“Huh? What is it? You want me to go down there?” Foster asked, looking at the small spirit that was tugging on his pant-leg. He peaked over the edge of the overhang that he was sitting on, and could still see Jasmin and Argo running around as if searching for him. It’s been probably half an hour since they started, and they somehow still didn’t give up, “Yeah, sorry, no I won’t do that. They’re bothersome. And yes, I know that I was the one to go talk to them in the first place, but that doesn’t mean I want to deal with them more than that. I had my fun, I don’t want to be bothered by them.” He said bluntly, and Aster continued peaking down the edge, as if he was feeling bad for those two.

Foster rolled his eyes and leaned back against the rock wall again, continuing to try and draw into the air with his mana. Currently, he was just drawing the triangle on repeat until he was able to make it look perfect. After all, most magic circles were supposedly made of carefully calculated geometrical patterns and shapes. If he couldn’t even draw a full straight line, he didn’t even need to try using that sort of magic. Even if he couldn’t be injured even if he did fail casting necromancy spells, he should still be careful. There might be side-effects that he doesn’t know about.

“Urgh…” Foster groaned, and pushed his hand into his bag, pulling out a small booklet out of it. After flipping it open, he could see sketches and lists filled with nothing but numbers, “Let’s see here… this one… Sali-V… at the observatory at midnight a week ago… it was here.” He muttered to himself, trying to think about the positions of the stars based on the star surveys that he got from the Astronomers at the observatory. They had gotten a lot of things right, but there are some things they can’t do with the knowledge they have now. For example, gauging the distance of stars, something that had only been possible on earth for less than two hundred years as well.

Foster glanced past his book as he started to take notes, and saw Aster staring at him, “…What? Using mana is hard, just let me do what I want…”

The small spirit just continued staring at Foster without even flinching, as if he was petrified. Foster finally gave in, “Fine, at least let me do it with just one or two of them, alright? I’m nearly done with the positions of stars in some major constellations in this world. I want to show it to the guys at the observatory, hehe.” He chuckled slightly, continuing to note things down on one of the pages of his notebook.

“Now, half a year, plus one week, ago, the same star was… over here, alright.” Foster kept whispering to himself, as he finally started to do something with this information. The way to calculate the distance from the planet to a star was simple, at least it was using the parallax formula. The same way an object in front of you seems to be in a different position depending on whether you look at it with only your left or only your right eye, a star was also in a similarly different position. Of course, with just your eyes, it was impossible to gauge this difference, so instead, you took the charted star position during different times of the year to calculate the distance.

The easiest way was to just use two positions with half a year between one another, since that meant the planet was on the opposite side of the sun compared to before. Since the distance between the center of the planet and the center of the sun was one astronomical unit, that made the difference in position roughly two astronomical units. That way, the formula didn’t have to be adjusted.

“Now, just to calculate the angle between the two points… then divide one astronomical unit by this angle, and… there we go… roughly 34 million kilometers, and… assuming that the distance between the sun and this planet is the same as on earth… that would be 549 light years.” Foster said with a light grin on his face. For some reason, knowing this sort of thing was really calming to him. Especially considering that he was quite possibly the only person in this whole world that knew how far that star, or any star at that, was away from them right now. It made him feel sort of in control of everything that was going on around him at the moment.

Foster continued calculating the same things for a few more stars, until he fully completed everything for the Salicia constellation, “Man… let’s hope Sam can really repair my phone, that way I could do more accurate calculations…” 

Dropping right onto his back, Foster looked at the ceiling. He really felt like watching the stars for a bit right now. Slowly, he raised his hand, and is if it knew what he was longing for, mana slowly streamed out of his fingers. Just for some instants, the mana seemed to create glowing dots in the air that practically made the air itself glitter. But to Foster, who was looking at the dark cave’s ceiling, the glittering looked like stars. And then, it dawned on him.

“On the map… the entrance to the boss room was perfectly east… so meaning, that’s north…” Slowly, he started to manipulate the mana that was flowing through the air above him, until he created one single dot, “Let’s say… my arm’s length would be 500 light years… and my right eye is the world…”

The dot slowly moved through the air, and settled right above one of Foster’s fingers, now taking on the role of Sali-V. Following that star, Foster made more appear, “The Salicia constellation has ten stars… that’s more than I’ve ever made, but it should be fine… they’re not moving, so…”

It didn’t take too much longer until ten glowing dots were floating above Foster. And there, he could see it. He was seeing the Salicia constellation, one of the clearest and easiest to watch in this world’s night-sky, floating above him. It was the first constellation that he had been able to point out in the sky after reading up on this world’s constellations.

As he looked at the ten tiny stars above him, his arm still stretched out toward them, he suddenly saw two more glowing points appear. But this time, they weren’t created by himself. They were the eyes of the snake bracelet wrapped around his wrist. And soon, a translucent message window started to float in front of his eyes.

— 

[You have begun stepping onto your own path through the world of magic. The spellcasting functions of the {Snake of Death} have been unlocked]

— 

“Spellcasting functions?” Foster read, and while the stars behind the window faded away together with his focus on them, the snake bracelet started to slither over his hand. It started wrapping itself around his index finger, its tail resting on his palm. When its hand reached the tip of his finger, the snake’s lower jaw started pressing onto his fingernail and the metal seemed to shift, as if it was conforming to the finger’s shape, practically swalling the tip whole in a weird way. It didn’t take long until the snake finally settled again, its head now resting around his fingertip, while its body tightly wrapped and conformed itself around his finger, as if it was a thin bandage instead of something that had acted like a bracelet just a few moments prior.

“The fuck’s this supposed to be?” He let out with a wry smile, looking at the snake confused, “Is this like a… wand now or something? I can’t fight with it like this.”

Foster turned his head, now looking at the message window that was still suspended in the air next to him. He started stepping onto his own path? What was that supposed to mean?

“Argh, this shit is so fucking confusing man… just be straightforward for once, what can you do, and what am I supposed to use you for?” Foster asked with a deep frown, really quite annoyed at what was going on right now. But then, he realized something, “Wait… So, like… you have spellcasting functions, does that mean you have combat functions as well? Like, can you turn into a weapon or something?”

But of course, the snake wrapped around his finger didn’t react to his question in the slightest, even though he tried to feed it mana while he was asking the question.

“Man… fuck this shit….”