Chapter 165 – Sharing magic

Once Canir finished scolding Fen and Sophia about accidentally having almost erased a continent, he explained a few things regarding how it actually happened. As it turned out, Sophia's using the same type of magic Canir does. Because of that, she isn't subjected to the same rules and limitations everyone else is. The tiger wasn't able to be concerned about that, though, because something else had blown her mind.

"What do you mean...?" The blonde still couldn't believe it. "I'm no h-higher being, am I...?"

"Sure are." Canir answered her in a playful tone.

"N-No way..."

"D-Does that mean Sophia is a... g-god, too?"

"Overseer." He corrected the cat-girl again.

"Accept it already, Canir. It's the same." Fen didn't let him have it.

"No!" Sophia loudly interjected. "It's a huge and important difference!"

"Thank you very much." The overseer was happy to hear it.

"You just don't want to be called like that, too, don't you?" Fen had seen through the tiger.

"Absolutely! That's 100% it!" She had no intention to hide it. "And that's why our dear Canir is definitely no god! Neither am I, for that matter!" The blonde was shouting and panicking at the same time. She was utterly unable to deal with this situation.

"Don't worry, you aren't at the moment."

"I don't want it ever!"

"Hahaha... You don't nearly have enough power, anyway. You'd need to amass a ton of it for a very long time."

"G-Good... Now I know what I won't do!"

"You using the same type of magic as I do just means that you have the potential to join my ranks. This, and being from a different world, plane of existence, makes you a higher being."

"I-I see..." It still sounded plenty bad to her, but it, at least, didn't seem like she'd be forced into something extremely bothersome.

"Just don't tell anyone about it, or else they might start worshipping you regardless." Aura had a small warning for her.

"Of course! That sounds like the biggest pain possible!" Sophia shuddered while just thinking about it.

"Tell me about it." Canir responded with a nod.

"A-Anyway, I won't be doing any overseer stuff! I'll be staying here with Maya and everyone else! No matter how much power I might eventually amass! Before that happens, I much rather share my magic with everyone I meet to keep it at an overpowered but reasonable level!"

"Oh, that sounds fun to watch!" He started smiling. "I like that idea of yours very much."

"Urgh." It wasn't the reaction the tiger wanted, but it still worked.

"People might start worshipping you for that, too, though." Fen ruined her plans.

"A-Ah..."

"But even then, it's still a conscious decision. It's not like you'll automatically get seated next to me once you reach a certain level of power."

"Good..." She sounded relieved. Eventually, she looked at the gigantic crater/lake and faced Canir again. "Do I need to watch out for anything for real when I use your... our magic ?"

"Hmm... Well, you're a bit of a special case when it comes to that. While you primarily use my magic, after your transformation to a tiger, you also have the magic of the beastfolk inside of you, which is native to this world. That makes you a hybrid."

"Is that good or bad...?" Sophia wasn't sure what this meant.

"Extremely good. In various ways. That part of your magic will act up if you're about to do something that shouldn't be possible. My magic doesn't care about that."

"Oh, like the barrier thingy I destroyed inside of Fen? It felt like I shouldn't go further, but it still worked once I used force."

"That's exactly it."

"I see. That's good to know." She nodded in understanding. "Wait, you said for various reasons. I don't like the sound of that, either!"

"No, you love the sound of that." Canir corrected her.

"Ehh...? What's that supposed to mean?" It made her even more dubious.

"My magic's compatible with this world, as it's positioned above it. The effects are mostly the same because, uhh... let's say it's rather similar. Still, it can't be used with magic native and exclusive to this specific world. Once your body became a native of this world as a beastfolk tiger, you now also can use their specific magic without restriction."

"For example...?" The blonde was only getting more confused.

"You've heard of Blessing magic before, right?"

"H-Huh... ?"

"You only became able to use that after you transformed to a tiger-girl."

"Seriously?!"

"Yep," Canir confirmed it again. "I would've told you about that limitation eventually and offered you a free race-change ticket because you hadn't used it when coming to this world, but you had already taken care of it before I could even mention it."

"W-Wow..." Sophia needed a moment. "As much as I messed up with that, becoming a tiger really was one of the best decisions I ever made, huh...?"

"Very entertaining, too." He let out another chuckle. "That's why, it's all set in that regard. Go get her, Maya~."

"E-Eh?!" The cat-girl, who was only listening with a wide variety of facial expressions until now, suddenly jumped up. The queen was one thing but being told something like that by Canir himself was too much for her to stay calm.

"Stop that." Sophia's voice changed a bit as she looked at Canir while cracking the knuckles of her already formed fist.

"Y-Yes." He shrunk down. "It was just a joke. Do whatever you want whenever you want, cat."

"..." Maya had already stopped working.

"I haven't hit you in quite a while, have I?"

"I would also like to keep it at that!" Saying so, Canir got up, left the position next to Sophia, walked around the campfire, and sat down again between the wolves.

"Coward." Fen had no nice words for him.

"H-Have you ever been hit by her?! It doesn't quite hurt my body yet, but it's the most pain I've felt in an eternity!"

"Coward." Aura joined in with the other wolf.

"H-Hey!"

Afterward, the group needed a little time. The wolves kept teasing Canir. Maya was confronted with the topics of kids again, a big weakness of hers, and it took her a while to recover. Sophia, too, had a lot, if not the most, to take in after everything he had told her.

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"By the way, Sophia, while the black sphere was the first time I had to actively intervene, I was getting ready for it before already. You really took it to heart when I said to go nuts with magic, huh?" Canir had addressed the tiger again.

"Eh? Was there anything else of this scale I did?" She glanced at the lake.

"Not quite as world ending, but it probably would've bothered you even more personally."

"More than the ending of the world...?"

"Depends. How do you feel about accidentally having kids?"

"Huh?!" The scream of Sophia and Maya echoed through the area.

"W-What does that mean...?" The blonde had no idea what was going on.

"You know, being unable to share magic with others is one of this world's rules, but there's an exception. Blessing magic. The magic authority you're born with is quite similar to your DNA, and it contains every information of the user. It's the foundation of this world, and so of every living being, as well. Your own, let's just call it magic-DNA formed with your transformation and contains a copy of everything there is to know about you. Whatever was left of your previous DNA fused with your new tiger form and formed the basis of the beast-girl Sophia. That's also part of the reason why you ran into so many issues when transforming back. It's near impossible to split it again. Adding stuff is easy; taking away is not."

"I-I see…"

"With blessing magic, two individuals share and combine their magic to create new life. The recipient of the magic then carries out the child with the shared traits of both parents. While the conception is different, everything else afterward is just like a normal pregnancy. It also makes the members of the same biological family more compatible with each other. It's not that relevant with the mild-hybrid type of beastfolk because they have enough shared traits most of the time to be very free with their partners." He looked at Maya and the blonde while saying so. "Still, normally a tiger and a cat aren't able to have an offspring. The same goes for something like a fox and a dog, for example. Blessing magic then mixes the race of one parent with the traits of the other."

"Err..." Sophia needed a moment to wrap her head around this explanation and understand how it was relevant right now. "WAIT!" She suddenly got loud again. Very loud. "Sharing magic… D-Does that mean I almost i-impregnated Fenny?!"

"Huh?!" The male wolf also sprang up in shock.

"Ahaha!" Canir started laughing. "That would've been quite something, huh?"

"It would not!" Everyone in the group retorted.

"Hehe. No, I didn't mean the two of you. You simply used Fen as a puffer. You didn't give him your magic."

"I see. That's go- g-give...?" Sophia's face suddenly lost all of its colors. "A-Ari..."

"W-What?!" Maya also started panicking.

"l... l... l, uhh... l, no... There's no way l... no." The tiger stopped working entirely.

"Calm down, idiot." Canir tried his best to hold in a chuckle while seeing her reaction. "I said I was getting ready to intervene, wasn't I? The two of you weren't even close to having an offspring. Blessing magic is a conscious decision that needs the consent and work of both sides to function, including speaking out loud wanting to have an offspring. It's a really failproof magic, but I still got a little cautious and started preparing to stop you because you often are a bit ambiguous and cut corners."

"..." She didn't like any of this.

"That Jaguar friend of yours also got really excited right before that because of your storage magic. After that, I remembered that you'd have to use my powers to make her use chantless magic because your tiger power's not enough for that. It's impossible to activate Blessing magic with my powers, so there never was a risk. The magic I gave you is just pure authority with no information of the actual owner. Only your tiger magic-DNA or whatever you want to call it would be used in your Blessing magic. In the end, what you did had some similarities with it at first, but it was something else entirely."

"T-Thank goodness..." Sophia looked like she went through three heart attacks while listening to Canir. "D-D-Don't ever scare me like that again!"

"Sorry about that. Looking at it again, it was a textbook example of a higher being or a deity blessing a mortal with the gift of magic. Both are a blessing, but it has no relation to each other. Sharing or mixing in my magic is only good for increasing authority. It can't create a new life that way. There was no need to worry."

"I-I'm super worried about something else now, though!" The tiger really didn't like the comparison he made.

"Hehe. Actually, it was more or less the same I did for you."

"Ughh..." She didn't want to hear it.

"Sophia, you idiot..." Maya was silent until now, but she finally found some words.

"W-Why?! I mean, sure, I am one, but why?! You heard him, right?! It had some similarities, but it was something else entirely! You're the only one I'd want to use the actual blessing magic with!"

"E-Eh...?" Hearing those words, Maya froze up again. This was happening a lot today.

"A-Ah!" Sophia only now noticed just what she'd just said. "M-Maybe in… in the future, okay?! I wasn't implying anything! W-We both aren't ready, and it's way too early and- urgh!" She stopped herself before making it even worse. "Canir, you stupid idiot!"

"Why me?!"

"You brought the topic up!"

"So unreasonable..."

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Afterward, the couple needed some time to collect themselves again. Both had taken a ton of mental damage for various reasons. Because of that, Canir spent the next hour catching up with the wolves because it had been quite a while since the three last saw each other.

Eventually, though, Sophia became able to converse in spoken words, rather than shades of blushing again, and she desperately wanted to leave the topic behind them by asking about something else.

"Say... Canir."

"Hmm?" He faced the blonde.

"Could you explain to me how magic actually works? Everyone seems to think they know what's going on, but no one actually has a plan, right? There's too much weird stuff going on..."

"Ahh..." He scratched his chin. "So, you've noticed, huh? Yeah, basically no one in this world understands the whole picture yet. Our wolves here included."

"Huh?" Fen and Aura looked more than just a bit surprised after hearing this.

Teanam

A big thank you to

- Li1 Mainy -

- phillyflaps -

- LordErr -

for supporting the story on Patreon. I'm super grateful for that!