Chapter 20: Magic Tests

"..." A few days passed with Nio studying as much as she could about the entire situation in the Theocracy and the world. She discovered many favorable things, but also many things that can only be uncovered in other kingdoms.

This is because of censorship. This kingdom has extreme censorship of historical content — perhaps a way to control and indoctrinate its people and its own saints. Nio, as an outsider, after reading so many books, noticed dozens of holes in the history.

Giant pieces of it missing, or things that don’t make sense and wrong dates, like a major incident happening on the same day as something important, showing that many events are fake or manipulated to make the kingdom look heroic.

"War... adventurers... secrets..." Nio murmurs, wandering through the secret prison she found in the church where she’s staying, a place she shouldn’t be but managed to infiltrate in secret using invisibility artifacts.

"So many prisoners here..." Nio observes the prisoners, noticing they seem to be undergoing experiments.

"The Theocracy isn’t just corrupt — it looks like they’re doing experiments with player items..." Nio stares at the items on the wall — potions, weapons, and player armor. They seem to be trying to replicate these weapons.

"I see that most are level 50 items... pretty bad. Unfortunately, no duplication bug happened, and the real items with [Faceless] only drop to the ground when the copy disappears."

"Just like [Faceless] items can only be used by him, and the copy can’t even use the same inventory as me, so figuring out how to create these things is interesting but kind of inefficient." Nio breaks into one of the cells, finding a man full of scars and a long gray beard. She deactivates the item, appearing in front of the man who looks at her.

’This place stinks... and I feel a strange biological disgust at being close to something so filthy... is it because I’m a girl?... dirt bothers me just like these rats and insects...’

"An... angel?"

"...That’s right, I’m an angel who appeared to decide where your soul will go, whether it will rise to the heavens and paradise or fall into hell. Repentance earns good positive points. Have you thought about confessing?" Nio acts in a way to gain something useful.

"...Why are you imprisoned here?"

"I-I’m a prisoner of war... a-adventurer from the empire..."

"So adventurer from the Behe’Tuor Empire, you’re not such a terrible sinner. Do you know how many lives you’ve taken?"

"I-I’m not sure..."

"Regrettable. How many experiments have you endured since coming here, and for how many years have you suffered for your mistakes?"

"I-I don’t know, m-miss angel... a-at least 8 years? I-I have no way of knowing how many experiments..."

"Why don’t you escape? It sounds so simple... I see that you can’t. A very strong curse permeates your body, more than one actually. If you manage to break free of the restriction magic and leave the church’s range, your body will catch fire." Nio observes, noticing various curses on the prisoner.

"...Are you ready to die?"

"P-Please... l-let me die... I-I’m so tired..."

"I understand. So you devoutly donate your soul to my goals?"

"Y-Yes..." The man’s voice is full of despair. He doesn’t even beg to escape, only for everything to end once and for all. Nio sees an opportunity in this. She breaks the physical chains immobilizing the man and takes his hands.

"..." Nio takes both of the man’s hands and begins to "dance," a movement that for the man is very difficult to follow. In seconds, the man’s body begins to dissolve into silver particles. Other prisoners watching this are horrified.

Each step, each movement of the dance corrodes the man’s body further until only a skeleton remains. Not even drops of blood remain on the floor or on Nio’s clothes as she finishes the brief dance, having used a spell to do this.

[Nightmare Waltz] — A spell that activates upon contact. It requires the condition of constant physical contact to be fulfilled. The target in contact with her body will begin to be consumed, becoming nightmare essence, a mass of silver particles that the user can absorb and use.

’I see my trap-style spells still work...’ In the game, Nio used this spell to kill specific NPCs. Normally the game didn’t allow attacking certain NPCs, but the Nightmare Waltz spell bypassed that rule if used during a dance, since at that moment the NPC changes from one state to another. It was almost a bug, in a way.

"Anyone else here wish to become magic dust?" Nio drops the skeleton, feeling nothing for having taken a life so up close, but interested in the result this "NPC" provided her.

’The energy... I can feel it and see it. In the game, this didn’t happen... so much has changed...’ The prisoners stay quiet as Nio leaves the room she was in.

"Well, I imagine no one here will say anything, right? After all, you won’t want a little visit from me. But if you want to die, I can give you freedom, even if I can’t necessarily guarantee heaven or hell." When Nio says this, several people beg to be freed. This makes her give a dark smile for having various targets to test her spells.

She spends the next two hours categorically killing each of the prisoners who asks for the sweet freedom of death. In her tests, she discovers how to use certain spells, the limits of her magic.

She discovers that only part of the spells she can use without speaking. Another large portion requires her to chant the spell’s incantation, otherwise nothing happens.

And she discovers the most useful part — her spells have lost any damage limit they had in the game, because now she can pour more and more magic into an attack without a ceiling.

In the game, the "MP" consumption of spells was something fixed. In reality now, she defines how much "MP" a spell uses, and the more MP, the more damage and potency the spell has, although if she overdoes it, the spell can collapse.

But thanks to her main class as an Ancient Mage, she easily manages to control every fine detail. And she also notices the most important thing of all — each of her classes influences her real physical capabilities.

As a mage, the class influences her understanding of magic, to the point where she only has to observe the spell she used and understand exactly what it does and its cost. Meanwhile, as an archer, that class made her know how to use a bow and have perfect precision even though she’s never used real bows.

With that, Nio returns to her room content, but a little disappointed, because she got the [Strategist] class but never tried to evolve the class to a Master Strategist. And that very current class of hers is what allows her to plan things she never thought of before with such mastery.

"How limiting... and how angry I am at myself from a few years ago." She criticizes her laziness, because in the game the Strategist class was already enough for certain quest conditions and evolving it was unnecessary since it had no real changes. So she goes to her room endlessly criticizing this small fact of her life — that she didn’t evolve it when it was time and forgot to evolve it later.