IdleMuse0307
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Between Wands & Sigils - Chapter 3
🕑 Added 2025-09-06 16:08:03 +0000 UTCDisclaimer - I don’t own anything. As the corporations say these days, you will own nothing & be happy. I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or Disney or any of its characters. With that out of the way, let’s goooo!
[A week later]
–?--
He awoke with a yawn, awareness slowly returning to his body as he chose to sleep on the mostly comfortable bed he had built for himself out of branches, leaves, and the cleaned hide of a deer he found wandering around. It was hard enough, killing the very cute deer, but the skinning and cleaning the hide was the worst.
It was his very first time doing something like that, and let’s just say that he had a newfound respect and some fear of the people who chose to do stuff like this voluntarily, not to mention, regularly, without magic as a tool.
Thank god for shaped durability, making up for the lack of any basic tools.
At least it was comfortable enough for him, so much so that he stopped using the forcefield to lie down on it, after it had been thoroughly cleaned, dried, obviously. A pillow would have been nice but he was not going to hunt down an animal just for that. His hands worked fine, especially since they recovered from the usual numbness very quickly.
He stretched his neck as he sat up, looking at the now vastly different cave. First of all, he’d made liberal use of both Shaped Durability and Energy regulation. The entire first layer of the soil, he had either scraped off using a branch he found in the forest or demolished using the explosive pebbles. Then, he removed all the excess dirt after smoothening over any irregularity, creating a uniform floor for his use.
Then came the ventilation. Which was something that he didn’t think he needed, right up until he activated the enchantment and felt the fresh air in the cave.
With a slight wave of his hand, the Thermal regulation enchantment on the large rock shut down, as it stopped emitting heat inside the cave now that it was morning once more. The rock looked a little different from before. There was now a small piece of deer hide stuck on top of that rock.
The same for the entrance of the cave. There was a small piece of deer hide placed in the hole.
In the process of making a bed for himself, he had discovered something truly helpful, especially at this stage of time. While leaves and tree branches were not the best base substance to be used for enhancement, they could still be used for a short period of time before they withered to dust. He experimented with a very small piece of deer hide, expecting the same to happen but voila! It didn’t.
Instead, it held onto the same enchantment for far longer than expected. Case in point, the large heat battery in the cave, which he hefted over his head before throwing it outside the cave, after he switched on the heat absorption function, obviously.
It had been active for over four days now, constantly absorbing any ambient heat during the day, and then constantly acting as a heater during the night, giving it no respite, and despite that, he could feel no change in the deer hide placed on top of it. And it was such a small piece, too.
Despite his misgivings on killing it just for the sake of his comfort, if it meant he could finally start doing some long term enchantments around here, on top of experimenting with higher tier ones? He would do so again, without question.
Yawning once more, he got out of the cave, stretched his body, and then went back to the lake. He had plans for a rudimentary pipeline from his cave to the lake but that was for later, once he had some form of shaping ability, either through his enchantment or through his magic.
Speaking of his magic, he had no idea what school of magic his magic belonged to, since he had no idea which universe he was actually in.
Was it Demonic magic? Was it Harry Potter magic? Was it shudders DC magic?
He had no idea, and since he did not have much idle time in the last week or so, he had not figured out much about his magic, beyond the fact that it powered his enchantments and the pool of magic was deep enough to sustain all of the enchantments without any issue whatsoever.
He had not felt an iota of magical or physical exhaustion since he came to this place, only the mental shock of being thrust somewhere unknown.
For all he knew, he could be in the Stone Age or worse, the only human on the planet.
He shook his head, promptly ignoring that train of thought. These thoughts were the reason why he never left the Calm Mind enchantment on his shirt switched off.
Washing the shirt, he finished his daily task of securing enough food and water for the day, before taking the shirt back to the cave. After putting it on top of a couple of pebbles that immediately began warming it, he got out of the cave, after activating the explosive pebbles placed near the entrance, just in case.
Taking a look around, he activated the Shaped Durability enchantment on his leg, before scraping his leg across the ground as he walked towards the frozen lake, carving a hole in the ground. He only activated on his right leg, keeping the left leg normal since he found out the hard way that carving a long tunnel with both legs meant he had nothing to really use as leverage since both his legs would sink in the ground. Since it wasn’t physically exhausting at all, as the Shaped Durability enchantment carved through the ground with ease, he continued to make multiple rounds to and fro, making good progress on his tunnel.
Once a small outline was made on the ground, he moved onto the other parts of the forest, to cut off a couple of tree branches to make the tools to dig a ditch. The place he was in had no bamboo shoots to speak of, so no easy way to get hollow wood here. He would have to make his own pipes of water to transport the water from the lake to his cave.
It was going to have to be really deep as well, since he planned on having the water reach the cave without the use of any motor.
The problem of a tap to regulate the flow of water was not on his mind right now. A problem for later. Guiding a nice, sharp tree branch, he activated the Shaped Durability enchantment on his leg before jumping and giving the branch a swift kick, something that was only possible because of the enhanced strength in his body.
“Oof!” he fell on his back, as the branch fell to the side, having given a clean cut by the magical force of his forcefield.
Looking at the clear sky, he grinned, just lying on the ground for a moment, somewhat happy that things were finally moving somewhere.
Of course, he couldn’t stay like that for long. Daylight was not a luxury he could afford to expend at this stage. He couldn’t really absorb light using his enchantments, not right now anyway, so a fire was the only way to light up the cave during the night. The large thermal battery glowed slightly, but it was nowhere near enough to act as a light to venture out during the night.
After having his lunch, he resumed the work of digging the tunnel, aided by the tree branch, which he used as leverage, to just slide across the soil, digging it deeper, so that the pipeline could be placed underground, so nothing could disturb it.
Obviously, he was going to boil the water in his cave before using it in any manner. He boiled it even now, using the thermal battery to heat the water before drinking any of it. Banthing and washing in the lake water was fine.
Depending on the area and time period and universe he was in, even drinking should be fine from the lake but he was not about to risk getting sick from something that he could have prevented, especially not in this small body and certainly not here, with no help or support as far as he could go.
Of course, he had spent days just walking aimlessly through this forest, finding nothing but pine trees, occasional howling noises, and snow. God, so much snow.
Knowing that there was a much better chance of him crossing this forest once he had grown, both magically and physically, he chose to make the executive decision to just hunker down and just grow his power.
A training montage, if you will.
Snickering at his joke, he looked up as the sky had gone dark once more. Sighing, as the day came and went way too soon, he heard the tree branch on his back as he walked back to the cave. Better to get to his shelter before it went dark.
He might be a magical expert with a near unbreakable magical forcefield on top of his body, but he was always afraid of the dark, even in his past life, something that he distinctly remembered, despite forgetting a lot of important other stuff.
