In the dead city, everyone trained individually, centering around the church ruins.
Igula placed Gwen on a nearby high platform, observing her to see if the temporal hourglass would have any other effects.
Then he summoned his Technique Spirit, gently nuzzling, teasing, and caressing them, even taking out gold and silver coins to feed them.
The relationship with Technique Spirits has always been a rather ambiguous discipline. Useful? Yes, but no matter how much your Technique Spirit dislikes you, as long as you are willing to consume Magic Power, it has to yield and serve you; useless? Not really, because if you run out of Magic Power or something, having a good relationship with your Technique Spirit might prompt it to trigger a Resonance to help you.
However, mages generally tend to maintain good relations with their Technique Spirits. Most of the time, Technique Spirits accompany a mage for years, even decades, so even without deliberate flattery, such a long relationship is enough to foster trust.
Due to his experiences at the Shattered Lake Prison, Igula had benefited from Technique Spirit Resonance multiple times, making him particularly attentive in this area. Even he couldn’t possibly wear a mask all the time; only when facing the simple-minded Technique Spirits could he completely lower his guard.
Playing with Technique Spirits and soaking in the bath were his only ways to relieve stress.
After all, Ash could confide his mental stress to him, but the Swindler had no one to share his burdens with—or maybe he did, but Igula would never reveal his vulnerabilities to anyone, as that was a weakness he couldn’t tolerate.
"La la ♪ (^∇^*), la la la..."
The relaxed smile the Swindler showed when playing with the Technique Spirits was something even Harvey, let alone Ash, had never seen. Only Gwen, frozen in time beside him, could silently appreciate this unseen moment.
Hearing the explosion, Igula looked towards the west, where the Beastman Qikara was researching his Fire Magic Miracle.
In the east, Harvey had found a basement, saying he would take advantage of the time to thoroughly renovate Alice. As for why a basement, Igula initially thought it was for the atmosphere, but the Necromancer said it was to prevent corpse fluids from splattering everywhere.
Imagining the many times he had bathed with Harvey, Igula felt as if a corpse stench lingered on him.
To the north, Ash and Black Crow were in combat. Although Black Crow said he wanted to teach Ash everything he knew, after much persuasion from Ash, Black Crow finally abandoned this frightening idea.
As Black Crow himself said, "What took immense difficulty for me to achieve, you all can do effortlessly, and even better," thus Ash had no need to learn those complex techniques. What he truly needed to learn from Black Crow was battle awareness.
Igula’s cultivation doesn’t require movement; he continued to perfect his "Imagining Overlap" Miracle and think about how to use his new Technique Spirit ’Change of Heart’.
"Spirit Faction, three-winged Technique Spirit"
"Active effect: Change the target’s mind for an instant. The more focused the target is, the more dire the situation, the easier it works."
"Passive effect: The mage’s will becomes more resolute, harder to change."
"Your mistake is thinking you still have a chance to make a mistake."
The ’Change of Heart’ Technique Spirit appeared as a neutral beauty in a white tailcoat, resembling a groom at a wedding. Igula actually obtained this Technique Spirit long ago in the Kingdom of Gospel and had used it to make enemies attack themselves, but it was mostly idle.
Because this Technique Spirit couldn’t penetrate the Holy Domain.
Below the Holy Domain, Igula would just use damaging Miracles directly, and often, he didn’t need to act, letting Harvey and Ash handle it was sufficient; for Holy Sanctuary Mages, since ’Change of Heart’ couldn’t penetrate the Holy Domain, it was ineffective.
However, upon seeing Silver Lamp’s series of ’Chaotic Battle Miracles’, the Swindler faintly felt some inspiration. Perhaps this Technique Spirit wasn’t meant for offense but rather for defense... Original content can be found at novel·fiɾe·net
After 12 hours, Gwen did not wake, and Igula no longer doubted the effect of the temporal hourglass.
He took a coat out of his Space Card, draped it over Gwen, and continued researching his Miracles.
On the fifteenth day, the socially adept Qikara ran out of topics with others, found no progress with Miracles, and exhausted his Magic Power, triggering the temporal hourglass to fall asleep.
On the thirty-second day, Harvey emerged from the basement, completely depleted of Magic Power. He dragged out a coffin, squeezed in with Alice, closed the coffin lid, and warned Igula not to sit on it.
On the sixty-eighth day, Black Crow had synthesized everything he had observed and learned during these days, and even created new techniques. Ash and Igula were both amazed because such summation and creation usually take years; however, according to Black Crow himself, excluding the time spent chasing Evil Crow and training his body, he had actually worked on combat techniques for less than three years, creating a special technique approximately every month on average.
This time, it took him two months, partly because he was training Ash and partly because he had gained so much during this period that he needed a good deal of reflection.
With Black Crow as a sparring partner, Ash not only saw a leap in his combat awareness but also fully mastery of his long-range attack system centered around the ’Heart Sword’.
Black Crow spent three days exploring the dead city, finding no trace of the evasive Silver Lamp before triggering the temporal hourglass to sleep. However, before he fell asleep, he curled up, pressing his hands against the Black Crow mask, obviously guarding against Ash and Igula from pulling off his mask after he fell asleep.