With more experimentation came more data, allowing me to rapidly advance my understanding of this particular subdiscipline of Mind Magic. It also granted me multiple skill points, namely five in Mind Magic, surprising me greatly as the skill reached fifty-seven, making it my highest skill, while Death Magic also gained three, bringing it to twenty-one. Wind Magic, which I extensively used to enhance my speed, also gained another point, bringing it to twenty-nine during the time I spent experimenting. Similarly, my Blood Magic had gained two points, bringing it to forty-three.

The massive gain in Mind Magic made me wonder about the mechanics once more. It was my strongest skill now, even though I had used other magical disciplines more and had higher affinities for them. So, why did Mind Magic gain so many points, compared to something like Ice Magic? I used Ice Magic more, a lot more, but, as I started to realise, I used Ice Magic in a fairly singular fashion. On the other hand, there were at least three different skills I practised with my Mind Magic, I used it to control enemies, I used it to directly attack the Mind of my enemies and I used it to guide allies. All three were distinctly different, forcing me to wield the skill in different ways.

In the meantime, eight times out of ten, I used my Ice Magic to control macro objects made from Ice, mostly my shuttles. Sure, I was quite good with them, but the discipline itself was likely much more than just throwing around large pieces of Ice. If I started to focus on other subsets of the skill, maybe something like direct temperature manipulation, microscopic shards of Ice or even something more esoteric like temporal stasis, I’d likely gain points fairly quickly. It was something I’d have to look into, especially the part about direct temperature manipulation, it was something I occasionally did with my Fire Magic, weaving it into Water Magic, but maybe there was a way to heat things up using Ice Magic? It sounded like such a wonderfully illogical idea, I wanted to try it, if only to see if I could.

But before I could throw myself into yet another large project, I had to finish my current one. For once, I didn’t want to start something new and get dragged into a totally different direction, leaving the old project abandoned. No, I wanted to truly learn how to control Shattered, or maybe Scorched would work, too, find a suitable one and set it on course to show the locals why they needed to unite and start planning for the future. What they were doing right now wasn’t enough, they were too complacent, too reliant on a few divine miracles for things to work in the long run. Even adding what I taught them about magic wasn’t enough, if they didn’t have a fire lit under their lazy behinds and started to seriously train and push themselves. They didn’t have the numbers to fall back on, so they couldn’t rely on having a few people with high affinities make a measurable difference.

It was somewhat amusing that large numbers could be both a curse and a blessing, completely depending on circumstances. But maybe it shouldn’t be, there was a reason why large cities had sprung up, but there was also a reason why large cities had been hotbeds of crime. Luckily, great power allowed for an unprecedented degree of freedom, meaning I only had to remain more powerful than the vast majority, if not everyone, and I would be able to make my own rules.

Though there’d always be some compromise, power only changed the things you had to compromise on. If I was powerful enough, the compromise might be that I didn’t turn their kingdom into a frozen wasteland and they didn’t bother me while allowing me to trade at my leisure. Or having people pay tribute and in exchange, I would provide some form of protection against certain threats. With enough caveats, that could be an incredibly cushy gig, acting like the dragon protecting their lair while a village at the foot of the mountain I lived on reaped the benefits of my protection while paying for the privilege. It was an interesting concept, one that might be quite feasible, but I’d have to see.

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For now, I had to finish my plan and set it into motion.

I was quite confident in my plan, as my experiments on the Shattered were promising. I could only provide a single order for a Shattered at a time before they’d return to their original programming, so to speak, but the orders could be incredibly detailed. Or maybe calling them impossibly detailed would be a better description. One of the tests I had come up with was to have a Shattered gather small stones, nothing bigger than a pebble, and place them in distinct, fairly large, forms, namely the alphabet in a two-metres large font. It took thousands of pebbles to create the letters but it had worked out, to my complete surprise.

That order had almost been a joke, a test to see what would happen if the order was impossible, but the stupid Shattered had completed it, taking multiple days of continuous work, but the thing had done it. Each letter, in fairly neat script, laid out on the road, the different lines all incredibly even for the material it had to work with. It was insane, it should have been impossible but I had seen it with my own eyes.

At that point, I was beginning to wonder about the Shattered. It was obvious that they weren’t living beings, that they didn’t think, certainly not like a human did. They were, for lack of a better word, biological robots with some strange, magical programming, nothing more. There were some parts within their programming that came from their original human bodies, of that I was fairly confident, but they weren’t living beings any more. No living being would have followed my command in such a robotic and idiotic fashion. The closest mental analogue I could come up with was that of a computer, capable of performing incredibly complex calculations, but not actually intelligent, just something that was incredibly good at counting incredibly large numbers.

Sadly, with my realisation about the strangeness of the Shattered’s mental processes, I had to be incredibly careful with the final wording of my command for the prime Shattered I wanted to lead the attack on the locals. There’d have to be some contingencies and incredibly detailed and careful directions in there, almost to the point of programming a robot to accomplish something.

The problem here was, I wasn’t a programmer. I had learned some simple programming during high school, there had been a single University module that taught a little more, but it had been years ago and not really something I had focused on. Now, I was supposed to program an incredibly complex task, using ordinary language. There were so many variables, it sounded impossible but unless I could come up with something else, I had to make do. To make matters worse, the task I wanted to set was one that required a certain amount of interaction, of dealing with other Shattered and putting Undead under my prime Shattered’s command so they would follow the attack. All that without accidentally triggering a tide of Undead and Shattered large enough to wipe out the locals, because I wasn’t sure if I could defend them once the numbers got large enough. Sure, I could conjure deadly mist at will, but could I cover the entire area without accidentally getting them caught up in my magic? I wasn’t sure, nor was I confident that the amount of magic necessary to perform such a feat wouldn’t permanently warp the local Astral River, causing Wild Magic phenomena in the world around the area.

In that case, the cure might be worse than the disease I was trying to fight. The people here would lose their current home, be driven from it or die due to the chaos left in the magic’s wake, meaning what little community they had would shatter. No, I needed the attack to be threatening but I needed it to be weak enough for the locals to fight off with nothing but reasonable assistance from me.

For that to work out, I had to be incredibly careful with my command to the Shattered, define it in such a way that the strange programming they worked on interpreted in the way I wanted it to and I’d most likely have to observe the entire operation as it progressed. Maybe I should look into a better way to accomplish my goal, but outside of finding another enemy that could act as the threat all on its own, I needed a decently sized group of Undead under the leadership of a singular, powerful Shattered or Scorched.

Amusingly, as annoying as the entire thing was, it was also quite fascinating and challenging, making me wonder just how far I would be able to push this particular part of the Mind Magic skill. Maybe I’d have to do some life testing at some point in the future.