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You learn magic quietly. Weeks pass and books from the library are devoured 24 hours a day, six days a week. Why six? Well, after I learnt to go into the astral I was able to let my body rest at night while I interacted with the books with relatively light energy manipulation. But even in this state, every six days it was desirable for me to return to my body for at least one night for the sake of a normal discharge of consciousness. Still, even the player's mind didn't remove the mental strain completely. No, nothing terrible would happen to me with a couple of months or even a year of such a life. It's just that the brain... the mind of the astral projection starts working a little worse. I mean, after six days it's a little bit, about 6-9% worse, but if I go without sleep for a long time I can lose up to 70% of the speed and power of my mind. Simply put, become sluggish and stupid.
Well, that wasn't the point of the problem I found. Over the past week I had already begun to demonstrate extremely decent energy manipulation skills and the grey robes were no longer enough for me. These achievements have earned me the rank of brown apprentice. It's a proud moment... if you don't think of the first thoughts at the mention of such students. In general, this is the level at which those who came here to study magic seriously begin. So it is only from the brown level that students are explained about the main patrons of our dimension. Agamotto, Oshtur and Hoggoth form a kind of interest circle for "good" higher entities. The circle is called Vishanti and any mage above the white level is encouraged to swear allegiance to them in the way of protecting the earth. And they will of course make the mage stronger in return. The wizard will be able to store much more energy about 4-5 times more. Control will also grow much better, and access to a bunch of the strongest barriers, conspiracies and combat spells to protect the dimension will be open. All in all, one plus. Well, except for a small point, which everyone quickly forgets, that any of such a trio at the first request can cut off the forces of the magician and return the so-called master to the level at best blue robes. So there I was, almost falling for the hook of such tempting "good" bitches. But midway through the oath, a very interesting message appeared in front of me.
Attention!
Player you are coming into contact with a powerful entity. If you recite the oath to the end you will be enrolled as its follower. This will bring an increase in your magical abilities and talents, but these powers will never be completely yours. Please note that with strong development in the magical direction in the future your body can become a vessel for the manifestation of the higher essence. Also in case of violation of the terms of the vow or negative opinion of the entity about you your magical powers can be almost completely blocked or in case of long use of magical energy, received in loans from the entity to go into an uncontrolled state, which has a 90% chance of lethal outcome for the magician. Please weigh the pros and cons again before making such a momentous decision.
When I saw that, I was faintly amazed at the size of the arsehole I had almost fallen into. Knowing the higher entities in Marvel, I clearly understood that the lives of ordinary mages and even the Ancient One were a bargaining chip for them. And for the sake of a lucrative piece of dimension or getting something valuable, they will quietly agree with another even "dark" entity to temporarily disable the powers of an unlucky mage. And these are at least the most obvious disadvantages, well, and in addition, most likely, there is an imperceptible branding of the soul of the magician, so that after death he got to the right entity. And I can think of a couple of ways to do it right now, for example, using the powers of Agamotto, your aura will be gradually covered by the remnants of his energy, summoned with the help of a spell. And for 10-20 years of cheerful magical life you will be completely covered by sets of such auras and dying your soul will be immediately surrounded by a net, dragging the magician into the hands of a god.
In general, when I saw this, I immediately rejected THESE plushies. For other mages it will be strange, but I'd rather do it myself. So I spent the next three weeks looking for ways to get stronger on my own. The books I dug through were a sea of books, but to summarise, there were only three ways to increase my energy reserve. The first and easiest to find, but not legal, is sacrifice. But not a standard one to some deity, but to yourself. The magician sacrifices the same sorcerer in strength and by means of ritual takes away his reserve to himself simply speaking plus someone else's to his own. Of the disadvantages, except for the understandable prohibition is a small practicality of the method. After the ritual is a kind of Frankenstein's vault, which seems to work and problems are not noticeable, but add a couple of extra drops of energy in the barrel and the magician just torn.
The second method is more complicated, but it's legal. Magical Artifact Vault. The most powerful of such artefacts can hold about 2-3 reserves of the wizard, which is not bad at all. But not many people can create such a powerful artefact, and they will ask for a lot of rare things for the magical world. And I have absolutely nothing in the magical world. And those are just the main drawbacks. There's also the time it takes to get used to the artefact. Such things, if they don't have the rudiments of consciousness inside them, usually take a long time to get used to a magician. This process can take from 3-10 years, and I don't have that much time. Until full habituation, such a reserve will work with interruptions and the speed of a snail on a rathbull. I mean, it's not slow, but you're fucked in combat.
The third and the only way that seems even slightly possible to me is to use your own dimension. Of course, all dimensions that are even marginally large or filled with energy have already been scattered by the powers that be, but nothing prevents me from tying to myself a small space capable of storing the tiny reserve of a mediocre mage. Such shards appear when a large dimension tries to absorb another dimension of equal or very dense energy. For example, Dormamu does not want to swallow Earth because of his obsession with world domination. It's just that our world is very tasty and if the planet is absorbed by his dimension, he will get a good boost in power.
By this logic you will probably ask why he does not eat on other planets and civilisations. It's all about the development of the world. We don't have any weapons against such entities, but developed civs can launch something of the level of exterminatus into the spatial rift, and even Dormam will be sad from such a murderous attack. No, we are not defenseless, but to put it simply, we are Kevin from Home Alone, who hurts, but will not do anything lethal and too dangerous. And advanced civilisations are the old and already experienced grandfather with a berdanka. The grandfather may not know what kind of magic you have there, demons and other dimensions such, but from a direct charge from the Berdanka stored above the fireplace the probability of staying alive will be much less.
The only options I had left were to slowly absorb the other shards and create my own dimension, but, firstly, it was quite difficult. And secondly, when I fatten my dimension to a medium level, it will be immediately attacked by a lot of enemies. Therefore, the variant with absorption of other shards is effective only at the first stages. You can also pump up your dimension with the help of targeted energy filling. Almost any energy is suitable, but it is a very long process almost equal in time to the second, and maybe even longer. In this case, you will need to fill the dimension to the limit and keep pouring energy into it in a constant stream. This will pump the shard to a full mini-dimension and ideally, after some time, teach it to create new energy on its own. In reality, a couple of nuclear power plants won't be enough to do it, but I've put together a plan that has a 68% chance of working. For it, I had to procure another 200g of vibranium to the very unhappy quack in my head and the odd stringy feeling in my neck for the next few days. But the mantra that the dead don't need money seemed to help.
While my plan to create a compound of light energy conversion seal from the very beginning of artefacting and pump pile type technologies was being prepared and going through the conceptual stage I started to solve my problem from the other side. Realising that I wouldn't see a normal reserve in the near future, I switched from volume to pumping speed. Mages have long had some compositions to increase the rate of absorption of energy around you several times and recipes for weak and medium potions were not a secret. Realising that my skill in the preparation of all sorts of mixtures very well rock the initial indicators of the ingredients and allows you to get, it would seem, from ordinary things magical elixirs I immediately wanted on the basis of magical herbs and roots to make my killer creation. A good part of mages lived in the ordinary world and ordinary money was not used everywhere, but for not very serious things or tasks I could easily pay for what I wanted with a couple of dozens of Franklins. Therefore, three days after the beginning of my endeavours in the direction of magic elixirs, I had a rather large stock of magic herbs and other strange-looking, but useful in experiments ingredients.
After extensive tests and combinations, here's honestly those who have played the mobile game, Alchemy will have to understand. You mix this with that then the resulting from this with the previous and so in a circle many, many, many hours in a row. In general, after a bunch of tests and ready-made options, I recognised the potions prepared by mages as unquotable and switched to other options. After a couple more days of torture and strange looks of other students at the windows of my room producing multi-coloured smoke twenty four by seven I finally created my greatest (for the next couple of months for sure) creation.
Normal elixirs took about 30 minutes to work and increased the rate of energy flow by 23-24%. My creations took 45-50 minutes to take effect and pumped up the ambient energy absorption rate by 43%. Which was a lot, but not enough for prolonged battles and I knew I could do better. The result of my torment was a combination of special leaves of a magical tree that must soak in a special sticky solution for 21 hours. After that, they are carefully rolled into self-rolls filled with small pieces of dried liver of one rare fish and smoked. Using hellfire, I can instantly draw in the entire result of my creation and get a 70% absorption rate boost and 65 minutes without remembering the low reserve. Or smoke long and hard for two hours and get a 74% speed boost. In general, I became the perfect proof of the phrase "If you don't blow, you can't make magic".
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