His inquiry was met with raised brows and fingers pointing at him.

Sigh!

Zephyr looked at the spell book again.

"Okay, give me a few minutes." He walked to a chair placed in the inner hall of the house and sat down.

"A few minutes?" Both Aurelia and Elenor were confused.

"Would that be enough?"

"Of course." Zephyr nodded, closing his eyes.

With his exceptional mana control and greater mana quantity, engraving the runes was becoming easier. Zephyr could do it without much effort.

However, it was not the case for the ladies. To them, engraving a spell was a strenuous process that required their absolute concentration. Then they needed to look at and verify the part over and over again to know they didn't make any mistakes. After all, a single mistake could cause the spell to implode and for them to die.

So, all of it could take as much as an hour or several, depending on the size of the spell.

The 256-rune spell, Sensory Resonance, was a reasonably complex spell that would have taken them an hour to engrave. But to Zephyr, it was achievable in a few minutes.

This surprised the ladies.

Besides that, Zephyr was a one-star mage. His core should have been small. With spells already engraved, he would have to erase a few to fit the new one. Erasing a spell was also not supposed to be easy.

They looked at Zephyr, wondering whether he was bragging or if he had the capability.

Meanwhile, Zephyr closed his eyes and fell into a meditative trance. The first one of the 256 runic symbols was clear in his mind. It was repeated eight times along the spell.

Zephyr quickly brought eight cores from the central cluster that stored empty cores. Then, without a word, he engraved the runes one by one.

The first time engraving a rune was a little bit difficult. He came out of meditation to check whether he had correctly engraved it before returning and engraving the rest.

Then he switched his attention to another rune, repeating the previous steps.

Soon, he completely engraved all the cores he needed. From a simple estimate, it took him just over fifteen minutes to do all that.

Finally, his attention moved onto the overall structure of the spell.

Arranging the cores to the spell structure was easier than engraving the cores. He closed his eyes with a smirk and did it in about five minutes.

After doing all that, he opened his eyes.

"It's done," he said, breathing out the stuffy air in his lungs.

Aurelia and Elenor looked at him, perplexed. The speed was unparalleled.

"The tower didn't call you a genius for nothing," Aurelia commented, stupefied.

Elenor nodded from the side.

"No wonder he overcame a mana core disability."

Their words washed over Zephyr without affecting him. He never considered himself… No, that was a lie.

There was a time he considered himself a genius. But not anymore.

He was sure he was not a genius nor someone worth looking up to. Just like him, his methods were often flawed. To have this realization, he paid a price. And it was worth it since he found out he could grow and fix himself and his methods.

'Well… there is always a taller mountain. Perhaps not on the same planet, but out there in the solar system. Perhaps beyond the solar system.'

'Anyway, let's use the spell.'

"Elenor, go catch a dog. A small one would be enough," he ordered, standing up.

Elenor rolled her eyes. She was stating clearly that he had no authority to order her around.

"Then, let's go together."

"It's not necessary." She pointed her finger outside. "Moss already brought one."

"Oh! We are on the same wavelength."

Zephyr walked out of the house. The rest followed him.

—

'I am a dog, now!'

A few minutes later, Zephyr found himself inside the body of the greyhound.

To be precise, he was feeling as though he was in a single-player game, in the POV of the dog with a broken controller.

He could see what it saw. He could hear what it heard. He could feel the air brushing against its body. He could taste the raw fish it had a few minutes ago.

And more importantly, he could sense the smell of Tom.

Together, it almost made him puke. His original body, which lost all its senses, almost stumbled and fell. The instinct to move and balance his body was completely wrecked.

Elenor had to cast flight magic and make him float to bring him along. He couldn't walk at all.

"To the left… I can sense the stench to the left."

Human body odor was pungent. Whenever the dog moved its head left and right, Zephyr could feel Tom's odor falling onto his nose. With zig-zag movement, the dog tracked the smell introduced to it.

He looked in the direction, ordering the group to move.

Meanwhile, Moss was trembling, holding the leash of the dog. Now that he saw Zephyr casting magic, he realized the one-armed young man was also a mage, not a servant.

A mage, no matter the rank, was considered a noble. Zephyr, or Victor as he knew him, should also be a noble.

"Gulp."

'I was treating a mage disrespectfully.'

The thought made him wince.

'If he is angry, I could die.'

He felt a tingling sensation around his neck. He was thinking about the neck separating into two parts. Instantly, a cold shiver went down his spine.

Holding the leash tightly, he prayed that Zephyr would forgive him.

Meanwhile, Zephyr felt the mana deplete faster as the dog ran forward. A continuous stream of mana was connecting the dog with him. The mana required was changing depending on their proximity.

When it was close by, it only consumed 1 core of mana per second. It was similar to the mana gathering rate.

"Moss, keep the dog close," he ordered, preventing it from running away.

"Okay," Moss yelped.

For the next few minutes, the dog occasionally sniffed the used clothes of Tom and ran around the village, following each path he took.

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