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6 July 2012 Kamarthage
Jumping into the portal that opened in front of me, I was very angry, you could tell by the air around me. When I'm not in control of my emotions and I'm just pissed off like this the air around me goes in waves and those around me get the feeling that they're in a bathhouse. I should probably first tell you what has happened in general over these months, what I have learnt and how I came to wish death on all living things.
After I was taught the basics of how to use common mage combat spells, I rarely crossed paths with Kaecilius. If I had questions, he would help, but the hours of training were no more than four or five times a month. Most of the mages' fighting style was useless to me, and Kaecilius, like the Ancient One, understood that. There was no point in learning the monks' fighting style, which was based on a lot of dodges and blocks with the help of magical shields that I didn't have the energy for. My physical data had long ago gone beyond human limits, and the same dodges I had performed much more technically only on instinct and experience of sparring with Philippa. Of course, I hadn't completely discarded the mages' fighting style, because the plan to get a reserve of master level or higher had been prepared for a week and was waiting for the right moment.
From their fighting style I adopted the skill of creating platforms in the air, which is extremely useful in the translation to the vertical level of battle. These I can use even with my small reserves. Barriers, shields, chains, threads, elemental magic, all of this was not really available to me. I could use them, but I didn't know what use I could make of the at best average shields and the sticky energy rope that could withstand a couple of stabbings. My illusion training was going extremely well. I was already quite plausibly able to change my appearance to whatever I saw or imagined in my head. But creating runes and energy lines in print still took about 40-45 seconds, so I couldn't change my appearance as lazily as Loki with a wave of his hand. Wider illusions were still too costly for me and my maximum reserve was a 10×10 metre area.
After my refusal of the "blessing" of the trio of tricksters, I faced a lot of incomprehensible looks. At least there was no shouting about heretics and lighting fires, otherwise I don't know how the local magical gods would treat the first sprouts of dissent in their personal feeding trough. The Ancient One also tried to persuade me to accept the Vishanti Unified, but after waiting a couple of weeks and realising that I wouldn't change my mind, she gave up and sent me a couple of interesting books.
The books were very old, but thanks to magic they were well preserved. They described the life of ancient mages before the emergence of such a cool school of magic as Kamartaj. In those distant times and the blessings of Vishanti, then had a few, but the power of demons and other aggressive entities were not less. But mages had a more torturous and less quick way to become powerful. In general, it resembled something of the same cultivators, but in a more human form, including the desire to move and go to the toilet. In general, the essence of the method consisted in the already seen filling the body with energy and fuelling the internal channels with a constant circulation of energy through them. Having understood the device and the first stages of the technique, I realised that it is taught to all those who come for healing like a broken back or shaky hands. This technique will allow the fighter to strengthen his body over time and already in the first stage to completely nail injuries. Which for fighting monks not capable of many modern tricks was quite useful. For example, broke your arm to the state of rubble some demon and revels in the weakness of humanity, and you using the technique can completely forget about the physical inability of hanging piece of mincemeat to do anything and purely on the created secondary energy skeleton will break the heart of the enemy with this piece of meat.
This technique itself had a couple of stages. At the first stage, a person simply stretched and strengthened the internal energy channels. By the end of the first stage inside the body was to appear a skeleton double, completely composed of energy. Pluses of its appearance was the ability of the magician even in the crappiest state of the body having a reserve of energy to move and even fight. Also such a skeleton increased defence and slightly increased the magician's regeneration.
At the second stage, the skeleton was filled with energy and the mage's body was strengthened. Strength, speed, endurance increased several times. Also on the hands it was possible to form something like a javara with armoured plates on top of the fingers.The third stage was the final stage on which the user received a thin layer of energy shell over the skin, which passively was able to reflect the impact of cold weapons, and when activated could take on 1-2 strikes of a high demon of medium level. Physical characteristics also received a very good boost, but the main reserve of the magician increased by two or three times. The third stage also had an afterburner mode of all the life force of the organism. A deadly technique for cases when you are sure that you can't escape alive. It completely removed all the blocks from the body and allowed you to burn your years of life in 10-15 minutes. Once applied the energy skeleton would come out and cover the body, each blow would break most of the bones in the mage's limb, but in return it gave a multiple increase in strength. A supreme demon usually needed a dozen third stages to win, but using this mode the mage could handle a mid-level supreme demon alone.
There were no special requirements for practising this technique. I only had to force my energy to constantly walk around my body and often physically exert myself. So after I started practising it, my mornings began to start with a bunch of physical exercises.
After the first month of training, I was able to get to the first stage and immediately felt the benefits of the training. My control of internal energy jumped a lot and there was an unfamiliar thin crusty feeling in my body. It was unpleasant at first, but after a couple of days I was able to adjust to it and the energy skeleton stopped causing such a reaction. Also, my metamorphism skill has increased quite a bit over the past few months, and I can already change something in my body structure. For example, I spent forty very torturous and painful hours replacing all my muscle fibres with a pink, stronger analogue. It did a pretty good job of boosting my strength and made me eat three times as much as usual. In fact, I've noticed that as my strength increases, I need more and more food. I'm not happy about this trend. My hopes rely on the existence of some threshold, after which the amount of necessary provisions will be severely cut. For example, the same Thor and his friends from Asgard are quite strong, but none of them can sharpen more than a couple of boars. In general, looking at the amount of regular food equal to a table full for 7-8 people I realise that soon I will have to sit down to experiment again for more nutritious food.
My fire was also getting stronger. It wasn't really noticeable, but after the battle in the inner world it was as if I had broken something holding back my flame powers. They were changing, but I couldn't figure out exactly how. The fire was definitely getting stronger, and my reserve to maintain it was clearly growing. The changes became more obvious only in the last two weeks, when when I was in a bad mood or had emotional outbursts, it became warmer around me, then hotter, and now, when I was angry, I became a mobile bathhouse.
Now I should probably explain why I'm so angry and why I'm even jumping into the portal archway. Now I've finally begun my duties as a mage, namely the defence of this dimension and the destruction/expulsion/captivity of invaders. With the help of a couple of artefacts, some of the mages keep an eye on the situation on the ground and if any invaders are detected that are too scorching, they send out mages to deal with the problem. Usually, this scanning can only pick up small scum or demons that are too powerful and therefore not lurking. But almost any higher up can be spotted by the Ancient One herself without the help of this search circle.
On small to medium sized enemies, they send out wizards or regular mages. My current powers would most likely allow me to defeat a strong lower demon or a weak medium, so I was sent to signal a dozen lower invaders of weak class and one weak medium. This is the kind of baptism of combat most mages undergo. Getting the power that is superior to ordinary people, and then becoming several times stronger because of the oath, most of the students have a big ego and so more experienced mages show them the limits of strength and put their brains in place. Of course, such personalities are usually quickly identified and secretly one of the masters is sent along with them, but after talking to me and realising that I don't belong to such category Kecilius just gave me an artefact to signal if something goes wrong and sent me alone.
I was glad to be on a mission like this, because I wanted to kill someone VERY badly. In the morning I was informed that I would finally be sent on the next few invasions. Usually such breakthroughs happened at least once a day, but they were always weak with a couple of lower demons or guests from other plans. So, knowing that I would most likely be sent to either a crowd of small enemies or one medium-sized one, I decided to spend my free time on a few experiments in artefacting. Still, I had to study it pretty well to create a single device. For example, in the morning I had a couple of interesting pouches hanging on my belt, which are 5×5 metre spatial storages. The thing is extremely useful and, most importantly, not particularly difficult to create. So, conducting an experiment I tried to repeat the forces of the double ring based on powering from an external source. Simply put, the ring quietly allows you to open a portal 50-100 metres ahead purely on the surrounding energy and only more distant points of connection make mages spend personally. When trying to create the same runes and energy lines, something went wrong and there was a boom... that hit me... and destroyed one of the spatial bags... filled with a lot of herbs and a couple of valuable ingredients... in general I don't know who is so lucky and inquisitive that he decided to enter our dimension at such a time, but he is definitely dead.
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