When Emilia had first learned the void formula, all she required of it was to regain her body, and perhaps be a little stronger than she used to be. Of course, there had always been a faint expectation for more, but the crimson-haired girl wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
With time, however, her comprehension of the void formula increased, and so did her understanding of what could and could not be done using chaos energy. Once her first mission was completed and she had this ‘fuel’ in hand, Emilia’s first priority was naturally to try and see if all the ideas she had before would work or not.
As Cynthia watched in disbelief, the tendrils of crimson energy continued swirling around Emilia’s arm and condensed into a small seed in her palm that slowly grew in size.
Once the tiny seed had grown to almost the size of a tennis ball, the crimson-haired girl closed her palm gently, and the excess energy instantly stopped pouring into the ball.
After trying to cling to her hands and legs, like a petulant child refusing to let go of their mother, the remnants of the crimson energy finally flew back to the giant orb in front of them.
Cynthia watched blankly as her partner swirled a finger around the big orb in her palm, and instantly compressed it to a small bead no bigger than a grape.
Emilia smiled as she pressed the crimson grape into Cynthia’s palm. “Can you guess what this is?”
The raven-haired girl already had a thousand and one questions swirling in her head, but she could only frown and sink consciousness into the bead.
It only took her a moment to figure out its purpose. ‘I-It’s… using the shapeshift skill…? No… i-it’s different?!’
Emilia giggled as she watched her partner’s head swivel back to her in shock as soon as she realized what the bead in her hand was. “So, am I good or what?”
Cynthia pointed a finger at her in disbelief. “Y-You…!”
The crimson-haired girl raised a brow with a smile. “Mhm?”
Although she was shocked, looking at the girl’s teasing and proud smile, Cynthia almost made up her mind to ignore the whole thing and never ask.
In the end, however, there’s no way she could live without knowing what was going on, so the raven-haired girl could only grit her teeth in anger. “What the hell is going on? Where did you learn how to do these things?!”
Emilia flicked back her long crimson locks haughtily. “Why, I came up with this by myself, obviously?”
The smug face of her gorgeous partner really made Cynthia wish to conjure a brick and smash it in, but there was no way she could actually do so, which only made her more angry. “Don’t joke around! Do you know how long it took me to learn how to manipulate chaos energy into usable techniques by myself?!”
Emilia blinked at her innocently. “Um… no? How long did it take?”
Cynthia was immediately dumbfounded. “I-I… “
It had been so long, how could she be bothered to remember such trivial things? But it was also impossible to admit it now…
”I-It doesn’t matter! A-Anyway, i-it should definitely be impossible for you to learn it by yourself so quickly!”
Emilia frowned as she scratched her cheek in confusion. “Why not?”
Cynthia couldn’t help but sigh, trying her best to calm herself down. Her partner wasn’t doing it on purpose… probably. But the way the energy flowed before made no sense, and the raven-haired girl knew she wasn’t without enemies. This was why she absolutely had to verify the source of this technique, for both their sake. “Emilia… don’t mess around, okay? Tell me where you learned it from!”
The crimson-haired girl sighed as she placed her palms on her angry partner’s cheeks before squeezing. “Why do you not believe me? Have I ever lied to you?”
Hearing the disappointment in her voice, Cynthia couldn’t help but feel a prick in her heart, and her previously uncompromising stare wavered. “…W-Well, i-if you really came up with it… t-then… explain it to me?”
Emilia grinned. “Sure!”
Ever since she had first started using the shapeshift ability, for her, the restriction of having to wait for eight hours to use it again had always been its most fatal flaw.
Not only did it prevent her from using it more flexibly, such as switching between different types of forms according to the need, but it also made using the ability completely impossible at other times.
For example, if Emilia knew that she needed to use the ability at a particular point in time, she could absolutely not afford to use it for eight hours leading up to that point.
As someone who liked to be prepared for emergencies, this naturally prevented her from making full use of the shapeshift skill at all, which made Emilia extremely annoyed.
She had been a little helpless about it before, when she hadn’t yet had any chaos energy to use for herself, and had no understanding of it. Once Emilia went through the absorption phase after completing her mission, however, things were no longer the same.
While she was still absorbing energy, her body was in a state where she could even use the shapeshift ability continuously if she wanted to, making the cooldown completely irrelevant for the duration.
Knowing that the cooldown wasn’t just some arbitrary restriction that Cynthia placed on her for fun, Emilia was interested in both figuring out how why it wasn’t such a problem during those few hours, and more importantly… how she could make it work for herself.
Cynthia could only gape at her partner in disbelief as she listened to the girl proudly explain how she had figured out how to modify the original energy channeling patterns of her shapeshift skill to create what she had, what restrictions it currently had, as well as what she planned to do in the future.
The raven-haired girl quickly shook her head in denial. “N-No, wait! How you figure out what should be done isn’t important! But how did you actually managed to do it?!”
Emilia tilted her head in confusion. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
Cynthia almost blew her top on the spot. “No it’s not! Just because you know that you must change the energy flow in a certain way doesn’t mean you can just do it?!”
The crimson-haired girl gave her a confused look. “Um… I’m not sure I understand…?”
Cynthia couldn’t help but grit her teeth in frustration. “Are you trying to piss me off on purpose? To make the chaos energy flow in a certain way, what we need to do is force it through prepared pathways first!”
Emilia blinked. “Don’t you just have to express what you want it to do, and then it just works?”
”No?! Look!”
With a wave of her hand, some of the crimson energy from the orb was forcibly plucked out and flew to Cynthia’s palm, who calmly made it change into various shapes before handing it over to her partner. “Try doing what I just did.”
Emilia didn’t understand what Cynthia was trying to do, but did as she was told anyway.
The raven-haired girl’s serious expression quickly turned ugly as she watched Emilia imitate what she had done with seemingly no effort.
In fact, not only did the tiny bubble of energy rapidly sift through all the shapes that Cynthia had made, it even bubbled afterwards as if eagerly anticipating Emilia’s next ‘play’.
”H-How…?!”
Not only were the transitions smoother, but Cynthia could even feel that the normally omnipresent vibration in chaos energy whenever it was being actively manipulated was no longer there once it was in Emilia’s palm.
The raven-haired girl could no longer deny that Emilia’s manipulation of chaos energy wasn’t just ‘good’, but completely different from her own!
The difference between how the two of them did it was like night and day. If Cynthia was someone dragging a dog by its leash against its will, then Emilia was like someone who simply had to give an order and the little puppy would dash off to get it done on its own. They couldn’t be compared at all!
”How did you make chaos energy work for you like that? Isn’t it inherently volatile and impossible to control?!”
Emilia tilted her head in confusion. “What are you talking about? It’s like an obedient, lovely little child. As long as you treat it gently and carefully, it will do everything on its own.”
Had there been any actual blood in her current form, Cynthia was sure that she would have already coughed some out from the continuous blows to her pride.
But there was no way that Emilia wasn’t telling her the truth either. After all, everything that happened was clear for her to see, and no matter how Cynthia wanted to deny it, there was no way she could do so.
Begrudgingly, she could only try to imitate what Emilia had told her, and gently coaxed the chaos energy like a little child, instructing it to come into her palm without forcing her will.
And to her shock, joy, and disbelief, a tiny drop of chaos energy actually separated from the giant orb. Even if it was small, it proved that what Emilia said would actually work!
But before she could celebrate, the tiny drop smacked her on the face before floating back into the orb, which proceeded to vibrate as if laughing before going back to serenity.
Cynthia felt like she had been spat on and mocked, and almost directly fainted from rage. “Emilia?!”
The crimson-haired girl coughed, doing her best to hide her amused smile as she patted her petite partner’s head in consolation. “W-Well… d-don’t worry, I’ll help you figure it out?”
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