Brockton Bay's Marvelous Mage - Chapter 105

As it always was, waiting for my cycle to tick over was filled with frayed nerves and anxiety-filled pacing. Despite consistently happening for months now, there was always the slight worry that maybe the previous time had been my final power-up and that I was now alone with whatever I had purchased. Eventually, to help pass the time and keep my mind off the shadows it liked to create, I started going through all of the material the PRT had gathered for me, organizing it in the storage trees to make it easier to use later. 

Unfortunately, even being as meticulous as I could, that only took up so much time. By the time I was done, the sun had just barely set, which meant I still had plenty of time before the refresh. Rather than just sit around and stir myself up into a frenzy, I decided to head into the city. Even if I wasn't very hungry, I could grab some food and find somewhere random with a nice view to enjoy it.

I knew that I could have started and completed a few of the luck enhancement rituals, but with my planned point investment, I didn't want to waste my time.

After bouncing around for a while, trying to decide what I wanted to heat, I eventually got myself some pizza. I might have caused a bit of a scene buying a pizza in costume, but my actual dinner experience was quiet, having taken my food to the top of one of the taller buildings downtown, far away from Empire territory. Unless something big happened, I wanted nothing to do with the Nazi gang, at least for tonight. I needed to focus on the cycle switching over.

Eventually, after slowly eating most of an entire large pizza, it was time for me to get home and properly prepare. I teleported back, settling down in one of the comfortable lounge chairs before closing my eyes, letting the last bit of time run out in relative peace, my stomach full, Alya floating around, and Kali's distant presence helping me relax.

After another hour or so of partially dozing and partially meditating with a mana exercise, I could finally feel the cycle turning over. I took a large breath, my body tensing as the familiar feeling of my charges refilling flooded me, and an eager grin spread along my face. Six more opportunities to increase my power, to give this world a fighting chance to recover from the hell that had been dropped onto its lap.

When my charges were filled, now with seven in total since I still had the spare one from my quests, I waited relatively patiently for my freebie. As always, it took its sweet old time, just long enough for me to get worried that nothing was coming before finally unlocking and filling my mind with knowledge. For a moment, I was somewhat surprised not to reach another level of understanding in druidcraft, before the download of knowledge pulled me deep into its depths.

Information about physical dimensions and space, the rules that limit, define, and lock us firmly into how reality is structured, was poured into my head. I now understood what gave an object its designated space in the reality of our existence. More and more data came, a constant stream, quite a lot of it stuffed to the brim with high-level concepts, difficult to parse even with the foundational knowledge being downloaded straight into my head.

As I began to understand a fundamental aspect of reality, knowledge of how to bend those aspects, called dimensional partitioning, filled my mind. Unfortunately, while the foundation of information was nearly overwhelming, what I could do with that information was actually quite limited. The first level exposed weaknesses that could be pushed and flexed, letting a wizard add a sort of flexibility to space, allowing the preverbal square peg to fit in a circle hole. The second level showed how magic could be used to add dimensional space, but only in small amounts and only in small, stable areas. There were other, more minor effects I could achieve, but it was clear by the density of knowledge that this field would take a lot of points to unlock fully.

The process to engage any of those effects required complicated enchantments and rituals to first stabilize the object, or container really, preparing it for the heavy magic that would be needed to bend the rules of physics, even in such a localized space. It was a startlingly long process to work the flexibility into space, a pattern that continued when trying to take one or two cubic inches of space and turn it into three or four.

I was severely limited in how much space I could create, for now, but it was still a pretty potent bit of knowledge. This was the very foundation of understanding that would eventually allow me to create bags of holding, a staple in magical gear.

I could even feel that this subject would go far beyond that, allowing me to fundamentally shift whole rooms and buildings, weaving and expanding space as I wanted. I would just need to unlock that knowledge with a frankly astounding amount of charges.

With a look at my other unlocked subjects, I could see that druidcraft had only been "selected" twice, setting it at level three, by whatever entity or mechanic was selecting my freebies. Dimensional partitioning could undoubtedly be very useful, especially at higher levels, but it didn't do much for my current mission of creating an army of enhanced, empowered, and armed soldiers explicitly designed to fight the Endbringers.

Sure, a bag of holding for each soldier would be incredible, or perhaps one per squad, but that was so far away that I wasn't sure it was possible. Not to mention so indulgent that I wondered if it was worth it. A soldier, enhanced with geomancy, could carry an awful lot of gear before it became a problem that required a magical solution.

For a few minutes, at least, I was lost in my head, considering the overall usefulness of the knowledge I had just gained. When I finally shook my head and let out a huff, pushing it to the side for a moment, I hadn't really made my mind up. Still, I had points to spend, and while dimensional partitioning was fascinating and had plenty of potential, it didn't do anything to change my plans.

For a moment, I hesitated, wondering if this was the right choice, before pushing past my doubt and grabbing a single charge. Focusing on what I wanted to unlock, it took a moment for me to frame my desire in a way the Marvelous Mage system seemed to accept, but eventually, the charge sank into what I was looking for. 

Magical mass production.

Immediately, before I could even dive into what it contained, the new subject sprouted and connected to a significant portion of my other subjects, considerably more quick casting. Looking through them, I could see links to enchantment and rituals in druidcraft, to the knowledge I had about the ritual design, to the process of making wands and other focuses, even spirit totem crafting, though there wasn't much it could connect to there, at least at the first level.

In fact, while the subject had plenty of connections, the usefulness of those links was definitely on the lower side, which was unsurprising considering I had only invested a single charge. Most of the connections were just methodologies to speed up making multiple things, ways to prepare workstations and set out materials, rather than actual magical solutions to making multiple items at once or rapidly. 

"Okay… this could be a solid fit," I said, letting out a long breath. 

"Your magical production idea?" Alya asked, floating nearby in a half-solid state.

"Yeah. I had to modify how I was originally thinking about it, but I got it to work… and it seems to fit," I responded, wincing slightly. "I'm worried that most of them seem to be about nonmagical solutions rather than mass production on larger scales... Okay, I'm investing two more charges."

I closed my eyes and pushed more of my chargers into the subject, watching as the connection bloomed, more connections forming while old ones became more robust. I dove head first into the knowledge, feeling it spread and grow with each connection it made. With the second charge, I was learning magic methods of rapid production, not just methods to speed things up. With a deep breath and a silent prayer to anyone who was listening, I put three more charges into the subject, watching them get absorbed. 

If the second level had been a bloom, the third was like watching a flower bed come to life. Nearly every subject I had was connected with thick tendrils, each one filled with magical solutions, methods, and adaptations. Even spell creation has a few connections detailing how to design spells in mass. I wasn't sure how useful that would be, but if I wanted to, I could do it. 

Suddenly, the idea of arming a hundred soldiers seemed like a small time number, the absolute bare minimum. If I wanted to, I could arm thousands of people.

"Well… my idea just suddenly got a lot more achievable," I admitted, shaking my head slightly. "And I was right about it making my current lucky charm ritual look stupid. Luckily, the luck part of the ritual is fine. It's just the part for doing multiple objects at once that I need to redo."

I grabbed my notebook, the one detailing the luck enhancement ritual, and got to work redesigning it with my new knowledge, overhauling about thirty percent of it as I did. Since I was working with fresh, fully realized knowledge rather than something I had to work out for myself, the changes came easily, and by two in the morning, I was ready to get to work.

The first step wasn't actually the ritual itself, but an entirely separate ritual for a new type of ritual chalk. This was an augmentation of my electrum and blood chalk, adding in iron dust and several other ingredients. This new type of chalk would resist the process of ritual imbuement enough that I could use the same outline multiple times, usually around three. That meant three batches per ritual drawing, a massive cut on time and resources. 

Once my new chalk was complete, I copied out my new ritual, using the new iron blend chalk. The ritual itself was rather large, essentially two rituals stacked on top of each other, as I was not only performing the enhancement ritual but also the ritual that allowed for multiple objects to be done at once. Though the second part was significantly refined with my new knowledge, it was still a sizable part of the process. 

When the new ritual outline was completed, I spread out the sacrificial ingredients. A ten-gram ingot of gold, a pound of commercial grade jade, a hundred-year-old iron horseshoe, and an actual four-leaf clover, found apparently by a thinker the PRT had to hire. At the center of the ritual, I spread out a pile of simple herringbone-style golden bracelets, spread out in a circle for optimal distribution of energy. 

When I had originally designed this ritual, I had been hoping to find a way to make hundreds of items at once. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that was not possible, at least not with the level of knowledge I had. At the time, about a dozen items at once was my max, and that was pushing my abilities to their max. Now, with my new knowledge of mass production, I was doing twenty at once in a ritual that was barely more difficult than my usual fare. 

I could have pushed it to do even more, upping the complexity and the amount of mana I needed to feed it, but the first level of magical mass production, the one that was mostly about methodologies and strategies, actually pointed out that it was not worth the struggle. Going all out and making a ritual for thirty or forty items at once would push me to my limit, take up to two hours to copy down, and would likely require me to feed it mana for half that time. 

Meanwhile, the design to do twenty at a time took half an hour to draw out and would only require fifteen to twenty minutes to charge. With the iron dust reinforced chalk letting me use the ritual three times in a row, I was still producing plenty of lucky bracelets, but at a much more manageable pace. 

If I pushed myself to complete the more reasonable version as fast as I could, my production rate was actually higher than if I was using the hypothetical massively overcomplicated version.

Once everything was set, I reached out to Kali, who was still watching over her new canine companions. The vast majority of the rescued dogs were resting, meaning Kali was free to come to help me with the ritual, watching over the whole process and tuning it as it formed, helping me improve the potency by a not-unnoticeable amount.

Contrary to what I had told Armsmaster, as well as my own planning, I ended up completing the entire order by the time the sun was breaking through the trees, making a hundred and forty lucky bracelets. Each one was the best I could do in terms of potency at this stage of my development and was comparable, though slightly less potent, to what Piper could do.

Each bracelet would have a noticeable effect on a person's luck, though only through extended observation. Nobody would suddenly be unbeatable at poker or always hit green lights as they drove. Instead, their own inherent luck would just get a slight, barely noticeable boost. Basically, the good things that could happen to them were just slightly more likely to happen, with the inverse happening to the bad. In all honesty, from what I could understand, through concepts brought forward by my knowledge of rituals and spell crafting, the concept of luck enhancement tied heavily into divination. Basically, messing around with luck wasn't altering reality. It was just giving what was already there a slight nudge. 

I was far from an expert in the field and didn't want to spend the points to become one. Though, that said, eventually dropping some spare points into some sort of divination subject was not a bad idea. While it would obviously be a powerful ability, if I had to choose between knowing what's coming and actually having the power to do something about it, I would rather have the latter. 

When I was done making the luck-enhancing bracelets, I stored them back in the same containers that they had come in. I still had plenty of empty packaging, so I burned the various cardboard boxes while keeping any of the sturdier crates and containers in one of the storage trees. Technically, I did have a few batches of materials left over since my new ritual was more productive than the original, but considering what I was working towards, I didn't mind storing them away for personal use later.

Consider it payment for the bracelets.