A Nascent Kaleidoscope.

Chapter 548:

I intertwined my fingers and pushed my arms out, stretching as I had been sitting down for a while. It's funny, I remember before my memories flooded back in my youth, reading stories, watching shows, and how they made Magic look so wondrous and fantastical. Those settings seemed to skip over the rather….boring parts.

That is to say, I spent the last four or so hours doing nothing but calculations and a bit of research. And frankly, this isn't even an uncommon occurrence for the vast majority of Magi.

In a lot of situations, I can put the backend calculations to Mirage to handle, but in this particular case, I'm forced to do the majority of them by hand.

I had the Harp and Avalon on the floor, both of them surrounded by a ritual circle containing about nearly every origin of Magical Ability I had acquired in my life. And while Mirage wasn't able to just compute everything without me, it was still handling a heavy workload that I could shunt off to it.

Right now, I was basically just gathering the needed data on how these objects interact with my origins. From there, I was going to partition off the effects and trace back their origins to see if I can't get a proverbial foot in the door to the Fae Realms. I admit, I wasn't entirely optimistic about this plan, but if it did work, it would save me a considerable amount of time over doing it the 'proper way'.

Essentially, I was throwing things at what these objects connected with to see if I couldn't find the 'door'. Otherwise, I would have to manually search for it.

I basically just stabbed Mirage into the ground while it handled the rather mundane portions that didn't require my specific input.

Thankfully, I could multitask, and there was something I had been putting off because things just continued to pile up on me. I probably should have done this sooner, my tendency to continuously push things off is not something I want to indulge intentionally. That already bit me in the ass rather recently.

I took out my Goblin made Sword.

I've been mentally calling it Greed, which is a bit on the nose, but I think it fits considering what I was going to be doing.

It was a beautiful sword, a Jian, made of Goblin Silver that had a rather elegant glint to it despite being a very simplistic design. Even without the purpose I commissioned it for, I would have loved to have this in my treasury because it's a magnificent piece.

I carefully set it to the side and let a barrel drop out of my ring with a thump.

The inside of the barrel had been coated fully with Emerald. It was a waste, but a necessary one considering what it would be filled with.

I waved my hand, letting dozens and dozens of bottles of varying size and shape deposit onto the table next to me.

And lastly, I made sure to get a mask to cover my face as well as casting a few spells to protect me as well.

I grabbed the first bottle, a small green container that fit into my palm, and I uncorked it, dumping the contents into the barrel.

A mild paralysis poison.

Of the same kind, I uncorked quite a few bottles and dumped them in as well until there was a little bit pooling at the bottom.

Emerald was the best to use to contain Poison and Venom.

The precious stone had the properties of being able to handle the type of corrosive substances without breaking down or losing potency.

I may not overly utilize Jewelcraft in this life, but it doesn't mean I didn't retain a good amount of knowledge on the subject.

I took Greed and gently put it blade down into the barrel, letting it rest against the side.

There was no effect, but I didn't expect one to be in all honesty.

Goblin Silver is greedy, the concept, while not overly powerful, is ingrained into the aspect of its existence. It takes in things that make it 'stronger' or 'better'.

A mere Paralysis Poison isn't going to activate the effects.

But on the flip side, I couldn't immediately have it take in something like Jormungandr's Poison, or Fenrir's Saliva. It simply couldn't handle the 'strength' of those things, thus I had to carefully cultivate it upwards to that level.

I took out a Fear Poison, that I obtained from Thorum and from extension, Skyrim. I poured it into the barrel with the Paralysis Poison.

Next was a basic Poison without any magical properties, something that comes from natural sources.

A few more basic poisons still hadn't elicited a reaction, but I was confident for the next one.

I uncapped a powerful Magicka Poison. A Poison that attacks one's Magical Energy.

Nearly as soon as I poured it inside, the sword reacted, glowing as the liquid inside the barrel slowly receded a few inches as if the sword were drinking it up.

Being able to attack someone's Magic was certainly something that makes the sword stronger. And as a side effect, it drank in the whole concoction due to the 'Magicka Poison' being part of it at that point.

I was about to pour more 'Magicka Poison' into the barrel until I heard a knock at the door, I could feel who it was so I wasn't bothered. "Come in."

Jinn happily barged right in, smiling brightly when she saw me, though it seems the waft of poison in the air hit her and any words died in her throat. "A little warning." She coughed, casting a few spells around her to take the lingering remnants away. She looked at me, then at the Ritual I was performing on the other side of the room. "I was about to ask if all that was going to interfere with the Ritual, but you put up a Bounded Field around it."

"Do you think this is my first time?" I deadpanned.

She shrugged. "You tend to miss the small things."

"Fair." I couldn't argue that point. "You need me for something?"

Jinn shook her head. "Just wanted to come to see if you needed help. Yasaka officially announced the invasion date, so everyone's running around and I wanted to be useful somewhere."

"Hmm. Is that shameless Dragon outside still?" I basically avoided the area I thought she would be in when I got back.

"Tiamat?.....well….Yasaka said that they worked out a deal."

I felt another headache coming on. "Proceed." I ushered her to continue explaining.

"The house next to us was bought."

"….joy." I groaned.

"In return for letting her live 'here' for the time being, Tiamat will defend the city if it's attacked."

"While that is good news and extremely beneficial, I still reserve the right to be annoyed." Having a Dragon of her power to protect in the case of a 'counter attack', well, that's pretty significant.

Jinn shrugged. "I think she's nice."

"You met her?"

"Uh huh."

"….you're just saying that because she's blue." Tiamat's true form was very blue apparently.

"Yup." She didn't even deny it. "So whatcha doin?" She came over, looking at my sword in the barrel.

"Finally getting around to upgrading my sword."

"Hmm, do you have notes?" She asked, and I simply handed my notes on the subject over to her as she began flipping through them. "Oh that's smart. It wouldn't take in things weaker than it, but if you add something it would absolutely take into the vat, it'll suck it all up because it considers the vat one 'entity'."

"Got it in one." She's always been a smart cookie, but that's fairly obvious.

"I'm not super knowledgeable on all the poisons here, but you made sure they wouldn't conflict if they were mixed together, right?"

"It was one of the first things I made sure to check. Well, I can't say with one hundred percent certainty, but I went over the ingredients in each concoction to make sure there weren't any obvious contradictions." I nodded.

There wasn't much of a difference between Poison and Medicine. One can easily counter the other, or even a poison can counteract another poison. About half of the various things I gathered haphazardly had to be shelved because they would be volatile.

"The first part was giving the Blade the ability to attack someone's Magical energy." I recited off, grabbing a few more vials, dumping them into the vat without a care. Most of them were just straight Poisons that attacked the body in one way or another. I then picked up a Red square vial. "At this point, the sword is still too 'weak' and I'm just building up its 'reach' rather than its 'strength'." I dumped the last vial in and the sword reacted once more, drinking up the 'new' tonic'.

It was a Poison that targeted one's Vitality, the opposite of a 'Health Potion' in comparison.

I wanted the Sword to be the ultimate Mage killer, that didn't just mean anti-magic to inject powerful poison, I wanted it to have versatility. I wanted someone who got stabbed with this to suffer every possible affliction I could shove into it.

Jinn started taking things off the table and casually dumping them into the vat of poison too. She read my notes, so there was no point in questioning her, she wouldn't do anything to ruin this.

"Stamina Poison going in." She said after a dozen more different things were added.

Just as predicted, the Sword reacted and drank them in again.

At this point, the Sword's path was locked in place. It was a Poison sword and probably couldn't take in anything that went against the new concepts added into it if they were too far divorced from what it existed as now.

"That should be the first step. Time for the second."

She flipped through my notes. "Now you want to reinforce the Poison aspect, right?"

"yup, get the….green and red ones over there." I pointed behind her. "The tiny vial preferably and be careful with it."

"Oh, what's this?" Jinn held it up to her face. "It's actually really potent and even I wouldn't want this inside of me."

"Basilisk Venom." I replied. "I got it from the world where the sword was made. Apparently, it's one of the strongest in the world. Add the weaker ones first."

She just hummed, pouring in a bunch of more things. "Frostbite Venom…..Necrotic Poison, that's interesting. Hag Poison, I remember reading about this one. Don't recognize these two, oh…is this Hydra Poison?"

"Got it from Kairi, apparently, he had a baby Hydra encased in Amber and he gave me a bit. A far cry from an Adult Hydra, but it'll build up into the Basilisk Venom nicely." I explained as she dumped it inside.

She also unceremoniously uncorked the Basilisk Venom once those were added and just dumped them inside.

The whole thing sizzled as the Sword greedily ate it up.

"This reminds me of something, isn't there a thing where people make a really powerful poison with a bunch of others added together?" She looked at me.

"A Gu." I replied. "You put a bunch of really poisonous and venomous organisms inside a container, and eventually they kill each other, leaving only the strongest." Or thereabouts. But the idea was generally the same.

The sizzling of the Basilisk Venom finally subsided, even if the concoction was bubbling at this point. I slowly pulled at the grip of Greed and gradually it slinked out of the barrel, the miasmic substance rolling off of the blade.

Not a drip of it remained as I held my sword up but that doesn't mean there wasn't evidence of what happened. If you looked very closely, there were vein-like patterns under the surface that pulsed a rather dark green. But they also began to slowly fade, becoming invisible to the eye.

I wasn't done, but one thing was for sure, even I wouldn't want to be stabbed with this at this point. I would survive without a huge problem, but it would be painful.

With a flick of my wrist, a Portal opened, and a sky of illuminated lights appeared overhead on the opposite side.

"Wilhelm?" Meridia's voice reached me as she looked my way. "Is there something you require?"

"Can you grab me a troll please? Bounded if possible."

Meridia blinked and did something as a Frost Troll fell onto the floor in front of her and golden ethereal chains wrapped around it. "Is that all?" It floated over to me and I let it pass through the portal and touch onto the ground in my workshop.

It struggled, but it couldn't escape.

"Thank you, love you." I blew her a kiss.

She smiled lightly as I closed the portal.

"She's going to be happy for a while." Jinn hummed.

"Hmm?"

"Meridia, she likes when you ask her for small, innocuous things." Jinn poked at the troll. "I would feel sorry for this thing if Trolls weren't bad for the environment and generally any place they settled down. Did you pick a Troll because of their regenerative properties?"

"Yup, figured it would be the best test subject." And as she said, absolutely no bad feelings about using one of these things as a test subject. They weren't even natural creatures from what I recall, something created that propagated over Nirn.

I wasted no more time and pushed the tip of my sword into the Troll's chest.

The effects were immediate and gruesome.

A Troll that can regenerate missing limbs ended up a shriveled husk in moments. Its blood vessels popped, its veins ruptured, its skin became necrotic, and all of its organs failed quickly. Blood seeps from its pours before every part of it was eaten away and it became not but a husk.

Despite how impressive the effects were, my intended target was far beyond a mere 'troll'.

"Are you doing the next step?" Jinn inspected the corpse before flicking her hand, igniting it so its remains simply disappeared.

"No time like the present." I nodded, taking out the last three ingredients. "Saliva from Fenrir, Jormungandr's Poison…" And probably the most important thing. "The last few drops of Felix Felicias." I was going to need a little bit of luck for this to work, but I wasn't going to drink it.

Rather, I dripped it onto my sword.

There was a step between the last bit and becoming Godly. I had nothing to bridge that point, so I was going to fudge it a little bit.

The sword didn't directly eat the 'luck' like it did other things, I didn't expect it to, that would be ridiculous. Luck was too nebulous a concept for it to make the sword 'stronger'.

Rather, the drops on the sword, I took the vial holding Jormungandr's poison and dropped it onto those spots, letting it mix together.

The sword glowed and vibrated.

Faintly, the roar of a Serpent could be heard as the phantom of the World Serpent coiled around the blade, disappearing inside of it.

Interesting.

I could feel the Sword's existence being elevated a step and it trembled in my grasp.

It managed to take in the Poison of Jormungandr which was a feat in itself. By doing this, it stepped into the threshold of being able to harm Godly beings, a clear leap in its previous capabilities.

This sword could now harm me sufficiently.

The Sword still trembled in my hand like it was having trouble 'digesting' what it just took in.

I looked at Fenrir's saliva on the table and decided to wait. It was 'stronger' than Jormungandr's Poison and I wasn't sure if my Sword could handle it right now.

Overall, I'm still happy with the progress made.

It was good enough for now and I would make sure to experiment before going to the next part.

"You done?" Jinn looked over my shoulder.

"For now." I put the sword onto the table, letting it rest. Despite not touching it, it clanked against the table, vibrating in place. "Not a bad place to stop."

"How's the other thing going?" She looked over at my Ritual.

"Let's see…" I walked over to Mirage to see if the basic Calculations I needed were done so I could begin the real experiments. "It needs a little bit more time unfortunately." Which meant I had some free time! "Wanna go visit Gramps for a few hours with me?"

Jinn pursed her lips. "Normally, I'd be happy to, but I wanna keep busy. If you don't need help, I'm going to go see if anyone else does." She walked up, kissing me on the cheek. "I'll make sure to check back in a few hours in case you get caught up in something."

"You're the best."

She smiled brightly, leaving the room.

Well, Other Gramps said that Arcueid Brunestud was visiting my Gramps….let's see what that's about.

I left Mirage there and opened the Portal Manually, the Calculations needed for this long memorization so it was rather easy to pop over to the Clock Tower, specifical Gramps' workshop.

"Gramps, are you –" I stopped, blinking because Gramps wasn't anywhere to be seen, but Lucretia was there.

And so was a certain blond-haired, Red-eyed girl.

Or rather, should I say True Ancestor.

She looked at me, I looked at her.

The chair she was sitting on exploded.

Why was there a clawed hand going for my throat?

@***@

A/N

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