Finding their attribute orbs was a trivial endeavour, aided in most part by Inkaro's tracking spell and Lizu's effortless deployment of said spell. Although the finding aspect of the task was the easy part, Lizu squinted her eyes in annoyance as she stared almost directly upwards, her chonky tail swishing from left to right while still holding firm onto Inkaro's waist.

  Glaring up in the direction of the sky, watching the clouds pass by, Lizu grumbled under her breath as the duo's attribute orbs were currently stuck on top of a tree.

  "Quite the predicament...," Lizu grumbled under her breath, knowing she'd get chewed out by her father if she dared to climb up the tree herself. She raised her hands to her face, pulling at her pouting cheeks in a semi-therapeutic fashion to soothe her temper.

  In a somewhat joking manner, as he was swung around like a baby rattle, Inkaro chimed, "This must be karma for using a spell to find them."

  A light, indignant huff escaped from Lizu as she crossed her arms defiantly at the notion. She believed there was no way she, of all people, could have a negative karma score, especially after what led to her being in...

  Although, as she thought about it, she considered the possibility, just maybe, this was more of a micro-scale karma balancing for her prior verbal slip-up. She clasped her head in shame, dreading that her taking the easy option of borrowing Inkaro's spell syntax meant it would come back to bite her soon.

  "Did something fall on your head?"

  Inkaro's bemused question struck the girl like a bucket of ice water being splashed on her neck, leading her face to turn red once more for a short time.

  "No..."

  The duo mulled over their options, ultimately coming to a single conclusion: they had to ask for help. Much to the antithesis of her pride, Lizu dragged her feet across the immutable, perfectly kept lawn of the church garden before returning to the spot with the teasing nun.

  "My-my, that certainly is a blunder, how'd some festive decorations get left up for half a year?"

  Lizu flinched and inadvertently tightened her grip on Inkaro, much to his dismay, not that he could voice a complaint.

  "Yeah...," Lizu murmured nervously. She screamed in her mind, cursing herself out for mistaking something else for the attribute orbs. So, trying to save face, she frantically darted her vision around the tree, her sudden jolt of embarrassment making it hard to focus, but she did spot a hole partway up the tree.

  "Miss nun lady, are they in the tree?"

  "I dunno, we don't you see?"

  Without warning, the nun playfully wagged her finger, twirling them for the sake of it, before the two hiding attribute orbs shot out from the hole in the tree.

  The two orbs dived directly at the kids, startling Lizu slightly while Inkaro didn't really notice, given his attention was on trying to breathe and not die.

  Seeing the boy's predicament, the nun employed her usual tricks by saying, "Already have a crush, I see."

  The comment did the trick—too well. In fact, Lizu was out of it, standing while unconscious, making the nun feel the tiniest hint of remorse. With Lizu's conscious control of her body removed, her tail slackened and released Inkaro from its endearing embrace.

  After waiting for Lizu to regain herself and returning to the podium inside the church, all the children cheered in excitement at the teasing nun's statement. She praised them and remarked that since they impressed her by how fast the children found their attribute orbs, she'd allow everyone to get a treat from the previously mentioned bakery.

  While the other six kids discussed what treats they wanted, Inkaro was more focused on the info of his Attribute Plaque, the thing he'd been having sleepless nights over for the past months. His glee was palpable and unignorable to anyone looking his way, so only Lizu.

  [Inkaro]

  [Age: 6]

  [Gender: M]

  [Mana Capacity: SSS]

  [Mana Control: SS]

  [Mana Tolerance: F(MAX)]

  "Man..." Inkaro uttered, his tone mildly distressed at the sight of his three revealed attributes on his Attribute Plaque. He slumped his head in defeat, his low murmurs drowned out by the other kids' excited discussions. However, one did pay attention to his tonal shift, Lizu. She shuffled a little closer, her eyes slightly heavy as she looked at her own filled plaque.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  [Lizu Feubread]

  [Age: 6]

  [Gender: F]

  [Base]

  [Mana Capacity: S]

  [Mana Control: A]

  [Mana Tolerance: SS]

  Given the boy's expression, Lizu figured Inkaro must've gotten subpar rankings for all of his attributes.

  She felt like it was a cruel twist of fate for someone as knowledgeable as Inkaro, for his age, to be given such a bad hand. The dragon girl felt a strange compulsion to say something, anything, to comfort the boy, but nothing came to mind, not even the default "It'll be okay" or "It's not the end of the world" graced her tongue.

  "I lost the bet, now I own Master three Tounz... that's the last of the pocket funds."

  "Heh?" Lizu uttered mentally, bamboozled by such a perplexing response, not that she could really say such a thing was a surprise coming from Inkaro. But, given that his sadness didn't come from his rankings, she felt urged to peek at the boy's Attribute Plaque.

  One glance, all it took was one glance and all the pity she felt turned to unrivalled confusion.

  Her mind raced with a single line of thought, "How! A triple and double. And, it's like he was born to be a grimoire maker with a tolerance like that."

  Lizu eyed Inkaro with unbridled suspicion, finding it preposterous how a kid not descended from a line of mages or arteificers could have so much mana. Her confusion was palpable, compounding every second the boy dared to tickle the part of her brain responsible for curiosity, just by him standing there like it was no big deal.

  Determined to figure out the source of his reserves, Lizu marched up to the grimoire-lover and stuck her face right up in his business, "Hey, you! Why do you have such a high mana capacity!?"

  Inkaro didn't much as flinch at the noble dragon girl's outcry, incorrectly interpreting it as her sharing his deep interest in grimoires. "I dunno, it's probably from all the grimoire editing I do with my family's grimoires, heh."

  "Huh?! You already know how to edit the syntax of others' grimoires?". Lizu's surprise only served to exacerbate and elevate Inkaro's astonishment that he'd found someone equally as interested in grimoires as him, since she knew about it being challenging to edit other people's grimoires.

  The girl was practically suffocating Inkaro with her proximity, threatening to put the guy in an early grave again, like her tail had tried to earlier.

  "Come along, Lizu. Don't go hounding Truno's son; otherwise, I'll get an earful from his wife. Besides, shouldn't you be thanking Inkaro for helping make such high-quality phetowa leaves for your first grimoire?"

  At the sound of her father's voice and appearance, Lizu jumped on the spot whilst putting a little distance between herself and Inkaro. However, her shock swiftly turned into her facepalming as she heard Inkaro's name, knowing the name all too well from her father's many mentions of his friend and business unusual associate's son.

  The red-haired and lively human man loomed endearingly over his daughter, finding it wholeheartedly heartwarming that he found her interacting with Inkaro of all children.

  Grumbling in defeat, Lizu whispered, "Yes... Father."

  "But it's gotta suck your tolerance is so abismal, you'll only be able to use conviniance and weak utility level grimoires," Lizu added, flinching almost immediately as she felt the presence of her father grow more intense from her verbal slip up.

  Raising a hand to the back of his head, Inkaro chuckled giddily as he said, "Yeah... but at least I don't need a high tolerance to create grimoires, ehe~ now that would've been abismal in my opinion."

  Sensing her father's glare soften thanks to Inkaro's lack of offence to her statement, Lizu knew if she were to just leave things as they were, her father would give her an earful back home. So, to save her hide, Lizu spontaneously blurted out with a sophisticated tone, "Then it's decided, you'll be- I um... mean. I think we should be friends and be grimoire study partners, that way you'll be able to have me test your grimoires for you... or something like that."

  Lizu nervously flicked the tip of her tail behind her in slightly cautious anticipation, dreading the supposedly high possibility Inkaro might refuse.

  "Lizu, I look forward to it!"

  Who could've seen that response coming?

  The boy's unfiltered acceptance of her proposal without any reservations or hesitation caught her completely off guard, to such an extent that it left her mentally paralysed from the shock alone. The only movement she could muster out of herself was some faint jitters from her wings and the very tip of her tail.

  "It just sounds like you're trying to get out of tutoring and writing the syntax in your grimoire yourself to me," Lizu's father teased as he grabbed Lizu by the collar of her pristine and frilly dress, forcing a shocked gasp out of the girl when she was dragged out of the church.

  Her face was still locked in a shocked blush as she disappeared into the crowds of the town: a quaint little town of buildings with cobblestone-looking marble base walls and white brick secondary walls.

  Inkaro raised a hand to wave goodbye to his new friend, but paused halfway as something occurred to him; other than Lizu probably won't get any of the treats the teasing nun promised.

  "Wait... she still has my paper with the syntax... oh well."