"Well, let's get everything unpacked. You can use the tool shed out back for the bits and bobs you needed. I'll need to check the pantry and fridge to see if my nephew was by anytime recently, probably not, but he has crashed here before. Left home like me to work in Boston as a mechanic. He leaves his tools here on occasion, so if you see something you could use, don't be shy. Just make sure nothing breaks. Obviously." He chuckles to himself at what was most likely an inside joke. I shrug, but get to work unpacking.
With a lunch break in between, it takes only two hours to get the truck unloaded, and another two to put away everything in its proper place. So to get things going, I summon the Poison Scaveran, Jeff, and Gearbreak.
"Alright, let's set some ground rules." The system of whistles I use with Loki were made with fliers in mind, so teaching that took very little time, and after naming the scaveran Caustic, we started on the more complex commands. Jeff was far smarter than I initially expected and was actually taking to whistling with me for the commands, though I'm eighty percent sure he doesn't have the biology to whistle.
After getting the commands down, I summoned Loki to fly with the others and follow us on our hike to the lake. Jeff was having fun telling the fliers to do tricks, and the fliers were having fun stretching their wings. Once we see the lake, I whistle to the fliers to circle the area and train on their own while I summon up Medusa, Ariel, and the Hullbreaker, who was swiftly named Triton.
"So, today is just basic drills and getting into the rhythm of training, so I want Medusa and Triton to race about the lake bed, while Jeff and Feabas will be doing physical exercises. Everybody got that? Good, I'll be swimming and practicing structural analysis on myself, so if you need me, you know where to find me. Let's go!"
Line Break
Later, I was in the tool shed stretching deliciously sore muscles and brainstorming. The training paired with getting the Hunter faunus transformation included a few different weapons before it settled for Poison and Venom, including a few that were mostly jokes, but the unorthodox can work if you do it right. As my aura slowly healed off my fatigue, I smiled at my mecha-shift weapons.
Poison and Venom appeared to be a bulky gauntlet with a pale blue crystal in the palm and a spear-bow hybrid, respectively. The gauntlet had a hardlight Dust crystal powering a hardlight generator calibrated to make a barrier and an arrow to go with the bow.
After getting Veterinary with Gearbreak, and thus the knowledge of Transformer's shifting and forcefield tech, I've been getting multiple ideas to upgrade my old friends. I grab some spare parts and a soldering iron and get to work.
Line Break
Meditating eith my eyes closed on the bed I claimed, I think deeply about the greater mysteries I may one day enact. Towering monstrosities of steel and power clashing with gods, a whole separate world that is at my complete command, rituals powerful enough to mold the planet in my image, and many more. But the journey of a thousand miles starts with just one step. An image I found while swimming on the lake flashes through my head, a ship's sails filling with wind, and my magic circuits hum to life.
Going through the motions, I slowly cast all three of the spells Gaea generously gave me. I hold a piece of paper in my hands, and trickle mana into it, getting pings of metaphysical information and physical dimensions. It feels like I'm literally scraping the surface of this spell, but I ignore it in favor of identifying imperfections within the sheet. Next, with a bit more prana, I carefully fill in those imperfections, centering my ideal as a sheet of metal. I open my eyes and look over the abnormal stiff paper, trying and failing to tear it. Suddenly, it cracked down the middle like a slab of sandstone. Obviously, I'm going to need to work on that.
Next, I again closed my eyes to focus, shape my prana into a thin plane of roughly equal proportions, and attempt to make it simulate the paper I was just experimenting with. Opening my eyes, I see a square of off-white material that looks as even as a preschooler's first attempt at a square. Trying to fold it instantly shatters the prana making it up, showing how much work I need to do.
I have a thought and grab a fresh piece of printer paper to test my idea. I first use structural analysis again, but instead keep these readings in mind as I make a paper out of gradation air. The spells synchronized harmoniously, and the paper I made both looked and felt correct, but the quality was worse than tissue paper and crumbled after only two folds.
I scratch my head, pondering on how to eek out a bit more efficiency, before remembering something. I reach within my soul, aiming right next to The Jump, and pull. A shimmer of soft orange light heralds the arrival of my wand.
The weight settled in my hands, and I was entranced by how smoothly my energy flowed through it. The wand was four feet long, almost a staff in honesty, and the Bog Oak was the perfect level of rough to keep a firm grip without chafing. Dark brown and ancient, the wood pulsed with a slow, methodical hum of magic that resembled more a mountain than a tree. The carvings of celtic knots converged upon a warm crystal that was colored like a frozen bonfire. The opposite end had a bronze cap that had dozens of runes with gold inlays that brought to mind a feeling of profound connection.
All of my internal energies; aura, prana, mana; they all were heartily accepted with such warmth it bordered on love, and the rightness I felt holding it was overwhelming.
It took a few minutes of bathing in the sheer joy to get my mind on track, and when I did, I noticed a shed tear of happiness. I felt more than a little guilty for having never summoned my wand before now. A forgiving whisper flowed through me, and I could only grin. Let's test out our limits, friend.
Line Break
The next morning, I pull Thomas away from the funny pages. I need to explain at somepoint, might as well do it quickly, like ripping a bandaid. I take a fortifying breath and look Thomas in the eyes.
"The world is going to end within my generation."
He looks confused but motions to continue. He has a bit of sweat on his bald head, but not a glimmer of doubt in his eyes.
"One of my summons is a precognitive spirit, and she foretold an evil greater than the Endbringers is coming. In fact, the Endbringers are this beings' creations. It does not care about life or happiness, and is planning a genocide on an uncountable scale, something it has done over and over for what might be millions of years." Trying to explain Gaea as a carry on of a different summon felt redundant when I can't realistically describe the ins and outs of magecraft, but this way I can at least get the information into an acceptable format.
Thomas pales, and the sweat multiplies. His eyes unfocused for a short moment, and the gears in his head spin in place. He looks into my eyes, begging for this to be a joke, to be exaggerated, to be as impossible as he feels it should be, but found naught but tired determination. Fear clings to his frame as he sags into his chair. Mutterings escape his quivering lips, prayers that go unanswered, and curses that lay unfulfilled.
"This being is currently unstoppable, but it won't always be. In time, something will come that could rival or defeat it, but as of right now, the planet is all but defenseless. I am one of the only people in the world who knows about this, but I refuse to be cowed by a future that I can change. My roster of summons is, according to this prophet, one path to victory, but it isn't the only one either. There is a chance to win, Tom, but to do that, I need to be stronger. I'm unsure where our deadline is, but it isn't today, so I'll train like it might be tomorrow."
His panic is not abated, but it is bouyed by a small sliver of hope. This is what I'm fighting for, and I will not fail to live up to that hope. I will kill Scion, and I will live my life because I am Noah. A name that will go down in history as a savior.
"Whatever happens, Arny, I'll be right behind you. Always." Thomas says, laying a hand on my shoulder. His eyes were aglow with bravery and loyalty. His hand gripped me like a lifeline. I feel a warmth in my chest, knowing I'm not alone in this.
That's all I needed.
Whoo boy, that was rough, I'm really glad that I'm doing a timeskip because I can not keep up this level of writing for so long on these same topics. Trying to not be repetitive with my vocabulary in a training setup was tough, I can not imagine doing an entire month of this. Also, I'm wondering if you want me to throw in an Informational thread with his progress or if I should try to write it in properly, I'm cautiously optimistic about my chances with truly writing it in, but if you guys prefer a more cold analysis of Noah's fruits of training let me know.
As of this moment, any suggested spells will be for Noah to learn in the future. Keep in mind that Magecraft is one of the hardest magic systems to learn and create spells with, so progress outside of highly focused training will be greatly reduced. Thanks to everyone for giving your suggestions! Many of your ideas were incorporated into the spells Noah makes during the month, and I'm excited to see what you all think of them!
Last thing to discuss will be where he should focus his magecraft research from now on, since he will not realistically have the necessary time to do everything. Obviously, this is heavily influenced by what spells he makes and his progress in them, but I'm curious of your blind ideas about it anyway. After his training timeskip is done, I'll be asking this again to see if anybody changes their minds upon seeing his repertoire.
Today is gonna be big. I can feel it in my bones. This is gonna be a day to remember. Excited tingles zipped up my spine as I breathed in the fresh forest air. The orange sunrise was more vibrant than it's been these last two weeks, and the buzzing energy in my heart is like a drug. I feel restless, but I continue through my stretches like I have since this training trip began.
Two weeks of hard, disciplined, and brutal training, and it's as I figured. Not a single new template from the Celestial Menagerie. That isn't to say there's been no progress, but I can't help but notice the absence.
If the motivation I feel in the air is any indicator, that's about to change.
I've noticed that most of my creatures have already hit their peak, and it's only me, Ariel, Loki, and, to a lesser extent, Jeff that are still growing stronger. Caustic was doing well for a while, but two days ago, he stopped improving and is lagging behind. Jeff has found that, like Ariel will soon, he has some inherent hydrokenesis. It isn't great, but it is enough to do a few tricks he couldn't before and claim a few more spars against Ariel than I expected.
Speaking of Ariel, she's so close to evolving that I know it has something to do with my excitement. She's going to be a Milotic today. However, something in the back of my head says today is more special than that. Something is screaming that I'm missing the obvious, that if I just listen a little closer...
No, I got this far on my discipline and hard work, I'm going to push this limit with my usual bull-headed stubbornness.
With a stomach stuffed with breakfast, a backpack full of treats, and a basket packed with lunch, I start my now customary morning sprint to the lake.
As trees and shrubbery whip by, I let my mind wander to all I've accomplished in the time since leaving Brockton Bay. My magic pool given with the Clow Card has widened to a river: strong, deep, and flowing with practiced grace. Until I get any more cards, I'm not going to progess much farther. I can maintain The Jump at max output all day now, and I've gotten into a habit to pour all that magic directly through my circuits. That seems to have expanded them a bit, and the perpetual cycling keeps them cooler for longer, letting me use and experiment with more prana than I rightly should. It's seriously helped speed up my research. My wand was an even greater help. The extra potency and precision it enabled made spell work smooth enough to be almost confusing.
I can see the lake now, so I summon out all my training partners for the day. Ariel appears with a determined glint in her eye, an anticipation evident in her roiling power. Loki screeches a triumphant note, scaring off some nearby birds and being particularly smug about it, too. Jeff flops into the water with a happy gargle, oblivious to everyone around him in his pursuit of wetness.
"You know the drill, no relaxing until later." Jeff surfaces with a disappointed noise, "there'll be time for fun on our break, Jeff. For the time being, it's gonna be you and Ariel in the lake again, Loki is off the weights for today to go easier for a bit, and I'm getting back onto them." I say seriously, my little land shark sometimes needs a bit of a sterner hand, but he means well.
With hearty trills, Loki and Ariel get right to it, while Jeff sighs but follows after the oldest sister of my small family. I slap my face, hyping up for a workout while my mind again wonders. Although my workouts are all magically enhanced, they still take a bit of time to show, so my baby fat has stubbornly hung on but I'm putting on twice that in muscle so I don't quite care.
Thinking back on magic, my spell research was improving much faster than my body. I know a bit of why, but from what I know, magecraft should take much longer to develop than this. I can feel both Gaea and Alaya are always watching, and there's a definite flake of confusion every time a new mystery completes correctly. The reasons may escape me, but I'm not complaining.
The basic three spells are all very interesting case studies into the principle of complexity increasing power and utility. With gradation air, it only took a couple of days to hit a dead end. The premise of the spell is for a shell of prana to make a facsimile of whatever you can imagine, but empty containers are fairly fragile without support. This is why the gradation air spell is so simple and so weak, there's no substance. No weight. But, if one decides to improve the spell, it naturally falls into the complex art of Projection, which from what I can tell, is a precursor to breaking the concept of conservation of mass and energy.
Reinforcement is brutish and limiting. The materials have a very hard limit on how far they can be pushed, and the dedication needed to master every materials' differing limits, is hard to do with such a primitive, and again simple delivery of prana. Is it possible to make reinforcement so finely tuned that it can give similar results to more complex spells? Yes, it can, but to get there, it is so much more difficult than making a better spell, and if you had similar masteries between the mysteries, plain reinforcement would lose every time.
Then, structural analysis is a whole other rabbit hole to tumble down. At its roots, it measures the physical properties of an object, person, or place by prodding it at every conceivable angle. Of the three, it certainly is the most complicated to learn because it also has a hidden depth to it I might never have the time to truly figure out. If I kept digging at the physical properties, I might start nudging the metaphysical as well. I have hit it once. Three days ago, I was using structural analysis on my Mecha-shift weapons to get some calculations going for upgrades. When I prodded at Venom, I got feedback on experiences. No matter how I've tried, I can't seem to recreate that moment, but it shows how far even these simpler spells can go when you introduce an extra variable of complexity to them.
The three spells all have so much potential to branch off with. It makes perfect sense why these are considered a rite of passage to be considered a Magus.
A cry of victory coming from the water stole my attention, and I turned to see a proud Feabas flailing out of the water with poor Jeff stuck in a tree. Then, a pale blue glow erupted from the jumping fish, and proud warbles transitioned into elegant croons. Hidden from view, a silhouette of Ariel elongated, growing longer, and longer, and longer, while a wide tail fin sprouted in a fanned shape. The light inexplicably shattered like glass, revealing the gorgeous pastel colors and silky soft fins of a very healthy Milotic.
Pride flared in my heart, seeing my little girl grow to her potential. The emotions hammered on my soul, sculpting the finishing touches on something special, and I, too, erupted in light. A golden pulse traveled out, just as bright as the evolution before it, and I swore an Oath.
I will protect this family I've stumbled into, and I'll do it with my head raised high!
Power surged through my aura, as my Semblance manifests right in time with Ariel. Holy energy ravaged the ground near me, breaking the well-trodden clearing in a wave. I cry out in more emotion than I could think about as a tug in my soul pulled me in.
The loom spins, but it was slow. Patient, if I were to try and personify it. A beautiful cascade of colorful ribbons glided towards the loom, and the tapestry showed a massive garden, every pigment imaginable splashing with chaotic excitement. All around the trees and taller plant life, festive and bright piñatas hang, dotting the landscape. It was a Piñata Garden. The power labeled Mindless Summoning clicked into place, and the loom glowed brighter.
A new tapestry was being woven, now with streamers of hopeful flame that whimsically twirled about, taking its time to playfully explore the room, before converging in a flood of power too great for the frame to support. It tore itself free, finishing itself three meters in the air. A song was resonating, shaking the endless room with uplifting magic, and the burning tapestry flared before falling to ash and flying off with the feeling of new beginnings. My Greater Companion, a Pheonix, has arrived.
With a jolt of weight on my right shoulder, I'm drawn back to reality with a warm, welcoming song.
My passionate roar, a magical tone, and a beautiful cry harmonized. The world shuddered, and I felt something crystallize, cementing this glorious moment within the eternity of history. This truly was a day to remember.
Jesus 0.0
That escalated quickly. Fitting for the Worm setting I guess.
But anyway, here's a peek at our hero becoming a minor legend. The firsts of so many things appeared around this one second of time; the first monster to train until they shatter their limits, the first soul to manifest thier semblance of individuality, the first real magical beast and immortal being. That is a ton of powerful happenings. As I just wrote, it is very much going to be a moment immortalized. The Throne of Heroes is getting a new face, slowly but surely.
Noah's Semblance is Oath Paladin. Fulfilling his oaths, staying true to himself, protecting others, and following the duty his patrons have given him will not only empower his aura, but all his energies, and this power can be used to fuel multiple facets of Holy magic including healing, smiting, cleansing, bolstering, and more.
Noah has taken the first steps in the basics of magecraft, and uses his Origin and elements to guide his first walks with death. He currently has a good number of personal spells he made himself and is beginning to mix his different powers. The only question left is: will it be enough?
Please leave your thoughts, and thanks for reading!
I look through my notebook in pride. I set out to expand my power, and expand it I did. I found my Semblance, something Alaya named Oath Paladin. I bettered my physique to peak human potential in just a month thanks to magic enhanced food, exercise, and rest. I upgraded my weapons Poison and Venom to a whole new realm of power through advanced technology and rituals. My wand has been upgraded with a pheonix tail feather, freely given, to boost its effects. All my summons are now a well-oiled machine of teamwork, and a select few have grown leaps and bounds. My magic pool has expanded into a lake, deep and wide enough to manifest almost every mystery I've found. My magecraft has grown into a foundation for a truly powerful research base. I'm ready to shake things up in this city.
"So, Arny, I'm curious about what you've been doing in that tool shed. I tried to peek, but I couldn't bring myself to look inside. What eldritch sorcery are you enacting in my backyard?" Although it was said with levity, the undercurrent of fear showed he was at least a little serious. Good news, the protections worked, which means they'll also work at the café.
I turn my smirking visage just enough to catch his brave front out of the corner of my eye. "Sorcery is pretty close, actually. What I'm doing is utilizing the abnormal laws of physics one of my summons uses to basically create a few personalized superpowers. The only issue is that I need to study these new physics extensively to make them, and with how dangerous normal particle physics can be, I chose to commandeer your tool shed to hopefully minimize any damage." I came up with this half-truth after week three, and it pretty well explains magic without giving away it is magic. And with magecraft, it isn't even a lie. Most magecraft mysteries utilize science to create their phenomena.
"You mean to tell me you were doing the equivalent of parahuman nuclear weapon tests in my god damn house!?"
"C'mon Thomas, keep up. We already established my workshop was in the tool shed, not the house itself." Ooh, that's an interesting expression. An artful mix of dread, fear, anger, and worry.
"Arnold Polke, did you or didn't you make weapons of mass destruction in my tool shed!?"
I scoff. "Hardly, I just said they were like personalized superpowers. Y'know, like super strength, illusions, laser beams, super senses, that type of thing." He sags into the faux-leather seat, and I couldn't help myself. "The WMDs are, like, ten years of study away." His strangled choke is glorious.
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding." It's more like a few decades away if that was all I focused on, presuming my rapid progress continues, but I give him a break for now.
He sighs, a vein popping on his forehead as he tries to keep from throttling me into the next century. I've learned a lot this past month, and unfortunately for old Tom, that includes his particular brand of annoying.
"What. Powers. Did you learn?" His gritted teeth is a balm to my tired soul.
"Oh, a little this and a little that. Standard Brute package for one." My work with the reinforcement spell and its variant I made was definitely the most extensive, taking a third of my total studies. Making a spell based on reinforcement is one of the first steps any self-respecting magus makes into the deadly science of magecraft, and I was no different. The spell I made, named oh so originally Steel-Forged, used the symbolic strength of steel to make a mystical version of its creation process as a better reinforcement spell.
"Oh? How good are we talking here?" Thomas asked. Good question, and honestly, I'm unsure how it will stack up to other parahumans. With my physique almost reaching its maximum, the reinforcement spell didn't have much room to improve on, so a different method was needed. Steel-Forged, simply put, starts with purifying the material, expanding it and filling the gaps with the projected aspect of alloyed, before quenching it in my Clow Card magic to make it much more conductive to exotic energy and overall improving it. Using it on my body lets me double my base strength and improves the effect of my aura by fifty percent, so I am effectively around three times the abilities of most Olympic athletes.
"Pretty good, I think. I'm currently hovering at about triple peak human strength and speed, but I'm not sure how that stacks up with any other parahuman."
"Huh. Not bad, I guess. What else?"
"Besides making that Brute package into a Striker power, I have a couple Master abilities centered on minions." With my Origin of Puppet, master powers are all but guaranteed to be potent. The first spell I made was as literal as I could make it to maximize the boost, and I called it Fiber. A powerful string I have full control over, able to be sharp as monofilament and as tough as iron, anything I connect it to I have near perfect control over as well. I haven't practiced using it on living creatures or humans, so even though it should work on them, I have no idea how different it'll be to master people and animals. Also, using my element of light, I can make them invisible to all forms of light, visible or otherwise. I can also run Steel-Forged through them to improve whatever they connect to.
Finally, I tried and succeeded in making a minion with my Fiber spell as the material. I used the template I know best: after all the exercise and use of structural analysis on myself during them, that was myself. Using Fiber to make a clone took days of trial and error, but I eventually got it working. Fiber Clone is my newest spell and is barely even past the proof of concept phase, so its limits and power are nowhere in sight. I can only make a single clone for now, and it takes a couple of minutes to shape correctly.
"Minions, eh? So like Crusader or that newer bitch on the block with dogs, uh... what's her name? Hellhound maybe?"
I did actually make my own minions, too. I took inspiration from the legend of Jade Totems, and made mine out of granite shaped like gorilla-gargoyle hybrids, massive arms, wings, talons and claws, and a sharp toothed maw with the ability to unhinge like a snake for maximum intimidation and power. I had to make the creation of the statues into a full ritual on its own to get the effects and power right. They don't have much more strength than an average gorilla, and they even fly like moths with disjointed and seemingly drunk movements. They require a lot of precision to make, and for now, my sculpting skills are lackluster. I tried to make a short cut by sculpting it like clay with a different application of magecraft, but it made the end product fall apart, making it seem like no easier method than just by hand will work.
"I think so, but those are my strongest powers offensively for the moment. Beyond that, I have a couple Shaker, Thinker, Mover, and Trump powers, too."
"Christ, kid, did you do anything else this last month?"
"Not really, just exercised and managed the training of my summons. Unfortunately, not many could get much stronger than they already were, so they got a bit sidelined. Most of the training was for Ariel, who, as you know, evolved into a right terror." Thomas shivered at the memories of getting blown across a room for mocking me with my Milotic in Water Pulse range.
"Yeah, terror is right. You might not be wrong about her taking on Lung if she gets too much stronger." Oh, she will. I have absolute faith in my pretty girl to decimate that false dragon.
I give a hum of agreement and lapse into silence for a while. Ariel has made incredible progress in both her physical power and elemental finesse. By the end of the month, Ariel was only sparring with Medusa, even if she still mostly lost for now, and she had learned a few techniques with her hydrokenesis that were quite advanced for her. Life Dew, Whirlpool, Protect, and her personal favorite Water Pulse. Gaea seemed abnormally pushy with making sure these techniques were named, so I just shrugged and went with it to appease her. There was some definite amusement in her insistence, which I still didn't quite understand, but if naming Ariel's attacks made her happy, who was I to stop her?
Thinking on my other magecraft for a bit, I write down a bit of details I missed recording last night.
Gradation air was the most simple spell to learn, period. But, it led to two mysteries I'm quite excited to explore further: Illusions, and Projection.
Illusions takes the flimsy nature of gradation air's shell structure and gives it a purpose. By creating the usual shell of prana and giving it the light attribute, I can far more easily control its appearance by directly influencing the light it interacts with, and with invisible Fibers, I can make the semi-physical illusions do whatever I want with very high precision. The only issue is that, for now, my illusions are amateur. In a few months I'm certain I'll be fooling Armsmaster, but it's still new so I'll need more time. I can also make the shells an extremely powerful light source to act as an emergency flashbang, but the shells can't contain that much power and quickly fall apart afterwards. By merging this with projection for the other senses, it gives a pretty decent illusion.
Projection is the direct upgrade to gradation air, as it makes full copies of what's in your mind, innards and all. This is a ridiculously power intensive spell, and to make use of it for anything needs an imagination as powerful as a dozen poets, so I can only really create one aspect or one mundane creation at a time. I'm sure that it has a few ways to make it a viable option, like using blueprints or something to ease the burden on the amount of imagination needed, but I didn't have enough time to explore it in depth. Since I only needed it to make an aspect or two to finish my more complex spells, and I was focusing quite heavily on Steel-Forged for more survivability, it kind of fell to the wayside.
Structural analysis was tough to learn at the higher levels, but I managed to just barely learn a bit of metaphysical information off the scans by the end of the trip. I was using my wand to boost it and casting on myself since I'm most familiar with using it to check my physical progress. I was able to see my magic circuits and magic pool, both of which are metaphysical in nature. It was a major breakthrough with the spell, but it happened with two days left to the trip, so making it more consistent will need to be done later.
Before I found out about the hidden depths, I made one variant of structural analysis that I just called Survey. As the name implies, I imbued some earth element into it to make it give a wide geological survey of the area, up to about a mile in radius last I checked. It led me to a large supply of granite, which was very helpful for minion creation.
With a bit of effort and a few panic attacks I was able to meditate on my dark element itjustwon'twashoffwhywon'titwashoffpleaseIdon'twanttorememberthenothingnesspleaseohdeargodno -ahem, uh, meditating on my dark element, I figured out how to emphasize its potent aspect of gravity. Pairing that with the density aspect of earth, I can now make any surface, solid or liquid, easily traversable. I just called it Cling and shelved any other deep contemplation on a certain element of mine for a while.
I was able to jail break The Jump of its limitations too, so I can use it to slightly increase my kicking power, jump off the air or any surface, and have no negative affects from inertia when it's fully manifested, which was a very pleasant surprise to find.
The "Trump" powers I was talking about were just me imbuing magecraft elements into objects or phenomena to give a minor boost, probably no more than twenty percent.
Something I didn't mention to Thomas and might never was the spell for hypnosis. It was like breathing air for me, made even easier by imbuing light into the spell. It was already quite simple, but it was so aligned with my Origin that it became something that would make any intelligence division green with envy and pale with fear. In theory, I could even mix the hypnosis spell into invisible Fibers, and that was enough to keep me up for a couple of nights, fearing my own potential.
Right after I finished writing my speculations, coded in invisible ink and layered over some mundane cooking recipes, the Celestial Menagerie made itself known once again.
The loom spins. The frame pulsed with energy, and the sky unraveled. Blue as a clear summer day, the threads soared with angelic grace, flitting about and releasing a soothing melody. Spiraling ever closer to the loom, a picture formed of a wide plateau surrounded by rivers, grassland, and rocky cliffs viewed from the air as a pair of clouds flew above the landscape. On closer inspection, the pair of clouds were instead a pair of very cottony wings connected to a sky blue spherical body. The Pokémon Swablu really did camouflage well in the open skies. A new Theme, Uniform, was added to the others, and the power of Calming Aura was slotted into place.
Returning to the drive back home, a new notebook is swiftly fished out, and new ideas and plans rapidly scribble into being. Something Thomas takes notice of.
"Hoh, Arny, slow down there, bud. You'll start a fire at that rate. What's the rush?"
I groan. "I just got another summon with similar potential and abilities as Ariel, but we just finished the big training trip. I'm just a bit upset about it, is all. Couldn't I have gotten this before now when I had the time to devote myself more to her training, too?"
"HAHAHA! Oh, that's funny. Do you want the world to follow your every whim while we're at it? For God's sake, Arny, didn't you say Ariel is a top-tier combatant? And now you got another monster just as strong? I think you might be spoiled! Ha!"
"Shut up!"
Line Break
Once everything is packed away again, the bounded fields flicker a bit showing they need to be redone, and that makes you remember that you no longer have a very convenient tool shed to use as a magus workshop.
It took far too long to realize what to use that piñata garden for. One full square kilometer of pocket dimension with nothing but me, my summons, and some piñatas inside sounds like a great place to put my new workshop. It's Sunday, so the café is closed for the rest of the day anyway, meaning it's magecraft time.
By noon, the bounded fields are all updated and upgraded with slightly more efficient and complex configurations and with a few newer rituals to make everything seem more normal. This way, nobody should care if a magecraft experiment goes awry in my workshop or some other weird noise or event happens in the café. Next up, I summon the garden in a closet.
Swirling, confetti like particles coalesce into an upright disk, and vibrant green is all the middle of the portal shows. A cheerful hum fills the closet, a slight rhythm carried along the vibrating waves of energy. Taking a step out to check, it seems the upbeat tone is too low to hear outside the closet. Perfect.
"Revere!" I bellow out, and in a flash of gold-brass flames, a gorgeous, sunlight yellow bird appears on my shoulder. A soft croon of greeting from Revere relaxes the minute tension in my joints, and I absentmindedly caress his warm plumage. His long neck bent down to lean into the affectionate contact, and his wide wings spread just enough to release a hot wind from flickering fiery feathers. Although pheonix are mostly red, ever since the ritual, Revere has had bright yellow coloring.
"Hello, old boy. How has your exploration gone? Good, I hope?" Revere bobbed his head, a feeling of contentment flowing through our bond. Within the world both Revere and Medusa come from, there are a few different bonds that magical creatures can form with wizards. I don't know the methods that world uses, but there is a Familiar Binding ritual within the Formalcraft gifted by Gaea. With a few tweaks to account for their form of magic instead of prana and leaving complete autonomy to them both, I now have a much deeper bond with them.
Just as Revere changed in color, so did Medusa, with her crest now a brilliant bronze and her scales having an oxidized copper tone with a shimmer of brass in the light.
Oddly, Revere was the first of my summons to fully choose his own name. He chose it after Paul Revere, the silversmith that rode out to warn the American militias of Britain's approaching army, or rather, more specifically after the lanterns he used to signal them: "one if by land, two if by sea."
A quizzical preck from Revere and a sense of curiosity from the bond gives a perfect segue to the topic at hand. With another soft pet, I turn to the portal.
"Well, this is a piñata garden. From what I know, this should give everyone not only a safe place to train but also a secluded area for me to practice magecraft. Obviously, I'm still putting a few bounded fields up inside. This is to hopefully influence the garden to gain a prana network of its own. Maybe it can gain a powerful sentience like Gaea or maybe become a full entity like a Dryad or nature spirit?" Revere stops my rambling with a gentle boop on the head. "Right, right. Don't get ahead of myself. You're right." A smug trill makes me roll my eyes, and I focus on the portal. With an excited gait, I walk inside.
The first thing I notice is the bright sunlight, necessitating I raise my arm to shield my eyes while Revere squawks in happy surprise. Once my eyes have adjusted, I'm struck at just how vibrant the colors are, like the world was extra saturated. The grass was practically lime green, the sky a deep azure blue, and the clouds looked like paper cutouts in the air. Everything was just more colorful.
Something rammed into my leg with pitiful force, and upon looking down, I saw a concussed worm-piñata hybrid wobbling in place. I'm gonna be thinking the word piñata far too much while I'm in this place, I can tell.
Crouching down, I easily pick up the Whirlm, something my veterinary knowledge is telling me should be biologically impossible while at the same time letting me know quite helpfully was perfectly healthy even with a slight concussion. Words can not describe how surreal this summon is.
Another thing my power is telling me is that this is a very big and very well cared for garden. I've half a mind to just ignore everything about this place, if for only my own peace of mind. With a big sigh, I just get started laying down some bounded fields and preparing a few rituals for after I've built a shelter big enough to secure my workshop to. Staying in here too long can't be good for my sanity. It just can't.
Stepping back out into the closet, I see Thomas doing an inventory of the pantry. I walk out to him and decisively put the garden out of my mind.
"Hey Thomas, how much does construction material go for these days?"
Glancing at me without turning away from his task, he states. "Depends on a few things. Location, insurance, quality, what have you. Why do you ask? Are you trying to get rid of me so soon?"
I scoff. "If only it was so simple. No, I want to build my workshop in a pocket dimension I got and need the materials to do so. Only me and my summons are able to go there, and it has a full square kilometer of space."
He blinks and looks incredulous. "Pocket dimension? Since when did you have a pocket dimension? The whole point of going to the cabin was room and secrecy to train, and now you tell me you had a pocket dimension with protections and a square kilometer to fuck around in?"
"Nah, just got it halfway through the training month. Haven't even summoned it until today because I didn't realize its potential until now." His incredulity grows infinitely stronger. "In my defense, the place is one step away from an enclosed cognito-hazard. Spending too much time in there without some kind of protection will almost certainly cause insanity." Completely factual and definitely not exaggeration at all, truly.
"Then why are you gonna use it anyway?" Reluctance.
"Because I need a workshop to contain the dangerous particle fuckery I'm continuing, and a place that removed from the café is too good to pass up on. Memetic dangers be damned." The things I sacrifice for progress...
"Riiight. Just write what you'll need and we can brainstorm how to get it later."
Line Break
"For the last time, I'm not going to be in any danger. Like, none whatsoever."
"Can you at least pretend to be normal about this Arny? For my sake, can you just please tell me that you have some first patrol or debut jitters or something? This nonchalant attitude feels like a thousand and one red flags. At the bare minimum don't say -"
"What's the worst that could happen?"
"ALRIGHT, THAT TEARS IT -"
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding." He looks unimpressed. "Besides, with all my summons on top of my superphysics, I'm honestly drawing a blank on what could severely injure me. And if I do get injured, Revere can heal me, Ariel can heal me, Hell if he wanted to I'm fairly certain Jeff could learn to heal in a year or two, and that's assuming they can keep up with a teleporting immortal bird carrying me everywhere but the battlefield. I've got nothing to fear in this city. This is what I've trained for, Thomas."
He stares me down with annoyance and worry. In his dark brown eyes, I can see the armor form of Medusa coated in the kaleidoscope that is my aura.
With a full set of leather armor in her new tealish tone, Medusa makes up the majority of the outfit with snake scales and basilisk decals artfully interspersed over the straps and belts. A half-cloak of pure snakeskin was secured with a buckle that looked like a massive bronze snake eye, luckily inert of her magic gaze.
For head protection, Medusa provided a cowl connected to the half-cloak that had a crest of her bronze feathers flaring just slightly. Strapped upon my face was a ceramic ceremonial mask of her fearsome visage. With a slight shift in weight, a copper shine glided over the armor, hinting at its potent protections.
Instead of the usual gloves, my slightly bulky gauntlets, Poison, were an almost pastel tone of green that glowed with energy. On my waist connected by a leather strap of more snakeskin was my highly collapsed bow-spear-whip, Venom, colored forest green.
A burst of sunfire heralded my pheonix companion landing on my shoulder, a proud cry filling the apartment with a hair-raising magic song.
"It's time to be a hero, Tom."
He continued his silent stare but eventually relented. With an exhausted sigh, he motions to the door.
After a gentle hug, I coat myself and Revere in an illusion and vanish.
Sprinting out the door, I fully manifest The Jump and leap to the rooftop to begin my journey into heroism.
After a few long strides covering a dozen buildings each, I drop my invisibility illusion and let out an excited bellow.
Practicing within the small forest surrounding the Quincy Cabin didn't hold a candle to truly roof hopping through the Bay as a hero. The wind parting with a mighty roar, hundreds of sounds struggling to keep up with my strides, the blurring of countless neon lights, and the feeling of freedom to finally just be Noah. It was intoxicating, thrilling, addicting. Is this what flight is like? Or will that be an entire magnitude better? I can't wait to find out!
Damn, that right there is the longest chapter to date. With this, the time skip is completed. However, none of his spells are truly mastered to perfection. They are still fairly weak, only a fraction of their full power. As a new magus, Noah has maybe a tenth the honed efficiency and power he can get later on. All his spells can be greatly improved, but to do that, he needs focus and time. With all these spells on the table, it's time for him to choose where he focuses his research. Something to keep in mind is that all of this is getting nerfed right now by being on Earth Bet, and to truly reach his peak will require years of highly focused research. With that said, the research can be augmented if a summon has a similar power. His Semblance is equally new and can definitely be greatly improved, but magecraft has a much steeper learning curve than most power systems, so perfecting his spells will take several times as long.