Chương 190: Familiar

Once Damion was released from Thaumaturgy, he grabbed Elicia by the hand and pulled her onto his Ice Sword. He flew the two of them into the sky and out of the school grounds to the nearby meadow where Damion would meet Phil on the weekends. Even before they arrived at the meadow, Phil was in the air, flying along with them. Elicia, despite not liking flying on his Ice Sword, had gotten used to it the past couple of months and no longer screamed in terror as Damion sped to the ground to land.

Back on the ground Elicia backed away from Damion while he and Phil took off back into the air for what Elicia assumed was some sort of aerial tag. The two would fly around the meadow chasing each other for a while before eventually landing and sharing a ration pack. Today, however, Damion intended to find out how well his spell actually worked.

"I made a spell that can link us together," Damion told the Snow Hawk. Damion had no idea how much the C Rank Ferocious Beast could understand him, but he felt it could glean some meaning from his words. When he summoned the magic seal to appear on his palm, the Snow Hawk gazed at it and then lowered its head slightly.

"Does this mean you want me to cast the spell?" Damion asked and received a chirp back in response. With the magic seal active, Damion reached out and touched the top of Phil's head. The Snow Hawk spread out its wings and let out a cry as his mana entered the beast's body. A moment later the glyphs from his spell appeared as ghostly images surrounding Phil and circling around the Snow Hawk as if it was the center of the magic seal.

The glyphs then constricted around Phil, Damion was worried the glyphs were going to have some negative effect, but they simply vanished into the Ferocious Beast's feathers.

"Did it work?" Elicia questioned once the glyphs vanished.

"I, think so," Damion said as he looked at Phil. He had not received a notification from the Magic System, but he also was not sure if he was supposed to.

'Fly,' a soft voice spoke in Damion's mind.

'Fly.' The voice repeated. Damion looked to Phil and the Snow Hawk tilted its head at him expectingly.

"Do you want to go flying again?" Damion asked.

'Yes. Fly,' the voice said again. Now Damion knew the spell had worked. He was not sure what else the spell could do, but he could hear the voice of Phil in his head and that told Damion enough. Damion got to his feet and as he did so the Snow Hawk flapped its wings and took to the sky. A moment later Damion cast Ice Sword and flew up into the sky with the Ferocious Beast to begin their game. As he and Phil flew around the meadow, Damion was quickly understanding how the spell worked.

The innate understanding he now shared with Phil allowed him to grasp basic concepts and thoughts of what Phil wanted or needed. The Snow Hawk in turn had gained an intuitive understanding of human speech and became quite obedient to him. He could tell or even think what he wanted Phil to do, and the bird would do its best to comply.

Damion found that the more complex the command, the harder it was to convey, but when he recalled the spell description, he understood that as he increased the Rank of the spell, his and Phil's understanding of one another would increase as well.

'Home?' Phil's voice called out.

'Home,' Damion thought back as he flew down and let Elicia climb onto the Ice Sword.

"Phil is going to come with us," Damion told Elicia.

"Are you sure that is a good idea?" Elicia questioned.

"What about the Headmaster's policy of no Ferocious Beasts on the grounds?"

"Phil can't be considered a wild or even a domesticated Ferocious Beast anymore. He's my bonded familiar." Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Besides, I just created a tier 2 spell and my bond with Phil shows what the spell is capable of. It only makes sense to bring Phil with us to study the full extent of the spell." Elicia did not disagree with Damion as the trio flew back towards the dormitories, but she felt the Headmaster would not quite see the situation in the same way.

'How did you find me?' Damion asked Phil through their bond once they were in his dormitory. The question had been nagging at him for a while. For the Ferocious Beast to have crossed from Benault Forest all the way to Argentum was not a short journey. Damion had spent some time looking at maps and while there were not exactly a lot of populated areas between the regions, it was still quite the feat.

Mostly, Damion was just glad that the Sentinel Order, which patrolled the Green and White Zones, did not kill the bird. Though, he suspected that they might have observed the Ferocious Beast if they had spotted it. As Damion learned in his first venture into the battle simulator, killing Ferocious Beasts was not always the correct answer. Being a bird of prey meant the Snow Hawk typically hunted other beasts that most people considered pests.

The possibility that Phil was left free to cross a Green and a White Zone because it could very likely be more helpful than hurtful crossed his mind. That or the bird simply flew too high for the patrols to care, flying artifacts were not exactly cheap.

'Same,' Phil answered.

'You came to find me because we have the same affinity?'

'Yes. You strong. Could feel, so followed.' Damion was not quite sure what to make of the Snow Hawk's answers. While he did have a higher magic power than Phil, he did not think it was strong enough for the Ferocious Beast to track him, especially not when he had teleported to Argentum. Plus, Concealed Aura was active, which should minimize his magic signature. There was one possibility that Damion considered, and that was that Phil, as an Ice affinity beast, was somehow attracted to his EX Rank Ice affinity.

The idea sounded ridiculous, but then Damion realized that it might have been possible. Mage Teft had once mentioned that people with similar affinities were often attracted to each other. It was during a lesson on magic bloodlines and how such attractions led to the early creations of noble families that tended to be predominately one affinity. If Damion's EX affinity was the strongest Rank possible, then maybe, after Phil encountered him, the Snow Hawk decided that he was his new alpha.

And once Damion's signal grew weaker, after he left Saung, the bird honed in on him and tracked him down. Even on Earth, he had heard stories of family pets traveling hundreds of miles in search of their owners, and for a bird, that distance would be more easily traveled.

"Damion created this?" Mage Teft asked as she examined Damion's Ice Familiar spells on Professor Toole's tablet.

"Remarkable isn't it? He's always excelled on the exams in class for Nashto. It is like he has an intuitive understanding of the language. And to be able to create a tier 2 spell on his first try…"

"Yes, I've noticed he had been giving this project his all the last few weeks. I thought he would come up with a tier 1 spell to manipulate ice or something similar to what other students have created in the past. But I agree, this is remarkable."

"Does the spell work?" Headmaster Sorin asked as he examined it.

"It should," Professor Toole responded.

"Of course, there is no way to know until it is actually tried, but the boy has already memorized it, so for his sake, I hope it does."

"What?! How could he do something as foolish as memorizing a magic seal that has not been tested. Teft, your prize pupil really does do everything without thinking it through."

"He considers his options and makes a choice. I can hardly fault him for that. Just by being able to summon the magic seal to his palm shows the spell is stable. What the spell will do, and how it will accomplish it, however, is still needing to be solved."

"The spell seems to have taken some inspiration from doppleganger spells, but the glyphs have been altered to mean something else, which I assume is companion. It is quite remarkable. Some of these glyphs I don't even recognize. I have no idea how Damion learned them."

"Take the magic seal to the spellsmiths right away. Let them begin to decipher the inner workings of it."

"What about the boy's reward?" Professor Toole asked the Headmaster.

"We can't provide a reward if we don't know the effects of the spell or if there are any flaws in it that we have yet to discover. He will have to be patient."

"We all know, fully vetting the spell could take years," Mage Teft interjected before the Headmaster could dismiss the meeting.

"There is a faster way, one that does not even require us to do anything but observe."

"What way is that?"

"As you are aware, Damion has a friendship with a Snow Hawk."

"Yes. I've seen the report of the beast. What of it?"

"I think Damion created this spell specifically to form a permanent bond with the creature." Headmaster Sorin looked to Professor Toole who in turn looked back to the glyphs of the magic seal.

"Damion did call the spell Ice Familiar, and it does seem to be a binding magic seal. Unlike Charm spells, that only cause empathy from a creature to a mage, this spell is more of a contract and promotes true understanding. At least as far as I can tell."

"And you think we should just let Mage Wells use the spell on his pet?" Headmaster Sorin asked, turning back to Mage Teft.

"If he hasn't already."