Looking into the mirror and recalling a funny childhood memory with her sister, Aozaki Aoko couldn't help but laugh out loud.
Who would've thought that the current well-mannered, polite, and brilliant magic prodigy, the 19-year-old Aozaki Touko, was once such a little rascal who used suggestion magecraft to prank her three-year-old sister, who had just learned to speak?
Since her birth, Aozaki Aoko had been constantly honing herself.
She leveraged the advantages of her foresight, steadily accumulating various resources. After all, she knew her future would be filled with countless trials, some of which could even lead to world-ending events if she failed.
Among all the challenges she would face, the most immediate was her relationship with her sister, Aozaki Touko.
More specifically, this conflict stemmed from the inheritance of the Fifth Magic, controlled by their grandfather, the Fourth Magician, Ouden.
Aozaki Touko, who had spent over a decade training to inherit their magical lineage, would tonight face the biggest blow of her life: Ouden would name Aozaki Aoko as the new heir, not Touko.
If Aoko didn't intervene, this event would inevitably lead to a life-or-death battle between the sisters in two years, and one of them might not survive.
This future was something Aozaki Aoko could not accept.
Thus, at the age of five, she, like her sister, asked her grandfather to teach her the magecraft of the Aozaki family. After relentless pleading, Ouden finally sighed and agreed, making Aozaki Aoko Touko's junior apprentice.
There was no denying Touko's extraordinary talent for magecraft—even the equally gifted Aoko had to admit it. Touko's skill in creating magical puppets was formidable, especially considering it didn't even fall within the Aozaki family's field of research or creation-type magecraft.
Touko, however, looked down on Aoko's self-made weird little magics, such as conjuring a large, transparent hand to assist with chores, often making snide remarks.
Around that time, Aozaki Aoko began deliberately drawing closer to her emotionally distant sister. She would play small pranks to tease her sister and get her attention. Just when Touko was about to lose her patience, Aoko would feign submission, playing the obedient little sister.
Through these antics, Aoko learned her stubborn sister's limits and discovered many of her weaknesses.
Of course, pranks alone wouldn't be enough to build a strong sisterly bond. Aoko also used skills from her previous life—namely, her excellent cooking abilities—to win her sister over.
Delicious snacks from various countries and dishes their family had never seen before not only won over their parents but also slowly wore down Touko's iron will, which had otherwise been solely focused on becoming a magician.
However, all of these tactics were merely supplementary. The ultimate reason for preventing a deadly battle between the sisters could only be Aoko's strength.
"Peace through strength will endure; peace through compromise will perish."
Aozaki Aoko always remembered this principle.
Today was her graduation ceremony from the middle school division of Asagami Private Girls Academy, and she was slated to give the graduation speech as her class representative.
Given her knowledge from her past life, middle school in this world's Japan had been easy for Aoko. Even though she devoted significant time and energy to studying magecraft, achieving the top rank in school was simple.
As a private, aristocratic school funded by the Asagami Group, the academy sprawled over 335 acres, with a building area of 110,000 square meters. It was equipped with every facility imaginable, and even the school uniforms were incredibly cute (which was Aoko's main reason for choosing the academy—rumor had it that discarded uniforms could fetch a surprisingly high price on the black market).
In addition to the standard curriculum, the school offered many unique courses, such as German, Latin, and life education.
To conserve her energy, Aoko chose Latin and German for her magecraft studies.
However, Asagami Private Girls Academy was located in the neighboring town of Misaki, Aoko had to get up at 6 a.m. each morning to catch the bus.
This forced Aoko, who needed a full eight hours of beauty sleep, to go to bed by 10 p.m., maximizing her efficiency in both work and study.
Her insistence on eight hours of sleep was tied to her deepest secret.
Within the depths of her soul lay a fragment of the soul.
A clever reader might ask, "Wouldn't having a fragment of the soul inside her body turn her into a walking magic bomb, like that one mage who romanced the goddess of magic only to be dumped?"
Aoko had worried about this too, but after extensive testing, the fragment in her soul proved incredibly stable—so stable that she wondered if it was even a real piece of the Soul.
Since childhood, every time Aoko fell asleep, her consciousness would enter this fragment. It was a dimension beyond words; no mortal vocabulary could adequately describe the sights within the Astral Plane's depths. If she had to sum it up, it was like a psychedelic dream, filled with vibrant colors.
Ultimately, her belief that it was a fragment of the soul was just that—a belief. For now, she didn't want to delve too deeply, as she lacked the ability. Through countless nights of exploration, Aoko gradually acquired vast arcane knowledge from the Soul, memorizing it with her photographic memory and transcribing it into her spellbook upon waking.
Aoko glanced at her watch, confirming that she still had plenty of time before school. She reached into her imaginary space, retrieving her beautifully bound spellbook.
Its cover was crafted from dragon leather, a material she had begged from her grandfather, and its pages were made from a blend of alder pulp and alchemical potions. Incredibly durable, they were also ideal for crafting scrolls.
The so-called dragons were once fantastical creatures that had existed in this world. However, most had retreated to the Reverse Side of the World due to the decline of mystery and changes in the planet's rules. Only a few unlucky corpses remained on the surface, their bodies collected as cursed relics by magicians for use as magical materials.
Using her intelligence and a bit of help from her Grandfather, Aoko created this spellbook. She designed it with future expansion and upgrades in mind, knowing she would eventually learn more spells. The book currently held 100 pages, allowing her to inscribe up to 100 spells.
As her life-saving cheat, Aoko naturally invested a great deal of effort into learning and practicing arcane magecraft. Keeping her work secret, she spent significant time and energy mastering arcane spells, and by the age of 15, she had already reached level 5 as a wizard, learning many spells from the fragment.
Had she been born in the Astral Plane and received formal wizard training, Aoko might have achieved far higher levels by now. Unfortunately, she hadn't, and this wasn't the Astral Plane. Her current achievements were entirely self-taught, and only she knew the hardship behind them.
As a side note, this world didn't have Wizards of the Coast or a tabletop game called Dungeons & Dragons.
Aoko opened her spellbook and began meditating, preparing the spells she might need for the day.
At her current level, Aoko had access to 3 first-level spell slots, 2 second-level spell slots, and 1 third-level spell slot.
It might not seem like much, but one should never underestimate a level 5 wizard. The first third-level spell Aoko learned was the iconic Fireball from the school of evocation. Known for its low cost, high damage, and wide area of effect, Fireball was a must-have for any wizard looking to eliminate enemies efficiently.
In addition to the crucial third-level spell slot, a level 5 wizard also gained an additional feat. Aoko chose the feat Alertness.
Given her limited offensive spells and the fact that she could only cast up to third-level spells, improving her awareness to avoid ambushes was a top priority—especially since there were plenty of cunning individuals like Kiritsugu Emiya in this world.
After confirming she still had enough time, Aoko retrieved a book with a beautifully crafted leather cover from her imaginary space.