2 The first ritual

"Don't forget to take your inhaler with you," the kindly old matron says while she takes care of one of the younger kids, "and don't over work yourself you hear!"

It has been about two years since I awoke in this world in the body of one Noah Adams.

"Don't worry sister Lawson, I've got my inhaler on me" I reassure the elderly lady, grabbing my crutches as I did, "and it's only a small walk. I'm pretty sure I can do those."

Waking up in the body of an eight year old had been quite the experience, only made worse by the fact that the eight year old in question was both a cripple and had a whole host of medical issues.

"I know dear, but ever since you've started these walks your health has only gotten worse."

I had accepted that I was probably going to suffer when I had chosen the plethora of diseases and injuries this body suffered in an attempt to afford the good perks, I had been expecting it even. However, it had still been incredibly jarring to no longer be able to walk properly or being unable to breathe after heavy activity.

"I'll make sure not to push myself too much," I say as I leave the orphanage and head not for the park, but my secret 'hideout' in the nearby woods, something I had been doing since I was reborn in this body.

"Why do you have a secret hideout in the woods and how do you have a hideout in the woods?" if I had an invisible audience, I'm sure those are the questions they'd be asking.

My answer to that would, of course, be to tell this hypothetical audience and that I found an old treehouse in the woods that I made my secret hideout and then tell you about the three things that I got from the omnipotent me.

Magic, prodigious talent in rituals and an ever-upgrading book on 'basic' rituals. Those were the three things I had taken all the health complications for.

Now this hypothetical audience, upon hearing about my choice, might then ask me, "why did you decide to get not one but two, probably expensive, ritual perks."

To that I'd tell them the description I got for ritual magic. You see, hypothetical audience, rituals were described as a magic that can perform any other type of magic at the caveat that it'll require sacrifices to do those magics.

I repeat, any other type of magic.

Now some may say that it was broken… and I would absolutely agree with them, but it did have its limits. Firstly, and most obviously, rituals required sacrifices that, a lot of the time, were either the death of something or blood, mine or otherwise.

Want to know the time? Sure, it'd only take a couple ounces of blood.

Want to throw an awesome fireball at someone? Sure, just twist the neck of a chicken.

Want to kill someone, who is completely mundane, with only their hair? Sure, just kill a few dozen baby orphans, and pregnant women and the sucker will be dead before morning.

So yeah, problematic. Especially since I wasn't a deranged psychopath.

The second limit, that made it less broken, was the fact that it had an incredibly bad efficiency when it comes to the sacrifice to effect ratio. An example of this is my aforementioned example of requiring about a dozen baby orphans and pregnant women to kill one normal bloke.

This of course is also a problem because, again, I am not a bloody psychopath.

The third, and last, limit is the most annoying one. Rituals, as it just so happens, are complicated as balls and require either extreme understanding to pull off or an intrinsic understanding of the ritual itself and if you mess anything up? Say hello to explosive magical cancer or something.

Obviously, that's also a problem.

Now you, the imaginary audience that I'm definitely not imagining to distract myself from the agony of walking to my hideout in the woods, may again ask, "why, if it has so many limits, did you, the clearly genius individual that you are, get the book on ritual magic."

To that I would say that it was because I also bought the ritual prodigy perk, that cost a literal leg to get, that lets me learn rituals at a ludicrously fast rate and loosens the limits that I have on rituals. Frankly it was probably the only reason I took the health problems, even if I regrated doing so at times.

Really the only thing that was eminently 'not good' with the perks I got, other than the crippling health I had to take to get them, was the fact that the ritual book required me to fully understand, not just memorise, every bit of information in it before it upgraded and let me learn the next 'level' of basic rituals.

Which meant that I spent the majority of the two years I've been Noah learning every petty, useless ritual that the book gave me, and boy… the book have enough useless rituals make me consider gouging my eyes out with a rusty spoon.

Telling the time of day in terms of the position of the sun? I know just the ritual for the job.

Telling the phase of the moon on a cloudless night? Again, I know a ritual just for the job.

You want to know if there was currently an earthquake going on where you were? Well say no more, Noah knows exactly the ritual for it.

Really the only thing I really learnt from learning all these useless rituals was the basics of making my own rituals… but only if they were relatively basic since making rituals wasn't an exact science but more of an art.

"But now that knowledge was finally going to pay off," I mutter to myself as I enter my hideout, taking a puff from my inhaler as I begin to feel tightness in my chest, and lay my eye on my masterpiece.

It had taken almost six months of finding symbolisms, doing abstract philosophy and a lot of trial and error, as well as scrounging money to get the materials, I had finally created the Essence Creation array, named as such because of the similarities between what it creates and the essences I read about in my previous life.

The entire thing consisted of a simple sheet metal plate, that had runes, imagery and ritual circles carved on both sides, with a funnel, that was similarly runed all over, glued to one end and a small blank space on the plate.

The way this haphazard 'device' would work was quite simple.

I'd place an animal on top of the plate, the ritual circles on the plate would slowly kill and 'extract' the essence from the animal, specified by the stuff I'd draw on the blank area in blood. The extracted essence would then drip down into the waiting container, under the funnel, for me to drink and get the (mundane) traits contained in that essence.

All in all, absolutely fool proof and in no way going to fail horribly…

Really though, if it wasn't for my prodigious instincts telling me that it'll be fine I wouldn't go anywhere near the thing.

"But I just can't stand the asthma or the crippling pain or being a literal cripple," I tell the tied-up pigeon, that embarrassingly enough I had nearly died catching, as I put it on the plate and start drawing the symbol for lungs in the blank space with a bloody paint brush.

"Coo! Coo!" the pigeon immediately began writhing in distress once I finished my drawing, causing me to cringe as it began to visibly bloat as it began decomposing while still alive.

Eventually though the cooing stopped as the pigeon finally died and the carvings on the plate and funnel lit up a deep red. Immediately the body of the pigeon practically melted away and before my very eyes a single drop of glowing red liquid dropped into the half-filled water bottle waiting below.

"Well… looks like it worked," I look at the, now faintly red glowing, water in the bottle before shrugging and just chugging the bottle.

The relief I felt in the constant tension in my chest was immediate. While it didn't cure it fully in any sense of the word, I still couldn't help but laugh at the reduction of the burden I've dealt with, and nearly died from on occasions, for the past two years.

However, that good humour soon left me as I looked back at the bones of the bird sitting on the plate.

"I'm going to have to catch a lot more pigeons aren't I?"