Wan spent the next few minutes explaining things to me. The System was made up of computers and nanites, and as such could only affect the physical and mental effects of spells. The basic mind control spell, which Brenda had used on me and which most witches knew, affected the body, mind and soul, making it so that all of them had to perform how the witch willed. My Physical Pain Resistance was able to resist the physical effect and my Mental Pain Resistance was able to resist the mental effect, but because the System could not effect immaterial things like Souls or Spirits, it had no way to resist the Soul component and therefore couldn’t break the spell.
‘If humans can manipulate those things, though, couldn’t the System learn how to manipulate them from humans?’ I asked Vera.
‘Multiple attempts have been made, from cloned artificial tissue to triggering the abilities in sapient beings that already possessed magical abilities. None of the experiments have succeeded, even when perfectly duplicating the neural and physical activity of the sapient being. There is obviously some component to this that the System can’t duplicate.’
“Then what the System offered me wasn’t actually magic?” I asked Wan.
“Not really. It is based on manipulating nanites and having them produce an effect for you. True magic uses the spirit of the wielder to effect other spirits or the physical world directly. It’s like using a machine to move an object versus moving it with your hand. At least that’s how it was explained to me.”
‘Does that mean I can’t download True Magic skills then?’ I asked Vera. This seemed like a massive weakness of the system which I would need to mend.
‘Not exactly. The System has had some success downloading everything one magic user knows about the subject into the mind of another being, giving the second the ability to use it. This method results in a very poorly adapted skill, however. That, combined with the quantity of data means that it would be very dangerous to attempt if you haven’t fully adapted to all of your skills.’
“I’ll need to think about that.” I responded to both. “If the System has that big of a weakness, I need to fix it right away.”
Once we were back at the office I handed the USB to agent Harkness and got the twenty thousand dollars he promised me. He was disappointed that I had been found out, but was relieved that I hadn’t told them everything. What’s more, the only things that seemed to get a response out of him were the revelation that they had a witch and the knowledge that I was part of the System, a fact that I could think of no way to avoid telling him. He questioned me about this last fact, but seemed to lose his concern when I told him I wasn’t part of any faction and had chosen my paradigm simply because I liked video games.
He assured me that he would be keeping my status a secret from his faction, a sentiment which Wan also agreed to, though I knew I couldn’t rely on either of them to do so if things got tough. Still, having him know about me could mean that I would be offered more work in the future, so it wasn’t a complete loss.
After I promised to get him the video of the event, he got up and left. The fact that they had a rogue Witch on their side meant that his superior would need to be informed.
After the Agent left, Wan pulled out two glasses and a bottle of whiskey and poured me a drink. “Congratulations,” he said, “on completing your first job.”
I took it and downed the whole glass, so he refilled it. “Thanks.” I responded and sipped the second glass. “The only real issue was that witch. I didn’t know they were really a thing.”
“Well, they aren’t exactly common, but there are a few True Magic users on Earth. In fact, one of my first jobs was a Witch.” He sighed and poured himself a second drink. “You see, my sect of the White Lotus Society see assassination as a tool for justice, so we limit ourselves to targets that the law can’t or won’t stop. In this case, there was a witch in Hong Kong that was putting a death curse on business men, then demanding payment to remove it. Two of her targets had died already and the police either didn’t believe that she could be doing that or were too afraid of her to do anything. So one of her targets contacted us. He refused to pay her on principle, and offered us the blackmail payment she had demanded to get rid of her. That talisman I gave you was given to me by a monk that works with us to help me fight evil magic users. I did eventually kill her, but I had to fight off her mind control spell multiple times to do it. And with her death, as usual, the spell was broken and our client saved.”
“Any chance you can get me one of those necklaces then?”
Wan shook his head. “They can only be sold to members of our faction. So unless you want to become my trainee, I can’t help you there.”
I shook my head and took another sip, only to see Wan pouring a third glass. “Yeah, I’m not going to do that. Shouldn’t you pace yourself, though? Or do you have such a huge Poison Resistance that you aren’t worried about it?”
“Oh, no. Sure I trained it a bit while learning to make poisons, but I actually have a meditation to clear my head and prevent hangovers.”
“Must be nice.” I responded.
“I could teach you if you want. It’s all about moving your chi throughout the pathways in your body to absorb toxins then dumping those toxins in your lower dantian.”
I looked at him confused. “What?”
Wan scratched his head. “Look, just close your eyes.” I sat down my glass and did so. “Now feel the energy in your middle dantian.”
“My what?”
Wan rubbed his eyes in frustration. “The energy center in your chest. Your heart chakra. I don’t know what else to call it.”
“Oh, you mean the Nexus the System made to store energy.”
“I would argue that it existed prior to the System but the System co-opted it for its own use, but that doesn’t matter. Yes, that is what my paradigm calls the middle dantian or heart chakra depending on the exact tradition. You need to pull the energy from there and make it flow through the various channels in your body. I can’t really help you with that step, as the channels are slightly different for different people and it isn’t really a system thing.”
I tried going back to my original image of a source of water, only this time I made it a pond. After a minute or so I noticed several streams flowing out from it. So I pushed the water into those streams. “Ok, I think I’m doing it.”
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“Notice any trash or scum in the streams?”
“Yeah, lots of driftwood and algae. A few insects.”
“Interesting. I’ve never heard of driftwood being found there. Just sweep it up in the current and drag it all with you towards your lower dantian. That would be around your bowels.”
I kept focusing, splashing the water against all the impurities and knocking them loose to flow down the stream. After a few minutes the stream flowed through my stomach and intestines, dumping out all of the trash.
I immediately had to jump up and run to the bathroom, where I emptied my stomach into the toilet. I continued dry heaving for another minute before I felt good enough to return to the other room. There I saw Wan laughing. “What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Nothing, nothing.” he said, forcing himself to stop. “It’s just a little joke we play on initiates. Usually your intestines grab the trash and you get diarrhea. But because you were drunk and most of the trash was alcohol, your stomach caught it and made you vomit. Don’t worry. Every time you do it the symptoms get better until eventually it does little more than make you have to piss.”
“So, you prank initiates by teaching them how to sober up?” I asked, still trying to catch my breath.
“Oh, no. It’s actually meant for clearing the pathways so that your chi flows more smoothly, making certain other techniques easier. It also has the added benefit of making you get tired more slowly when exerting yourself.”
“Great.” I said, finally feeling okay and noticing that my head was completely clear. “Well, I better be going. I need to look into this whole Magic thing.”
Wan nodded. “Good luck with that. And if you feel up to it, give me a call. I’ll show you around the gym I use. You look like you could use a workout.” I looked at Wan and myself. He was well toned, but not overly muscular, whereas I looked like I rarely got out of the house.
“Sure, I’ll think about it.”
I left and started walking home. I asked Vera about the possibility of the system helping me out in this situation, but once again she explained to me that it wasn’t a skill I could download. She could lead me to books or other resources other known magic users had read, but that wasn’t guaranteed to work. Besides, the issue wasn’t that I wanted to learn magic, it was that I wanted to be able to resist magic. ‘So, what kind of people would be able to resist magic?’ I asked myself, only to have Vera respond.
‘That sounds like the definition of a priest to me.’ she responded. ‘Their whole job is dealing with spiritual matters and various spiritual creatures.’
‘The priest I met before I was fully part of the system, then?’ I asked her, and I could feel her approval. I remembered his name was Father Jacob Terrance Smith, so I looked him up on the internet and changed course for his church.
When I entered a nun approached me to see if she could help me, and I asked to speak with him. Once he came out I asked if we could go somewhere more private than a confessional booth. “This is a lot more serious than picking up a random woman at a bar.”
He nodded and showed me to his office. After the door was closed he asked me what I needed to speak to him about. “I remember you from Dormart. I assume you came to me because you remembered me too?”
“Partially. I also think you are the only person I know who can help with my particular situation.”
He walked behind the desk and we sat down. “In that case, what do you need my help with?”
“I need to know how to fight magic.” I said bluntly, and he gave me a strange look. “Specifically, the Soul effecting variety that the Sapient Empowerment System can’t help with.”
He seemed surprised. “You don’t seem to be a part of the system, which tells me you are hiding it for some reason. May I ask why you are telling me about your connection if you are hiding it?”
“Two other people already know, and you, at least, are sworn to keep it a secret.”
Father Smith nodded. “Fair enough. So I assume you are Catholic, or at least some version of Christian?”
“Not really. I went to church when I was a kid, but I don’t really think about it anymore.”
He nodded. “In that case, the method I use to resist soul effecting magic won’t work. It requires you to essentially overpower the effect by the power of your faith, which someone without strong religious conventions can’t do. That leave open two possibilities. You can make a contract with a neutral spirit like a fae to defend you, which I can’t recommend for both religious and practical reasons and only mentioned because it could solve your issue. You could also develop the ability to resist the effect through shear willpower by altering the effects on your own soul. I have had some experience with that method.”
“Isn’t the second one just another way of telling me to learn magic?”
“Not really. Yes, a magic user could develop a spell to defend their soul by breaking outside influences, but because your soul is a part of you, or all of you, you can exercise control over it without having to learn magic, which is the ability to affect the world outside yourself.”
I nodded. “Then how would that work? Do I just need to have someone try to use Soul magic on me and resist it?”
Father Smith stood up. “Not exactly. I’ll be right back with an answer.” He left and, five minutes later returned with something wrapped in a piece of cloth. “This is an athame that was used by a satanic cult for ritual human sacrifice. Normally we would turn these kinds of things over to the police, but this one picked up a bit of a curse, so we have had to store it here in the reliquary. Anyone that touches it is overcome with the belief that they can become stronger by killing people with it, which is technically true. It steals energy from the soul of the victim to grant it to the user. I want you to touch this, then force yourself to not follow through with the impulse.”
“Are you sure about this?” I asked. “After all, if it overpowers me you’ll be my first target.”
Father Smith smirked. “I’m not as helpless as I look.”
I shrugged. “Ok, then. Here goes.” I reached out and picked up the knife. It seemed like a very nice knife. Well built. I could probably kill easily with it. Just a quick jab and my victim would lie at my feet. There strength would become mine. With enough victims I could become so strong that no one could challenge me. What was wrong with that? It was self defense, after all. They should feel honored to make me stronger. And right now the biggest threat to me is my secret getting out. Only three people know. If they died, I would be safe. After all, as the saying goes, Dead Men Tell No Tales. And one of those people was right in front of me. He was wide open. Just one little swipe and….
The next thing I knew I was staring up at the ceiling. The Father leaned over and looked at me. “Have you come back to your senses yet?” he asked.
“What happened?”
“You tried to stab me. Luckily I am way better at martial arts than you, so I was able to disarm you and knock you out.”
I rubbed my jaw, noticing that it was hurting. “Boxing, huh?”
He shrugged. “The priest where I grew up taught us in order to keep us off the streets. I was his second best student.”
“And the best one?”
“US Army Colonel. Retired.”
“Great. Glad I didn’t lunge at him. I doubt he would have held back.”
Father Smith nodded. “So do I. He has 613 confirmed kills.” He reached down and helped me up. “That’s enough training for today. The next step is more psychology than spirtualism. You need to figure out why the dagger was able to control you. What part of your mind and soul lead you down that path. Then you need to deal with those issues. Once you have done that, come back here and we’ll try again. Until you know yourself well enough to know where the line between you and an outside influence lies, you can’t learn to fight those influences.”
I nodded, thanked him, and left. I didn’t really need to think about it. My problem was the recent circumstances that forced me to reveal my secret. I could deal with Wan knowing it. He seemed to be trustworthy enough, and I knew his secret as well, so we had a standoff on that issue. The FBI agent was a problem, however. I never really trusted the government or the police, and now one of them knew enough to run my life. They could use that secret to blackmail me, and I could do nothing about it. After all, as the quote goes, “The State is a gang of thieves, writ large”. I could deal with them as long as the worst I had to do was wait for three hours at the DMV for some bureaucrat to renew my license, but now their highest law enforcement branch knew about me. The only thing worse would be if the CIA found out, as they could make me disappear, and I couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t find out. Some may call me paranoid, but I doubt many of those people completely trust the government either.
I had only one option, then. I needed friends that could defend me, or at least friends who could blow the whistle if someone did take me out. An assassin seemed to be a good choice for that. After all, he knew all about how to quietly get rid of people, so he would know how to stop it. And even if the government didn’t do the job, there were many other factions that might try if they found out about me. Now that my secret was out, I needed to learn to protect myself. I needed to get stronger. I needed to train.
I pulled out my phone and called Wan, accepting his deal to try out his gym. Now that I had the $32k dollars they had paid me for that job, I could afford to not look for work and pour myself into training.
I went home, drank a spiralina smoothie, used “align nanites” on myself, and did my daily workout quest. After seeing that Vera had given me an extra 5 Zerka for completing the quest, I sat down and started pouring over the data in my head and my harddrive. It turns out my guess was mostly correct. The stoner zombie and the homeless man were part of human trials, and the chimp used to live in the lab we raided, where he was experimented on. Vera sent me another alert about completing the quest and gave me 1000 Zerka. She also gave me an extra 10k Zerka. ‘What was that for?’ I asked, rubbing my sore shoulders.
‘I am authorized to pay people for any action which helps or defends the system. According to the data you acquired, the modified nanites created in that lab have the potential for exponential growth. If they multiply as quickly as these test results suggest, they will not only spread quickly, outnumbering the number of system nanites on the planet within a month, but they will lead to the death of the majority of the human race. The System is meant to support sapient lifeforms, and as such we can’t allow this genocide. Now that we know about this outbreak, we can fight against it.’
‘Does that mean you’ll find a cure for it?’
‘The System servers will be looking for one, but it may take some time, as they are based on System technology. In the mean time, we will be increasing the number of nanites on the planet so that we will have the numbers to fight it when a cure is developed.’
I nodded. ‘I didn’t realize it was that bad. Anything I can do to help?’
‘I don’t know of anything besides getting stronger. The stronger you and your skills are, the more useful you are to the System. That’s why I reward you for working out.’
Seeing that even the System wanted me to work on myself, I knew it was time for some serious training.