Mage Among Superheroes

For the next couple of weeks, I wasn't on active duty for a number of reasons. Injuries and magic not working right were high up there.

That did give me time to figure things out, though. I even had Midnight and Bolster to represent the way things normally worked. Honestly, outside of a crisis it was pretty manageable.

I now had twice as much usable mana. Which was not to say that I actually had more mana. In fact, it seemed like that probably hadn't changed at all. It was difficult to say without breaking mana for someone else, but that was how it seemed to be. For normal individuals, they effectively had half of their mana in reserve, seemingly as a stabilizing factor.

Did that mean if I didn't dig into the latter half of my mana that my spells would be stable? Absolutely not. Now that I'd done this, I had to actively choose to make things stable, calling upon mana that wasn't used. And then once I was below the 'empty' threshold nothing stayed entirely stable no matter how much effort I put into it.

There were numerous other changes I hadn't immediately comprehended, such as using spells at over their capacity, especially some of the large ones. Unsurprisingly using mana as more power instead of a stabilizing force made things pretty strong. It also seemed to break the fatigue limit, which was where things got tricky.

As far as I was able to discern from repeated bouts of spellcasting, the fatigue limit wasn't an entirely artificial construct. At least, there was some base portion of the spell that couldn't go outside that limit. Which wasn't an issue in the majority of cases given that my fatigue limit was beyond 20- no single spell could be an issue. It did pose a meaningful restriction for Multicasting, though.

Currently, I was limited to spells that had a base cost of no more than 8 mana after accounting for upgrades. That was my extreme limit at level 43 with a 24 fatigue threshold, and it was probably better to stay short of that. Perhaps if I broke through some other limitation I would be able to push past that, but I wasn't sure if that was actually true or if I would even want to. It was far better to momentarily lose consciousness than to explode your own brain.

What else was there that had changed? My mana regeneration was proportionately more. That might also be unstable. Perhaps it was unhealthy. Then again, what I was doing with Mana Crystal Deposition had already strained my ability to absorb mana to its limits.

Ultimately, if I kept to previous levels of power my spells were just as stable for a while, I had twice as much mana and similarly twice as much recovery to make use of. And I could push beyond prior limits. It was great for me, and both Midnight and I were glad he was still… normal.

Assistive Familiar Casting worked fine. I could moderate myself, and Midnight's part was just normal. Nothing to worry about. At the current point it was only for splitting costs, because if we wanted just one big thing it was better for me to do it alone.

-----

"It's great that things are still normal for you," I said to Midnight. "Even if you could make use of a larger mana pool, it's probably best to keep things steady."

"Small miracles are great," Midnight said. "It's too bad my family knows I can visit alone, though."

Midnight had to go get his suit checked out just in case the Bunvorixians screwed with it too much. Obviously it had worked pretty well during our escape, but it was better to be cautious. And if we forgot and it was super bugged, the next time we'd ended up on Celmoth it could have been a serious issue. He'd been able to take care of all of that- and bring information about the Bunvorixian Freedom Initiative.

I looked around. "Thereotically, Zeb's out here somewhere."

Midnight sniffed. "This way."

We were strolling through a park, looking for Zeb. And theoretically Ceira at some point. I didn't see Cel or Bun anywhere yet, and they were usually pretty visible.

We found Zeb up in a tree. Or at least, I was pretty sure she was there, packed in among the squirrels. "How many do you have now?" I asked.

"Oh, so many! This one is East, and this is-"

"I absolutely cannot remember dozens of squirrel names," I said.

"I only have eleven," Zeb protested. "That's not even a single dozen yet!"

"Right. So… what do they do?"

"Well, they're squirrels. Obviously."

"For your job?" I tilted my head. "You know, as a mercenary."

"Oh, that! Well, not all of them are combat trained yet. Just four."

"Isn't that risky, with them being… weaker."

"Oh, that's easy," Zeb said, her black and white head dangling down from a crook in the tree. "I make sure they're up to proper standards. They have to be able to reliably take down a street thug first."

"That's impressive," I admitted. "Four squirrels to take down a street thug is a pretty big upgrade."

"Not together, silly! Individually."

"Oh, that makes more sense," I nodded. After all, that would put them at sidekick status. Able to at least fend for themselves against low rank super threats. Presumably able to escape from mid rank or higher foes.

Midnight was confused. "... Does it? How strong are they?"

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"Wanna wrestle?" Zeb asked. "Douglas says she'll take you down!"

"I might as well try."

As expected, Midnight's physical capabilities were far above the average street thug. Though it was surprising to see him be knocked away, tumbling. The power hidden in Douglas was significant. Midnight was able to absorb the blow without getting hurt and quickly recovered, eventually pinning Douglas with the help of some physical extensions from his suit, but it wasn't entirely trivial.

"I'm not used to fighting something smaller than me," Midnight said. "Certainly not smaller and with greater power."

"Beastmaster~" Zeb said proudly. "Mages like yourself don't get a ton of physical improvements, but these guys do."

Normally, Zeb would have needed a lot of levels to get any significant upgrades to such a large number of companions. As it was, I found it rather concerning. For my own purposes, I could only cast so many spells at once, limiting how many natural upgrades I got. But if each companion could independently train and raise their own abilities, Zeb's growth factor might be concerningly high.

Today, Zeb was 'incognito' which meant no Miss Flutter and no Fluffy. Just squirrels.

I heard only a hiss and a bark before I was tackled to the ground. However, those were enough to provide a proper response, flipping Bun over me and avoiding Cel. It appeared that Ceira had arrived… or was about to.

She jogged over- her form could probably use a bit of work, but she was clearly active enough. "Hey. I heard you got injured?"

"It's fine," I said, pulling up my sleeve. "See? It's all yellow and new now."

Ceira took a good look at my elbow. "Is yellow… good?"

"It's like pink for humans," I said. "Mostly."

Ceira poked my elbow, carefully watching my reaction.

"It hurts," Midnight said in a betrayal of trust.

I shrugged. "It'll be better soon. It's still healing. But it's fine."

"Midnight said… Finger of Death?"

"Probably," I shrugged. "Spot didn't exactly yell out his spell names, and I haven't seen it before."

Ceira frowned. "You should be careful with things like that."

"I tried to avoid it. And I can't get Death Ward."

"I can," Ceira said. "Uuugh, do I have to learn that?"

"Are you planning to fight people?" I asked.

"Eh. Not really."

"You should be fine."

"And you-" she prodded my elbow. "Should make sure that you don't get any wound buildup."

"Doctor Martinez is scheduled to perform a final scan tomorrow."

"Let's make sure you pass." Ceira gathered mana. I wasn't going to stop her from voluntarily healing me.

Yellow with specks of black turned into a proper, healthy shade of green. As if nothing had ever happened. "You're really good at that," I said. "Though I suspect you know that already."

"Am I good at it?" she asked. "Or is it good at itself?"

"Well, I recently broke magic," I said. "But the mana that was making things stable and good was part of me, so at least a majority of that is definitely you."

"... Do I want to know?" Ceira asked.

Midnight shook his head.

"That sounds bad," Zeb commented. "Do you want help fixing it?"

I looked down at the border collie shaped individual, wagging her tail. "It's too late, and it's not a machine." Probably. I didn't actually know that for sure, though.

"I heard you met some Bunvorixians," Zeb said. "I want to meet them! I've been cut off from home."

"We'll bring you along any chance I get," I said. "Extra is going to be focusing on that more than the Brigade, but you might get hired by them." I turned to Ceira. "Not all the small dogs are bad."

"I knew it," Ceira said. "It's probably just some extremely loud ones ruining things for everyone else."

"Eh," Midnight shook his head. "It's still probably the majority of them. Because the system is corrupt."

Hanging out with friends was good. Unfortunately, Ceira was busy and there was only so much we could be around public parks. We couldn't afford to go to the same ones every time, either. Not with various people that might recognize us, even with a bit of magic helping disguise some of us.

-----

Now that magic was broken, I had some things to try. Like, contacting someone on a super sealed plane. To that end, I pulled out my phone and both typed out a message and recorded a voiced version.

This was my focus for Sending. Normally, completely unnecessary. Here, I was trying to be a bit extra. Comhghall hadn't told me to never talk to him again- it was just sort of the default because it was difficult. It had become more so, but I'd been able to bounce Sendings to him after a few attempts. Now I was going to put in an unnecessary amount of juice to make it more reliable.

"I broke magic. It's pretty neat. Lots of mana, very unstable. Powerful."

Sending wasn't a good basis for a proper conversation, unless you liked exchanging extremely short letters a handful of times per day. Like texts, but they cost 10 mana each. In this case, it was 20. Some of that would make it more stable, as part of the power in Sending was its reliability. So with a focus, it should probably be alright. Worst case, I expected a few words to be jumbled.

I thought it failed when I didn't get a response within half an hour. I wasn't willing to throw more mana at it at the moment, however.

Then a full hour later, far after the normal response time, I did get a response.

"I don't recommend it. For a short time, you can revert if you wish. I suspect I know your choice. Either way, be cautious."

Circumstances had conspired that whatever time period might have elapsed, I certainly couldn't go back now. Not easily. But it had been worth it for Midnight, and I didn't think this was worse. In fact, I was well suited to it. If only I could fight without caution, I could blast huge spells everywhere.

No way I was gonna do that, though. Great Girl always complained about paying for cars, and buildings were way worse.

-----

Nobody should end up breaking magic by accident, but I still put together a handy primer on magic control, added to our documentation so that we could avoid replicating tests.

I also repeated the information to others. Jerome was absolutely forbidden from trying to break magic, but he was smart enough not to try. My secondary apprentice, Haralamb, was also content with how things were going.

Rob might actually be fine to break magic though. Maybe he'd need a processing upgrade, but a machine might actually do it. An interesting experiment I wasn't even going to suggest, because I wasn't the sort to risk harm to my apprentice's familiar. Just a thought. The difference between a proper mage and a mad mage was not what you thought about doing, but what you actually went through with.

I might still be pretty close to that threshold given my various actions, though.