I strode down the street, a casually confident look on my face as I did so. I was now a, perhaps conceptually so, handsome man who radiated a dense air of masculinity. It felt a bit odd to be so powerful in a world that I now knew was far from alone in all of existence as far as having life went. 

I was filled with an eerie amount of knowledge concerning the innermost workings of reality and that knowledge was both exciting and humbling. I had even met an alien, my benefactor, who had confirmed to me that he was not from Earth and was from a whole different multiverse than this one. I was also filled with an eerie amount of power, power which grew with every passing second. 

One of the strangest aspects of my newfound might was that I still wasn’t fully “On” yet. My power, as vast as it was, was not fully activated at the moment. I could sense some of the essences within me taking a little bit to fully… digest, for lack of a better term. Some of them were ones that required me to make a creature of my own design, such as the essence that granted me lordship over a strain of vampirism, and one that made me a dragon. 

My mysterious benefactor had given me a rather cryptic hint about those two. He had told me I’d be best served if I went online and looked up a pair of Choose Your Own Adventures with ambitious names before I went ahead and made my choices regarding those two essences. The names of the CYOAs, as he called them, were “Sanguinarch Ascension” and “Dragon Lord Ascension”, and he specified that he meant the latest versions. 

Some of the other essences that were still digesting within me were other fairly intense ones. I had imbibed something that was turning me into a “God Emperor of Mankind”, and that granted me mastery over the X-Gene, the strange genetic anomaly that granted Marvel’s mutants their vast array of powers. That second one in particular would grant me new abilities, and would allow me to become a perfect host to the Phoenix Force.

I wasn’t lucky enough to have been hugely into comics growing up but I had seen movies and watched cartoons as a kid. I knew about both the X-Gene and Jean Grey, the other supposedly perfect host for the Phoenix Force. That knowledge was handy, though I had been assured that it wouldn’t be necessary for me since I had drunk an essence. Apparently that meant that what I had done had fiat backing and so the Phoenix Force wouldn’t treat me as it had treated Jean, and would be loyal and kind to me. 

In some cases there were individual parts of “Larger” essences that worked already, such as the essence that granted me control over the X-Gene granting me my pick, at any one time, of five of the powers displayed by any of homo sapien superior mutants in the Marvel comic omniverse. When I imbibed it my mind was automatically granted an encyclopedic and absolute level of knowledge regarding every power possessed by any of the homo sapien superior subspecies of humanity. 

At the moment the five that I picked were a diverse bunch. I had chosen a few of the ones I knew were more reliable and that weren’t granted to me by other powers, such as weather control and the ability to talk to animals. I wasn’t actively utilizing any of my mutant powers, but passively I could distantly hear various animals communicating with each other. 

My senses were immensely powerful and they were sensitive enough to grant me a high level of awareness of everything in my immediate vicinity. One of the essences I had chosen to consume was one that granted me godhood and unsurprisingly that one was not yet finished turning me into a fully non-human being but it had progressed enough that my senses were those of a deity. 

I could hear everything around me perfectly to a range of about one mile solely through my odd godhood, and thanks to the might of the other essences around me the full extent of my sensory range was about another mile added onto that. My other senses were equally as sensitive, though in the case of sight I couldn’t passively see through solid objects. 

Beyond just my ability to hear everything, which was one of the least interesting things this sort of godhood was granting me, I could also understand every language spoken by creatures of human-level intellect. 

I heard a distant conversation that I recognized as occurring in German but to me the words sounded like they were spoken in perfect English. I heard them talking about the quality of their breakfast and I listened idly to the conversation while I kept walking down the street. 

The local Barnes and Noble was not far from my current location. I knew that the second I reached it I’d be able to effectively cheat my way to an astounding array of newfound skills and abilities because of one essence in particular. Despite the fact that that essence would be handy for me in the future, one of my favorite essences at the moment was not that particular one.

Some of the essences I had imbibed were weird even among the countless vials of life-changing liquid I had chugged. One of the more quirky essences was the “Essence of the Machine”, which in all honesty was one of my favorite ones, even among the ones that made me an inhuman entity and fully stripped me of the weaknesses of being a human being. 

At the moment I could sense a gigantic amount of information all at once, due in no small part to the aforementioned robotic essence. It had transformed me utterly into an unbelievably powerful machine, and that came with a number of benefits. One passive benefit was allowing me to detect and make sense of any sort of signal, along any and every frequency. 

I silently listened to the frequencies I could hear and in doing so I heard several conversations and songs being played all at once. The only reason I was able to listen to all of these conversations at once was due to another of the benefits given to me by the machine essence; the ability to have multiple streams of consciousness operating at the same time. 

I didn’t say a word as I made my way to the distant Barnes and Nobles. I just listened to the world around me, and I allowed my mind to make sense of hundreds of conversations I could hear. I heard phone calls, conversations between parents, whispers shared by lovers, and much, much more. Had I been a lesser being than I was now the amount of information I was receiving would have surely been too much to make sense of and been able to use, but it wasn’t because I had become something superior to who I had been just hours ago. 

My incredible mind allowed me to silently accept that who I was now was simply superior to who I had been even two hours ago. I was simply beyond who I had been hours ago in every single respect. I didn’t feel a tinge of sadness due to this fact, which was good. I knew that sadness wouldn’t have helped me become greater, which I wanted to do. I wanted to take advantage of my time in this world to continue my upwards ascent as far as power and powers went. 

I mused on that as I made my way into the local Barnes and Noble, a gleaming bookstore deep in the heart of the city. I stepped past the anti-theft devices placed right at the entrance to the store and inhaled as I found myself in a very real treasure trove for me in my current state.

The creature who had just entered the bookstore had a content grin on his face. It was mid-morning on a weekday so the bookstore had relatively few people in it and the former human made his way to the closest set of books he could. 

Right in front of him was a tiny desk where the trending best sellers were placed for the sake of being displayed right at the front of the store. The strange being immediately went up to one of them and lightly placed his finger on the thing.

The mere act of placing his finger on the book caused his mind to race and absorb the contents of the book. Every word of the book was immediately stored in his impossibly elegant and vast mind palace, the metaphorical location in his mind where he stored knowledge, memories, and even secrets and thoughts.

He silently sighed and smiled as he felt his mind racing with the newfound knowledge he was gaining. He kept his face a placid mask as he grew intimately aware of every word on every page of the book he had just absorbed into some sort of impenetrable mental database. A second later he finished processing the book’s contents and chuckled. 

“With a power like this, fiction is very fascinating…” He muttered, very quietly. The book he had just touched was a fictional book for children, and he had just wanted to take this power of his for a test run. 

The power he had just used was a subtle, but a remarkably fascinating one. Thanks to the power of the “Essence of the Scholar” he had the ability to absorb the contents of any book or data storage device with the lightest of touches. In the case of books, this absorption manifested as him effectively downloading the contents of the book to an impossibly vast mental palace in the depths of his mindscape. 

This was an incredible power in a place such as Earth in the year 2022. Not only were there countless books for him to learn from, but data storage devices were also incredibly common as well. A data storage device could be anything from a DVD to a phone’s SD memory card, and most modern cell phones had some sort of memory storage device in them. 

As he fully realized the implications of this incredible power, having actually taken the time to use it, he began to walk the length of the store. He was familiar with his local Barnes and Noble and he knew about the place’s layout. He reserved his original destination for last, and actually chose to start in the section that housed children’s books. 

When he reached the place he turned himself invisible, using one of the powers granted to him by one of the essences he had imbibed. Each time he used a power he grew more comfortable doing so, and he was quite grateful that using any of the powers the beverages had granted him was as simple as willing it so. 

He entered the children’s quarter of the store and began to lightly touch the books in the area. He was indiscriminate when it came to the knowledge he acquired, taking several minutes to casually brush his fingers against even the simplest books he could find. 

The figure strode around the children’s quarter of the store and by the time he was done he had a newfound appreciation for the children’s literature. He found himself a strange expert on such books after all, having absorbed the contents of hundreds of different stories for kids, and so he could feel a sense of familiarity with the expectations of such books. 

Despite his newfound appreciation for the subtleties of kids lit, when he left the place he breathed a grateful sigh. He remained invisible and continued to place his finger on the spines of books as he made his way up towards the store’s bathroom and touched books that were written in Spanish and other non-English languages commonly spoken in the United States. 

He did not enter the bathroom, no longer needing to. Once he was done with the non-English books he walked towards the nearest section of the store; shelves of cookbooks and other skill-based books. As he began to touch them he felt his mind filling with useful knowledge, though in the case of the cookbooks their usefulness was lesser than others, since he had consumed essences which granted him absolute skill over cooking and food.  

The man would spend over ten whole minutes slowly wandering almost the entire length of the store. He methodically explored every inch of the place, dragging his fingertips across the backs of countless books.

By doing this he tremendously expanded the confines of his mind palace and gave himself knowledge of everything from emergency field medicine to theories held by historians on everything from the role of women in ancient Roman society to eidetic memory with regards to interviews journalists had with everyone from former President Trump to the survivors of the horrific attacks conducted against the United States on September 11th, 2001. Eventually, he found himself in front of the section of the store that held the store’s selection of manga, comics, video game guides, and tabletop roleplaying books. 

“Finally…” He uttered, as he gazed firmly at the books on display before him. The treasure trove before the man made him feel incredibly excited, and he stared at the books quite covetously. 

He took a step forward and placed a finger on the spine of one of the volumes of manga, managing to stay patient and save his true reward for last. As he touched the manga, he felt his mind “Download” the contents of it and chuckled. He proceeded to repeat what he had done before throughout the rest of the store, only with the manga, comics, and video game books. 

When he was done with rows and bookshelves of manga, comics, and video game guides, he again found himself in front of the small half-a-shelf of books for role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder. He approached them and began to whisper quietly, as he gazed at the books. 

“I’ve earned this…” He whispered, a bright smile on his face. He saw everything from a Player’s Handbook for Dungeons and Dragons to the Ultimate Magic book which was a sourcebook expanding the magical system of Pathfinder’s first edition. He reached out and touched the Player’s Handbook and froze as the knowledge contained within the book filled his mind. 

He was still for a second while his mind danced with newfound knowledge and his body began to glow with new and terrifying arcane might. He shuddered as he felt his power increasing significantly. When he regained control of his body, he began to quietly laugh and he eagerly used both of his hands to double the speed at which he touched the various books before him. 

He lightly touched everything from Pathfinder’s multiple monster manuals to a number of Starfinder’s sourcebooks. Each book he touched expanded not only his mind but also his abilities, doing something similar to what had happened to him when he was in the fiction sections of the store’s areas devoted to children, young adults, and adults. In every case he had touched at least a few books which expanded his magical arsenal and gave him terrifying new powers he’d eagerly use in the days to come. 

“Oh yeah… This power is the real deal!” He uttered, quietly, as he felt his ability to use the arcane arts tremendously expanding. He was also experiencing something common to jumpers; his first bouts with the might of the seven deadly sins. He was experiencing both pride and greed in this moment, and he felt himself wanting to grow in arcane power further still. 

The smile on his face was radiantly stunning, the smile a divine being would give to someone he loved. And the joy he was feeling would have been palpable had anyone been able to sense him. The young man was experiencing perhaps the most intense joy he had ever felt, and he felt the desire to utilize his magic grow ever stronger the more magic he learned.