The Prince of Demons

The only issue with trying to make my <Lord's Eye> work now was understanding just how probable an event actually was. I might be good at math, but I am not that good at math. I also doubted my ability to learn how to calculate probabilities on the fly in a manner that could properly quantify the chance of an event being possible; there was a measurable, definite limit to what my <Lord's Eye> could manifest into reality. I guess the bright side is that means even <Lord's Eyes> have some form of limit to them; whatever you envision or want to do with the eye has to be technically possible or you need to provide <Mana> to make up the difference. While that piece of information was somewhat comforting, it did little to help me at the moment. I needed things that could realistically happen for my <Lord's Eye> to work; it was the entire premise of the main ability which was kind of an annoying catch. It is a massive upside because it can turn my <Mana> into a malevolent manifestation of the <Veil> needed to zero out an <Astral Scale>, but for general use I need something a bit more useful. It was useful, I just needed to somehow figure out how to make it work for me.

What would that be though? Standing around was not going to make anything happen. Wait. Wait a second. I could turn my <Mana> into an effect, something that could be. If I initiated the needed event, could my <Lord's Eye> force it into happening? I mulled over that, debating what kind of event I should try. Definitely start small as I did not want to feel my eyes boil again just yet. From what I understood the event didn't even need to be a spell, it just needed to be something that could be. Maybe I should start with something that would be somewhat unlikely, and see if the <Lord's Eye> can force it through. Who did I want to test this idea on? I nearly chuckled as there was zero chance I was testing this on Luna; Krahinn, time for you to invest your blood into this nightmarish training. What did I need for this to work? Desire, vision, and the probability for it to happen. I manifested a knife of <Void Magic>, relishing at the thought of Krahinn's face when this landed in his shoulder. I could picture his anger clear as day after I hit him with this knife, embedded up to the hilt in his shoulder with some blood trickling out. It would so be worth it for how agonizing this was. He should be able to forgive me. Krahinn and Luna both looked curiously at me holding the knife of <Void Magic>, before I threw it straight at Krahinn's shoulder.

I used my <Arcane Eye>, envisioning the knife hitting him. Krahinn clearly formed <Mana> to defend himself, making a wall of <Mana> to protect himself from the obvious attack. Despite what Krahinn did, the knife simply manifested in his shoulder to his utter shock as it appeared to simply phase through his <Mana> to hit him. My <Mana> was almost completely wiped in an instant to make that happen. Wow, that took more of a toll than I thought it would. The good news was that it didn't incur a massive amount of <Backlash>, it simply drained all of my <Mana>. Krahinn looked at his shoulder, stunned the knife simply willed itself into him. His eyes shot between the knife and me a few times as I gave him a shiza eating grin. It worked! We are finally making more progress! Krahinn's anger erupted as he clearly deduced what I just used my <Arcane Eye> to do; to my immense surprise I was not suddenly and abruptly folded into a ball.

"Really Nil?! That was what you wanted to try next?!" Krahinn screamed at me, clearly irritated that was my idea.

"I needed something to try, and that was the simplest idea I could think of." I gasped, feeling just how much that took from me. Okay, merely hurting Krahinn would take everything I currently have. Maybe I should have tried something a bit easier or less likely to anger the being actively trying to save my life. Mildly terrifying to think he still thought of needing my <Arcane Eye> to deal with what was ahead of us.

"No cost too great Krahinn, we need to focus on the training." Luna added on. His stare could have melted the ice caps.

"Okay you bomslogs, I will give you this one. ONE. You could have asked me for a target to practice with." Krahinn pointed out, sounding annoyed but willing to drop it.

"So, do you have it?" Luna checked, hiding how much she wanted to smile from Krahinn.

"Kind of. I at least have the underlying idea down. The problem is I only have nine hours fifty-five minutes and seven seconds to build up a feel for what I can and cannot do with it." I informed her, feeling a bit guilty from testing on Krahinn.

"And I am sorry I tried it on you, Krahinn. That was immature of me." I apologized to him. But man is this training awful.

"I accept the apology. Now with that, focus on helpful endeavors." Krahinn replied calmly after a deep breath.

I now had two tangible starting points to work with now. Unfortunately, one is not repeatable, and the other is quite minor. The knife trick was vastly more effort than using <Temporal Erasure> to simply produce the result of the knife hitting. It was likely completely impossible to dodge, but that didn't feel exactly feasible to use in a more meaningful way. I imagine how much he cared and would have taken steps to avoid it would be substantially greater if that knife was aimed at anywhere important. The <Lord's Eye> didn't magically create an uncounterable attack, so how could I use this more effectively? There was a more economical use of this <Arcane Eye> I wasn't thinking of as trying to make impossible events or things occur simply failed or would likely kill me from the amount of <Mana> and <Backlash> they would incur. I would love to be able to throw uncounterable, guaranteed to connect knives at people, but I imagine as cool on paper as the idea is, sufficiently strong beings just aren't going to let themselves be hit without extreme effort. Wait. That at least gave me a bit of insight into it. Make the chance of success not rely on targeting the being directly. There had to be a difference of making the knife hit the shoulder versus going to the space in front of the shoulder. Will definitely need to test how that works in a bit here. I just needed some inspiration or new line of thinking to try and get this to work.

"Luna, did I ever have any creative uses of this <Arcane Eye> that you can remember?" I checked. I was fairly confident she said I never was that good at using it, but I wanted to verify.

"You were great at using it to check the weather or <Future Peek> what your opponents were going to do, but beyond that I cannot think of any specific examples. If one exists, it was something you hid the mechanism of." Luna answered after thinking about it for a moment.

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"The compendium does not suggest you made a lot of headway with that <Arcane Eye>, which is unsurprising given knowing what you have to practice or try makes a massive difference when it comes to them." Krahinn added on as he was making sure his shoulder was healed.

"How did you know what it did? In all those attempts, how did none of the other <Eternals> know what my <Arcane Eye> did? How did you get so close to the actual function?" I asked. It might give a clue on what to envision a bit better. Also a bit unsettling to think in all those attempts I potentially neglected something so helpful, or was it just I struggled that much to use it?

"I researched the Lords more than most other beings in order to have a keen understanding of <Magic> for starters. Also, I am much older than other <Eternals>, so I have witnessed generations of <Arcane Eyes> and their functions in my years. Furthermore, I know firsthand from how Hugminn's <Arcane Eye> worked and seeing a different <Lord's Eye> in action gave me the rough idea of what that one should do. Most other <Eternals> do not interact with me if they can avoid it, and I am not sure most of them fully grasp the monster that is Scius so they didn't prepare or train to the extent they should have. <Arcane Eyes> can be quite tricky, especially more abstract ones, so using their higher functions can be a major roadblock. To be fair to them, I do not think you truly grasp what you are up against either." Krahinn explained for me. Him being ancient and experienced does have its benefits.

"What other <Lord's Eye> did you see in action? And what do you mean not truly grasp what I'm up against?" I inquired, kind of curious by what he meant.

"I got to see Uhm's in action by an individual that is long dead. As for not grasp, I do not think you can properly grasp the level of <Magic> you need to overcome just yet, but that is more of a lack of experience. Regardless, I do not think this line of questions is going to give you the inspiration nor idea you're thinking it will." Krahinn lectured. That was ominous, but not currently relevant. Noted to ask about later. I did see when Krahinn used his <Magic> more seriously against Hoggdin, but I imagined that was still held back to a degree.

"I want to resume this discussion at a later date. Granted, I was hoping for something. Do you have any ideas on how to make this work more efficiently? Just hitting you with a knife in a non-critical location took all of my <Mana>." I requested while my <Mana Reserve> was refilling. I definitely needed some vision or inspiration at the moment because I was drawing a blank.

"The simplest way to state the function as confirmed by Kron is what can be. You just demonstrated the fact that if you initiate an action, your <Lord's Eye> can force it to become reality at a cost. For it to be useful, it needs to be something that you cannot easily replicate with the rest of your <Magic>. To build on that foundation I would suggest instead of thinking what can the <Lord's Eye> do, think about what you as a Magus or individual in general cannot do as that might give you more creativity in thinking of a use." Krahinn advised. I mean, his idea made sense at least.

Krahinn's approach was at least different from mine. So that begged the question, what could I not do? A laundry list of ideas immediately came to mind. Which one of these would be the most useful? I needed the context of fighting an army to help narrow this down. I replayed manifesting the event to bring an <Astral Scale> to zero in my mind. That was the basis of what I wanted, though I could only do it one at a time. Nothing was changing that fact. Wait, was that fact set in stone? I tried manifesting two instances of bringing Luna's <Astral Scale> slightly towards zero, but only one happened as I could only focus on one well enough for my <Lord's Eye> to manifest it. Both were formed though, and I could feel the <Mana> form behind each of them, just only one actually happened.

"Nil, that's not what you should be practicing right now." Krahinn snapped at me.

"Give me a second, I'm thinking; this is just a step in the process." I shot back, trying to think it through more.

Each of them at least formed to an extent, but only one I could focus on sufficiently to actually cast. Because both were possible, could I use the <Arcane Eye> to make both actually happen? Both were possible for me to manifest, but I was not able to manifest both in practice. Let's see if the <Lord's Eye> destroys me or this is somehow feasible. I again began using the <Arcane Eye> to create events to bring Luna's <Astral Scale> towards zero, envisioning the small radiant light that happened out of both of them occurring. My <Mana> took a little bit of a hit, but I would definitely be able to do that again if I wanted to. Luna and Krahinn both looked at me quizzically, not grasping what I was doing; Krahinn's stare definitely was more annoyed as this was not what he wanted me to be focusing on, or so he thought. Okay, so it could make both branching paths happen without annihilating my <Mana> in the process. That then raised the question, how well did it scale? Is it linear, quadratic, or maybe even exponential to the number of events I want to manifest?

There was only one way to find out. Let's start with a slightly conservative four. If two was that easy, four should be highly doable even in the worst case. I patiently refilled my <Mana>, making sure I was nearly fully recovered in that regard just in case. This feels kind of convoluted; I can't immediately manifest four separate events, but I can imagine potentially four events and have my <Lord's Eye> make all of them happen. How did that even work? Was it the needed focus for the individual events, but if I formed my <Mana> into the possibilities, as they all could easily be done the <Lord's Eye> had no problem completing them? I think that's how it is working in practice. It was the understanding I was going to use in my limited time moving forward at least. I formed my <Mana> into four possibly lowering events and tried using my <Lord's Eye> to make all of them happen at once. What? THAT'S HOW IT SCALES?!

"Why are you making four of the healing events at once Nil?" Luna checked, not grasping what I was doing.

"While I appreciate you improving at using the <Arcane Eye> like that Nil, focus on what can be, not this." Krahinn snapped at me. I smiled wide back at him. I have found the most useful interaction for an army at least.

"Krahinn, your insight was immensely helpful. Here, let me demonstrate a slightly different application." I told him sincerely.

Krahinn looked at me a bit confused as it hadn't clicked what I meant just yet. This works perfectly with <Closed Structure> <Spells> for starters. It my work with other ones, but <Closed Structure> ones met what I was thinking the easiest. I prepped my <Mana> to form roughly one hundred <Cuts>, envisioning casting them in a hemisphere around Krahinn. Krahinn was eyeballing me, his <Mana> formed around him as he knew that I was about to do something aimed at him to demonstrate the new idea. I used my <Lord's Eye> to manifest all one hundred at once, bombarding him with one hundred replicas of my <Cut>. Krahinn effortlessly shielded himself with <Warping Ward>, bending the space around him to make them collide with each other. My <Mana> was severely depleted, but I was still fine and free from any <Backlash> that trying to cast one hundred <Spells> at once would normally cause me. Cut doesn't take a lot of <Mana> on an individual level thankfully. The downside was the replication needed to follow an easy for me to envision pattern as I doubted my ability to think of highly complex geometries while casting <Spells> in that manner. Not without practicing it at least.

"How did you do that?!" Luna exclaimed, looking stunned.

"See, that's why I'm the great Krahinn." Krahinn boasted, like it was all his idea. Forling credit hog.