In the grand oakiness of the grimoire crafter's isolated magic testing grounds, Inkaro held bracelet mode Omens Befallen up towards the ceiling, allowing himself to peer through it and keep an eye on the floating Ana at the same time. But, it would seem he wasn't the only one doing some observation: whether it be a little sister or a hyperactive classmate. Thanks to her glasses enabling the use of her eyes without needing to worry about gazing upon others, aside from a snake-obsessed individual, Anazenpha noticed Inkaro's observation of her, so she waved at the guy with her free hand.

  [Omens Befallen(Bracelet Mode)][Type: Conduit][Rank: Forbidden]

  -A pale platinum wrist-sized ring with four pale cyan cubes positioned and spaced ninety degrees away from each other.

  As it would happen, Ana, sitting in a floating bowl held up by a parasol that was all made of different coloured mana particles, swiped Inscription of Injected Providence's crystal stylus to the farthest left that her short arm could reach, signifying her next art composition was completed. Had the dramatic arm swipe not been the most obvious of giveaways, Ana's bombastic and functionally inaccessible —given it was in one of the many demon language— cheers were hard to miss, even if Inkaro had no clue what she was saying for the most part. But such an audible expression of her pride boiled down to her doing a simple "heads up" sort of saying, which made it clear to Inkaro that he would have to go on the move again. So with a light exhale that bore no emotions of any type, Inkaro became enveloped in a pale bronze glow before leaping from his spot, hopping from place-to-place like he was participating in the world's most explosive game of hopscotch as he ducked and weaved between the onslaught of cartoonishly designed missiles of various colours. The cartooniness of the attacks was only heightened the moment those missiles struck the floor, exploding into a comic book-worthy sound effect bubble.

  Due to the attacks' scale, they could only make a light popping sound, whilst the effect bubble read 'BOOM!'.

  Mid dodge from the first missile to reach him, Inkaro darted his eyes about, noticing that the remaining mana missiles had been positioned around him in such a way that attempting to dodge one would end up putting him directly in the flight course of another one. Although catching him momentarily off guard, Inkaro did find himself faintly smirking at discovering Anazenpha's mana constructs weren't as unpiloted as he'd initially anticipated.

  So, after making one last effort to look for an escape without resorting to teleporting but not seeing any, Inkaro quickly twirled Omens Befallen around his finger, ushering it to transform into its polearm form before slashing the closest mana missiles into pieces with a colourless mana blade casing that was constructed with spatial-type SSS:AW rings around the polearm's crystal cubes.

  Splitting into uneven or even halves, the slashed mana constructs shot past Inkaro, colliding with the space around him in a rhythmic drumming pattern.

  But that wasn't the final segment of Ana's attack volley, which was made apparent to Inkaro when a frying pan made of orange mana particles, one that was slightly larger than a normal-sized one, struck him in the back of the head with a booming 'bang'. Although it didn't knock him off his feet, like the loud clang would've implied, the strike did manage to override the guy's ability to hear and replace it with a comically overbearing buzz that drowned out all other sounds.

  "Oh come on... how did he let that hit him?" Inoni grumbled sulkingly as she clutched G.Galore in her arms and had the sentient grimoire held tightly against her chest. However, much to the little sister's annoyance, Inoni's confidence in her brother's magic-making ability didn't transfer into combat awareness. None whatsoever, as all his combat basics came from those read to him by Lizu over the years. The little girl pouted, hopping to her feet and marching over to her brother with G.Galore balanced on her head, as Ana landed in front of Inkaro.

  "Wowie~ is that the uchiko(polearm) Ene said you made?" Anazenpha asked playfully, which went right into one of Inkaro's ears and out the other. After all, he was functionally deaf for the next few minutes, making him immune to audio-triggered attacks, so the best he could do was struggle to lipread.

  "What is a mana bread?" The trio around Inkaro looked at him like they were some silly deers in headlights, then at each other, before back at the guy. Had the task of trying to comprehend how the guy got mana bread from what the demon girl said not been so attention-grabbing, Ana's abrupt wobble into full-on slumping onto the floor was right there to steal everyone's attention, as she became completely exhausted of all her fast-acting energy that the Paruneha honey had provided her. Luckily for the floor, a Morilore caught Ana mid-fall, saving the floor from having to regenerate from receiving a blunt force impact from the Inscription of Injected Providence.

  "Oh, seems like she's asleep... can you take me to the festival now, bro?"

  A little bit later, Lizu, still lounging about on the sofa with Inkaro's trench coat draped over herself like a sleeping blanket, was in a fierce two-player battle in some RPG-esque game with Yuuvia as her teammate.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  "How have you crited every single time you've attacked? Don't you have an item that lowers your crit rate to one percent for one thousand crit damage? Aren't you so lucky?" Lizu remarked cheekily, perfectly matching her use of any word containing 'crit' in time with Yuuvia's character performing a critical instance of damage. This agitating timing did wonders in ticking Yuuvia off, had her red face not been so illuminatingly obvious.

  "Your sarcasm isn't funny, and you told me to choose it becaus-" Yuuvia's impending was silenced as the full-length mirror between the kitchen and the livingroom shimmered, briefly displaying the interior of Inkaro's treehouse before a group of figures emerged from its visually rippling surface.

  "It really is a shame your father had to remain at home to harvest the fields. I was looking forward to making this a family outing," Lephaelia stated softly, but somehow sounded disheartened and frustrated in the same breath. As she exited the mirror-linked portal, Inkaro, having exited shortly before his mother, carried Inoni on his shoulders and an out-cold Ana, peacefully sleeping away to the point she was melting in Inkaro's arms. Seeing as it was Lizu's turn, Yuuvia briefly hopped to her feet so she could look behind herself without appearing crass or delinquent-adjacent in any form.

  Only being allowed to preseave female germinator of the most mind-boggling guy she knew by her mind for a brief moment, Yuuvia sharply swivelled her focus back to the TV. She plopped her butt back on the sofa before snapping her head in Lizu's direction with zero hesitation, which lack of restraint was matched by her following question to said dragolyte.

  "She's his mother? Isn't she so...," Yuuvia whispered to Lizu, to which the dragolyte lightly jabbed Yuuvia in the side for her blatant jealousy for a grown woman when she herself was barely an adult. Yuuvia met Lizu's teasing by impactlessly slapping her palm onto Lizu's face, inflicting the dragolite with the enhanced coldness allotted to her via possessing glass-like palms. "I was focusing on her outfit, it's the middle of summer... and I feel like I've seen her somewhere before."

  As she gently brushed Yuuvia's hand off her face, Lizu confidently planted a fist against her chin and tilted her head to give her arch rival a smug side-eye. "Well, duh, you were constantly challenging me to dumb challenges when we were kids, and since I spent a lot of my time with Inkaro, it's only natural you would have seen his family. So you probably blocked out everything other than me. Maybe that is the reason you don't remember her fully."

  Yuuvia lightly clicked her tongue, which had a vaguly glass accent to it as her glassy tongue struck the equally glassy bridge of her mouth.

  "Don't say it like that... you're making me sound like some... obsessed ex or something," Yuuvia grumbled as she weakly rubbed her fingertips against the subtle grey glassy parts of her skin. As the noble girl physically recoiled and cringed at the thought of herself being obsessed with Lizu in such a way, Paruneha scuttled their way out from under the coffee table before bounding around the sofa to meet Inkaro.

  Functionally cutting him off from fully reaching the sofa with their actions, the stigmai smooshed their face into Inkaro's legs and hugged them by employing their inky limbs protruding from their leg tattoos instead of their arms. The stigmai's little act of affection got an unreserved coo of motherly affection from Lephaelia, who had to harness every fibre of her being to keep herself from reciprocating Paruneha's bear hug on Inkaro's behalf.

  "What happened to her?" Paruneha mumbled, refusing to remove their face from Inkaro's legs as they increased the strength behind the bear hug they applied to the guy's limbs.

  "She had a sugar crash," Inkaro stated calmly as he gently held out his arms in preparation to hand Ana over to Yuuvia, unbeknownst to said noble girl. Having not expected to receive such a wondrous task that was carrying Ana, Yuuvia only managed to get a befuddled 'ah' out before Ana was dropped on top of her. With a sudden weight pressed down on her and being not-so-subjectively folded like an omelette, the noble-astetic obsessed girl deeply groaned, bordering on painfully so, whilst every breath she would've breathed in the next few seconds was forced out of her all at once, leaving her looking blue in the face.

  Almost bursting into a giggle at seeing Yuuvia making a funny face, despite not knowing how to describe said expression, the little sister of Inkaro smirked at such an angle she unquestionably presented as villainously cute, but also straight up something a villainess would wear during an act of petty annoyance for the heroine. But when Inoni caught Paruneha in the corner of her gaze, the little sister's demeanour crumbled the second she took her focus off looking villainous. Her heart sanked and she pouted to the point her cheeks resembled pale tomatoes, solely from being so easily distracted.

  Pressing her chin into the throes of her brother's unruly hair, Inoni quietly whispered a question to her brother, out of nothing short of sating her own curiosity and pacifying her annoyance: "Hey, brother... is this your pond friend?"

  "Pond friend... isn't inaccurate...," Paruneha murmured as they rocked their head from side-to-side, before slowly removing their face from Inkaro to glance at Inoni. "But Awaux88 Paruneha doesn't need such additions to her title of Inko's friend."

  The little sister of Paruneha's hugging raised an eyebrow at something, something that would go unnoticed by all but Inkaro, which would have included Myu had she not been beating out Ana in the sleeping department by having contorted her body in the shape of a 'K.'

  "I thought your first name was Paruneha, though," Inoni murmured to herself, sporting a puzzled expression as she wondered why someone would decide that putting numbers in their kid's name was a good idea. It was all so confusing to the little girl that of noble people's names, or so she believed was the reason behind Paruneha's odd first name.