I got down on one knee and put forth my worst acting I could possibly pull off and overdid everything to the best of my abilities. "Oh, small yet extraordinarily powerful devil I've called from the depths to guard my heart, would you give me yours as I've trusted you with mine."
"I thought you'd never ask." She replied. She ripped the ring off her finger and placed it in my hand. I shrugged and was about to get up, but she planted both palms on my shoulders and non-verbally demanded I put the ring on her finger.
"Is that a yes?"
"Yes, it's a yes now get this over with. I want to brag to the twins that I got my ring first already."
"Oh yeah." I summoned them both. "Girls, your rings are on the counter over there, take one if you want to be my fiancé as well."
The two didn't even question it and immediately grabbed them and teleported away as if I'd take them back if they didn't immediately retreat with them. The fiend was more than a little upset, but I did finally put the ring on her hand myself. I fear she'd've probably tried to kill me herself if I didn't.
"Stubbornness will get you nowhere in life."
"Bite me."
"The twins just left."
"You know what I meant!"
It amused me to watch her squirm. I opted to leave her here to cool down and brought the club's VP back to the club room as the last member was about to clear out. "Did you need anything from here or should I just drop you off at your house?"
"Take me home." She breathed out tiredly. If I didn't know better, I might have misconstrued her tone. But I did know better. Unlike the twin who pretended to hate me thinking I'd be more drawn to her if she was "unavailable" the VP genuinely doesn't like me and she's a bit too pure to even have those kinds of emotions.
I teleported her back to her room and as if she forgot I was even there began walking into her bathroom while taking off her clothes not even saying a word. I'd assume she'd thought I'd teleport away the second I dropped her off. In retrospect, I probably should have. Instead, I stood dumbfounded as to why she'd just done so in front of me, eventually, I regained my senses and just went home. The fiend was waiting in bed nude for us to finish dinner.
After dinner, she was bragging about her ring to my favourite of the group who was less than impressed and after some light reading, we fell asleep for the day.
I awoke the next morning to the little fiend straddling my waist, she'd clearly undone and gotten rid of my clothes while I slept, I was about to ask what she was doing but she put a finger to her lips and whispered telepathically 'I am trying to teach you my domains of magic.'
'Make it quick.' I responded.
Much to my surprise instead of doing exactly what I thought she'd be doing she simply pressed herself to me and spread out as far as she could making as much contact as possible while pressing her forehead against mine. In a moment a ritual spell I had never seen before was implanted into my mind. I immediately cast it.
The moment the spell was cast a pair of angelic wings sprouted from my back and my anti-magic circle gained its backlight as my skin changed entirely into a bright glowing white. As if I myself began to give off light. This spell's name was Celestial Form it has no chant and can only be cast through feeling but the circle for it was ingrained In my memories.
The next spell to be sent via the mind link was Abyssal Form I cast it as well. These were both passive spells. Casting the spell with the other one changed my skin back to the way it was and my wings receded, but I knew if I chose to I could return them to where they were. I even felt I could choose whether my wings looked divine or demonic or both.
I felt as if I could manipulate any of the other domains with just these two spells alone but the magic kept flooding in. after the first two passive spells it was like the damn of knowledge burst. If the first two spells was the tiny drips of water leaking through a hairline crack the flood of information that followed was the entire rest of the water pouring in.
I immediately passed out and was rendered unconscious for the first half of the day. The spells were still floating around somewhere in my memories with Perfect Recall I can cast any one of them if I can put a name to a spell. But as I was currently trying to forget the headache that was this morning, I don't think I'll be trying to dredge up any of the new spells drilled into my mind any time soon.
I moved to get up and found the little fiend asleep naked on my chest, the process must have tired her out as well. There was a note on a tray of food left for me when I woke up. 'went to school enjoy your cold breakfast.' It said. Despite being cold the food she made was still really good. You could tell she wasn't in the best of moods when she left the food there for it to get cold but you could tell the food left was still made with love.
I went to get up when I noticed she'd probably tuckered herself out with more than just the transfer of knowledge. I sighed and left her in the bed to rest as I got dressed and moved to get to school to attend at least the latter half of my classes for the day. During one of my classes, I was caught writing a letter because my professors know I never take notes. Luckily, he didn't try to take it from me he just called me out for not paying attention as if I ever paid any attention to him in the first place.
Before I went to the magic clubroom for the day I went to the breakfast club room and told the club advisor to pass on my letter to my fiancé when she arrived. I put a charm on the paper so I knew if she'd unfolded it before giving it to her.
I went back to the magic club and collected the VP. We went back to the academy we visited the day before and went to go speak to the professor again. Once again we were met with a class about to end and sat in on the last dregs of the lecture.
After all the other students left she walked up to us and asked us if we got the chance to learn from the transmutation tomb she'd given me. I told her I read a bit of it before bed the other day but couldn't seem to find where one spell ended and another began so she began to explain it to me. "Oh, that's easy. It's because there's technically only one transmutation spell."
I slammed her tomb on the desk beside my necromancy grimoire for scale. "This whole thing is one spell?"
"Well yeah, technically. In most other domains of magic you use minimal components for maximum returns but that's not how it is in transmutation magic. For transmutation magic, you have to be intimately familiar with your components and make things equal in your casting. You're changing one thing into another but there's no mass lost. It's the simplest form of magic and yet usually takes the longest to master."
"So, there's no passive spell I can learn to get my marks of mastery for transmutation?"
"Transmutation is unique in that it inspires the most growth and creativity in making new spells. Honestly, the space-time magic is very similar in how linked together all the spells are but the existence of the separation of the kinds of spells as opposed to just one that changes things. It makes it a bit trickier to read."
"If there's only one spell then teach it to me."
"Hmm… the book is meant to teach it to you, you have to memorize the entire book to use transmutation efficiently."
"What do you mean?"
"The chant changes a bit depending on the components being used and the desired end result. Of course, a couple of chants are recorded like the spell to turn lead into gold and gold into platinum. I say it encourages the most magical experimentation because in most cases you have to figure out the words yourself. Sorry but transmutation is just something you have to memorize the theory for and just wing it on the casting. As long as you have what you need and think of what you want the casting should leave your components looking vaguely similar to what you had in mind."
"All I got from that was, 'figure it out."
"That's essentially all the advice I can give though."
I sighed and asked if they were still stuck on anything about space-time magic and after clearing out a few misunderstandings I helped them to figure out anything they were still struggling with. Luckily for me, they were both experience mages who knew the words I was using.
After a fair bit of exchanging information, I learned a bit more about transmutation and they learned a bit more about space-time magic. specifically, I learned the chant for the True Polymorph spell. Which is the spell the space-time spell I used to change my pet's appearance was copied from. If I wanted to I could completely change the way someone looked. As I began thinking about the spell and all the applications it could bear, a memory flashed like a single image on a page suddenly blown by the wind into view and carried off just as swiftly.
As I began to try to focus on this memory, I realized there's a spell from the divine magic that can alter someone down to the very core of their soul. A spell that can change not just a person's face but their beliefs and personality as well. A spell that can truly change someone. Like the entire transmutation domain is based off this one spell. I then thought of my magics in general and I realized that every self-defence spell across all the domains was in my Celestial and Abyssal form spells.
The closer I looked the more I realized magic for humans, in general, is just a cheap imitation of the original three forms of magic. This knowledge seemed to flow with the realization that ani-magic was an original domain created by humans on the mortal plane as divine magic was created in its realm and demonic magic in the abyss.
I came to realize that these three original magics would be fairly difficult to understand and so the domains must have come about invented by scholars who wanted to make it easier to cast simple spells under any circumstance as divine and demonic magic is very contingent on the dispositions of the people nearby in order to work. And anti-magic is particularly tricky to work with. The more you use the weaker it gets the less you use the more focused and effective it gets.
Anti-magic is fairly counterintuitive, but it's effective in fighting against other forms of magic. The only reason I can see for these traditions to die out is for them to be so difficult no one wanted to pass them down and thus just left their apprentices with the simpler to cast 8 main domains.
It seemed as though a key had been turned in my mind unlocking the knowledge I'd gained that morning. Two tombs floated in view of my mind's eye, looking upon its pages gave not words to be read but concepts to be understood. These spells were not something you learned they were something you had to know. This means it's fairly difficult to teach the spells through conventional means.
After the lecture ended I took the VP back to her house and went home to study the transmutation grimoire. It became wonderfully easy to learn now that the original source material was so engrained into my mind. By the end of the evening, I had completely memorized the book and even created my own self-defence spell in the transmutation domain, I called it Immutable form.
The spells intended effect is to make it so if someone tries to attack me my body will reposition itself out of the way without moving. If someone sliced my arm off this spell would make it as though the blade passed through air and no change would ever occur. Instead of healing it more so prevented damage from ever happening.
In short, my form can no longer be changed by outside forces. My marks for transmutation began to shift the tattoos on my body. Its circle actively moved when you looked at it, it was formed of many geometric shapes that refused to stay still. Now there were three arrows left to fill on my chest and they each are opposite a different one, it seems they might actively hurt me to gain the last three though.
I put the thoughts to the side and went to bed after dinner. My fiancé was a bit worried because I now had four girls lined up to marry me and instead of thinking about setting up the wedding(s) I was focused on gaining magic.
"That reminds me I need to study mind magic with my pet and develop a spell with her I can cast to get my marks."
"Can't you just recast Perfect Recall?"
"I don't have the confidence to be able to cast it from memory without the spell that makes it impossible to forget a spell I'm casting mid cast. Nor do I want to write it down rememorize it and cast it as it is."
After briefly telling my pet to get dressed I summoned her and told her I planned to be up all night developing the spell. When my pet arrived, however, she had yet to lace the back of her dress yet. "Little help?"
I sighed walked up to her and tightened it as far as it could fit.
Lucky for me tomorrow is an off day so we won't have school on account of the weekend. So we spent all night debating and fixating on how to make a mind magic spell that'd be enough to give me my mastery.