Dana Wallens.

As soon as I got back, I got to work on rearming myself.

The first thing I made?

My trusty 9 gauge laser pistol.

Scrounging up parts from local hobby shops, electronics stores and amazon warehouses, I recreated my basic toolset. Except this time, it was better, compact and higher efficiency than the first time around when I made it in Heroes.

Why?

Simple.

Now I had technokinesis!

Don't have some rare materials?

Hack into the manufacturer or suppliers systems and either order them to a select location or just steal them mid transport.

Don't have a nuclear battery?

Walk right into a nuclear power plant, takeover their systems and charge it all up.

And on my way out, wipe all traces of me being there.

Easy as pie.

Within the week I had a basic lab set up with a laser gun, drones, even a healing serum tank and portal gun.

All without a shred of worry that there could be a leak.

Beyond the vision of man and god.

How?

For that, we need to go back a week to the day I got the incubus tail.

I alighted at the Chester Public Library, and with a thought, scanned through their whole catalogue as I walked in, looking for the book that held the secret to controlling the source of all magic.

A book with no listed author and a very generic name.

The Tale Of The Seven Keys.

A book that jumpstarted a quest for the seven magical keys that can lock and unlock the Wellspring, the source of all magic in the Magicians multiverse.

It did so through a backdoor to magic built into the most secure prison in the multiverse.

Castle Blackspire. The prison at the end of the world.

A castle located on the reverse side of Fillory where Old Gods imprisoned their mistakes, the worst and most horrifying monsters to ever be created, including my future target.

The Nameless God.

One of two beings with the power of multiple gods in one body.

Nigh omnipotent and unstoppable, held back only by the prison and it's jailor's ability to keep it entertained.

But that was for later. Way later.

For now, I picked up the book from a dusty, long forgotten corner of the library and walked out, wiping away all traces of me being here, including altering all surveillance footage in the area and the city up to three days in the past.

No one would ever find out I was here unless they used some very rare magic. And even then, I was wearing a mask and a hoodie so they won't recognise me.

I will of course fill in that loophole too as soon as I get filtered, pure magic back.

But till then, this will have to do.

Thankfully, no one was yet looking for the book. Not for another year and a half at least when the Questing Creature, a wish granting whimsical feature of Fillory, The Great Cock Of The Darkling Woods - yes, that's his name, and yes, he looks exactly how you're imagining him, just better dressed - sends our heroes on a quest to return magic to the world. And by then I will have become a god already so no worries.

Still, I will make sure to go to Fillory and shut their mouths tight, just in case, as soon as possible.

I have plans for that too.

For now though, I have one more thing to do.

Right next on my list.

Get me some filtered magic.

An easy thing to do with the chubby little incubus tail in my possession.

Enchant it into a filter and use it like a life straw to suck magic out of the air.

Just one problem.

I don't want to risk it being seen by anyone.

No one can know what and how I did this.

And for that I have to go to a place where no one can find put what I am doing.

And I know just one such place, on the other side of the country.

I hopped back into the cab I had kept waiting and gave it directions to the next stop.

"JFK International please."

I was going to California!

I put on my newly acquired, and modified nekomimi headphones, actual on-brand ones were hella overpriced, and switched to my playlist as a very theme appropriate song began to play.

I smiled, as This Land Is Your Land by Sharon Jones began to play.

"Ladies and gentlemen of whatever fanfiction site this is being posted on, and especially my shitty, most likely neckbearded creator, let's do a little transition montage!"

And with a clap, we were gone.

.

Sacramento, California.

211 Ranch Road.

The home of one Dana Wallens.

Who's Dana Wallens you ask?

Let me introduce you.

Do you remember Reynard The Fox?

Trickster God, does the snuggle struggle with Julia, gets all in with his magic baby batter and makes her all prego with a demigod?

The guy who's divinity I plan to steal first?

Well, let's just say, humping and pumping his load into Julia, that whole ordeal?

Not his first rodeo on Earth.

Once, forty years back in the good ol' 70s, he made his rounds in the magical community.

Same shtick, different time.

Honestly, with all that free love bullcrap they were almost asking for it, but hey, not going to encourage the surprise diddles.

Still a bad thing.

But when you pray to Our Lady Underground, Dread Persephone, what do you expect?

She is the Despoinai.

Dread is her literal first name.

Goddess of the underworld. Wife of Hades.

She's literally associated with death.

Why would you call her to do good and rain milk from the sky and make you shit gold for a week straight?

But still, people do as people will.

And so did one young, little witch.

Dana Wallens, 23.

She prayed, with her little coven.

Knocked on god's door. And someone answered.

Just not the one they wanted.

Reynard The Fox ascended onto Earth, from whatever hellhole he called home and tore through them, flesh and bone, mind, body and soul.

Ripped their hearts out and ate it in front of their dying eyes.

Absolutely brutal.

Dana survived that, but only because she became pregnant with his child, which, not a good thing for a traumatized victim.

She regretted her life choices. Just tried to kill the baby. But she couldn't.

Not when there was a chance she could banish the bastard from Earth forever.

Undo her mistake.

Atone for the suffering she had caused.

And she found it.

A method to banish him.

You see, the birth or death of a demigod or god, or sufficiently powerful being, causes a sort of reaction. Huge. Magical. Big energy.

Using that moment, the moment she gave birth, she used her own blood to banish Reynard from Earth.

A massive phenomenon.

Caused wildfires and tornados and a continental wave of shitstorms and natural disasters.

That's just how big the magic was.

But she did it.

And that was 40 years ago.

She safely delivered the baby, hid all traces of it's existence, got it adopted into a good family and wiped herself from the map, settling down in a small suburb to live out her life.

But of course that was all undone by Julia and her friends getting their big, sweaty paws on the summoning ritual.

And the rest is history. Repeating itself.

Julia gets snuggle struggled. Ends up pregnant and broken. Tries to kill Reynard. Strikes a deal with Persephone at the last moment to spare his life in exchange for godhood.

Something I won't allow this time.

But that's not important right now.

What's important is how Dana managed to hide from all that godly retribution.

How she avoided getting smote.

The same way I intend to hide my spellcasting.

A haxenpaxen.

A magical beast that stinks. Bad.

But in terms of what it gives off magically?

It's even worse.

Even gods won't touch it's smelly, disgusting aura.

They don't even look at it, instinctually.

And I can use that to hide my works.

If they won't even bother looking, I don't need to hide shit!

I checked the address again and walked over to the house, hand to the bell.

Suddenly, I heard the familiar click of a cocking hammer as the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of my head.

"Who are you and how did you find me?" A voice asked.

What sort of magician uses a gun?

A well prepared one!

Which is good for her but....

I gulped heavily and raised my hands in the air.

Time for some more Bullshit no Jutsu.

"Well...hear me out. Reynard is back." I lied.

________________

The extra chapter for 400 powerstones as promised.

A question.

Did anyone else get a weirdly large amount of powerstones today cuz I went from 368 to 400 in like an hour (4 to 6.30 pm) which doesn't happen often.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate it but just asking. It was all daoistxyz sort of accounts. So is Webnovel running a promotion or something or is it a system error or....?

Anyways, thanks for the powerstones!

Also, Magicians season 4 ep 10, the songs slap!

Especially the Eliot spirit guide dance sequence.

Shit had me singing karaoke with it.

Go to youtube and look it up. there's a cut of it.

It was sublime, 3 minutes. Straight up Bollywood-ed their stuff.

And yes, he looked dazzled lol.

And then, I was watching Magicians season 4 ending and boy is it great at making you weep like a bitch.

I didn't cry, obviously, but it was emotional and I think a lot of people must have cried on that epsiode cuz it was heavy emotional beats all the way down my dudes.

I know how I'm ending the Magicians arc now.

Just one question for that, if you haven't guessed what I'm thinking.

Do you want a heroic sacrifice? With a twist.

or

Do you want a heroic sacrifice with a plan behind it? Like with the Lady Death double cross thingy?

or

Do you want a heroic sacrifice of clone but true body of mc wakes up and finishes the old gods off?

or

Do you want MC to be right about everything and a 'plan falls into place, 4D chess montage' as the ending?

Vote!

Thanks for reading!

See you later.

There are 4 extra chapters available on Pat-reon right now, including a Pat-reon exclusive interlude, so go check it out if you want to read ahead or support me!

www.pat.reon.com/goldenfingers