Chapter 117: Keep Your Meteor, Aria, I Know What I Want!

BAM—

The edge of Aria’s hand came down sharply on the top of Freya’s head, and Freya immediately brought her hands up to it.

"Ow, ow, ow!"

She looked up at Aria with already watery eyes, with no idea what had just happened.

But why?!

"You’re getting carried away, Freya," Aria said simply.

"Aaaaah..."

Freya didn’t need any further explanation. All she had to do was look at the notification displayed at the right edge of her vision to understand.

[ Word of Greed skill activated. ]

She dismissed it with a wave of her hand, as she always did, and sighed.

I really need to find a way to counter this...

Then she turned her eyes toward Aria with a glimmer of hope.

Maybe she knows?

Aria answered as if she had heard the thought.

"Unfortunately not, Freya. If I knew, I would already have made sure it never happened again. But I’ve warned everyone at the dungeon by now, so as long as you have your episodes around us, everything will be fine. Well... in principle."

"In principle? What a reassuring choice of words. Thanks, Aria..."

Freya had said it as a joke, but Aria didn’t smile. She lowered her eyes to the rug.

"I am truly sorry, my lady. Once again, I have failed to live up to your expectations. This is something I don’t know..."

Her voice had grown so small that it caught Freya off guard. Aria seemed genuinely disappointed in herself, exactly as she had been in the early days after her summoning, when she blamed herself for the slightest imperfection. It had been a long time since Freya had seen her like this, and it affected her far more than she expected.

She took Aria’s hand in hers.

"If you want... next time, you can let things run their course, to learn more about my episodes and see where it leads..."

She had said it without thinking, simply to make the woman she loved happy, and the change was instant. Aria looked up, her eyes shining, and took Freya’s hand between both of hers, suddenly swept up by an eagerness she didn’t even try to hide.

"Really? I-I-I can?! You’ll allow it?!"

BAAM—

This time, it was Freya’s turn. The edge of her hand came down on the top of Aria’s head, then she stood up, hands on her hips, and watched her lover rub her head, even though Freya could never have hurt her in the slightest.

"If you get carried away too, Aria, then what are we supposed to do?!"

Aria didn’t answer, embarrassed by her own behavior, all the more so since it had come right after a question she hadn’t been able to answer.

Freya was expecting a teasing comeback, a crooked smile, anything other than this silence. But Aria just sat there, eyes lowered, visibly downcast.

So Freya sat back down beside her and gently drew her against her chest, running her fingers through her hair.

"You know, I’m not mad at you..." she murmured. "I just think the world must have seen us as such a boosted couple that it decided to hit us with a curse each. Me with greed... and you with knowledge."

Aria couldn’t hold back a small laugh against her, and that was all it took for the two women to fall back into their easy, intimate conversations about everything and nothing.

They were both still laughing when Freya suddenly froze, her mouth half open.

"WAIT?! The skill we’re supposed to create?!!"

Aria couldn’t help laughing even harder at her reaction.

"Then let’s not waste any more time."

Freya nodded eagerly, while taking care, this time, not to sink back into pure greed. She settled cross-legged in front of Aria, hands on her knees, back perfectly straight, with all the seriousness of a student on the first day of school.

"What would you like to create?" Aria asked. "A gravity spell? A flight spell? A taming spell? A spell of—"

"A fireball!"

Freya had cut her off, bursting with excitement and completely sure of herself.

"Huh?" Aria blinked, caught off guard. "You must have used the wrong words, Freya. Did you mean a firestorm? Or perhaps a fire meteor? Or a miniature sun, perhaps?"

Freya shook her head from side to side.

"A fireball! I want to make a fireball!"

Her eyes had filled with wonder, and she was already picturing herself hurling them left and right.

"It’s the foundation of every magic story ever! The very first spell everyone has to learn!"

Aria pressed a hand to her forehead and let out a long sigh, realizing once again that her mistress was a... special woman.

Then, resigned, she set about showing her how it was done.

The principle was the same as in their usual exercises. The idea was to seek out red quantimanas in the flow and bring them to her hand. But it wasn’t just any red: the flow held a multitude of different shades, and the one she needed was a very specific red, leaning slightly toward orange, which Aria had to point out to her several times before Freya managed to tell it apart from the others.

And this time, it was no longer a matter of moving them one by one, but several at once. To ease the difficulty, Aria had her bring her hand as close to the flow as possible, to shorten the path they would have to travel as much as she could.

The first attempts were disastrous.

Freya managed to draw in two or three, then one of them would stray from the right path, start to grow agitated, and drag the others along with it. She would then have to release everything in a hurry, and each time, a small, sharp pop would crack through the tent, followed by a smell of scorching and a muffled curse.

"Again," Aria would simply say.

And Freya would start over.

Aria patiently corrected every one of her mistakes. She had her lower her shoulder, bring her hand closer, slow down, breathe. Little by little, fewer quantimanas slipped away, and the ones that reached her palm stayed there a little longer.

The hours went by like this, without either of them noticing the time slip past. Outside, the conversations around the fires had long since died down, and all that could be heard through the canvas was the crackle of the last embers.

Freya, for her part, was drenched in sweat. Strands of hair stuck to her forehead, her outstretched arm trembled, and her silk tunic clung to her back. But she didn’t give up.

Until, at last, she managed to gather about a hundred quantimanas in the hollow of her hand.

"That’s enough!" Aria said. "Now it’s fairly simple. Think very hard about what you want to cast, about the fireball you want to create. And aim at me with your arm, while you’re at it."

Freya stretched her arm toward her and closed her eyes.

In the darkness, she let all her memories of the genre come back to her, the light novels read until dawn, the manga, the anime, and all those scenes where a hero reached out a hand to cast their very first spell. From all of it, she gathered a single image: that of a perfect fireball.

Then she felt her hand grow warm.

She opened her eyes and froze in amazement.

In the hollow of her palm floated a perfectly round sphere of flames, a reddish orange that turned almost white at its center. The flames rolled endlessly across its surface without ever spilling past its shape, and an intense heat brushed against her face without burning her hand in the slightest. The flickering light danced across the walls of the tent and cast both their shadows all the way up to the ceiling.

She didn’t wait a second longer.

"FIREBALL!"

The sphere left her hand with a rush of air and shot straight toward Aria, leaving a short trail of sparks behind it.

Aria simply raised her hand and caught it in midair. Her fingers closed around the flames, and the fireball vanished into her palm all at once, absorbed, without leaving the slightest mark, neither on her skin nor on the canvas of the tent.

A notification immediately appeared in Freya’s vision.

[ Congratulations! You have unlocked the skill: Pure Flame Fireball — Rank B ]

Freya stayed motionless for a moment, her eyes fixed on the text, then sprang to her feet with a cry of joy. She jumped on the spot, spun around, threw her arms in the air, and started literally dancing in the middle of the tent, humming whatever came into her head.

Then her gaze fell on Aria.

She was smiling just as much as Freya was, as proud as if she had created that fireball herself.

Freya couldn’t hold back. She threw herself at her, half knocking her over onto the rug, and started covering her face with kisses, on her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, everywhere she could reach.

"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You’re the best~!"

Aria let her, laughing, her hands resting on Freya’s waist.

Then, little by little, the laughter faded.

Freya had stopped, leaning over her, and their eyes had met. They stayed like that for a long moment, gazing into each other’s eyes without a word, while Freya felt a warmth rising within her, a warmth that, quite obviously, had nothing to do with a fireball this time.

"How much time do we have left?" she asked quietly.

"Enough," Aria replied simply.

And Freya threw herself at her.