Otherworld Adventure

Zephyr walked in and noticed the members of Little Kings loitering around the workshop and Cecil who was busy using the apparatus on the workbench. He went over to Lucia and asked about what the boy was doing.

"What's he up to?"

Lucia only shook her head in reply, "I'm not sure, but he needs some time to finish...everyone else can go up to exit the trial grounds before us...we'll wait here until Cecil's finished."

"Hmm...We'll wait, it's not like we can't wait any longer. Just inform me when he's done. I'll tell the others."

"Alright, thanks again, President."

"No problem...honestly, you lot from Little Kings are the biggest contributors during this trial...I should be thanking you, but frankly I don't even know where to begin...but still, thank you."

"Hihi~ like I said, it's no biggie, President Zephyr!"

Zephyr smiled slightly and looked towards his little sister. He then turned around and walked out of the room. His back looked a little desolate. In the trials...Zephyr's and Eli's brother was also part of the casualties during the final battle against the Fallen.

They both lost someone precious to them and although Zephyr never really expressed it, he was the person amongst the siblings who really treasured each of his brothers and sisters.

With this, the royal family's heirs were cut by 1 again...and only 4 of the siblings were left. Zephyr himself, Eli, the older sister who was saved by Lance during the Fallen battle, Manora, and their youngest brother, Memphis, who still only 9 years old and still playing around inside the castle.

Eli and Manora were the most devastated when they couldn't save Lance from his injuries. Manora was the most remorseful, but eventually they had to move on. They could only bring back his body and properly hold a funeral for him back at the kingdom.

Serilla could sense the sadness in Lucia's eyes and she couldn't help but speak up.

"Everyone's lost something during the trials...we should be grateful that nothing happened to us..."

"...yeah..."

Serilla patted her back and Lucia looked up and smiled at her. She couldn't help but chuckle at herself. The two were supposed to be rivals, but they had instead turned into allies. After going through life and death together, the two bonded even more strongly together and they began to appreciate each other.

"If we do get married to Cecil...now, I really won't mind sharing him with you..."

"Oh? Did this mean that before you were trying to find a way to kick me out?"

"Ahaha~ yeah, I guess," Lucia honestly replied. "But now, I think Cecil could use a person like Serilla by his side...I mean, it might be exhausting to just hang around an overbearing girl like me..."

"Hahah~ so you acknowledge yourself to be overbearing?"

"...a little."

"Hihi~ thanks, Lulu~"

Just as the Lucia was about to speak up again, Cecil rose up from his seat and smashed his fist down onto the workbench.

BOOOOMMMMM

His fist strike resounded loudly in the workshop and people could even hear the loud boom from outside of the workshop.

"C-Cel?!"

"Haaaaahhhh..." Cecil let out a tired sigh.

The members of Little Kings couldn't help but have a negative thought. Did he fail whatever it is he was doing?

But then they turned their attention to Cecil's fist imprint on the work bench. The materials to create all the furniture and equipment inside the building were very sturdy, but to their astonishment Cecil had left a deep imprint on the tough-looking workbench.

"Finished! Hahaha~" It was in the next moment that Cecil released a loud joyful laugh.

Lucia walked over to him and smashed him in the back of the head with a fist.

"If you're happy then don't just randomly hit things!!!"

"..."

Her friends could only stare at the unreasonable girl and they all thought. 'Like you're one to talk!'

"Ouch...geez, you don't have to hit me, Lulu..." Cecil grumbled.

He then turned around and decided to hug the girl in joy.

"Finally finished! Yes!!!"

"Uh? Huh? Whuh?"

Cecil immediately released her and turned his attention back to the silver rectangular block on the workbench.

He then picked up the black mithril pieces and walked over to another smaller workbench. There were two magic circles engraved on it, a small one on the left and a bigger one on the right.

Cecil placed the thin silver block in the center of the right magic circle and placed a black mithril piece on the smaller magic circle.

His friends were naturally curious and they all gathered around. Cecil didn't mind that and he quickly raised his finger over the magic circles. A small golden blob of mana appeared on his finger.

The others couldn't help but notice that the tattoos on his bare upper body began to glint faintly.

Cecil's finger quickly began to dance in the air and a magic formation quickly formed in the air in front of him.

Cecil then chanted a short incantation.

"Inbedia."

In the next moment, the two magic formations on the table immediately lit up and began activating.

The black mithril piece in the smaller magic circle began to liquefy. Then the small blob of liquid mithril flew over to the air just above the larger magic circle and it slowly fell down onto the silver box in the middle of the circle.

When it came into contact with the silver box, the black blob was absorbed into the silver box.

"Alright!" Cecil exclaimed joyfully.

Cecil's Manual Casting, at least that's what he called it, was something that he had gained alongside being able to use Ki. With the permanent enhancement that Ki had given to his body, his mind and brain was also influenced. Right now, he nearly had an eidetic memory and the processing speed of his mind had experienced a large increase.

Long before, Cecil had a thought, since those magic formations were something that were always conjured whenever a spell activated, couldn't he simply just try and replicate the formation and cast elemental magic this way?

Cecil had been observing the activation of magic spells with his Mana Eyes for a long time now and he had always noticed the similarities when they activated. Once the spell finished its incantation, the magic formation would always appear and it would attract the ambient elemental mana that would be used in the spell that was being casted. Once the mana flowed into the magic formation, only then would the spell activate and that acc.u.mulated mana inside the formation change shape and forms the desired magic spell.

He had tried it out before to see if he could cast magic using this 'written' casting. It did work, but it was much too slow for him to use in battle or anywhere else! Just writing the runes and forming the spell formation took him almost half an hour to over an hour to do and this was only for a low-tier spell!

As for the mid and high-tiered spells that had much larger magic formations and numerous runes...it could only be a pipe dream for him to even think about using such spells with the 'written' casting. There was also the problem where he would sometimes forget which rune to write in the next sequence so he had messed up plenty of times and failed to even activate the spell. 9 times out of 10 he would fail forming the spell formation because he had drawn the wrong rune.

Once again this was only for low-tier spells. If he formed numerous mistakes just from drawing out the spell formation for low-tier spells, then it would be impossible for him to draw the spell formations for higher tiered magic spells.

At least, that was until he gained Ki. With his near eidetic memory and newly empowered thought process, he was able to memorize all the runic sequences that he had to draw in order to form a low-tier spell's formation.

He first experimented with the low-tier spell formations he already knew like Fire Ball, Water Ball, Air Bullet, and the like. Cecil was astonished when he actually finished drawing out the spell formations in less than10 minutes so adeptly without committing even a single mistake.

At first he thought it was only a fluke, but after repeated experimentations, he was now sure that he was able to cast low-ranked elemental spells using this new and unique way of casting! Now all he needed to do was improve his hand speed.

It had to be remembered that since Cecil was always writing in his magic tome for most of the time he spent inside the Final Plaza, this caused his hand speed to improve faster and faster. With the help of Hypersensitivity, he was able to speed up his Manual Casting. He could now complete a low-tiered magic formation under 2 seconds.

The mid-tier magic formation from earlier took him 10 seconds to complete. He's never tried drawing a mid-tier magic formation before, but 10 seconds was pretty quick in Cecil's opinion considering that most incantations for mid-tier spells took anywhere around 5-15 seconds to chant. Cecil still couldn't complete a high-tiered magic formation however. The complexity of the spell formation was too high for him even with his newfound abilities. He did try and finish one, but when he finished it, it actually took him over 2 hours.

Since it wasn't currently plausible, Cecil decided to just stick to low and mid-tiered magic spells. He could figure things out later when he had the spare time.

Everyone in the party including Serilla knew about Cecil's inability to use Magic Spells. So seeing his unique way of casting magic caused everyone to widen their eyes in surprise.

The spell he used was unfamiliar to them, but they could tell just based on the magic formation he created, it was most likely a mid-tiered magic spell.

They wanted to ask him about the peculiar way he casted magic spells, but they refrained from doing so seeing that he still wasn't done yet.

Cecil continued the earlier process another 19 times for the remaining black mithril pieces.

Once he finished, Cecil slowly picked up the silver box. He then injected his mana into the box and one side of the silver box lit up.

"Yes!!! It worked!! It finally worked!!!"

Cecil cheered joyfully.

His friends were still unsure of what he was so joyful about. When they looked at the unique silver box in his hands...they couldn't help but think of a certain magi-tech.

"A MID?" Fina hesitantly asked.

Cecil immediately turned around and said, "Ohhh!! You can tell Fina?! Yup, you're right! This is a MID! My very own personally crafted MID! Wahahahah~"

Now this was news, they were really shocked hearing his confirmation. The creations of MIDs were kingdom specific secrets. Not just anyone could manufacture a MID, but their friend had actually created one and judging by its unique sleek shape and color, it was much, much more different to the ones currently in their possession.

"C-Cecil...is that...really a MID?"

"Yup! Ah, I almost forgot!"

Cecil immediately rummaged into his pants pockets. During his use of the workshop's apparatus, Cecil had taken off all the accessories he had on his fingers, his two spatial rings, and put them inside his pockets. He didn't want anything to affect his hands' stability during the runic circuit creation.

When he finally pulled out his black spatial ring, Cecil extracted a couple of similar looking MIDs and tossed them over to each of his friends. He also created one for Serilla, but in fact it was just an extra, a backup just in case he failed in creating his personal MID.

"Here ya go! Those are all MIDs I created for you guys. They have the normal functions of the academy issued MIDs, but I also added a few other functions. Check 'em out later alright~"

Cecil had a thought and fiddled around with his new MID.

"I guess I should show you guys one of the new functions."

Cecil looked around and saw that Yuna was the person farthest from him. He then tapped on his MID's screen. Not long later Yuna's MID began to vibrate all of a sudden. The dragon girl nearly dropped the thing in surprise.

"W-wha?"

"Yuna, just tap anywhere on the screen," Cecil instructed.

"O-okay..." Yuna tapped the screen and it turned black.

"...?"

"Now bring it up to your ear!" While saying this, Cecil began to rapidly Manual Cast a silencing barrier around himself.

With the magic casted, he tried to shout, but no one could hear him. He then spoke into his MID and to Yuna's astonishment; she could actually hear his voice.

"Heya, Yuna! Can you hear me~?"

"Cecil? H-how come?"

"Ahahahaha~ so it worked! That's a relief!"

Once he found that the function he had installed on the new MIDs were working perfectly, Cecil dispelled the silencing barrier and he addressed his friends.

"I added a communication function to the MIDs! When it vibrates like earlier the name of the caller will show up on the screen and all you have to do is tap anywhere on the screen to accept the call, if you want to reject it, just simply tap anywhere on the back of the MID.

Now regardless of how far we are, as long as theirs mana in the environment, we'll be able to communicate with each other through our MIDs!"

Cecil smiled widely and took in the incredulous looks his friends gave him. Today, on the 27th day of the Month of Life, Livven; Cecil had successfully created a magi-tech tool that had similar functions with modern Earth's cellphones.

The first ever Alternian cellphones were created inside the Urrugdrasil Trials' Last Plaza, specifically inside of the Magi-tech building.