Paul’s POV.
…
Damn. Wow. Paul knew his kids were good, but he didn’t expect them to be THAT good. He never expected his seed would bear such strong fruit.
At first when he saw Laurel teaching Rudeus, he was simply expecting a little sibling bonding time, so he chose not to interfere. And then suddenly Laurel pointed out Rudeus’s problem, and after that the kids clash with each other.
In the first fight, Laurel jumped at Rudeus; Rudeus responded by instinct and shot a wave of hot air to put some distance while pushing himself back. However, that distance was cut off by a water ball shot from Laurel's hand. Rudeus tried to avoid it with magic again while trying to muddy the ground and break Laurel’s stance, but he wasn’t fast enough to dodge the next water ball and got wet. That was the end of the first battle.
Three steps. Sure, the fight only lasted a few seconds, but three steps to take down a magician is way too much. If Rudeus had been in a group, one of his allies would have stepped in to protect him by the time Laurel shot the second strike. And if there’d been just a bit more distance, the battle might’ve shifted in Rudeus’s favor instead.
But was it Rudeus who was doing better than expectations, or Laurel who was going easy on him? Paul pondered. There’s no way Laurel would have handled a B-rank disaster with that level of skills. That said, whether it was Rudeus or Laurel, they’d more than pull their own weight in a labyrinth with a decent party of adventurers right now.
At first the spars were cute, but as time went on, the kids were proving themselves to be as menacing as possible.
After getting splashed a few times, Rudeus changed into a more offensive stance. Unlike before, he already got used to the speed Laurel was casting, opting for quantity and trying to overwhelm Laurel with numbers… Could he survive that?
While Paul looked at the dozens of water balls shooting at Laurel, Laurel instead opted for… aerial combat?
Paul stared blankly at Laurel flying upwards, dodging rows and rows of water balls, and suddenly flew over Rudeus’s head and poured water downwards. Rudeus dodged, but the splash still managed to hit him.
“How did you learn how to fly?"
“I just fly.”
“?”
“I’m being serious. Wind, fire, water… Whatever suits you best is the best option. Because the method doesn’t really matter so long as it works.”
“Ah. Wait. Hold up. Let me try something. "Woah—"
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks."
A gust of wind blew as Rudeus flew up. But he wasn’t used to flying, so he was having trouble. So, at the end of the day, the two were having flying classes in the backyard. It was the first day this mess happened. But it definitely wasn’t the last.
“Ah, so it was possible to create lightning through Cumulonimbus.”
“Yeah, but we can’t strike using it with water while staying on the ground, so you might want to stay flying.”
Ground attacks, sky attacks, wind attacks, fire, water, electric and telekinesis, from hand to hand to sword against sword… The kids weren’t joking when they said it was a fight using any means and method.
Their ability to handle combat was increasing at an alarming rate, to the point where Paul was wondering whether he could even win against them now in an actual fight.
And they had been at it for hours, only stopping for rest or out of pure boredom. After the fight, they huddle their little heads together, theorizing weird things through trial and error and trying out variations of mixing spells together.
“Wait, what if I use an iron weapon as a medium? Like swordsmen kept holding iron swords, right? So, what if we use that as a medium to increase electric accuracy?”
“That’s actually not a bad idea.”
And as if that wasn’t enough, Rudeus taught Laws’s kid how to use magic. After he helped her from a gang of bullies, the girl had been infatuated with him the whole time, and she came and played with the twins nearly everyday. Paul thought as he saw a tiny green-haired girl pop her head out from a corner.
“Hi guys!”
“Hi Sylphy!”
“En~”
“How can you guys fly?”
“Just use whatever you’re comfortable with. For me it’s wind magic. For Laurel it’s telekinesis.”
And she also happened to be able to do silent casting as well… Paul stared at Sylphy, who flew up to join them. Seriously, is there something wrong with this village or something? What’s with all these monstrous kids popping up out of nowhere?
And so, the three had been huddling together with Laurel as the ringleader of weird magical experiments. At first it started with a few cool spells, but then it turned into figurines and glass.
Up there, the three kids were flying around casually on air as they talked about stuff. It was funny how Zenith called them tiny angels when she saw them flying.
Everything was getting weirder and weirder. Not that Paul hated it, though. The kids were bonding from it, so there wasn’t much to say.
That was what Paul had initially thought until the day Laurel said something that’s absurd.
“Hey Rudeus, I know what we're going to do today!”
He was making Rudeus and Sylphy sit on an earth chair as he wrote something on the earth board with a maddening look in his eyes. It was something about using glass and magic ink to paint the picture on a canvas.
“Wow, that’s a great idea.”
“But you would need to make the mana into paint.”
“Ah. Right. Looks like we have to make that happen too."
Later that day the trio of mischief had plotted a plan to turn colored mana into true ink for painting. It seemed that Paul had been imagining things too much. Well, it couldn’t be helped since Paul had no idea what the kids were up to from one day to another.
But rather than that, it seems that Sylphy had become a little bit too attached to Rudeus. Well, the kids seemed fine, so he’ll put a hold on whatever parenting plan he intended to do. Rather, Laurel was there, so it should be fine.