Like how the little snake demon had suggested, she and her friends awaited the school day's end, with every second closer to that fact feeling more agonisingly stretched out than the one preceding it for the restless Anazenpha. But sure enough, since it was all merely within her voracity-plagued mind, the final chimes of the school bells rang at the same time it had every single day since its installation. With the bells chiming hammering against her mind as a constant reminder that she couldn't put off testing Inkaro's gifts for much longer, Anazenpha wildly swung her hands upwards, letting her very long sleeves slip down her slender arms, before latching her exposed hands onto Yuuvia's metalic thigh-band. Her movements were almost robotically effective. The unwarned physical contact caused the noble humalian to involuntarily scream like she'd been stabbed from how cold the snake girl's hands probably were, or the surrounding students so readily assumed, seeing as they didn't want to look too far into the scene, from wanting to go home themselves or risk appearing weird.

  Rummaging around the thigh bands' contents, much to the detriment of Yuuvia's mental clarity, Anazenpha eventually found what she was looking for: the Inscription of Injected Providence, her tome. With tome on her lap and opaque dark-blue crystal stylus —plucked from the tome's marbly spine— in hand, she swiftly sketched away before swinging her stylus to the side, unleashing a wave of green mana from its nib, once she was finished.

  The screen glimmered and shuddered, rocking about with enough force to send ripples across Ana's crossed legs before a giant winged snake bursted from its single, almost jet-black lapis lazuli, opaque crystal screen, soaring to life in the sky. Crafted entirely of green mana, the serpent circled in the air, getting unreserved affection out of Yuuvia as she wore the largest puppy dog eyes she could physically muster. Lucky for the scale-having demon girl, all those who were left in the current training courtyard were Yuuvia and people she'd call friends.

  While the trio of Ana, Enetha, and Yuuvia climbed energetically onto the mana serpent's back, Inkaro subtly nodded his head at the spectacle, taking on a more analytical eye to appreciate Anazenpha's skills. "Demon magic really is something else."

  "In a literal sense, I presume?" Lizu teased as she strained her tail directly upwards and her two large wings outwards unreservedly, stretching them all to their limits in preparation to fly while carrying a passenger. The thought alone got her pacing on the spot in anticipation; it had been ages since she'd got to carry Inkaro while flying, so she'd be damned if she'd give up any excuse to partake in the action.

  "Indeed, the methods behind their magic expression focus more on abstract feelings and art, compared to our magic's hard-coded logic. It's truly fascinating. Although I suppose, curios are the closest our magic gets to theirs." Lizu playfully rolled her eyes at the guy's enthusiasm towards the magics of the world, wishing he'd talk about her like that. Well, more often at least.

  Wrapping the thick alternating-coloured chains around her arms like shoulder straps, Anazenpha wore her tome like a backpack, and, once its passengers were secured, her mana serpent flew away, whisking the trio off for the home of Inkaro and Lizu. As the guy continued to wonder about all the wondrous possibilities that the different species magics could interact if someone just contained the blood from both species, Lizu flapped herself off the ground, using the same amount of effort as someone would when jogging. And after having wrapped her tail around Inkaro to drag him along with her, grabbing him around his waist for the best support, Lizu bounded for home.

  Back at the human and dragolyte's home. More importantly, in the living room where the main event was transpiring, Anazenpha stood, but it could hardly be considered strong, given how much her body was trembling with fearful anticipation. Despite concentrating every ounce of the mental strength she could, the teen, trembling from physical strain, just couldn't will herself to pry her eyes open. They didn't budge in the slightest, no matter how much she desperately tried: "I can't, they won't listen to me."

  "You got this, Ana; I'm right behind you, figuratively and literally," Yuuvia proclaimed protectively as she stood behind Ana with her arms raised to be under the demon girl's arms.

  Ana felt the warmth of Yuuvia's body heat, even with the finger-long gap between the two of them. It felt oddly comforting. So, with her confidence bolstered a smidgen by Yuuvia's encouraging words and absolutely not wanting to put the other girl's faith in her to waste, Anazenpha took a deep breath.

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  However, instead of trying to open her eyes again, Anazenpha went still, excluding a loose sway to her stance as she remained unsteadily in place.

  As the snake girl's swaying worsened to the point she'd be penalised for travelling in basketball, Yuuvia struggled to keep up with her. Her first thought was to simply grab Ana by the armpits, but she hesitated to grab Ana anywhere, knowing that both of them would be out of commission if the two of them made physical contact. Then Ana stopped with a foot off the ground, catching Yuuvia off guard with a gasp.

  Slowly falling backwards like a solid statue, Ana swung with unstopable momentum, having succumbed to unconsciousness from trying to overcome her own brain, which simply had been too much for her to triumph over, apparently. With nothing capable of catching her in her way, Ana fell unobstructed, leading her to fall on top of an eeping Yuuvia with a loud thud as the duo crashed into a plushy tenticle belonging to the BRM Umbra Termination.

  Having watched the whole scene transpire with her resting face of emotionlessness, Enetha slowly tilted her head to the side, unsure of to what extent such an order of things could have happened. Sitting on Lizu's tail as the dragolyte led on the sofa, Enetha contemplated deeply, physically manifesting in her clacking two of her MB chess pieces together.

  It was truly baffling to the little princess, especially with how oddly similar the scene was to when she fell on Lizu in the bath. A thought occurred to Enetha; she briefly considered if the house had some sort of curse pertaining to peculiarly-targeted falls, before adamantly shaking the thought away and mentally commenting on how bizarre what she saw was: "Seems she... they passed out."

  Soon, there was a knock at the door.

  The series of knocks and bangs was timed, practised, and precise, causing low, unified buzzing to resound through the house as a handful of worker beegirls bumbled their way over, drawn to the door by the knock's tune. Turning into a hotspot of different colour beegirl fuzz, one of the beegirls grabbed onto the doorknob using her little hand before fiddling with it for a solid seven seconds until the door clicked open. Grabbing onto the doorknob-holding beegirl with their many small hands, the collective of beegirls worked together to heave the door open, revealing the man behind the door: Cardinal Vergilou.

  "Finally, I've caught up with you two," Vergilou stated exhaustedly, feeling an immense amount of respite at seeing his pending task can be completed, as Inkaro approached the door, followed by the worker beegirls bundling on his back to peer at the return visitor.

  "Yo, Vergilou," Lizu murmured casually from the soda, while lazily raising an arm to wave at the cardinal standing in her doorway.

  Poking her head over and then plopping her chin atop Inkaro's head while Enetha was left in the care of the beegirls that carried the self-bundled up princess, Lizu cheekily commented, "Couldn't you have just called or sent a text?"

  The cardinal deeply groaned, having received the same suggestion Zaluto gave him, but knowing that would only get him in more trouble than being late ever could. Sighing mentally, he didn't understand how the world had become so used to easily getting into contact with others, and why the church wouldn't, refused to adapt to the times, even if the reluctance made some sense.

  "What I need to say is too confidential to risk being recorded in any form, or so the pope appeared to believe," Vergilou stated calmly, if not a little more on the unemotional side from having lost any sort of urgency by the obnoxious amount of time passing since he'd received the message to pass on. "First thing, I don't understand why, but he asked me, as this region's cardinal, to confirm something and ask something of you."

  "Which would be?" Inkaro asked, speaking with a respectful tone that had been diligently drilled into him by Karuoe, which the spectral guy only managed to achieve by tricking the young Inkaro into believing that doing so would make him better at writing grimoire syntax.

  With the girmoire crafter's attention fully on answering his question and slowly noticing the crackles oozing from Lizu's horns, having gotten interested in the question herself, Vergilou dispersed the last part of the first thing he had to say to the duo he personally knew as intelligent problem children: "Have you noticed any stigmai-related activity recently?"

  Initially starting off with flat, the expression Lizu sported morphed, turning into a truly sneaky grin of villainous amusement, one that needed to be covered to keep its full potency in check, as she answered the question on Inkaro's behalf: "You could say that."

  That comment from Lizu was the last thing the religious guy wanted to hear, knowing that her giving him anything but a straight answer meant more paperwork was about rear its tedious head in his soon-to-be present. "What... did you two do this time?"

  "Do you want the long answer, or the documentarily concise answer?" Lizu inquired amsudedly and rhetorically, as she lazily swished her tail back and forth, and wrapped her wings around Inkaro's chest. Vergilou weakly exhaled, knowing both options meant the same thing when coming from Lizu, of all people.