Morning sunlight filtered through the stained-glass windows, scattering soft colors across the church floor as Lulu knelt in her usual prayer spot. The air was calm, but her mind buzzed with anticipation.
Today, she would push further.
Today's goal: master pages seven and eight.
After finishing her morning prayer, Lulu headed straight to the training hall. The church staff were already beginning their duties, but no one disturbed her—everyone knew she had entered one of her "serious phases," where she barely noticed the world around her.
She began with the physical warm-ups the Priestess had trained into her early in life:
A steady combination of breathing, stances, and gentle magic circulation.
Her body loosened.
Her spirit sharpened.
And the threads… the faint invisible strands that touched her yesterday… quietly brushed against her awareness again.
Good, she thought.
They're getting clearer.
She opened the spellbook to page seven.
The moment she did, she felt the difference.
Pages four to six had focused on perception—awareness, presence, subtle sensitivity.
Page seven was about containment.
"Creating the inner shell of the avatar…" Lulu murmured as she read. "A vessel for consciousness."
The theory looked deceptively simple. A few diagrams, a few lines of explanation. But the moment she tried the basic exercise, she understood why the witch who created this spell was considered absurdly strong.
Lulu exhaled and put her hands together, channeling a small amount of mana.
A faint glow formed.
But the book instructed her to press the glow into a compact shape—a "seed," as the instructions called it.
"Easy," she whispered.
With a focused breath, she compressed the energy.
The seed collapsed violently.
BOF.
Her hair flew upward. Papers scattered.
She coughed as a burst of soft smoke filled the room.
"…Okay," she muttered, fanning the air. "Not easy."
She tried again.
Focus.
Gather.
Shape.
Compress—
BOP.
Another failure.
By the tenth attempt, Lulu was panting lightly and had smoke smudges across her cheeks.
She sat on the floor, glaring at the page like it had personally offended her.
"Why is the 'seed' even necessary…? Just let me skip ahead…"
The moment she said that, she imagined the Priestess staring blankly at her and saying something like:
"Mm. Skip it. Then explode later. Up to you."
Lulu shivered.
No, thank you.
So she stood again and resumed the exercise.
Her awareness slowly deepened.
The threads—soft, whisper-like—moved around her, and she followed their motion with her breath.
She tried again.
This time, instead of wrestling with the energy, she allowed it to gather naturally.
She let it swirl softly, forming its own center.
A tiny blue glow appeared between her palms.
"Good… good…"
She didn't compress it abruptly.
She guided it inward, like folding petals around a blooming flower.
The glow shrank.
Smaller.
Smaller.
Until—
A tiny orb, the size of a grain of rice, pulsed gently in her hand.
Lulu gasped.
"I did it…"
It flickered once—
twice—
POP.
It vanished into harmless sparks.
But Lulu laughed anyway, hands trembling with excitement.
"That's progress… That's real progress!"
Energized, she returned to the spellbook and began studying page eight, which described stabilizing the seed. This time, she didn't explode anything; she only felt her mana drain rapidly each time the glow flickered.
By afternoon, her legs felt weak and her arms heavy.
She took a short break, drinking water and staring at the ceiling as she caught her breath.
"Why is this so exhausting…? I barely moved."
It wasn't physical tiredness.
It was spiritual fatigue—the kind that left her soul feeling warm and heavy, like molten metal cooling inside her chest.
Still, she stood again.
She refused to stop.
Again, she summoned the glow.
Again, she shaped it.
Again, she compressed it softly into a seed.
This time, it didn't pop immediately.
It hovered quietly, flickering like an uncertain candle flame.
She stared at it for ten full seconds before it faded on its own.
And something inside her clicked.
"That's all I need for today. Stability for even ten seconds… is enough."
By evening, Lulu had practiced the seed-shaping exercise more than thirty times. Her final attempt stayed stable for fifteen seconds—still weak, still unstable, but undeniably progress.
When she finally dropped into bed that night, her limbs felt like lead, and her mind buzzed faintly with magical residue.
But she smiled into her pillow.
Slow progress was still progress.
And for the first time since she started learning the avatar spell… she felt like she could truly do it someday.
Tomorrow, she would tackle pages nine and ten.
Tomorrow, the next milestone awaited.
For now—she slept peacefully, the delicate threads of unseen worlds quietly drifting around her like fireflies.