Chapter 104: Unique Binding Factor
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—Dawn—
The sun was barely out when Caius stood up from bed and found his way to the grand desk in his room. With a wave of his hand, he retrieved his self-composed Grimoire from his Storage Ring and flipped through the pages to continue from where he had left off before the crash yesterday.
With a slight flick of the finger he was wearing his Storage Ring on, he made another book appear. A much larger book that contained the Von Helsing Family’s interpretation of the Arcane Codex or at least a copy of it that he was allowed to keep with himself.
For hours, he pored through the book in a studious study session, picking out the symbols that especially stood out to him. He formed seals over and over again, making Arcane symbols appear, trying to find something that would resonate with him enough to qualify as his ’unique binding factor’.
Being basically a codex of an ancient language of magic, not every symbol in the Arcane Codex was about spell casting. A lot of it was actually about the very core of a person. A lot of it was philosophical. So casting the symbols over and over was less taxing than it would have been if it were a spell. That said, it was still mentally draining and mind-throbbing to keep at it for so long though.
Caius still sometimes tried reverse-engineering the Spell Circles Arlette had given him yesterday to figure out the binding factor within them but he found himself feeling less interested in the easy way out.
It was very tiring work and most of all, frustrating. Especially since, in [To Kill A Demon Lord...], the original Caius had discovered this far more easily. It took him barely a day once he decided he needed to know it.
"Way to hammer in that I’m worse than him, I guess," Caius mumbled to himself and at his brain for bringing up that memory when he was feeling especially dumb.
It was like it was right in front of him but he was still missing it. Unable to grasp it. Like it was at the tip of his fingers but he couldn’t quite get his hand around it.
"Any luck?" Samantha asked as she appeared sitting on his desk, her ethereal-looking body looking like it wasn’t touching the surface, as usual.
"You know the answer to that," Caius said with a heavy sigh as he flipped another page in the Interpretation of the Arcane Codex.