Jack sat and stewed. It had been days at this point but he could not get the memories out of his head. With just how strong and present they were compared to any of the ones that had not been used against him, he was certain that the asshole of a being that styled itself as the “Great System” had done something to him in its last fleeting moments of connection. What that was exactly, he was not sure. What Jack was sure about however was the fact that he needed to get out of this prison of a room and find out more about this facility. He had been trapped here for going on three weeks by this point and all he had to show for it was being fucked over repeatedly. The only positive being a new level of power that he couldn’t even properly control.
Every casting now was drastically more painful than it was before as more mana rampaged and tore through the crystalized portions of his passages. It occurred to him that perhaps this was the main reason that he was the only jack that he knew of that lasted for a significant amount of time. Not simply his willpower, as he had always assumed before, but the fact that his aptitudes were so low that he simply had not experienced the same level of pain as other fools who tread this path. He really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at such a revelation. Many of the things in his life that had condemned him to misery had also been the things that saved him from other tragedies.
His low aptitudes had caused his childhood to be torturous and cruel, in ways he would have still refused to acknowledge if it weren’t for the memories being forced to the forefront of his mind. Ever present and unforgettable. Those same aptitudes however turned out to have protected him, at least in some minor way from his idiotic decision to become a jack of all trades.
In the same vein the terrible experiences of his youth had allowed him to survive better on the streets when he had finally managed to escape the monster that had birthed him. After all, how terrible was eating a live rat when you compared it to the memory of being fed the remains of the one person who had showed you any level of care and warmth. As those thoughts passed through his mind the associated memories shoved themselves forward, the taste and wriggling of biting into the vermin right alongside the puzzlement and worry as she watched him bite and swallow the well-cooked meat. Making sure that he did not leave a single bite.
Jack let out a choaked sob of misery as the painful memories threatened to overwhelm him again. He needed to do something, anything to get them under control. All of his work when it came to mental skills had been self-taught, slapdash and crude. Having no foundation other then the theories he had worked out while attempting to contain the concepts spawned from his childhood traumas. Perhaps there was something similar he could do with the memories. The only worry was that it would severely affect his long-term mental wellbeing.
As he weighed the dangers, Jack realized that if he didn’t get this under control soon, he would likely not be around to worry about long term effects. What was happening was so damaging and upsetting that a more permanent solution was quickly becoming more and more appealing. He had not gone through all the suffering in his life to give up or give in. He would surpass this just as he had all the other challenges that had come before. That vow and reaffirmation brought with it a brief respite from the kaleidoscope of misery as numerous memories of his successes and adolescent dreams supplanted them.
The change in memories came as a relief. Not just because it broke the constant negative spiral that his mind had been in. But also, for the discovery that all of the memories used by the system were unforgettable, not just the bad ones. It seemed the order of the day was to keep up self-affirmations and positive thinking. Jack would have to be careful however and not let himself become complacent from all the positive reinforcement. Afterall too much medicine was no different than poison.
He sighed to himself. There was no time like the present. Even more so when Jack was unsure of how long he would be able to maintain the dominance of the upbeat memories. Being careful to ruminate on the successful aspects of having bound chunks of his psyche before and not the negative parts, Jack got to work. He needed to design a mental framework of what exactly he wanted the spell to accomplish. This was something that needed the utmost precision and care. He had already experienced what this type of work could result in if one was even slightly careless. The better he could figure out everything now, the easier it would be to deal with the consequences later.
After a few minutes of consideration Jack had three possible directions that he thought could be good to pursue. Two that followed the standard thought of removing the problem, and one that approached it from the opposite direction. He could make a spell that would dampen his emotions which would hopefully stop the constant recall of the memories attached to said feelings. He could work on a spell that would suppress or remove memories, after all can’t recall something that isn’t there. Or, he could work on a spell that would make all of his memories have the same photographic state as the emotionally charged ones.
With the basic ideas in place, it was time for him to begin work flushing out the spell frameworks. He hoped that once he had finished creating each spell, he would have a better idea of which route to take. With that he stood and walked over to the shelving to collect some paper and writing utensils. As much as Jack would have liked to keep everything in his head and not write anything down, he was not that good. At least not yet.
Jack started writing everything out in the same order that he had come up with the spells. First, the idea of emotional dampening. The tricky thing with such a concept was figuring out the best way to limit emotional responses while still having them. He had seen many monstrous behaviors from sapient creatures and knew very well that his empathy towards others and disgust at what had seen were important motivating factors in how he behaved and what his goals were. If he took away too much of his ability to feel and process emotions then that motivation and control would be gone.
Eventually, he hit a stumbling block and switched over to working on the next framework. How to suppress or remove memories. This was more familiar territory as it was similar to what he used to do with his concepts. With that prior experience he was well aware of what many of the negatives of this could or would be. If one wasn’t careful, suppressing aspects of their mind would drastically alter their personality. While he would still chart out the spell, as it might be the most effective short-term solution, Jack was fairly certain one of the other two spells would probably be what he would end up going with in the long run.
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After a time, Jack ran out of steam working on the removal spell and stared hard at the paper laid out for the third spell. With the other two he had had some idea of where to start. For this idea however, he was starting blind. The only clue he had was his memories of when the system attacked him while he was expelling it. That meant he had to look deep into his experiences from that moment, not only reliving the pain, but working past such potent agony to feel how his mana had been twisted and used by the system to produce the effect.
Scowling slightly Jack knew that it wasn’t really a choice. Both of his other options might be an okay short-term solution but long term? He was pretty sure that they would have a devastating impact on his mind. Not only were their potential side effects more dangerous than the theoretical ones for eidetic memory, but in both cases, they went against his core concept of self that had established in the fight for his freedom. The idea that he was able to do and be anything. The true ideal of a jack of all trades. With that thought in mind he began the arduous process of trying to get what fragments of information he could from his memories to start the spell creation.
Before Jack had finished writing out what would need to be done each spell, he had already realized that no matter which route he went, he would not be able to do more than a temporary version. At least for now. With his power levels, even enhanced as they were, he lacked the strength to do anything long term without a ritual setup. Besides that, he wanted to test each spell carefully as he could in order to see if his inferences about which would work best short term and long term were correct.
Many hours later with everything as polished as he could make it in his current circumstances Jack decided to get to testing right away. He had already lost weeks to this place; he didn’t fancy having to lose even more. Plus, the side effects of testing the spells might be beneficial to his plans. While it wouldn’t be as good as having other people look over the escape plans. Rechecking them while having radically different outlooks on life would hopefully still help him spot problems that otherwise would be overlooked.
With Jack’s desire to keep what he was doing secret he took the stacks of paper and put them into one of the drawers of the cabinet, and shifted the table and chairs closer to the wall. He needed to make enough space to lay out the spell arrays. With his lack of materials, even basic mana-infused chalk, the arrays were made of just regular paper and ink. Even so, they would still help him cast the spells, more than if he had no array at all. For testing he decided that he would be starting with the photographic memory spell. His hope was that it would allow him to commit everything he had created today to perfect memory and he would be free to destroy his notes.
He needed to wait until night time as he would not be interrupted during his attempt. To hide why he moved everything he started using the open area for basic exercises. Breaking them up with periods of meditation. Not practicing any of the spells that he knew or trying to adjust to his higher power level during the meditation as he needed every scrap of power available to him if he hoped to pull off his plans. He kept this act up off an on until the lights were finally shut off for the night.
As the room fell into darkness Jack smiled. It was time. Without a moments pause he flipped on the lamp and walked to the door and made sure the privacy screen was shut. With that secure he strode over to the drawers and pulled everything back out. As quickly as he could while still keeping quiet Jack set everything down and began to lay out the first array.
He was nervous about what he was going to be attempting. His heart kept pounding as he got set up, he had no idea what types of secondary effects the spell might end up producing in addition to what it was designed to do. There could easily be lights or sounds created that could attract unwanted attention. In addition, he had no idea when guards would pass by doing one of their patrols. Jack knew that there would be a few throughout the night. But when exactly they occurred? He didn’t know.
Scowling slightly at his reticence to actually get to casting, Jack slapped himself across the face. This was not the time to be thinking about how maybe he should try another method, or put it off until another night. If he didn’t do this now, he would almost guaranteed get stuck in another memory spiral. His face stinging from his self-rebuke, Jack sat in the center of the ritual circle and began to cast. His ever-present mantra ringing in his head. He skipped first two steps as there was no ambient mana and he did not want to complicate matters by absorbing the ultra-dense mana in the artifacts while casting an already overly complex theoretical spell. He had figured things out as best as he could in order to keep the mana requirements equal to his new limits.
Jacks glowing white mana hit his passages with a thick almost syrupy density, it too had changed during the time he had been trapped here. He was fairly certain that his rather insane choice of practice over the last few weeks had created more long-term alterations to his ability to process and use mana on top of the changes that being infected with the system caused. With everything that had happened to him Jack had forgotten just how much more painful it was to use all of his power after his passages had widened. Clenching his jaw to keep from screaming, he pulled his shirt over his head and shoved it into his mouth. Teeth snapping shut violently as soon as his fingers were free.
White hot agony burned through his body as he shattered open and used the crystalized portions. It was nowhere near as painful when he was casting the system from his mind, but still more then enough to turn his world inside out. Jack’s body began to shake as the nerves twitched and jumped. His vision fading in and out, he realized he needed to get the spell working immediately or the suffering and preparation would be wasted.
Jack forced the mana pulsing though his passages to begin following the patterns written in the array. What had been done to him that he worked to copy was twofold. He needed the memories he wanted to become permanent to be actively recalled, and then he needed to use mana to enhance the neural connections until they could no longer be degraded. This double-sided effect was why the ritual required both types of spellcasting, the outer passages to stimulate the memories even through the pain, and the inner passages to affect the physical mind.
The pain was so significant that just like before he could not actively tell if thoughts and memories were popping into his head. All he could do was hold on and trust that his calculations were correct. So, he did. Second after second, holding on through the pain. His teeth clenching so hard that the shirt he had clamped in his mouth began to rip and tear.
After what seemed an eternity, the pain stopped suddenly as the spell dropped. Jack collapsed sideways his body and mind struck by a wave of lethargy. He had known these aftereffects would be coming. But even so, it didn’t change just how painful and unpleasant they were. His muscles spasmed out of his control as his nerves still jolted as if the pain would return at any moment.
Slowly pushing himself back upright he looked around at the paper that had been used to channel the spell. It was all ashes. As were the other stacks of paper he had set to the side in preparation of the next rituals. Jack felt a small chuckle begin to bubble up inside. It had worked. Frustrating as it was that he would need to redo the papers, costing him hours of work redrawing and preparing everything again. It was a small price to pay. His memories of the creation process and the spells themselves could now be perfectly recalled. Just like the emotionally charged memories that the entity had used against him. All that was left was to see what the long-term effects of the spell would be. Well, that and get everything fixed and cleaned up before the morning came.