254, 2/2

Erick sat atop the mossy stone chair.

He breathed; in, out, in, out.

He spoke his Truth yet again, as he had many times over the last several days of meditation.

“For the good of all, and every individual, we give assistance to those in need and do what we must to prevent apocalypse before it happens, to found and cultivate an evergrowing cycle of less war, less horror, and more hope, for now, and for all always.”

Erick’s soul was a less-tattered mess and his mantra pulled that mess together just a little bit more. It had been days since Erick had started this accretion/cultivation project of True Wizardry, and while problems plagued the compound underfoot, they were all solvable problems. Everything was a solvable problem, including Erick and this ascent to True Wizardry.

“For the good of all, and every individual…”

He spoke the words and his soul aligned a little bit more. He was keeping every part of his mortal life, he had decided, which included a lot of the Script which had raised him to power.

This was sort of like soul surgery, but really it was closer to advanced healing. The pieces were all there inside of him, but they were muted and out of alignment, in the case of his Stats, or hooked up to functionality that didn’t exist, like [Cleanse], or hanging out pretty much fully intact but unable to be used at full power instantly like usual, like all of the his spells with costs in the thousands.

The way in which this was exactly like soul surgery was in how he was envisioning all of this stuff working in his soul.

The soul was mostly incomprehensible. Even the best necromancers only saw something like 10% to 40% of a soul. But the best necromancers, and even Erick with his [Reincarnation], had a trick. One simply had to frameshift, to recategorize oneself and how one viewed the world, in order to interpret the soul into something understandable and able to be operated upon.

And so, Erick was reorganizing his soul into something able to be changed based on need or want. Something that could grow with him, and change with him, that could categorize the magic he made and protect him from outside magics, like how the God Pact and the Script did for Veird.

Something like a personal Script.

Erick was still workshopping a name and the ultimate powers of such a personal Script, and how to make it truly categorize his Wizard nature… Which was pretty much impossible. All of these little spells in his soul only looked like spells, and only from certain angles. If Erick wasn’t focusing on the frameshift of his own mind into turning the unknowable into the known, then all these ‘tools’ in his soul and core would simply look like bits of benevolence-white fog, melding with each other, completely unable to be separated from each other into discernible things.

Erick wasn’t going to make something as robust as the Script, or at least not here, at the beginning.

At this new beginning, Erick was just going to transform his existence into an unassailable tree.

Poi had once spoken of the three ways that Mind Mages eventually grew. The Unbreachable Wall, shutting out everyone and everything else, becoming completely immune to the outside world. The Growing Tree, which took in good things and withstood the bad things. And the Perfect Gestalt, which took in everything, both good and bad, in order to become one with the people around them.

Erick would become an infinitely inwardly growing tree, with his heart protected by a density of True Wizardry, and with his Benevolence touching and influencing and being influenced in return by everything out here in this universe, or any other universe.

Nothanganathor was a great evil that must be killed, but to think that Nothanganathor was the only evil out there was to set oneself up to be blinded later. So Erick wasn’t planning for just that battle. He was planning for the unplannable, as much as could be done.

He repeated his mantra.

“For the good of all, and every individual…”

– – – –

Erick likely could have forced himself to True Wizardry the very second he was out of Veird’s Script. He was glad he had not done that. Everything could be made better, and that included his own ideas of Wizardry. Being truly alone for the first time in forever —and the slimes didn’t count— had done a lot to clarify a lot…

Erick looked behind, to the staircase.

A slime with a green tint to its white body was desperately trying to climb up the stairs, to get outside.

“Bartholomew,” Erick said, “You know you can’t come up here. You almost got sucked out of the room the last time you came out… Okay. I guess you’re rolling in my meditation space now.”

Erick probably should have cleaned up the mossy floor more than he had. These little slimes could climb up anything that offered as much grip as solid moss. Erick watched as Bartholomew plopped across the ground, toward the edge of the invisible shadow walls that separated the room from the vacuum. Bartholomew rolled forward fast, right to the Great Empty beyond, the Call of the Void drawing him right through—

Erick grabbed him back, pouring a little bit of Benevolence and Healing into the slime. The little guy looked dead, but he was not. Slimes only really had cores that floated in a water-like sack, and Bartholomew’s core was intact, even if all the rest of him was not. His goo had popped, though, and he rapidly turned into a puddle of luminescent goo, which was not good. Erick placed Bartholomew downstairs, in a divot of stone. He would heal.

As long as his core was intact, and the rest of him was mostly there, he would heal.

Erick would be a lot more impossible to kill than a simple slime, soon enough, but the idea was basically the same.

He sat back down on his chair, and considered Stats.

Erick was pretty set on Stats being the basis of his personal system. But what was a Stat, exactly? Well, the little slime down there had given Erick a good example of what a Stat was, considering it was pulling itself together right now and coming back to life where it had almost looked dead. Stats were like slimes in that way.

A slime was a confluence of mana that became magic in the living expression of a mutated bacteria into something more. When Erick accreted his core originally, he accreted for size and then density and along the way he gained Stats, because Stats were the expression of a life turned solid by magic.

Strength, Vitality, Willpower, and Focus were the original Stats of Veird; they were the way that the creators of the Script decided that living things would quantify themselves through magic. Then along came Melemizargo and the New Stats and the ways in which life could quantify itself doubled. Constitution, Dexterity, Perception, and Intelligence were not the end of quantification, though.

The original four Stats weren’t the start of quantification, either.

They were all simply the directions that the creators of Veird had decided to make life live upon.

Erick could pick entirely new Stats for his personal system, if he wanted. And he kinda did. Willpower and Focus meant nothing outside of mana well size and mana regeneration, but those were defunct variables in Erick’s new system. Strength still provided physical power, and Vitality recovered that strength faster, but there wasn’t a ‘Health’ unless he made Health exist.

Erick already had those original 8 Stats, though, and those were doing a lot for him already, so he wasn’t going to ditch his core and start all over again.

He could rearrange himself, though.

Erick liked being able to have a very large mana pool, so that was one of the foundations that he was going to build upon. He’d be using his own mana generation per day, all by himself, thank you very much. Sorry, Rozeta! Erick was using his 12-ish million mana per day now; not Veird.

A core was only naturally able to churn through around 500ish mana per second before it stressed and began to break, though. Erick was far beyond that because of a blessing from Rozeta, but he still had limits that he needed to eliminate, and the natural limitations of using one’s own mana was one such roadblock. So he’d Paradox himself beyond that throughput-limit, for sure.

He’d probably go for an infinitely deep mana pool that constantly filled with his own mana, and pushed out all other influences and manas. He would want to be able to open himself up and pour out mana to get rid of outside interference as well.

So that was part 1 of his new Stats. That would be his ‘soul’. Infinite depth, infinite capacity, constantly filling from his mana generation, constantly cleaning itself. His main source of clarity of purpose. This is where he would include all of the parts of him that the Script had given him. The spells. His Familiar Forms. His ‘dragon’ form. His ‘Erick’ form. All of his Class Abilities. The soul would be the main foundation for all the rest.

Soul, Body, and Mind; Erick had already decided that, but now came the organization.

Erick would put all of his Old Stats into his soul, so that they could be expressed through all the rest to come.

His body came next, and his body would be the physical expression of his soul. His ability to move a claw and slice apart steel, or to hold a cup of coffee and not break it while still being able to enjoy the heat of the mug. The strength of his scales. The power of his breath. The ability to heal completely and never tire.

Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Perception, and Vitality would be mostly expressed through the body. All of that would be rolled into one number; simply ‘Body’. All of that would create a confluence called Health, that would be the main shield protecting Erick from physical harm. That shield would be a lot harder to weaken than Health on Veird, too, because it would be a secondary infinite well of resources that could be used to keep the body running well.

No limits to Health, either, in this new True Wizard world, thank-you-very-much.

For the third Stat, Erick wanted ‘mind’. ‘Mind’ would be an expression of his body, and be his conscious self. It was on this level that he would primarily exist, but he would also exist in soul and body. Intelligence would mainly express itself here. Willpower and Focus had nothing to do with Mana Points or Mana Point Regeneration anymore, which were deprecated Stats under Erick’s True Wizardry, so Erick would roll both of those into a new stat called ‘Concentration’, which would also go here, and simply be a part of ‘Mind’. Concentration would be the ability to focus on goals. It’d be something he could ignore when he wanted to, though. No one wanted to be ‘on’ 100% of the time.

And on top of all that, what Erick had done to make this compound in the middle of Nowhere, FENRIR, was what he would do to himself.

His soul would create a mana barrier automatically, keeping control over his mana, and in that control he would become immune to all forms of spell and skill which attempted to battle him magically.

His body, meanwhile, would form a physical barrier protecting him from the vagaries of the physical world, and in that protection, keep his physical form intact. Erick imagined that his physical barrier would be the most tested of his barriers.

His mind would be the conscious control of the first two, and also have a ‘barrier’ against manipulation. Erick imagined that his mental barrier would be the weakest link here, since he didn’t have any true mental magics, but he had been using [Telepathy] and such almost all his life on Veird. He knew what mental magic was, even if his ‘mind slime’ was ‘asleep’. And besides that, this personal Script was meant to grow eventually. Erick could figure out that functionality later.

A ‘mind shield’ would protect him from mind damage just like a Health and Mana shield would protect his soul.

… yes. That seemed good.

The main purpose of splitting up everything like this was to make it so that he could build himself up more, later, and also for what came next.

Erick envisioned 3 forms of ‘Health’ in his personal script. There was mana, which was his main fuel and also a Mana Shield of protection for his soul. There was Health, in the traditional sense, for his body. Maybe ‘Psyche’ could be the name for the mental shield around and composing his mind.

Splitting them up like this would also allow him to understand anything that attempted to maliciously interact with him. Whichever ‘health bar’ started decreasing in the face of various threats, be they magical or environmental or mental, Erick could look at his personal Script readouts for his various health bars and understand better the threat he was facing.

“Maybe I don’t need an exact number readout either. Maybe a stability meter would be more than enough. The numbers could go from -100 to 0 to 100. Any positive numbers would be me gaining resources while anything negative would be indicative of an attack of some sort.”

Of course Erick still wanted some actual numbers, but he didn’t much care for knowing if he had 21 billion mana in the tank, versus 22 billion. Once the numbers got that high then there was no practical way to spend them except in Grand Wizardry. For that, Erick would want actual numbers. But after 100 days, Erick would already have 1-ish billion mana in his core.

… He would likely have to adjust the displayed numbers when life proved his choices as inadequate to the nature of his future needs. Erick’s goal in this part of his personal system was to be able to experience a threat and categorize whatever primary threat it represented through the depletion of his… Existence Points? Like Health Points?

Sure. ‘EP’. That worked.

… Or maybe not.

Erick threw a lightward image into the air, displaying a possible… ‘benevolence box’? Instead of a blue box? Maybe.

– –

Erick Flatt, [timer for age goes here, make it subjective age] [timer for current age goes here; needs update from sources to be determined]

Overall Stability: [-100 to 100]

Mp: mana pool, [-100 to 100]

Hp: health pool, [-100 to 100]

Pp: psyche pool, [-100 to 100]

– –

Erick thought for a moment, then said, “I like that. Simple. And I can accrete for stronger versions of body and mind— Ah. Wait. I should account for that. Soul is infinite and impossible to accrete for… but it still grows based on actions. Hmm.”

He tried another display.

– –

Erick Flatt, [timer for age goes here, make it subjective age] [timer for current age goes here; needs update from sources to be determined]

Soul: [-100 to 100]

Body: [-100 to 100]

Mind: [-100 to 100]

Overall Stability: [-100 to 100]

Mp: mana pool, [-100 to 100]

Hp: health pool, [-100 to 100]

Pp: psyche pool, [-100 to 100]

– –

“Soul would grow as the Darkness in my soul grows and my actions become more renowned and influential, so while I can’t grow that directly, it will be growing… usually? Usually. Body is something that will degrade if I don’t keep it up, so that needs to be tracked and improved upon… and people can surely attack my soul directly, and this sort of degradation should be tracked.”

… And yet, was this redundant?

And not even indicative of anything, really. Did Erick need to keep track of the exact amount of mana his soul produced per day? Well… Actually. Yeah. But this didn’t do that. This showed him his rate of growth.

So let’s change that.

And the body would be refining or degrading based on the Hp number down there. Not some nebulous ‘body’ rate of change.

That should be a number, too. But what would the number even mean? Nothing, really. Not when everyone else’s systems of measurements were different.

How was he supposed to change his Mind, anyway?

And there was something Erick was missing from this readout. Probably a lot of somethings.

Erick changed the readout again.

– –

Erick Flatt, [timer for age goes here, make it subjective age] [timer for current age goes here; needs update from sources to be determined]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 34%, 33%, 33%

Soul: [some number, use mana production per day; New Hidden Stat (Darkness)]

Body: [some number, use average of all hidden body stats; Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Vitality]

Mind: [some number, use average of all hidden mind stats: (Willpower+Focus= Concentration), Intelligence, Perception]

Overall Stability: [-100 to 100]

Mp: mana pool, [-100 to 100]

Hp: health pool, [-100 to 100]

Pp: psyche pool, [-100 to 100]

– –

“Ah! I need to do this, too.”

– –

Erick Flatt, [timer for age goes here, make it subjective age] [timer for current age goes here; needs update from sources to be determined] [CURRENT REALITY]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 34%, 33%, 33%

Soul: [some number, use mana production per day; New Hidden Stat (Darkness)]

Body: [some number, use average of all hidden body stats; Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Vitality]

Mind: [some number, use average of all hidden mind stats: (Willpower+Focus= Concentration), Intelligence, Perception]

Overall Stability: [-100 to 100]

Resons: ??? [-100 to 100]

Mp: mana pool, [-100 to 100]

Hp: health pool, [-100 to 100]

Pp: psyche pool, [-100 to 100]

– –

“… Or maybe not include resons? They’re rather impossible to measure… But I should include them…. Somewhere— Ah! Let’s put them under Mind, because resons are the precipitation of reasons-for-being-and-doing.” Erick smiled, as he understood something deeply. “I might not have a mind slime but I surely have resons.”

– –

Erick Flatt, [timer for age goes here, make it subjective age] [timer for current age goes here; needs update from sources to be determined] [CURRENT REALITY: God Pact, etc; needs update from sources to be determined]

Mana split; Soul, Body, Mind: 34%, 33%, 33%

Soul: [some number, mana production per day; also New Hidden Stat (Darkness)]

Body: [some number, use average of all hidden body stats; Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Vitality]

Mind: [some number, use average of all hidden mind stats: (Willpower+Focus= Concentration), Intelligence, Perception]

Overall Stability: [-100 to 100]

Mp: mana pool / mana shield, [-100 to 100]

Hp: health pool / health shield, [-100 to 100]

Pp: psyche pool / mind shield, [-100 to 100] ; Resons: ??? [-100 to 100]

– –

Erick was happy with that.

… Except Resons were probably uncountable since they were the form of Wizardry in this universe, and Wizardry, while based in numbers somewhat, was also a lot more than numbers.

But this would do for now. When Erick got some real learning about resons he’d fix up that part of his New Status.

What came next was Grand Wizardry, to impose this personal Script.

… Erick was going to wait on that until his soul was fully healed to do that. Maybe in a few more days.

His Lightning Path wasn’t too active at the moment since there was nothing out there to interact with, but his Lightning Path was telling him that there was something coming the moment he passed this gate. Erick would need to be absolutely ready for that.

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And so, he planned for the worst possible case: At the very least, he needed to be prepared to abandon this outpost at a moment’s notice, and that meant securing his mana and body and mind against outside influences, like the vacuum of space, and Primal Lightning.

There. That was the worst possible case of becoming a True Wizard; being able to ignore the dangers of the world.

And then Erick planned for success. What did the best possible version of this endeavor look like?

This Personal Script would allow him to fire off countless spells outside of the Script Second. With a pool of mana that was as deep as he regenerated, and with full access to his own mana, he’d be able to fire off spells faster than he could ever before. It’d be like that time he got to use that [SSS] spell from Rozeta at the end of ‘Last Shadow’s Feast’.

Other benefits to setting up these various permanent accretion and protective magics inside his body included being immune to Mind Control and Soul Control and Blood Magic, too.

If Erick could make this work, and he was pretty sure he could, he would get all of the benefits of the Script, but with none of the controls imposed by the Script.

It seemed like a good base to start.

– – – –

Two days later, and after expanding the compound a few times, Erick decided to try opening a [Gate] into Benevolence Itself, because he hadn’t tried that, actually. He opened a hole into a very small part of reality that was foggy as shit, and empty as could be.

Erick rapidly closed the entrance into Benevolence and decided not to do that ever again, for a few reasons.

If he did that, and if he decided to make a Gate Network here on FENRIR, it could possibly connect back to Veird, and that would make Veird vulnerable to whatever fuckery is happening here on this adamantium land. However, if he did need to get back to Veird —more like ‘when’, not ‘if’— then making a gate network here would be the way to create that path to Veird.

Opening up that hole to Benevolence Itself did clue him in that the various upgrades to the compound’s domainwork were making a Benevolence-capable space in this small area. What Erick had done here was pretty much exactly what the Script was doing when it held on to Benevolence on Veird.

Good to know.

… Which gave Erick a great idea for an upgrade to his future Status.

“Or at least a potential one. I could make a personal gate space that I could always carry around with me, inside my infinite depth core… Hmm. That might not work out how I want. I should workshop that, first. Put it on the list for potential future upgrades.”

So far that list included:

The Luck Stat. His Lightning Path might work well when quantized into ‘Luck’

A personal ‘inventory’, which Erick had been considering to place inside his soul. This was probably unnecessary. A personal inventory could go right alongside an extradimensional gatespace.

Various other Stats, like ‘Reality Sense’, which would be great for using to figure out where he was at all points in time; he just had to actually figure out how the heck such a ‘stat’ would even work.

“… And yet, that opens up the problem of me accidentally making a path back to Veird. I probably don’t want to make a gatespace right now, for any reason. Not only could it be used to find Veird, but someone could attack me through that dimension… probably… Hmm. I’m probably going to get attacked from a lot of weird angles. Dimensional attacks? Yeah. And yet…”

Part of successfully fighting an enemy was deciding how the enemy was able to attack you.

Like, sure, people could come through the walls to get you, but most people came through the doors and windows.

“Can I do that with Wizardry? Enforce the avenue of attacks upon which someone can harm me? Decide how I’ll let myself be harmed? A good enough Wizard could overcome that… But… No. Maybe not? Could I…?”

… Erick wasn’t so sure such a thing was possible…

But as he considered that particular thought…

“Oh. Shit. This is a Big Thought, isn’t it.”

And then.

“Wizards should be able to define avenues of attack quite well, actually. Especially Paradox Wizards. I need to incorporate this. This is like… foundational— Oh! I can use my Class Ability Failsafe that triggers [Time Stop] and [Return] and mutate that into anti-egress magics and also…”