Black Magus

Following an extensive and painful hair appointment with Ebbet, I flew off to the library and ascended through the ceiling to find a relatively small office or study packed with dust-caked books, scrolls, and tomes galore.

Seeing the veritable bounty before me, I dove headfirst into the books to try and find anything worthwhile; though, there was regrettably little of interest. Many of the tomes and grimoires were for shadow spells that I’d already come to learn. Though there were a few illusion-type spells that I stored away in my Pocket to practice later. Quite disappointingly, a vast majority of the text consisted of legal and financial documents from a long-past age that’d been strewn in with textbooks, tales, stories, and biographies about the many different deities or pantheons and adventures from older times. Through them and the books I’ve read thus far, I did my best to piece together what I could of the expansion theory. Though, to not much surprise, there still wasn’t much to learn in here.

Regardless, I managed to confirm the full scope of humanity's footprint across the Mortal Plane. Like humans and Maru; or Earth, the advertised species weren’t the only beings found on other worlds. By historical accounts, the gates appeared nearly 1500 years ago. Linking the different realms of the Mortal Plane together. Those gates then remained open for over a millennium, allowing humanity to spread across nearly the entirety of the Plane. According to the tales, humans could be found from the Metropolis of Metals in Vagua, all the way to Sky Hill City, far beyond the White Wall. In Betrarth, Nonus, Maru; everywhere but Youtera, humans were found.

Common knowledge, it’d already been. That was true. Reading it now, however, I couldn’t help but wonder about how these humans may have changed and evolved in these exotic lands throughout the last thousand years. For, if I have come to learn anything about mana in the past few years, it was that change was the essence of mana. In the same way that, through one process or another, an ordinary creature could evolve into a dire version of its species, gain sentience, or become magical; I was all but certain of there being some sort of change spurred forth by mana to assist these humans surviving in other realms. Necessitating more observations and yet more experiments.

While the dozens of fantastical accounts all aligned with the same truth, I remained skeptical of their validity and thus reaffirmed my desire to see the different realms with my own eyes one day. Much like I wanted to do and eventually did with the worlds of the Sol System, I would bear witness to it all in due time.

In three weeks' time, I put my studies behind me and I joined my vassals in occupying our compound full-time. After bringing the place back up to snuff, the compound was expanded to make accommodations for the new additions. Including separate workshops and warehouses for the three of them. They got to work immediately. Ed made custom work tents for each of us that were easily collapsible into our dimensional rucks. Rudimentary things to ensure we’d be able to handle our business in any environment. Simultaneously, Letta and Giorno went around to each of us to interview us on our particular styles and fashion needs. Then, they were rarely seen outside of training, our mealtimes, and the many times they approached us with massive bundles of clothes or cases and chests filled with watches or jewelry.

Our schedule changed to a more cohesive routine around a month into our full-time occupation. At that point, we began waking at dusk to spend an hour or so conducting daily hygiene and having breakfast before we gathered in the clearing outside to begin the day with some warm-up exercises. Then, I’d summon everyone’s Doppelgangers and we’d fight ourselves for the next few hours. After a short break, we’d split up to practice spell development until we rendezvoused at the compound at midnight to eat or relax for a bit before going to work in our more specific roles. Such a schedule would continue for nine days out of the week. On the tenth day, we’d gather in or outside and spend the night feasting, playing music, dancing, watching or participating in one of Jonet’s plays, or otherwise enjoying each other’s company. Forming quite a bond between us as the weeks passed into months. Conversely, we’d split up every other week or so to go out hunting and fishing; sometimes with Gerolt. From our excursions, we were able to amass a sizable stockpile of provisions and building materials for the guild pool; stuffed away inside the wagon for later use. On top of that, the new additions were able to catch up to the rest of us in terms of pemmican reserves, seeds, and jugs of stored water.

Eventually, we were returning to the estate only once a fortnight, if not once a month to assure my father that all was well with us before I tried to acquire any kind of information I could from the place. Despite my efforts, Letta and Giorno never came with me on any of those excursions. In spite of the former's claim of wanting to be rich, she instead insisted that she needed to produce a sizable stockpile of wares before she even thought about selling. Something I couldn’t quite argue with, and something that Giorno seemed to agree with as well.

Despite my curiosity remaining unsatiated, I decided it was best to wait until I was closer to awakening my cores before I sought out my mother for questioning. And oh, there were a lot of questions. But for once, I didn't mind waiting. With my vassals being fully trained and self-sufficient, I reveled in my newfound freedom. My main purpose in training them so diligently was to instill a standard in them that they’d pass on to anyone who’d come to follow me in the future. Them knowing everything I wanted them to meant that the need for me to personally supervise them was now a thing of the past. Thus freeing up an abundance of time for me that could be spent doing the things I wanted or needed to do.

And so, I endlessly drilled with my spear and daggers to develop muscle memory. I continuously trained up my spell proficiencies and worked on developing new spells. I tirelessly fought against my doppelganger; who’d been growing alongside me since the day I first summoned him. And I relentlessly practiced my mana manipulation, elemental manipulation, and elemental fusion until they all become second nature. By Sextrand, the sixth month, I was proficient enough in my Mana Skin that I was able to keep a thin veil of condensed mana surrounding me with minimal effort. On top of that, I worked out a type of dual sight with my mana sight and regular vision, creating a type of lens or filter effect that overlaid the web of flowing energy onto whatever I was looking at.

That breakthrough sprouted a series of experiments that revolved around making the most out of my Eternal Eye. Rationalized by the prospects of an upcoming journey and fueled by the nostalgia of my forsaken implants, I designed and implemented a basic heads-up display that would give me some basic information about my environment at a glance. Things I’ve never or rarely paid attention to up until now, as well as a few additional widgets that took some time to develop. In all, I installed a temperature readout in the Kelvin scale, a rotating compass, a clock, a luminosity gauge, and a rudimentary geo-tagging system. On top of that, I furiously debated developing a type of system to track mana expenditure. Though, no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t settle on a system that utilized anything but numbers. Which was a problem when I had no way to quantify mana. More importantly, I couldn’t exactly justify spending so much mental effort on the task. Work was indeed measured by joules in the scientific world. Nevertheless, people rarely associated their efforts with a numerical value. And though a percentage was sometimes used; it wasn’t often enough to be called common. Riding that train of thought, I tossed that matter aside and quickly moved on to a far more important function: Music.

Within my Eternal eye was a vast library of not only technological marvels; there was music; podcasts; tv shows; movies; video games; and other media that all contained pricelessly timeless tunes, information, and quotes. Through the spiritual organ, each of the memories was now able to be played back to my senses with the utmost clarity. Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I could listen to my heart's content without making as much as a peep to the outside world. A function that seemed to make the final months of the year pass by like seconds. And before I knew it, my 15th birthday was right around the corner.