The expression on Saffra’s face was rather comical. She at least didn’t look panicked at being presented another gift—though Vivi predicted that was only thanks to superseding emotions. Wide green eyes flicked around at the huge radius of melted snow, then back to the brilliant, otherworldly red and orange feather.

“Please tell me that isn’t what I think it is,” she said weakly.

“It’s a phoenix feather.”

Saffra winced hard, as if Vivi had physically struck her. “That’s…what I thought it might be. Lady Vivi, why are you giving me a phoenix feather?”

“It’s just a vessel. Here, take.”

Vivi at least didn’t have to insist this time; Saffra, if with extreme hesitation, took the feather without need for cajoling. She cradled its hollow base between two fingers, holding it as far away from herself as she physically could.

“A vessel?”

“It stores a magical construct. Say [Summon].”

Several seconds of dubious silence passed, but finally, Saffra commanded, “[Summon].”

In a familiar display, a pillar of sunfire exploded from the ground, from which, with a cry, a huge bird of burning plumage emerged. Resplendent in orange and yellow, the simulacrum of a phoenix was a magnificent sight, and nearly indistinguishable from one of its true brethren.

Saffra immediately began scrambling backward, almost tripping over herself in her haste to escape the legendary creature. Vivi realized she should have warned the girl.

“It’s not a real phoenix,” Vivi tried telling her, but Saffra was already pointing at the bird, her face ashen.

“A phoenix? You’re giving me a phoenix?”

“It’s a construct modeled to look like one. Calm down. His name is Nova.”

The sheer strangeness of that statement seemed to snap Saffra out of her panic. She turned an incredulous look to Vivi. “His name is Nova?”

In another life, Vivi’s cheeks would’ve colored. Maintaining a straight face, she said, “It’s as good a name as any.”

Saffra’s mouth worked soundlessly. Rather than responding, she faced back to Nova, and her briefly recovering complexion whitened again.

“Phoenix,” she repeated dumbly. “It’s a phoenix.”

“Fake phoenix,” Vivi corrected, shooting an apologetic look at the giant flaming bird, who didn’t seem to take offense. He preened a misplaced feather and seemed generally unbothered by everything happening. “It’s level thirteen hundred. A real phoenix would be much higher. They’re stronger than dragons on average, just far rarer.”

The words didn’t seem to assure Saffra, and Vivi cleared her throat. She wasn’t handling this well.

“Just think of him as any other summon.” She paused. “You haven’t used any other summoning magic, have you?” Her grimoire had been quite small.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well. He’ll listen to commands. There’s a limit to his intelligence, but most tactical and some strategic orders work. Attack, guard this position, patrol that area. He understands nonlethal orders like ‘subdue without killing’, which many don’t.” She’d tested that during her preparations for ensuring that handing over an artifact of this caliber to a thirteen-year-old girl was a smart idea. Maybe it wasn’t regardless, but Vivi didn’t want to give her any super high-level offensive scrolls, and also didn’t want to leave her without any attack capabilities. Nova was a good middle ground. “Try it. Point at an area and say [Solar Flare].”

Saffra seemed to act on autopilot thanks to sheer mental overload, which Vivi supposed was better than standing there dumbstruck. She raised a finger—to which Nova stiffened to alertness, sensing an incoming order—and pointed off to the distance.

“[Solar Flare],” Saffra stammered, her cat ears flattening in anticipation.

Nova took to the sky with a flap of wings that spawned a small blizzard around them. Hovering airborne a few dozen meters up, Nova began casting a spell. A long, thin strand of gold manifested from the ground and ascended to the heavens, like a lightbulb filament slowly brightening. When the precursor of [Solar Flare] reached its full brilliance, washing the reflective white plains in a glare of yellow, the spell activated.

A pyre fit for a dragon erupted where Saffra had pointed. It was an impressive light show, and Vivi enjoyed it as she did all magic, though she had to say that compared to real upper-tier area-of-effect elemental spells, like [Kaelum’s Thousand-Year Pyre], it was merely exciting, not anything to write home about.

When the spell faded, and a small section of the tundra had been thoroughly melted, Vivi turned to Saffra and said, “Of course, I expect you to use him judiciously. Only for emergencies.”

“Only…for emergencies,” Saffra echoed numbly, cat ears still flattened to her skull.

“He has a few other spells. I wrote them down for you.” She handed the folded paper over, which Saffra mutely took. “To unsummon him, the command is [Dismiss]. Go ahead and do so.”

Saffra obeyed. Kind of automaton-like, as if she’d become a summon herself.

Vivi pursed her lips. She still had the scrolls to hand over, but she was worried any more artifacts would break the poor girl. Maybe holding off until the end of the hunting session was best.

“All right. That’s it for now. Let’s get to hunting. I have a few questions for you about how experience gain works.”

Saffra's attention locked to her, seemingly out of desperation. Maybe wanting a shred of normalcy. While this was an odd question for Vivi to ask considering her rank, her memory problems explained the gap, and musings over how, precisely, leveling worked in this world were probably fairly common even among higher-level adventurers.

“Like what?” Saffra asked.

“It’s clear that at a basic level, both practice and combat provide experience. Has this been studied, though?”

Saffra tilted her head. “Sure. Or, people have tried to. There’s too many factors though. Two people doing the exact same routine will see way different results.” She seemed to relax as she talked, happily wiping the memory of a phoenix melting a small portion of the tundra from her mind. “It’s basically impossible to know how it really works. With any certainty, at least.”

To be fair, progress varied wildly in natural, non-System growth, too. Talent mattered, even if it wasn’t the be-all end-all. “If you ordered Nova to wipe out this entire zone, you wouldn’t level, right?”

“No. Summons or pets or anything like that only give experience if they come from your class.”

Vivi had intuited as much. Society would surely have turned out very differently if reaching Titled was as simple as abusing artifacts. Then again, Vivi doubted many non-level-gated items like the phoenix feather existed in the first place. Surely at least a few, though.

“Does that apply to any items? What about the armor I gave you?”

Saffra blinked. “As long as it’s normal gear, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t hurt experience gain. Same with potions and consumables. That’s how plenty of rich people get ahead.”

“And if I put shields on you?” she asked, curious how extensively the concept of ‘power leveling’ had been tested. “Or buffs?”

“You’ll get the credit. Or almost all of it—I’m not sure exactly? You can have strong gear, but you still need to be the one doing most of the work to level up.”

That lined up with Vivi’s intuition. “So there’s no quick way to move through the levels besides an apprenticeship status and best-in-slot gear?”

Saffra paused. “Best in slot?”

Er. Vivi should probably be careful with the gaming terminology. Some of it had carried over from Seven Cataclysms, thanks to stats and game screens and so on actually existing in this world, but not all of it. Seven Cataclysms hadn’t even had ‘gear slots’—that term was just carry-over shorthand. “Best available for your situation,” she clarified.

“Oh. Then yes. Those are the main ways, as far as I know.”

Vivi didn’t like that she would have to remove her shields on Saffra, but the System wouldn’t recognize Saffra’s efforts as ‘solo’ otherwise.

Saffra seemed to be calming down thanks to the conversation, though she was steadfastly holding the phoenix feather away from her body like it was a poisonous snake.

“Is watching over you detrimental to your progress even without me putting shields on you?” Vivi asked.

Saffra hesitated. “No? There just can’t be anything active on me. Being there, ready to help, doesn’t change anything. I think?” She shrugged. “It is the same thing, I see what you mean. But active magic means you’re engaged in the fight, and since you’re so much stronger you would get all the credit.”

It made sense from a technical perspective, and Vivi supposed that a System imposed onto a world would need technical boundaries. What about the edge cases though? Would the System itself make the decision, or had everything been defined perfectly, such that there weren’t edge cases? If not, did the System have a basic level of consciousness to make those judgments? How did all of this work? Who had created the Grand System? Was it a force of nature like gravity? A natural manifestation of magic somehow?

She could invent a thousand theories, and she wondered if this world had a commonly accepted one. Probably something to do with the gods. Vivi wondered if those existed too, or were simply figures of this world’s religion which clerics and other divine-type classes could link to. Despite having played Seven Cataclysms endlessly, there was quite a lot she didn’t know about this world, and how game-lore had translated to reality.

Waving her staff, Vivi dispelled the various effects she’d put on Saffra. She felt instantly uncomfortable, but she couldn’t let her paranoia get carried away. Saffra had gone her entire life without being guarded by Vivi’s spells, and Vivi would be there to watch over her while she fought. She would be fine.

“Go ahead and equip everything. Here’s some privacy.”

She constructed a stone enclosure with a light inside—the versatility of an archmage’s kit was seriously amazing. Five minutes later, Saffra called out that she was done, and Vivi disassembled the room.

In the meantime, she’d been cataloging the monsters prowling the Icevein Craters and had identified the lowest-level one she could spot: a level 512 [Rime Crawler], a crystalline leopard-like monster composed of white-blue ice. She held a hand out and the girl accepted; a [Blink] teleported them off the cliff and within casting range of the monster.

“I know I got it last time,” Saffra mumbled, “but that doesn’t mean I can get it again. I still need to practice before I’ll be able to cast it consistently.”

“Just do your best. You can keep trying until you get it. There’s no rush.”

Saffra took a breath, then lowered her new staff toward the beast. Without ceremony, she began taking slow steps through the snow, closing the distance as the spell took shape. Mana flowed from Saffra’s staff and engraved onto the air in bright runes. The monster, sixty meters away, perked up at the sensation of magic filling the air. It seemed confused—the mana too distant and suppressed to identify immediately—but after turning in a circle, it spotted the flash of bright red hair and gray armor against the backdrop of snow. It charged without a moment’s hesitation.

Saffra didn’t flinch, but Vivi internally did. Her palms began to sweat seeing a monster sprint with killing intent for her undefended apprentice, but she could pull together a spell to erase the [Rime Crawler] in less time than it took to blink. She was in no real danger.

Still, it was impressive how little Saffra faltered. Brow furrowed slightly, the novice mage patiently formed the spell diagram—and, even more commendably, seemed to do so better than last time. Here was someone who didn't falter under pressure. Vivi could tell that the spell would properly take hold well in advance of its completion.

“[Scorchlance],” Saffra incanted.

Vivi had honestly been curious how powerful the boosts from her armor would be. To what extent the enchantments would amplify Saffra’s spells. On her rings and staff especially, she’d put in some devastatingly strong—for the level—sorcery boosts, since jewelry held enchantments better than other gear.

The lance of orange fire manifested from the mana held in Saffra’s spell circle, then flew forward with devastating speed, melting snow and ice in a long, twenty-meter trail to the charging elemental. It impacted—

—and obliterated the target. The missile hit the construct center of mass, burrowed in, and exploded, and the creature disintegrated with a shower of ice shards. After a few seconds in which the flames cleared, Vivi saw that nothing remained but a huge circle of melted snow.

Saffra gaped, staff pointed incredulously at where a monster had once existed.

Vivi was pretty sure a silver-rank mage shouldn’t be capable of one-shotting a gold-rank monster. Though she couldn’t say she was surprised. Strong starter gear like this would have allowed something similar in Seven Cataclysms too. She’d helped arrange something like this for Alex’s—Axian’s—little brother when he’d started getting into the game.

“Well done,” Vivi said. “You’ll be able to deal with some of the more powerful monsters in this zone, it looks like. Not just the weakest. Perhaps up to six hundred?”

But not more than that. Unless Saffra could one-shot the monster, she wouldn’t do well in a fight. At her level, a mage needed a team for extended combat.

Saffra didn’t seem to hear her. Her eyes had locked onto something mid-air, slightly offset from where the monster had been.

“What is it?” Vivi asked.

“I leveled up.” A second of incredulous silence passed, and she added: “Twice.”

That brought a slight quirk of satisfaction to Vivi’s lips. She supposed that brief combat had counted as ten equivalent ones, thanks to the apprenticeship boost. And Saffra killing ten monsters a hundred levels higher than her, by herself, would give a good chunk of experience.

“It seems like we’ll be making decent progress this morning,” Vivi mused.