John was meditating when he noticed he wasn't alone. He looked up and the armor on him scraped...It had become completely rusted over the centuries.

"Hello."

The person screamed. They backed away as they fell to the ground in a panic. John sighed.

"You'll have to die."

He stood up as his armor fell apart completely. Surprisingly, the cloth was still tattered... As if the years had no effect on it. Right as he was about to strike the human and kill this witness. The human did something weird. He bowed his head and said:

"Leo greets the great one!"

"Great one?"

Leo was brimming with excitement and seemed to completely disregard the fact that he was a second away from death.

"You are the god of death! I've heard stories about you!"

John had been affected by the tree in his consciousness. He then began to think clearer.

"It's just a kid..."

"Hey, I'm not a kid! I turned 13 this year!"

John had been in a state of meditation digesting the memories of that supreme being.

"Are you interested in learning magic?"

The kids face lit up.

"Yes! I greet teacher!"

John waved his hands.

"No need to call me teacher, you can call me John."

John wanted to begin experimentation. He had gained some knowledge of magic over the centuries.

"If you want to learn from me. You need to keep what you learn a secret."

"You have my word."

"That isn't good enough."

John held out his hand for a handshake. Right as Leo was about to shake it. He said:

"Wait for me to establish a contract."

John took his other hand an drew a magic circle in the air.

"By shaking my hand, you promise to keep my origin a secret. You also promise not to show your spells to outsiders. Nor talk about anything you have seen unless ordered. For the next century, you will be my servant."

John snapped his fingers and a green light emanated from his hand. Leo hesitated for a second. For some reason... he felt it was dangerous. But then he found resolve and shook hands with this god of death!

"You have just agreed to a one way soul contract. If you break it, your soul will shatter and your path of reincarnation will be cut off."

"This is not a game."

"I understand!"

John then thought carefully about the magic he knew. There were a few different systems the supreme being had learned. There was soul magic, life magic, and mental magic. He dismissed soul magic and life magic right away. Messing with the soul was dangerous and life magic without a means of recovery was equally so.

Mental magic was all that was left. There were stages to mental magic. There was also various systems the supreme being had experienced throughout its life. The magic the supreme being used was special in itself. It didn't rely on the environment at all. This was also the case for life and soul magic.

Soul magic used the soul as the source of power. Life magic used the users vitality as the cost. Mental Magic used mental energy as the source. The first step to becoming a mage was creating an energy generator called a source. You used a visualization technique to make a loop, each time you rotated this technique you would get one unit of energy.

The visualization technique itself had an extremely long animation, it could perhaps be rotated once or twice a day. This was the case for standard unrefined techniques, legendary techniques could be rotated hundreds of times a day as they had shorter animations.

There was some startup cost though for a mage. The cost dealt in concentration, before becoming a mage, you lacked a visualization technique. So how did you acquire one? You had visualize runes in your mind creating a complex image, having data heavy enough to puncture a hole in your sea of consciousness.

You then guided the hole with constructs creating a loop. There were various levels to being a mage. Stage zero you would have a capacity of one. Stage one, you would have a capacity of eight. Stage two, you would have a capacity sixteen. Stage three, you would have a capacity of thirty-two. There was a qualitive change in your energy bank upon reaching stage four. You would have a capacity of two hundred and fifty six.

You merely needed to shape it first, breaking through the stages was dependent more on stretching your container for your mental energy. There was something called a phantom bank. Then you had your real energy bank. This determined your progression.

For example, let's say you are a stage one mage. You have a max capacity of eight units of energy. In order to breakthrough to stage two. You need to have sixteen energy. So you would have a phantom bank that could go over your capacity as a stage one mage. But your actual energy reserves stays the same. So it is possible to have fifteen energy in your phantom bank. But you still only really have eight energy you can play with. Once your phantom energy breaks past the threshold... your actually capacity would become sixteen and you would no longer be a stage one mage.

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There weren't passive spells in this particular system. Spells worked in tiers, you could only cast spells at or below your level, then you have to likely wait days to recover, your visualization techniques grade will also determine how much energy you generate each day.

A normal technique can get you one or two a day.

But John had legendary techniques.

He didn't plan to give Leo these though.

Since John only had one consciousness and mental spells required one to place a generator in their sea of consciousness. He planned to use this kid as a lab rat for this magic system. This way he could further optimize engraving his own generator. He only had a singular sea of consciousness after all. If he messed this up, he wouldn't know where to cry.

There was a slight issue unfortunately, he wasn't able to view someone else's sea of consciousness. Luckily for him, in the memories of that being, there was his method of searching soul.

John felt a bit unsure whether to use this method, it was this method after all that caused that being to get sucked into his soul.

"Could this kid be hiding deeply? Plotting to consume my soul and consciousness?"

John shook his head... that was a bit ridiculous, in order to search this kids soul, he needed to use soul magic. His soul had a massive amount of energy he figured. Especially after consuming the remnants of that being. He placed his hand on Leo's head.

He then realized that he still couldn't feel his own soul, so he focused on the tree in his sea of consciousness. Just like that moment he pulsed that entity away with a sphere. He relied on the same feeling to guide his consciousness to perform this soul search.

John then saw a white room, he could see the memories of Leo... it was mostly useless nonsense. He then saw a white ball of energy. It reminded him of when he initially gained the ability to see soul, except this wasn't above his head. John couldn't help but think:

"Was it truly the soul I was seeing back then?"

He thought this mainly because when he saw the soul of Leo, it felt more like it was in an entirely separate dimension and not on the same plane of existence at all.

"I will forcefully inject memories into your mind. This will include the images needed to puncture a hole in your consciousness. I'll include a step by step plan for building your visualization technique. Let me know if you encounter any issues."

John transferred many memories into the boys mind. Leo passed out from the stress. When he awoke later he saw an infinite loop in his minds eye. John found out Leo now had a proper dimension in his sea of consciousness. As for what was stored there? It was his visualization technique 'Baneful Tranquility'.

This was a very old and ancient technique, you must keep in mind this didn't mean it was good. It could generate two mana every day. Leo was now a stage zero wizard. Or he could be called an apprentice wizard.

His maximum capacity was simply one unit of energy. He had just stepped in the door of magic. He was now fully capable of casting tier zero spells. John made sure to teach him some spells via the same method he used to transfer the technique to him. Leo also put his experiences into words. After seeing the success for himself, John was quite excited to transform his own consciousness.

He obviously wouldn't use 'Baneful Tranquility'. He had a much better technique, the best mental energy generating technique 'Absolute Generation'. It could produce five hundred energy a day. This was an absolutely insane generation rate.

Leo had to leave so his parents wouldn't send his village into a panic. John began to inscribe 'Absolute Generation' into his sea of consciousness. It was a hundred times more complex than 'Baneful Tranquility', but it was also paradoxical. In that its animation was far faster.

After a week of laying out the pieces in his sea of consciousness.

An infinity symbol surrounded by an ouroboros was wrapped like a tire around the tree in his sea of consciousness. He had successfully punctured a hole in his sea of consciousness. As for its location? It was right above the base of the tree. The visualization technique itself looked like a complex magic circle.

He was quite satisfied with it. John then started the technique. In an instant, he broke through to a tier zero. His capacity was now one. His phantom capacity started to climb. After a few hours it reached eight and he broke through to tier one. His capacity became eight.

At this point he stopped grinding his phantom energy reserve. Because he needed to test out his spell casting ability.

The tier of the spell was also the cost of the spell. An example of this would be a tier 1 spell 'Creature Illusion'. This spell itself cost eight energy. It lasted for an entire day.

But casting spells was extremely complex and the system that John was using was an internal one. Without the support of the magic matrix over the world, there were obvious downsides.

That's right. There were spell slots! You had to prepare the spell in advance before you could use it. Once it was prepared, you could cast it whenever and in an instant.

Preparing the spells took a lot of conscious effort, it wasn't something that could be done on a whim.

An example of this would be using 'Creature Illusion'. This spell was tier one and costed eight mana. To prepare this spell, you had to draw the runes in your mind and dedicate your capacity to it. So preparing this tier one spell at tier one would leave you at zero energy. Once you casted the spell... You would recover your energy depending on the technique you established as your foundation.

John's technique made him recover around 21 energy an hour.

So if he prepared 'Creature Illusion'. Different tiers of spells also took a different amount of time because of different complexities. It took him eight minutes to inscribe the runes for it.

There was also a limit to the amount of spell slots you had available.

At stage zero, you had only a single spell slot, at stage one, you still only had a single spell slot. Once you made it to stage two, you would have two spell slots. Stage three, you would have four slots. At stage four, you would have sixteen spell slots.

This made it so you couldn't really spam tier zero spells. It also meant you had to be careful with the spells you prepared, taking into account various future situations.

It wasn't until you reached stage four that you were able to really chain spells.

Sixteen slots was quite a bit, and going beyond this stage doubled your slots and energy capacity. So tier five would have a max capacity of five hundred and twelve. You would also have thirty-two slots. At tier six, you would have one thousand twenty four energy and sixty-four slots.

There was also the top level existence barring laws.

This legendary stage was stage seven. At this stage you would have two thousand and forty eight energy and a hundred and twenty eight slots.

One of the benefits of this mental energy system was that all of John's bodies shared his sea of consciousness. This meant he could inscribe spells using one of his other bodies from operation phoenix. This meant he could bypass not being able to cast spells without preparation. He could inscribe them without fully focusing his attention since he had become proficient in splitting his awareness.

This also meant that every single version of himself was capable of using spells right out the gate.

So when he became a tier one mage... every copy of him also became tier one in a sense.

But he still was limited by the slots and the cost of spells.

John casted 'Creature Illusion', then an illusion covered his entire body.

He no longer looked like a skeleton. He looked more like himself now, although this was just an illusion he conjured. But it would make things far more convenient for him.

John then decided to grind away at his phantom bank and breakthrough to the legendary realm.