Dominic waited patiently for Calvin to ponder his question. He was still a young kid, after all. Struggling to deal with being memory charmed was only natural—not to mention whatever memories he’d regained.

  Expecting an immediate response would be dumb, and Dominic wasn’t dumb.

  It did take a minute, but that wasn’t nearly as long as he’d expected to wait.

  “Someone intentionally made me contract the plague, using a spell,” Calvin finally said. “And then they memory charmed me for good measure.” His voice grew softer, the continuation clearly reserved for himself. “Memory charming a dying orphan just in case… they’re even more of a paranoid bastard than me. Who’s even gonna bother about a random already-half-dead orphan?”

  “I did, didn’t I?” Dominic asked gently.

  Calvin looked up hesitantly, not sure how to respond to that, before he decided to try and smile gratefully. How successful he was, only Dominic would know.

  Dominic stroked his chin once more. “Do you want revenge?”

  Calvin blinked. “Revenge?”

  “Against the mage who did this to you.”

  The kid’s face scrunched up, clearly thinking about it deeply. “...yeah. I’d like that.” Calvin’s eyes darkened with sheer murderous rage, his no-longer-plagued hands tightening as though strangling something. “I want to maim them, torture them, kill them, make them regret ever being born—”

  Dominic’s eyes widened. “Uh, Calvin, pause for a second.”

  The boy paused, eyes fixed on Dominic hesitantly.

  “I should have told you this in advance,” Dominic said as kindly as he could, “but I’m in this universe to accumulate good karma and establish my divine connection to it. So, while I understand your desire to… vent your rage at them, could we instead do something more… tame? We could… uh, try to reform… them…” Seeing that Calvin was clearly unsatisfied with that course of action, Dominic continued, “or hand them over to the guards! With some clever political maneuvering, I’m sure we could get them lawfully executed!”

  Calvin stared at him for a long, tense moment, then sighed and looked away. “I mean, you are a kind demigod, I guess, or you’d not have helped me. So I’m fine with reforming them, but could you at least beat them up first?”

  “Well, if you accidentally use too much force while subduing them, that wouldn’t necessarily be bad,” Dominic said diplomatically, “And, Calvin,” his tone turned fully serious, “you should know this.”

  Calvin blinked up at the sudden serious note in his voice.

  “I would have made you my disciple even if I was less kind. This wasn’t an act of pity, but of empathy. There is a difference. I didn’t do this to gain good karma—it was a purely selfish act, you understand?”

  Calvin opened and closed his mouth a few times like a fish out of water, clearly not knowing how to respond. It was amusing, seeing the kid be so flustered. And much better than murderous. “I—I see.”

  Dominic struggled to suppress his laughter. Calvin was just too adorable. Was Dominic this adorable when he was younger? Is that why Atwater was so excited to get some grand disciples? To experience the joy of their reactions?

  “...what do you mean about me using too much force, though…?” Calvin murmured after a few more seconds, looking up at Dominic with as neutral of a face as he could after his previous embarrassed expression. “Do you plan to train me? Won’t it take a long time, reaching the level of that mage? What if they harm others by then? And, locating them, can you locate them without even seeing them?”

  “I just froze time in front of you.”

  Calvin paused, then nodded. “Right, yes. You’re a demigod.”

  “Mhm,” Dominic hummed. “I do have to see them, yes, unless I scry into your fate, which would be more invasive than looking at your memories. So, with your permission, I’ll examine only that specific memory, find the identity of the mage, and with their identity, I can locate them easy peasy. As for training you…”

  We could take Mister Disciple to one of the S Class Rifts! There are a few permanent rifts that have stabilized into the world and become ‘dungeons’ that have never been able to be destroyed due to their incredibly strong boss monsters. The Rift Sealers normally go into these dungeons on a regular basis and wipe all the mobs spawning, to prevent a dungeon outbreak. They even get paid for this, so that might be one way to establish Mister Disciple’s reputation too, Mister Dominic, if you wish to do so!

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Then again, with your strength, Mister Dominic, you could probably train your disciple till he gets rid of a dungeon entirely, which would be much more effective! Or perhaps your disciple does not seek fame at all, but I digress.

  Gabrielle out!

  (∩?ω?∩)

  “...we could take you to one of the S Class Rifts. I can heal you whenever you get injured, and you can fight and fight till you get strong enough. Pretty straightforward. Of course, you can decide the level of intensity since I quite literally can pause time,” Dominic continued explaining, “We could go for a easy level where I heal all and any injuries as soon as you sustain them or we could go for a hard level where I heal you when you’re on the brink of death.”

  Aboooout that…

  I think you heal a little bit too effectively, Mister Dominic.

  (?-﹏-?)

  What do you mean, Gabrielle? Dominic asked, blinking at the floating dark blue text in front of him.

  You kind of reset everyone you heal. Fully. So if you were to heal poor Mister Disciple while he was training, and he’d gathered experience from levelling up to level two…

  (??_?)

  He’d reset to zero? Dominic asked incredulously.

  Yeeeapp.

  (╥?╥)

  There is a pretty easy solution to this, and that’d be hiring a top class healer! With the amount of gold coins you’ve created, you could probably move the Saintess herself to be a healer if you were to donate them to the Church of Light!

  ( ??_??)?

  “...could you revive me?” Calvin asked, drawing Dominic’s attention away from the conversation with Gabrielle.

  “Revive you?” Dominic asked, “What do you mean? I mean, yes, I could revive you if you die, so you don’t really have to fear death.”

  “Then why not just let me die? Why heal me at the brink of death?”

  Dominic’s eyes widened, making him look like one of Gabrielle’s shocked emojis. “W—What do you mean, kiddo?”

  “If I keep dying, I’ll stop fearing death, won’t I? I’m sure I can get some flashier titles too, and probably grow faster overall,” Calvin explained, perfectly serious, “And besides, why not die when I can?”

  Why not die when I can?! What in the Holy God’s name? My disciple is just as crazy as his grandmaster!

  Dominic took a deep breath. “Listen, kiddo. We’re supposed to fear death, you know? It’s unhealthy to embrace death that openly—well, not unhealthy, but… Um…” Right, his grandmaster! “Your grandmaster will beat me black and blue if he knows I’m abusing his grand disciples! Even the hard mode, I was just musing about it, didn’t expect you’d actually even consider it. We could, we could slowly escalate this, alright? You could embrace and taste death before your first attempt at becoming a demigod! All things in moderation, kiddo, moderation!”

  Calvin seemed unconvinced, but he nodded anyway.

  “I do want you to level up as naturally as possible, so we’ll go hire an expert healer from the Church of Light. My healing has a few side effects that aren’t conducive to levelling up—apparently I reset your level too!” Dominic stroked his chin, “Buying you gear would be a dumb move, though, since I can make infinitely better gear much more easily.”

  He looked over the clothes he and Calvin were wearing. While his were dirty too, at least they fit. Calvin’s though—with his sudden growth in both height and mass, he looked like a fashion model wearing the bare minimum for a new fashion line called poverty.

  “Alright, we’ve got to change our clothes, first.”

  Dominic raised an eyebrow as he looked at the robed man in Calvin’s memory. He clicked his finger, pausing the image, and bent down in a yakuza sitting pose.

  He barely suppressed the rage that flooded him at the sight.

  To harm his disciple, even before Calvin had become his disciple. How dare they. He seriously considered allowing himself some bad karma as he felt the sheer helpless terror in Calvin's body and mind in that moment.

  Dominic turned his gaze towards the robed man. The man's face was just a blur of black. Perhaps because Calvin had been so stressed when the memory was created, or because it had been tampered with so soon. Or the man might’ve used an obscurification spell, since he had been paranoid enough to use a memory seal too.

  “So, Gabrielle. Since you've seen him, can you give some information about him now? Perhaps locate him?”

  This man belongs to the Darkness Bane Cult, a cult which directly opposes the Church of Light and the Empire of Nohl. They must have been attempting to spread a plague and weaken the Empire majorly.

  I can indeed locate him, now! I've registered his mana signature, so I can give you his live location whenever you want!

  ?(⊙?⊙)???

  Dominic grinned. Well, that took care of tracking quite nicely. Next up, time to make his disciple into an S Rank Powerhouse.