at using fire magic.

  But locking into a [Fire Mage] build might not be the most optimal route long-term. After all, if he was facing the Death God Cult and their eccentric forms of magic, he probably would not do well if all he could do was ‘burn ‘em all.’ He needed something more.

  With that decided, he summoned his system screen again, went for his new class options, and picked the generalist mage option. In his stat window, his class remained the same as a result.

  He was still a [Mage], an iron-ranked [Mage] to be specific. It felt good. It didn’t take that long in reality, and he was already somewhere close to an average caster, with the added buff of having a Diamond rank manacore to make him ridiculously overpowered even with his current limitations.

  “There we go,” Marcus smiled. “I picked the generalist class.”

  “Congratulations!” Stella clapped. “I think at this rate, you’ll be equal to my rank in about a year. Your [Mage] class rank, that is.”

  “I think you’re a bit too optimistic,” Marcus laughed it off.

  “I’m serious!”

  “Anyway…” Marcus looked at Siris. His tone finally turned stiff and serious. “About the Death God Cult.”

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  “What is it?” Siris folded her arms.

  “Do you know anything about body vessels?” Marcus asked. “One of the Archbishops of the Death God Cult, Selena, is using vessels that allow her to revive herself using the bodies of her followers. I have no idea how to counter it.”

  “Hmm…that indeed is quite a hard spell to counter,” Siris frowned. “Technically, a simpler version of it can be easily broken by just using [Dispel]. Even Stella’s [Aura of Faith] can probably destroy it due to its demonic nature.”

  “I faced her while using [Aura of Faith] before. If it worked, she wouldn’t have returned,” Stella said.

  “Yeah, I doubt it’s one of the simpler ones.” Marcus shook his head.

  “Then most likely, the spell that she’s using is powered by an intricate ritual, or she has a phylactery somewhere that maintains it. In this case, the only way to kill her is to destroy the foundation of the spell that allows her to transfer her soul between bodies.”

  “Shit…” Marcus lightly bashed his fist on the table. “So it comes down to that again. We have to find her lair.”

  “There’s a chance that she’s not hiding the source of this demonic magic in her lair too,” Stella added. “On the upside, I’m quite confident that if I see the source, I can figure out a way to destroy it.”

  “It’ll be an easy game for me too,” Siris scoffed. “The hard part is finding it, especially if she’s smart enough to have decoys in place.”

  Marcus was cringing at this point. This reminded him a bit of the Death God himself, who drew power from magical towers filled with damned souls that granted him unlimited magic in the underworld. A lot of the operations they organized to win the war were aimed against those towers, and each one of them was so heavily defended that they’d lose thousands of troops whenever they conducted a strike mission.

  In that case, there’s a possibility that Archbishop Selena will be a long-term threat. She’s the one who knows me and Stella the most, and she’s able to move around the world, escape her death, and organize the rest of the Death God Cult against us.

  What a pain. She’s like a damned cockroach.

  “I’ll try to reach level 30 silver rank first before going into another hunt then,” Marcus said. “Unless…you and Stella have other plans?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that…” Stella looked down at her teacup. “Some part of me wants to go home, at least, to tell my mother and father that I’m alive. It’s why I don’t really mind if they notice my bank activity.”

  “Right.”

  “But, at the same time, I’m not sure if I’m ready yet.” She smiled at Marcus. “For now, I’d like to stay by your side here. I’d like to know you better. Is that alright?”

  “Of course…” Even Marcus somewhat liked spending time with her here. It was quiet and peaceful, and Stella was just good company in general. He’s been smiling more and more nowadays, and he was feeling less of that near-constant urge to go into combat.

  I guess I am turning a bit soft.

  But, this was peacetime, Marcus thought. Surely, there wasn’t anything wrong with indulging in a peaceful life for a while, no? Even if trouble was on the horizon, he was sure that he’d slap it off anyway before it became a massive headache.

  Even Archbishop Selena wasn’t a true threat to Marcus and Stella. The more concerning problem about her was the fact that her existence was harming innocent people, but, well, every day, misery and suffering plagued the world.

  Marcus could hardly ever act to prevent all of that. What was the difference then if he took some time off before eliminating Selena?

  Yeah, it probably shouldn’t be that bad.

  Siris’s eyes darted between Marcus and Stella. Then, the great spirit rolled her eyes.

  “Geez, you two,” she slackened. “You youngsters are always a pain to watch.”

  Marcus sighed as he retired to his suite. After taking a bath, which he swore to do twice a day at least, once in the morning and once in the evening, he quickly went straight for his bedroom.

  On the side of his bed was a small table. On it was a book he had purchased earlier. He remembered Stella’s words earlier, while they were out shopping. When he saw an empty book, she advised Marcus to buy one of them.

  Marcus naturally asked why he should do such a thing, and her answer was simple. She told him that while his summonable grimoire kept the knowledge about spells that he accumulated, it wasn’t enough.

  She told him that every [Mage] had a story that should be documented. Thus, this book would be Marcus’s diary. It was a bit of a strange pastime to do, but Marcus learned that taking Stella’s advice in life tended to improve his mood and spirit a lot.

  Picking up a fountain pen, another expensive tool he acquired under Stella’s recommendation, Marcus began writing on his diary’s first pages while sitting in front of the table. He wasn’t exactly sure what to write, so all he did was ramble.

  On and on, he rambled about what he did today. He discussed how he felt this morning, what he ate, the new things he learned, and much more. He planned to include a lot of details about the spells he was capable of using now.

  But, somehow, when he was done with his three-page-long entry, the contents felt a bit lopsided.

  He rested his left cheek on his hand, a bit annoyed with himself.

  “I talked more about Stella than spells,” Marcus frowned. “...I swear, she’s taking too much space in my head nowadays.”

  He supposed it was just her personality. If she wasn’t hiding her identity, he imagined that she would take everyone’s attention. People liked good people, especially good people who were humble, kindhearted, and generally wholesome.

  His diary was supposed to be his story, but since Marcus’s mind was tricked by Stella’s ability to attract attention, it felt like he just wrote her story. How weird. He almost wanted to rip off the pages to start again, but he just rested his back on his chair and refrained from doing so. After a bit of thinking, his mind changed.

  He remembered his buddies in hell. So many of them had colorful personalities too, endlessly more interesting than Marcus’s dull and crass behavior. Had he kept a diary while in hell, maybe he’d remember their stories much clearer.

  Then he’d have more stories to tell Stella.

  “Yeah, that shouldn’t be too bad.” Marcus closed his diary with a laugh. “I get to tell people one day that I worked with the [Saint], and I’ll have accurate records. That will certainly make me look cooler.”

  He looked up at the ceiling. This wasn’t so bad, he thought. His heart also wanted to learn more about her while he was trying to mooch off her great spirit’s sagely experience at magecraft.

  So why not stay at Branburg a little longer? It sure was nice here, after all.