“Oh, by the way Agnis and Giana, Bellia told me that she would go look for more shadowcats. Something about an energy bank containing a lot of energy but no shadow cats to access it.”

  So she’s finally showing some competency, that’s good to hear.

  “Deca, do you think they will be done this fast? They have travel time unlike us.”

  What do you suppose we do in the meantime?

  “How about we talk?”

  Whatever I did, it wasn’t me!

  “Why are you so defensive?!” Giana said as her tails extended.

  Wait! Not the cocoon! Not now! Behave yourself! Yv is here!

  “Cocoon? Giana, what is he talking about?”

  “Ohh you see when a vixen likes a fox really much…”

  I swerved multiple times and turned them into milkshakes.

  “Now, we certainly need to talk. Yv help me out.” Pink mana flared behind me, and I feared for my life.

  Give me a break…

  I was sitting in a field, restrained by vixen tails. They got petty after they couldn’t do anything against me, so they went tailed mode on me.

  “Deca, what can you tell us about fairies?”

  Giana looked extra dazzling and sparkly. What is happening to me…

  “Deca? Are you alright?”

  Yeah… sorry. Everyone has seen many types of fairies. They just don’t know it.

  I got confused looks while I sipped some tea.

  “Hey! Where did you get that from! Give us too! And what do you mean with that?”

  The ladies got their tea but… these 2 look like kids ready for story time. Am I playing the grandpa here?

  You know, those creatures that invaded us and terrorized the land for who knows long? Those were all fairies; extradimensional invaders. The end!

  “Extradimensional…”

  “…invaders?”

  It was cute how they finished each other question.

  Yup!

  I said as I took another sip.

  “Explain more!” Giana shook me and my tea flew out of my hand. “Oh sorry…”

  …its just tea… Deca, how much do you know about the role of the 9t?

  “Uhh… ohh… I actually don’t know…” Giana said and looked down.

  Don’t worry, I do. I will show you sometime although… I have no clue what I'm doing, but it works. In summary, we’re the dimensional border police. It’s more than that, but this works for now. We make sure nothing strange comes into our dimension and kick anything out that invades. Well not kick them out… kick their ass.

  “So we need to kill fairies?”

  Uhmmm that’s where things get tricky as they have adapted to us and even eat us so… no we avoid them.

  Giana leapt at me for an embrace after I said that. The test must still be bothering her. I needed to focus. How can a woman be this hot?

  So every type makes a sound that only elves can’t hear for some reason, but I wonder…

  I glanced at Yv’s ears.

  “W…what? Is there something with my ears?”

  Your race shares many similarities with elves right?

  The ears moved down and up.

  Elves can’t hear the specific sound fairies make, and I was wondering if it’s the same for you. Both you and elves have good ears. If I ever ask you ‘do you hear that?’ specifically, it’s a hint toward fairies. Logically, you should be the first one to hear them.

  “Oh that’s interesting. I’ll pay attention!” Yv said with full vigor.

  Where do these idols get this energy from? I’m always tired…

  So they're all ugly and have many eyes besides… the scytedog and Anavel.

  “Ohh! Those clouds that made buzzing sounds!”

  Did you hear ticking sounds?

  Yv cocked her head.

  “Yeah, there were ticking sounds.” Yv looked at Giana in confusion. “I think this is what Deca meant. The ticking sound was quite clear. Who’s Anavel?”

  You’ve met her before… the ruler of the Aquini Kingdom, whoo that gave me a scare when I found out. She can also use charm magic… overpowered ruler…

  The idols started discussing under themselves. I forgot to tell them that they like to take the appearance of how humans think fairies look like, but that’s not that important.

  A lot happened back then. Fairies eating the breath of the planet. I still don’t know what exactly that means. I might have to research spirits more. My experience in the spirit world was shitty but educational.

  Deca, how did you pull me out of the spirit world, by the way? Do you have some song to pull in spirits?

  Giana cocked her head. ”No? I used [Siren Song] and your spirit got pulled toward me.”

  I’m so weak to charm magic that you can pull me in from another plane?

  “Seems like it!” she put up a big smile and continued chatting with Yv.

  I had forgotten something important when tutoring Giana. I just realized… the spirit vessel stuff. I haven't brought out the paper as there is no audience and… I will be giving away that I'm a 9t with it.

  My tales compiled everything I knew about spirits, as it had been a while since I studied them and something popped up.

  I had mana as a spirit in the spirit world but couldn't use magic. Why is that? Bywen also had mana. Not sure about other spirits.

  Do I delve into this? Will I discover another strange secret? There is 0 guarantee that I will get answers of my current questions. Might as well pile on more.

  I focused on my spirit tethers. I could still feel them and traced them to the core of my ‘spirit’ to which they were attached to.

  It became harder and harder to focus on it the closer I came. My curiosity grew, as my biggest power ups had always been inside me.

  Expecting something great, I got to the core. It was empty… Am I hollow? Is this normal? It… looks similar to Azu’s theorized spherical magic circle setup but… more sophisticated. Spirits are magical constructs? And here I thought my identity crisis couldn't get worse… but am I correct though?

  This research… is gonna be shitty. No spirit is going to let me peer into their core. It will be a study with a sample size of 1. Nobody is going to take that seriously…

  Although… Nilah is a part of me, but different. Giana might let me. Bywen perhaps too. 4 is still small…

  I cleared my mind and exhaled. A clearer image of my core appeared. It wasn't a magical construct, but it held one. How strange…

  I broke my focus and returned the swords to Nilah's fox form.

  Hey girl, mind me peering into your soul?

  I placed my forehead on hers and first looked for her spirit tethers and followed them to her core. It took a while, but I got there. It was empty too with an empty magical construct. I broke my focus and gave Nilah treats.

  Why does the core hold something that could hold a magic circle, even though spirits can't use magic? Spirit magic uses spirit mana runes…

  I jumped up.

  What the fuck?! Why didn't I realize! I'm so stupid! Let's find shrimpy again! I forgot to ask her something!

  Giana and Yv started to sing and calmed me down. “Tell us Deca, what makes you ‘stupid’ I'm sure it makes us make look even dumber “ I showed Giana magic circles of spirit magic. “Huh? They're different but…I can read them?”

  Yes so here is the problem. We as spirits can speak spirit language without realizing. This is the same for spirit magic, we can just read the runes but… they're completely different from our racial skills ..

  “I'm sorry Deca. I don't know what that means. The spirits are from another dimension than ours?”

  I don't know… but ..what makes this dimension so unique that it's the only one that have other dimensions crash into it…

  “Aren't you overthinking? Come here and relax.” Giana patted on a spot next to her

  I complied but felt a bit uncomfortable. Can I just ask her if I can peer into her soul? Or not soul but spirit. I don't know if spirit and souls are the same.

  “Aww Giana. His heart is beating like crazy since he came to sit next to you!”

  Rabbits and their overpowered hearing…

  Hey Deca…can I peer into your spirit?

  A brief sign of confusion got followed up with a bright smile. “Sure!”

  “Oh now his heart skipped a beat!”

  Overpowered rabbit…

  I placed my forehead on hers and looked for her spirit tethers. It was harder than myself and Nilah. I eventually found it and discovered that Giana had 2 cores. What the fuck? Besides that, it looked like mine or Nilah's.

  “It feels as if you're deep in me.”

  This broke my focus and I got kicked out.

  That sounded wrong…

  “It was true though, what did you find?”

  You have 2 cores. Nilah and I have 1. I'm unsure who the anomaly is here or if there's a variation.

  Giana shifted and made a cute thinking pose. Yv’s ears were moving around strangely again.

  “Oh! How about this! Nilah got hers from you!” Giana said as she pointed at Nilah.

  Or you're an overpowered vixen.

  “And you're not overpowered?”

  I don't have 2 spirit cores, so no!

  “Your logic is flawed!”

  You can attack my logic all you want, but that doesn't decrease your overpowered dual cores!

  “Do you even know what they do?!”

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  Nope!

  “Then how do you know that it's overpowered?!”

  Because I want you to be overpowered…

  “Aww…” Was what we heard.

  Giana and I directed our attention towards Yv.

  “You guys are so close and sweet. It makes me a bit envious…”

  I sat down next to Yv.

  I'm sorry about the Greg thing. I'll try to find a cool dude for you.

  “You don't need to keep apologizing… And… I still need to sort my feelings, but I'm close to an answer.”

  Just tell me if there is anything I can help with. Within reason, of course!

  “Deca, you and Raishin are the only ones who would ask for things that are unreasonable.”

  Pff says the vixen who is horny at all times!

  “I’m…”

  Come on! Finish that sentence!

  A cute laugh interrupted us. It was rare for Yv to laugh like this. It's sad to think this, but her trying to get Greg's attention must have stressed her out, and we're only seeing her real self now.

  “Hey Giana, I want to ask you something. Do you mind Agnis? We're going for some girl talk. I will make it up to you later, I promise.”

  Go for it. I was wondering if you guys didn't need more of it. Go gossip about how shit I am or how stinky Raishin's socks are!

  I gave the women of team Hourai their privacy and returned to my spirit core.

  Would I be able to use magic as a spirit if I dump a magic circle…magic sphere here? How do I make magic spheres?

  This might turn into a big project. Studying magic spheres to study spirit cores. But using normal magic as a spirit… and just 1 skill…

  Giana can use 2. What if I put [Hattrick] there?! It's a loophole, as [Hattrick] can use anything I can use. But… I will have to rewrite [Hattrick] to a magic sphere…

  What if I use my new ultimate technique? It's not complete, so that should be easier.

  I rolled over the grass while hugging Nilah.

  If I use [Hattrick] as one of the skills to prime my ultimate technique, then I can layer cheats. Either way, [Hattrick] is the key.

  Different thoughts went out. Will I be tampering with my own existence doing this? I could do this on Nilah but… what if I mess up? I can't do this to her.

  Nilah got more cuddles.

  Nilah, it seems we will have to write a beast of a paper. Will you continue the research if I mess up?

  Nilah made an unfamiliar cry and I noticed that Yv’s ears reacted to it.

  Nilah didn't snitch on me, did she? Nah, she would never. She would have already done so if she was like that.

  I spent the rest of the night messing around with magic circles to turn them into spheres, or at least in something more three-dimensional.

  Stacking circles of different circumferences to create a sphere didn't work. It just acted as how it was built; like stacked circles, firing off like parallel casting.

  Think Agnis! What about math? 4/3πr^3 was it? Or do I need the surface area, so 4πr^2. What does a magic circle use? It's a two-dimensional structure… so it has no volume…

  I rolled through the grass again.

  So do I use the surface area? Wouldn't the volume allow for more complexity?

  My head started to hurt, so I delegated it to my tails as they are smarter than me.

  My tails woke me the next morning. They had figured it out. Magic circles are secretly thin magic disks. Why would that make a difference? Disks have a volume, circles do not.

  From there they went to give a crack at expanding the volume and… it was partly successful. Spheres are efficient shapes, so that's the end goal.

  Giana and Yv were still sleeping. Their girl talk was insanely long. I'm not in trouble, am I?

  Nilah went to cool my tails as they started to overheat.

  My 5th tail was in charge of compiling the data to write a paper but… it sat currently on 42 pages. A lot of math, my head had difficulties dealing with. My tails would not.

  The Misha are missing out by not allowing tailed beasts in. Put a handful at work for 5 years and all their problems are solved.

  Progress was currently at ellipsoids. Sphere would be next up, but with this I could make a magic volume in any shape. What would a Nilah shaped magic volume do? So many possibilities, so much potential!

  What if Nilah is exactly that?

  Nilah! C’mere!

  Nilah ignored me and continued cooling my tails.

  Right, that might have been a bad idea.

  I laid in the grass and felt sleepy.

  Voices woke me up, and I was met with a strange sight. What am I looking at? Elgards eyes revealed an embarrassing sight. My head was resting on Giana’s lap.

  “Good afternoon sleepyhead. You seem quite busy. If your tails are overheating… are you going to make another race look silly?”

  Not quite, I might make everyone look silly.

  “I'm curious, but I will wait till you're finished. Yv and I will continue our talk.”

  I got up and gave Nilah treats.

  I'm not in trouble, am I?

  “Why would you think that? What did you do?”

  Uhhm stare a bit too much?

  “You can stare as much as you want, silly.”

  Giana and Yv went to have their talk again. Maybe they're talking about their test.

  Raishin and Greg didn't say how long they needed to dump energy into the dimension initially. I'm sure that they will contact me when they're done.

  My thoughts went out to the talk with Bellia. We got pulled in here to do a job that wasn't ours to solve, eh? And on purpose…

  Maybe I shouldn't have asked. Ignorance would have been bliss. Someone or something messed up, and we're paying for it with our lives. The 6th dimension merge might have been intentional too. To get more mythical beasts because we're going extinct? How about helping us instead of stressing us out instead of making a bigger mess.

  Was it Isi? But she was weakened and is weaker now. And Raishin and Greg confirmed the lack of energy, so probably not her.

  Maybe Chiara, but she gave me salmon… was it to butter me up? But her specialty should make it easier to fix most of this. Instead, she dropped another mess in an existing one. Not impossible, but unlikely that it was her.

  Maybe it's my fault? But I wasn't alive for the 5th one, so near impossible. But could it be an accident? It's a bit strange for it to happen twice… with such favorable outcomes.

  The scarier option is that the culprit is unknown. Some entity, separate from the Sarian gods that's doing this. The Sarian gods are just stupidly strong, not like fiction portrays gods.

  More gears started to turn. Why is the depiction of gods in fiction vastly different from the real deal? Or…

  I held out my hands.

  I have met and ‘killed’ gods. Something most races have not shot at. They never even met one. Am I highly biased because I did? I am, right? By this world's standard, the tailed beasts could also be seen as gods… maybe I need to step back and take the perspective of a weak being.

  If I were a human, what would classify as god tier?

  The mythical and legendary. The Misha as the lower bounds. So Misha might be put on demi god level and I think Misha could put up a good fight and win against some.

  Then gods and demons. What else? Spirits? Not really. Spirit mages exist. Spirits could kick their asses, but the majority can't.

  Am I missing something? I probably am, but I'm too stupid to find out. Maybe this is ultimately not my problem, and I am overthinking it.

  My tails finished. The mana spheres were finished, and these things are scarily efficient.

  [Hattrick] had many folds and epics, all because it had to fit in a ‘disk’. A tail concluded that the whole of [Hattrick] could fit in a mana sphere the size of a pea.

  Most other magic would form a dot which would be near imperceivable. I'm slowly turning into a monster myself. But I need to become a monster to fight against extinction and this unfair world.

  Despite their efficiency, they have 2 flaws. It's impossible to draw them on surfaces. A logical flaw. The second flaw is a ‘skill issue’, not because I created mana volumes means I know how to use them. It's all theoretical. It still has to be put into practice. Also… how does the shape affect the magic? Only one way to find out.

  My tails finished a [Fireball] equivalent. It was so simple when fit into a volume…

  My hand stretched out, and I aimed for a tree in the distance.

  The mana collected into the mana sphere, and it kept pouring in. Isn't that strange? The mana surged and violently erupted, causing an enormous explosion.

  The heat wasn't a problem. The force of the explosion was. I am currently nearing escape velocity and have no idea how to stop it. [Elgards Overload] to kill my inertia? Let's go with that!

  I floated down after killing my inertia. Fall damage is foreign to my race, so all I need to do is wait. Why is there desert below me?

  Giana's gaze locked on me moments later. I might be in trouble…I felt a strange tug. Is she using charm magic to draw me in? So, it can do other things than brainwashing!

  I got pulled towards an enormous crater. It had no fire mana corruption, luckily. 2 upset individuals came in sight as I was getting drawn in more.

  “We leave you alone for a bit and this is what happens? You blow up the whole area?”

  I can explain…

  Giana froze a couch, and she and Yv sat down on it and crossed their arms and legs. “Go ahead, explain to us why you blew up the area and nearly got blown into space.”

  I explained my failure to cast [Fireball] in a mana volume format.

  “I’m so happy you went with [Fireball] and not [Meteor]... I suppose I should learn how to fish silly Deca’s out of space.”

  Hey come on! It was an accident! I might figure it out after 3 or 4 more fuckups.

  “That's assuming you're still on this planet at that point… unbelievable! I can't believe that I now have to worry about you getting blasted to space too! Can you believe this, Yv?”

  “At least there is never a dull day. You used to complain that most of our idol days were the same.”

  “Yeah, but fishing someone from outer space is quite the step up from that…”

  Giana kept pulling me in, and I got secured by an embrace. “You're doing this to be able to protect us better, right?”

  Yeh, look forward to me tutoring you on this, it makes [Hattrick] look like a picture book for toddlers.

  “Deca please… my head might explode…”

  But who will take over if I blow myself up one day?

  “Why don't you study magic that makes sure that doesn't happen…”

  She let me go, and I showed them a theoretical spherical magic volume, which captivated the idols.

  “How does it work?”

  Well you see Yv, if I knew that, this crater wouldn't be here.

  They halted their girl talk to help me test it out. How much can they talk?

  I figured out how to use magic volumes at the end of the day. Magic circles get mana poured in from the sides which causes the mana to flow inward and fill up the circle. This doesn't work for volumes. Filling them from the outside is inefficient, takes long, slurps mana and more importantly, causes mana to surge and explode. If I ever want to destroy the planet, I could do that with a large spatiotemporal skill and rip the planet off the dimensional fabric with the explosion. A new super villain has been born!

  Jokes aside, the magic volumes need one or multiple mana seeds in or near the center of the shape and fill it from within. Fast and efficient. I can currently only create 2 mana seeds, so only simple shapes for me now.

  The new [Fireball] was the most beautiful display of magic I've ever seen. So efficient, clean and…powerful…

  Yv was fixing the plain that had turned into an inferno. I had to give her a [Frost Cloak] for that while Giana and I were putting out the fire but… this fire is strange.

  “Deca…what have you done… What is this fire?”

  It's real fire hahaha!

  “You don't know, do you…”

  Working on it… I will [Elgard Overload] this fire away, this is bullshit.

  The fire resisted but disappeared after 3 minutes. I kept a small flame to analyze. It just didn't want to go out, our resistance still worked.

  The plain had returned to its former glory, maybe even better due to Yv and they went to talk again. Surely I'm in trouble now, right? Are they doing this to intimate me? Because I'm successfully intimidated.

  I just focused on this strange fire. I didn't try frost magic. It did protect Yv so it should work right?

  The frost magic killed the flame and I lost my test subject. Why am I so shit?

  Frost magic removes mana, conventional ways of putting out the fire didn't work.

  My mana control got pushed to its absolute limit and I created the same fire but without setting the plain ablaze. I dipped my tail in it to analyze and the result was near instant.

  I love my race! I hugged my tail.

  The magic created by magic volumes can be mainly affected by magic of the same kind. Frost magic is being overpowered as usual and doesn't care.

  So water magic cast with mana volumes will kill that fire. Wait… does that mean that I will be unstoppable if I move to only using mana volumes?

  I paced around and thought about it. Normal magic still had an effect, so not really. Also, it doesn't change my resistance. I will only be unstoppable offensive-wise.

  Giana is my shield, so why do I care about defense? It's time to rewrite some skills to become 3D!

  follow if the story is interesting enough.

  Moorland Menace