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Per Luca’s request, we went to take a bath early tonight as well. The bath was separated from the one used by the girls and wasn’t that big so we had to use it one at a time.
After soaking in the tub and warming myself up, I cleaned my entire body and then got in the tub again. It was because Luca would worry if I didn’t do so. Afterwards I put my bathrobe on, thoroughly dried my hair and went back to the bedroom.
Luca got up from the bed and kissed my hair. We then switched places and I sat down on the bed and waited for Luca to come out.
Now then, we were almost definitely going to have sex afterwards, but I hadn’t used up any of my mana today and if he embraced me like this, I’d end up feeling it way too much when Luca’s mana absorbed into me. Thinking of how depressed Luca was earlier, I wanted to stay conscious until the end tonight. Alright, let’s use up my mana.
I closed my eyes and focused my attention on my palm. Using my mana, I pulled on the emotions I could sense in the air around my palm and condensed them. I tried to turn those ephemeral sensations into something that was graspable.
After I had meditated for a while, I could feel the presence of Luca coming out of the bath. I opened my eyes since he was back in the bedroom and Luca sat next to me, eyes blinking.
“Zagan that’s your that? Demonic essence, right?”
“Yeah. If I do this, I can use up my mana right away without causing any damage to my surroundings.”
As Luca had pointed out, a small amount of black mist was floating above my palm. It was barely 10 centimeters in diameter and could only summon a dark attribute baby slime.
“How much mana do you need to use to make something this size?”
“I’ve already used a fourth of my mana.”
“So just this takes up a fourth of your mana? Then a colossal amount must have been used to summon the five dragons with demonic essence. Is that why it took them three months even though there are so many people in the organization?”
Speaking of which, Luca had been standing behind me at the time so he saw the amount of demonic essence that the Dark Organization had gathered.
Gathering so much demonic essence would have definitely taken a lot of time and effort. However, in my current condition there was another reason why I could only accumulate such a small amount.
“I think those guys were able to reduce the amount of mana they depleted, even if only to a certain extent, because they had strong negative emotions. The reason I can only gather this much is because there aren’t that many negative emotions surrounding us. No matter how much mana I use, I can’t gather what’s not there.”
“Oh, I see. Then this, it’s my emotions from earlier?”
Luca extended his finger towards the demonic essence. When he touched it, he looked at me in surprise.
“It’s small but I can touch it – even though it’s an emotion.”
“I used my mana to turn the intangible into tangible. It’s similar to creating tentacles. Luca, how about you try gathering purifying essence? I’m sure you could use up the same amount of mana as I did and end up with something a hundred times bigger than this.”
“Fufufu. That’s right. There’s a lot of Zagan and my love in the air after all.” Luca smiled happily and kissed me.
… I had the feeling that I accidentally said something embarrassing, but that was just my imagination, right? Probably. In the meantime, I dispersed the demonic essence. Waving my hand a couple of times, it diffused into the air and gradually disappeared.
Staring at the essence as it disappeared, Luca tilted his head and turned his gaze back to me.
“But I’ve never gathered purifying essence before. I don’t use summoning magic so I never felt the need to do so. Zagan, did you naturally learn summoning magic?”
“Yeah, but Luca didn’t?”
Speaking of which, the protagonist didn’t use any summoning magic in the game either. Even though he had the light attribute. Even though light and dark were two sides of the same coin and he should be able to use it. I wonder why?
Skills and spells were things that popped into one’s mind unexpectedly. However, there were some conditions that triggered them.
Basically these were things that you could learn by leveling up your skills, but there were also cases where you learned them through action. For example, the sword skills the original Zagan acquired by repeatedly committing insane murders, or my ultimate spell which I learned through getting the right weapon. These kinds of conditions.
In other words, learning them might depend on the environment you are in.
“The current Soleil kingdom is filled to the brim with Soleil’s negative emotions. If that’s cancelling out any positive emotions, then it would be meaningless for light attribute users to have summoning magic.”
“I see, that might be the case. Is that why it’s extremely rare for spirits to be born in Soleil kingdom?”
I nodded. Those rarely seen spirits might have been born from the world’s emotions that hadn’t been cancelled out.
By coincidence, the two of us had seen a small spirit in August, but that private beach had been at the edge of Soleil kingdom. So it’s highly likely that the positive emotions hadn’t been cancelled. Furthermore, that small fish spirit had swum around Luca as if to comfort him. No… wait a minute. Was that really just a coincidence?
I tilted my head and stared at Luca. He was concentrating on gathering mana on his palm, but smiled gently when he noticed my gaze.
“What is it Zagan?”
“Sorry for bothering you. It’s about that spirit we saw before. I remembered that it was clearly trying to comfort you. But it seems unlikely for a newborn spirit to act that way. I was wondering whether it was being manipulated by the world.”
“Umm… in other words, the world was trying to comfort me?”
“Something like that. The dark dragons for example, couldn’t go against the will of those that summoned them and had to fight against us despite having the wisdom of dragons. Soleil and Lune also summoned spirits and monsters to follow them, resulting in the whole kingdom being engulfed in their fierce battle.”
Of course, it was also possible for them to have their own will, which was exactly why the magic beasts in the Great Forest of Lune and Terre kingdom could live freely.
Perhaps then the monsters of Soleil kingdom attacked humans indiscriminately because Lune wanted them to be suppressed immediately so that there wouldn’t be so many monsters around that there wouldn’t be any place to convert the demonic essence of Soleil’s grudge into monsters. Or did they want to kill humans because they were born from Soleil’s grudge? Both options seemed plausible.
As I was having these thoughts, Luca’s tentacles reached out to me all of a sudden and laid me down on the middle of the bed. Luca then covered my body with his.
He kissed me gently on the cheeks and eyes and then hugged me tightly. It didn’t feel like we were going to have sex, and it didn’t feel like he was spoiling me either. He just hugged me ever so preciously.
“Luca… what’s wrong?”
I didn’t know why so I tried asking, but Luca just rubbed his cheek on my head.
“It’s just that it’s amazing. That the world tried to comfort me. And that you realised that is amazing as well. Thank you, Zagan… I’ll do my best from now on as well. I’ll work hard and save Soleil no matter what. Then I can have my happily ever after with you.”
The Luca who was looking at me had a very handsome and beautiful smile on his face. When I stared at him, enchanted, he laughed happily and gave me a sweet, gentle kiss.