She’s not dying at least. I bet everything is gonna hurt when she wakes… wait, how does that work? She is… was? My puppet. If she were to wake up now and suddenly be separate from me, she’d practically be a baby, right? One which can walk and whatnot if my hypothesis that most of the ‘basic’ brainpower is offloaded to the puppet, but still.

Oh hey, Leda is back. ｢{Worried}What’s wrong?｣

“I lost control of the puppet while experimenting. It… hurts, I think.”

She summons her puppet. At first it was because I prefer talking with words instead of telepathically, but by now I think she just enjoys talking. “Is it broken? It looks broken.”

“Ehm, a bit? I tested something dangerous. She’ll get better, though. I think. Anyway, while waiting for that, I’d like you to help me figure out how mana physique works again. Oh, and I’d like you to demonstrate your advance mana abilities.”

“Okay!”

“Ahh, before that… Someone called me so I’ll check on that. The egg is growing nicely.”

“Yes!” she says, accompanied by what I can only describe as a fuzzy burning ball of happy proudness shining through the mind-bond. I go over to my bag and grab my phone while she perches the puppet on top of the egg. I still think that looks funny, but after how mad she got the first time I stifle my laughter.

The failed call… it’s a personal number, so not someone trying to sell me something I don’t need. Though I did appreciate learning that I could get a cheaper electricity bill because I was technically a ‘business owner’. Well, I mean, at this point I might actually call myself a business owner. But I got that call before I got those things set up…

The receiver speaks with the voice of a mature man. “Hello, Kristoffer Holen speaking?”

“Hi, Lars from Terra Arcana. You called earlier?”

“Oh yes, yes. You sell uhm, shapechanging, correct?”

“Yep.”

“I saw your interview with those that Mike person. Can you really make people younger?”

“Yes, unless something stops me from performing shapeshifting on someone. And I should note that the brain is highly complex, so for safety reasons I do not want to change the brain. The mind and body is closely linked, however, and if nothing else the person will have a more youthful body.”

“I see. It is a full-body functional change, I assume. Is the price on your internet page correct?”

“It should be, yes. As the website notes, prices vary by the specifics and can are more of a guideline, but this falls more or less right on the base price point.”

“Good, good. When can you do it?”

“Pardon? You want to know when I am available to perform the service?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm, while I could do it almost any day, there are some bureaucratic things that needs to be done.” I’m pretty sure I’m under some kind of surveillance, as Thomas called me and made that abundantly clear. “Unless you want to change your outwards appearance, we can avoid most of them, but I will need to handle some things and set up an appointment.”

I suppose I should elaborate. “The way this will be done is that we need to go to a medical clinic. Someone will verify your identity, and then you will need to speak with a doctor, and I think they might do a simple medical check up. After that I will perform the change, and the doctor will talk with you again. If your appearance changed there would be some extra stuff, but it sounds like that’s unnecessary?”

“No that will be fine.”

“Okay. I think I should be able to set up an appointment Thursday, Friday or Monday. Which would you prefer?”

“The earliest, please.”

“Alright. I will try to get one for thursday then. I’ll contact you with further information when I have a definitive answer, so hopefully later today or early tomorrow.”

“That’s good.”

“Is there anything else?”

“No, thank you.”

“Okay. I will call you later, till then.”

“Good bye.”

Well that was something. Some old(?) man wants to be youthful again? They’re hardly my target demographic, and it was unexpected that someone like that watched the Magic Mic channel. Or, given how he butchered the name, maybe someone sent a link to him or something. Heh, maybe some grandchild wanted to show grandpa the ‘interesting video or something.

Not that I’ll say no, of course. That’s quite a lot of money for maybe half a day’s work, if you count the calls I’ll now have to make and the cost of an appointment in some clinic including use of a room for a little while.

Heck, I could probably double the price and still have customers be just as willing to pay. What is a year of pension (maybe, I dunno how much you usually get) for more years to live, or at the very least living your final years not plagued by the ailments that usually come with age?

Good for business, but… “Sorry, Leda, but I might need to do some more calls, so it will have to wait.”

“Aww.”

“Hey, if you come over here I can pet you.”

“Yay!”

Well aren’t you adorably easy to manipulate… It is a bit frightening that I have enough power through Leda to take over some small nation, probably. Or make one for myself. Not that I’d want to, the hassle is definitely not worth it. And in the end I’d probably either be killed or become a prisoner for life.

“Are you done nooow?”

“Yes, yes, I told you that was the last one.”

“Yes! Now we can start! What did you want to do?”

“Uhm… err… Oh yeah, mana physique and advanced mana abilities! Lemme form a mana link with your main body. Okay, good. Can you show me how they work? Uhh, [Mana Refining] and [Mana Condensing]. One at a time.”

“Oh, that’s easy!” She claims, then proving that she’s clearly not just bragging by… refining the mana.

“Uhm, can you do that again, but slower? And use the mind bond to explain what you do?”

She refines the mana again, this time slower. ｢I refine the mana.｣

…She is not a very good teacher. “Okay, how about this: Take some mana from the air, okay, and refine it. Good. Now gather some more, but don’t refine it.”

Now that is a bit more helpful. A bit. The refined mana does in fact seem more… refined. Even piggybacking of her own mana sense I can’t tell much more. Ugh, frustrating. If I were to specify how it is more refined… More… pure? Yeah. Aspect wise it seems to be reduced to only her natural, or at least strongest Aspects: Air and Wyvern.

Other than that all I can really tell is that there is some sort of qualitative change. Useless. Well, useless until further notice. “The other one now. Condensing?”

The results are, like before, more or less the same. The density increases in a quantitative change. I feel like I am much closer to doing that though. “Leda, can you let me control the mana? As usual, just ensure your mana doesn’t flow into me.”

“Okay!”

And with this control I will… slowly get a better sense of her mana physique, like I’ve been working on lately. I think she finds it comfortable, or at least relaxing, to give me control. Or maybe it’s less about the control and more about my mana, which is quite a bit different. For example, my strongest aspects are Human, Wolf and then a bunch of others are pretty strong including Water and Mist.

Mainly I think she just likes the attention and relaxing. My mana always feels so small and insignificant compared to hers. I couldn’t at first, but by now I can use my little stream to control, or at least guide the raging ocean that is her mana. By necessity it becomes a push-and-pull thing, with one step back for every two forwards. And so her ocean clashes gentle against its beaches, carefully guided by my little stream.

Perhaps that’s it. But that’s a question I can answer later. I have gotten my mana to her core, the pulsating ‘heart’ of her mana. Or perhaps lungs is a better comparison, it seems to constantly draw in and expel mana. Neither works very well. And with her mana completely drowning out mine I can’t really sense much.

Hmm… I ‘mark’ a bit of mana. “Can you refine this mana for me?”

Ooh, it went through the core. Of course that broke the mark and left me ‘blind’ to what actually happened, but still. That unlocked another piece of the puzzle - the odd movement of the mana she refines is to draw it into her core and send it back to where she uses it. And I knew beforehand that the vast majority of her internal mana is in the ‘refined’ state, but now it makes more sense; the core acts like a filter, slowly, but passively refining it.

Aaaand I have no way to actually utilize this new information, so I’ll categorize it as ‘useless until further notice’ with the other things I know about the advanced mana abilities. Sigh. And as with the previous times her body is a natural conduit for mana, capable of holding as well as moving a lot of mana at once. Hm, what would happen if I compress mana to-

“AAAAAAAARGH!” Bloodyfuckingaiaiaiaiai EVERYTHING HUUURTS!

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Haah. I was too right. “Leda, let me-”

Thankful for the mind bond getting my intent across, I crawl over to the puppet and try to heal the worst pains. The pain, aaah, no good. Maybe… Return. Oh, that helped. Now I can properly think, ugh, mostly. I need to repair the puppet, but I won’t be able to concentrate unless it’s in stasis. Even then, it hurts. At least it feels a bit more distant and dull, not like I’ve been put through a burning meat grinder.

Can I heal by shapeshifting it? I should start carefully. Let’s ‘revert’ one leg to undamaged. Oh, that seem to have worked. I follow up with the rest of the body, one part at a time. Okay, if I summon it now…

Safe. It still hurts, no it feels like it should hurt, an uncomfortable feeling, but at least better than the pain. I… hope it goes away. And that feeling of something missing is gone, too. So… don’t let puppets fall unconscious, it sucks. Gotcha. I… Let’s clear my mind. Petting Leda will do.

Well… at least now I know what happens if you lose control of a puppet, and one way that can happen. I think you can just walk out of mana range too, but you get that same hollow feeling and a… strong compulsion, I suppose, to get closer. And the re-connection wasn’t exactly pleasant, though that might be because of the horrible burns I had caused.

This gives me several ideas I want to try out. I should really get a lab mouse aspect. I mean, doesn’t have to be Mouse, but I’ll be using it to make puppets for experimentation, so something like that would be ideal. Finding out the exact mechanics of aspect magic will be useful, I think, and I do have some other experiments that will help with that.

“What’s with armed people pointing their guns at me while I’m flying?”

Thomas gives me a look I am 60% sure is not positive “It would be more surprising if they were not wary of the giant flying creature. Especially given the speed you approached with.”

“Yeah, sure. Almost good you didn’t let me bring Leda. Not that I think small calibre weapons would bother her that much. The basilisk shrugged them off, after all.”

“Actually, Leda is on the list of known safe targets.”

“…which means?”

“There are photos and descriptions of her and standing order not to engage.”

“Oh. That’s nice. But I wanna get started, how exactly do we do this?”

He straightens up and gestures to the miscellaneous things stacked next to the armored command vehicle. Wow, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone visibly switch from casual to business mode like that.

“I assume you’ve read the information I sent you, so I’ll just stress the most important points: Don’t do anything without clearing it with me first. Other than that, we’ll start small. I know you requested this specifically to try out things that might be dangerous, but the brass wants something to compare it to.”

I nod and give a vague ‘mhm’ sound. Nothing that the information didn’t say twice.

“First, we would like a comparison to firearms.” He says, pointing at the unmistakable targets set up some twenty to thirty meters away, before turning to one of the soldiers, who stands next to a table and what I assume is crates for secure transport of guns.

“We will start with the smaller ones, gradually scaling up. Questions?”

“Uh, so you want to compare magic to guns, right? Can I shoot to get a feel for them? I know the basics of gun safety - assume it is loaded, don’t point at things your don’t want to destroy or kill and no finger on the trigger until you intend to destroy or kill it.”

“That’s a succinct description. Usually the answer would be no, but given the circumstances I’ll check with HQ. You can start while I do that.”

“This way.” says the soldier as Thomas returns to the command vehicle. “I’m vice corporal first class Stian Asplund, and will instruct you. I will fire a weapon, and on my signal you will try to recreate the sequence of shots, but with magic. For example, if I fire three shots, you should try to fire three magic shots with the same power. Understood?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. We’ll start with a couple pistol sequences, then move onto rifles.”

The pistol sequences were easy to copy, and by the time we were done with that Thomas had gotten the green light for letting me use the smaller calibre weapons. So I got to fire the pistols I had just mimicked, telling them my thoughts as I did. After that we moved on to rifles.

So the procedure went ‘see sequence→mimic sequence→try gun→mimic again’. Honestly, I didn’t particularly change things after trying out the weapons, except for a few notable exceptions. They wanted me to do it anyway for posterity - everything I did and said were recorded both on paper and by a few different cameras.

It was pretty easy to keep up with both both the fire rate and power of semi-automatic shooting, but I fell behind on fire rate once they started shooting on full-auto. Using magic was a lot less scary than using automatic weapons, though. After rifles they got to the more interesting weapons, which incidentally were also the ones I didn’t get to fire. Well, except for one machine gun with ten rounds.

Needless to say, I did not keep up with its fire rate, but the vice corporal guy (was his name Stian?) remarked that I didn’t really fire any slower despite outputting more power. I pointed out that it was because the slow part was forming, targeting and firing the spell, not gathering mana.

And then, grenades. And a rocket launcher, neither of which I would have touched even if they let me. I had no problems copying the effects, and (after getting permission) demonstrated that I could fire off mana bombs only slightly slower than mana spikes.

That got their attention and, being done with what they wanted me to do anyway, they handed me a walkie talkie. Then I was ordered away from the command vehicle and ACV to create increasingly large explosions. Not that I’m complaining. One of the drones they used to record me got hit by some shrapnel from the explosion. I caught it before it crashed, but we decided to quit while I still had a head.

So the entire area I’m allowed to play around with is pretty big and surrounded by a fence with rather clear ‘WARNING - Keep Out’ signs. The terrain is part forest, part (freshly deforested) field, part swamp. For now I have to stick to the significantly smaller forested area, but given the things I want to test it will be bigger soon enough. Well, if they let me.

First up is three different uses of [Sound Magic]. At first I called it [Sonic Magic], but that sounds kinda… Either way, the military folks brought ear plugs, though I’m not trusting my hearing to that, so I’ll use the assistant puppet for these tests.

“I’m ready, can I start?”

“ Go ahead.”

Okay, this will be interesting. I have used it to amplify my voice, but not to this degree… I draw in a really deep breath, then throw my arms and head back with a high-pitched scream. There’s a peaceful moment where it just sounds like a woman screaming, then [Sound Magic: Amplify] kicks in and it quickly rises through ‘woman getting mutilated’ to what I noted it down as: ‘Banshee’s Wail’.

I scream until my lungs are empty, then try to recover my breath.

“ Are you okay?”

“Yeah. A bit, huuh, winded, but that was, haah, satisfying. I’m Gonna try again at full power, ah, as soon as I catch my breath.”

Pause.

“ That was not full power?”

“No. Maybe seventy percent? Not sure how it scales, though.”

They don’t respond, so I [Meditate] and calm my breath while replenishing my mana.

“ That registered as sixty decibels inside the ACV. Will you be fine if you do that at full strength?”

“Eh, probably. Worst case scenario I make a new puppet.”

“ In that case, could you come and grab a sound measuring tool?”

“Banshee’s Wail, second try: Full power.”

This time the sound immediately ramps up, and once it reaches full power it I can only describe it as ‘the worst thing I have ever, and will ever, hear’ aka. ‘Banshee wails in pure terror while being mutilated.’ Hmm, my naming sense is fine.

I cut the scream short once I actually register that I have successfully made myself deaf. Welp, at least it doesn’t hurt. Well, healing doesn’t seem to do much. Hah, I’m really torturing this poor puppet. Better switch back to my main body so I can figure out what they’re trying to tell me.

“Uh, sorry about that, I made myself deaf.”

“ You can heal deafness?”

“Uh, maybe? I just swapped to my main body. Can’t you see that from the drones? Wait, where are the drones?”

“ Your scream caused some technical problems, and we lost control for a moment. The auto-control started sending them back here..”

“Oh. Well, while you fix that I’m gonna do another test of that magic. Uh, a lot weaker, though.”

Screaming my lungs out as the puppet was satisfying, but what if I use my main body? Of course, I would rather keep my hearing. Either way, I let out a mix of a primal yell and laughter. Ahh, cathartic. I should probably not amplify my already evil-sounding laughter around other people.

“ That was it?”

“Yeah, told you it’d be weaker.”

“ The men are checking the drones for damage, but in the meanwhile, what’s next on your list?”