Codex

12 - Divinity in Division

My mind was fully focused on the intricately dangerous task at hand, transplanting my clone's consciousness into mine. I started the spell, slowly, delicately, taking my sweet time, and in the middle of it a loud bang ripped my eyes and attention away from my current proceedings.

"Are you insane, young man?!" Aldis, the old councilman busted open the door to the spell experiments room in the library, despite its very clear 'do not disturb' sign hanging in full glory.

"You old piece of shit!" I lashed out, "Do you want me to die?! Do you?!" I breathed heavily, honestly scared for my life. What bad timing!

"Don't take that tone with me, tadpole! Because of your parade through the streets with that damned witch, the government is smothering us in questions and accusations!"

I could've guessed that's what he came to argue, but my only reply was a tiring sigh. "Was anyone attacked? Is anyone dead? Did Aquan come crumbling down? Why are you sweating me, man? If anything, she spent a stupid amount of coins so those old politicking geezers should be grateful she supported our economy."

"You're sure?"

"Well, I was with her most of the day and no one heard any reports of criminal activity concerning her, so what's the problem? Anyway, I'm not speaking to those fools again, so you tell them to relax."

He exhaled, wearily and rubbed his beard, "I don't know how your father deals with you, boy," then joined his hands behind his back, "by the way, is what the witch said about you true?"

"Huh?" I slouched back and leaned on the wall.

"About you being the strongest mage in Aquan."

"Oh, that. Yeah, apparently."

"You, don't seem cocky like usual."

"It's hard to be like that when you know the Apostles, dragons and a witch exists."

He didn't say anything afterward, instead he left in silence. I can't imagine how devastating it must be to one who bet their everything on magic and got trumped by a boy, but it's not like we were competing for anything.

I pounced on the opportune moment of tranquillity and finally completed the transplant of consciousness. It went off without a hitch, but wasn't like how I imagined it would be. I figured the clone would basically be another talking person in my head, but it was nothing like that. It felt like I had an extra bedroom in the mansion that is the brain, it was like more space to think. To put it simply, it was an extension of my consciousness, and although they were separate, they could still communicate properly.

I used Discharge and felt no decrease in stamina. I cast Levitate and even whilst using that, there still wasn't any reduction, my body felt the same throughout, but those were small spells that didn't tax you much. The real bastard was definitely Clone, but Hand of God and the second level of Divergence were more practical to pull off in the heat of a battle.

I cast a few times, which would've usually had my breath ragged, but I was completely fine. This, this is amazing! I chuckled, after all these years, "all these years," I muttered to myself, I finally learned Division! To say I was overjoyed was an understatement. Of course, knowing all I needed was mana now, I decided to test just how far I could go. Before, I could manage about ten Hand of God before collapsing from exhaustion, but that night I managed over fifty of them until I simply couldn't cast anymore. There was no backlash, only a simple poof. Mana was much more efficient. In the first place, it was severely bottlenecked by physical stamina, since it had a much larger pool–in my case, about five times larger than what my body allowed–plus it regenerated extremely fast. I was back to full capacity in about three to five minutes.