HP: Spirit Talker

It was only after almost half a year that I returned to the Spatial Magic book. I took the basics of magical education and copied everything that made sense, cutting out all the empty chatter, philosophizing, and other nonsense.

My notes contained only sensible, well-founded work by scientists, arranged on accessible shelves. It is worth mentioning that I had nothing on which to copy texts or take notes, so I had to use shikigami to steal notebooks, single sheets of paper, and other office supplies from storerooms.

Listening to conversations, I never heard any mention of stealing from there, so I continued to use the services of the free storeroom. I especially liked the thick magazines: heavy leather bindings with loops, containing a little over two hundred blank, unlined sheets. There were several boxes of them, so I took them out as I needed them, organizing them by subject. I hid my notes under a wooden floor panel in a closet.

So, onward. I read books and scrolls, took notes on the material, marked the text as valuable or as empty nonsense. What might be needed in the future, or simply useful educational material, was copied letter by letter by my shikigami without my participation.

The ink was literally flying away. I racked my brain, memorizing new things, filling the dusty shelves in my head with knowledge. At some point we had to change the focus to alchemy and potion making. The fact is that I started too abruptly, and my body could no longer keep up the pace.

My little people were already tired of carrying all kinds of food for me at night, because there really wasn't enough. But even so, the gradually increasing fatigue and weakness intensified, and the pace had to slow down until I found a way out — potions and alchemy.

 They still took a lot of time, so I put everything else aside (secret, the rest, official training, no one would allow me to stop) and took up only this section. At the end of the third month, I was able to find the necessary supplements and to calculate the necessary volume that would not conflict with the drugs I was already using. Alchemy, the little I had studied, allowed me to synthesize some of the missing ingredients in an artisanal way; everything else I stole from the clan's warehouses.

My notes continued to grow, and having found a way to sleep only four hours a day without harming my growing body, I returned to the basics of the magical arts. At the end of the winter, using a complex ritual in an even more complex ritual circle, I enchanted a silver ring, purchased at the temple for the New Year, to function as a spatial bubble pocket.

 My entire growing library didn't take up a tenth of the volume of my pocket, but I didn't put anything else in it except notes — I like order. And a few weeks later, in the far corner of the library, my shikigami found a cluttered door leading to another room.

Even the entrance itself was so cluttered that it was immediately obvious that it had not been touched in decades. The paper was thin, so the shikigami easily crawled into the hidden room and began to examine it.

The further I went, the more dismayed I became by the treasures, abandoned and forgotten. Treatises by court healers-magicians of the Chinese Imperial Dynasty, entire chests containing the works of a single master, or a target group of ancient scientists. Three dozen scrolls, as thick as my thigh, on chimerology and necromancy from the entire magical school of Egypt.

Works on alchemy and potions, individual texts on the most unexpected topics, such as smelting magical alloys, tempering magical weapons, caring for and raising mystical animals, demonology, and the magic of portals. I couldn't sleep that night. I was shaking and agitated, rattled by hostility toward the people who had taken THIS and left it to rot in oblivion.

At first, I just wanted to copy everything, that's all, but as I continued to look through what I had discovered, I came across a treasure chest that shocked my mind and decided to just appropriate the entire closet. I was not afraid of being discovered, and I did not try to justify my actions.

The treasure that decided the fate of the other treasures belonged to the hand of a Chinese scientist who lived more than three thousand years ago. The work turned out to be dated — inside the beautifully decorated chest there was a plaque with the date, but the name of the scientist was not found.

To be honest, if I had not seen with my own eyes what the Chinese were working on, I would never have believed it. Thirteen thick scrolls in ornate cases preserved the whole idea, developed rituals, step-by-step recipes for potions for processing materials, design features of various parts, etc., etc. to create... PARAM-PAM-PAM: Puppets with intelligence, i.e. ROBOTS! Can you imagine it?

Three thousand years ago, the Chinese developed a complete cycle of creating real ROBOTS using magic and alchemy! I thought I was going crazy, honestly! I even asked for some kind of sedative. But with each new line of text, with each new paragraph, I felt more and more acutely my stupidity and primitiveness compared to the genius of this man.

He had no wires, but he learned to grow magical power lines out of metals, minerals, and biological materials. He had no computer technology to control them, but the Chinese invented a special ritual to summon the spirit.

A contract is made, and the spirit moves into the specially "programmed" core of the doll, and controls it using a charge of magic in the storage core, which is powered not only by the magician, but also by the surrounding world. This is tough! And just to be on the safe side, the core itself has a bunch of restrictions, condition programs, as well as a self-destruct system according to the magician's code wish. Simply amazing work! The more I studied it, the more I wanted to build a magical robot myself...

It even became a little frightening to think what other wonders were hidden in other scrolls and books in this room. But these thoughts did not shake my decision, and over the next few weeks the entire secret room, or rather its contents, migrated to me and was sealed in a ring.

It is true that I had to perform a complex and exhausting ritual, and each ritual had to be performed in secret, because in the official classes, as I understand it, I am prepared as a kind of shield in conjunction with a magician: while the magician is preparing, and this is not done quickly, he needs to be protected.

There have been cases in history, not uncommonly, where a mage would contract with a powerful ayakashi for a similar role. The Miyazaki clan treats non-humans badly, without dividing them into good and bad, a kind of xenophobia.

Because of this, they give me a lot of theory about ritualism, witchcraft, malevolence, shamanism, and astral magic, but very little practice, VERY little. So if I am noticed performing my own ritual, and such a complex one at that, then a lot of questions will arise that I will be forced to answer, by force if necessary.

Well, oh well, I see all this as training — it's easier for the psyche. In short, after the ritual, the ring acquired the properties of an "astral recording of an entity" (something like a backup is made in the astral plane, with detailed information about the object) and subsequent restoration, as well as almost absolute concealment, meaning that either demigods or gods, or entities comparable to them, can detect it. So, the treasures are now mine, and no one will take them away from me! ... from humans... probably...

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