For the first time in a long time when Villin woke up, he didn’t feel active and ready to take on the world. When he opened his eyes he just wanted to lay in be- on the floor for five more minutes. In the end, he kept laying on the floor for another half an hour before he got up, groggily wiping his eyes.
“Did I go out drinking yesterday?”
Villin couldn’t help but utter these words as he felt as if he had a massive hangover. After another minute of lazily strolling around his room, he heard a noise coming from his door. He focused a bit and after a moment it came again, three distinct knocks.
With an unfocused mind, he walked up to the door and opened it.
When he looked out of the door he saw Amelia. The brown-haired girl with glasses was looking at him with a raised eyebrow. He mumbled for her to come in before he went back into his room to sit on his bed.
Amelia sighed when she saw the state he was in and entered “You should eat something Villin. You overdid yourself yesterday and it obviously has an effect on your mind and body. Generally eating is the best way to get back lost energy.”
As she said that she went ahead and opened his chest, taking out the breakfast that had appeared within. Today they had bacon and eggs, quite a classic. With a wave of her hand, some of the egg floated upward and then toward Villin “Choo choo, the train is coming, open up.”
Villin shot her a dirty look before he grabbed some utensils to eat. Surprisingly he felt slightly better after every bite he took, the effect was nearly instant. Once he finished his meal, he still felt something was slightly off about him. Once he realized what it was he grabbed his crystal holder and started absorbing some of the magical energy within, after a few minutes he felt a lot better.
“Thanks, Amelia, I feel a lot better now. Was the train bit really necessary though?”
Villin looked at Amelia with a slightly aggrieved expression, it was clear she knew the state he was in yet she still decided to play with him. Amelia looked at him happily when she saw his expression, it seemed she liked making a fool out of people.
Now that he was able to think properly again he felt somewhat perplexed, why was it he was totally out of magical energy a bit ago, he remembered very well that he still had plenty left when he finished his first gene solution the previous day.
As if she was able to read his thoughts Amelia began speaking “When you intake a gene solution you practically change your own DNA. It is completely natural to be exhausted and dried out after intaking one. In some cases it is even possible to sleep for multiple days in a row.” her expression had turned more serious as he explained everything to him “I would advise you to call in sick for the first class today so you have some time to explore the changes within your web and get used to them. I’ll come back in the evening with the spell blueprint the rest of the club has already gotten.”
She kept talking in one piece and near the end she got up, he was about to ask her why she was in such a rush when she answered that question for him “I have to get going now so I don’t miss class.” she walked up to the door but before leaving she turned toward him again just to say a few words.
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“Well done Villin.”
Even though the words were simple enough her voice broke near the end and Villin felt a great number of emotions within the simple sentence. He looked at her face and wanted to ask what was wrong but before he could do so she had already left closing the door behind her. Villin felt stunned for a moment, he didn’t believe she had any romantical feeling for him, and if she did it wouldn’t cause her words to sound so sad. He decided he would ask her next time they had a serious one-on-one conversation and quickly made his way out of his room.
He went to the grade-holder’s door and slipped a note underneath it stating he would be absent for the first class of the day. He then went back into his room and carefully entered his web once more. At first, nothing really seemed all that different. None of the nodes’ colors seemed to have changed. As he was thinking this though he figured the once he had activated that turned white did seem a bit whiter than usual. He reached out to one of them with a strand of magical energy and when he reached he felt stunned. The node was supplying the bit he had sent out with more magical energy.
Normally what happened was quite simple, you breached a node’s defenses and then the magical energy within would go dormant, no longer resisting. Yet what was happening now was vastly different, the node had once more activated but instead of resisting is assisted his magic power.
Feeling stunned, Villin tried reaching out to another node, and now he was being supplied with energy from two nodes, after about five minutes he noticed the light of one of the node had gotten slightly dimmer and so he retracted the strand of energy he had sent that way. But after about fifteen minutes it was back to its previous luster.
Even though the amount of energy a single node could supply was little he suspected that if he could get energy from fifteen nodes at once it would be comparable to using magic crystals.
With a stunned expression, Villin hurriedly took out his enchanting book and started looking at the area which held the description of the gene solution. One of the effects if you took it while already having magic was an ‘increased connection to the web’ this apparently meant that nodes would stop growing hostile once more if you didn’t use them for a while.
This caused a thought to pop up in his head. Naturally, he had no way to verify if this would have happened previously since he was a new Magus but there was something he had to take into account. When he got reborn one of his advantages was an ‘increased connection to the web’, hence it was very possible he already had this effect previously.
Since a ‘gene solution’ can only be taken once there was no telling what would happen if you somehow managed to ’stack’ the effects. Now it seemed very possible the cooperation of nodes would be gained. Once he practiced reaching out to nodes for a bit he would be able to get magic power back a lot quicker compared to most other magus’.
With an already fast-beating heart, Villin decided to try and see if there were any other advantages. He tried casting ‘Cold-Blood’ a wandless spell with seven nodes he hadn’t attempted to cast before. After just half an hour Villin managed to cast the spell as he felt as if the temperature in his room got slightly hotter making it perfectly comfortable.
At this point his heart was beating so fast he feared it would suddenly stop. But there was one more thing he thought might be possible. He sat on his bed with his eyes open and he focused immensely, after some effort he suddenly saw his web appear before him, with a thought it would move similar to when he entered his head. The only drawback was that he could only see the nodes he had already awakened and those closeby them.
Despite the drawback of also taking quite a bit of mental effort, it was still extremely useful. Now if he wasn’t in a place that was completely safe he would still be able to awaken new nodes and try to cast new spells for the first time without having to close his eyes and leave his regular senses behind to enter the deepest parts of his head.
In a single day he had gotten so many benefits, even if most ‘gene solutions’ weren’t this good, he was certain it was worth spending time to master, even more so than pill-making.