The moment the Peony Mystic Circle bloomed, everything changed. For the first time in two years, Veneri no longer looked frustrated whenever he sat by the beach.
The entire shoreline of Modernia had become his testing ground and for once, failure no longer felt suffocating. The first successful activation of the Peony Mystic Circle had proven something important to him. Melody had been right. Mandalas were not simply geometry and runes arranged in beautiful formations. They were emotion made real. The moment he admitted to himself that he wanted to show Elyonari something beautiful, the Mystic Circle accepted him.
That realization changed everything.
The first year after that success was honestly embarrassing for Melody because Veneri became obsessed. Every single day, he would sit on the beach for hours making peonies bloom. Sometimes they were emerald green because Elyonari liked nature.
Sometimes they were crimson red because Adela would definitely like the dramatic atmosphere. He even made them starry because Narisva would absolutely brag about how expensive-looking it was.
Sometimes he did it in sapphire because it reminded him of Phaenora and white because it reminded him of Asenane's scales.
The peonies became larger, smaller, kept floating and began blooming underwater.
At one point, Melody walked into a forest made entirely of glowing sapphire peonies stretching across the horizon and found Veneri sitting in the middle of it while writing notes in the Mystic Book of Altherion.
The Peony Mystic Circle eventually stabilized after nearly three years of modifications. At maximum output, it could cover more than ten kilometers.
Millions upon millions of glowing sapphire peonies would bloom across the landscape the air while a soft floral scent spread naturally across the surroundings. Every flower functioned like a sensory node connected to him through Soul Energy. Anyone entering the field would immediately come up in his perception thanks to his Mystic Eyes of Awareness.
It became one of the strangest surveillance systems Melody had ever seen. The worst part was that it was beautiful.
"You made one of the most absurd utility Mystic Circles in existence and somehow it looks romantic."
Veneri shrugged.
"I made it for Ely."
"That somehow makes it worse."
He crossed his arms.
"I could make the flowers explode."
"You better not."
"I would never disrespect flowers like that."
"You made weaponized genocide and even committed it but your draw the line at flowers?"
"The flowers have dignity."
Years passed strangely for immortals. On the sixth year, he made the Soul Eradication Mystic Circle. Unlike the Peony Mandala, this one terrified Melody.
The first prototype alone nearly shattered half the coastline.
Veneri had decided that if he was rebuilding his Magecraft from the ground up, he needed something overwhelming enough to handle armies. That was when he designed the Soul Eradication Mystic Circle. Calling it a "circle" felt insulting.
Seventeen Mandalas floated vertically in alignment. The structure was enormous, spanning close to a kilometer at maximum size, glowing with terrifying sapphire brilliance while Nepenthes runes spiraled endlessly between the Mandalas.
The air itself distorted around it. Melody still remembered the first activation vividly.
The sky had darkened. The ocean froze and for one horrifying second, everything felt dead. Veneri calmly spoke a Nepenthes invocation which was the activation sequence for it.
An entire mountain in the tropical island vanished. Its structure had simply ceased to exist. It even tore through down. It was so deep that one couldn't see the end. Melody stared at the empty space where an entire cliff had once stood and the giant hole.
"What the hell did you just make?"
Veneri looked equally horrified.
"I think I accidentally invented a nuclear hydrogen bomb."
"That is not funny."
The terrifying thing was not even the destruction. It was the efficiency.
Unlike most devastating Magecraft, the Soul Eradication Mystic Circle consumed Soul Energy directly instead of normal Divine Energy. For almost everyone in existence, that would have made the spell impossible to maintain. Veneri was unfortunately not normal.
His soul reserves bordered on absurdity.
Between being an Aeterium, possessing ridiculous spiritual density, having Body and Soul Reconstruction, and his already monstrous soul, he effectively had near-infinite reserves. This meant the spell became viable.
That realization frightened Melody.
"You are aware that if you ever lose emotional stability, you become a natural disaster?"
Then came the Regeneration Mystic Circle. Ironically, this one was the hardest. Veneri did not actually need healing anymore. Body and Soul Reconstruction already made him absurdly difficult to kill. His natural regeneration surpassed every race in Spheraphase but he kept thinking about home and Dynasty Richinaria. So he began copying the principles of Aeterium reconstruction.
The Mandala took nearly three years to stabilize. Unlike the others, this one was very delicate. Every rune placement mattered. Every concentric layer had to mimic biological reconstruction, soul restoration, energy balancing and regeneration simultaneously. Even one mistake caused catastrophic backlash.
He nearly exploded twice. He lost consciousness seven times. He collapsed from exhaustion more times than Melody could count yet he refused to stop. When it finally worked, Melody watched him regenerate an entire severed limb from a dead animal in seconds after he chopped it off and almost left it for dead.
The creature stood back up.
"You do realize your Dynasty is going to worship you if they get this."
He sighed.
"That is exactly what I'm trying to avoid."
By the end of the eighth year, he had only created three Mystic Circles. For someone like him, who had once crafted multiple circles before the age of thirty, that sounded almost insulting until one actually understood what he had accomplished.
Mandala Mystic Circles were hellishly difficult. Every Mandala demanded emotional honesty. Every activation required absurd amounts of energy. Even Veneri failed thousands of times. That was why Melody found it funny whenever he looked disappointed.
"You made three Mystic Circles in ten years," she told him one evening while they walked barefoot across the shoreline. "Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?"
He sighed.
"It feels slow."
She looked at him like he was insane.
"You recreated an entire system from zero, invented your own runic language, mastered it, created three First Stellar-level Mystic Circles, and somehow you think you are underperforming."
"When you say it like that, it sounds bad."
"No. It sounds horrifying. You're of the most terrifying mage prodigies I have ever met."
He paused.
"Even compared to Vasreveilder?"
Melody looked at him for a very long moment.
"Unfortunately for my pride... you can't get close to that guy. That person is an absolute genius."