"Indeed, little Kirito was already remarkably talented when I first met him. His magical power far exceeded the average for our race, and his aptitude was quite high, but magic… he viewed it from a uniquely personal perspective." Serie slightly lifted one leg before leaning back more comfortably on the sofa.
The elf woman completely ignored the furious expression of the dragonmaid servant as she openly judged her own master.
"Hmm~ That's also why I decided to adopt him, after watching him teach himself for years. Was it just a whim on my part? I'm not really sure anymore," she said with a shrug.
'Yes, I adopted this child on a whim,' Serie thought to herself, before slumping nonchalantly onto the sofa and unable to hold back a small self-mocking chuckle.
Memories flashed through Serie's mind as she took another sip of Kirito's wine.
As it turned out, long before his encounter with the dragonmaid, Kirito had already been thriving without issue in this fantasy-like world.
Back then, he had transmigrated into the body of a deceased elf child, killed by a faulty hibernation spell cast by a desperate mother.
Upon waking, Ren became Kirito.
He wasn't greeted by a big-breasted goddess, but by a hostile forest.
He didn't know the exact age of his body, but later decided to treat that day as his birthday.
The young elf child wandered through the forest in the north of the continent until he stumbled upon a town.
At first, the town's appearance felt familiar to him, but he paid it no mind. He hid his abnormally long ears as best he could and slipped inside.
Kirito hadn't been a soldier or a criminal in his previous life, but hunger proved to be an excellent teacher.
He survived by pushing ethics to the back burner and relying on the magical knowledge inherited from his body.
He quickly rose to become the leader of a small gang, thanks to his leadership skills and magical power that far surpassed that of ordinary delinquents.
In just a few months, the elf child had become a notable figure in the town's underworld.
It wasn't until he turned eighteen that he gained regular access to magical knowledge, through frequent explorations of the dungeons in the region.
Perhaps it was due to the powerful legacy of Vegapunk, but Kirito possessed an exceptional gift for understanding magic and any other theoretical subject.
Even though his natural talent didn't reach Serie's standards, the young elf progressed smoothly until their fateful encounter in an alley.
Serie had long observed the elf who was slowly but surely taking control of her city.
Though Kirito's methods weren't ethical, Serie enjoyed watching how far an elf child was willing to go to survive and improve his magic.
At least, that was the official reason behind adopting Kirito.
…
In a basement that looked anything but fantasy-like, Kirito arrived in front of a door made of an unknown metal.
Pushing the door gently, he discovered an immaculately white interior, reminiscent of a laboratory straight out of a science-fiction movie.
With a white floor and various instruments evoking a futuristic setting, it felt as though one had traveled from a medieval world to a futuristic one.
After donning a white lab coat and skillfully starting up the various devices, Kirito summoned a holographic panel using his personal magic: Earkype.
(Image)
This magic originated from the world of Fairy Tail, though several magics exist with fragments of its properties.
Thus, Kirito had asked Serie to help him develop this magic.
"Thanks to the Earkype spell, I've also become something of a living pseudo-library," he thought as he read the database.
Earkype is a support-oriented magic, not purely combat-focused.
Back when Kirito first proposed the idea of creating this spell, Serie hadn't found it particularly useful.
An absurd notion, but Kirito quickly realized that Serie clearly had no need for such a spell in her daily life.
She was already a living library and possessed countless spells capable of managing and analyzing information. So why on earth invent a magic of this kind?
Even if Kirito wanted to create an all-in-one spell, it held no importance for her.
Nevertheless, she was interested in witnessing the birth of a new magic and assisted Kirito in the endeavor.
'…If only I had the blood of a powerful demon, like a chaos sage,' he mentally complained while observing the progress.
Thanks to Earkype, Kirito didn't need to read all the information inside his laboratory manually.
He could simply analyze the data and transfer it directly into his mind.
"This artificial devil fruit is barely passable—is that why Vegapunk considered Momonosuke's fruit a failure?" he wondered, looking at the finished product in his hands.
The artificial devil fruit of the Zoan type, fire dragon model, had been created using Ilulu's DNA.
This devil fruit had been more difficult to design than the Mythical Zoan-type human model elf fruit that Ilulu had consumed.
Unfortunately, the young elf hadn't been able to significantly reduce the failure rate when absorbing the fruit's power.
'Every artificial devil fruit has a failure rate during creation that I can't completely eliminate,' he thought as he examined his creation.
In the One Piece universe, artificial devil fruits potentially pose a danger to their consumer.
Not only would you be unable to swim due to the curse, but you might also develop no powers at all.
If that were the worst outcome, it would still be acceptable for Kirito, since he wasn't in One Piece and the sea curse didn't affect Ilulu.
The real problem lay in the risk of uncontrollable laughing fits caused by an artificial fruit.
Unconsciously, he glanced toward a rabbit that had consumed an ordinary Zoan model human devil fruit.
Unlike Ilulu, they had gained neither a humanoid form nor any special powers.
They had simply gone mad with inexplicable laughter.
That was why Kirito had no intention of eating the artificial fruit he had created without sufficiently high assurances to satisfy him.
He estimated the success rate for obtaining a power at around 50% upon consumption.
Even though Ilulu had only had 25% back then, Kirito preferred to wait a while longer.
After all, he was still young.
Adolescence itself was merely an elf over 50 years old.
The man in the white coat let out a helpless sigh, then casually tossed the devil fruit aside.
The revolutionary creation for this fantasy world rolled across the table before being stopped by a stack of books.
After cleaning his chemistry instruments and putting away other devil fruits that he deemed less important than the fire dragon model, the young elf's pupils suddenly contracted slightly upon noticing the appearance of a holographic panel similar to the one from his magic.
However, he had never summoned it even once.
"What the hell is this?" he said, narrowing his eyes.
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