5 Synergies

As one class ended, the bell ringing in the background, I pondered how to best utilize my abilities. Almost on autopilot, I got up and began to converse quite casually with my classmates and friends, listening to them as they wished me happy birthday and asked me what my plans were, but the primary train of thought that I was focused on was one concerning my powers.

Knowledge of my powers filled my mind, as readily as my own memories did. I could sense every nuance of my powers, feel every "inch" of them, so-to-speak. I had exact knowledge of them, and an awareness that they grew with strength as I used them, that my mutations made them incredibly powerful both in scale and in scope. If I used my powers, they'd grow, thanks to powerful mutations such as my fourth tier "Hypermutation" mutation, as well as my second tier "Adaptability" mutation. All I had to do to strengthen my powers was use them, to work them out like they were muscles.

I possessed a number of abilities from each of the power sets that the system had informed me about. Aside from having the full tier-one suite of black power set powers, I had a number of abilities from each of the sets that the system had mentioned to me.

With the green power set I gained an innate understanding and ability to use the forms of magic known as the enchantment and transmutation "schools" of magic. That referred to magic that allowed me to do things like fool the senses or weave illusions, for enchantment, and magic that allowed me to transform non-living-things into other sorts of non-living-things.

I was by no means a master magician in these schools of magic, but I was surprisingly skilled and my mind was filled with dozens of beginning to intermediate level spells in both schools, none of which required anything more than verbal, somatic, or in rare cases, both, components.

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Magic was interesting to me. I now possessed an innate knowledge of it that to a reasonably nerdy guy like myself was enough to fill me with an insatiable curiosity for it.

As both a changeling and someone who possessed an innate affiliation with the green power set, arcane wisdom was embedded within my genetics. Occult wisdom filled every cell of mine, and gave me a strange, natural ability to use magic that had never manifested before today, but it was one that I was now fully conscious of.

I could freely utilize magic, and all of the spells I knew of at the moment required little more than an utterance or a flick of the wrist to be used. The two forms of magic I could use were ones that were quite interesting to me, though I would have also liked to have some sort of healing ability if I was being completely honest. That said, the spells I possessed were already surprisingly potent and more than capable of allowing me to have some fun if utilized properly.

I had an internal store of magical energy, and whenever I used any sort of magic aside from bare basic magic some of that energy was depleted. Over time that energy would be regenerated, and its speed of regeneration was determined by my intelligence and wisdom, as was the actual total amount of magical energy I possessed. I could also pour any loose attribute points I possessed into my pool of internal mana, for lack of a more original term, to supercharge both it and its rate of regeneration, temporarily, and then when the temporary boost had expired I would still have a small boost leftover, forever.

The list of spells I could make use of at the moment wasn't small. I could do things that ranged from shapeshifting, either myself or someone else, for up to an hour, to speaking to animals and plants, to creating moderately complex illusions that could even have actual effects on those who fail to realize that they are illusions. I could also touch and transform non-living things with ease, or affect nature by using magic that allowed me to give myself the ability to do things like breathe fire or acid at will.

One of the more fun abilities I possessed was the power to use magic to do things that would otherwise require higher tier superpowers for me to do. I could, for example, turn myself invisible at will, which, if combined with something like the "Empty Presence" power, would be invaluable for quickly gathering points, and wouldn't have otherwise been an option for me aside from through the "Chameleon" power I possessed, which wasn't true invisibility.

Curiously, some spells could be resisted by those with strong enough wills. Fortunately for me, I could easily drain someone of their will, and though I wasn't about too unless extraordinary conditions applied, having that ability at my disposal was excellent.

As I made my way to my next class, I eyed one of the students who was also walking to class. He was one of my underclassmen, and was a junior. His wisdom score was a decent one, at eleven, and I knew, assuming that something analogous to the rules of "Druids and Demons" applied still, that that meant that if I tried to enchant him he'd have no real edge when it came to resisting the spell's effects. The reality was that if I tried to ensorcel someone who wasn't a peak human they'd struggle to resist it, since they'd have to resist magic cast by someone whose mind was many degrees above theirs in terms of complexity.

I could rely on my mind usually overwhelming a regular person, though I also knew that someday other super-powered beings would show up. When they did, using enchantment magic on them would probably require careful planning, unless I was a truly ascendant magic user.

As I strode to class I activated something that wasn't a simple spell but was rather a manual activation of one of my other powers. A simple fire appeared within my almost closed hand, a strange event which represented an activation of one of my more intriguing abilities: pyrokinesis. I could control fire at will, and could even generate it from nothing.

The fire warmed the inside of my hand, and after a simple moment I utilized transmutation to transform the small fire in my hand into a pencil, while allowing my super durability to take the heat of the flame and make it painless for me. My magic poured over the fire and altered it, showcasing the unique synergy that came with utilizing powers across types to interact with each other.

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My power over fire, and powers over light, darkness, and air, came from the orange power set. I was not just pyrokinetic, I was also lumokinetic, umbrakinetic, and aerokinetic. I couldn't yet control water or earth but I knew that in time I'd be able to do that too.

Fortunately for me, my ability to manipulate things like fire, light, darkness, and air, gave me potent leeway in a number of ways. I could attack or defend using those four things as easily as I could use the air to enhance my movements, or even grant others something loosely resembling flight. As I strode into my next class, a mathematics one, I conjured a breeze that followed me even as the door closed behind me. It made me smile to so freely and subtly use my powers.

Simple manipulations of the aforementioned elements were entirely possible for me, and with the ability to control four potent things like fire, darkness, light, and air, I had an enviable power set with just that. As the teacher for my mathematics class began to lecture us I began to "take notes", listening to him and copying his instructions with ease.

My fingers moved as fast as he spoke, instantly copying his every word, thanks to my superspeed combining with my intensely sharpened mind. That said, I knew everything he knew about math anyway so it wasn't like I really needed notes. I was mostly doing it so that I wouldn't get called out in front of the class. Unfortunately for them, others were.

As it so happened, some of my classmates had not yet seen my transformation. They were unlucky and got a front-row view of it, distracting them from the teacher who definitely noticed that they weren't listening to him. I slightly altered his senses and his perception, combining illusion magic with subtle mental prods and pokes, so that he never really noticed me aside from the fact that I was "diligently" doing my work and listening to his lecture.

Other students in the class were also subtly touched by my mental-powers, as over the course of the class I felt like boosting my own popularity. I made use of my "Natural Harmony" mutation and subtly lit up my desk and myself as if I were some sort of anime protagonist, as well as made use of the more fun effects of "Airbrush" to make myself smell spectacular. Other students in the class found themselves admiring me, and looking at me wistfully, while I myself pretended to focus on the class.

The class was a fun distraction, since I made use of my powers to cleverly pass the time. It was also nice to use powers that were capable of being much more disruptive or overtly powerful in subtle and distracting ways, rather than flexing my own powers in more direct ways. I was also cleverly going about eventually making it easier for me to gather points in the future by making more people want to be my friends.

When the sixth bell of the day, the one marking the beginning of the lunch period for the upperclassmen, rang I smiled and closed my notebook. As I did so, one of the more curious powers I possessed entitled "Psychometry" activated. I ignored the sudden surge of information that filled my mind about the notebook.

"Psychometry" was one of my more fascinating psychic powers. With it, anyone or anything I touched or that touched me filled my mind with information about itself or themself. With it, even the slightest touch of something like a desk or a pencil that I hadn't created filled my mind with visions of the past and glimpses of those who had sat where I had sat, or written with the same pencils as me.

When my classmates touched me, whether because they bumped into me by accident, or were greeting me with a hug or fist bump, my mind was filled with facts about them and visions from their past. Fortunately for me, my earlier tests of my powers resulted in me already knowing everything about them.

Right as I began to to head to the door a number of my more direct classmates began to approach me and ask me about where I'd be going to get lunch, or if they could see my notes from class, all of which brought a smile to my face.