Scarlet

The tanuki closes his eyes and lays his head down on his paws as he continues, “You either don’t know how to use your eyes properly yet, or you can’t use them yet because you’re not a high enough level. But you do seem to inherently be able to use your ears. And the ears of a blood lycan are some of the most powerful ears in the world. They’re also a point of pride for the blood lycans, and every blood lycan hates having their ears touched by anyone. So it’s not just you in that department.”

Huh. Interesting.

Why are my ears recognizable though?

“It’s not necessarily that your ears are clearly recognizable – which they are a bit, since blood lycans are the only species with red and black wolf ears in all of demon kind – it’s more so the presence of you having the ears with your eyes and hair. That makes it more clear to the blood lycans and even other higher up demons what you might be,” he says, still not opening his eyes.

So other higher up demons might be able to figure out what I am besides blood lycans?

The tanuki sluggishly shakes his head without picking it up.

“No. They’ll just believe you’re a human contractor – which is what the demons call Guardians – that got their own reality warped into having an appearance similar to a blood lycan. After all, you’re still missing their tail. And all blood lycans bring out their tail when in combat, since it’s a powerful weapon.”

Oh. That’s good then.

On that note, what happened with the reality warp anyways? I never really thought about asking till now.

This time, the tanuki opens his eyes and meets my own as he says, “Usually a Guardian’s magic will alter the human’s body within reality itself to better suit their magic. But in your case? Your magic is already inherently suited for your body after awakening as a half demon, since all blood lycans can use in terms of magic is blood magic. So the reality warping power given off by our contract went solely into initializing you into the System and holding back your demon genes from devouring your human genes.”

That’s not bad then. It’s nice to be alive after all.

It also means that none of my current features are actually from the contract, but rather from my blood lycan side.

Silence fills the room for several minutes as we wait for my mana to slowly regenerate.

“I really wish I had some sort of skill to increase my mana regeneration…” I mutter out loud, only for my eyes to widen at the mention of mana regeneration. So I raise my head slightly to look at the tanuki who has his head on his paws and his eyes closed as I ask, “What decides a person’s mana regeneration anyways? And their mana capacity, come to think of it. Since you never gave me an answer and I forgot to look it up.”

The tanuki cracks an eye open before glancing at me, sighing, and answering, “The mana stat is dependent on your power capability within your mental stat, and your capacity capability within your magical stat. Take your mental and magical stat and apply a multiplier depending on your capability while multiplying the two stats together, and there’s your total mana.”

I stare at Tar for several seconds before asking, “What’re the multipliers?”

He lets out a groan, making it clear how much he enjoys talking about math. But he answers nonetheless, “Tier E has a multiplier of 0.1, D a multiplier of 0.2, C 0.4, B 0.6, and A has a multiplier of 0.9. To figure out the multiplier that you have for your total mana, simply take the average multiplier between your multiplier for the power capability and capacity capability. Then multiply that with your mental and magical stats and you’ll get your mana stat.”

Oh. That’s annoyingly complicated yet simple at the same time.

If I remember correctly, didn’t I have a C for the power capability, and a B for capacity?

So that’d be a 0.4 and 0.6, which averages to 0.5. And 58 times 58 divided by 2 is… 1,682.

I open and glance at my status to make sure before closing out of it again.

Okay. That wasn’t very hard.

Now tell me about how to calculate my mana regeneration.

The tanuki just groans again.

I wait for several seconds, not willing to let this go. And after nearly half a minute of waiting, he finally answers, “Your mana regeneration is the average between the multipliers of your vitality capability of your physical stat and your power capability of your magical stat, multiplied by your magical stat. You will regenerate the resulting mana every twenty four hours naturally with nothing external affecting it.”

Okay. I had a B in vitality and an A in power for the magical stat, so that averages to 0.75.

Guess that means I naturally regenerate 75% of my mana every twenty four hours?

The tanuki doesn’t say anything, so I just take that as a confirmation.

You really do hate math, don’t you? Shouldn’t that be something that a prince should be good at?

“Just because I may or may not be good at it doesn’t mean I like it,” he offhandedly answers while floating in the air and then landing back down next to me while facing the other way as if pouting.

I can’t help but raise an eyebrow in amusement at that.

Who would’ve thought that the all-powerful – not really – prince of the fae has such a hatred for math? Maybe I should use it against him at some point?

The tanuki in question actually raises a paw and shows me something I never expected to see in my entire life.

A tanuki flipping me off.

My jaw drops open in shock.

He just chuckles at my shock before lowering his paw and seemingly going to sleep next to me as I stare at his still form.

Did… did that just happen?

Where did you even learn to do that? Or do they do that in the Farshore as well?

Oh. Right. He had a previous human contractor.

Either way, no answer comes from the tanuki, leaving me in silence as I stare at him.