The stone courtyard was filled with the sound of metal clashing against metal as the armored knights within it fought each other. Swords met swords that blocked, armor that slowed, and flesh that tore as the battle to control the stronghold escalated.
And there I was, right in the middle of it.
My blood pumped through my veins, roaring in my ears as I ducked under a horizontal swing intended to separate my head from my shoulders. The knight in question had no compunctions about attacking someone as seemingly young and cute as me. He knew better.
The tip of my staff, a golden cross-like shape, glowed with energy as I swung it upward. The knight saw it coming and started moving out of the way, but had yet to recover from his missed attack and was too slow.
"Flash Impact!" I shouted. The staff hit his armored torso and exploded with magical energy. The knight was sent flying, both his armor and the flesh under it burned and shredded, stopped only by hitting his allies behind him. My lips twitched upward in a satisfied smile.
The victory was small though, and short lived as more knights stepped forward to fill the newly made gap. I wiped the sweat beading on my forehead away on the sleeve of my arm before holding my staff out again.
"Shoot Bullet!" I intoned. Magical energy gathered at the tip of my staff before firing off at the closest knight. He stumbled back as it hit him in the stomach, armor dented badly enough that it was likely causing him pain, but it was a minor wound at best.
Thankfully though, Shoot Bullet could be spammed. And I did so, firing off sphere after sphere of magical energy into the wall of enemy knights. They stumbled back, but the few that had shields simply stepped forward and raised them, supported by their fellow knights.
I clicked my tongue, annoyed. Their shields had no right being that durable, though that would explain why so few of the knights carried them. No doubt they weren't easy to make.
Still, I had ways of overcoming such things.
A sphere of magic gathered at the tip of my staff again, but unlike the purple bullets of Shoot Bullet, this one was red. And when it fired, it went straight up. "Eisengeheul!" I shouted.
The ball of magic burst with a deafening bang and a rush of air, causing nearly everyone in the courtyard, ally and enemy both, to flinch. Everyone looked up, wary of a magical attack.
And while they were distracted, I cast two more spells. "Stahlmesser," I quietly intoned. Magic gathered at the tip of my staff, but this time it was shaped into a blade about half a meter long. "Blitz Action." Magic filled my body and propelled my forward, staff held straight like a lance.
I slammed into the line of shields, who were too distracted by my flashbang to react in time, and the blade of magic cut through their shields like a hot knife through butter. The man I ran into gurgled, blood rising in his throat. He tried to attack me with his sword, but the metal bounced off my Barrier Jacket, too weak to penetrate the meager defensive spells woven into it.
He fell, energy draining from his limbs as he died, and I turned my attention to the nearby knights who were getting their bearings back and turning back towards me, weapons raised. But I was faster. My magical blade tore through their armor as I swung my staff around like a spear or halberd, the movements feeling natural despite my relative lack of experience.
Before long, a gap had formed around me, filled only with corpses and soon to be corpses. The still standing enemy knights eyed me warily, hesitantly. I smiled and twirled my staff before planting the base of it on the paved stone ground. "Is that all the challenge that knights of your caliber can offer?"
They hesitated for a moment longer before raising their weapons and charging toward me. I bared my teeth as I prepared another spell.
And then the world went black.
I blinked, and I found myself looking not at the stone bricks of a courtyard, but the smooth stone walls of the Stoneblock, dimly lit by our lanterns.
I shook my head and took a moment to reorient myself. I wasn't standing up any longer, but sitting down, back against the wall. I looked down in my lap and saw an open book. On the page, written in a language I hadn't known how to read a few days ago, were many words, but the bottom most line was the relevant one.
User Magic Power critically low, ending simulation.
I clicked my tongue in annoyance and closed the book. It was an ancient looking tome, bound in brown leather. It didn't have any words on it, but both the front and the back had a golden cross-like object embedded onto it. It looked very mystical.
It was called the Tome of the Night Sky, and it was one of the first things I had purchased once the captures we made in Sword Art Online were finalized. Technically speaking what I purchased wasn't the book, but a Template Stack of a girl named Hayate Yagami, a 'magical girl' from a setting that blended sci-fi and the Magical Girl genre, but the Tome was her main spellcasting Device so it had come with the Template Stack of her.
Sadly it lacked the AI Control Program and Guardians that it normally had, containing only spells, troves of information, and a few key functions, but I had expected as much. It was those few key functions that I wanted, after all.
The Tome of the Night Sky was, first and foremost, a tool made to collect spells. And for someone in my position, who would see four different worlds in a month, and who planned on having hundreds of champions from those worlds attack me so I could defeat them, a tool to collect spells from them was perfect. Each spell was a trophy from a defeated enemy, a way to use their power against them and my other foes.
The spells it already had listed within its pages were also pretty cool. Granted, I couldn't make heads or tails of most of them, the magic formula far too complicated for me to even begin to parse even when aided by the Science Talent that I had purchased alongside the Template. But I remembered them from watching the show, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, and I was eager to get to that point.
Of course the other sticking point was my relatively lackluster amount of mana, which is what had caused the end of the simulation. One of the neat things about Devices, spell casting tools that were part mechanical and part magical, was that they could allow you to run simulations in your head. Well, the good ones did at least. And the Tome was very good, though without an Intelligence, a type of AI, controlling things, I was limited to scenarios that had been recorded directly by the Tome in the past. Which were largely Ancient Belkan battles.
But while the simulations provided a terrific method of live fire training even when restricted to the cramped space of the Stoneblock, they still consumed mana, and my mana pool was pathetically small. I was working on that, having taken out a small loan after repaying my first one to be able to afford Soul Talent, which was helping me grow my reserves at a rapid pace. But I was still far from being able to cast most of the spells I had found in the Tome.
Instead I looked around. Maria was standing at the wall to my right, in front of the portable gas-powered stove that we had set up between the water and the trash hole. The smell of curry filled the air. Asuna was sitting against the opposite wall, knees pulled up to her chest and head lowered. I wondered if she realized how much she exposed herself like that, her relatively short skirt hiding little with her legs like that. And since I had confiscated her panties, she didn't even have those to protect her modesty.
In all likelihood she had stopped caring. After all, it wasn't anything I hadn't seen, and we both knew that I could see it whenever I wanted. In fact, over the past several days, I had often randomly ordered her to flip her skirt for 'uniform inspection'. Nevermind that her panties were in my Pocket Space so she couldn't possibly have put anything on. We both knew it was just my way of reminding her who was in charge.
Something she was very aware of by this point. She wasn't exactly thrilled with the situation, but after a few days of the Master-Servant Contract kicking in every time she had contemplated rebellion, she had come to terms with the situation. The mark of the Contract had even changed from violet to indigo, indicating a small but significant increase in her loyalty.
That was last night, and I had rewarded her by not messing with her all day. Well, mostly not messing with her. If she was annoyed by me and Maria loudly fucking when she physically couldn't move more than a few meters away then that was just incidental.
But leaving her alone wasn't going to push her further into my clutches. So, since dinner wasn't done yet and I couldn't do any more training in a simulation, I called out to her.
"Hey, Asuna, wanna play a game with me?" I asked her with a sweet tone and innocent smile.
She lifted her head up to look at me. I half expected to see her eyes red and puffy with tears, but her face was carefully blank. She considered me for a moment, and despite her lack of expression I could practically taste her train of thought. I had phrased it like a question, not an order, and she was wondering if she had the ability to deny it. She was probably wondering if she could risk saying no even if I did accept it, for fear that I would demand something worse from her in exchange.
"Fine," she said after a few moments, pushing herself to her feet.
"Yay!" I cheered happily. "Thanks so much Asuna!" Her eyes narrowed slightly at me, but she didn't say anything and I just grinned back at her. "I think we put the board games over there, why don't you pick one?" I gestured vaguely to the messy pile of stuff we had shoved between the water source and the vine that grew the magical fruit.
She spent another moment looking at me, thoughts abuzz as she picked apart my every word and gesture so she could piece my true intentions together. It was a fun game the two of us played. Well, I was having fun at least, and that was the important thing.
I had no idea what conclusion she reached, but after spending a moment rifling through the piles of stuff, she approached me with a wooden board crossed with a grid of lines. I kept my smile even as she sat down in front of me, carefully adjusting her skirt so she didn't flash me in the process, and looked at me blankly.
"Go, huh?" I said, pulling open the drawer on the side of the board to reveal a pile of black stones. "I didn't know you played."
"I thought you knew everything about me?" she replied, almost snippish. She hadn't loved the discussion about my meta-knowledge of her and her world. She was a smart girl, she could piece together just what kind of in-depth understanding that could give a person. Especially when they had watched you at your lowest points as entertainment.
"Not everything, of course," I replied nonchalantly as I played down one of my stones on the board. "Believe it or not, Go never came up in the show. You were either too busy fighting for your life, being a damsel in distress, or, well, just not being relevant at all while Kirito played the big damn hero."
A flash of aggravation broke through her mask for a moment, but she was getting better at hiding them, and it disappeared quickly. She didn't like it when I talked about Kirito. Or when I described how she had peaked in SAO.
Really, she should be grateful I had swooped in and grabbed her. Now she could soar to ever greater heights, free from Kirito's shadow. Granted, she was still stuck in mine, but mine was much roomier.
Sadly though, she didn't reply and simply went quiet, focusing on the game. I waited patiently, taking my time before placing my pieces. Not that I really needed to. Asuna wasn't a bad player by any means, but it didn't take much focus to beat her. A fact that she slowly realized as the game progressed and I gained control over the board.
She wasn't able to keep the frustration out of her expression, not entirely. Her eyes kept flicking up to look at my face, to gauge my reaction, but she'd immediately look back down whenever I looked back at her.
"Something on your mind, Asuna?" I asked her after the fifth time that happened. "Something you want to ask?"
She grit her teeth. "Why would I need to ask anything? I am your loyal slave, and a slave doesn't ask questions of her master." Her words were devoted, but her tone was acerbic.
"Tsk tsk tsk," I said as I shook my head. "That's foolish thinking. You are correct in that you're my slave, but how are you meant to better enact my will as an extension of myself if you don't understand me or my desires?"
She scoffed at that, but didn't say anything, so I continued. "But I can see that you're still adjusting. That's fine, being a good slave is a skill just like any other, so it's normal for it to take you a bit of time to get better at it." Her expression grew darker at that. "But don't worry, I'll make it easy for you. Ask me a question, and I'll answer it honestly, promise. But in exchange, each time you ask me a question, I get to ask you one in return, and you have to answer it honestly. How does that sound?"
"It sounds pointless," she snarked. "How is making me have to pay to ask my question making it easy?"
"Well, it just seemed like you had trouble believing you could ask it 'freely'," I replied with a shrug. I placed another stone on the board, but she didn't seem to notice. "Now, I'm getting something out of it, so I have a motivation and it's fair, right?"
"Fair?" she asked with incredulity. "I'm literally your slave. You could force me to answer any question you want."
"Yeah but that'd be boring. This sounds more fun. Plus, as I just learned, there's still plenty of stuff I don't know about you. This is a good way to fix that."
Asuna glared at me for a few moments before sighing. "Fine. I'll play your game. My first question is this. Why are you so good at this? You've forced me to read everything in that horrendous catalog of yours, and you've told me about all the… things you have from it. But none of that would improve your abilities in this game."
I hadn't told her everything that I had purchased. There was at least one that I had hid from her. But she was correct about the rest. "Oh, my skill is all natural," I said. "A couple of years ago I spent my summer break earning pocket money by challenging old men in the park to matches. All of them underestimated me." I flashed her a grin and played with the hem of my skirt. "No one expects a young girl to be that good at Go."
"...is that why you dress like that?" Asuna asked.
I waved my finger at her. "It's my turn, remember?" I reminded her. "I'll repeat the question though. You're not playing so badly yourself. Why'd you learn it?"
Asuna grumbled and turned her attention back to the board, studying it. After a few moments, she placed a piece down. "My parents believe that Go is something a high society Japanese person should be skilled at, so I've been playing since I was old enough to understand the rules. It was never something I put a lot of effort into, but whenever I was forced to interact with the kids of my parents' friends, it was a safe and easy way to interact with them, so I ended up playing a lot."
She blinked, seemingly surprised, and touched her throat before glaring at me. "There. Now, why do you dress like a girl? Is it to trick people?"
"No, that's just a bonus," I said, placing another stone. I decided not to call her out on technically asking two questions. I was feeling generous. "I just think clothing for girls is cute, and I like looking cute while wearing them. I don't really care about things like manliness or whatever. My favorites have always been the villainesses, powerful and sexy."
"Of course they were," Asuna muttered.
"How about you?" I asked. "Why do you dress like a girl?"
Asuna blinked at me in confusion. "W-what? Of course I dress like a girl, I am a girl."
"Oh please, even with parents like yours, it would have been easy to get away with dressing like a boy if you wanted to," I said. "At the very least, you could have ditched the skirts in SAO. Even your alt account was a cute girl instead of a guy."
"...you mean Erika?" she asked, surprised. She had created a second account when she started playing ALO for real, separate from her main account that she converted from her SAO data, a knife wielding Sylph who looked totally different from herself focused on pure DPS, unlike her hybrid DPS and healing Undine that was her main ALO avatar.
"Yes, I mean Erika," I said. "You wanted to try out a new face every now and then, right? But still a feminine one. You could have easily chosen a masculine look if you wanted. But instead you stuck to something feminine. Why?"
"I- I don't know," she said. "It's not something I ever really thought about. Habit, I suppose. I've never really been interested in trying anything else."
"But do you like dresses and skirts and looking cute?" I asked.
She narrowed her eyes at me. "It's my turn to ask a question, isn't it?"
I raised my hands in surrender. "No, no, you're right. That's my bad. Go ahead."
If anything that caused her to narrow her eyes further at me, but then her gaze shifted down to the board as she thought.
"How old are you?" she asked eventually.
I grinned. "Sixteen. Shocking, right? Because I look like a middle schooler." I shrugged. "Puberty just didn't hit me very hard, which I was pretty thankful for. I started crossdressing when I was very young, and I was afraid that puberty would mess it up. I got lucky in that regard."
"I guess…" Asuna muttered. She seemed to not quite know how to handle that particular topic, despite being the one to bring it up in the first place.
"And that's game," I said as I put down another piece. Asuna did a double take, looking at the board with a frown. She probably hadn't realized that she had mostly been playing on auto-pilot while we had talked.
"Hey Maria, how long until dinner is done?" I called out.
"Mmm. Probably about fifteen minutes, Master!" she replied cheerfully.
I looked back at Asuna. "Another game? We can keep up our question game as well."
She nodded. "Fine. But I'll play Black this time."
I shrugged and started clearing the board. "Sure. It's my question so… how was sex in SAO?"
She made a choking noise. "W-what? You can't possibly- there's no way they would publish-" she trailed off, unwilling to speak her sentence fully.
But I got the jist of it and I laughed. "Not officially no, they didn't publish your awkward first session of virtual sex. But it still got written and unofficially passed around. But it was from Kirito's perspective, and I want to know yours."
"It was-" she started to say before cutting herself off. She looked at me warily and her fingers reached up to brush against her neck, where the invisible mark of the Master-Servant contract laid dormant. My smile widened. I had ordered her to answer truthfully.
Her eyes lowered, not in anger but in shame. "It was… bland. I enjoyed it at the time, but now…"
"Now you've experienced a real cock, pushed to new heights with both natural and supernatural skill, and it can't compare?" I filled in the rest for her. She blushed, partly in anger, partly in humiliation, and partly in arousal. But she didn't answer.
I just chuckled again and finished cleaning the board. I turned it around so she had the black pieces. "Your move," I said. "Both for the game and for your question."
She placed her stone before speaking up. "Why did you choose to start in this place? You made me read the catalog, I know you could have started in a much more comfortable position. You could have even still done this challenge, but made it a nice field or a snowy mountain or something. But you didn't."
"I told you after I captured you, didn't I?" I said. "I want to make a dungeon. And any good dungeon is underground. Well, there's also the tower type, but that's just an inverse of a normal dungeon, and they don't have windows so it's still basically the same thing."
"But isn't it harder to make a dungeon like this, with all the restrictions?"
"That sounds suspiciously like a second question," I pointed out. "But we can call it a clarification of your original question. The answer is, of course, yes. It is harder. I can't go out and collect materials, I have limited windows to capture the people I need to make it, my space is limited in several ways instead of just one."
"Then why?"
"Mostly because it's more fun this way," I said with a shrug. "There are advantages as well. This lets me visit the most worlds in the shortest amount of time, at least on a cheap budget. I can also save some Devotion Points when I start making the dungeon by having the actual physical dungeon be something I carved out myself, leaving more resources for traps and portals and other useful things. But it's mostly because it seemed interesting and fun."
"And risky," Asuna pointed out.
"Yes, that's another benefit," I 'agreed' with a grin. "A bit of risk to spice things up. Life would be so dreadfully boring without it."
She didn't seem very impressed with my answer. But I hadn't expected her to be. I knew my line of thinking wasn't 'normal', but I also knew that it had been a very long time since I had let that stop me from doing what I wanted.
"My turn!" I continued cheerfully, placing down another stone. I was winning again. Asuna was putting up a better fight this time, but I suspected that was just because she was taking me more seriously than she had in the last game. "Your SAO avatar, your main ALO avatar, or your alt ALO avatar; which one is your favorite?"
Asuna's lips twitched into a frown as she considered the question. We each placed a few more stones on the board, back and forth, before she answered. "My Undine ALO avatar," she said finally. "I'm comfortable with it, and I like being able to do more than just fight. I like being able to support others."
I hummed in acknowledgment. "Well, my favorite is your original SAO one. That Knights of Blood armor is hot, and blue hair doesn't suit you."
She glared at me. "I don't remember asking your opinion."
"You didn't, that one was a freebie." I winked at her, teasing her.
She muttered something under her breath before turning her attention back to the board. I waited patiently as she placed her stone and for her question, which came after a few turns.
"Why me?" she asked. Her tone was nervous, hesitant.
I looked at her, reading her body language. The way her hands gripped at her skirt, the tenseness of her shoulders, the way she avoided my gaze by staring at the board.
"Why you, what?" I asked, pretending like I didn't understand.
"Why… why did you take me?" she asked. I could hear the guilt dripping from her voice. "You stamped the others, but you took me. Why?"
"Oh my, what a thing to ask," I said in faux shock. "Asuna the hero of Aincrad, wishing that it was her friends that got kidnapped instead of her? Scandalous."
She looked up at me in anger, in denial. "That's not-!" she started to protest, and then she caught sight of my smile, wide and teasing, and she bit back her words. "Just, answer the question!"
I chuckled. She was too easy to rile up. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Maria had turned her head to watch us. Three plates were sitting on a cheap little table next to her, food ready. But she was waiting, not wanting to interrupt at an inopportune time, like the amazing servant that she was.
I placed another stone. "There are three main reasons, I suppose. A practical one, a simple one, and a dastardly one."
She was watching me, expression masked once again, but it was thin and fragile. I just smiled at her and waited for her to place her stone before continuing.
"The practical one is that you're by far the strongest of the three," I said after examining the board again and putting down a stone. "I need muscle for my dungeon, and you're one of the best fighters of your entire setting. Of course I'm going to pick you."
Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she nodded. It wasn't something she liked, but it was a reason she could understand at least. "And the other two reasons?" she prompted me.
I waved my hand at the board, reminding her it was her turn. She put a piece down randomly, in quite a bad spot actually, and I shook my head ruefully. It wasn't any fun if she wasn't actually playing anymore. But the game was nearly over anyway, and a win was a win.
"The simple reason is that you're the hottest of the three," I continued after placing my own piece. "Silica has that innocent loli look to her, which isn't bad. And Lizbeth's pink hair looks great on her. But you?" I made a show of running my eyes up and down her body. "Pure sexiness."
She shifted slightly, as if she started to move to hide herself from my gaze, but thought better of it. Instead she just looked uncomfortable. She quickly put down another piece on the board. "And the last one?" she said, moving the subject along.
"Because you make the best bait," I said as I put down another piece. "And there, that's the game." I looked up at her. "My win again, Asuna."
She didn't even look at the board though. She was staring at me in shock. "...bait?"
"Bait, yes," I said in a casual tone. "Kirito's already proven that he'll storm into whatever situation in order to rescue you from dastardly villains who are keeping you hostage. And all of those girls around him with their own complicated feelings for him also care about you, so once I get my dungeon up and running it should be a pretty simple matter to lure all of them in."
I leaned forward, grinning, and whispered to her. "Don't you think it'll be fun? To watch them fight through my dungeon? I might even allow them to use their game avatars, if I can stamp them first. And I'll let them fight through the dungeon, floor by floor, until they get to you, the penultimate boss, and my loyal servant. Imagine their reactions when they realize just how willingly you are here."
"But- but I'm not!" Asuna protested, a look of horror dawning on her face.
"You will be," I promised.
She looked faintly sick. "I'm… I'm…"
"Dinner is ready!" Maria cut in with perfect timing. I let my expression relax to a more naturally cheerful smile and leaned back as Maria handed us plates of curry and rice.
Asuna blinked at her as I took my own plate and started digging in. I was hungry after my simulation training earlier. But I kept an eye on how Asuna was reacting.
The entire back and forth between us and the reveal that she was bait wasn't something I just did on a whim, or to be sadistic. Asuna was as stubborn as they come, practically a shounen protagonist in her own right. Breaking her was no easy task. Thankfully, I wasn't above cheating.
The purchase that I had hidden from her was a lure, Zenryoku Zenkai, and it caused anyone I defeated in a direct conflict to fall for me. It was actually quite the subtle and conniving effect, first using their defeat as a natural way to make them obsess over me, and then twisting that obsession into something romantic.
It worked with any kind of conflict too. Combat, competition, or social. It was weakened if it wasn't a one versus one situation, and it also grew weaker the further it was away from their specialty, but minor effects still helped.
That was why I had her choose the game. She had surprised me with her choice and skill in Go, but there was no chance of her defeating a seasoned gamer like myself. Even if she had grabbed the deck of cards or set of dice and challenged me to a game of luck… well, I had ways to ensure I wouldn't lose to chance alone.
But she had chosen something she had considered herself good at, and with two victories against her, the effects of the lure would push her just a bit more into loving and worshiping me just as much as Maria did.
Asuna's face grew blank as she accepted the food from Maria. It was easy to recognize the signs of her emotionally withdrawing from a situation, reducing her presence here and hiding away from a painful reality.
It was a risk, telling her that she was bait. It would almost certainly fortify her stubbornness as she tried to protect her friends. But the Master-Servant Contract would limit her ability to act on that desire, and more importantly I had promised to tell the truth. I could have lied or just excluded that part, my first two reasons were sufficient, but I had promised her the truth.
I'll lie and cheat and trick, and I'll betray anyone I don't like. But I had found myself not wanting to break the promise I had made with Asuna. I suspected it was because she was mine, in a way that I hadn't ever experienced before. She was an extension of me, albeit a stubborn one. Betraying her trust didn't feel right. So I didn't.
Besides, it wouldn't matter in the end. At worst, it would slow down her progress a bit, but it would be all the sweeter when she finally did fully submit to me. That alone was worth a bit of inconvenience.
Maria sat down next to us with her own plate of food. We had a proper table, but setting it up with chairs made the place feel even more crowded so we put it away. Instead, we usually just sat on the floor to eat. We mostly ate in silence, though I made sure to praise Maria for her skilled cooking.
Once our plates were clean I set mine on the ground and turned to the other two girls. "Now, I think it's time for dessert," I said as I flipped up my skirt to reveal my cock. It wasn't hard yet, but that would change soon.
"Oh, thank you Master!" Maria said excitedly as she placed her plate down as well and scrambled on her hands and knees to fit between my legs.
Asuna glared at me, but followed her with only a small moment of hesitation. It was tradition at this point to make the two of them give me a blowjob after dinner, so they could have their 'creamy dessert'. She knew better than to turn it down.
Besides, once my cock was in her sight, turning it down was something she found very difficult to do thanks to Love Spot.
So the two of them crammed themselves between my legs, which I had to spread wide to accommodate them, and they started using their hands and mouths to service me, running their tongues up my length or placing kisses on my shaft, all while stroking my dick or thighs, or cupping my balls.
I leaned back and enjoyed it as both of them practically worshiped my cock. It was moments like this that reassured me. Asuna was stubborn, but she wasn't invincible, and this was the proof. I just had to keep breaking down her resistance, chipping away at it piece by piece. Then I could replace it all with love, lust, and devotion.
I reached down to place a hand on either of their heads, wordlessly praising them for doing a good job. I saw Asuna blush.
It wouldn't be much longer until she was mine.
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AN: I'm honestly shocked I got even this much done considering what work has been like. We've entered a pretty busy part of the year, so my uploads might be a bit slow and erratic for the next month or so. Or maybe it won't. It's really hard to tell with my job. That's also part of why I've just been writing whatever I feel motivated for at the time. My time is already limited, so I'm gonna get as many words out of that time as I can.
I don't know how many of you know Nanoha. It's a pretty cool show though. Starts out as a sort of sci-fi Cardcaptor Sakura, ends up more like Gundam. And then it transitions into lolis who transform into adults and punch the shit out of each other for sport. Good shit. But yeah, The Tome of the Night Sky, or the Book of Darkness as it's originally introduced, is pretty good for any multiversal mage, explicitly designed to steal spells in a setting where multiversal travel is a thing. Even better, by the end of the series she's collected a fair amount of spells, including the spells of the other main two girls of the settings, so it's just a matter of training to unlock all the major spells that I'd want. And after some training, even the ones she doesn't explicitly have can be easily reverse engineered. There are some other functions too that I'll explain as we go.
This chapter was mostly about Asuna though, and about Morgan, giving some more context for his goals and more importantly his personality. Just to make it clear what to expect from him. Clever, but not optimal. Observant, but insane. Skilled, but reckless. Just a real mess of a person, but hopefully in an entertaining way.