It was the next morning, and I woke up with a smile on my face, because today was magic day, or so I hoped, the last 2 times I tried to do it I was blocked by some resource I needed, but this time I think I was all covered.

First I made the thaumometer, then I used a stack of the clay to make bottles for the witchcraft gases.

I put the bottles in the furnace and while they were being made, I scanned everything I could with the thaumometer.

Few things I could scan at this point, since I didn't know the aspects of what they were made of, or so I wanted to say, since that was how it happened in the game, if you didn't know the aspects, at least most of them, of an object, you couldn't scan it.

What my eyes saw through the thaumometer was completely different.

I could see lines, lines of energy, or magic, flowing through everything, shaping matter, or dictating how it interacted with other elements.

And it was confusing, threads of colors flowing, tangling and combining into new colors, now I understand why you couldn't analyze it all from the beginning in the game, my mind just couldn't begin to comprehend what I was seeing.

Luckily it didn't cause me any kind of harm, it was more like looking at an abstract art painting, dots and lines everywhere, that everyone interpreted in their own way.

I decided to start small, first I looked at a block of dirt, I could see green lines running through the whole structure, they formed extremely complex three-dimensional patterns and shapes, and I felt that they were what gave the material its shape and characteristics.

Then I examined the rock, it was more complex than dirt, and had another type of essence, black lines ran through its structure, intertwining with the dirt essence but never blending in.

Perditio, I assumed, and the thaumonometer proved me right, when it told me that was what I was seeing.

It seemed I was not completely alone in this, I could get some help from my tools, to some extent.

Then I examined the sand, it was somewhere in between stone and earth, it had half the essence of stone, but it had perditio as well.

Then the clay, it had the essence of aqua and terra.

With the analysis I did so far, I came to the conclusion that the essence within the objects, despite being the same in some cases, could acquire different forms within the material, and that, combined with the interaction with other types of essence, were what gave the characteristics to the material.

For example, stone and dirt both had terra essence, but stone was harder because the terra essence within it was organized into a more stable, more rigid form, and intertwined with perditio, while the essence within dirt was freer, not as rigid.

I tried to scan other materials in my chests, but I did not understand what I was seeing, the essence inside the things had colors that I did not know what they meant, I could not begin to understand them, and they were arranged in more esoteric ways, more complex, some simpler, others, contained a lot of different essences, intertwined in such a delicate way that I was surprised that the thing could remain stable, like a ender pearl.

Since I could not progress any further without knowing what I was seeing, I turned my attention to the thaumonomicon, and as it said, the next step in advancing my research would be to make myself a research table, placing 2 tables together and using a writing tool on top of it.

Once done, the table didn't seem to change much physically, the line in the middle that divided the two tables simply disappeared, making it a single larger table, but when I touched it, I could feel inside, I could see the aspects I had knowledge of, and the table allowed me to mix them, and simulate their interaction, to see if I could form combinations, create more complex essences from simpler ones.

It seemed that the table came with some knowledge of the basic elements, in it I could see some of the different forms in which they presented themselves, as well as those I had already encountered in nature.

For example, I could see the form that the essence took in a block of dirt, and I could also see the form that the essence took in clay, both materials had terra essence, but this essence was expressed differently, but retained some similarities between the two.

With that knowledge, I took the 4 forms that I knew of the terra and mixed them with the aqua that I had found in the clay, and the table seemed to help me, working almost like a super computer, I could see in my mind, how the "expressions of essence" were mixed and formed a new structure, I had discovered victus, or life, at least in its most elemental or pure form, but I felt that I could not continue mixing it with other types of essence until I analyzed its different expressions in the real world, the different forms it could take and form.

I went up to the surface to see if I could scan some things, and managed to identify a new element in the grass that I can grow with bone meal, herba, finely mixed with air.

From the wheat seeds I was also able to detect herba, this time just herba.

I scanned some gunpowder I had stored and saw that it had a large amount of red and black inside, ignis and perditio, the thaumometer told me.

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It seemed that I didn't have to memorize the information, once I discovered it, the thaumometer would remind me every time I saw it, and ignis and perditio I already knew from the book, which told me what the primordial essences were.

Now I had a little more to work with, I mixed on the research table a little ignis, with some perditio, and the result surprised me, gelum, the element of ice and cold, or rather of materials with low thermal energy, it made sense.

I mixed the expression of the aer I had found from the grass, with some ignis, and I got lux, the essence of light, that allowed me to understand what I was seeing inside a torch, and to keep that form of expression of essence in my rapidly growing knowledge.

Then I mixed aer and perditio, the result was vacuos, that allowed me to analyze a chest, which had another more complex form of vacuos, as well as another type of essence, its structure was more complex, but it had similarities with the aer and herba, it was arbor, a mixture of the 2 previous ones.

From air and aqua I got tempestas, and with aqua and perditio, venenum.

With the primitive knowledge of ordo and a little aer I was able to force motus, since I compared it with a feather I had at hand and some qualities matched.

With acua and victus I got limus, and analyzing a bird egg that I had caught while flying, I got bestia.

So I spent several days, eating bread in the depths of my cave and analyzing the essence of the world around me, discovering new ones by mixing the old ones and extrapolating from the materials I had to analyze.

But unfortunately, there came a time when I had to stop, I was driven from my focus by the lack of variety of essence to work with, I had a great deal of data on the different forms in which the different types of essence could be presented, but it was not enough, I needed more variety, to make more complex essences, and that led me back to the book, that led me to the research, now that I understood a great variety of the aspects of the world, at least a little, I could begin to research the entries in the book.

I had some experience about the mod in the game, so the first thing that caught my attention to investigate was the deconstruction table, I could feel its star off in the distance from the main pages, but before I could get there I had to perform another intermediate research, the "research experience".

I placed the thaumonomicon on the research table, and with some paper at hand I gave my intention to the book, I wanted to perform that research, and the magic resounded, the feather rose from the inkpot and began to draw by itself on a sheet of paper, I drew 3 essence nodes, ordo, cognitio, and sensus, and around it I drew several hexagons, once the drawings were finished the feather returned to the inkpot and nothing else happened.

I stood still for a second, this was not how I imagined the investigation of the thaumonomicon to be, in the game it was a simple mini-game, you connected the essence and obtained the investigation, but here in the real world it was different, the essence drawings on paper were representations, but if I looked at them I could see the different forms that the essence could assume, and the hexagons were representations of the space that I had available in the thaumonomicon itself.

It was as if the book was an electrical circuit, and it had some broken connections, the paper showed me the space I had, and the 3 fixed essence nodes were like the cut paths of the circuit, I had to use my knowledge of the essence, and the forms it assumed or changed, to reconnect the circuit, connecting the essence one after another, changing its form slowly as I went along, to repair the flow between the 3 nodes.

Once I finished connecting the 3 nodes, I could see how the energy flowed again through the paths I had created, slowly changing its appearance as it moved forward and dispersed through the paths, like bringing an old machine back to life.

The newly arranged research floated in the air for a second and then the thaumonomicon as well, it began to turn its pages quickly until it reached a blank passage, where it absorbed the research and I could see how words began to appear where before there were only yellow sheets.

In the journal entry I could read how I now had a greater ability to understand the essence, I could easily access the knowledge about what type was required to mix to get to the one I was thinking of, the book had granted me that, it had given me a new ability by allowing me access to its new characteristics, that was when I understood it.

I wasn't doing any real research, I was repairing the book, the essence nodes in the research were like the broken circuits of the book, by connecting them I was re-establishing the flow, repairing the book and releasing some features, or in some cases, previously inaccessible knowledge.

The book was like a machine, a magic computer so to speak, and it was broken, incomplete, that I could repair, it belonged to me now.

That reminded me that I never scanned it.

A glance told me that the book contained a bit of pannus and arbor, the physical materials it was made of, as well as some praecantatio, the magic, basically, and the last element, cognitio, was the one that contained the most, there was as much of that as the sum of all the other aspects combined, part of it could be the amount of knowledge it contained inside, but I was not going to be fooled, at least a little bit, the book seemed to contain some kind of sapience, not real intelligence like a human, nor a soul like a living being, but it was definitely not a rock, it could perform some actions independently, like granting me access to the components of the essences, which I had just unlocked.

I held it in my hands, looking at its cover, it looked in better quality than before, although imperceptibly, I could feel it now, there was a connection, which was formed at the moment I gave him the first sheet of research to repair it, he had chosen me as his master, I could feel the book, its state, and its contents, with a thought he began to flip its pages in my hands, I could feel the general state of the book and it was terrible, there was a lot of work to do to repair it as much as possible, and that was precisely what I was planning to do.