I sat in Dusk’s realm again as I drew power from the plants around me to break through to my second gate with spatial and death mana.

Breaking through was easy, easier than life had been, and easier than time had been, but it also produced a strange sense of unease from my staff. It was no longer perfectly synchronized to my spirit, and that wasn’t how it should be. The resonance didn’t weaken in the places where it had filled before, but the absence of resonance was obvious in my newly opened mana gates.

And that was despite the fact that I’d only had the resonance for half an hour at most. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for someone older and stronger, like Liz’s grandfather. How would he feel if his domain weapon was broken?

I shivered at the thought. The concept was… uncomfortable. Not painful, per se, but it wasn’t something I wanted to happen.

I rose and grinned at Meadow.

“You know what this means, right?” I asked her. She arched an eyebrow, and I winked at her, then ran into the house to gather my things.

I had two full-gate spells provided by the library, and I returned with them shortly afterwards and put the papers down on the small patio table.

“Ah,” Meadow said, nodding. “Indeed. We can certainly begin on that.”

She drew out two massive stacks of paper from a storage ring and put them down next to the sheets the library had given me.

Up until that point, I’d refrained from looking at the spells, since I knew that if I did, I’d be tempted to push forwards right there and right then, and that was stupid. But now, I could read over them.

I flipped through each of the spells to get a general idea of what each one did.

To my surprise, only three of the four spells were life spells. The fourth was actually a death spell, and it gave me the sneaking suspicion that Meadow had collaborated with the library for it.

The first one I looked over was the one that Orykson had meant for me to use. It was a technical marvel of spell engineering that I couldn’t even pretend to understand, but the basic core of it was very simple. I designed the ‘perfect’ body, and then the spell would constantly push me towards that ‘perfect’ state, altering the life flows in my body to accomplish it.

As an excellent side benefit, that meant that the spell also fought hard against things like diseases, exhaustion, and even help me heal from injury. Technically, it wasn’t actually regenerating my body, just slowly pulling it into a perfect state, but the effect was the same, so I didn’t care if the word was wrong. That was just pedantry, in my opinion.

It wasn’t going to make me immortal or anything, but it could eventually become an absolutely absurd level of regeneration, and it may add some time to my lifespan.

Admittedly, with time and life magic, as well as learning alchemy, there were a lot of potential paths to extend my lifespan if I ever wanted to seriously look into that, but I still couldn’t deny that having it built in was a benefit.

The second one the library had provided was called the Magister’s Body. The sheet that it was on had clearly been spelled or enchanted, because it held more information than a sheet of paper should have been able to contain – just as much as the stacks that Meadow had given me, in fact.

I’d actually been a little bit underwhelmed by it at first, considering how perfect the librarian had said it was, but I thought I understood why after it sunk in.

It would allow me to call on the energies inside my body for spellcasting. Output wise, it would result in more efficient spells, but it’d drain my body somewhat to do so.

Spells like my Vampiric Senses had a lunar mana component, but I didn’t have lunar mana to cast it perfectly. The Magister's Body would draw from the lunar energy inside my blood, sweat, tears, and any other sources of lunar energy in the body, then use it to empower that aspect of the spell.

If it only did that, then it'd be a slow death penalty as my body's energy was whittled away to fuel my magic.

But every time it drained from me, the Magister's Body flooded itself with mana to replace it and allow that aspect to grow back just a little bit stronger. More telluric mana in my bones, more solar in the white blood cells, more desolation in the gut...

That was the part of the spell that was why flushing myself with healing spells and potions would hasten its development.

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It offered less instant power than the one Orykson had planned, but if it was called on for spellcasting enough, it could seriously improve my body, and that would in return deepen the reserves of power I had for spellcasting. It was a circle of synergy, and the generalist nature of it appealed to me a lot.

It reminded me of a Lushloam, in some ways. Like the Magister's Body mimicked what the seed would do for both the body and for the soul, but imperfect, missing... something.

Even with that missing component, the sheer value of the Lushloam had been absurd. A spell to mimic the effects of two of them? That was impressive.

At first, I’d been confused as to how it would let me transition – surely, it’d just result in a stronger body, after all, but Meadow had explained it to me.

Death and life energy would both be called on for spellcasting too, despite the fact I had mana for them. That would always be the case, which is why it could always provide a general benefit for me.

As the death and life energy grew back stronger, though, the connection between my soul and body would deepen, and my body would begin to resemble what my soul was projecting.

I wouldn’t be designing my perfect body, which did disappoint me some, but frankly, I would be happy just to be able to present more masculine easier, and I wasn’t worried that the expression of my soul would be male.

Which brought me to the death spell Meadow had picked out for me, the Beast Mage Soul.

Magical creatures like blink foxes didn’t need to sketch spells in the same way as humans did, instead flowing their mana through natural arrays of magic inside of their souls and bodies, and this spell worked on a similar principle.

It would alter my soul's connection to my body, which would allow the same sort of natural arrays to form inside me – only instead of being natural spells that existed in my mana-garden, they’d copy out my spells from my mana-garden into my body and soul.

On its own, that meant I’d be able to mostly skip the sketching stage, and it would reinforce the effects of mastery and ingraining spells, making them more mana efficient, powerful, and faster to respond to me, since they’d have a direct line into my soul.

Similar to the Magister’s body, it would reflect my soul into my body, but from the opposite side.

Not bad, but where it got most interesting was that mana that was in my body or soul could be pooled as part of the arrays.

Since the Magister’s Body allowed me to convert energy in my body into mana for my spells, the Beast Mage Soul would allow that built up energy to store inside the spell arrays themselves, as well as in my body, allowing me to essentially double the effects, the synergy fusing my shade with my body.

Not only would it let me transition faster, but it’d make my body, soul, and spellcraft all substantially stronger.

I frowned and looked closer at the parts of each spell that reflected the soul into the body and vice versa.

They were the same, but mirrored.

Exactly equal but opposite.

“Would this…?” I asked, trailing off.

“Trigger your legacy?” Meadow asked. “I hope so. They’re overlapping, like your legacy effects, but there are few certainties in life.”

I nodded. If that was the case, combining the two would be absurdly useful. But still, I looked over my last option.

The final option that Meadow had presented for me was a life spell, and it was strange as well. It was called the Alchemist’s Body. Similar to the one that Orykson had planned for me to use, required me to craft an ideal body for myself.

But instead of focusing on the flesh, like Orykson’s, it focused heavily on the flows of energy in the body, and how they connected to my mana – in particular, the fields of mana toxicity. By allowing the toxic effects of pills, elixirs, and potions to spread throughout the body and be purged by the powerful life flows, it would allow me to consume them far more regularly than a normal person could.

This same effect would help me fight off poisons, diseases, and even spells that were meant to poison my body. It was nowhere near the level of what Orykson’s spell would do for me in healing injury, but it could still do that too, and the diminished harm from mana toxins would let healing potions work better and faster.

It did reflect something of their philosophies, though. Meadow’s two bodies and the Magister’s Body emphasized flexibility and adaptability. Orykson’s only did one thing, but it did it very, very well.

“There’s one thing I need to know before I make a decision,” I said.

“What’s that?” Meadow asked.

“The opportunity cost,” I said. “Any one of these will lock off a quarter of my second gate magic. If I do the Magister’s Body and Beast Mage Soul, that’s locking up half of it.”

“Well, for your life magic… Second gate contains a plant and animal location spell that’s useful, paralytic spells, many healing spells of all stripes, root armor, an entangling briars spell that can damage or control a wide area, basic beast summons, and a variety of other things. You’d never learn all of these, of course, likely only four or five, along with a bit of blood magic. It’s a lot, but you can account for many of them eventually in the future, even if not perfectly. There are always tools to account for loss.”

That was a lot, and I took a breath.

“And death?”

“Spirit trap, analyze mana-garden, wards to prevent the dead from rising, and a life draining spell, though that’s blood magic. There are more introductory blood and necromancy spells. You would lose access to Harvest Corpse as well, but that could be accounted for at third gate with Harvest Dead Matter. You're giving up on a lot of potential power."

She considered for a moment, then shrugged.

“There’s also some useful cooking spells, but I don’t like cooking spells. They take the fun out of the art."

I smiled at that, then considered. I could mitigate the flaws of losing one gate, or even two. But how far did I want to go?

The Magister’s Body and Beast Mage Soul were probably the strongest and most useful for the future, assuming I could recover the losses.

Beast Mage Soul didn’t synergize with Orykson’s or the Alchemist’s, so those combos were out, but…

But even without both, it’d still be useful to have one or the other. The Alchemist’s was pretty broad, but helpful. And healing and a perfected physical form was hard to turn down.

Then again, the Magister’s Body and Beast Mage Soul put out what I put in. They may be less direct power, but reinforcing everything had a flexibility that was hard to beat.

It wasn’t an easy choice, and I groaned at making it.