With the musical tweeting of unseen birds arching overhead, the grimoire otaku and the grimoire otaku denier took in the greenery of the surrounding forest; situated on the outskirts of Inkaro's village, the place was filled to the brim with lavish floral life from the many decades of the nearby phetowa leaf farm. Lizu, more energised from the prospect of a cute turtle golem, marched unpreturbed down the worn, forest path, heedless of the many bugs and insects buzzing about.

  "Do we need to go into the forest to test the spells?" Inkaro muttered as he found himself hoisted off his feet again by the dragolyte's chonky tail. She chose not to respond straight away; instead, she quietly mumbled something as she slowly unfurled her tail around the boy and left him to ride on her tail like someone mounting a camel.

  "Remember what I said the other day?" Lizu retorted as she carried a small picnic basket with a tight, unyielding grip.

  "Oh, right, hiding my grimoire making and syntax writing capabilities until I'm not a kid anymore."

  "At least you remembered," she grumbled in relief, "so why didn't you want to go into this forest anyway?"

  After swaying his head back and forth, then rocking back and forth, the boy struggled to recall his reason for his apprehension. But the second the thought returned, Inkaro explained, "Well, I think great-grandpa said something about dangerous relics and interesting grimoires being scattered about because of some battle or something happening in the past."

  Lizu lightly scoffed in amusement the second Inkaro said grimoire, half expecting the word to appear multiple times.

  "I bet you only remember that because the word grimoire was mentioned," Lizu remarked teasingly, to which Inkaro could only giggle with a faint blush on his cheeks.

  "Say, Inkaro, how did your teacher know your attribute rankings were before you even got them checked?"

  "I dunno, must have been a lucky guess, maybe?"

  "Yeah... the option of him knowing the spell from the church's grimoire would be..."

  Noticing the dragolyte crawl to a verbal stop, Inkaro leaned forward to see if she was okay, only to get caught up in Lizu's contemplative glare.

  "What's wrong?". Inkaro slouched his head to one side, invoking the image of a small fox in the dragolyte's mind and forcing a mental squeel of delight out of her; she found herself slipping into her old ways, when she was four, of getting crippled by the fluttery sensation in her stomach whenever she saw a cute creature.

  Clicking her tongue to clear her mind, knowing the absurd idea isn't so absurd, Lizu averted her gaze from the boy and grumbled, "Nothing."

  Luckily for her, Inkaro didn't push her, his attention drawn away from her to the clearing ahead of them that the two had been blindly searching for.

  Although calling it a clearing was a slight stretch, only a few sparse spots in the area were open spaces. Save for those sections, every other spot housed some form of long-abandoned rubble of an ancient temple or unidentifiable gear, weathered into formless shapes from the years exposed to the natural elements.

  "Woah!" the kids uttered in unison.

  Albeit, the subjects of their awe were vastly different.

  Jumping off the girl's tail, Inkaro scurried across the clearing to an ornate cabinet, shockingly out of place with how well-kept and fresh its form was. While the boy poked and prodded at the cabinet, getting angered groaning creeks from it, Lizu bounced over to a little set-up contraption huddled up by a fallen wall. Sprawled out in front of her on a table, sat an unfinished lightbulb circuit: consisting of a coil lightbulb, a double-A battery, and two short copper wires.

  Lizu raised a cautious hand to the copper wire, fearing it might shock her. But as she picked them up, nothing happened, which left her mildly disappointed. In a huff of annoyance as she crouched down, Lizu drew upon the knowledge from her science classes, mainly the practical portions of said classes.

  She knocked the battery onto its side, and with careful and steady hands, poked each end of the copper wires on opposite sides of the battery and lightbulb nodes. The coils of the bulb shone faintly against the girl's face, bringing an illuminating smile to Lizu as she ignored the weak voltage shooting through her fingers.

  "Woah~ old technology, wow. Although using an uninsulated copper wire as a medium is kind of silly, maybe they were a race like me with elemental resistance; I wonder how it survived in the open for so long?"

  "A medium?" Inkaro asked as he strolled over and crouched down next to Lizu, seemingly having lost interest in the cabinet. Beaming with excitement, the girl gladly divulged her knowledge on the topic without hesitation.

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  "Yeah, I learned it in science class... let's see. Basically, the wires act as the bridge or medium for the electricity to travel from the battery to the light bulb, so the electricity doesn't have to struggle going through the air."

  "I see, a medium to make the transferring of electricity easier," Inkaro mused, "I wonder how I can apply that to grimoires."

  "Of course you'd try to apply that to grim-.". Lizu jolted at the mention of grimoires; the dragolyte sprang to her feet and dramatically swung her hands to her forehead horns.

  "No! I got side-tracked," Lizu said aloud, her shouting simmering into a lower murmur as she picked at her horns. Turning her head, Lizu glared at Inkaro. Having grown accustomed to her facial reactions, Inkaro didn't even bat an eye from being glared at.

  "Well, what are you waiting for?"

  "Shouldn't we make some more space before I summon the golem?" Inkaro asked seriously. Speaking without the slightest bit of insincerity, Lizu found herself awestruck from a feeling mixed between excitement for a giant turtle and expectant shock.

  "... how... big is the turtle supposed to be?"

  "Depends."

  The nonchalant response took all the wind out of Lizu's sails and left her in a deenergized state as she grumbled, "Of course it does."

  Elsewhere, as the two kids began their endeavour to tidy up the area for the anticipated turtle golem, the teasing nun, who led the Attribute Appraisal ceremony for Inkaro and the other kids, peacefully strolled through the church's garden. Taking in the refreshingly fresh air as a bonus, she inspected each and every one of the neuionathrila trees for any signs of dehydration.

  "Checking on the purification trees, I see, Sister Lynn," a cherpy man asked in the middle of his stroll through the garden. Lynn jumped slightly, causing her face cover to waver in its task of sheltering her face for a mere moment.

  "Oh, Bishop Vergilou, what a pleasant surprise! Had I known you were coming, I would've bought some extra muffins to share with you."

  (Bishop Vergilou is a tall, fair-skinned adult human male: he has long braided golden hair tied into a single ponytail from three separate ones, pale golden eyes, and a glowing dark blue sigil of a diamond on his forehead)

  "Such is a tragedy, to think I've missed such a lavish event; I indubitably missed the mark by neglecting to inform Priest Abigail of my visit today."

  With a playful wink, the nun added, "And what might be the reason for said visit, if you pardon my curiosity?"

  "Haha, Abigail wasn't joking when she mentioned you being..."

  Lynn's cheerful demeanour derailed into a pout the instant the bishop began talking about Abigail's opinion of her; the switch-up happened so fast it caught the bishop by complete surprise.

  "She called me an airhead, didn't she?" Lynn grumbled with a few angry chuckles sprinkled in.

  "That's... certainly a way of painting what that lady said," the bishop murmured under his breath.

  "Ehh... I should get a move on, those pesky trees won't check their own health, now will they?"

  With that, Lynn gave the bishop a gentle curtsey before going on her way, leaving Vergilou to continue on his way towards the church's podiumed grimoire.

  Vergilou somberly walked down the aisle of the otherwise unoccupied church hall. The light from pooling in through the grand stained glass windows, each displaying a long-distant historical figure from each of the eight races, as the distant grimoire sprang to life at his approach. Its pages flew by, racing to find the particular page containing the syntax script for the spell routinely used on the guy's visit.

  "Attribute Record."

  That was all he had to state, no incantation, just the spell's name before a torrent of light escaped from the grimoire's pages and bonded together into a floating screen.

  "It's honestly perplexing, why is it that those of the aristocracy are so full of hubris. Isn't getting the rankings for their kid's base Attributes enough? It's not like having a personal record ready years in advance before they enter any academies is required. Appearances, I suppose. Although in Axrlou Feubread's case, he is certainly doing it to dote on his daughter, which is much more commendable. But it is protocol nowadays, so no use dwelling on it any... further?"

  The bishop's ramblings fell into a tumble of confusion as he found his attention drawn to Lizu's base attributes. The name and rankings of the noble girl were shown in bright silver, forcing them to stand out against the bronze text belonging to the commoner children.

  "Intriguing, what manner of exploits must she have been engaged in to have such impressive rankings at the age of six? Most nobles are normally content with their kids having a C rank as a baseline until proper... training begins at... the age of eight?"

  Vergilou's attention wandered once again as his gaze fell slightly downward to the last name on the list. His mouth went agape, shocked at how he'd managed to overlook such an obtuse thing staring him right in the face.

  "What... in the worlds..."

  Those sparse, puzzled words were all he could muster as he fully noticed Inkaro's rankings underneath Lizu's.

  "To think a commoner... no... I dread to think what hellish things he's been subjected to to get such results... wait, isn't Inkaro the name of that boy belonging to The Phetowa Leaf Cultivating Farm? If that's the case, those rankings would make some sense, those common sense destroyers."

  He let out a hearty sigh as something occurred to him, "Protocol dictates to report any promising commoners to the local lord so they can give financial support, but given Marquess Feubread is on friendly terms with that grimoire-making family. Yes-yes, let's go with that."

  "Just sounds like you're trying to get out of tedious work, sir," Lynn remarked in jest, casting a strong verbal knife into the back of the guy's head, leaving him stunned.

  "She saw right through me. That girl will make a fine bishop in the future. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to pay both of those appraisees house visits today."