TSSG - Chapter 9 : [Mechanics of Magic] (Patreon)

Disclaimer - I don't own any of the characters appearing in High School DXD or the Anime or the manga whatsoever.

Lucifaad, Underworld

–Shin–

He looked up at the timer and saw that it had been just over an hour since Nat had left, and while he was not tired in any meaningful capacity, he had gained a ton in such a short period of time.

See, his initial strategy of trying to use that perk on his physical body, while sound, was not really optimised for his current living conditions. See, he lived in a small apartment, with a store below him, and not a lot of space to stretch his body. He also could not just exit the city in search of a barren place to train to his heart’s content.

All he had was this house, and as such, he had switched gears to train the one thing that the majority of Devils used in their day to day lives.

Magic. 

Magic fueled by Demonic Energy. The reserves of which were usually pretty much decided by the time one became an adult, or rather, that’s what was commonly known in Devil society. See, Devils as a species are never ending, i. e., no real biological death, and are also capable of endlessly growing, though the growth rates later on are so minuscule that the growth will not appear.

But Devils will grow in strength if they train endlessly into their centuries. Or, that’s what he knew before he came here.

Here, the perception was that once a Devil reached their maturity, which was somewhere around 50-80 years old, their overall strength stagnated. It was pretty much set in stone that your demonic energy reserves do not grow after someone reaches that age. And in a society that conflated Demonic Energy with overall strength, it was practically written in stone that low class devils in their first century would remain low class evils for the rest of their pathetic lifespan.

But that’s where his power comes in.

See, if he was not wrong, beyond just shattering any limits he might have on his powers, the perk Shattered Limiter also ensures that even if he did nothing but laze around and sleep in his bed, his power would double every year. Now, doubling the power of a low class devil still leaves him a low class devil who could be killed by a single glancing blow from a high class devil.

But if he trained really hard and came out alive and on top of life, treating situations, then his power would reward him with even greater power. He could potentially double his power every six months, or maybe even every quarter, if he was really reckless about his life.

See, with no way to do meaningful physical training without having the space and the tools for it, he wanted to train his Demonic Energy, so that he would have a bigger pool of energy to draw from.

His theory was simple. Do everything he could to drain his reserves before doing the same to refill them. Then, the question arose of how exactly to do that.

See, on paper, Magic used by all Devils was based on imagination. In theory, the most OP form of magic out there, only it depended on the amount of Demonic Energy actually available to the Devil in question. In reality, true Imagination based magic was horribly inefficient, requiring tremendous amounts of willpower and Demonic Energy to do anything meaningful.

That was where Magic Circles came into play. Every single Pillar House had them, varying kinds. There were probably different ones for the House Head, and for the servants and retainers, where they were mostly used as identifying measures.

The Magic Circles drastically cut down the amount of Demonic Energy needed to cast high tier magic. It helped devils do more with less, which helped them with figuring out newer ways to kill people, do more research, and overall, become more powerful.

Low class devils did not have that luxury. If he was not wrong, sometime in the future, there would be a standardised test that devils could take to graduate to become a middle class and then a high class devil, wherein they could gain a government sanctioned Magic Circle, instead of being beholden to Pillar Houses.

Unfortunately for him, that did not exist right now, and as such, he was stuck with using just his imagination and Demonic Energy to perform magic, and as one might imagine, it was horribly inefficient.

To the point that casting the few spells he knew, such as lighting up the room, generating a gust of wind, and creating weak sparks of electricity, took up most of his reserves.

The reason he did not go all the way down to zero was that he still had to retrieve Natasha, and while he hadn’t felt much strain when he retrieved her before, he was not sure what would happen if she was further away, or trapped in something, or any number of other scenarios. He had to keep some Demonic Energy in reserve to make sure he did not fail her.

The good thing about Demonic Energy was that he could recover it at a much faster rate as long as he was meditating and focusing on the flow of his energy. Amusingly, the fact that he had such low energy reserves seems to be working in his favour somewhat, as he was able to refill his tank at a much faster rate.

Which was what he was doing when he saw the timer. Natasha and he had decided that 4 hours were the max he was going to wait before he called upon Natasha directly, irrespective of any feeling she might send through their bond. It was her responsibility to be back here in that much time, and in a manner that ensured she was not being tracked. Otherwise, he was just going to assume that she had been captured or worse.

Now, he was confident in her skills, but this world had reality breaking magic, so even after doing everything he could, he was still anxious.

3 more hours to go, he noted before going back to his meditation.

Due to the aforementioned benefit of having really small energy reserves, he was able to get his reserves back up to 100 in less than an hour. 

He exhaled, opened his eyes before lifting his hand. Feeling the Demonic Energy coursing through his body, he willed the energy to turn into light and heat. Now, another nice aspect of Demonic Energy was that while it could be used to just impose your will on reality itself, you could somewhat tweak the reality imposition effects to reduce the energy cost, irrespective of whether you have a Magic Circle or not.

So, instead of just blindly casting a spell, if he could imagine the heat, light, and the mechanism behind it, and somehow imbue that into the spell, he could reduce the cost of that spell. Knowledge was useful here, as this world too ran on similar rules as his previous one, with the addition of Supernatural energy that could bend reality as he knew it.

So, he watched as his hand heated up and began glowing after a while. After that, he cast the spell to light up the entire room, imagining the bits of knowledge he had regarding Electromagnetic waves and the propagation of visible wavelengths of light everywhere, and just like that, he had a noticeable reduction in energy usage. The effect was instantaneous as well. There was no need to change some uber complicated magic spell and worry about magic matrices and account for new variables like human mages had to do every time they had to change a spell even slightly.

That was yet another perk of Demonic Energy spells. Man, having knowledge of just how natural phenomena worked out in the wild must be a wild boost to any existing spell that was up at that point, working solely based on Demonic Energy and imagination.

He noted the time and dispelled the light spell. He had far better ways to waste energy. Just like in the real world, it took a lot of energy to generate heat, so he just placed his hand on a metal utensil he had before, willing it to heat up, as in, he willed for its molecules to begin vibrating at a higher rate.

The moment he willed that to happen, though, he almost blacked out right then and there, as his hand shot back, red hot and blistering, as the metal was already a molten slag at this point, burning through his flooring.

He frantically tried to get it off the floor to limit any more property damage, whilst running low on Demonic Energy. Once there was no more danger of him burning his house down, he sighed and promptly got to meditating.

He had to get his Demonic Energy back up to full as fast as possible. 

Nat was still out there, and he couldn’t risk her getting back here safely just to work on his Demonic Energy.

He was so stupid trying to test a new spell just because he wanted to deplete his reserves faster.

He should have stuck to the tried and tested methods instead of trying something new so recklessly. If he had just knocked himself out, and Natasha, trusting him, had taken some risks to get something extra, and trusted him to bail her out, and found him unresponsive, what would he have done then?!

The thought filled him with guilt as he worked on getting his reserves back up and running.

Imagination fueled magic had some cons as well, as he had just realised. One would not know just how much fuel that particular spell needed once one actually cast it.

He figured that since it was a medium sized utensil and not even that heavy, heating it up should not need that much energy, right?

He was very wrong. That single stunt had liquefied the utensil and eaten up a good chunk of his reserves. More than 50% easily.

STUPID!