Chapter 132—Self Experimentation

The priestess was standing a polite two metres away from him. She was waiting patiently with an expectant look on her face. She wanted to know why he had insisted on getting someone like her to experiment on. For a few seconds, he pondered the best way to tell her, and then he remembered the contagious nature of the title and he realised that instead of explaining first he could just demonstrate.

Inside, he smiled.

“Do you remember the oracle questions from the tutorial?”

“Yes, of course I do,” she said dismissively. “We all do. It was a fundamental part of my life, all of our lives, for at least a decade.”

“Me too.” Tom answered easily ignoring the slight hostility. “I did well in the tutorial by defining my death as anything with a probability greater than one in a hundred thousand, and then I used those questions to see if I should do something. Whether that was fighting a goblin village or clearing an unknown lair a positive response to an oracle question supported that activity.”

“Yes, yes. I know. Lots of people used it like that.”

This was a safe space and by an oath enforced by the GODs his identity was protected. Which meant there was no need to hide his extra special capabilities. He held out a flat palm and then with a single thought his inefficient, tier one, precognition disk appeared in his hand.

“That’s a nice bauble.” She said instantly. “It has a powerful ability trapped inside it. As for your spatial storage that’s an amazing trait for you to have inherited. Especially if the manifestation is instant like it appeared to be. It’s cool. How large is it? Does it have combat potential?”

His spear materialised in his other hand. “Very large and very useful,” he told her, and the weapon disappeared. “But ignore all that for now. For today’s demonstration,” he waved the disk, “think of this as only being a coin.” He flipped it over so she could see the heads and the tails he had engraved on it. There was nothing special in the engravings it was just him duplicating the design of a coin from his childhood. A silver dollar dating back to the nineteen hundreds. 

The priestess was looking at him like he was an idiot.

Tom ignored her and continued on and delivering his lecture designed to infect her with the contagious title. “Fate, as you know has a functionality that allows it to see the future and make small changes to probabilities to help make what you want a reality.”

She nodded an easy agreement, which was fair enough he hadn’t said anything controversial yet.

“I can ask a question like. ‘Is it best for humanity that I try to kill you?’”

She widened her eyes and then looked decisively unimpressed. “It’s not, and if you tried, I would take actions.”

“I’m not suggesting I’m going to try but that I can ask that question and specify that the answer will be a yes, if this disk, I mean coin, lands ten times in a row on heads.” She was still looking at him with a puzzled expression like she was trying to work out what he was on about. “Remember fate can change probabilities to get an outcome and it’s not hard for it to bend chance to make this come up as heads ten times in a row.”

A look of surprise crossed her face in reaction to what Tom was sure was trumpets going off. “What have you done?” she whispered in a stressed and worried voice. 

“Check.” He answered and then her face lost all animation.

Ten seconds later life flooded back into her.

“You’ve inflicted a contagious title on me. It even has a bloody penalty associated with it? How is this in humanity’s favour? Did you think about the fact that I am a priestess of DEUS and what complications that might bring to this attempt?”

“I was subjected to a small amount of blasphemy when receiving the title, but anyone catching it off me shouldn’t suffer it. Did you suffer anything? Because you, being a priestess shouldn’t matter.”

“No, I didn’t. But that’s beside the point. Explain why you’ve cursed me.”

“I was testing whether the notes would travel along with the title. My guess was that they would and if they did the benefit, they provide might be greater than the loss of functionality the title causes. You need to tell me if you got the notes.”

Her face went inanimate for a moment. “Notes 2 and 3 have bits redacted. Here I can show you.” She used her own inventory to produce pen and paper and then her hands blurred so fast he could barely see. At the end of it the relevant notes had been neatly printed for him to check.

Note 2. [Redacted]

Note 3. [Redacted] was influenced by this title and been changed in turn. [Redacted] In compensation these notes have been made available due to that boost.

Note two referred to details around the Divine Champions trial, and he was not surprised that the information had been excluded. Number three likewise dealt with his Known Heretic title and if anything, it was a surprise that it hadn’t been completely censored. It was possible the GODS thought it was important that others saw that something special in his status was the only reason the notes were made available. Understanding precise reasons was beyond his pay grade and nor did it matter. They were off track. Those first two were not the important ones. “What about the last note. What about note four?” 

Once more, she checked while he waited impatiently for the answer. “Ten lines, no noticeable redactions.” Then she picked up the pen and her hands blurred again.

He snatched what she had written and read it.

It was all there. The exact wording he had used to improve his own fate usage was written out for other people to come to the same conclusions.

“You do understand Tom, that I will need to destroy these after I go. Because if anyone reads them they will get the title.”

“Yes, that’s fine.” Then he looked at her with wild eyes and blazing intensity. If he was an adult, it would have been scary, but as a seven-year-old it probably came across as cute. “Please tell me you’re able to see the value of these notes.”

She read what she had just copied over with her tongue poking out the side of her mouth. She paused her finger on the fourth line. “Interesting. This is confirmation that you can use fate to drive sideways evolutions, and it’s also readable by someone who hasn’t discovered it themselves. Wow. I see why you brought this to our attention. Somehow, this circumvents the geas on sharing methods of fate use.”

Tom nodded happily.

“That’s…” she looked up at the sky. “Why didn’t I think of that. It’s so obvious now that it’s written down. Just the knowledge of sideway evolutions by itself is probably worth the restrictions. But let’s see. Is there anymore?”

“Yes. I think so,” Tom answered. “But I don’t want to say it.”

She was ignoring him and was instead engrossed in reading the exact wording of his notes. “’A more concrete application of intention will get better result.’” She read out loud and then looked up. “This is saying specificity improves results.” She looked at him. “Did you know that in advance?”

“Not precisely, but I suspected.”

“How much of a boost will that get me?” She asked rhetorically. “And I guess I can use this technique to evolve abilities.” Her mind was clearly racing at the implications of what he had shared. “Or target evolutions. This is telling me to practice the skill or spell with intent and stuff happens.”

“I don’t know about skills yet, but for spells, when you construct the mana matrix it adds extra lines. One at the first and then multiple until you get the new, better structure.” He was amazed he was able to see that much.  

She smiled at him. “I can see why you wanted to check whether the notes were useable.”

“And are they?”

“Maybe?” She shrugged. “I’m a bit of a system scholar. What’s obvious to me might not be to others. We’ll need to see what we can do to prod their mindset in the right directions. But this could be very, very useful.”

“Outside of adventurering where the restrictions are a larger issue this will block community prayers. Any benefit needs to be weighed against that.” He pointed out.

“I can see that,” she answered. “But providing the notes gets passed on when I do this, I have to say this has a lot of potential. The priest class can even take point and that way it won’t get linked back to you. Outside observers will just think that DEUS did something. If this can force evolutions for thousands of people, it might be very, very useful.” She paused momentarily when she finished her observations. Then she grinned at him. “Of course, you knew that already. A method to fast track evolutions and side-ways evolutions is massive.”

“I’m not sure the numbers will work for later stage adventurers. They probably lose more than they gain from the title. But for people starting out, for children and crafters I think it can be significant.”

“It can,” she said. “We’ll have to optimise how and who we share it too, but in theory this is a big step forward. Dimitri said it was potentially worth ten million ranking points, which is why I agreed to come. I think that’s an underestimate but in terms of implementation cost, which is half an hour of a priests time for each person, we’d do that for a million point boost so this title is significantly higher than the minimum threshold to get us to start a project. Thanks for making sure you shared this. Too many of your kind just think the only way they can contribute is via the battlefield. I keep saying affecting change on the warfront is the hardest path and we need to be more innovative.”

He nodded in agreement.

“But I’ll get this rolling. I think it has a lot of potential especially if we design a presentation to leverage that last note and get the recipients to interpret it the right way. I think there’s more in it than you realise.”

“Quite possibly.” Tom agreed.

She smiled. “Well, this wasted week is suddenly worth it. I’ll take this and get it going, but Tom you’re reincarnated and too weak to protect yourself, so I won’t be giving any updates. But I promise you, if it can be rolled out it will be. Don’t try to work out what’s happening with it.”

“I won’t.

“Great. Now the business is done,” she glanced around the isolation room. “What do you really get up to in here?”

“I usually do hammer and spear work and a bit of spell craft on the side, but I just got some study material to look into.”

“Oh, on what?”

“Internal Mana Manipulation.”

“That stuffs fun. It’s a pity it doesn’t work for humans.”

“How do you know about it.”

“I told you I’m a system scholar. Actually, you said you had study material. Do you want my help to interpret it?”

Tom smiled at that offer. “Yes, that would be very useful. It’s in the hidden cupboards.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “What hidden cupboards?”

“If you can help me build a tower, I will show you.”

She was sceptical, and Tom had to promise her multiple times that there was a powerful illusion and it was not a joke, but when it was clear, hewas serious she agreed to help. Having an adult move the boxes completely changed the process. What was constructed was more robust than what he had been building and have been completed in half the time. He clambered up and opened the cupboard to her shock.

Happily, they spent an hour and a half two hours reading the two books. The priestess offered no unique insights, but Tom didn’t care. It was nice to chat with an adult. The subject was also fascinating, but incredibly complex. He guessed it was kind of like general relativity back on earth. Everyone could see it was amazing and incredible but way too convoluted to be understood in any more detail than broad catch phrases. That’s what internal mana manipulation was like. He kind of got it but also totally didn’t.

“I don’t envy you,” she said with a laugh as they packed up the boxes to return everything to their original state. “I don’t see how you can pull it off.”

“Experimentation.” He answered. “Lots of good old testing.”

She frowned at that. “Don’t kill yourself by pushing too hard.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

There two hours were up, but she hesitated a moment before touching the button to unlock the isolation doors. “Tom, you have soul storage, right?”

He nodded.

“Good! That means I can give you this without it revealing your nature to anyone else.”

She passed him an ancient elaborate coin. It was almost large as one of his disks and depicted a forest scene. It was beyond beautiful and partially three dimensional. The gaps in the vines and trees were actually holes in the metal, allowing you to see through it in various spots. To the best of his senses, magically, it was inert.

He studied it for a moment longer and then looked up at his guest. “What is it?”

“It’s a trapped prayer.”

“A what?”

“It’s a trapped prayer.” She repeated. “If you need a divine intervention, you can use it and it’ll greatly lower the cost for DEUS if she grants you the intervention. It won’t guarantee her help, but it will it make far more likely.”

Tom studied it again. No matter how closely he examined it the coin remained an incredible piece of art but completely mundane. He hadn’t spent much time with the priest class, but he knew the power of divine intervention. It could be the tiniest of touches or something more material like him being reincarnated.

“Does it have tier value?” he asked curiosity. 

Thankfully instead of getting offended she chuckled. “Nominally, it’s tier six.”

“Are there stronger versions?”

“Of course. The tier nine version providing its use aligns with DEUS’s will is a guarantee of a greater intervention.”

“What’s a greater intervention?”

“Civilisation changing stuff,” she answered simply. “But the one I gave you is nowhere near that powerful. It’s precious and well beyond anything I can make. But given the potential of your title I think you deserve it. Hopefully, you can employ it effectively. I’ve had it for ten years and haven’t experienced a reason to use it, so maybe it’ll be better utilised by an up and comer.”

“I’m sure it will be,” Tom promised and moved it to his storage. The instant he did, he felt the tier increase by one and wondered what he could do with a strategically timed divine intervention. It would, he decided, be a trump card for him to use later.

More days passed which he spent on training his long-term path abilities, but during his limited free time he focused on understanding all he could about internal mana manipulation.

He was not an idiot. He knew he was obsessing about the topic and that he shouldn’t be doing it, but couldn’t help himself. In the safety of his system room, he compiled all the data he had into useful formats.

First, there was a list of known uses. It was very similar to what Vturalta had already told him, but his research had discovered extra applications. Flight and mass manipulation were the most significant of those additions.

While Vturalta had mentioned exotic applications, statistically, the ability was best used to boost physical attributes.

Applied correctly, it was basically free power. The success of which depended on how well you executed the technique. An outcome that was independent of formal education or levels, there seemed to be an innate talent at play. He wondered if he was going to be one of the lucky ones who produced a powerful technique or someone who invested time to only gain a fraction of a percentage boost to an attribute. Even in species naturally gifted in internal mana manipulation there was a wide range of outcomes and while there might not be a single standard affinity that was best for any specific result, there was a hierarchy of what produced the highest peaks or averages.

For speed velocity, then force were best, though something that lightened the body was also a valid approach. Toughness or hardiness depended upon the biology of the sapient species, and the best affinities were the obvious ones. Things like metal, crystal and earth were good for reinforcing impact points, while density and pure mana could also provide a useful boost through were clearly less suitable than those in the top tier.

Strength Tom had discovered was the most complicated of the attribute aligned boosts. The problem was there were lots of ways to measure strength. Increased weight at the right moment would magnify the power of your blow. But if you were lifting that did nothing. It meant the number of approaches that boosted an aspect of strength exploded. It was a lot to absorb. There were hierarchies governing the best affinity for specific components of strength, but nothing for the ability overall.

Everything he inferred from the books was obvious when you thought about it. A lot of the process seemed to revolve around common sense, which worried Tom. It felt like he was missing something.

After collecting all this information decided on his path. Earth affinity would be his choice for toughness, speed would be lightning, pure mana, precognition and healing, and finally, for strength he would use pure mana both for its utility and because he could start the training straight away. 

The doors of the isolation room clicked shut, and it was time.

He concentrated on Danger Sense for a moment. It was thankfully silent, but he still visually checked all corners of the room.

As best he could tell, he was alone, so it was time to run his first test.

The basic technique he was attempting to mimic involved creating a bridge between two points and then shrinking the mana to make it contract. Basically, when fully developed the pure mana could mimic what his muscles were doing and give him extra strength. He had been practicing the process externally for days and he had only just got it to work. The connection he made between the two points was weak, but when he flexed the mana, he definitely felt some pull. The external testing, because of mana degradation, had been incredibly inefficient, and he was looking forward to strengthening the ability inside him where theoretically no mana would be wasted.

He smiled as he looked around the room and got to work.

Without hesitation, he packed books into first one toy box and then after placing it on top of the first, a second. He tried to move it with all the strength in one arm and couldn’t even lift the corner off the ground.

It was perfect for the test he wanted to run. 

With careful focus, he pumped the diffuse cloud of mana into his bicep, then used Touch Heal to track all the connections of the muscle to the skeletal structure and mimicked it.

As ready as he was ever going to get, he first relaxed the muscle and then tried to move the box. Simultaneously, as his bicep contracted he manipulated the mana, condensing the middle.

Structured mana shattered.

It felt like time itself had glitched. Agony consumed his arm and blood splattered onto the box in front of him. It took him almost two seconds to get his brain back under control. The failure was debilitating in a way an externally inflicted wound couldn’t compare to.

For an eternity in this sort of thing, his brain stopped working before ever so slowly kick starting like an old steam train leaving the station. Even after recovering it took another few seconds for his brain to fully sort through what his senses telling him.

Liquid red made strange but pretty patterns on the boxes in front of him.

His arm hurt.

What had he been doing?

A lifting experiment, he remembered.

The red had to be blood.

Was he alone?

Was it his blood?

Everything snapped back together.

Shuddering at the moment of thought paralysis, he focused on fixing himself.

He turned off the pain to make thinking easier and activated Touch Heal. Years of experience let him divert blood vessels around the torn apart area. It was like a bomb had gone off under the skin. When he opened his eyes, he stared glumly at the gaping hole in his arm, at the missing chunk of muscle the size of one of his fists. It was no longer bleeding, but the blood that had escaped in the four or five seconds since the incident caused small puddles to pool in the wound. The damage went deep because he could even see the white of bone. The word gory did not do it justice.

Despite all of his life experience, he winced at the extent of his failure. Especially the bit about not letting the obsession impact everything else he was working on. His training session for the day was gone because it was going to take him most of the two hours he had in the room to fix the damage.

While being careful not to spill the blood, he walked over to the healing crystal. With his good hand pressed firmly on the smooth hard surface, he went to work using its power at a lower level to supplement his own abilities.

Slowly but steadily, the muscle began to regrow. 

His test, he realised was a complete failure. He wasn’t even sure he had any learning to take away from it.