Chapitre 40: A pack of smokes, a can of coffee and a bible

"And that's the last of it," Leo heaved as he dropped the last crate of the canned foods to the back of the pantry.

Even though the Pesterny's apartment belonged to the last age, with most of the furniture and applicancies long past their due replacement date, it was big enough to comfortably house Leo's relatively big family.

And between the late father, his three sons, Carol and, at times, her daughter, just a shelf or two for the supplies would never suffice.

'I bet pops would never think this place would be as stocked as it is today,' Leo thought, completely disregarding the fact that his little shopping trip pretty much cleaned out most of the savings of his entire household, Millie's allowance included.

But what was money if not just scrap paper in the eyes of someone who studied magic for much longer than any normal human would be ever allowed to live.

"When are you going to start making those crystals?" Millie asked as she snuck up to Leo's back.

Her eyes sparked with curiosity and excitement, sparks that greatly contributed to restoring the cheerful girl Leo remembered.

"I was just about to," Leo replied while turning away from the now-stacked pantry and casting a glance over to where his old room was. "What? Are you that interested in the process?"

Millie readily nodded her head only to then look up with pleading eyes.

"Can't I?" she asked, lowering her head while turning her eyes up.

'This vixen…' Leo sighed in his soul.

"Why not?" Leo shrugged his shoulders, suddenly perplexed over how to approach this young woman.

She was the only member of his familial circle that bore no direct ties to him. And, to a degree, after all those years he spent elsewhere, Leo came to dignify if not outright worship his memories of his original life.

But now, he was facing the past incarnate, the girl that he used to somewhat like.

And when she looked up with a slight unease on her face, all the eager to watch him work…

'I guess that's the perk of being back in my twenties…' Leo thought, releasing a second inner sigh before shaking his head.

"Do you want me to explain the process as I go, or should I start with the basics of magic?" Leo then asked.

This was the likely truth behind Millie's excitement.

Even though even Rob appeared to miss it, with Leo's few words over the magic crystal, Millie managed to catch on the deeper meaning.

While it sure was a food for thought to learn you were about to be rich. But with that said, Millie appeared to wonder, just where did that idea come from? And if Leo spoke about magic in such details, then what would him explaining the topic reveal?

"That's some interesting topic you bring up," Tina called out from deeper within the apartment. A moment later, she appeared from beyond the corner, her eyes squinted and her arms heavily resting down on her hips. "You won't mind if I join, right?" she asked, only to turn her eyes towards the box with art tools and several packs of illegal cigarettes that Leo carried up in his arms.

"Again, why would I mind it?" Leo shook his head before getting a move on, directing his steps right to where his world used to be centered; his room.

"Oh, right," Millie blurted out as soon as Leo reached for the door's knob. "About a year ago, Carol had no other choice but to rent out this room…"

Faced with the sudden revelation, Leo looked back at Millie before turning his eyes back towards the door.

"I see," Leo openly sighed. "So things were that bad, huh?"

Rather than minding how his room wasn't kept for him to return, Leo's mood darkened over the realization hidden behind this message.

With the patriarch of the family gone, it was no wonder Carol struggled to keep her family afloat. It wasn't easy to raise two stepsons after a harsh divorce and with merely a minimum-wage job.

From how it took Carol five years to reuse Leo's room, it was clear it wasn't a choice she made lightly, which only implied the degree of trouble and stress she was likely going through for her to make such a choice.

"All the more reason for me to work hard now that I'm back," Leo spoke up, hoping to lift the group's spirits right as he pushed the door open.

The room… Was pretty much how Leo remembered it to be. With the obvious lack of his belongings, everything else was exactly the same.

The narrow bed, solid, wooden desk, a small chair, and a bookshelf for toiletries.

The furniture was the same, the window at the far end of the room was the same, and even the air of the place didn't seem to change.

"It's good to be back," Leo muttered to himself before carefully dropping the box with the supplies down to the floor and moving the chair aside to create a bigger patch of empty space in the middle of the room.

"Now then, can I ask one of you to get me some hot water and a lighter?" Leo asked while falling down on one knee and digging his hands into the open box, fishing for the few items he would start with.

"Lighter I get, but hot water…?" Tina asked while already turning around, her eyes inevitably lingering on the crate of smokes within the box. Then, her eyes widened a little. "Ah, coffee?" she asked, standing at the room's doors.

"I will be brewing some, yes. So while I appreciate the thought," Leo looked away from the box where a can of freshly bought coffee of a cheap brand sat at the very top. "Just hot water will be enough, thanks."

There was no need for Tina to bother brewing coffee back in the kitchen if Leo needed the water exactly to add the process of brewing an extremely popular drink into the process.

"Since Tina's not here, I will start with caveats rather than the proper beginning," Leo announced as he started to pull out all the supplies and items he would need for his operation.

From auto-hardening clay, through various chemical reagents, paints, and brushes, all the way to oddities like freshly opened packs of smokes, a can of instant coffee, or the bible.*

In the meantime, Tina moved to the floor and sat down on her knees before vigorously nodding her head.

"While the concept of mythos will appear much deeper into the topic, it's not something that's all that hard to understand on its own," Leo started his lecture as he sat down with his legs crossed and reached out for the small sphere of soft, self-hardening clay and tore an even smaller piece out of it.

"It refers to all sorts of small rituals that permeate human civilization. Actions that produce repeatable results within a predictable pattern. Actions that humans, through their culture or religion, came to appreciate on a whole new level."

With a few quick moves, Leo formed a tiny, thin disc with his thumbs before reaching out for a razor and carefully bringing it over to the freshly molded piece.

"It can be something as simple as stretching in the morning to improve circulation, taking a smoke break, drinking a cup of coffee to wake up, throwing up after drinking too much…" Leo quickly threw a list of examples, too quick for Millie to process them all at once.

"All of those are just sequences of actions that people can predict the likely outcome of, actions that people grew so used to, they can complete them on an auto-pilot."

Millie only nodded her head, both her gaze itself and the sparks in her eyes growing with intensity with Leo's every word.

"That should be good enough," Leo then muttered as he pulled the tip of the razor away from the slowly hardening plate the size of one's fingernail.

Even though it was extremely soft and thus hard to mold even with something as sharp as a razor's blade, he somehow managed to fill it with nearly a dozen extremely tiny symbols.

"I know it might make little to no sense right now, but this mythos is a sort of medium that allows the mana to root into this world," Leo revealed right as the sound of nearby steps reached its peak.

"What did I miss?" she asked, standing in the doorway with a judging look centered on the side of Millie's head with the poor girl, for some reason, desperately avoiding her glare.

"Nothing much, a single fun fact," Leo replied before tearing away a slightly bigger chunk of the clay and readily kneading it with his thumbs to turn it into two balls first, one slightly bigger than the other.

Then, with just a few kneads, he squashed the two balls and turned them into thin discs, roughly twice and then four times as big as the first one. Then, he put them all aside before splashing a few drops of special reagent that would kickstart the accelerated process of the clay hardening.

"You can put it away for now, we need those plates to harden before moving into the coffee. So, for now," Leo put on a wide smile on his face as he rose up on his knees only to then sit down on his heels, "welcome to the first lesson of runegraving!"

*HUGE CAVEAT:

- The Bible doesn't refer to the Holy Bible of our universe. The religions of this story, while in certain senses similar, are not the same as IRL. So yeah, TERMINOLOGY might be close to what everyone is used to (Because most of the religion-related vocab is inherently associated with this religion or that anyway), but the meaning might be different.

For example, the bible used here, refers to some sort of a holy book, likely to represent the same or similar values/belief system/structure as religion associated with the world (Christianity). It doesn't exactly mean the Holy Bible, but it likely implies stuff alike ten commandments, restricting one's desires… or, simply, an act of prayer