My birthday came and I wasn''t asleep. This calls for celebration! Some preparations were made beforehand. I had cooked up a harmless prank. I looked at the tanks of garlic oil I had made. It was 4 in the morning. I took a long shower because the water would be quite garlicky in a bit, petted Nilah and we teleported to the water purifying facility of the city.


    I dumped the garlic oil in the purified water and waited thill it spread through the city. I was wearing my gasmask because this oil was very potent. It would get diluted so unless they somehow concentrate the contents of the water, they should smell like garlic bread.


    And that was it, my last prank. The problem is that they will 100% know it was me. It would be better if there was confusion about who the culprit was.


    I relaxed in the park and brushed my tails. Nilah was taking a nap because we spent almost the whole of yesterday creating this oil. A lot of strong Misha had returned in the past few days. It is as if they’re preparing for something. It’s not to kick me out on my birthday, is it? That would be cruel. The smell of garlic wafted by. Nilah woke up and absorbed a barrage of attacks.


    "So, you are the tailed fox they were talking about. It is good to see that your race is fine but you have to go!" It was Shrimpy and 9 strong looking friends.  Ooh you smell nice, what is it?


    "Enough!" A large spell got prepared but it disappeared after I stole their hats and catalysts. 2 seemed to have learned the substitute catalyst magic that I had developed. Nilah kept blocking their attacks.


    "Ugh, is there nothing we can do against this?"  Don''t worry, I just need to go over my paper one last time to fish out mistakes and when I do, I will release the solution. It will probably be tomorrow or the day after.


    "What is your goal in all this?"  Well, you guys are strong I acknowledge that, I just want to make sure you guys don''t feel like messing with me in the future. I encountered a Misha years ago and her capabilities scared the shit out of me. So, I don''t want to ever deal with that.


    "Well, it seems to be working. An order is almost ready to get passed on. A flee on sight order."  Oh perfect! Now the Misha that''s in charge of creating soap has been cutting corners. I had beef with her because it took too long to wash goo out of Nilah''s fur. She said her soap is fine, which is bullshit! If you guys want to smell good again, take it up with her. Good soap should fix this quite effectively, just not today, there''s still garlic oil in the water system.


    “So petty… Anyways, we have the firepower to finally get you out!” Shrimpy pointed her finger at me. You would kick a fox out of his home on his birthday?


    “Happy birthday and yes! We don''t have the numbers and power to deal with you and other problems!”  And you want to do that without hat and catalyst?


    “Would you be so kind as to return those…”  How about this, if you can beat me in a fight I will leave, all 10 of you can go at me.


    Shrimpy had a wide smile. “You can just leave, there is no way you alone would win against the 10 of us in a fair fight.”  Well, it’s 10v2 on your own home turf, it''s hardly a fair fight so you are correct


    “2?”  Don''t leave Nilah out of this.


    “Ah right a fox and his fox pet, we will kick you out gently since you have brought merits to our city. I need to learn that substitute catalyst thing…” I returned their stuff and they instantly started blasting me. I jumped back.


    We haven''t let loose in a while Nilah! Let''s show them how big of a mistake they made thinking they can win a 10v2!  Nilah turned back to her original form. Although she was way bigger now and looked a bit different.


    You guys have made one crucial mistake, I don’t need to steal your hats or catalysts to make you useless.  The Misha shot various objections to me which I ignored. I will just have to show them. Nilah and I used [Eternal Winter]. I could control better now how much mana got into me and could redirect the rest to Nilah. We turned the whole city into a winter wonderland, the magic the 10 Misha were throwing at us weakened considerably.


    “What?! Ice magic?!”  Don’t think Nilah was the only one who could use this.  The Misha surely were strong. I targeted only them they didn''t freeze over but they were using a lot of mana to resist it. Some mana also leaked out of them and got stolen by us. The other Misha of the city were watching. None of their mana got stolen because I had better control over this. Nilah also had good control but she didn''t care so I had to tell her to leave the others alone, for now.


    “Ugh… remind me again, why is your race close to extinction?”  Because of those stupid gods and also because of humans.


    “Dying to the strong and the weak, you guys make no sense.”  I know but the world is a crazy place. Ready to surrender?


    “No!”


    Nilah and my eyes glowed light blue and the frost intensified and froze the 10 Misha. We dropped the [Eternal Winter] but left the 10 Misha frozen. I changed the frost so that it would turn into normal ice in 2 hours and then melt. They can cool off a bit. I picked up 5 Misha with my tails and Nilah shrunk back to her smaller size and picked up the other 5. We walked to the campus showing off the ''Ice cube Ten'' as we walked and placed them in the headmaster''s office.


    “Ugh, I don''t even want to ask. An order has been pushed. A flee-on-sight order. This just… enforces it… these Misha are all stronger than me you know?”  I know magic is your thing and all but you might want to find alternative ways. You are reliant on magic the most out of all races, also your hats and catalysts are weaknesses. Don''t let what happened to us happen to the Misha.


    “Is this some sort of big lecture?”  I suck at lectures; you can take this how you want. I am going to relax today since it’s my birthday, I have a solution to your hat problems ready by tomorrow or the day after, also these guys will be able to get free from their frozen state in 2 hours. And you smell nice hehe.


    “You are lucky that I like the smell of garlic bread else I would have your head! Also, they will be available in 2 hours, right?”  Are you preparing for something?


    “None of your business go enjoy your birthday and please… ease up on those pranks.”  I will stop the pranks after today.  The headmaster got up


    “Are you ill?”  How rude! No, I got what I wanted, you Misha are very unlikely to mess with me in the future now so I can give you guys some well-deserved rest.  The headmaster sat down.


    “Ugh, why couldn''t you just tell us.”  Would you or any of those ice statues here listen?


    “Fair point. So… are you going to form a research partnership after? We have kind of developed a love-hate relationship, we would want you gone from here but you also brought some good changes. The sewers are cleaner than ever, my daughter is well-behaved now, we have fixed some of our weaknesses, we surely are better at chasing and tracking down opponents and reacting to unpredictable situations, and we have realized how primitive our magic is based on some of your papers and the list goes on.”  And if that greedy Misha gets her shit together you will also have better soap!


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    “You seem to do the wrong things for the right reasons…”  Well, if you think I had some ulterior reason you’re wrong I just did what I wanted to do and if the outcome is that your race overall improves then that''s a nice bonus.


    “It is strange because this is obviously a lie, you are quite terrible at it…”  People keep telling me that, anyways these 10 might be in a bad mood after they thaw so beware.


    The city was a bit in an uproar and some Misha asked us to make some ice sculptures and other cool stuff because most have never seen so much ice. The day ended up with the soap Misha getting pressured into creating better soap. The city still smelled like garlic bread and I visited a restaurant that had some good garlic bread. These Misha were thankful because the garlic bread smell had many Misha craving garlic bread and they were doing better than normal because of it. The food was good, Nilah had a great time too, we headed back home when we saw a group of the strongest Misha fly away to the northwest.


    I sat on Azu’s house and checked out where they were heading to. Something strange was going on. Space was bending and an army of people came out. Wait are those vampires? Weren''t they super rare? What is an army doing here?


    The vampires outnumbered the Misha 10 to 1. Did they go there to die? Is this what they were preparing for? The vampires seemed to be way stronger than all the Misha but… they were acting strange. A 3-hour battle followed and the vampires suffered a crushing defeat and retreated into the rift. It closed and left a big group behind and the Misha continued to blast them. Only 3 strong Misha had perished in that fight. The vampires didn''t seem to want to die though. They restrained them with magic and left them behind. Are they just going to leave them there till the sun fries them?


    A small group of Misha stayed behind and kept assaulting them with ice. The vampires didn’t get turned into ash when the sun started to rise. They died to… hypothermia? And shattered as if made out of ice and turned into fine glittering dust, how strange. Are all the stories about vampires wrong? A large group of super-strong Misha headed my way. I think I should hide.


    “Wait!” The headmaster and some of her friends came to me before I could go back inside. “We… want to thank you… I know it was a prank but this garlic bread smell… It was very effective against that vampire army… I can''t believe that I’m saying this.”


    “We have been struggling and losing many Misha in the fight against them, the rift used to open every 200 years near our city and we would fight them off but something is happening and they appear every 50 years now…”  Huh, that’s strange, what is the deal with them?


    “I don''t know the specifics but their race got locked in a subdimension many centuries ago and they’ve tried to get back here ever since, they are not friendly to many races here including ours so we took it upon ourselves to repel them. We would lose so many every time… we only lost 3 today.”  Locked in a sub-dimension, is that why I saw a rift open? Can they use spatiotemporal magic?


    “I don’t believe they can, I think the fabric is weakening, judging by what you described what happened when the mana started to leak, I can only assume that’s related.”  Hmm, so the dimensional fabrics weakening and this allows for the vampires to stage more frequent invasions? That doesn''t sound good.


    I heard a stomach growling and a Misha turned red in embarrassment. The smell of garlic bread must be making her hungry.


    “Is there anything you can do?”  I can mainly create subdimensions or fix what’s broken, sometimes destroy but that’s not my expertise, reinforcing and strengthening isn''t my thing sorry, we would need a 7t for that.


    “Oh… that’s unfortunate. At least you gave us a solution for these invasions. Can we have the recipe for the garlic bread oil?”  Hehe.


    “Please don''t make this hard for us…” I gave them the recipe for the garlic oil. Some other strong Misha thanked me and they went home. I can''t believe that turned out well… I am better at pranking than I thought! Although it doesn''t look like a prank now anymore, I won''t be surprised if someone cooks up a suspicion that I might have foreseen this and masked it as a prank to secretly help them. I don’t want them to see me as a hero… I should''ve used a different prank… It was time to finish this research I''ve been working on for almost half a year.


    <hr>


    The last day of the training year. Not the last day of the calendar year. It might be confusing but the last day of my training year is 1 day after my birthday. December 9th was the day that I first set out from Ainahs. Almost 3 years have passed. Time flies by. The headmaster let me into her office after I knocked and I put my research paper on her desk.


    “What have you cooked up this time? Are you going to invalidate this 3 days after we implement it?”  Well, this skill is actually very hard to use. I can use it since I created it but I’m expecting the most talented Misha to take 3-4 years to learn this. I have taken the Misha physiology in mind so don''t worry but I can emulate this quite well. Nilah hat!


    I used [Transform] and turned into Agnès Oures and Nilah jumped on my head and turned into a hat.


    “Give me a second, I will ask some others to observe too.” She used magic to expand the office room and to call other Misha. Some familiar faces appeared, most of them were strong Misha, also the ''Ice cube Ten'' had joined.


    Shrimpy pointed at me. “This guy again?”  No need to be so snarky you might like this one. I named it [Hattrick] it creates up to 2 hats that work like your original. Due to its difficulty, I can only use 1 extra hat.  I created a functional copy of Nilah as a hat. And I threw it and it floated.


    Now some of you might be familiar with my [Staff Throw] attack.  I saw 2 lecturers cringe.


    This is similar but… The hat can independently cast attacks from its location.  I casted [Fireball] and the hat casted [Thunderbolt].


    You can freely change the location of the remote hat.  The hat floated away and continued casting.


    Now if I could use the third hat it would be able to do the same. The spells are limited to those that you know and your mana gets copied and not split up, this is a very important detail.  I already had impressed most of the Misha as copying mana is extremely difficult, or impossible. I forgot which one of the two it was.


    But this isn''t the main feature.  I flicked my hair and knocked my hat off my head.


    In case you lose your hat…  The floating hat glowed and I teleported under the hat so that I was wearing that hat now. The hat that I had flicked on the ground started to float and was ready to cast magic.


    You can teleport to the location of any floating hat.  All the Misha went crazy.


    “Are you serious?! We can do that now?! I need this I need to learn it now!” I was expecting some stuck up Misha to stay cool or disagree with my idea but even the most serous Misha was going crazy.


    Well, as I told the headmaster this is very hard to learn, you will have to divide your attention between yourself and the hat. I can only use it with 1 hat but 2 is currently the maximum. Theoretically, I could improve it to have 5, 6 or even more hats but that would probably take me a year to do, this should be good enough for now.  The excitement could be felt.


    And this is probably the last paper I will publish.  The Misha quieted down.


    “Are you leaving?”  Not now, but probably in several months, yeah, I can’t stay here, I don''t belong here.


    “How about a research partnership? With this skill surely, we can make an exception for him, right?” Other Misha started to talk to each other and trying to convince the others to make an exception.


    That sounds nice but I don''t think you should. Don’t let another race be responsible for yours, go find Azu… Ayaru, everything I did, she can probably do better and she is one of you guys. Don''t abandon her.  The Misha looked guilty. Nilah returned to her fox form and I used [Transform] and turned back into a 9t.