"I'm Wicky." The Neko butler introduced herself, bowing at the waist.
"Step aside so I may guide my... friend to the kitchen." Aurora waved Wicky to the side so I could pass by.
"Do you normally do things like you're doing to me to Wicky?" I asked, continuing to follow her directions through the massive house.
"She might look like an ironing board, but she's surprisingly strong." Aurora laughed, half-answering my question.
I arrived at the kitchen and set Aurora on the counter, where she curled up and observed me.
"Aren't you cold in that?" I asked, gesturing to her nightgown she was still wearing. "And aren't you worried about exposing yourself to me?"
She chuckled in response, not giving an answer.
I sighed and got into her fridge, wondering what I could make for a breakfast that would fit the owner of the single largest department store in the world.
"I have no idea what kind of food you like." I said, turning to her.
"Just make something you're comfortable with." Aurora responded, hanging a foot off the counter and moving it the same way a cat would move its tail.
I made eggs and toast.
I wasn't rich or anything, and I needed to save money so I could buy magic materials. I'd considered buying an expensive house or expensive ingredients, but I'd chosen to prioritize my own cultivation over comfort.
Power came first in this world, after all.
I served her the meal while she was still laying upon the counter in her nigh-transparent nightgown.
"Why are you so comfortable around me?" I asked her as she ate contentedly, trying to take my mind off how attractive she looked while she ate.
"People like you fall in love and never fall out of it." She laughed at me, licking a spot of jelly from the corner of her mouth. "And you're not the kind of person that would try and force yourself on me."
"That's it?" I asked in disbelief.
"Well, I suppose it's also that you're so weak that you can't really do much harm to me." She shrugged and turned back to her meal.
"Ouch." I said, wounded.
"Don't worry." She giggled as she finished her toast. "I'll make you more powerful the longer you work for me."
I couldn't refute that the increased salary would help my cultivation.
"Oh, I didn't mean your salary." She laughed, hopping off the counter and walking towards another room.
If she didn't mean salary, did she mean she was going to teach me?
Teaching me, a seventh-rate fire magician who was going on twenty-five?
But, other than teaching, what else could she mean?
I was flitting between ideas like a butterfly flew when Aurora returned and read my thoughts.
"Yes, I mean teaching." She grinned. "But you won't like it."
I immediately thought of one of those cultivation novels where the main character had to go through hell to gain power.
"That's precisely what I'm going to help you do." Aurora giggled at the facial expression I must have made. "Just not right now."
I sighed in relief.
"Come, we must teleport now." She grabbed my shoulder and steered me through many hallways and opened a grey door.
Stepping onto the massive magic mandala, it activated and we were teleported not into the store, but into a massive forest.
"Where are we?" I asked curiously, turning to where Aurora was.
To my dismay, she was nowhere in sight.
In the place of where she stood, there laid a small backpack that could fit food for maybe a day, a dagger, along with a note.
"Welcome to the Phosphor Forest!" I could imagine Aurora giggling as she said that. "I've left you with a manual and a compass, and sealed your flame attribute. Good luck! You have to survive for either a week, or arrive back in the store before then."
"Well, shit." I sighed, wearily eyeing the eerie forest around me.
The trees were thick and dense, obscuring most of the sunlight with a towering canopy. There was shrubbery, vines, and bug nests that obscured nearly every possible pathway I could follow.
Well, calling them paths was a stretch. They were more like slightly less dense forest areas.
According to what I had heard, the Phosphor Forest was full of plant-type and demon-type magic creatures, hence its name.
Demon-type creatures smelled of phosphorous, which smelled slightly like garlic. It'd be easier to call it the Garlic Forest, in my opinion, but that didn't have the same ring to it.
I picked up the backpack and pulled out the manual Aurora mentioned, which was a manual for the water element.
Even though I have a high affinity for water, she was asking me to survive this hellhole of a forest with water magic alone?
Nevertheless, it would be useful to use the magic for fresh water so I didn't have to risk being eaten by a magic fish or something.
The concept was relatively simple, merely using mana to condense the water in the air for the basic level, then condensing the air itself for the intermediate level, then using mana to emulate water at the advanced level.
It was an incredibly detailed manual considering that water magic had essentially gone out of fashion about a century ago.
Too few people had an affinity for it, and it had relatively low battle power.
Prestigious mages argued that water magic had potential to be the most powerful magic, but the records of how to use it properly were incredibly rare.
The cost of such books were astronomical; in the millions of magic stones.
It chilled me to know that the price of the manual in my hands could be worth several mansions like Aurora's.
I tried following the instructions, and managed to conjure a water ball the size of my pinky nail on my seventh try.
Unsatisfied, I drank the pitiful amount of water and tried again.
I had a plan of how I was going to use water ball, and a tiny water ball such as that wasn't going to cut it.
With every attempt, the water ball grew slightly bigger, and I wasn't going to give up. My life was at stake here. I wasn't going to stop until I got it larger than my head.
It took me well into the afternoon for me to get a water ball even half the size of my head.
I formed another water ball and heard something crash behind me.
"Well." I muttered to myself, turning around. "Let's see if this works."