《magik obelisk rewrite》 Prologue In the year 2034, the world as we knew it ended. Why the year 2034? Because some random fuck picked an arbitrary event as year 0 and the world as we knew it ended precisely 2034 years afterwards. As for how it ended? Well, if you were expecting something like a solar flare, meteor impact, nuclear apocalypse, or even zombies rising up while hellfire rained from above, you would be wrong. Actually, there are only a few very rare recorded cases of people dying from a reason directly related to the end of the world. That''s because rather than a sudden disaster, the end of the world as we knew it came as something that could only be called a miracle. As long as they weren''t too far gone, the sick miraculously recovered with even the bedridden suddenly jumping around as if they were in the prime of their lives. Crops grew to maturity in weeks instead of months. Batteries seemed to last 100s of times longer than they had any right to, while each drop of gasoline someone put into their car did for 20. Athletes found themselves capable of increasingly superhuman feats of strength, endurance, speed and skill. It was the end of the world as we knew it, because the world we found ourselves in was unrecognizable. Soon enough people could manipulate the very world around them with their wills alone. Most could barely will a ball of light with the radiance of a candle into existence. However some learned to teleport themselves to the other side of the world, to bend hurricanes to their will, temporarily control the minds of others, create massive illusions, divine the future and past, and countless other feats. Unmistakably, magic had stepped out of the realms of fantasy and into reality. This was just the beginning, as it seemed that the advent of magic meant more than simple parlor tricks. Soon it was discovered that the planet was growing, growing hundreds of meters wider every day. About a month in, miners noticed that stone and ore that they mined through the month since magic appeared was beginning to grow back. Besides the usual stone and mundane ore, wholly new materials started to appear as well. The appearance of strange new elements coincided with the wide scale mutation of living things. Some herbs gained incredible properties, some plants uprooted themselves and migrated across the land, and animals grew into beasts and monsters of legend. It was the analysis of these materials and creatures that revealed the existence of ¡°mana particles¡±. The newly discovered elements were actually the same elements on the periodic table, save the addition of mana changing their intrinsic properties. Mana itself was classified as a boson for magic, similarly to how photons were the bosons for light and the electromagnetic spectrum, affecting the world in strange ways. The implications of this discovery were enormous, but dwarfed by the questions it raised, especially as time passed. 2 months in, and the first reported sighting of a goddamn unicorn occured along with dragons, mermaids, phoenixes, and countless other mythical creatures. People began changing, some developing an incredible affinity with magic, along with pointed ears, some seemed to compress themselves, becoming short and stout, while others grew to immense sizes with the strength to match. Race suddenly stopped being about skin color and became whether you were elf, giant, dwarf, or just plain human. Faith healing began to actually work, and even common priests of almost all religions could give at least minor blessings. It seemed that mana responded to information, tapping into the lore and collective unconscious of humanity and bringing it to reality. Of course testing this with a computer yielded the first case of an enchanted item. Causing a computer to output the information related to a certain phenomena, in the case of that experiment a small electrical arc, and then adding a bit of code to actually send a current caused a small arc to magically appear, even when the computers battery was removed and all electricity drained. It seemed that magic simply drew on the thoughts and imaginations of people and made that into reality, taking that which lies in the platonic realm of ideas and forms, and bringing it into the material world. It was by the study of magical phenomena that the existence of this realm became part of the natural sciences instead of a simple philosophical thought experiment. Mana had an intimate relationship with ideas, acting as the medium between reality and imagination. At its most basic essence, magic took what existed in the realm of thought and brought it into the here and now. Suddenly humanity was ushered into a strange era. Technology progressed explosively while dragons soared through the skies. During all this time, the earth continued to grow and living things continued to mutate. The properties of the realm of Ideas was studied more and more, finding countless different forms and structures that magic seemed to naturally create, from beasts of myth to, ironically, futuristic starships, as well as strange and alien forms unlike any seen on earth. Through harnessing this magic, mankind not only maintained their position at the top of the food chain in spite of the existence of dragons and zombies, but rose further than ever before. After the passage of almost 3 years, the earth burst into pieces.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. Not in the sense that it exploded into a horrendous ball of fire, but that the land itself shattered and spread out, like a massive iceberg breaking apart into smaller chunks upon the sea. Suddenly instead of a sphere of rock hurtling through space, it was a massive archipelago of floating islands, the space light years around the planet suddenly warping. New islands appeared, these not being born from when the planet shattered, but seemingly teleporting in from the space between the islands. These islands were populated by strange creatures, some angelic, with feathered wings and halos, some demonic with cloven hooves and barbed tails, some completely alien, as if they were extraterrestrial aliens that were dragged into this situation with us, some mechanical, as if robots that were built rather than born. At that moment humanity learned they were not alone in this universe, or even those dimensions adjacent to theirs. These foreign aliens seemed to have gone through the same process as humanity. They too reported that strange phenomena had occurred all over their own worlds, bringing their myths and legends to life. It was not known at the time, but it was the combined creative imagination and consciousness of all of those species that allowed magic to spill into the world in the first place. It was this collective consciousness that finally gave the world of Ideals the oomph it needed to pierce the veil of reality. That was when everyone first heard what humanity would then know as ¡°the system¡± [initializing¡­] [quantifying¡­] [greetings sentient, your status has been recorded and can be displayed at your leisure] It appeared that magic itself developed something of a boltzmann brain after reaching some sort of critical mass by bringing all the races together. Suddenly everyone found their attributes quantified into specific numbers. These numbers, representing their physical, mental and miscellaneous attributes, were then subdivided further. For example, mental attributes included memory, magical attunement, and will, while physical attributes included vitality, perception and strength. Beyond that, the system granted creatures the ability to level up, and even gain skills, perks and classes. Leveling up was achieved by collecting experience points, supposedly bits of magic you gained over time by doing certain actions. Leveling granted bonus stat points to certain stats, depending on the skills and perks of the one who leveled up. Perks were akin to passive abilities one gained by meeting certain criteria such as a certain level in a skill. Skills represented certain abilities one learned, such as ones mastery with a sword, their ability with a certain type of magic, all abilities that grew in proficiency and leveled up as you went. Classes acted as the sum total of a creature''s abilities, allowing them to grow their abilities in their chosen fields even further. So, as time passed, the various races and cultures that were swept into this new world collided, with the addition of the system, technology and magic kept growing, and the world became truly and utterly unrecognizable. It was in this world, where wizards stood tall over mechanized cities, warriors could sunder mountains with their bare hands, angels and demons collided, and myths and legends were brought to life, where a young lad named Zeno met his ¡°end¡±. Zeno was working at a ¡°lab¡± in the university, composed of several computers as well as a wide area to create a runic matrix. Zeno was garbed in basic lab attire, a long white lab coat covering most of his skin while safety goggles enchanted with magic detection framed his face. His hair was short, black and spiky, while his skin was tanned. While not exactly built heavily, he wasn¡¯t a stick either, maintaining a medium build despite spending most of his time either in front of a computer or with his face in a book. At the current moment, Zeno was busy trying to design the runes necessary for the current experiment. He was currently researching a new technique to break the first law of thermodynamics, creating something from nothing. Magic, interestingly enough, was both great and terrible for this purpose. Great, because breaking the fundamental laws of reality was the modus operandi of magic, and terrible because by its very nature, magic needed something to base itself off. It was hard to create a good rune to represent the act of creation, since something appearing out of nothing was really hard to actually conceptualize, and thus most techniques and spells fell short in either versatility or practicality. What Zeno was doing, on the other hand, was try to design a rune that represented not simple creation, but the very beginning of reality. He hoped that a runic array capable of symbolizing the Big Bang would allow him to tap into that power to act as a form of source for whatever he wanted to create. Zeno was able to achieve so much progress in this area due to his origin research perk, a perk gained from reaching 5 levels of proficiency in the research skill tree as well as 1 level of proficiency in at least 4 other fields of knowledge. This perk gave allowed him several epiphanies in his work, as if an unseen force was guiding him to success. Soon enough, he completed the runic array he was to test. ¡°Now let¡¯s see if this works¡­¡± Programming the runic array into the computer, Zeno watched as lasers engraved it onto the floor with inhuman proficiency. The array itself was multi layered, expanding from a single point on the first layer before bursting out into various symbols of heat, energy, and matter on the second layer, with control and regulation runes on the third layer to keep the array from exploding. Once the engraving was done, all that was left was to actually supply some mana to start it up. Standing at the center of the array, Zeno began channeling his mana into it. Light seemed to flow through the runes under Zeno¡¯s eyes, the runes seeming to rise into the air around him. For a split second, Zeno felt a sense of immense vertigo as the runes spread around him, space itself shifting about. Then, before he could jump out of the array, everything went dark. Chapter 1: a new world When Zeno next woke up, he found himself in yet more darkness. He also noticed that he no longer had arms, or legs, or any other extremities for that matter. From what he could feel his body was a small floating island of indeterminate composition about 10 meters in diameter. Zeno also found that said sphere lacked a mouth to verbalize the terrified screeching that he was emitting internally. He had no clue what had happened, at least until he checked his status.
Zeno 1 Class: none
Willpower 10 focus 15 Confidence 5
Attunement 64.5 Control 29 Mana 100
Memory 16.5 Capacity 21 learning 12
Strength 52.5 Power 96 Dexterity 9
Vitality 102.5 Endurance 110 Fortitude 95
Perception 10 senses 10 Recognition 10
luck 10
Affinity 10 Primal chaos 10
Hp 102.5
Mp 100
Skills: knowledge (research 5, physics 1, arcane 3, biology 1, history 1, chemistry 1) spells (prestidigitation 3, analysis 3, genesis 1) mundane (cleaning 1) production (cooking 1) [Perks: dimensional lord, primal chaos mana] Zeno saw that he was sent back to level 1 from the 27 he was before the experiment. Even worse, several of his skills were of a much lower level than they were before, some even straight up disappearing due to his level and memory stat restricting the skill levels he could obtain. Before, he had 15 levels in research, several different spells, and the lowest leveled knowledge skill he had was at least level 2. Zeno barely even noticed the increases to stats such as his mana control and capacity, or his power, endurance and fortitude since his mind was consumed by how he lost his origin research perk. Of course having his skill list cleared up allowed him to notice the new genesis spell, as well as the two new perks. [genesis: allows the creation of objects from mana. Mana cost dependent on object] [dimensional sovereign: a title awarded to those who conquer a pocket dimension is dimensional lord. Dimensional sovereigns are those who create the pocket dimension themselves. The sentient host has merged with the nascent plane of existence, evolving into a nascent world. Attunement, vitality and power stats boosted. While within pocket dimension, host will recover health at a rate equal to endurance every second, and will recover mana at a rate equal to mana control every second. The mana inside the miniature space is extremely beneficial to host, and will enhance all aspects of host actions. Host may create an avatar at the cost of mana. Creatures exposed to the mana of the miniature world will be slightly influenced to serve the host. +10 attunement, will, memory, vitality, strength and perception per level] [primal chaos mana: grants primal chaos affinity. Boosts magical abilities and powers by 10% per point of affinity. +10 primal chaos affinity. +1 primal chaos affinity per level] Zeno¡¯s immediate reaction was to create an avatar that resembled his original body down to what he was wearing in the lab (plus a few cosmetic alterations). The body actually cost quite a bit, taking almost an hour of constantly channeling mana to actually materialize it. Inside the miniature space, his mana regeneration equaled his mana control stat, which measured how fast he could output mana, meaning he was recovering any mana he spent as soon as he spent it. Even then, it took almost an hour before he found himself back in his body. It felt weird, like instead of being there, he was just driving an RC car or a character in a VR game. He still felt as if he was the 10 meter diameter floating island. Those two perks were¡­ interesting to say the least. The extreme versatility of primal chaos mana was incredible, while the stat gains from dimensional sovereign were incredible for a perk at that level. Stepping outside of the mini space for a moment, Zeno teleported back to the lab, still empty save for the scorch mark where the array was. From there, he grabbed a nearby notepad to write down his observations, along with several measuring tools. [integrating object functionality with space] Once Zeno was back in the space, the tools he brought seemed to dissolve and dissipate into the space. The very complicated and expensive tools. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. ¡°Fuck¡± On the bright side, a small structure appeared on top of the floating island with several of the more advanced measurement systems built into it, while he suddenly found he could measure distances by eye and intuitively quantify weight, time and temperature. Besides that, a small screen appeared in front of him, complete with a holographic keyboard for writing. ¡°Well, let''s hope this works¡­¡± Zeno wrote down how the space seemed to absorb and integrate the tools before experimenting with the genesis spell, trying to recreate the tools his little pocket dimension absorbed. First up was a simple ruler, a small piece of wood with marked measurements should be a fairly simple starting point. It took about 15 minutes of channeling, taking more mana in total than the average mana pool of someone at level 50. A small pair of calipers took 30 minutes, showing that the cost of the item scaled with complexity and prediction rather than size or mass. Next he tried constructing a microscope, which took so long Zeno decided to try something else. Making a lump of gold. This took a few minutes for a few dozen grams of gold, so he decided to leave the gold where the microscope was and go find his professor, copying over his observations and the amounts of mana each object required onto paper before giving them over and heading to his next class. Which is where he learned that he still remembered most of the information from his skills, just finding it a lot fuzzier than before. He was busy trying to do basic algebra in his calculus class when the professor he gave his notes to barged in the room. ¡°Zeno, could you come with me for a moment?¡± Theodore Apollo was a tall and lanky man, dressed in the standard violet robes of the arcane arts faculty, with the golden green embroidery of the generation magic faculty. The bottom half of his wrinkled face was covered by a magnificent beard whitened with age. His eyes were scrunched in consternation as he learned what happened to Zeno, though what worried him most was how his research magic registered Zeno as a ¡°dimensional avatar¡± ¡°You seem to be taking your transformation into a floating island in a pocket dimension very well¡­¡± Zeno didn¡¯t actually react very strongly to his transformation. It was a slight scare, but his ability to create an avatar meant that he could get back to relative normalcy very quickly. ¡°Well, if I was stuck in that position for a longer period of time, I might have gotten worried, but luckily I found a way out very quickly¡± Theodore would have assumed that the person in front of him was some kind of alien creature that replaced Zeno if he didn¡¯t already get used to his student¡¯s eccentricities and his magic confirming that it was Zeno. Of course it helped that Zeno felt more and more like it was natural for him to be a floating island, while his avatar was just a character in a game. Zeno¡¯s slight neural divergence was only part of the reason he adapted so readily to the change, the new mana also altering his thought process so that the actual processing of the events happened slowly in the background. Sure it may have been a backdoor for mind magic attacks, but that was safer and healthier in the short term than breaking down into madness, er, madderness¡­ ¡°So Zeno, you say you lost most of your skill ranks, but still have the basic memory?¡± ¡°That is correct?¡± At that point Theodore had Zeno grab a bunch of books from the library and begin studying them. His plan was to raise Zeno¡¯s skills, and therefore his level, back to what they were before. He also gave Zeno books and documents related to other subjects, wanting to see what effects they would have under the influence of the ¡°enhanced mana¡± of the mini space. It also served a double purpose of quarantining Zeno, making sure any mana he gave off wouldn''t enslave the people around him. In the meantime, Theodore would try and find a way to counteract the effect of the mana. He was worried about that ability the most, since it seemed like an inherent quality of the mana. If others were to learn of it Zeno could be hunted down for it, as well as everyone related to him. In the meantime, Zeno went into the space to begin his studies. [unlocked mage hand spell] [unlocked runecraft skill] [Level up x2!!] Zeno gained skills and leveled up fairly quickly, the memory from when he got those skills the first time and the enhancing mana of the mini space allowing him to gain several skill levels in mere hours rather than months or years. The skills came back to him so easily that he quickly started approaching his previous abilities, at least within the enhancing mana of the space. After a couple of days refresher, his skills were already back to what they were before he transformed into a floating island, though his level was a bit lower.
Zeno 3 Class: none
Willpower 30 focus 35 Confidence 25
Attunement 84.5 Control 49 Mana 120
Memory 36.5 Capacity 41 learning 32
Strength 72.5 Power 116 Dexterity 29
Vitality 122.5 Endurance 130 Fortitude 115
Perception 30 senses 30 Recognition 30
luck 10
Affinity 12 Primal chaos 12
Hp 367.5
Mp 360
Skills: knowledge (research 10, physics 6, arcane 10, biology 6, history 3, chemistry 6, mathematics 6) spells (prestidigitation 9, analysis 9, genesis 1, mage hand 4, observation 3) mundane (cleaning 1, programming 4) production (cooking 1, runecraft 5, spellwork 2) [Perks: dimensional lord, primal chaos mana] Of course even with his much lower level, his stats still approached and exceeded his previous stats due to the fact that his perks gave him so many more stat points per level than normal perks. While most of the early level perks only gave 1 or two stat points to a single stat every couple levels, dimensional lord alone gave over 60 stat points per level. At this point, Zeno began looking around the miniature space. The floating island¡¯s surface began to take a kind of stony and sculpted texture, similar to the building that made up the university. The small room on top of the floating island with all of the measuring equipment matched the architecture almost perfectly, as if the room was built to make the tools look as if at home. The room had pillars built into marbleline walls with a domed roof. Zeno wanted to make sure of something, so he quickly stepped out of the mini space, grabbed as much dirt, rock and assorted biomass as he could before bringing it all into the mini space. He also went and grabbed a few more books from the library, on architecture and aesthetics. [level up] When he went back to the mini space, the floating island had small patches of dirt with tufts of grass growing out of them. Meanwhile, he managed to figure out that both the architectural style of the room on his floating island and the general style of the university were identical. He even gained a level in the aesthetics knowledge skill after a couple hours of research rather than a couple weeks. ¡°Note, objects brought into miniature space will change the environment to become more familiar to them¡­¡± Both the dirt and the tools made the floating island change to become more similar to their home environments. As for what effect this had? Zeno had no idea. So instead, he planned to try to grab more things and see how they affected the pocket space. Of course, not attending classes while he was relearning his skills brought a bit of suspicion to Zeno, but Theodore had already given the excuse of needing Zeno to help study a new phenomenon that meant he needed to be separated from the rest of the students. So far he¡¯s tried to counteract the effect of Zeno¡¯s mana by what is effectively a software diagnostic spell for his mind, to fix whatever the mana messes with. Of course casting something like that on everyone Zeno knows is entirely impractical, not to mention the work of calibrating the spell to each of their individual minds. He knew that if people learned of Zeno¡¯s ability, Zeno and everyone he knew would be hunted. And he was one of the people that Zeno knew. The best solution would be a way to make sure Zeno didn''t emit mana. A person capable of using mana always gave off trace amounts of mana relative to their mana pools, unless they had a skill specifically for making sure they didn''t. Several of these skills didn''t even make sure the person didn''t emit mana, just made the mana difficult to detect¡­ Most of the abilities that made it so one didn''t emit mana were power type skills, skills that manipulated the mana inside the body instead of controlling it outwardly like a spell would. Of course he wasn''t very well versed in powers, so he would need to ask a colleague for a favor¡­ So while Zeno was off gallivanting through the woods, Theodore was drafting a letter to one of his colleagues in the department of powers. A power like Zeno¡¯s was especially dangerous with the tensions between Aris and Taarak to the west. Best case scenario, Zeno is drafted and sent deep into enemy territory. Worst case scenario, the entire university is purged. Taarak was actually a pretty small territory. When the planet earth shattered along with all of the nearby planets, each fragment was of a different size, and while Aris stood on a void island over 300 km across, Taarak was barely 30 km from one end to the other. The problem was the opening to the abyss smackdab in the middle of the void island. Unlike Aris which was mainly comprised of humans with the occasional angelic spirit, Taarak was inhabited by fiends like devils and demons. Their presence on the island warped it into a hellscape, springs of boiling blood and molten rock rising up from the ground, gothic fortresses built from rough bloodstone dotting the landscape. So to specifically make sure that neither he nor Zeno were dragged off into that hellscape, Theodore went to his old friend Yvonne, one of the professors in the departments of magical powers that he worked with on a project based on heat emission. Chapter 2: its free real estate ¡°Now Zeno, I¡¯m going to need you to practice this method of meditation for a while, so that your mana doesn¡¯t spread everywhere¡± Theodore handed Zeno a scroll covered in script instructing him how to move his mana as well as what thoughts to have while channeling it to get the skill. Theodore also handed Zeno a small red marble, meant to enhance the mana containing effect. Theodore went to talk to Yvonne about any powers that allowed for mana containment, and was honestly surprised at the enthusiasm she showed when he asked. He told her that one of his assistants was leaking a large amount of mana that could be detrimental to any experiment he carried out. He deliberately didn¡¯t inform her about the mind control aspect, since the less people knew, the better. ¡°Remember Zeno, you cant let your mana out around others. If people learn about what you can do, it won¡¯t end well for either of us¡± ¡°Professor, aren¡¯t you affected?¡± Zeno was worried. He did his best to avoid everyone for the last few days, but he didn¡¯t want his mentor to suffer the effects of his mana. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about me boy, I have my methods against mental intrusions, something as slight as what your mana does won¡¯t affect me, now get practicing¡± Zeno began reading the scroll inside his space, sitting in a lotus position. The scripture mainly dealt with focusing on the self, closing oneself away from external influences. Basically to shut of his senses and focus on what his mind did while idling, passing through it and clearing it away before going deeper. His mana was channeled towards his center of mass, just behind and above his belly button. He barely noticed as maroon light flowed into the continuously condensing mass of mana. Mana flooded into him from the space around him. It was as if the mana that went into him from the space around him was on a loop, appearing back in the space around him after it went into him. Like a river rushing down a cliff it gained more and more speed, the flow of mana exceeding Zeno¡¯s personal ability to control it by several orders of magnitude. The only reason Zeno wasn¡¯t washed away was because the mana served his wishes automatically. Soon enough he felt the island itself expanding, the central building where all the tools were held growing and changing, trees rising up out of the ground, and the building shifting into a cross of the gothic and neo classical styles of construction, forming into a kind of baroque architectural style. [unlocked Hesych¨ªa skill] [unlocked M¨¦tis skill] [M¨¦tis and Hesych¨ªa fuse and become Henosis skill] [due to dimensional sovereign sovereign perk, henosis skill is amplified] [henosis: allows the user to become one with the world around them. Due to the fact that the user is already technically a world onto themselves, this skill condenses hosts mana, increasing mana density of miniature space and enhancing host abilities. +10 will, attunement, memory, vitality, strength, perception and luck per skill level] ¡°Well, those are a lot of stats, it even includes luck¡­¡± Of course it was also interesting, as most of those ¡°internal cultivation¡± powers multiplied the stats of the practitioner based on level. Certain techniques, like tai-chi, are able to give a multiplicative 50% increase per level, while legendary techniques like the Heart Sutra actually doubled the users stats every level, along with being able to seemingly bend reality. Of course techniques like those were proportionately hard to level, where as Zeno didn¡¯t even need to do anything for Henosis to grow. Looking inside himself, he could see the ball of mana inside of him where all of his mana collected, surrounded by a red sphere of light making sure nothing escaped by mana emission. This meant that Zeno could finally return to his regular classes. He went over the syllabus and did some miniature space enhanced studying to make sure he wasn¡¯t completely out of his depth, even though with his learning stat he could coast through pretty easily. ¡°So Zeno, what happened that you couldn¡¯t come to class?¡± It was in his principles of conjuration class where his friend Marcus went over and asked. Marcus and Zeno met a couple years ago when Zeno first entered campus, having moved to the capital where the university was from a city near the edge of the island. Marcus had tanned skin and curly dark hair, dressed in a casual long tunic, clearly superior to the modern dress code due to the lack of redundant pants. ¡°Well, there was an accident in the lab and the mana that I was giving off would have been a bit hazardous to be around. I had to try and do self study until the problem was fixed, so here I am¡± Zeno didn''t mention the exact nature of the accident, once he learned from Theodore how it was possible for all of them to be hunted down. After a while and a few level ups his mind somewhat recovered from the immediate effects of the change, his human side began to reassert itself. Just remembering the robotic and unthinking manner in which he tried to handle the problem gave him chills. He actually still felt like he was controlling his body remotely, just that his consciousness was more ¡°awake¡±, as if a large part of his brain power was inaccessible until a few levels later. It reminded him of when he was younger, when his mind was less developed and he didn''t know how to handle himself in situations more complex than solving a math problem. He still had a few eccentricities, such as the fact that he was more comfortable among books than people. Books were at the very least predictable, unlike humans who¡¯s actions and state of mind were even less orderly than the most arbitrary weather patterns. It helped him get where he was academically, since most of that time spent with books did slowly increase his memory and attunement stats. Most people didn''t exactly believe that to be the best usage of time at his age, but he was never one to partake in the more iniquitous parts of social interaction such as drugs and alcohol. This did have the side effect of making his baseline thought process become ¡°emotionally detached¡± and thus make it harder for him to interact with others. He still felt emotions like empathy, but they were logical in process if not immediately logical in origin, i.e. he would feel bad for someone who broke their arm because of the pain they feel and the temporary disability they suffered because of the fact, while if someone was going through a rough breakup with a slightly abusive significant other he would probably feel happy for the person despite the pain they go through. Of course there were always people in a similar position to him, if not an identical one. For example, Emilia Wattson, a girl he met in the library. Emilia was a foreigner, from the Imperium Sacrum Francais to the east. The girl was the daughter of a traveling financier merchant family, the kind that travelled the land and moved money around to provide interest. Her family was fairly well off, but the constant moving from place to place meant she couldn''t really make that many friends, and thus decided to spend her time diving into art, books and plays. Most of the time their interaction was best described as ¡°courteous¡±. Mainly ignoring each other while occasionally asking the other to pass a particular book. Sometimes however, they would find themselves wound into a debate over an arbitrary topic, from whether more wealth was generated by focusing it at the top and having it trickle down against spreading it out like at the bottom grassroots, to whether skill level or visualization contribute more to the effect of a spell. Of course this time Zeno avoided even that small amount of interaction, grabbing books on several subjects before jumping into the miniature world. He wanted to see what were the actual limits of his genesis skill¡­ Meanwhile, professor Yvonne, from the department of magical powers, was kneeling in her darkened office. A screen of illusory magic covered the windows and walls to foil any divination magic pointed at her, showing instead her lazily sipping coffee while grading papers. In reality, she held a dark orb in her hands, whispering into it. ¡°The mana siphon was given to Theodore without a hitch, and neither him nor any of my students suspect anything. The enhancement to the rate of skill growth was also confirmed, so soon enough it will be possible to distribute these items on mass¡± ¡°Excellent, my little daevi. Proceed as planned, soon we will have enough forces to expand ever further¡­¡± A deep and gravelly voice emanated from the communication artifact, connected to a point in the shallow end of the abyss near Taarak. A lesser demonoid, with dark green skin and curled black horns, looked out over the parapets of the fort he currently inhabited. A tower of bloody bone held up a small blood red flame at its top, miasmic smoke gushing down deeper into the abyss, fiendish essence feeding the dark recesses the nutrients needed to grow and spread. Most demons made it their life''s goal to gain and harvest fiendish essence. This was because that fiendish essence was what allowed demons, devils, daemons, daevas, asuras, qlippoth, yaoguai, oni, rakshasa and every other kind of fiend to level up, and even certain non-fiends could consume it to evolve to a different stage, such as from zombie to a ghul, skipping the standard ghoul form entirely. But beyond that, it let anyone who held a territory in the abyss to grow their domain. This not only increased the amount of territory they controlled, but also increased the rate at which lesser fiends spawned, granting the enterprising fiend countless minions. This is why demonic hordes, infernal legions, and other fiendish kingdoms were so worrisome, as they would consistently mount raids to neighboring regions to capture sacrifices. The mana siphons were another kind of sacrifice. While not as powerful as the standard blood sacrifice, they were much more efficient, slowly smoldering away at the mana and soul of the user. In the short term, this meant an increased rate of skill and level gain, but in the long term it decreased the lifespan of the user drastically, giving more than enough time to spread it so much that it was innocuous by the time the side effects appeared. At that point, Taarak would be more than strong enough to conquer every nearby country, allowing almost every fiend in Taarak a chance at promotion to a more powerful fiendish form. After conquering the Suining dynasty to the west, Tenobylon to the north and the Norian kingdoms to the south, they would have more than enough power to go against the Imperium Sacrum Francais head on, given that it was mainly uninhabited void islands and emptiness in every other direction. For now, the demonoid reported to the fiend above them, the daemon knight exilis. The demon knight would then collect the reports of countless fiendish gentry like the lesser demonoid, and then send them to the nearest fiendish baron, who sends it to the nearest fiendish viscount, who sends it to the nearest fiendish count, who sends it to the fiendish marquis, who decides the immediate plans for the territory, before reporting to the respective duke deeper in the abyss, who reports to the royal court. From their the court spreads the information until it reaches the imperial court, and from their the emperor enacts the will of the fiendish gods of the abyss. Of course each territory was assigned a specific patron god. in the case of Taarak that patron was tenebrous, abyssal god of darkness and death, and thus where the entire chain of command ended. In the meantime, daemon knight exilis was preparing his troops. In front of him was arrayed a mob of thin and pale creatures, split jaws filled with oversized fangs, and a long barbed tongue tasting the air in front of them. These were profane strigoi, a subset of vampires, with extraordinary strength, speed and control of necrotic force and fiendish essence. Straddling the line between fiends and undead, these monsters were able to generate both necrotic force and fiendish essence by consuming blood, and were thus able to grow stronger with every foe defeated. Their control of these forces also allowed them to heal each other at the same time they struck their enemy, so that they grew exponentially stronger in numbers as the area grew saturated in necrotic force and fiendish essence. Currently all the forces in Taarak had a total of 20,000 of these creatures, enough to take a city maybe, but not enough to conquer a nation, let alone 4. But they had 70 or so years to prepare, meaning that when the plan commences, they would have an army over at least 2,000,000 of these profane strigoi, each one at a much higher level than the few hundred in front of him. ¡°Now all that¡¯s left to do is make sure our plans aren¡¯t found out before it¡¯s too late, and everything will fall right into place¡­¡± The biggest worry on the mind of every demon knight and hellish baron was that the plan was discovered before the side effects of the mana siphons began to show. As soon as the side effects made themselves apparent, the fiendish forces of the abyss would have ample opportunity to strike a foe who¡¯s greatest champions begin to drop like flies. On the other hand, the retaliation of every nearby force at once could possibly cause them to be forced back into the abyss itself, the void island of Tamara being lost and possibly even purified, while raiding parties would ravage the nearby area to harvest mana from demonic essence. Of course, that wasn¡¯t exactly a guaranteed lose even now, as the sheer amount of demons and devils spawned since the last all out war was enormous. As things stood, Taarak was well prepared for this. It would take a near miracle for the nearby kingdoms to discover what they were doing before the mana siphons were spread to the general populace, and by then, all the fiends had to do was wait. And across the abyssal expanse below Taarak, the fiends were doing much more than waiting. Whether tending to newly spawned troops, preparing new kinds of magic, or planting false information in foreign intelligence, the fiends impatiently waited for the time of the attack to arrive. ¡°The world beyond our abyss¡­ it¡¯s free real estate¡±