A lot of time has passed since I put the awkward yet rewarding show to the family.
Albeit still looks scared, the maid, who was almost always present in the room, never ran out of the room like the wind anymore. She and my mother often share the same sentiment, watching me limit testing with anxious looks on their faces.
My sister, on the other hand, fared better than the two as time went by. Maybe because she was young, or maybe she did buy my act. Who knows...
Anyway, I did get the desired result despite how clunky the whole show was. That's all that mattered.
And with my mind at ease, I was able to train myself to my heart's content. I spent the whole day, morning till dusk grinding my magic. The evening was when I stopped and relaxed while trying new things to quench the nagging boredom.
As a result, my limit had increased by the size of a fist. The increment really picked up, as I suspect.
The more it grew, the more variety of things I could do, and also, the more convenient it was to me.
What did that mean? It meant I could offer to be less specific with my commands. For example, if I said the word fly before, it would register the command as make everything fly. But now, the blessing would understand what I wanted better since my body could handle the strain the word magic put whenever it tried to establish a connection with my soul.
You might have noticed it, but yeah, just like the blessing of danger, word magic was also growing, and their growth was parallel with my own.
Why was that? Because if I asked for the blessings at their full power, even with the sealed fragment, God's divinity, and my soul, it would be far from being sufficient to balance the scale. That's why it was necessary to impose a limit on these blessings.
But even then, the price was barely enough to tip the balance. Sure, god's divinity and the world's fate fragment were there to help me, but I have to offer something expensive regardless. And the most expensive thing I could offer other than my life was, my time...
They were just too much of a cheat power, that's why. Especially the word magic. It was a power that could contest even the authority of God after all.
So, instead of asking for one hundred right from the get-go, I went for one. And from there, I would work my way up.
I digress.
There was a reason why I kept rambling about my power for a while now. I admit the topic took quite the detour, but I was getting to the point. Be a bit patient with me.
Here's the story...
Just a minute ago, I was playing a simple game with my sister. It was a game where you had three cups, and the goal was to guess which of the three cups hid the object you were looking for. You know, that game where street scammers often used to cheat people.
Moving on, I took the unused cups from my mother and sister's snack tray and crumpled a gold fork into a perfect cube with magic for the game's props.
And while waiting for my sister to snuggly sit across me on the bed, I levitated myself, acting like a freaking thousand-year-old wizard or some shit.
I'm not gonna lie; it was pretty dope.
After that, the game began in earnest. I showed her which cup held the small cube before moving the cups.
With a mental image as vivid as the burning sun, I uttered a simple command. 'Move like that, but faster.' It was a simple combination of movements for the cups.
And it worked, thanks to word magic. The three cups moved like water serpents that were high on steroids. My sister, who had a nonchalant look on her face right before the game began, couldn't help but widen her eyes. Heck, even my mother and the maid were surprised.
With absolutely no freaking clue where the cube was, my sister took a wild guess. As a result, out of the ten games we played, she could only win three times.
Feeling frustrated that she couldn't hope to trace the cup's movement even if she winced her eyes to her limit, my sister took the cups and cube and declared that it was her turn to set the game.
Boy, little did she know, she was still playing on top of my hand. And I figured it ain't half bad to mess with my sister now and then...
Now, my sister was someone who clearly knew her own limits. She knew she couldn't possibly move the cups the way I did. Hence, she chose an easier and simpler option. She asked the maid to hold a tablecloth between us to cover my vision as she moved the cups around.
Thank god that I couldn't move a muscle, or she would've seen the huge smirk I had by the time she was done mixing the cups.
As I said, this was the game for scammers. And scammers never finish you off from the start. No, they lure you in first before sucking your blood dry.
That's why I let her win. I chose whatever and lost. Well, only for the first two games, though.
Feeling as if my villainous whiskers were tingling in anticipation, I used my trump card.
'X-ray vision.' And my whole world turned black and white in an instant.
Now hold your tongue before you start raining judgment on me. To be clear, the image that I had as I issued the command was not to include my mother, sister, and the blonde maid in the command.
That meant I could see everything using X-ray vision, Except for those three. I didn't have that kind of hobby, and this story didn't have that genre...
Anywho, that's that. Long story short, I won by a landslide against my sister. Again.
Well, she never stood a chance in the first place...
And while I was tasting the sweet cheap victory inside my mind, the door opened, and a maid entered the room bringing a new tray of refreshments.
She was someone I had never seen before, and since I never put her in the image of the command I issued, obviously, the X-ray vision worked flawlessly on her.
Okay...That was a miss, but I swear this story doesn't have anything saucy...
Now, back to the story.
There, I saw...a dagger. A thin and long dagger strapped tight on her calf.
My blessing of danger was not ringing, but it was definitely weaving a little. That meant she did pose a certain level of threat to my life, even if they were low.
'Fuck...An assassin?'
And I was forced to remember once again, what kind of world this second life of mine was. It was a world where conflict and war were nothing but common occurrences.
'Now...what do I do with her...?'