Magic

It had been a few days since the last attack by the goblins, and it was officially one month since the start of the 'apocalypse'. Currently, Alan was practicing magic in one of the many empty rooms of the facility. The knowledge he had been able to extract from the goblins wasn't much but it did help.

Firstly, the path that his essence followed when he used magic was indeed a magic pattern. Secondly, the benefits of his bloodstone power 'aura' were much more than he originally thought. For a normal person or monster to use magic they would first need to record a magic pattern, they would then use a chant to push the essence through the pattern which would give the essence its 'commands' which would eventually be activated by a magic circle to form 'magic'.

But with 'aura', Alan didn't need a chant to move the mana or a magic circle to activate it, all he needed was a magic pattern to give the commands to the essence, the magic pattern acted as the 'code' of magic, turning basic essence into a different form that would be used to implement someone or somethings will on to reality, bending it's very fabric.

When a mage was adept enough at a specific spell they would be able to omit the chant as by that point they would be able to use the magic circle to 'pull' their essence through the magic pattern instead of 'pushing' it with a chant.

As for the magic pattern itself, a normal mage would typically need another mage with the pattern already engraved or a special item to engrave the pattern for them, but for Alan, all he needed was the chant and he could 'guide' his essence along the needed path, from their the chant would not be needed anymore as he could freely control his message down the path as he wished.

Currently, he had three more spells engraved that he stole from the shamans, the magic wall the first one had, one that summoned chains to bind the target, and a curse that would weaken the target.

He had been able to reach a certain level of mastery over all four spells, including the first one the essence bullet. For the essence bullet, he could control the speed, power, and direction to a certain degree, for the shield he could control its shape and hardness, for the chains he could move them around somewhat, and for the curse he could control how it would affect its targets, such as speed or strength.

Currently, he is trying to make his own spell using the knowledge he had gained from the shamans and self-study of the spells he had. Making a new spell with no guide was a dangerous matter, if the path, or 'code', was wrong then the spell could go from 'healing' to 'self-destruct', or from 'protect' to 'bind'. So Alan was being very careful as he 'mapped out' the paths he took. when he discovered a new path he would log it in his memory and continue, he was currently at the last stages of making his own spell, its goal was to enhance physical powers, such as speed or strength.

The way he was 'building' the spell was using the reverse of the curse spell, but it was a bit more tricky than that. Through his tests, he found out that opposite paths, such as 'buff' and 'debuff' were typically smaller in structure, so he took the 'curse' path from the shamen spell and reverse-engineered it to find the 'enhance' path, he also found a path that he intended to use in an anti-curse spell later.

After finding the 'enhance' path he needed the 'self' and 'target' paths, as well as the 'control', 'modular', 'limit', and some other paths, if he didn't add those it could become a spell that would use all of his essences to give a very minor increase to his muscle contractivity. He then needed to find the right way to fit these paths together to form the whole 'spell' in a way that it would work and not backfire. Then he needed to adjust the different parts of the spell so it would fit its intended purpose better. Finally, after all this, he would have the framework to build and develop the actual spell pathway. And after that, he would need to make a 'chant' to fit that path so he could actually use the spell he had made. And after that normal mages would need to repeat the whole losses for the magic circle and some more things but luckily Alan could skip that.

From this, you can see the difficulty of making even a simple spell like 'buffing physical capability', so imagine more complex spells like aoe(area of effect), or even an aoe spell that could differentiate targets. But currently, Alan was just finishing up the chant for his self-buffing spell. Standing up he began to chant in an archaic mix of the goblin's language and english.

Soon after a light glow started to form on his body before disappearing, n't reaching, and doing some light exercise he was able to confirm that the spell had worked as intended, it had increased his overall physical capabilities by roughly 20%.

Canceling the spell he tried to use the spell model without the chant, and roughly a second later the spell activated, checking his essence reserves the spell only took 10 to 12 for each cast, not much compared to his total amount. Next, he waited for the spell to wear off to see if's duration, after 15 seconds the effectiveness started to drop and after another 15 its erect was gone entirely, so on average he would spend about 45 essences per minute of keeping the spell active. So with his reserve of 650, he could keep the spell active for just under 15 minutes if he didn't cast any other spells.

Taking into account the 30 or so minutes it took for his reserves of essence to go from 0 to full the final prototype of the spell was acceptable but not desirable, he would focus on increasing the duration and decreasing the cost, and he would also 'upgrade' the other spells he currently had as well.

But for now, there were more important things. Walking down the hallways Alan eventually reached one of the rooms the test subjects would be held in, opening the door he saw Abagail reading a book.

Looking up from the book she said "Hey Alan, here to read a book?" walking over to one of the bean bags, again he had no idea where she got them, Alan sat down "Sure."

Pausing for a second Abigail said, "Wait, really? You're kidding, right? The oh-so-serious you reading a book with me? Really? What next You're gonna tell me the moon is red?" picking up a book titled 'silver knight' he opened it and started reading, "now that I am allowed to move through the facility freely, I thought I might as well join you in reading."

But just as he was about to read the first sentence of the book, a loud boom went off outside. Sighing and putting the book back down Alan said, "It looks like I will have to postpone this reading session for now. I will be back soon." before walking out of the door and over to the commotion, meanwhile Abagail waited for him to leave to the room before moving on to the beanbag Alan was just sitting in before inhaling deeply and sighing in content.