As I mentally examined my new list of spells I willed the creation of a new part of my mind-palace. This part was simple; it was a library of sorts, devoted purely to my expansive list of spells.
Creating this place was instantaneous, and all it took was for me to want it to be created. Once I had willed it into being I partitioned off a stream of thought to focus exclusively on it, even while I kept my hand on the last of the books I had touched.
The catalog of spells at my disposal was gigantic. I also possessed a vast amount of arcane energy flowing through every cell in my body, the fuel I’d need to consume to use any of the spells I wanted to warp reality with.
I had a perfect awareness of my body and the functions of the few things within me that I still possessed after being turned into a machine. These rare few things were objects such as the strange supernatural energies organ that was continuously producing the energies with which I could change reality, and a few other such parts of my newfound internal anatomy.
My sharpened and perfected mind allowed me to effortlessly maintain countless trains of thought, though at the moment I was only maintaining two. The first train of thought was my “main” one, the most conscious, active, and powerful train of thought in my mind. The second train was the one that focused on magic, sorting through the countless spells I now had at my disposal.
My sharpened intellect and analytical skills allowed me to come to many important conclusions even as I studied the magic I had at my disposal. The magic that now followed through my veins was no joke, and I immediately realized that in the days to come magic would likely prove itself to be one of my greatest routes to power.
As I knew from the vast list of spells that my enhanced mind was currently sorting through I possessed the ability to alter reality in a range of ways even discounting the myriad of powers I had acquired through the consumption of various essences. I could do things that ranged from summoning tidal waves to summoning creatures from universes very far from this one.
When I considered the powers I wielded thanks to the other essences I had consumed that weren’t related to magic I felt confident. I had become a powerful all-rounder who just happened to be better at magic, for now, than I was at other things. I wasn’t a simple glass cannon of a mage like a D&D wizard might have been, I was a fierce and capable warrior who wielded the powers of magic as skillfully as I wielded a sword.
As I gazed at the books, stranger changes began to occur to me then even the ones I had already experienced. I blinked and saw a list of numbers hovering over all of the books in front of me, and over the other objects as well. The numbers were followed by a series of symbols, some were as simple as dollar signs and others were stranger things that I only recognized because of the intervention of my newfound powers.
I was witnessing the effects of “The Essence of the Merchant”, a strange essence that helped me become a skilled participant in capitalism, if I wanted to be. Its abilities were linked to purchasing and selling things, and understanding the value of the objects around me.
The essence was a fascinating one, but it seemed strange to focus on the ownership of a thing when thanks to the power of “The Essence of the Thief” I had a seemingly unlimited ability to steal things.
I wordlessly took my hand off of the last book I was holding onto and chuckled. The powers I now possessed were intensely varied and applicable to an astounding array of areas, all I needed to do was figure out what I wanted to do with them while I was here on the Earth of my birth.
I began to walk to the cafe, and as I did a small part of me wondered what I ought to do next. As I was thinking about that I heard a familiar voice begin to speak to me, one that made me grimace when I heard it.
“Andrew, if you’re thinking about what to go ahead and do there are many things that should be on your list. First of all, you should definitely go and pull out your phone so you can read over the Choose Your Own Adventures that I mentioned.” Ben telepathically muttered. I listened to the figure and pulled out my phone so that I could find the strange storytelling device he had told me to find.
I wanted greater power and this promised greater power. Finding the first document I opted to search for, the “Dragon Lord Ascension” one was quite easy. It was created by someone named Troy, and it was a beautiful document filled with pictures of dragons performing incredible feats. Beyond that though the actual feats described in the story were beyond any sorts of feats I had ever heard dragons performing.
The dragons in the choose your own adventure I was reading through had the ability to destroy universes with their elemental breaths. They had the power to roar so explosively that their roars could be heard across the vacuum of space, and they could resurrect entire planet’s worth of dead people and other deceased life with ease. As I read the document, I heard the voice of my benefactor whisper to me again.
“Incredible aren’t they? That Troy lad is something else…” The man whispered, openly admiring the author of the document. As I continued to study the document I studied my surroundings and noticed something odd. Everything around me was frozen!
When I noticed this, due to the fact that I couldn’t hear anything but my own thoughts and the sounds of my movement, Ben began to speak again.
“I’ve frozen time to give you time to fully acclimate to your new reality. I want you to do a number of things for me, including… ‘filling out’ that choose your own adventure, and the Sanguinarch one.” Ben explained. I could hear the smile in his voice.
“By drinking the essences you’ve begun down a path and you are unable to turn back. You can never return to the life of normalcy you once lived. It is important that you grow comfortable with your true self, your new self, and that you prepare yourself for the days to come.” Ben revealed, cryptically.
I knew that he was right. I… didn’t know how to feel about the fact that he was correct, but I knew that he was. Accepting that, even though I wasn’t fully sure how to feel about it, was an easy thing for me to do. Once more I found myself grateful for the mighty effects of my expanded intellect.
As I stared at the document in front of me I watched my phone begin to glow. And then, just a split second later, the images and words on the screen in front of me began to float upwards off of the screen and into the air in front of me. I stared at the images and text, wide-eyed and alarmed.
“Andrew my boy… One of the things I really like about you is your ambition. You opted to drink every essence I had on display. And that move is going to have… a lot of effects on you and your journey. I bring this up because the effects that that will have on you are beginning right now.” Ben warned me, ominously.
“One of the essences you drank was ‘The Essence of the Dragon’, and that essence is why you are staring at a dragon lord building choose your own adventure. But the thing that really matters is that you drank ‘The Essence of Overwhelming, Infinite, Cosmic Might’. That special essence gives you the power to cheese these choose your own adventures.” Ben revealed, and the tone of his voice indicated that he was praising me.
“By drinking that you gave yourself the power to have infinite resources in any choose your own adventure that you get to apply to your jumpchain. Choose your own adventures are different from jumps, but right now we’re gonna stick with choose your own adventures. Andrew, you can go through and pick any and all the options you want to pick in this document, and in the ‘Sanguinarch’ document.” Ben informed me, praising me. And he wasn’t even done talking!
“I’ll freely admit I like your greed, my little jumper. That’s the sort of spirit that changes the omniverse. It takes greed like that to really seize power. And I’m even more excited to watch you really relish this moment.” Ben said, with a hint of pride in his voice. And with that he stopped talking, to allow me to really enjoy this moment of triumph.
I would take what I knew would have been several minutes to create the most powerful dragon lord possible. I gave my dragon lord alt-form, a term that I knew made sense due to the power of the “Essence of the Jumper” flowing inside of me, the most power possible.
I freely and greedily selected all eight of the draconic elements, I made my dragon lord self have the aspect of the Mythic Wyrm, and I gave myself every single dragon power at the highest possible tier every time.
I maximized all aspects of my “Hoard”, and even maxed out all of the areas where “Lord points” would have been the currency spent. That meant that I had the power to dominate dragons, and could sire my own draconic half-breed descendants, as well as could recruit an infinite number of dragons to join my horde of servants and worshipers.
The one weird thing I couldn’t do was fill out the section of the document that talked about allies I could have recruited, or the part of the document that talked about goals. That was a bit disappointing, but that disappointment vanished the very next second when the images surrounding me disappeared and were replaced with two more grim sets of images and text.
One of the sets of images talked about an “Archdemon Ascension”, and as I studied it I realized that it was done by the very same person who had written the “Dragon Lord Ascension” document. I smiled as I studied it and began to fill it out. I also created another train of thought to fill out the one for Sanguinarchs, which I immediately realized were to vampires what gods were to living mortals.
Reading both documents at the same time was a strange experience, but one I was able to get used to quite easily. As I read them I sailed through them, quietly selecting the maximum tier of every single option available to me, from choosing to master all eight of the deadly sins to maximizing every one of the five fonts of essence.
It was only when I was done with both of those documents, barring the sections I couldn’t do which in both cases were the sections for me to select allies and for me to customize a lair in Hell, as well as the parts of both sections that outlined goals.
“And now… One final gift.” Ben whispered, as both screens faded out of existence and were replaced by one larger screen. This screen was simply entitled “Ascension Meta”, and it was mostly blacked out, unlike the other documents I had seen.
I mentally scrolled through it, until I reached the part of the document entitled “Cosmopotence” which listed a formidable array of abilities that those who could wield these powers could eventually reach if they trained hard enough and was the only section not blacked out. I chuckled as I imagined having to train these powers to the extent listed out here, and instead began to purchase the powers like I was a child who didn’t understand how currency worked.
With each purchase I felt my powers growing greater, and I laughed when I felt the power that flowed through me begin to stabilize. As I laughed I heard Ben chuckle as well.
“And there you are… A very powerful toddler.” He remarked, into my mind. I could hear the note of amusement in his voice.
“You should know that as powerful as you are, in some settings you would be but one member of a vast community of incredibly powerful beings. I didn’t even give you the strongest powers from the Troy-verse.” The man informed me, causing me to exhale in sudden surprise. I was an unbelievably powerful being, effortlessly surpassing the vast majority of popular characters in fiction, so the knowledge that I had peers and even other superiors aside from Ben somewhere in the cosmos was humbling.
“That said, you do have some special gifts… The essences I gave you are all incredibly powerful. Some of them even interacted with you acquiring your Troy-verse powers, like the ‘Essence of the Demon Emperor’ giving you the power to acquire the ‘Archdemon Ascension’ CYOA.” Ben added, answering questions that I had but hadn’t had a chance to articulate.
Several things were all linked together. The Sanguinarch CYOA had been given to me so that I could use it to design a vampire breed for the “Essence of the Vampire Lord” effects, such as how the “Essence of the Dragon” was the font for the “Dragon Lord Ascension” CYOA to be received by me and promptly filled out. I was now overflowing with power, and I was eager to use it but before I could I was slowed down by none other than Ben.
“Whoa now, I know that you’re excited to get going but I need to talk to you before you go and start mischief.” He cautioned me. He did not strike me as the sort to relish being a voice of reason, so hearing him say that actually did make me stop and listen.
“I need to talk to you about godhood. Because godhood is… a lot, and you’re the sort of person who wants power so you’d be smart to stop and listen to me.” Ben continued, his words striking a cord deep within me. I waited for him to continue, ready and even eager to learn from him before I fully went out on my own and began to change my fate.
“You imbibed a number of very powerful essences related to godhood and before you do anything I want to make sure that you are loaded with more than just the knowledge given to you by the notes I created for the essences. You may have an unlimited mind, but you do not have unlimited experience, so are you ready to listen to me and hear what I have to say?” Ben asked, earnestly beseeching me to listen.
I was still as the weight of his words dawned on me. And then, after giving myself a second to ponder them, I nodded. I was ready to learn.
damn if only i have the essence of wealth i would give u my full support but sadly reality like always is bi+ch!