Semirys hung frozen in midair, mouth still open.
She cast it... she actually cast it? Three branches of magic? You were a triple-affinity mage this whole time? And what in the world did you do this past month?
Before Semirys could fully recover, Shulim continued.
"Next comes the fourth."
Wait. Wait. Fourth? Don’t tell me...
"[ᚷᚲᚠᛏᛗᛜᚻᚠᛏᛖᛡᛣᛏᚠᚳᛜᚻᛄᚾ]"
"Breeze."
A gust swept through the clearing, stirring Semirys’s hair.
That was the moment Semirys truly blanked.
F-four affinities...
The second four-affinity mage in the world today?
"Hoo."
Shulim let out a breath.
For one brief instant, Semirys thought maybe that was it, and a faint little spark of hope rose inside her.
Then Shulim spoke again, and it hit her like a lightning strike.
"Next is the fifth spell."
That breath had only been Shulim pausing to steady herself after using several spells in a row.
Semirys no longer had the spare brainpower to realize that. Her thoughts had already crashed completely.
F-five affinities?
As light bloomed at Shulim’s fingertip, Semirys could only feel as though she had somehow not fully woken up yet.
"Next is the sixth spell."
Every word landed like a hammerblow against Semirys’s mind.
N-no way... that can’t be real.
Then a veil of shadow settled over Shulim’s body, and Semirys went completely rigid.
"Semirys? Semirys. Are you okay?"
Shulim’s voice finally dragged Semirys back to herself.
She shook her head hard.
"Ah. Ah, I’m fine. Totally fine..."
"Okay then. I’ll keep going. The last spell is next."
"Right, right, go ahead. Keep going... wait, keep going?"
Semirys’s mind was still lagging behind. By the time she understood what Shulim meant, it was already too late to stop her.
Then, before her horrified eyes, Shulim cast the seventh spell.
"[ᚳᛃᛄᛖᛚᛜᛈᚠᛞᛃᛡᚪᛚᛏᛗᚠᚺᛜᛖᛗהᚠᚷ]"
The first-circle void spell, Cleanse.
On the final day of the month, while struggling over how in the world she was supposed to learn void magic, Shulim had suddenly remembered that void spells almost always worked on the self.
So she had wondered whether learning void magic might require starting from herself.
With that thought in mind, she had carefully observed her own body. That was when she discovered the seventh element existing within her.
Against the presence of the other six, the void particles were almost absurdly obvious. Once she noticed them, it was hard not to see them.
And when she tried to move them, she found it far easier than with any other element. Since these particles had coexisted with her from the very beginning, they felt like part of her own body. There was no barrier to overcome, no gap to bridge.
Shulim had mastered the first-circle void spell, Cleanse, with ridiculous ease, so easily that the effort she had spent on the other branches almost felt like a joke.
When the light of Cleanse shone over her body, sweeping the dust from her clothes, it also swept away the last thread of Semirys’s sanity.
"...Did the world break?"
A question mark practically appeared over Shulim’s head.
"Semirys? Semirys, what’s wrong with you? I won, you know."
"Ah... ah... ah..."
Semirys let out a string of meaningless little noises, clutched both hands to her head, and then screamed at the top of her lungs.
"This is not how this is supposed to work!"
...
Her wings beat furiously, a frantic blur of motion that made it perfectly clear how shaken she really was.
She shoved her face right up in front of Shulim’s and started shouting without pause.
"This is wrong. You’re completely wrong. What even are you? There’s no way someone like you should exist. This makes no sense at all. Is the world ending? Mother Goddess, what am I supposed to do here?!"
Shulim clapped both hands over her ears and yelled back with open disgust,
"Semirys, you’re way too loud."
It took quite a while before Semirys finally calmed down.
Even then, she kept staring at Shulim like she was looking at some kind of monster.
That immediately made Shulim flare up in irritation.
"Even if you pretend to go crazy, you still can’t back out. I won the bet."
"Oh. Right. That was a thing too."
Semirys smacked a fist into her palm as if she had only just remembered.
"That part’s tiny compared to the real issue here. Shulim, how in the world did you do that? Why can you use all seven branches of magic?"
"You’re the one who made the bet with me, so why are you the confused one now? Unless..."
Shulim narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"You really were planning to cheat me from the start."
As she said that, she quietly edged a little closer to Semirys, ready to grab her at any moment in case she tried to flee.
Semirys caught the movement at once, and a whole forest of black stress lines seemed to appear across her forehead.
"Ahem. I’m the great Fairy King. Why would I ever cheat? More importantly, Shulim, do you actually understand what it means that you can use all seven branches of magic?"
"What it means? Is it really that strange?"
Shulim looked genuinely puzzled.
"I mean..."
Semirys rubbed at her forehead.
"The person with the highest number of affinities in the world right now only has four. Seven? Forget the present day. There has never been anyone in all of Hymriel’s history with all seven."
"Huh? But Semirys, you can..."
"That’s different. I’m a fairy, a magical life-form born that way. And even fairies have elemental attributes. When I was first born, I couldn’t use every branch of magic either. It was only later, after all kinds of things happened and through a whole chain of strange circumstances, that I ended up able to use every element. And I’m the only case like that in the entire world. That’s exactly why the Mother Goddess entrusted the boon to me in the first place..."
As Semirys explained, Shulim gradually realized she had misunderstood something important.
When she first read about magic, the books had said that learning a spell required the matching affinity.
But they had never explicitly said that someone without that affinity could never learn the magic at all.
On top of that, Shulim had barely ever met any real mages. The one example burned most deeply into her memory was Semirys, who just so happened to be the single weirdest exception in the world.
And because Semirys had made such a huge impression on her, when Shulim read that part in the book, she had naturally assumed that even without affinity, magic was still possible. She had thought the emphasis on affinity simply meant that having it made learning easier.
Now the misunderstanding was gone.
And now Shulim was staring too.
"Huh... then what am I?"
"I’d like to know that too."
Semirys shot back at once.
"Forget it. I should never have gotten lazy in the first place."
She kept muttering to herself while staring hard at Shulim.
A question mark had barely begun to form over Shulim’s head when she saw Semirys’s eyes suddenly light up. Two tiny magic circles appeared in front of them.
"Your eyes. They’re glowing."
Shulim cried out in amazement.
Inside, she was even more shaken. So eyes could cast magic too?
At the same time, something entirely different was happening in Semirys’s vision.
A series of words appeared above Shulim’s head.
[Shulim Hayeral
Race: Human, Female
Age: Seven
Vitality: Rank E
Mana: Rank D
Magical Affinity: Fire Affinity Rank C, Water Affinity Rank C, Earth Affinity Rank C, Wind Affinity Rank C, Light Affinity Rank C, Dark Affinity Rank C, Void Affinity Rank C
...]
...
The moment she finished reading, Semirys fell silent all over again.
This child...
She really does have all-element affinity. And every single affinity is exactly the same rank?
What in the world is going on here?