A Jaded Life

Chapter 1346

By the time March rolled around, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of pity for Joshua. Calling the guy a shadow of his former self would do a disservice to shadows; they could have quite a bit of substance with the right magic. Joshua, on the other hand, had lost pretty much everything that made him who he was. While none of my experiments had been terribly destructive, at least none had been intended as such, but the repeated exposure and intrusion had been enough to crack his mind, and those cracks were close to breaking it. Maybe even shattering it, though I doubted it would happen with the same mechanism as the one responsible for the Shattered. After all, they had their souls shattered, not their minds.

But while his value as a test-subject was rapidly coming to an end, the strides my Mind Magic had made meant his sacrifice was worth it. Very much so. Not only had my Mind Magic increased by two more points, reaching a staggering ninety-four, but I also gained a level. The level was a bit of a surprise, especially as I hadn’t really killed anything worthwhile, but I somehow had gained the EXP.

Maybe due to my teaching of the four back at Jademoon Tower, especially training Waylon. After all, he wasn’t a spellcaster in the traditional sense; he was a Warlock. And that was something quite new, something I hadn’t seen before, certainly not on Terra. I vaguely recalled some mention of Warlocks on Mundus, or maybe during the creation of my character back then, but I wasn’t sure; it had been a while, and those memories weren’t enhanced by my Intelligence attribute.

It would be fascinating to see how that developed, even if my biggest interest was in my side of the equation. I had no doubt that Waylon would start gaining power soon, and relatively quickly. He was, quite frankly, ridiculously interested in wielding this new power he had access to, making me wonder why his interest was so out-of-line with his affinity. So far, everyone who had a strong interest in magic also had a fair affinity, to the point that I had believed there to be some correlation between the two. Waylon, on the other hand, had originally been cursed with the weakest magical affinity of anyone who had ever approached me, and one of the weakest I believed possible.

But now that he was able to wield magic, he was working incredibly hard, easily matching the hours put in by two of his fellow students combined. At least at first, the other three started working harder, too, once they noticed how much work he put in. It was quite the synergistic effect, having him there to motivate the others, even if their abilities were fundamentally different.

Another project I was actively working on was unravelling EXP into memories and trying to extract them without destroying the EXP. So far, it has been going quite slowly, but I did have some success, to the point that I believed my idea was plausible. It would likely take a lot of additional work and a few more test subjects, but if I stuck with it, I would likely achieve my goal.

And, more importantly, I had also started to carefully parse out the strands of power within my own being. Never pulling too hard, never prodding anything once I felt a tinge of pain, but I kept going, putting in an hour or two every day, just exploring and sorting these parts of the system. So far, I was fairly confident that I had identified the areas where the Legacy of Morgana tied into the rest of my being, though I hadn’t made much further progress. But it was a definitive start, a place where I hoped to come across the EXP Sigmir had bestowed upon me when she was dying. If I could find and identify those parts, I would hopefully be able to parse out the information contained within and use them to recreate her Mind. At least to recreate the memories we shared, our journey across Mundus and our relationship throughout.

One evening, after finishing the lessons at Jademoon Tower, I decided to test one of my recent projects. So, instead of stepping through the shadows and either visiting Maggie’s community to put in a bit of work on the hospital or returning to my prison and experimenting on Joshua some more, I walked up to the top of my tower and manifested my wings.

Moments later, I was soaring through the air, carried by the wind I conjured below me, making my way toward the combined ruins of Denver and Colorado Springs. I was still a little confused just why the two towns had been smooshed together, or where the spatial distortions to cause that effect had come from, but I had never been able to find anything to even start an investigation. A few seams, but those just looked like they had always been there, and, by now, any lingering trace was almost certainly gone, so it might just be one of those things that had to be accepted, without trying to understand.

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My goal for the night was to test my latest idea, born from my suffering when trying to manipulate the strands of the system woven throughout my being. The idea was inspired by that suffering, and, hopefully, it would work as intended. Namely, to use what I thought was a punishment-reflex from the system and weaponise it, as I was hoping that even something usually unable to feel pain would be affected.

I had managed to create something that might work, but hadn’t been able to test it on anything, which was why I was testing it tonight. The nice thing about Denver Springs was that it held a wide variety of creatures, from some lingering Shattered, who had learned to be quite careful, cautious and sneaky, to a number of different animals who had escaped during and after the Change, becoming a primal version of their previous selves. Plus, there was the massive, combined graveyard, spawning a perpetual number of undead I could use as my final test-subjects, creatures that were about as immune to pain as anything I had ever heard about. If I could make them scream, my idea was working perfectly fine.

But before I was willing to test things on Undead, I was planning to use a few more conventional targets. Like the large bobcat I could see sneaking through the ruins below. That was a good first target.

Landing on a relatively high point in the ruins, I focused on the creature that was trying to sneak up on some other critter and started to carefully weave together the Mind, Blood and Soul Magic required to make my idea work. It was quite complex, not something I would want to use in active combat without a great deal of optimisation and training, but until I knew it worked, this would have to do.

My magical weave produced a crackling arc reminiscent of lightning, only coloured a mix of blood red and a somewhat creepy green-black. The physical effect was incredibly fast, almost too fast to see and certainly too fast to dodge, unless you were already prepared. In this case, the bobcat hadn’t noticed a thing, so it was struck and affected, letting out a horrible yowl that made me immediately feel bad. Knowing that the spell worked as intended, I let it fade away, only to realise that the bobcat was completely out of it. Just a second or two had been enough to stun it, making me wonder what would happen if I sustained the spell. The bobcat was weak, only level twenty-seven, but the effect was insane.

Insane enough that I didn’t even bother to continue experimenting on the poor animal. Instead, I simply wove together a swift burst of Mind and Death Magic, putting the tortured animal out of its misery in the blink of an eye and collected the carcass.

With such a result, I decided to skip testing it on Shattered, as I wasn’t sure I could find any in the area, and made my way over to the graveyard. Even from afar, I could hear sounds of combat and soon saw a few locals, thinning the endless hordes of Undead, or maybe just trying to get some additional EXP. The group wasn’t one I was familiar with, so I simply ignored them and went to a different area. The graveyard was large enough to avoid them easily, and soon I had a suitable target.

It was one of the abominations, a horrible amalgamation of different bodies, fused together into a horrible giant of flesh, bone and death. I had seen these things before, and knew they were quite robust, making it a good target.

Again, I wove together my magic and unleashed the blast of red, green and black lightning, watching it strike my target.

Where the bobcat had immediately collapsed, the abomination tried to make its way towards me. Maybe its undead nature or its higher level allowed it to push through the spell for a few moments, but then, it, too, started to scream in an alien noise, as if a chorus of numerous tortured souls was wailing. It was, quite frankly, a bit horrifying, and I was quite happy that the wailing was silenced moments later when the entire creature came apart in an unexpected explosion of blood and gore.

Somewhat happy about my success, but also completely confused, I decided to test the spell on a few skeletons before calling it a day and starting to optimise it. Because this had potential.