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"May that Cthulhu eat this pilot! What the hell made him choose my dorm for his morning parade over the city?! - I couldn't contain my anger. For the second day in a row, I couldn't get a decent sleep or finish my wonderful morning dream, starring Masha, because of this winged parasite! - Nothing, I'll buy a huge quartz crystal, fill it to the brim with mana and arrange a mental storm in the sky when this kamikaze flies over my room again!
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If yesterday I fell to the floor from the roar of the jet engine, today, cursing, I slowly got out of bed. I wanted to sleep unbelievably and even a horse dose of adrenaline and a supersonic explosion couldn't immediately dispel my drowsiness.
And it's all because of Masha. How hard is it to take these coins and throw them away somewhere on the way so that my conscience wouldn't torment me?! But I spent half the night worrying that I wouldn't find this proud girl in a city of a million people and the poor girl would be left defenseless! I had to drive around the night capital for three hours, risking running into a patrol, and then break the lock with telekinesis to get into the apartment and leave a note with the coins! And something tells me that for all this suffering, I won't even get a kiss! Although, what kind of a kiss, it'll be good if she doesn't call the police. Oh girls, how hard it is with you...
I wrote the note on the first piece of paper I found, torn from some notebook that was lying on the table. Its content was simple: “You can be angry at me as much as you want, but these coins can save your life. Keep them close! The system won't ask if you're ready to meet it, it will just come! Along with the monsters will come!"
I hope the note will work. It would be a pity if such a beauty died because of resentment. No, I could have forced her to take these coins by mentally influencing the girl, but I saw no point in it. Puppets controlled by me fight badly. That was discovered in Babylon. I'm a bad puppeteer.
The only thing that comforts me is the image of Masha sleeping. A really beautiful girl, even without makeup, which is rare.
Yes, now is not the time for romance! It's time to get dressed and go to the park. Pazuzu to these imperials in wives! No, something needs to be done about this. I can't handle a psionic storm, of course, but I can easily reinforce the walls of the room with runes. The only thing is, what will the dorm commandant say to such decor?
The park greeted me with silence and tranquility. I didn't understand where all the residents who were hiding here yesterday had gone. The answer to this question was found quite quickly, on the nearest tree I found a hand-written notice taped with duct tape:
Dear citizens!
The nearest bomb shelter to the park is located on Shevchenko Boulevard, house 9, in the basement! Don't risk yourself and your loved ones, take shelter in designated places! We remind you that from now on you can find the nearest shelter in your “Diia” app! And the “Trivoha” app will help you learn about the start of the alarm!
I noticed similar leaflets on the walls of buildings, but I didn't pay attention to them. It seems that some of the neighbors decided to take matters into their own hands. Smart, the park is not the safest place. But I wasn't going to the bomb shelter either. I know that basement. It's located in the house of culture. A familiar digger told me about it. In Soviet times, it was a large bomb shelter for a thousand people, even civil defense stands remained there. But the stands are the only thing that reminded about the purpose of this room. And I'm not talking about the pile of garbage left behind by the homeless and drug addicts who spent the night there. The basement can be cleaned up, which it seems the building administration has already done, the main problem of that place is the lack of ventilation. The huge compressors that were supposed to pump life-giving oxygen into the bomb shelter were stolen by the institution's administration and sold before I was born, and the metal ventilation pipes were sold for pennies to scrap metal. As soon as the entrance to the basement is blocked, the bomb shelter will turn into a gas chamber for thousands… And seeing women and children die before your eyes, and you can't help them - forget it. I'd rather take a chance and stay in the park. With personal protection in the open air, I have a better chance of surviving. So I continued on my way and sat down in the place where I meditated yesterday.
I didn't risk immersing myself in meditation and gathering mana in such a state - there was too much chance that it would turn into sleep. And I didn't want to sleep in the middle of the park and provoke thieves, I had my phone and wallet with me. There was nothing to do, so I decided to explore the system and deal with the unallocated development points that had accumulated for the mission. The first thing I did was open my status.
Status
True Character Name: Alexander Oleksiyovych Stone
Alias: AQUA
Species: Human (E) 99%
Race Rank: E (F)
Level: 3
Planetary ID: 10
Interplanetary ID: -
Interreality ID: -
Attributes:
Strength: 9/10
Agility: 8/10
Endurance: 5/10
Vitality: 4/10
Intellect: 9/10
Luck: 1/10
Racial Traits and Attributes:
Foresight: 5/10
Bonus Attributes: 0
Experience Points: 0
Traits:
Small magical energy cycle system
Skills:
Metamorphism
Hmm. Added foresight? Let's see.
Access to reference information is allowed.
The "Foresight" parameter allows, by connecting to the information field, to obtain information about the probable development of events.
I hope this characteristic doesn't apply to all players on the planet! Foresight is the strongest and most insidious gift a person can receive at birth. In Babylon, most free mages generally considered it a curse that slowly drives you mad. The essence of the gift is quite simple, a seer connects to the interspatial information field and sees not the future, but the variants of the development of future events that have already happened in parallel worlds. With the development of the gift, the human brain can't withstand the enormous amounts of information and the seer begins to get lost in the interweaving of his visions. He ceases to distinguish between the past, present and future, his reality and a parallel one. Only the timely intervention of a divine force that becomes an anchor for the lost soul of such a mage can save such a madman. That's why all the powerful seers of Babylon were under the patronage of one of the high gods.
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I also had the beginnings of this gift in my past life, but I didn't develop it. Oracles lived in the temples of their gods like kings, hundreds of concubines, wine, any entertainment including narcotic substances, but I didn't want such a fate for myself, as did most sane mages. The golden cage is the lot of dreams for fools only. Although the decisive factor for me was that they didn't teach the magic of seers. Who needs a powerful, unpredictable psycho?
Now it's clear why I have such vivid and realistic dreams every night! Marduk take him, I envy that Alex from a parallel reality! But I won't develop this characteristic, my mind and my consciousness are dear to me like memory.
So, what do I choose? Put everything into magic? Tempting, but my mana reserve and the channels through which it flows are already growing. Fortunately, I know the methods of developing the seventh sphere of the soul, and the system's bonus characteristics are not endless. Vitality rose on its own by one unit, which means that my stats can be raised without the system. It would be wiser to keep the bonus characteristics and develop independently, but if I can grow the seventh magical shell of the soul quite quickly, since the magical core and the presence of mana allow it, then such a thing won't work out so quickly with the body. No, I can magically modify my body according to the standard of the Babylonian warrior. I had to do this often in my past life, Babylon cared about the strength and might of its soldiers, and therefore often hired healers, one of whom I was. But there is one big drawback to this method. Magical low-level modifications interfere with the movement of mana in the body. For a warrior, this is an acceptable price, they don't use mana, only prana, or chi, but for a mage it's unacceptable... By the way, this doesn't apply to metamorphosis. But metamorphosis itself is not a toy and not a Lego constructor where you put together the details and that's it. Of course, temporary operations, such as changing your appearance, can be carried out without straining yourself too much, but deep and permanent changes are a laborious and dangerous matter. Preparing for this can take months. And strength and agility are needed yesterday… So I'm going to develop them today.
But first I need to prepare. Leaving the system menu, I plunged into the mental space of my soul. In the center of the deserted temple of the mind, in the lotus position, on a pedestal, my avatar sat proudly - a mental cast of the body. That's what I need right now. I don't want the changes that the system will make to me to be rolled back by metamorphosis, do I? I need to cover my back too, I don't know what and how the system will do. Suddenly it will turn me into a cadaver? And recording metamorphosis itself won't be superfluous.
The first thing I did was copy the image of the body onto a psi energy crystal. Creating such a thing in my temple of the mind is not a problem, a volitional effort and here in my hands is already a white crystal empty of information. Now I touch it with my avatar and wish to copy it onto the crystal. Done, the white color of the stone changed its color to blue, which means everything went well. Now, if I don't like the changes in my body, I can return everything as it was. I create an analogous crystal and embed it in the pedestal on which the projection sits, with the task of recording the changes that will take place in the body. In parallel, I convert part of the mana from my reserve into psi and evenly distribute this energy throughout the body. The crystal that I placed in the groove of the pedestal glowed with a golden glow - the recording began. All that remains is to allow changes in the organism, touching my projection and giving the appropriate command, and I can leave the mental space.
Returning to reality and reopening the system menu, I began to distribute bonus characteristics. I won't spend everything, for a start, I'll put half of the received bonus characteristics into action by investing 1 point in strength and two in agility, bringing them to the maximum.
As soon as I finished distributing the characteristics and closed the system interface, I was overtaken by pain. Every cell, every muscle seemed to burn in hellfire. I was stretched and twisted, broken, disassembled cell by cell and reassembled. With every second, the pain grew. Even that hellfire of the posthumous curse of a duelist faded into the background compared to new sensations.
"Who in their right mind would agree to such torture?! To hell with that phone, maybe they won't steal it." - I decided to let go of the pressure of will and go into the arms of short oblivion. There was no point in enduring such torture and remaining conscious, all the changes are fixed in my subconscious and mirrored in the psi energy crystal on the altar of the mental avatar. Releasing my consciousness, I fell into the saving oblivion of unconsciousness.
I woke up only two hours after starting my experiment. All my muscles ached as if I had been running a cross for a month somewhere in Africa or Europe, setting a world record. My head is also cracking, as if a brick flew at it again. The phone and credit card, by the way, remained untouched, in vain I was afraid that they would be stolen. Maybe the thieves were scared because I wasn't lying down but sitting?
Nothing, as my relatives told me in my first life - “if you wake up and something hurts, rejoice, it means you're still alive.” And I rejoice and climb back into my mental world for the received information.
Oh, how good it is here! Nothing hurts, nothing worries. Peace and grace. The crystal on the pedestal glows blue - the information is loaded and can be checked.
The system is an amazing thing. I have never encountered such fine and filigree work. No welds, no overlaps, no residual mana or prana background, as is the case with the use of body improvement rituals. Everything looks natural and organic as if nature itself approved and carried out these changes. Only archmages or someone stronger could have done this, but even they wouldn't have been able to do it in just ten minutes. Yes! It was ten minutes that growth lasted and changes took place in the body! The other two hours, the body adapted to the changes!
So, what about our energies? Hmm. Residual emanations of bakhions… Divine energy, that means. Interesting. The emanations are insignificant and fade with every minute. Unfortunately, becoming a demigod or a god is not an option, the volumes of energy are not the same, but the fact is interesting. It seems that the system acts as an artificial surrogate of a demiurge. An all-seeing god-creator. And I'm now something like an avatar-puppet of this being. Although I must admit, she has long strings and, so far, she gives freedom of will. Oh, how I long to summon one of the omniscient demons and ask him about everything… But I have nothing to pay with at the moment, and these little guys don't work for thanks.
There is a huge amount of information on the crystal. Every change was carried out filigree and at the cellular level. To even try to reproduce the process of body improvement with my metamorphosis would take months of research. But that won't stop me from consolidating the positive results achieved in the mental avatar. Which I did by touching my projection and giving the appropriate order.
Everything, I can return to reality and go to the dorm. The sirens of the air raid are no longer howling.
Returning to my room, the first thing I did was inspect my fridge. The inspection, unfortunately, didn't reveal anything useful. I ate all the remnants of edible supplies yesterday. And there was nothing to eat for breakfast. I didn't have the strength or desire to go to the shops, so I decided to try ordering pizza. Surprisingly, the online pizzerias were still working and their assortment had only increased by about fifty percent. Expensive, but hunger and laziness dictate their terms. At the same time, I ordered medium and large quartz crystals - it's time to prepare for the next system mission.
Sitting in the lotus position on the bed, I immersed myself in meditation. Thieves no longer threatened me and my sleep was over. In the couple of hours that I was out, my body and mind, surprisingly, had time to rest. Maybe the divine energy that was rebuilding my organism influenced it? Anything is possible. I have about twenty minutes before the pizza delivery guy arrives. It's not enough for anything grandiose, but I'll have time to adjust the mana flows in my body.
Focusing on the flows of mana in my organism, I mentally transported myself to the inside of my magical core. By analogy with the brain, this mystical organ is an interweaving of the shells of the human soul. Only if in the first case the mental shell is woven into the body, here the magical one is mounted. Since in my previous life I didn't have such a wonderful organ, I only have theoretical knowledge about its development and structure.
So, what do we have here. Ah. My core is located at the junction of the mana channels and has the shape of a walnut. My mana channels are quite organically interwoven into its surface structure. Hmm. Maybe the organ was formed based on this interweaving? An interesting theory.
The flows of mana coming from the four main and countless small auxiliary channels create protuberances and local eddies that interfere with the circulation of mystical energy. This is what needs to be corrected.
According to the manual from my first teacher's library, all the energy in the core needs to be twisted clockwise into a common cycle. This will temporarily reduce the reserve, but it will improve the quality of mana and accelerate the development of magical channels.
Gradually, by force of will, I began to change the direction of the flows and twist them into one common cycle. Mana in the mystical organ gradually began to pick up speed and twist around a single center that began to glow slightly with a cold blue light. Oh, I wish I had that elemental mana crystal that I used for the ritual, I could have created the heart of the element. But, what isn't, isn't…
I was torn away from contemplating the fascinating spectacle of the magical circulation of energies by a knock on the door - the pizza had arrived. After paying the courier, I sat down at the table and finally had breakfast. I had to take two pizzas. I still didn't satisfy my hunger completely. It seems that the system takes resources from the player's reserves for raising stats and rebuilding the organism. I will need to take this into account when I decide to go through this little ritual of pain and suffering, which is mistakenly called distributing my development points.
As soon as I washed my hands, there was another knock on the door.