Game of Monsters - 195

I Wanna Teach You Right from Wrong Nothing quite like the training room to work on something if the silence or calm music of his studio were

I Wanna Teach You Right from Wrong

Nothing quite like the training room to work on something if the silence or calm music of his studio weren’t doing the trick for him. Which, to be fair, Joshua didn’t often manage to get a lot done there, funnily enough. That is, unless he was mostly reading through the books there and from his library.

If he needed to actually think instead of just processing new information, then the chaotic nature of… literally anywhere else worked much better. It kept his brain from shutting off or going into useless tangents. After all, if there was something to snap him out of his thoughts every so often, then he was less likely to waste time thinking about something completely unrelated to what he was working on.

The fact that this allowed him to spend time with friends and family was very much appreciated too, he’d admit.

Otherwise, he was sure he wouldn’t see a lot from any of them, even living in the same place. He had a lot to work on, after all, so he spent most of his day tinkering and brainstorming. If he did that in seclusion, then he’d be even more antisocial than he’d already been before magic, which was saying something.

Speaking of interruptions, those idle musings came to a stop when Nagini shifted. That was very distracting, considering he was lying on her like she was the world’s deadliest pouf. Looking up from the notebook he’d kind of been ignoring for a bit, Joshua raised an eyebrow at his snake familiar. Not that she looked at him, but he sent the general feel of it through their bond for good measure anyway.

“You can join them if you want,” he pointed out, turning to follow the basilisk’s gaze towards the battlefield where Raynare and Kuroka were having a spar session against Jeanne, Meredith and Margalo. He had started bringing his first official apprentice to his place for training ever since the vampire thing. It’d help her develop further and it made him feel less like he was neglecting his duties.

At least everyone else was just unofficial apprentices, even if he should be treating them equally. It helped that Meredith was the only one properly battle-oriented. She also benefited less from his classes than the rest of the Stars did. She gained more from practical sessions such as that one, so he was providing her with that too. All the same, he’d already told Ravel to make sure everyone else got good job offers and such to keep the benefits well spread out between his pseudo-apprentice group.

He still didn’t know why the devil had found that so funny though.

“Come on, it’s written all over your face, Nagini,” he said, unimpressed when the snake continued to visibly struggle with her decision. She was a battle maniac, who was she trying to fool? “Morag and I can keep each other company while you and Cheshire go and have fun,” he added, glancing towards his feline familiar. She was generally less interested in battles, but she liked indulging in those every so often. Seemed like that was one such time, if he was reading her emotions well.

With some hissing grumbles that Joshua really didn’t know the reason for, his gigantic serpentine familiar slithered off towards the field.

“Big sis is silly,” Morag commented, giggling as she crawled up to where he’d been left standing and then climbing on his back to hang onto him in what had to be one of the weirdest piggy backs ever. “You’re busy?”

“Kind of, yeah,” he said, giving her a weary, apologetic smile over his shoulder.

“It’s fine,” she replied, even though her mood dampened somewhat. “I can wait until Kunou is free. Then we can play?” she asked this time and Joshua didn’t have the heart to tell her that he needed to work on stuff…

So he didn’t.

“Sure, she needs to show me her Illusion homework and then we can watch a show or play cards,” he commented with an indulgent smile that only widened when Morag cheered, throwing her arms up in the air and all while she clung to him with her spider legs. ‘I’m way too wrapped around their fingers,’ he mused to himself.

Yet, he regretted nothing.

“For now though, I need to work on things if I want to have the time,” he said, as if he wouldn’t make time anyway once it came to it. Morag pretended not to know that, nodding at him. At least they didn’t abuse their power over him. Silver linings and all that. “Make sure those don’t kill each other, alright?” he added, waving his hand towards the battlefield, which had become that much more chaotic with the addition of Nagini and Cheshire. “You too, Friday,” he added.

The living spell could help him with his work, he knew very well. However, he was reluctant to let her do that too much. She was young, so he wanted her to experience as much as she could, even if it was through what others did in her range of influence. He tried to encourage her to do things, since she could do a lot, especially under his main spell arrays. All the same, the living spell seemed content just watching and occasionally perching herself on him or one of her sister familiars through the bond.

He wasn’t sure what all that was about, but she was happy, so he guessed it was all fine.

So, kind of by himself, even if Morag and Friday remained close by, he summoned a seat and sat down. His attention was quickly grabbed by his notebook as he continued delving on matters of the soul. He had a bunch of projects touching on that, so it had – understandably, in his opinion – become the subject that he worked the most on.

‘Not yet,’ he said when he felt a few Egyptian deities poking at him through his connection with them. ‘Soon though,’ he thought, and they pulled back away from him.

He was almost fully recovered, and once that happened, he’d be able to channel some of the soul-oriented gods and goddesses to get a better idea of things. For the moment though, he’d have to make do with what he could do himself. Not as much as he’d have liked, but he didn’t want to rely on them too much, admittedly. Not that he wouldn’t if he could, but he liked the chance to work by himself.

Joshua already felt like a massive fraud at times with the system, he didn’t need to add divine intervention on top of that.

At least not all the time.

[}-o-{]

“-and that means I can summon two more Spiderlings!” Morag exclaimed, all smiles and cheer. On the other side of the table, Joshua heard Kunou whining despairingly. Not that he blamed her. One trap and now his arachnid – did she even count as that by then? – daughter had not only taken out her strongest card but she also had cards all over the board on her side.

Granted, those Spiderlings weren’t very strong, but they’d be annoying, and that was all they needed to be. Nevermind the sacrificial value too, of course. Kunou was not going to have a good time recovering from that misstep. Which was what Morag’s deck was all about, really.

“Your turn,” the eight-eyed girl said and Joshua wondered if she was playing up the innocently happy act or if it was real. A look through the bond told him that it was… somewhere in the middle, apparently. That was interesting. Then she reached to the side-

“Ew,” Kunou protested, watching her sister bring a cricket to her mouth.

“Kunou, what have I told you about that?” Joshua asked, turning and raising an eyebrow at her. “Your sister likes those. I know it’s odd, but there’s no need to react like that,” he pointed out. It wasn’t like he didn’t understand where she was coming from. Watching someone casually munch on a cricket – one that was still alive to boot – was… an experience, but there was weirder out in the world. “She finds it odd that you like ice cream, but you don’t see her going “ew”, do you?” he added.

And wasn’t that a funny thing, the way Morag recoiled at the mere idea of eating the sweet treat.

“But that’s weird!” Kunou protested and his raised eyebrow stayed up, but his almost disinterested expression shifted into something sharper. Kunou might have been his daughter in a more official manner first, but still…

“You don’t call your sister weird, Kunou,” he said, trying to keep most of the steel from his voice. Not all of it though. “Apologize, right now.”

“... I’m sorry,” she mumbled almost immediately. It wasn’t a good feeling, having to scold her, but at least she didn’t make him work too much for it when he had to. Probably because he only pulled the tough act when it really mattered.

“No problem,” Morag replied, still all smiles. Still, just because she didn’t care for what was said didn’t make it ok though. He hoped he could teach Kunou that. “Can I have another, Daddy?” the Jorogumo asked, blinking all her eight eyes at him and he sighed internally.

“Only one. We’ll have dinner soon and you don’t want to sit at the table doing nothing because you’re full again, do you?” he asked, making her pout. Whoever said having kids was easy was a lying liar, but then again, he didn’t think anyone had ever said that, so there was that.

On the other hand, he did think he’d kind of lucked out with his daughters. They were still a handful, obviously, but they were more manageable than he knew kids to be. Or maybe the kids he’d known through his life had been particularly bad?

His family wasn’t known to have well behaved people in general, so there was some backing for that theory, he supposed.

“Mr. Davis-” Ravel started from his side and Joshua took a deep breath in. ‘God, give me patience-’ he thought to himself, remembering his mother’s words from literally another life. ‘-because if you give me strength I’ll kill them.’ “... Joshua?” the devil corrected hesitantly, noticing his flat stare.

He’d gotten used to her calling him Mr. Davis, he really had. Hell, people calling him by his surname wasn’t as much of a problem as it once was. The scars that had pained him that way were healing and all. However, he did prefer to be called Joshua. Which was why he was trying to get the Phenex to call him by his name when they were in private or with his family.

He wasn’t having a lot of success on that front.

It worked better when she was “off working hours” as it were. When she called it a day, but still stayed around the house because she didn’t want to go home for whatever reason. Personally, Joshua thought she just had fun playing with his daughters and Koneko – even if she protested against the latter “accusation” a whole lot –, but he could be wrong.

He really didn’t think he was though.

“Yes?” he asked, deciding not to make a big deal out of that.

“I was just wondering if maybe…” the devil started, before stopping. She already looked a little nervous, but now she looked even more so. It made him feel guilty about pressuring her for the name thing. Before he could apologize though, she continued. “... we could have a homemade meal tomorrow?” she asked, fidgeting with her hands.

Joshua’s eyebrows shot up immediately.

She didn’t often bring up such casual stuff. It was, usually, his or maybe his daughters’ job to drag her into that kind of thing. Maybe she was opening up though, and he couldn’t be happier for it. With as young as she was, he often felt guilty for being a part of the reason why she couldn’t be a kid.

Thus, why he tried to encourage such behaviour.

“Sure thing,” he agreed easily. “You wanna help?”

“I do!” Morag exclaimed, raising her hand up enthusiastically. Joshua smiled at her, but most of his attention was on Ravel. She seemed happy with the idea though, if the shy smile was anything to go by. It was a very nice sight.

“What about you, Kunou? Maybe we can drag in Koneko too, make it the whole gang,” he commented, half-joking. The four of them had taken to being a friend group of sorts, he noticed. He was happy to notice that too, since each of them needed the extra company for their own reasons. Koneko needed to open up more. Ravel needed to relax more. Kunou needed more friends. And Morag needed to develop more as a girl rather than a spider.

“Do we have to?” Ravel asked, suddenly a lot less on board. Or, at least, so she wanted him to believe.

“Would feel bad leaving her out,” he offered as an answer with a smile and reaching to ruffle her hair. He resolutely ignored her grumbling. “Come on, I know you don’t mind as much as you say you do.”

“That’s a lie if I ever heard one,” the Phenex muttered under her breath, crossing her arms petulantly and looking away from him. Morag and Kunou seemed to find that hilarious though.

“It’s decided then,” he commented, nodding. “By the way, you two forgot to keep playing,” he pointed out, making both of the younger girls let out an exclamation and turn towards the board between them. To that, Joshua shook his head, glancing to the side to see Ravel having withdrawn into her schedule notebook in order to recover from that bout of “weakness” or whatever.

With all the children occupied, he glanced towards the other side of the room and saw…

‘Could help me a little, if you have the time,’ he thought, but didn’t say. All the same, he knew Yasaka, Serafall and Gabriel had all got the message. They were that good at reading people, after all, especially him. They were supposed to be working on stuff, but there they were, all of them looking straight at his side of the table like it was a great spectacle.

“You’re doing a great job, Joshua,” Yasaka commented, bringing a cup of tea to her lips. That only made his eye twitch though, because it felt mocking, in a way. Not meanly, but in a teasing mood that he didn’t appreciate. He often got nervous when trying to “parent” the girls, so he would appreciate the help.

Instead, they seemed to all have decided to throw him off the deep end.

That was just mean.

“We had a conversation about this, Joshua. You need to stop being unfair,” Gabriel said and he frowned. What did she mean? He didn’t remember any discussions about fairness taking place those days. Had he forgotten something in his absentmindedness again?

“Come on~” Serafall whined then, dropping on the table. “I want one too~!”

‘Oh…’ Joshua thought, in realization.

A moment later, he decided to follow Ravel’s example and get lost in work. That was much better than dealing with embarrassment. Although, he appreciated the indirect compliment to his parenting capabilities. Maybe one day he’d feel like he was actually good at that, but for the moment, he’d take other people thinking so.

[}-o-{]

“Now, I know the systems are different, but I’ve been looking deeper into runes for the sake of my own classes,” Joshua explained, leaning against his teacher desk and looking at the arranged class before him.

There were more valkyries than there had been when he first met Göndul and her students. Idly, Joshua wondered what was up with that, but ultimately he decided it was likely that not all of them had gone to House of Water for that first meeting. Probably would have been a little crowded if they had. Either that, or something equally as inane.

“Nothing I’ve seen tells me that the broad strokes of my methods won’t work for you all with your own practices,” he continued, wondering why they were looking so wide-eyed already. He hadn’t even gotten started with the actual class yet. “Which means I can teach my class as normal, just that I won’t be able to easily understand your spell designs, considering the different systems. At least not until I’ve managed to get a good hold on runes.”

As he talked, Joshua had to admit that teaching valkyries felt different from teaching regular magicians. ‘Is that because they aren’t regular humans like me?’ he wondered to himself, trying not to let that awkwardness affect him too much. ‘Might be the runes thing too, I guess,’ he continued musing, because yeah. Teaching people that used a completely different magic system than him had its own odd feelings.

“So, first things first,” he continued, taking a deep breath in and deciding to just play it by ear. Just like it had taken him a bit to comfortably teach at all, it might take him a bit to do so with valkyries. No need to overthink it. He did that enough as it was, after all. “I don’t have many rules on how I work, at least nothing too important. Except maybe one,” he told the students.

It didn’t help that none of the women so much as twitched. That was certainly a change from his usually either enthusiastic or belligerent students. He wasn’t getting much feedback from them, evidently. Well, maybe that’d change when he started asking questions. If not, well… he was always up to making examples of people.

“My first and most important rule is that nothing is impossible,” he told them, and it was something that’d been coming up in his mind a lot those days. His delvings into soul matters had him putting that one rule to a lot of use. “Things might be difficult, or seem impossible, but I’ve never come across something that I haven’t thought possible, and I’ve yet to be wrong. If something seems impossible, then you either don’t have enough information, aren’t skilled enough yet or aren’t using the right method or approach.”

He paused for a moment when he saw every single valkyrie start taking notes already. They also seemed rather… motivated, as it were. They were so intent about it that it caught him off guard a little bit. Joshua wasn’t sure any one class had ever heard him so attentively. There were always some outliers, after all.

‘Valkyries are just built different, I guess,’ he guessed.

“Now, with that said, it’s generally better to start small, so… for the sake of getting you all off to a similar start, I’m gonna ask, is there any one spell that all of you know?” he asked, glancing around. Immediately and without hesitation, he got his answer.

“The Warmth Spell, Professor Davis,” one of the valkyries that had been there during the meeting answered. He was a little surprised that she was so sure about that without having to discuss it with the others. Maybe that was a valkyrie thing that all of them were taught? He also found it interesting that it was the Warmth Spell instead of the Signal Spell which seemed to be the most common spell with the magicians he usually taught.

“Great, thank you,” he replied with a smile. He briefly pondered sharing with them the fact that he usually didn’t remember names, but maybe he could leave that for some other time. With such an eager audience, he felt motivated to stay on topic and teach them as he was supposed to.

He was already liking teaching them more than the regular class even if the awkwardness was there.

“So, the obvious modification there is to make it hotter or colder, right? That might even be something that’s built in, but we can tweak the starting point,” he said, absently considering the spell. That was something he’d already worked with when setting up his home arrays, together with a bunch of other quality of life spells. Although, if he knew anything about regular magicians, they probably just saw the spell as a good first step in the ladder to stronger things. “What else can you come up with?” he asked, glancing around and raising an eyebrow.

There was a moment of hesitation there that made him tilt his head, but soon a different valkyrie from the one that had spoken before answered.

“Area?”

“Area,” he repeated, more decisively, waving his hand and making an illusory display appear over one of the blackboards. “Can someone else come up with a different modification besides that?” he asked and there was a slight shift around the classroom. ‘More engaged and eager, but even valkyries have their limits, huh?’ he thought to himself with a half-smile.

“Distance?”

“Focusing it over one target only instead of an area?”

“Targeting a specific temperature instead of a general warming effect?”

They were getting more creative, as the class went. Not that he blamed them, the opposite, really. Besides, there were only so many different easy modifications one could come up with. All the same, he noted them down and he saw some interest in the fact that the list wasn’t organized in the order they were mentioned. Instead, he moved them around every time a new one appeared.

They started seeing the pattern, eventually, and those that had already given answers started trying again and harder.

Noticing that, Joshua grinned and he thought he saw Göndul – who had joined the class, even if she was just sitting in a corner to witness it – giggling to herself. It was always neat to push his students to try harder. And he hadn’t even had to mention the “secret” part of the exercise to get them going.

Valkyries were truly built different.

“Taking the warmth from somewhere instead of generating it from nothing?”

“Oh, I like that,” he said, pointing at – ‘Rosseweisse, huh?’ – the student and adding that idea to the top of the list, which made the woman preen a little bit. “Well, I think that’s enough ideas,” he added, looking at the now full blackboard. Then, with a snap of his fingers, the top five from the list were left alone while the rest moved to the board on the side. “Now, can the students that suggested these five stand up and come to the front, please?” he asked. Interestingly, only four of them stood up, one instantly and one very hesitantly, while Rosseweisse and the other were somewhere in the middle. “Which of you suggested two?” he asked.

“I did, Professor Davis,” the one that had stood first answered, evidently very proud of herself. Maybe that helped her not be offended that he didn’t remembe. Joshua didn’t miss the way her eyes flickered towards Rosseweisse either. ‘A competition? How fun,’ he thought, holding back a grin. That was going to be very interesting to use.

“Good job,” he told her with a grin, before nodding and looking at the four of them. “Now, I’m gonna give you four a project each that you’ll start now and can finish whenever, so long as it’s before I’m done teaching you this class,” he started with and all of them stood a little straighter, wary but also interested. “You’ll be choosing from the remaining students to form teams. You’ll also be choosing twice as many, since you’ll have two projects,” he added, focusing the last part on the valkyrie that had spoken up before.

If they had been listening attentively before, now the students were hanging onto his every word, as if afraid to miss anything.

“The project is simple, you have to make the modification that you suggested,” he said, gesturing towards the list on the blackboard. “The first one to finish will get a reward, by the way, so look forward to that,” he added, but it seemed that it was unnecessary for him to tell them. The four had perked up immediately when he said “reward”. “Now, you have two, so that’ll be taken into consideration if you manage to finish one of yours first. Keep in mind that you have to finish both before the classes are over though.”

Well, all four of the valkyries seemed on board with the idea, at least, so that was good. Still though…

“And if you manage to finish and impress me somehow, then that’ll mean your reward will be better,” he added and he could almost see the hungry glint in their eyes.

Yeah, they were going to give it their all.

Joshua couldn’t wait to see what they came up with.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

I don’t have much to say about this chapter, actually. I like it, and I feel content with it. Sure, nothing much happened, but we did get continue with this new plotline with the valkyries, so that’s interesting. There’s also the fact that any time spent is getting Joshua closer to full recovery and things are gonna happen when that comes about.

All in all, I’m happy with the chapter.

I hope you guys enjoyed it too.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: I’m gonna blatantly abuse the random question more than I’ve ever done so… Do you guys know any fun family friendly local co op games? I’ve set up a desktop computer on our living room as a “pseudo-console” and gotten four controllers. So, I’m on the lookout for anything good to play. Right now, we’re getting by mainly playing Horizon Chase Turbo and Pummel Party. I do have Overcooked 2, Unrailed, Brotato, Stick Fights and Inversus ready on the side too though.

See you.