“I think an extra thousand to any attribute is going to be plenty,” Thera told him as she got up and lightly stretched, feeling no lingering pain in her head, even if the pain in her soul had gone untreated and, with a thought, she called over some of the soul spirits swarming her to politely ask for their help healing it, getting a small glance from Ben as she did.
“I suppose that’s fair, it’s just that the great spirits have such a substantially different mental structure from a regular mortal, I really would have expected the growth to be in the range of multiple thousands of points or else for the change to be so alien that it would have only measured in a small change of actual intelligence. Still, ultimately not as important as how you feel.”
“Ha, how do you think I feel, mister mind reader?”
“... I believe I’m going to withhold my evaluation for a bit longer beyond saying that I can confirm doing this hasn’t seemed to harm you more than just the expected strain on your soul and there’s less strain on your brain than I thought there’d be. Your personality seems unchanged, and you’re managing the absence of senses your brain should think that you should possess better than I had hoped.”
“You’re sounding like a researcher right now.”
“Until we’ve confirmed the scope of how this has affected you, I am a researcher. For now, I’m sure you want to do a bit of practicing, so test out all of your magics as you see fit, but try to stay in my range until I tell you otherwise, please.”
“Alright, I can do that.”
She’d been itching to since they’d finished anyway, the drive to use her magics all the greater. She could feel it in the way she’d think, even if she hadn’t tested it yet, magic had just changed for her and it more than anything else left the hope that it meant she’d see some progress as she lifted her hand and the ground below raised with it, what had been a clump of dirt smoothly condensed to a strong stone knife in her grasp that she wiggled lightly Ben’s way, the sight of his eyes scrunching up being her reward.
“You know, if you want to practice your homunculus creation, you can just tell me.”
“If you’re reading my mind, it’s not like I have to.”
“When it means someone’s going to be waving a knife at me, it can just be nice to hear.”
“Ha, just consider this a handy way to get a few more to use. It’ll be fine.”
An argument Ben couldn’t help but give in to, he held out his arm while she dragged the thin blade across it, spilling his blood on the ground and empowering it as it fell, each drop becoming the start of a new clone that grew as they ate their way through the lawn around them, leaving a dozen fresh creations for him to use as he saw fit.
“One thing,” Thera said as he clothed them, about to slip them away into his rings but held off at the same time she was asking the nearby plant spirits to repair the yard. “Leave one out for me so I can do some tests with it.”
“Suit yourself.”
He took the rest while she examined the remaining Ben clone and, with the knife still in hand, cut through its throat, healing the injury as the slice was being made and nodded in satisfaction as it was done. Life spirits called next to strengthen the clone while she weakened it and then the inverse was arranged as well with the aid of the death spirits, but she could beat out the power of both of those groups easily. She felt like she had complete control of whether the homunculus before her lived or died and what that meant for one of the magics she held.
There was no denying it; life magic felt more natural. She couldn’t perfectly judge by how much, but it was enough to be noticeable and, with a thought, she broke her knife back down into basic dirt, done with her tests on the homunculus and allowed Ben to take it away.
Making dark her next choice as she took aim at the most complex spell of that category she knew, the targeted charm that Anailia had taught her, but instead applied it to a broader group than the demons she’d been using it most on, letting it out to attract the insects of Anailia to her as a cloud came up before being driven away by a change of application, applying the targeted effect to a fear spell instead and get to watch as they dispersed.
A quick enough level after her last one to make a grin spread across her face. It wasn’t a guarantee, but it sure felt like confirmation that her idea had worked, the modes of thought held by the spirits of the world giving her an advantage in raising her magics and, if she was as lucky as she hoped, would apply to going beyond that as well, with Ben seeming to be in agreement.
“Hmm, even if the gods are feeling iffy about me modifying anyone else’s mind, it might be worthwhile to mention the prospect to Jake at least to see if he’d be interested. Uliel too. I do really want to see what a third-tier archmage looks like, after all.”
“I don’t get the impression he’s going to trust you with his mind again after the last time you taught him.”
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“Pretty ungrateful of him, I made the guy so much smarter than he used to be.”
Shaking her head, Thera got back to it, ignoring her final affinitied option to instead look at her non-affinitied.
Arguably the main reason she’d wanted to rebuild her mind using all of the great spirits instead of just the ones that applied to her, while it was obviously different from any sort of innate and natural affinitied power a person might hold, there was crossover between the two that she hoped she might benefit from as she began, materializing water and letting it flow through the air under her command, pulling the heat from it to make it freeze and sublimating it just as easy, forcing it to blend into the air before pulling it out into one liquid blob again and asked the water spirits around to try and pull it from her grasp, playing with them for a bit but ultimately being successful in keeping it to herself in the end.
Non-affinitied magic feels smoother too, she nodded to herself, happy with the result, even if the attempt didn’t immediately come with a level like dark had. Everything feels better really, which just leaves one more.
The closest magic to her, even if her life magic had recently been taking up the most of her time. The one she’d been born to and the one she had the greatest affinity for by far, she couldn’t deny her desire to see how the change had affected her understanding of her earth magic, turning to her father as she did.
“It’s been a while, how about a light spar?”
“Ha, think you can finally beat me then?”
“Mmh, not if I’m just using my earth magic.”
“So you think you have a shot if you work in the rest, do you?” he laughed. “It’s still a bit soon for you to be that optimistic. Let’s see what you can do within my domain first, and then maybe we can prepare something a little more grand in the future when it wouldn’t be happening in the front yard.”
Hearing all she needed to, she didn’t give her father the chance to prepare before she moved, bringing the ground beneath her with her as she launched herself towards him, catching her father off guard as she raised the ground up around him and did something she knew he couldn’t. She strengthened it using the majority of the mana she held, only facing mana exhausting for the fact when escaping it would mean he’d have to bring his own mana low enough that he’d be uncomfortably close to death, no matter how many points of wiggle room he’d actually have.
Even when she’d tried to cheat a bit in the past, she’d never been able to beat her father so she held no qualms about being sneaky, and the effort had paid off. The great earth spirit had been completely unprepared to be captured by stone with eight hundred thousand points of mana poured into it and with him putting far too little mana into his escape attempt, assuming that it would work, it gave her the chance to strike. When she reached him, she put both hands on his chest and disintegrated the body he’d made, turning it to dust for a split second before he remade it while she fell to her knees.
“That’s my win,” she laughed, feeling one of the closest times she’d come to mana exhaustion without falling into it, even if her father had to try to have the last word.
“You are well aware that this body is just a construct, it’s not actually me.”
“Yeah, and if we’re going to say that, then there’s no actual way to beat you with only earth magic, but you always use that body so it’s my win.”
“You also caught me completely off guard.”
“Stop being a sore loser about it,” Lux called from the side, laughing as she did. “Your daughter completely beat you.”
“Definitely the princess’s win,” Grace nodded, his roots as a collection of spirits who loved Thera dearly easily bleeding through, with both of them forcing Abrus to admit defeat.
“Fine, fine, but be aware, sweetheart, this means I’m not going easy on you again in the future.”
“Hmm, what do you mean again in the future?” she asked innocently. “I’m officially retiring from sparring with you.”
“What?”
“If I quit now, then I get to end on a high note,” she laughed. “Maybe if I’m feeling nice, then I’ll give you another shot when I know I can take you on at your best.”
Abrus said nothing, the idea that he wouldn’t get to claim a rematch more of an emotional blow than the loss had been while she turned her focus to Ben, having a different question on her lips.
“So then, mister researcher, what did you think about all of that?”
“Your use of your magic has undeniably improved, there’s no arguing that, and while you have too big of a pool to really be conscious of it, I can say the mana cost for your various spells has gone down as well so you’re good there too. A side effect I wasn’t expecting that you seemed to have not really noticed either is that when you use your magic now, your thoughts speed up a bit relative to how you’d normally think which is also admittedly pretty interesting, but it seems like you haven’t noticed what I would consider the biggest change to you.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No, I’d even say it seems pretty handy. The biggest difference by far is how you’re communicating with the spirits around you, something that goes beyond the two levels of communication you just got. It’s become significantly more natural and, more interesting than that, you seem to be doing it in a semi-subconscious state. You’re aware you’re doing it, but it’s improved so much compared to how it would go before without seeming to have been aware of that, and you were doing it while doing other things too, be it casting your spells or talking to us. Compared to everything else, that was really the most great spirit-like change.”
She didn’t immediately know what he was talking about before realizing he was right. She’d asked the spirits around her for help multiple times throughout her practice like it was second nature, not feeling any difference as she talked to them and not distracted by their presence at all. They were around, that fact was constant in the back of her mind but it was the back of her mind dealing with them, speaking to them with her mana to address them or ask them for help, only stopping when she became aware of it.
“Okay, that kind of feels like I’ve taken a step back with spirit communication.”
“It’s not like you’re accidentally blurting out all of your thoughts to them like when you first started, I’d say this is actually a more natural progression of communication. You don’t need to use conscious thought when you talk to me to decide what you should or shouldn’t say, you just say what you want to. It’s the exact same thing there.”
When he explained it like that, it felt a bit less worrying than back when she was blurting out whatever thought entered her head, but it did raise other questions with her. Mainly, how was thinking like that going to change her relationship with the spirits?
…I guess it doesn’t matter in the end, she tried to accept. I made my choice and it seems worth it. If that means I’m better at talking to the spirits around me, that’s not like it’s a bad thing.
She’d just need to be careful to make sure that in their talks, she never became too comfortable that she would start venting to them, lest she be forced to see just what they would do to try and appease their princess.