"And... done, phew," Lizu gurmbled between her ever-increasing huffs of exhaustion as she tossed another large chunk of rubble to the edge of the clearing. She softly slapped her palms together, smacking some clingy bits of stone off her hands. "I'd appreciate some camaraderie, or at the very least a hoora of agreement, Inka...ro?"

  Turning her head, the girl was greeted by what she could only describe as pitiful: Inkaro on the verge of passing out. Lizu slapped her plating-covered tail against the floor indignantly.

  "How are you out of breath? Don't you work on a farm? Wait, is the phetowa leaf farm even run the same way as traditional leaf farms?"

  Inkaro weakly huffed and puffed, flopping onto Lizu's tail for support and refraining from falling on his face.

  "My noodle arms... weren't built for anything but writing fast.". The boy slumped even more firmly against the girl's tail as he pitifully spoke, smushing his cheeks against her plating with a quiet "bleh".

  The sight of the boy's pinchable and squishable cheeks being squished against her chonky tail got a whirling maelstrom of affection out of her. The sensation ravaged her core, demanding she snuggle the life out of the grimoire lover to quell it.

  "Stop looking cute every five seconds, you're killing me here, you dummy," Lizu barked under her breath as she found herself nibbling at her thumbnail to keep herself from acting on the welling-up desire within her. Her tail ignored her orders, wagging aggressively up and down; Her tail flicking only grew more frantic with each subsequent "bleh" Inkaro made.

  Eventually, Lizu quelled herself enough for her tail to calm down, and Inkaro regained the strength to keep himself from toppling over.

  "Ahem... now that there is enough space, could you... explain the syntax to me"

  "But a caster doesn't need to know what the syntax script does other than its output is, do they? Or, is this another me being that overpowered and clueless guy thing and not realising knowing the syntax script is important?"

  With her cheeks puffing up with rage to the point she turned them red, the girl thrashed her tail about and smashed some rubble behind her into smaller rubble. In a sulk, Lizu whined, "I just wanted to know so I could make something similar on my own."

  "Oh! Why didn't you say that?" Inkaro replied cheerfully, contrasted by Lizu with her strengthening pouting.

  "I DID!". Her bellow of rage shot through the air, kicking up a strong gale of wind that sent Inkaro and some nearby objects flying over the tree. Following a loud splash of water from nearby, Lizu blankly looked at the spot Inkaro once stood before uttering, "Oops."

  "Woah, there's a swimming pool over there," Inkaro announced cheerfully, "And I got instantly dried the second I got out."

  Watching Inkaro return from the mysterious swimming pool, Lizu slacked her tail against the ground and muttered exhaustedly, "I'm starting to see why your great gramps didn't want us going into the forest: this place has inherited your family's absurdities from all the discarded stuff."

  "So... where is the spell?"

  "Huh? Oh, right, I put the syntax script paper in the picnic basket." Inkaro stated. Silence overtook the air over at Inkaro's statement, allowing the ambient noises of the forest to be brought into focus, broken only by Inkaro adding, "Say, where is it?"

  "A~," the girl uttered before slapping her face so hard it reverberated through the forest, "I sent it flying when I shouted."

  "It shouldn't be a problem, you still have the tracking spell, right?"

  Momentarily embarrassed that the boy remembered she still had it, Lizu uttered weakly, "Oh... right."

  After an hour of searching and tracking, the duo exploded from the brush that surrounded the clearing, sticks and leaves adorning their hair and bodies as Lizu tightly held the bound and completed flying turtle golem spell.

  "I still can't believe you forgot to name your spell again. We had to try over twenty different words just to get a reaction from the tracking spell."

  "Sorry, force of habit, don't have a need to name them if I'll never use them myself."

  The dragolyte considered retorting straight away, puffing her cheeks up in a pout. But as she thought on it, all she could do was let out her frustration as a huff that bordered on a whimper.

  "No... You don't need to apologise, I'm just being a pain. I should be the one apologising to you for launching you."

  To her confusion, Inkaro tilted his head with just as much confusion on his face as she had on hers.

  "For what, this is way more fun than how I normally test spells.". His beaming and warm expression left the girl in a state of silence, left to wonder how someone could find constant setbacks as fun, or was she the weird one for not finding them entertaining?

  "Honestly, Inkaro," the girl remarked in her head as she faintly smirked.

  With a sigh of resignation, Lizu took her mana ink pen out of her pocket and scribbled beside the turtle doodle in an elegant penmanship: Virlteul. With a name on the spell, she stashed her pen back in her shorts' pocket before carefully placing the pages of the turtle spell into her grimoire and fusing them to the inside of its book's spine.

  "Okay, so what is the incantation?"

  "Incantation?" Inkaro said with put-on obliviousness. Telling straight away she was being played with, the girl playfully glared at the boy, getting a giggle out of the two of them.

  "Ok-ok, you got me. Just repeat after me.". Lizu nodded firmly as she clutched at her grimoire like she expected it to fly away at a moment's notice. With the girl following the boy's lead, the duo sang the spell's incantation, "Vacant shells of earth and heaven, gather together in one of a flying fortress: Virlteul!"

  The grimoire within her grasp sparkled, its illumination of life blooming higher than its resting levels at the girl's beckoning voice. With its orders received, the grimoire unleashed a wave of purple energy from its pages.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  The sudden expenditure of mana startled Lizu, both from the lightshow itself and the abrupt depleation of roughly a tenth of her accessable mana supply; the bone chilling sensation from using so much in one go was new to her, leaving her a little jittery on the spot as she pictured how big her mana would make the turtle golem.

  However, as she watched the swirling purple mana coalesce into the anticipated form, her non-stop moving faltered into a puzzled stumble. Before her floated a small, light pink turtle with a ruby gem shell and a lighter lower half, glowing golden eyes, and a goofily cute face.

  Overloaded by the summoned golem's cute face, all Lizu could say was, "Hah?"

  Although the constructed golem was every bit as cute as she had pictured it being, there was one thing that caused her frown to make a reappearance: the floating turtle golem was barely bigger than the diameter of her head.

  "Why is it so small? You said it would be big enough for us to ride on."

  Inkaro placed a hand on his chin to muse over the question. "Hmm, I think Teacher mentioned something about the size of summoned things depends on how much mana you give them."

  Lizu slumped her head. "But kids don't have the training to use more than E rank magic, no matter their physical ranking. And here I thought you were going to say we needed to feed Virlteul to make 'em bigger."

  "Teacher said materials only apply to golems and how long they can stay without getting constant mana."

  "You don't say, Inkaro."

  "But I did."

  Lizu peered between Virlteul and Inkaro with a neutral expression as she considered how hard she could throw the golem at the boy's head without doing any lasting damage.

  But having been around him for long enough and hearing all the anecdotes from her father, she knew he probably had some sort of countermeasure for small objects that might fly his way. Looking at the new expression Lizu expressed, Inkaro buried a hand in his hair as he itched his grimoire-filled dome.

  "Um... so I know usually adding mana to a summon after it is been summoned is difficult," Inkaro uttered.

  Nodding, Lizu said, "My tutor said the same thing. She explained it is difficult to adjust mana to match the summon's mana after it has been created is... You're telling me you already figured out how to do it, haven't you?"

  The boy chipperly nodded and followed her statement with, "Yep-yep, Virl-pool can adjust its size. I think the max size is based on how much mana is stored in them"

  She overlooked the egregious bad attempt at saying the turtle golem's name. After all, he did say it correctly during the incantation, or did he and Lizu simply miss it? She shook her head, dismissing the absent thought. "You better explain the syntax script to me later, Inkaro."

  Inkaro happily nodded, his face beaming with earnest flair that it threatened to put Lizu out of commission from a cuteness overload, had she not blocked the attack with her arm.

  With her eyes still sheltered, Lizu mumbled loudly, "You say that, but I can't tap into any more of my mana reserves. And if you say you know a mana transfer spell, I swear."

  Like always, the bird that was her attempt to be angry flew right over the boy's head; instead, he latched onto the idea of a mana transfer spell and didn't let it go as he pulled some magi-crystal paper from his pocket.

  "Ooh, that sounds like a useful spell to make, then I can give you some of my mana; let's make one right now."

  Lizu felt her soul leave her body, like it were being ripped out by a spectral manifestation of Inkaro's out-of-control absurdity. But she couldn't allow the boy to hold this trophy for this act of absurdity by himself, it was her idea after all.

  With that, a fear crept into her unsuspecting mind: was Inkaro's absurdity contagious?

  Deeming it stupid, she bobbed her head, hoping to free her mind of the idea while Inkaro was already mumbling about various syntax script options.

  After some trial and a lot of tree-felling errors, the task had been achieved. Virlteul was now the size of a small car: an original Mini Cooper to be needlessly precise. The duo's faces sparkled as the turtle defied the logic imposed on its organic brethren and hovered beyond the ground. Lizu wasted no more time in hoisting Inkaro onto the golem's back. Using her tail as a fishing rod to claim the floating grimoire, Lizu hopped on Virlteul herself before it took off fully.

  As the duo sat on its back, Virlteul travelled above the forest, far out of the reach of any calls from its inhabitants. Lizu silently watched the leaves of the trees below swish and sway in the wind.

  "We're flying~," Lizu said in cheer as she wagged her tail at supersonic speeds before adding as a thought occurred to her, "Inkaro?"

  Already twiddling away on a new spell after the mana transfer one, Inkaro raised his gaze barely over the top edge of the magi-crystal paper while continuing to write away. "Yeah~?"

  "How come the incantation included the name for the spell when I just made it up?"

  "Oh, when I write incantations, Teacher taught me about a special character that acts like a replace prompt to swap itself with the name of whatever spell you're trying to perform."

  "Interesting."

  With her question answered, the girl turned her attention back to the land below, playfully swishing her chonky tail around and inadvertently brushing it against Inkaro's leg. But, the laughter that should follow from being tickled did not follow; Inkaro was much more focused on his new spell idea, to the point that he ignored his senses.

  He placed a hand on his chin, his face a spiral of deep contemplation mixed with delightful thrill. He pondered; if he combined the properties of a medium with the special prompt replacing properties of the special character and mana transfer spell, could his idea work?

  Inkaro found himself unnervingly motionless, so unnaturally quiet that birds would find his shoulders a nice place to relax.

  As he drew close to a breakthrough, his trained focus was broken by a simple "Inkaro?"

  "Yes, Lizu?"

  "You're having fun, right?" Lizu asked while remaining flat on her belly and refusing to remove her face from the land below, sheltering her dampened expression from being discovered by the boy.

  Despite the girl's effort, her tone of voice, even if masked by joy, told the boy what he needed to do. He placed the written on paper to one side; the ding of his oak pen against the gem shell caught Lizu's ear and she abruptly stopped swishing her tail.

  Her face winced, believing the incoming reveal that he'd gotten fed up with her at long last.

  "Ahem, most certainly, my good lady, how could I not when embarking on a fun adventure with a friend? If anything, this is more fun than making grimoires.". Inkaro spoke with a put-on fancy accent that clashed with his voice, ultimately destroying the fancy image he tried to create to cheer up his friend. Quietly lying on the spot, Lizu gripped her small fingers firmly against Virlteul's shell as she struggled to hold back the floodgates of her building laughter; the dissonance between Inkaro's response and the one she'd expected to hear was simply too great for her prior gloom to contend against.

  In her mind, Lizu murmured, "Don't laugh, don't laugh~, he sounds even sillier than my older sisters trying to copy their mother's accent."

  Down on the ground, where the air didn't threaten to put people six feet into the ground, Vergilou peacefully strolled the streets of Inkaro's hometown village and drew the curiosity of the village's small population.

  "To think the youngest daughter of the Marquess would have befriended the phetowa leaf farmer boy. I would've appreciated it if Lynn mentioned that earlier," Vergilou spoke aloud, recalling the overbearingly happy face on the Marquess and his wife's faces as they recounted Lizu's demand to visit Inkaro.

  "I suppose there are some nobles who don't believe in the nobility and... commoner... divide nonsense?". In the middle of speaking, the bishop spotted an oval shadow meander over him, catching his and the villagers' attention.

  Following where the shadow likely originated, Vergilou stood on the spot, stone-faced as he watched Virlteul flying overhead.

  "...is that a flying turtle?"