Yesterday, on my way home, I was so worried I couldn’t even take my usual nap on the carriage. After talking with Keith, though, I felt so relieved that I slept like a baby until Anne came to wake me up. After getting out of bed and into the hallway, I saw Keith.
“Good morning, Keith! Thank you for yesterday,” I said, walking toward him.
“Oh, Big Sister, good morning,” he replied, but, when he turned around to face me, I noticed two big dark circles under his eyes.
“Keith, what’s wrong?! Did you stay up all night because of what I told you last night?!” Maybe talking about my fears made him worried too.
“No, don’t worry. I was awake till morning, yes, but it had nothing to do with you,” he assured me, shaking his head.
I was relieved that at least it wasn’t my fault, but this didn’t change the fact that he’d been up all night. “But you still had something that worried you so much that you couldn’t sleep, right? When you let me vent to you yesterday, that helped a lot, so I’ll do the same with you! I can’t do much more than listen to you, but I’ll do my best.” I proudly beat my fist against my chest.
“Hmm… I’m not worried about anything though. Actually, I couldn’t sleep because of how happy I was. So, really, I’m fine.” He giggled.
Oh, kind of like a kid on the day before a school trip?
“What made you so happy?” I asked, curious.
“Isn’t it about time you go to work? You’d better hurry up, or you’ll be late.” Keith ignored my question as he pushed me toward the entrance. “See you later, Big Sister,” he added, leaving me no time to speak before he closed the door behind me with a terribly sensual smile on his face.
Seeing Keith show an expression so sexy that you’d think he belonged to an M-rated game—and seeing it first thing in the morning, no less—left me totally confused. He must have been very happy. Thankfully, I had built enough of a resistance to handsome guys doing handsome things that, halfway through the carriage trip to the Ministry, I finally got my cool back.
I can’t space out like this! I have to concentrate! I’m going to learn Dark Magic today!
Unable to focus, I thought of Keith again. He wasn’t the playboy type, but he was just as attractive as all the other romanceable options in Fortune Lover. In the past few years, in particular, he had bloomed into a man so attractive as to remind me of Nicol.
I can’t have Alluring Count Number 2 living in my house. I’ll have to tell Keith to tone the sexy down a bit.
I eventually reached the Ministry, got off the carriage, thanked the coachman, and headed to the Magical Tool Laboratory office. As soon as I opened the door, Larna greeted me.
“Good morning, Lady Katarina. I reserved the same room as yesterday for you. Go and learn to your heart’s content!”
I noticed that she had something around her ankle. A better look revealed that it was a chain with its other end connected to her desk.
What exactly is this…?
“Excuse me, Miss Larna… What is that on your ankle?”
“Oh, this? It’s made of a special metal that’s very strong but also very light, so that it doesn’t interfere with my work. We’d built it for Nathan, but today, since Raphael isn’t here, they put it on me so that I don’t get away and leave them with all the work! Ha ha ha!” she replied with a hearty laugh, although to me it sounded like no laughing matter.
I could understand why they’d want to put a chain on Nathan, as he had the incredible ability of getting lost within seconds, causing everyone in the department lots of trouble. But Larna? The department’s director? The other employees had so little trust in her that, despite the chain, I could see them occasionally taking their eyes off their desks to check on their boss. They really had it hard.
“Give this document to Larna, and this one over here too. As for this one…” Raphael was giving orders left and right. Today, instead of working in the office as usual, he would be teaching me Dark Magic.
He was the department’s vice-director, but I thought that nobody would complain about having him as the director.
“I will be leaving now. Let me know if you need me for anything,” he concluded, before turning around to approach me. “Shall we go?” he asked.
“Yes!” I replied, and we headed to the room that Larna had arranged for us.
“It’s been a while since we last met like this, Lady Katarina,” Raphael told me while we were walking together.
“Yes, quite a while…” I said, noticing the woman passing by and staring in awe at Raphael’s calm, handsome smile. Speaking of handsome, Raphael, with his red hair and gray eyes, was a secret romanceable character in FL1.
He had to be in disguise most of the time, but even his fake, not-as-flashy appearance didn’t change the fact that he was very popular within the Ministry, mainly because of his calm and understanding personality and his skill with work. He, too, sometimes showed hints of sexiness in his facial expressions that made the girls around him swoon.
In general though, he was so busy with work that he always looked tired, and he was mostly hidden behind stacks of documents anyway. Maybe life at the Ministry was easier for him than it was back at the academy, where he was ridiculously popular. After he left the academy because of the incident he was involved in, we somehow ended up working together, but he had so much to do (mostly because of Larna) that I could never spend time with him.
Doing something together after so long makes me feel like I’m back at the academy, I happily thought to myself. He also used to help me study back there, where he was the kind and reliable student council president.
“By the way,” I spoke up, “since today you’re the teacher and I’m the student, you don’t need to call me ‘Lady.’” Even though he was my superior at work, he always spoke very politely to me, but having him do the same today would feel too weird.
He looked surprised at first, but then he smiled and told me, “Okay then, Katarina.”
No wonder he was so popular.
“I am going to explain the basics of Dark Magic to you, but I also made some notes so that you can refer to them after we’re done,” he continued, handing me some papers covered in his beautiful handwriting clearly detailing all that one would need to study the topic.
Raphael was born to be a teacher! What a difference from yesterday’s swishes and whooshes…
“Thank you, Mister Raphael!” I rejoiced, deciding that he was worthy of being addressed like a real teacher.
“I think that’s going overboard…” he muttered, looking bitterly amused. Judging from his reaction, I thought that I’d better cut the ‘Mister.’
And so, my first proper Dark Magic lesson finally started.
“Now, let me explain,” Raphael began.
“Yes!”
At first, he explained about the most basic stuff, like how one obtains Dark Magic powers, which was something I already knew. One had to sacrifice a human life and perform a ritual with some sort of magic circle. Remembering Raphael’s tragic story about that very ritual made me sad, but he went on explaining completely unfazed.
“What we know about how to obtain Dark Magic powers, we have learned from investigating the Dieke mansion and Sora’s case. You’re the first person who did it by finding a Dark Familiar instead. So, please understand that you may not be able to use your powers in the same way as Sora and I,” he cautioned.
“Of course.”
Of course indeed. Even Larna had told me the same thing before. I didn’t know how it happened in the game’s actual plot, but in my case I had stumbled upon Dark Magic without meaning to do it, and certainly hadn’t performed any ritual. I just met the Dark Familiar (Pochi) who belonged to Sarah, a mysterious woman who wielded Dark Magic, and he started living in my shadow.
“Good. Now I am going to tell you how I actually used Dark Magic.”
“Yes!” I answered, and he looked at me with a pleased smile.
“How do you normally use your powers, Katarina?” he asked me.
“You mean Earth Magic? I just go ziiip, and then kind of kaplow!”
Wait, this is the same useless explanation I gave yesterday… A list of sounds.
Raphael, however, didn’t get mad at me at all. “I see… And do you feel like you are doing that with your body? Or is it a tool or something?” he inquired. Larna and Sora had asked me nothing of the sort.
I’d never really thought about it before, but… “I think it’s my body.”
“That’s good,” he replied, relieved. “That is how I do it too. I consider magic powers like extra limbs. Some of the teachers at the academy also used similar comparisons, saying that using magic is not much different from moving your body. I believe that this holds true for most people.”
I was impressed by how much intelligent students were able to learn from lessons at the academy. I mostly just nodded along and forgot anything I was told within minutes.
“But, when I use Dark Magic,” Raphael continued, “it’s a bit different. It’s like using my hands and feet to control a tool.”
“How so?”
“Imagine using a pen to write, or scissors to cut paper.”
“Oh…” I gasped, in awe at how much clearer his explanation was than everything I had heard on the previous day. That’s Raphael for you…
“You cannot use Dark Magic as you would your other powers. I try to concentrate on an imaginary tool, thinking of using it to cast my spells. In my case, specifically, it was a lantern. Try to do the same,” he instructed.
Given that my current level of understanding was “Concentrate it in your hand, like buzzzz, and then let it go like whoosh,” I really needed this practical advice. The way that Raphael had put it was clear and easy to understand, if a bit surprising.
“Does it need to be any specific tool?”
“Not necessarily. But it must be something that you feel could help you cast Dark Magic.”
“Why is yours a lantern anyway?” I asked him.
“Hmm, no reason in particular.” I could tell from his expression that he didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t investigate any further. I had heard part of his story directly from him, but I was sure that there were a lot of terrible things about it that I didn’t know about. It was incredible that he still had the strength to smile like that while talking about Dark Magic.
I wish I was half as incredible as him… I guess I have to start with learning how to use Dark Magic. But what kind of tool should I use? In my old world, the first thing you’d think of when talking about magic tools would be a flying broom, but that doesn’t really apply in this world. Hmm, what about a wand? That sounds pretty magical.
I visualized a shiny, sparkling wand with a star on the tip, like the ones that anime heroines used, but then I realized that it looked way out of place. We were talking about Dark Magic here, with my Dark Familiar being a black dog who was able to turn into a huge wolf. What I needed was a black, creepy wand, like the one a villain would use. Instead of the star, it needed a skull on the tip.
“Okay! I got it!” I announced after visualizing the new dark wand.
“Very good. Now try to think of it as if it were right in front of your eyes.”
“All right,” I agreed, imagining the wand, in all its details, in front of my eyes. Suddenly, I heard a whoosh noise and something, too dark to distinguish, jumped out of my shadow and right into my hand. “H-Huh?!” I looked to my hand, and there it was: the wand I was thinking about, skull and all. “I-Is this…real?” I mumbled to myself, and noticed that Raphael, too, was staring at my hand.
“Wh-What…?!” he asked, before going speechless. After a while, he asked, “Is this the tool you were thinking about?” looking dead serious.
I nodded, still shocked, and he put a hand to his forehead.
“You have a Dark Familiar, and that makes you different from us other Dark Magic users… I knew that much. But this… This I didn’t expect. The tool you imagined has actually materialized,” he continued, without for a second taking his eyes off the wand. “I wonder if I can touch it too…”
“Go ahead,” I offered, handing it over to him.
“It seems that I can. But why? What is this even made of?”
Feeling a bit less nervous now that I didn’t have the wand in my hands anymore, I looked at it again. Between the skull, the color, and its general appearance, it looked very scary.
Ugh, I knew it. I should have gone with the cute one. This is going to make me look even more like a villainess!
“Thank you,” Raphael said, giving the wand back to me. “I would like to learn more about it. Will you help me?”
I nodded again. I remembered being told the same thing about Pochi—when dealing with mysterious stuff, it was important to learn as much as possible about it.
Raphael gave me a series of instructions, like trying to materialize other objects or to make the wand disappear. I found out that the skull wand was the only thing I could materialize, maybe because its image had been burned into my mind. However, I could put it back into my shadow and take it out at will.
“I see. You can take it out of your shadow and put it back in as many times as you want, but you cannot produce any other object. I’ll have to report to Miss Larna…” Raphael mused as he took notes. “Your powers are really different from ours,” he added, looking slightly worried, “so you should be careful. Do you feel all right?”
After making a new discovery like this, Larna would have started going forward with experiments and tests without worrying about anything, but Raphael was coolheaded enough to remain calm. This was another reason why most people—including me—liked him and always relied on him.
“Yes! No problem at all,” I replied.
“I’m glad.” His face showed that he meant it. “Now we can try to see whether this tool allows you to use Dark Magic.”
“Sure. But…how?”
Dark Magic was used to control people’s minds. Even if the wand enabled me to do it, I didn’t want to do something that scary. I nervously clenched a fist in front of my chest.
“Don’t worry. I won’t have you control people or anything like that,” Raphael assured me, guessing what I was thinking. “That’s not something to be done lightly anyway.” His kind smile relieved me of my fear.
“What do I have to do then?”
“Dark Magic can do more than control people. It can also summon darkness,” he explained.
“What does that mean?”
“You literally create darkness in front of your eyes. Since we can see it, it’s easy to tell whether you succeeded, and since I’ve tried it myself, I know that it’s safe. It’s perfect for training your powers.”
“Oh! It’s like Dark Magic for dummies!”
“More or less, yes,” Raphael giggled. “So, do you want to try?”
“Yes!” I firmly grasped the wand and visualized my magic coming out of it. “Come forth, Darkness!” I shouted, flicking my wrist.
I waited. “Huh?”
Weird. Nothing’s happening. Let’s try again.
“Come forth, Darkness!”
Nope. Nothing.
“This isn’t working…” I told Raphael in disappointment. He thought for a bit before speaking.
“Maybe you should try to visualize the darkness itself,” he suggested. Once again, his instructions were clear and easy to understand.
Got it—I have to visualize darkness. What does darkness look like? Like black paint?
“Raphael… What does darkness look like?” I asked, and he stared at me in surprise before giggling to himself.
“Oh, right, you wouldn’t know,” he said, still laughing. Seeing a handsome man laughing like that made me blush for some reason.
“Hmm… Would something like black paint work?”
“Not quite. Try to think of, let’s see… What about a dark, starless night?”
“Okay!” I answered, positive that I could visualize something so easy.
A dark night, without any stars, moon, or lamps. Pitch black. It’s too dark to even sneak into the kitchen to grab a few cookies… Good. I got it. This is the image I need.
“Come forth, Darkness!” I shouted once again, flailing the wand around. “Oh…?”
In front of me, where there used to be nothing, there was now a floating dark dot, smaller than a grape. It was so tiny that I thought I just had something stuck in my eyes, but, even after rubbing on them, the dot remained there.
Is it a bug then?
I tried getting closer, but the dot didn’t move, and upon closer inspection it didn’t look like a bug at all. Just a dark, featureless circle.
“Is this…Dark Magic?” I mumbled, confused.
“Most likely.”
“I was expecting the whole room to turn dark or something… This is a bit underwhelming.” What was even the point of summoning this itsy bitsy piece of darkness?
“Hmm…” Raphael pondered the matter, looking particularly distressed. “When I tried it, the whole room did turn dark…”
It took a moment for this to sink in. “Does this mean that my powers are lousy?! Not only the Earth Magic ones, but the Dark Magic ones too?!”
It was a very sad realization that, after finally finding a new spell that wasn’t Dirt Bump, what I’d got was Dark Bump.
“This is your first time trying it out, so it’s no surprise that you aren’t good at it yet. But you can even materialize a physical object out of thin air, so I’m sure that with some practice your spells will become very powerful in no time.” Raphael tried to soften the blow, but…
“So was it this small the first time you tried it?” I asked.
He just smiled awkwardly.
I might have been dense, but not that dense. I knew he probably made the whole room go dark on his first try. If only I had his talent… However, I understood how important practice was. After years of training, my Dirt Bump had grown a bit too. Thankfully, Raphael was also good at motivating people: he praised me for being able to summon darkness on my first day (even though it was tiny) and convinced me to keep trying so that I could learn to do it even better.
I’m going to train so hard and become so good! I promised myself, and so my Dark Magic training finally began for real.
“It’s gotten late, so we will stop here for today,” Raphael declared, and I was surprised to notice just how long we’d been in the room. My schedule said that I had to learn Dark Magic in the morning, and then, in the afternoon, go back to deciphering the Dark Covenant. The higher-ups wanted me to juggle both of these tasks at the same time, and I assumed that they didn’t want Raphael, who was already busy, to have these lessons take up his whole day.
“Okay. Thank you!” I said, grateful at how he had not only taught me how to use my first Dark Magic spell, but also praised me—despite the very poor results—making me feel very good about myself. He was an awesome teacher.
While we were getting ready to leave, Larna rushed into the room.
“How’d it go? Did you manage to use it? Dark Magic, I mean!” She was out of breath from running here, and had anticipation written all over her face. Poor Larna couldn’t help it; she just liked magic that much.
“Yes. Katarina is a very good learner, and she has already been able to successfully cast a spell,” Raphael, in all of his kindness, answered.
“It’s all because you’re such a good teacher,” I corrected him, but he humbly refused the compliment.
“I knew it,” Larna crowed. Despite having done nothing to help, she looked very proud of herself.
“Now show me this new spell of yours, would you?” she demanded. She was trying to make it sound like an important order from a superior, but her expression made it clear that she had just asked me out of curiosity.
“Of course,” I replied, starting to visualize the skull wand in my mind and finding it in my hand moments later.
“What is this?!” she screamed, jumping toward me to take a closer look at the wand. Her enthusiasm made me recoil a little bit.
“I was going to report this to you later…” Raphael chimed in, and he went on to explain our findings from that day.
Larna, more excited than I had ever seen her before, was bombarding us with questions: “Can other people touch it too?!” “How does it work?!” and so on.
Thankfully, the always reliable Raphael was there to answer her, because I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the ridiculous speed of Larna’s questions.
Hearing Raphael’s explanation and examining the wand had mostly satisfied Larna’s curiosity. “Now show me some magic,” she insisted.
“Come forth, Darkness!” I chanted, using the wand to make the tiny dark dot appear.
“Huh?” Larna looked at the dot, confused.
Raphael’s compliments had almost made me forget a very important fact: my powers were terribly weak. I couldn’t blame Larna for her reaction, since mine had been exactly the same. She even started rubbing her eyes and walking closer to the dot just as I had.
Ugh, she must be so disappointed…
“Hahahaha! This is great! Dark Magic can summon such a thing out of nowhere! Interesting,” she chortled, before starting another round of rapid-fire questions: “Is it okay to touch it?” “How does that materialize?” and so on.
I was very relieved to see that she didn’t look the least bit disappointed.
Phew. Now all I have to do is give my best and practice this. And after lunch, I also have to work on the covenant…
★★★★★★
I, Raphael Wolt, was tasked with teaching Katarina Claes how to use Dark Magic.
I already knew that she had been told to study it, but who could have expected that I would be chosen as her teacher? Well… Me. I thought that it was likely to happen, since the person currently in charge of doing so was Sora, who, despite his great talent, wasn’t exactly the best at passing on his knowledge to others. He learned by feel rather than through logic and reason, which is why, when asked to explain something, he usually resorted to gestures and sound effects.
Maybe he was too talented for his own good: he immediately succeeded at anything he tried without thinking about it, making it impossible for him to relay his learning process. This was also true of Larna, my superior…and of most other people in my department.
On the other hand, Katarina wasn’t the logical reasoning type either, so I thought that there was a chance that things would work out. They did not. What took me by surprise was that it only took one day for everyone involved to admit their failure. I wasn’t sure whether to commend how resolute they were in realizing their mistake or reprimand them for how quick they were in giving up. Either way, I was told that teaching Katarina was now my responsibility.
Giving her lessons wasn’t a problem for me, and if anything I was glad that I could spend some time with her after so long. What was a problem was the amount of work weighing on my shoulders. This was mostly the fault of the department head, Larna. She was incredibly talented, and she always covered for her subordinates’ mistakes. However, once something caught her attention, she had the tendency to focus on that and forget about her work.
When the Ministry took me in after the incident I was involved in a few years ago, Larna was the only one who accepted me, inviting me to her department, instead of treating me like an outcast. I tried my best to repay her with my hard work, and I was eventually promoted, upon my colleagues’ recommendations, to vice-director of the department.
I didn’t want to disappoint those who had recommended me for that position, and I started working even harder to make up for Larna’s absenteeism. People eventually started joking about me being the real department director—and some newcomers even genuinely mistook me for it—and before I knew it I was in charge of most everything going on in the Magical Tool Laboratory.
Given this situation, I could hardly ever afford to leave the office. While I was teaching Katarina, Larna would need to take my place (which was actually hers to begin with) overseeing the department. She was sorely disappointed about being unable to see Dark Magic being taught, something that she was very interested in, but I eventually convinced her by promising a detailed report. Just in case, before giving out some final instructions to the other employees, I literally chained her to her desk. Once everything was prepared, Katarina and I made for the room that had been set up for us.
Katarina was once a schoolmate of mine, and when I found out that she would be working in the same department as I do, I was overjoyed. I had feared that, after confessing my crimes and my false identity, I would never be able to see her again. Luckily, fate proved me wrong. I was too busy to actually talk to her, but just knowing that we were sharing an office made me happy. As much as I tried to hide it, this rare occasion to actually interact with her had me particularly excited, even though it was just for work. I had to be careful not to break into a silly smile, and when Katarina declared that, for today, I did not need to call her “Lady,” that is exactly what I ended up doing. We had not yet started and I was barely keeping myself together already.
Once we reached the room, I handed her my notes and started explaining some basic concepts, even though I assumed she already knew them. A few years ago, I would have never been able to speak so calmly about the process involved in obtaining Dark Magic powers. What happened to me when I was still a child had traumatized me. It was Katarina who, by reaching out to me, made my wounds start to heal. Things had slowly improved to the point where now those past events didn’t bother me anymore, nor did those terrible nightmares.
I told her that her powers were likely different from either mine or Sora’s, and then I explained how Dark Magic is exerted through an imaginary tool rather than from one’s body. I told her to visualize a tool, and when asked for an example, I told her what mine was: a lantern.
Confused, she asked me why I thought of a lantern. Indeed, lanterns didn’t elicit any image of magic. For me, however, when I first realized I had Dark Magic powers and I thought of how to use them, that was the first thing that came to mind. When I was dragged into that dark room against my will, the only source of light showing me my surroundings was a single lantern. I associated that sight with Dark Magic itself.
But I didn’t want to tell her that, so I tried to dodge the question. She seemed to understand, and didn’t press further. Katarina could give off the impression of acting without ever thinking, but she knew which topics to avoid in order not to make someone sad. She also immediately noticed when the people around her were in need, and she quickly offered them help. I was one of the many that she had saved.
As I watched Katarina think of a tool, I thought that such a bleak, grim concept as Dark Magic did not fit her. At the same time, I believed that she had the power to take the bleakness and grimness out of it.
“All right,” she announced after deciding on a tool, and, incredibly, something jumped out of her shadow and into her hand.
It was a black stick with a poor rendition of a skull on its tip. Katarina mumbled to herself, surprised by what had happened, but I was even more shocked. Words failed me.
What in the world did I just witness?! I thought, but I quickly realized that the strange object must have been the tool that Katarina imagined. When asked if that was indeed the case, she nodded at me.
She somehow managed to materialize an object out of nothing…
This was all too unexpected. I nervously looked at the stick in her hand. It was peculiar in its shape, but it was clearly visible and seemingly complete.
When I voiced my question of whether someone other than her would be able to touch the object, she handed it to me. I slowly reached for it, asking myself whether it would disappear as soon as I touched it. It didn’t disappear or break, and it felt exactly like one would have expected it to. It had nothing out of the ordinary, except maybe for the fact that, despite looking like it was made out of wood, it was weirdly light. I tried examining it more closely, but my confusion remained.
I will need help from another department to investigate this further.
I thanked Katarina, who seemed to have recovered from her own shock, and gave her back the tool, telling her that I wanted to learn more about it. We experimented for a while and found out that she could not materialize any other objects, but that she could hide this one back in her shadow. After writing as much in my notes, I asked her whether she felt well—we did not have much data on Dark Magic, and it was imperative to pay attention to the health of those wielding it. This went double for Katarina, who often put in a lot of effort without any care for how it could affect her. Thankfully, she told me that she was all right, and she did not look tired or sick in any way.
I suggested that she try casting an actual spell, and her face suddenly turned dark as she asked what kind of spell that would be. I could tell what she was thinking. Someone as kind as her was obviously opposed to controlling people’s minds, which was what Dark Magic was mainly known for. I reassured her that we would not be doing that, and her frown quickly changed into a smile. Relieved, I explained that all we would do is summon darkness, listing the reasons why this was ideal for our purposes.
“Oh! It’s like Dark Magic for dummies!” she blurted out. I could not help but laugh.
She looked full of energy as she summoned forth darkness, practically screaming, but her spell did absolutely nothing. She tried a few times with no improvement, and finally looked at me as if to seek help. Then she asked me something surprising: “What does darkness look like?”
I was stunned by how ridiculous, yet so befitting of her, that question was. While I was still laughing, she asked me if imagining black paint would work, making it even funnier for me. I gave her a more applicable example, namely that of a starless night. She seemed to finally understand, took the tool in her hand, and flicked it while shouting her summons once again.
Why is she flicking that stick anyway? Is it like an orchestra conductor’s baton?
A tiny orb of darkness appeared in front of a very confused Katarina. She looked at it and asked me whether that was indeed Dark Magic; it probably was, even though it was very different from when I tried to use that spell.
“I was expecting the whole room to turn dark or something… This is a bit underwhelming,” she lamented, and I had to agree, as I was anticipating a much larger orb of darkness.
I wouldn’t have blamed her for thinking that this spell was completely useless, but to convince her otherwise, I told her that I had used it to do exactly that: make the whole room turn dark. This seemed to shock her.
“Does this mean that my powers are lousy?! Not only the Earth Magic ones, but the Dark Magic ones too?!”
Realizing that I had made a terrible mistake, I nervously tried to fix what I could by telling her that she just needed practice to improve. That wasn’t a lie either—Dark Magic powers could be made stronger through training.