Chapter 32 

After settling the matter with a few more apologies and booming laughter, Curtis  and Terty withdrew to the estate’s guest quarters—the same rooms they had occupied the day before.

“I’ll rest until evening,” Curtis  said, voice thin.

“What about lunch?”

“Go on without me. I need sleep more than food.”

“Very well. Rest well.”

Terty departed, and Curtis , after a quick wash and change, collapsed onto the bed.
It was soft. Heavenly. His limbs surrendered entirely to its embrace.

Until now—whether in training or battle—Curtis  had always kept a sliver of mana in reserve.
But today, he had used it all. Every drop wrung dry.

This wasn’t fatigue of the body. It was deeper—like the exhaustion that follows solving an impossible problem for hours, only to collapse the moment the exam ends.

“No one to blame but myself…”

If progress toward Spirit Creation had been slow, Curtis  would’ve paced himself.

But the advancement had been too rapid—far too promising. He had realized, mid-battle, that he could complete the spell today.

And that thought… that certainty… had made restraint impossible.

So what if he collapsed afterward? He could rest.
That was his logic. And now, here he was—flattened by the weight of his own ambition.

[Flowweaving – Lv. 41]
[Progress to Next Level: 3%]

He’d confirmed that his level had risen as well.

Just like with the assassin—taking a life, it seemed, truly granted experience.

“Feels like I gained even more than I did from the troll…”

The troll had required both him and Terty to bring down.
But Redna—he had defeated her alone.

That could mean one of two things:
Humans might yield more experience than beasts…
Or—

“Maybe the experience gets divided?”

It was a reasonable theory.

In games, it was common for rewards from bosses to be split by contribution.
There was no reason the system here would be any different.

And now, Curtis  had proof.

Though Curtis  advanced at a pace tens—hundreds—of times faster than any mage before him, it was still earned.
Through battle, through study, through trials of the flesh and soul.
He wasn’t simply handed strength; there was no free ride to glory.

He could even understand why the system wouldn’t reward passive bystanders—why one could not level by merely existing.

And yet, as he lay sprawled in the aftermath, he couldn’t help but let a crooked smile tug at his lips.

“Contemplating XP theory after killing someone… Charming.”

He felt no guilt. It had been kill or be killed. Redna had struck first, and their battleground had been a field of war—not a place for mercy.
Still, the weight of it lingered, faint but present.

Perhaps it was the sheer number of “creatures” he’d slain of late that dulled him.
Blood no longer shocked him as it once did. The sight of death stirred no tremors.

And if he truly meant to live as a mage—he’d need to grow used to that.

Still… there was a bitterness in that acceptance.

“Save the brooding for later.”

With a quiet exhale, Curtis  shut his eyes.

His mind could wait. His body, however, cried for rest.

And soon, the gentle hand of sleep embraced him.

Mages were rare. Spiritcallers, rarer still.

Little was known of them—not just because of their rarity, but because they, like most mages, guarded their truths jealously.
Power invites vulnerability. And vulnerability invites death.

Even the simplest question—Where do spirits come from?—had never once received a satisfactory answer.

So the world did what it always does in the face of the unknown: it imagined.

Some said spirits slumbered within all things—that mages merely awoke one and bound it to their will.
Others believed spirits dwelled in a separate realm, an elemental plane beyond the veil—and Spiritcallers served as bridges to summon them forth.

Curtis  had once considered both plausible. But neither satisfied him.

If spirits truly dwelled all around, why were they never seen unless tethered to a Spiritcaller?
Why did they never manifest in the wild, alone?

Now, at last, he understood. And the answer was neither.

The name of the spell said it plainly: Spirit Creation.
Not summoning. Not contracting. Creation.

Waking from a deep and healing slumber, his mind clear and refined, Curtis  recalled the moment he had attained the spell.
With it had come knowledge—not learned, but imprinted—etched into the soul like ancient runes carved in stone.

Spirits were not born of nature. They were not summoned from some other realm.

They were made.

Constructs. Phantoms of form shaped by magical will.

Not alive. Not truly.
In fact… it was akin to something far simpler. The way a child invents an imaginary friend—a being only they can see, made real through belief.

Only here, with the right spark of magical talent, imagination twisted the laws of the world itself.

It warped the very fabric of physics. It made delusion manifest.

This, then, was why spirits only ever appeared beside Spiritcallers.

They could not exist elsewhere—because they had no elsewhere to come from.

“So then… is it purity, or madness?”

He thought of Redna.

Some trauma in her childhood, perhaps. A fixation on flame so intense that fire itself took on a voice, a form.
In another life, she might have been branded mad. Or perhaps a pyromaniac.
But with talent came power, and with power… her obsession gave birth to fire itself.

Of course, it was speculation—but Curtis ’s intuition, guided by the clarity of Spirit Creation, told him he was not far from truth.

“Which means… my spirit cannot be like hers.”

Redna had been consumed by flame. Others were consumed by wind, ice, lightning.

Whatever they were enthralled by—that became the spirit.

Curtis  was not “consumed” by water, per se. But it was a part of him.
He had lived two decades by the sea.
He had shaped water daily for months.
His bond with it was not obsession—it was resonance.

A perfect familiarity.

Shhhh—

Moisture gathered in his palm, rippling like liquid glass. The recovered strength from his nap had brought back some of his Flowweaving ability.

A small sphere of water formed—no larger than a clenched fist.

The condition was met: direct contact with a quantity of water.

And then, he felt it—Spirit Creation stirring.

The orb devoured the magic. Drank it like a starved beast.

Curtis  let go of the weave.
But the water held its form.

The spell now supported it.

He had created a spirit.

“Hn.”

He felt it—like a thin silver thread, linking his mind to another presence.
Not a voice. Not thoughts. Just… awareness.

The water quivered atop his palm, softly pulsing like breath.

It was water. And yet, it didn’t make his hand wet.

“Now what am I supposed to do with you?”

He hadn’t truly asked the spirit. But the answer came anyway—innate.
A Spiritcaller simply knew.

The newborn spirit could consume water—and expel it in bursts.

That was all.

Curtis  stared at it for a moment. Then reached out and gently poked it.

Splitch! Splitch!

A spray of water shot out with each prod. Like a child’s toy.

He nearly sighed in disappointment. Nearly.

But steadied himself.

“Even Flowweaving was pathetic at Level 1. This is the same.”

Of course, he remembered how, even at its weakest, Flowweaving had allowed him to fountain water with flair.

But he chose to ignore that.

“So it shoots water. Fine. But what does it mean it ‘consumes’ water? Stores it, maybe?”

He glanced beside the bed. There, waiting patiently, sat a water jug.

Curtis  slowly poured it over the spirit resting in his palm.

Gulp… gulp… gulp…

There was no sound. But in his mind, it felt like there should be. The spirit drank without spilling a drop.

And it kept drinking.

The jug was nearly empty. And the spirit? It hadn’t grown heavier. Or larger.
It looked exactly the same.

“Where the hell is it putting it? A black hole in its belly?”

Intrigued, Curtis  set the jug aside and studied the spirit closely.

No changes.

He tapped it again.

FWOOOOOSH!

This time, the spirit didn’t spray—it launched a jet.
A full stream—thick and powerful, like a proper spell.
A rainbow arced in the air from the mist it left behind.

“…Oh.”

Maybe this little creature… was more useful than it first appeared.