C4:-In_Marvel_with_Five_Templates (Patreon)

4. Physique, Haki, Spells, and Annihilation Maker.

│3rd Person POV │

Lucas used a few transfiguration and charm spells to transform a few cardboard boxes into steel blocks with grips on two sides, each block with different weights and sizes.

Then, he tucked the Elder Wand back into its holster.

As he was already wearing a gym vest, he got into position and started by lifting the lightest steel block of about 10 kg. He was able to lift it without any strain.

After setting down the first steel block gently, he tried to lift the others one by one and found himself comfortably lifting steel blocks weighing about 25 kg. When the weight reached 30 kg and higher, he started to feel some strain. By 50 kg, he had to exert every ounce of power in his body to lift the steel block above his waist.

Huff—! Huff—! 

Setting down the 50 kg steel block, Lucas lay on the floor, taking deep breaths to calm down his racing heart.

“That was exhausting. And embarrassing as well. There are people out there, who without any power, are capable of lifting hundreds of kilograms of weight and here I am, struggling to lift even 50kg.” Lucas muttered in low spirits.

However, his mood wasn't down for longer than a few moments as he stood up quickly and encouraged himself.

“This small setback is nothing. I only just got the [One Piece Physiology] and [DxD Human Physiology]. I was a normal human who didn't do any exercise apart from occasionally running to catch a bus. Without any training and very low amounts of Magicules, how could my physique be stronger than a normal human who has trained for years? I just need to start training my body, and soon enough, I will step into the superhuman category very easily.”

After that bit of coping and self-encouragement, Lucas decided to move on to the next test. Trying to use Haki. 

Firstly, he tried to use Observation Haki.

He summoned a few sponge stress balls, which he had already prepared beforehand just for this test. Then, he used a charm on them to make them bounce around him erratically.

After doing all this, Lucas closed his eyes, calmed his mind, and took slow, deep breaths. He then tried to “expand” his senses, to feel the world around him, and try to anticipate moments of the sponge balls before they hit him.

However, apart from feeling the sensation of the sponge balls making contact with his body, he didn't feel anything.

This continued for about ten minutes before Lucas acknowledged the failure and moved on.

After quickly banishing the sponge balls back to their place, he tried to use Armament Haki next. Clenching his right hand, he focused his willpower to create a coating of armor around his fist.

The result was the same. No matter how much he focused, even using Occlumency to stimulate emotions to increase his will, he didn't succeed.

Sighing, Lucas relaxed his fist and sat down. He didn't bother to try to awaken Conqueror’s Haki, as he knew he would fail again. Additionally, he didn't remember anyone in One Piece awakening Conqueror’s Haki through training. Everyone who had Conqueror’s Haki in One Piece awakened it during moments of intense stress and emotions. 

“It seems just having enough willpower isn't enough to awaken Haki. I will have to incorporate Haki training as well in my schedule in the future. As for Conqueror’s Haki, I guess I can only try to see if I can awaken it on my own.”

Lucas knew his willpower wasn't lacking, because he had the [Mental Resilience] Trait, and he hadn't stopped training this trait.

It seemed that just having strong willpower wasn't enough to awaken Haki. Maybe it would've been possible if he had Chinjao's skills too. However, there was no use crying over what-ifs.

Lucas was getting tired just thinking about the suffering he would have to go through in the coming period.

He was happy about one thing at least. Since he finished assimilating Chinjao’s Template two days ago, the [One Piece Physiology] Trait didn’t cause his head to start getting pointy and his hair to fall off.

“Now, only things from Leonardo’s Template are left to test.”

Then, Lucas sat down to meditate again. He decided to save the best for last. At this moment, he was planning to go through the basic knowledge from [Adept Magic], then try to cast a basic spell before moving on to the main course. 

This time, Lucas had to sit in meditation for a few hours before he was able to digest enough knowledge to be able to conjure a basic magic circle to use a few simple spells.

“It seemed Leonardo had only dabbled in the Mathematics Magic System. Even though I can easily understand the concept and knowledge, the sheer amount of basic knowledge required to even get started was so much more than what Shirou learned about Magecraft in ten plus years.” Lucas rubbed his temples, feeling a headache from absorbing so much knowledge within a short time.

Even with two [Genius Intellect] Traits and Occlumency to organize his mind, it was pretty straining to sift through and understand weeks' worth of knowledge within a few hours. 

“Well, I guess it's time for a break.”

Lucas had been in the basement since 8 am after having breakfast. It was now past noon, and he was getting hungry. He decided to have lunch and an afternoon nap to give his brain some rest before continuing his tests when he was back at 100%.

A few hours later.

Lucas was back in the basement, ready to continue from where he left off. 

Sitting cross-legged on the gym mat, Lucas raised his right hand. Doing the required magical calculations in his mind, he pushed Magicules out of his hand and tried to construct the magic circle.

Hum—!

With a soft humming sound, an intricate magic circle appeared above his hand. From the center of the magic circle, a blue ball emitting soft light emerged.

The next moment, Lucas stopped supplying Magicules and waved his hand to disperse the magic circle and the blue ball of light.

Lucas wanted to try other basic elemental spells; however, his Magicules were already running low. The [DxD Human Physiology] he got was from Leonardo, and as far as Lucas knew, that kid wasn't a genius mage to have a substantial innate pool of magical energy. So, Lucas also inherited a low amount of Magicules after he finished assimilating the [DxD Human Physiology] Trait just this morning.

“Well, I will just have to grind my Magicules reserves to what Leonardo had during the Kyoto Attack and then surpass him.”

Lucas was more excited than disappointed at this moment, because it was time for the main event.

From the moment he activated his Magic Circuits, Lucas had become vaguely aware of the existence of his soul because Magic Circuits primarily reside within a magus’ soul, and what is found on the body was just a physical representation of them that stretches itself like a nervous system.

Through this awareness, Lucas had the hazy feeling of something being attached to his soul. Making a reasonable guess, Lucas thought that it was Leonardo’s item that he got from the template.

Annihilation Maker, one of thirteen Longinus-tier Sacred Gears.

Calming his excitement, Lucas focused and drew upon Leonardo’s knowledge of how to summon the Sacred Gear. 

The next moment, he felt the shadows around him become alive to his senses. He knew that this meant that he had successfully activated the Sacred Gear, so he quickly tried to create a monster in the shape of a dog.

The shadows beneath him churned and stretched. First, the head of a dog emerged from within the shadow. Then the rest of the body also emerged quickly. 

Looking at the dog-shaped shadow monster before him, Lucas reached out with his hands and started petting the dog to check how it felt.

Even though it was made from shadow, it was fully solid to touch, and even its fur was soft, just like how Lucas imagined it to be. It also behaved like a normal, real dog would, wagging its tail, tongue sticking out, ears twitching, etc.

“Alright, buddy. You come here, I’m going to create another dog to test the limit of Annihilation Maker.” Lucas gestured for the shadow dog to move to his side before he went on to create another shadow dog. This time, he tried to imagine the shadow dog having the power of teleporting through the use of shadow within 10 meters radius.

Another shadow dog appeared from his shadows, looking completely identical to the first one. However, when Lucas gave the command to the second shadow dog to try out the shadow teleportation power, it just tilted its head, expressing confusion.

Lucas nodded, having expected this. “As I thought, I didn’t get the Fanon Annihilation Maker.”

In the original High School DxD Light Novel that Lucas read, the Annihilation Maker allowed its user to create monsters from their imagination, with their power directly scaling to their own. However, they innately possessed zero magical abilities; it’s just their appearance that matched your imagination. If you want to give them a magical ability, you need to understand how that ability works and be able to use it on your own, which you can then grant to your monsters.

When Lucas mentioned the Fanon Annihilation Maker, he was referring to the fanfics he read that portrayed the user of Annihilation Maker being able to create monsters with whatever abilities they fancied, only the most absurd abilities requiring the user to unlock Balance Breaker first.

If it were that easy to create monsters with any abilities you imagine, Annihilation Maker wouldn’t be ranked lower than True Longinus and Zenith Tempest among the 13 Longinus Sacred Gears. Annihilation Maker was considered one of the Longinus because it didn’t inherently have a limit to what you can create. With enough smarts and knowledge, one can truly create something to even slay the Gods in DxD.

In the hands of an average person with no knowledge of the supernatural, Annihilation Maker was just a cannon fodder making machine in various shapes and sizes. Even the amount of cannon fodder they could make was low because it consumed stamina to create monsters, and an average person’s stamina wasn’t something to write about.

Stamina was one thing Lucas did have, as all his physiological traits increased it in some way or another.

Lucas wasn’t too disappointed with not getting the Fanon Annihilation Maker, because he had Dumbledore’s Template. The sheer number and variety of spells that Dumbledore had in his arsenal were enough for Lucas to use Annihilation Maker to its full potential. Once he unlocked all the knowledge from Dumbledore’s template.

Next, Lucas created more shadow dog monsters, trying to find his limits.

Once the number reached nine, he stopped as he felt the exhaustion setting in. He could feel that if he pushed himself, he could create a few more. However, he decided to stop for now as he didn’t want to pass out from exhaustion at this moment. He still had to dedicate a few hours to studying programming during the evening, after all.

“Okay, I have completed the initial testing. Now, I should come up with a schedule to train my various powers. For the coming months, I will stick to the schedule and in the meantime, I hope to finish developing [Getting Over It] before December.” Lucas muttered while being surrounded by nine dog-shaped shadow monsters.

It was now late September, and Lucas graduated from his high school in late May.

According to what Lucas researched in the last few weeks, Steam already had the Steam Direct program integrated into it. They did it at the same time they launched their first Steam Summer Sales event a few months ago.

Steam Direct allowed game developers to submit their video games directly to the Steam Store. In his previous life, Valve developed this program in 2017. Lucas was glad that the program was already present here at this time; otherwise he would’ve had to expend countless times more effort to make any games he developed available on big platforms.

Even more fortunately, Steam was going to launch a new event called Steam Game Festival during the planned Steam Winter Sales in January. The progress that Steam had made in a decade in his previous life, it was making here within a year.

“I am sure if the technology in my old world was as advanced as it is here, Steam would’ve been progressing at the same rate in that world.”

Lucas was obviously very happy to see the changes in timeline that were beneficial to him. Like, all the conditions he needed to make his version of Getting Over It famous in this world were manifesting one by one.

Now, his only job was to create and publish the game. Failing with such advantages would be enough to die of embarrassment.

____

A/N: Here's the fourth chapter. Next chapter, there's going to be a time skip and Lucas finally interacting with other characters. Hint:- It's a girl with a troubled past and tragic future, that is, if Lucas' presence doesn't change the future.

I hope you all like this chapter, and please share your thoughts about how you feel about the fic.

Good day, and see you all later.