One Last System

"Sorry, but I'm not sure if I understand this properly," Mia muttered, lowering her eyes and then raising her head to her chin as she took her sweet time to process everything that I said. "So all you wanted to say was that this Musk guy managed to achieve something that should be impossible, right?"

'Clever girl,' I thought, as always impressed by how quickly Mia could catch on to the things that she wasn't predisposed to understand.

Even if I was the best in the world at explaining knowledge, even if I actually had any background preparing me for such a task... Helping Mia understand the scale of things space-related should still be a massive challenge.

Not at all because Mia was lacking in intelligence or wits. It was all because this reality was so mind-boggling that even those who grew up knowing those scales by their heart hardly ever could understand what it truly meant.

And still, junding from how Mia managed to sum everything up with a single word... She actually understood my lesson!

"That's right," I nodded my head, a satisfied smile creeping up on my lips.

"Then, why did you go for such lenghts to explain it?" Mia then asked, leaning her head to the side.

At the same time, playful sparks appeared behind her pupils, lighting up her eyes.

"I mean, you could just say that this guy was a monster on his own, didn't you?" Mia pressed forward, striking right where I was currently vulnerable.

Because now that I thought about it, it didn't matter if Mia understood the conceptualization of space and its scale. But that was the smaller problem.

Now that Mia pointed it out, wasn't my entire, lengthy lecture all aimed to say, 'It was hard, but they did it?'

"Judging by how you turned silent, it seems that I'm right," Mia noted before releasing a long, heavy sigh.

"Dear, I understand that you want me to figure out every last detail of the situation. I understand that you want me to not only know what happened but how and why as well," Mia stated, shaking her head and throwing me a serious glance. "But didn't you want me to be the one in command today?"

My whole body shrugged, shocked by how plainly and directly Mia put the situation to be.

And then, my lips resumed their duty of forming a smile.

"You are correct, albeit I don't see the connection between those two topics," I informed while nodding my head to Mia's points from before.

In fact, I could tell where Mia was going with her words. Yet, rather than answering my guess, I only answered what she actually said.

'If I'm right, this could serve as an important lesson to her,' I thought, gazing at the beautiful features of Mia's face.

"Then why did you waste so much time just to tell me something so simple?"

Mia's question struck like a hammer. Both because she was absolutely right about my own fault and because hearing her say those words...

It meant that Mia passed the small test of mine. She successfully satisfied my curiosity about whether or not she could call me out on the mistake I made.

'She grew a lot since we first met,' I thought, my lips finally forming a proper smirk.

"My bad," I admitted without any shame. "I guess I just have the habit of overexplaining things," I added. And then I shrugged.

Because this small commentary that I followed my initial statement with... It was an over-explanation as well.

"That's right." Mia heavily nodded her head as if I had just uttered something that should be plain obvious for anyone to see. "Dear, don't take me wrong," she quickly added, shaking her head sideways. "I don't mean to say that I don't like listening to your stories."

Mia took a step closer and placed her hands on my shoulder. She then looked me deeply in the eyes, keeping her silence for a short while.

"Arthur. If you want me to lead today, I need your answers to be concise," she whispered, her voice becoming a mix of affection and seriousness. "You can leave the detailed stories for when we are free, okay?"

"Sure thing," I replied shortly, paying an awful lot of attention to keep the entirety of what I was saying short.

'Maybe I'm getting the drive to explain everything because I keep using complicated sentences?' I thought, trying to figure out the reason behind my talkativeness.

'No, it's not it,' I quickly dismissed my initial idea.

Something like this could work if I was writing, not speaking!

"Maybe it's because I never had anyone to listen to me?" I thought, only to be slightly too late to realize I actually allowed those words out of my mouth.

"Arty?" Mia shrugged, surprised by my sudden reveal.

"Ah, don't worry about it." I waved my hand and took a step away. "Just a slip of the tongue."

For a moment, Mia simply stared at me as if trying to sound off what was the message behind what I uttered.

"Well then, how about we return to your story?" Mia suggested with a strange look on her face.

'Wait, no!' I was never an eagle of social interactions... But even an introvert like me could understand what was likely going through Mia's head.

Or rather, being the introvert myself, I could very well understand what conclusions one could reach when overthinking the meaning behind what I just said!

"Just shortly this time, please," Mia added just as I opened my mouth to apologize for the earlier slip of a tongue.

'Thank God...'

While thinking about Mia in this way gave me pretty bad vibes, I had to somehow train her.

Not in some weird or disgusting way, but train her to become even more independent than she is right now.

This was the sole reason why I wanted her to play the leading role today. This was the reason behind this small test of mine.

In other words, I wanted to ensure Mia would fully embrace her new position, with all the perks included. And that meant she had to grow her ability to command me, something that a former slave like her could find pretty problematic!

"In short words, huh?" I muttered, only to rub my chin and then shake my head. "The development, discovery, and advancement of technology were supposed to bring peace. Oh, and you can attribute all three of them to that Musk guy," I spoke, doing my absolute best to be as concise as possible.

"But it didn't," Mia muttered, raising her eyebrow in a clear expression of doubt.

"Yeah." I nodded my head. "At first, people rushed to capitalize on the colonization of mars, then the exploitation of the asteroid belt..." I quickly recalled the events that transpired in what I considered to be my past. "Then came a war that resulted in a debris field closing the space for humanity forever," I explained, only to then raise my hand and slap my own cheeks.

"What does it mean for us, though?" Mia asked, not showing any signs of being bothered by my small explanation.

"If this place made use of magic and was created by the Musk family..." I thought, only to then bite my lips and raise my eyes, looking deeply into Mia's pupils.

"It most likely means that all the magic of this world is actually a technology," I revealed my guess. "A technology that's too advanced even for me to understand."