He wanted it to help him learn the Earth Jolt spell that he was practicing, and give guidance that could lead toward a sideways evolution. The idea was this would let it be used completely within the four-minute window.
Under his quick administrations, the spell formed. The rough lines of energy came together in a manner that was close to the wire frames he had memorised, but he made a point of rushing it in order to give fate more chance to act. The lines of energy weren’t precise or nicely-tied, and it was a long way from perfect. As he wove it, a single line of mana randomly peeled away and linked one of the octahedral corners to another right across the otherwise-hollow centre.
These random failures were not unusual, and were often a prelude to the spell forms collapse, but, given his fate use, Tom didn’t correct it. That unusual line was hopefully what he had invested fate into finding. Instead, he noted the exact geometry of the strange connection and the fact that everything else he had constructed matched the wireframes he had memorised.
Satisfied, he infused mana into the spell, wondering whether the dirt in his pocket was going to react more vigorously than usual.
The spell took, and he could feel the energy building. There seemed to be some sort of standing wave within the structure, one that was amplifying the power.
He started to grin in anticipation. It had been a single point of fate, and it looked like it had worked.
The wave crested… and then one of the corners broke apart, and the spell form collapsed without moving the dirt in his pocket.
In moments, the one mana invested had dissipated into nothing, but that did not concern him. That extra energy made him hopeful that the random line, against all odds of probability, was beneficial and the technique he was applying could be useful. Yes, the spell had failed, but he didn’t think it was because of the addition. After all, it had been failing seventy percent of the time, so it falling apart was not a surprise.
Was this what the specific wording in his title had been alluding to?
Was this a better way of striving for the best possible outcome from the spells he was learning?
He focused on the same image as before, which was a desire for the spell to be constructed in such a way as to create a sideways evolution.
The next spell formed, and he knew it was going to work even before he invested mana, as it felt more stable than his earlier effort. There was no line through the centre, but two edges were double reinforced. One of them aligned to the previous failure point, and, given the line bisecting the centre had increased the power of the spell, Tom couldn’t help but feel that the two changes were related.
The spell, once cast, made the dirt in his pocket twist in one of the more violent responses he had achieved so far. That was a good sign.
Grinning, he continued the experiment and burnt through twenty fate as he cast it repeatedly.
Every single time, that single point of fate and his rushed construction caused something unexpected to happen. Mentally, he took careful note of all of them. After the additional lines of reinforcements had appeared three times, he incorporated the change into each new build of the spell.
The other alterations began to reappear: an extra whirl added at the nominal front of the spell form, a detailed and elaborate pattern that he suspected was a fractal inserted into one of the octahedral panes instead of empty space. Then that line through the middle appeared for the third time, and he attached it to the primary spell.
Tom tested the two additions.
Without fate interfering, every fourth cast was successful, so the change was valid even if it was creating more instability. However, a drop from thirty-percent success to twenty-five could just be a sample size issue. Tom wasn’t concerned about those details. The testing proved he was on the right track because of the slight power boost.
Then, when he started using fate once more, the fractal and the additional whirls repeated.
After he had incorporated all four of them, the spell’s success rate increased to fifty percent, and it packed notably more punch than the unaltered form. That level of success was a superior ratio than the one that came before the changes. As best as he could tell, not only did the alterations increase the power of the spell, they had also improved the stability.
Excitement coursed through him.
Those changes, he was sure, were the physical representation of a sideways evolution, and, because Dirt Jolt was an input into Earth Manipulation, which was a core spell, any benefit he got was going to permanently boost the effectiveness of all the future earth magic abilities he was going to learn. If every single input spell gained a sideways evolution, then Earth Manipulation could end up with as many bonuses as Touch Heal, even with it required far fewer steps to create.
That was going to be beyond massive.
Another ten minutes had passed, so he did a double forward flip to trigger Fateful Repositioning, and, as always, the skill produced a single point of free fate.
Tom seized it with his mind and formed as image.
He wanted the spell to fall apart if he wasn’t on the right track to create Dirt Jolt with a sideways evolution. Given that it was only successful fifty percent of the time, he figured that failure was an easy condition for the small amount of fate to engineer. Nevertheless, he constructed the spell hurriedly to give fate an even greater chance to cause failure if his changes were pointless.
Then he cast it.
The dirt in his pocket shifted violently just like it had a dozen times before, almost threatening to break out of the magically reinforced uniform.
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“Yes!” he fist-pumped in excitement. This was it. The notes that Known Heretic had caused to be included on the spell were correct. He could use fate better than he had been.
The new title, he decided once he had considered all the benefits, was a blessing, not a curse.
He paused for a moment as he remembered the contagious nature of the title.
If it was a boon and he could pass it onto someone, what then?
He shook his head. “Surely not. No, nope. They wouldn’t let it work like that, would they?” He muttered to himself as he contemplated the problem.
By itself, the title was a curse, but with the notes that had come with it, that changed the equation a lot. The question was whether they were going to be transferred over as well.
For a moment, he went through everyone he had known and wondered if they would be able to gain the same insights that he had. Kang, he suspected, could work it out. The girls couldn’t. Michael, Clare and Rahmat, companions from his first life, would have definitely understood the hints. Harry and Everlyn as well, he decided after a moment’s thought. The others from that group? Maybe not, but to the right person, the title became a definite boon, if that text transferred.
He grinned.
He wasn’t going to say anything out loud, but his mind raced about the concept. At worst, it was worth testing.
There were a lot of anomalies around the title. However, that kernel of himself, that thing that triggered when he discovered a truth, the ability that had helped him with the idea that had created the heroes of humanity... That special part of him, he was certain, the notes would carry over. It all clicked together into a nice little picture, even if bits of it remained uncertain. He had observed GODs interacting, and he was sure that they had directly negotiated everything from the way fate worked in the trial to the specific words in the additional notes he had received. Given that complication, the outcome could swing either way. However, he was hopeful that the loophole was there for a single specific reason.
The special rules for the Divine Champions’ Trial and this cursed title had been put in place to kill, or, in the title’s case, to negate a generic reincarnator.
If the coin trick killed the reincarnator, then, as far as they were concerned, that was a great outcome, but if it didn’t, then the enemy GODs had laid this title as a secondary trap. The reincarnators that successfully completed their stint in the Divine Champions’ Trial in real life were going to follow the same chain of thought that he had. It was logical to extend the short-term forecasting from the trial into a longer-term version of the oracle questions they had all had access to during the tutorial. It wasn’t even a coin flip. Everyone would do it. Even meatheads would have seen the connection, and he was sure that, after he had tested it on someone less important so he could discuss it with Corrine, he was going to find that she had received the title as well. It was a foul trap, and, without the benefit of the notes he had been gifted because of his Known Heretic title, a nasty, almost-crippling curse.
His case was different. The other GODs had planned for a general reincarnator, and DEUS, he was sure, considered Tom’s unique situation. He could easily imagine DEUS gambling on him and accepting an outcome which, while punitive for every other reincarnator, was acceptable because of the massive bonus he would eventually receive. She definitely would have accepted that gamble, and, given that the other GODs hadn’t known about the title, they wouldn’t have blocked it. That meant the notes would be transferrable, and, when he proved that and implemented the plan to upgrade the fate use of thousands of humans, the GODs were going to rage. He wondered if he could somehow use that to improve the Known Heretic title further.
He chuckled at that thought. What would an extra level look like? Would it be a two-tier upgrade for everything gifted to him?
If the test was successful, he definitely had to do something to ensure his title benefited from the likely fallout. The GODs were going to rage.
He flinched as he felt a tug on his soul. A distant, shielded memory, an echo of the terror of having a GOD want to kill him, and the recollection of his soul breaking apart as a result of that fact. He concentrated on the present and focused on all the good things in his life, on DEUS’ support, and, to his immense relief, his thundering heartbeat slowed.
That game was for later. He made a mental note, then forced his mind towards a different direction.
There was a path where he could still influence future events and, if he did it right, do it with more efficiency than everyone else. When they acted on the future, they lost a lot of fate’s power, but he could do so in a way that would allow him not to suffer the same penalties.
If he got a precognition skill to let him see the future, then he could construct tangible images of what he needed and what had to change to make the specific successful future glimpse a reality.
He laughed unable to help himself. “Thank you, GOD’s, for the title. It’s a boon.”
Somewhere, he was sure, GODs were raging, and that made everything better.
His precognition was going to break the back of his restrictions because of his high affinity.
Within the system room, he brought up the table that summarised the power of his 95 Affinity, potentially 96, if he could afford the divine fruit.
- An affinity of 50 increases power by 1.1 times.
- An affinity of 60 increases power by 1.2 times.
- An affinity of 70 increases power by 1.3 times.
- An affinity of 80 increases power by 1.7 times.
- An affinity of 85 increases power by 2.4 times.
- An affinity of 90 increases power by 3.5 times.
- An affinity of 95 increases power by 12.8 times.
- An affinity of 96 increases power by 20.1 times.
- An affinity of 97 increases power by 59.6 times.
His abilities currently meant his precognition skills were 13 times that of someone with no affinity and if he consumed the entire divine fruit, that would boost it to be 20 times more powerful. On the scale of how Existentia worked, it was more than significant.
Tom knew that each tier increased power by fifty percent.
That meant, if you raised an ability by two tiers, you doubled the power of the spell. With a thought, the wall displayed the exact impact that compounding had on the power of each tier. Tom skimmed over the various lines, skipping the less important ones:
- Plus, 1 tier increase power by 1.5.
- Plus, 2 tiers increase power by 2.3.
- Plus, 3 tiers increase power by 3.4.
- Plus, 4 tiers increase power by 5.1.
- Plus, 5 tiers increase power by 7.6.
- Plus, 6 tiers increase power by 11.4.
- Plus, 7 tiers increase power by 17.1.
- Plus, 8 tiers increase power by 25.6.
His affinity was already effectively boosting the power of his spells up eight tiers. Danger Sense was functioning at the level of a tier-ten ability - something he doubted any human would have been able to afford, given it would have cost them millions of experience.
Levels were also a factor in power calculations and functioned under similar rules, but without as much insane scaling. At a thought he displayed them, too, because it was relevant:
- Tier 0 level 32 (or tier 4 level 2) grants 2 times power.
- Tier 0 level 96 (or tier 4 level 6) grants 3 times power.
- Tier 0 level 288 (or tier 4 level 18) grants 4 times power.
- Tier 0 level 864 (or tier 4 level 54) grants 5 times power.
The leveling speed his affinity granted was significant. His eight levels in Danger Sense were an example of this enhanced leveling benefit. It was already twice as powerful as it had been when he had started. That bonus was going to continue to accumulate and apply to new abilities in the same sphere. It was doubtful he would ever get to the point of gaining a four times multiplier, outside of being gifted proficiency from a challenger trial like what had happened in his first life in Existentia. However, a multiplier of three was achievable. If he got a skill that let him see optimal futures, then, with the combined multipliers, it was going to be powerful enough to make a real difference. He would be able to use fate to make those visions a tangible reality and basically sidestep the negative restrictions of the title.
Well, it was a plan. One that he could implement and would work. His ability to recognise the truth confirmed that.
Tom smiled.
He could use this to save humanity.