–– Clara Ali Ollivander ––
The exchange with Marduk was interesting to say the least, near enlightening if I was honest. I would go so far as to say that I could form another ember of an aspect about wards now, but I did not even try to. This had multiple reason, but the biggest was also the simplest.
I did not have enough time. Even consolidating and improving my first ember of an aspect about languages was tedious, nearly no real progress visible, as learning magical languages was in no way as easy as learning mortal ones. It would take years or even longer of invested time to understand a single magical language to perfection and I needed to learn a ton of them. It would get easier with time, naturally so, but short term it was a fools dream to progress my original aspect out of the novice classification anytime soon, not to speak of upgrading it to a flare. Adding another aspect would obviously not change that and would take away even more time. Novice here did not refer to cultivation stages, but to the first substage of aspect stages. The first three were called novice, journeyman and accomplished, each taking thirty three percent of understanding of the chosen aspect relative to its stage, while the last percent, the hardest of any stage to reach, was titled as peak, even the smallest of progress into this percent a challenge in itself.
Back to the main topic, my understanding of wards improved by a lot. Naturally, the same as for the mind arts and pretty much any other discipline, there was an important rule to always remember: „Do not copy!", as this would hinder me in the long term.
It was also the reason why the exchange appeared sophisticatedly rudimentary and even near useless. But it was anything but that, as I had hundreds of new ideas, flashes and insights into wards and how I could incorporate those in my knowledge and make them mine. And all these were easier to test than any ideas relating to my mind and those ideas worked without incorporating a single enchantment into a ward, which was Marduk's speciality.
I also read the books, which were not really in depth, they were very informative nonetheless, further solidifying my foundation.
Foundation was a interesting phenomenon as well. It was commonly used to describe the first layer of ones power, understanding and some other things as well. It was the foundation on which someone would build for their years to come. A lot depended on this foundation as well, as you could not just rebuild it without giving up your whole power at the risk of crippling yourself.
The adept stage was the most important foundation though, overshadowing everything else which might be associated with this word. This stage was one of the rare few ones, where you could progress a stage without completing all substages or complete the stage or rank itself with only a single substage or stage. This means, that the foundation differs greatly from one being to another and still, most wasted their potential exactly there and if they lived long enough, they would regret it quite a lot.
As you already know, the first five stages and substages are common, uncommon, rare, epic and legendary, together with newcomer, entry, advanced, elite, peak. But there were seven stages and even though I make it seem easy, a single changing could get you into the top percentile of powerhouses in your rank, whereas breathing just amplified exactly that. And the same was true for the next two stages living and conscious.
While these stages and substages amplify all the other results of your cultivation, you could have achieved six stages at newcomer and it would trump five stages with all five substages, though the requirements also spiked, as the foundation was missing. There were more possible examples and combinations, but it was still the truth, that ninety nine point nine percent of people did not even reach five stages with five substages.
This consequently meant, that I could skip the last two stages, though I did not even play with that thought, even as I failed again and again at living newcomer. Due to my previous solid foundation, I had abysmal requirements if you compared mine with other cultivation techniques, but I did not even come close to calculating and finding the very first substage of another fourteen I had before me. This naturally meant, that the benefits of the substages would be that much better, but it was complicated.
The problem were not my arithmancy skills luckily, as they had developed splendidly along the way. I was missing high level knowledge, ideas, applications of already existing skills and similar. I had abused intent infusion to hell and back, but that would no longer cut it, neither would rebuilding or replacing older building blocks.
One of the common ones for tiers like this was tainting the energy body with your aspect. It was called attunement and used the origin of your aspect to improve certain qualities of the energy body. An aspect of languages was sadly not really useful for that and would hinder me in the long run, though an aspect of mana would be perfect and I would not even think about doing it. This was also the reason that elite organizations specifically or only recruited certain aspects, as it was a requirement for their cultivation techniques, though for the most it would only be needed in later stages and not in the very first one. There were still huge requirements for even this common approach, as you needed to be able to physically manifest your aspect to taint your energy body, as it was done through simple, rough exposure to the aspect over long durations of time.
Another similar application of this was to let the aspect of another person tait your energy body, though that also had similar downsides, as the taint would no longer grow with your aspect and would consequently be fixed at that level.
A completely different approach would be to concentrate on multiple energy bodies, which would also be part of my approach, though I wanted to combine it with one of my previous ideas to somehow bring my animagi forms into the mix. I already had an idea which was close to the requirements if I could believe my calculations, but a bit of it failed. It consisted of bonding one energy body to one animagus form with matching attributes.
And let me be honest, even if that was enough, I myself was not satisfied with this, which brings me to the final solution to this puzzle. Sixteen days were needed, but I had finally found the perfect balance. It was to designate a main energy body per type of energy and to create child energy bodies for all of these main bodies for every single animagi form, tethering them to the form itself instead of my human one. This was not as easy as it sounded, as I first needed to isolate my energy bodies to my human body.
I tried to incorporate the matching attributes idea with the child bodies, having one main child body and other sub child bodies, but sadly this made the result worse as it was not in the nature of energy bodies to have a main one. They all had the same permissions in a manner of speaking.
This may sound simple, easy or weak, but it was neither of them. I could approximately multiply my storage capacity of affected energies by the amount of my animagi forms divided by two, currently 3.5, which also meant that I needed to build twenty one child energy bodies.
Living entry was surprisingly easy to calculate and find the idea. The only caveat of it was, that doing it would be even harder, as I needed to arrange the energy bodies in a stable expandable structure, which went infinitely near the forth dimension. Most humans and even mages did not really grasp three dimensions, not to speak of the difficulty to even scratch on a fourth one, most do not even try it due to the absurdity of it.
But I am and always will be a perfectionist, idiot and just plain weird. This is to say that I will not let these things stop me, though the generalization of the later substages and stages will be a pain in the ass. Anything considered it was still good progress.
Now back to Gabrielle. She was in a constant state of waking up and crashing again and while I could not say that I had no ideas why that was, any of them were not in my purview and ability to fix or dampen. While she remained unconscious there were other changes though.
For one, her bloodline mutated, again. Gabrielle was either the luckiest person to be alive or had some gene defect which makes it easier for a bloodline to mutate and in the best case it is a defect which only allows positiv or neutral changes, though that was questionable at best as I only had a sample size of two.
To put this weirdness into perspective, a single bloodline, with which I mean any and all people who are part of it in even the most minute ways, does not mutate or only a rare few times every century or so, not to speak of a single person having two mutations in the span of five to six years. Especially as prominent bloodlines have a population of thousands while the more common and propagated bloodlines numbered in the millions if not billions, as simply being human you already had a bloodline. Weak and useless yes, but technically you had a human bloodline, such as the veela had a veela bloodline, though those base bloodlines depend heavily upon different species and humans got the bad end of the stick.
We did have other advantages though. Easy and fast reproduction, versatility, stature, physiology and most importantly the weak and useless human bloodline. It was a near perfect blank slate, which meant that a positive mutation of the base bloodline in normal human beings was more possible than for other species who already had a better bloodline. This does not mean that it is easier, as the base bloodline of us humans is extremely stable, and we need a powerful catalyst to try to force a mutation, advancement or improvement. It could be stress, fatigue, happiness, torture, a potion or alchemic product. Anything really.
–– Gabrielle Delacour POV ––
Waking up.
Worsening headaches.
Passing out.
That was my daily live for months, after the first time on the Hogwarts express at the start of the winter break. The timeframes between consciousness and unconsciousness varied, slowly getting better the longer the current situation continued.
At the start, I could neither move nor think. Through repeated practice I was slowly able to fall into a meditative state, which was a relieve. I still couldn't move, but now I could at least think and comprehend what was happening. I was bombarded with information about mana, its density, location, amount, state, type, tier, inhabitant and every other information which was only vaguely connected to mana itself.
After a relatively short time I also understood what had happened the first time, before I fell unconscious. I could sense the mana signatures of humans, animals, plants and wards, I was even able to categorize them by species, bloodline and age, though I was missing the information about how to differentiate between those, as the information about what is what is currently missing. I had sensed Clara Ali Ollivander, a whole ocean separating us but I had still sensed her familiar mana and in my panic apparated there due to a rare bout of accidental magic. It was luck mostly, as I realized that the wards next to her could or rather should have overshadowed any mana signature nearby due to the extreme amounts of mana they house and passively radiate.
The amount of information was the biggest problem in the end though, as coupled with the immense range, it flooded my brain, resulting in my current situation. My occlumency was good, but not anywhere near that good yet sadly. The solution finally came as I figured out how to limit, suppress and decrease the range of this ability and also filter a bit of the information. But it was also the dumbest thing I had done till date, as my whole being protested due to the limited range, a huge discomfort overcoming me before I could even get near a manageable range. So I focused more on the filtering aspect and I struck gold as it was possible to filter out anything. After realizing that, it was as easy as flipping a mental switch and nothing. No more information reached me, as I filtered out anything which might get to me.
Then, I moved a little bit, lost concentration and lost consciousness, again. So the next time I woke up I resolved myself to practice it until it became an instinct, to change the standard option you might say and after another month I was finally free.
The future would not be easy, as I needed to learn how to handle this gift, though it currently felt like a curse.