《On a Blank Canvas》Chapter 4: Even More Functions
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I tried once again imagining a small flame appearing on my hand with reference to the picture, with Vaes need now flowing within me and reducing the rate of which my Vaes bar absorbed my mana to be around the same or lesser than that of my Vaes regeneration, as i didn't know the exact rate of it.
Feeling the flowing motion of Vaes and directing it to concentrate and seep out of my hand, i was able to see a yellow light, as small as a bead, appear and slowly get bigger.
I continued to keep it up, following my instincts, as i directed my Vaes towards the small light, slowly growing bigger until it took on a red tint and started having a semblance of a flame.
It was now around the size of a tennis ball, flickering like a real flame and giving off small amount of heat.
Amazing... for the first time in my life, i never been this amazed that i was able to do such an extraordinary thing.
As i checked my remaining Vaes in my body it seemed like it had drained around 1/10 of the way from just maintaining the small flame for a minute, even with the increased capacity in my Vaes bar i knew it was still really pathetic.
I wasn't discouraged as the book had said that through continuous use, training and studying one would be able to increase their Vaes capacity and reduce the amount of Vaes they used when performing a spell along with increasing their Vaes regeneration, as well as the fact that the Vaes consumption of the imagining method was disgustingly higher than that of the formula method, especially at the beginners stage.
In the next 30 minutes, i had done around 15 or more beginner imagining spells that the book had explained how to imagine and do, from water to wind to even darkness and light.
The consumption of some spells was much higher than the others and i had to draw upon another 2/10 of the Vaes bar, even if the current amount of Vaes i was able to use currently was low, it was more than enough to practice with.
After that, the book had stated that the methods for training in the imagining method was vague and highly differed between people, as everyone had their own perspective of the world, thus it stated that we had to find out how to train it on our own and that it would no longer teach the imagining method from this point on.
That was perfectly fine by me since I've never thought myself to have an amazing perspective of the world regardless of how many novels and anime I've seen and read.
The book stated it would start to teach me how to do the same spells as before but using the formula method.
But upon looking at the fireball spell and the explanation that followed on how to perform it using the formula method, it had reminded me exactly of chemistry, physics, and advanced mathematics...
Of course, it would be... why did i assume it would be something else? I should have already guessed that the formula method involved using the rules that humans had discovered and applied to the world, such as rules of science and mathematics, would be directly applied to how to effectively use magic and have complex spells just like in some novels I've read...
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I can also assume that the average person today would have an amazingly high IQ compared to the people on earth just from the fact that this is a sci-fi world, mixed with magic, and so such complicated formulas may just be like elementary school level for them.
Since that was the case i decided not to even attempt the spells for now and try to increase the amount of knowledge stored inside my canvas as it was the only thing i could do.
The only problem was that I'd have to read a massive amount of books and carefully at that as reading it quickly would leave an incomplete copy in my canvas, due to my brain not processing each and every word.
I wasn't in a mood for reading anymore and decided to experiment more with my canvas.
I was thinking that since i was able to create things like separate spaces for a better organization such as my folders and txt files, and especially my Vaes bar, that i would be able to create more functional things. There was one thing in particular that i remembered having multiple capabilities and was, in my opinion, the most amazing thing invented in my world.
Smartphones
Smartphones have literally anything you could ask for from a dictionary to a map, a clock, a phone, a flashlight, a calculator, everything!! And it fits perfectly in your pocket.
So i decided to imitate things from a Smartphone and add it to my canvas.
I imagined a digital clock that showed the date and time, a quick search through some children's books and a quick peek outside at the giant virtual clock with the date outside the library confirmed to me that it was currently 3305, 8th of Palinary, Doranday 3:46 PM.
This world had the same time as earth with 24 hours, 60 minutes and seconds, 365 days a year, but instead of 12 months, there were 13 Months. Palinary was the 6th month and each month had 28 days exactly, with 7 days a week, Doranday being the 3rd day of the week.
So there was 28*13=364 days plus one day where everyone took a day off, making it 365 days, in the event of a leap year everyone in the world had two days off instead. There was still two days per week that were weekends of course.
Really convenient if you ask me, and it seemed like the whole world adopted this around 150 years ago, i never found out who had named the new month but i didn't really care.
I had imagined my digital clock with date that it would tick up by one every second and that every 60 seconds made the minutes increase by one and had the seconds reset to 0, and that every 60 minutes it made the hours increase by one and had imagined that until the year would increase by one every 365 days, and i didn't forget the leap year.
[ 3:46:47 PM, Doranday, 8th Palinary, 3305 ]
The moment the clock had appeared, i felt every second go by unconsciously in my mind and knew that i had achieved a perfect sense of time and that i would never lose track of time ever again.
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I really need to expand my vocabulary but all i can say is amazing!! Though i had set a goal to make my canvas similar to a Smartphone, you had to consciously use the functions in a smartphone, like looking at the clock when you wanted to know the time, but my canvas is more like a computer implant in my brain and every new function would directly affect it!
I immediately began making a calculator, imagining all the numbers and the operations and rules of mathematics, though all it had was the basic four operations and some others that i had remembered didn't mean that i couldn't just learn more later fron some books.
As it formed in my canvas i had immediately tried it out with nine by nine digit multiplication and had successfully calculated it immediately, making me realize another ability my canvas gave me, an extremely high speed of thought, as with enough time i would have been able to complete the calculation. Even with other people with amazing or perfect memory would need time to recall everything but is typically much faster at remembering it than the average person.
There is also another thing i realized, what was the difference between calculating in my brain and on my canvas? My brain had information on how to do it, while my canvas didn't. If i had not imagined all the numbers and operations to appear on my calculator, i would have been unable to calculate with my canvas as it didn't have any information related to mathematics to pull from, same with imagining that my calculator followed the rules of mathematics that i had understood.
I'm pretty sure if anyone without any understanding of mathematics tried to make a calculator, they would fail as they didn't know how numbers and operations work.
The next one was I had imagined was a camera and i hadn't even considered imagining pictures onto my canvas at all and had tried it on what i saw in front of me, perfectly appearing on my canvas. Even while closing my eyes or turning my head, i was able to perfectly see each and every detail of the picture as if i was looking at it, i even was able to zoom in anywhere on it.
If i could do a picture why couldn't i do a video with things moving and sounds?
Imagining my camera was able to take a video i had slowly looked around the library while snapping my fingers beside my ears a few times for around 10 seconds while imagining it to be copied onto my canvas like how the words on the book would be slowly copied over as i read them.
Just like the picture, the video had perfectly recorded all i saw and heard and not only that, i was also able to pause it and zoom in anywhere at any time unlike real memories where you'd just have a vague image in your head when trying to remember something.
Thinking deeper into it, my canvas was like another brain that was connected to my real one without any information at all, and unlike a normal brain, it perfectly stored all of its information without any loss or leakage over time.
After that, i decided to add to my text folder everything i could remember of my previous life, as muxh as i could recall, starting from my life story to all the technical knowledge i had to the plots, chapters, and episodes i had remembered of my favorite animes, mangas and novels.
I even made two separate folders inside the text folder with one containing text and the other containing images and videos of memories in my life.
Though it was possible to create images and video using purely my memories, all of them were not perfect with far memories being very vague and vivid and only slightly recognizable in video and image and others just being slightly warped due to being unable to remember all the details.
An image of my favorite anime character i had imagined for example didn't feel as if it was perfect representation of her but it seemed like that was as much as i could remember.
Like the feeling of thinking you had forgotten something but not knowing what it is.
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Sometime later i had experimented more and had created a recorder that was able to record sound only and was able to amplify the volume and slow down or speed up. I tested the same thing with videos and i was able to change the speed of it as well.
Though i do realize that even without a camera amd recorder i would be able to just imagine images, sounds and videos just fine but they help remind me of my canvases capabilities.
I even tried record while i was moving my head around quickly and it had no problems, even while pausing when i was moving, the image displayed had little to no blur while it would almost always blur if you suddenly pointed a camera a different direction, though i haven't what would happen if i spun around really fast and recorded that.
Taking a picture of a books page while the words were still readable was amazing as i was able to copy over all the words i recognized on the image, which was all of them, and memorize them it in an instant, which took less than a second in total, literally increasing my reading speed over a hundred times.
Even if i shook the book i was able to record a video and pause it and then transfer the words, but if i shook it too fast it the words would still blur even if i paused it.
If the words were too far away i wouldn't be able to recognize and copy them and obviously covering them would make me unable to copy them either.
I noticed that exactly 15 minutes have passed since my clock was created making it two minutes past 4 and sitting inside this library this whole time is actually quite boring and decided to go outside, i may be able to gain some inspiration to further improve my canvas.
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