The giant sword hovered in front of me, steady and silent.
I wiped the tears from my cheek and focused.
I tried moving it around, left and right, up and down.
It responded, but barely.
The speed was slow, like pushing through thick mud.
The acceleration was almost nonexistent.
"Kuh!"
Overall mobility at its absolute minimum.
I could feel the cause immediately.
My Demonic Essence, its trait revolved around being extremely faint and resilient. The side effect was that it possessed a weak output, just like what Eli pointed out.
To put it simply, there was no real force behind it, reducing the overall performance of the spell.
Then again, the magic circle in itself was absolute dogshit.
But to create a much more complex magic circle formation, I needed to improve my Demonic Essence.
I needed more Demonic Essence, stronger, denser.
I decided to meditate once more and hone it.
But forging and tempering new Demonic Essence, strengthening them—it took too much time and effort last round.
I needed a different method.
『 Mmm, so you're already trying to create a magic anatomy, I see. 』
"At this point, you're nothing more than my blabbering thesaurus. Can you do anything other than being a peanut gallery?"
『 You're doing fine~ 』
The plan was simple.
Engrave a magic circle directly into my heart, creating a magic formation with the sole purpose of automating the whole process of Demonic Essence refining and creation.
The plan sounded insane on paper, but there were reasons I went this far.
First, Eli didn't stop me—she benefited from me thriving and attaining the rest of Eisheth's inheritance, and I knew she understood the extent of my potential.
She would not let me fall off a cliff and die without achieving something significant. The fact she had not told me off while I concocted this ridiculous plan meant there was still a chance for success.
As long as that chance existed, it was enough for me.
Second, the Thaumanthus flower connected to my heart and brain. It seemed to possess an intricate subconscious that assisted with anything Demonic Essence related. Using it to guide the installation should be enough to enhance my chance even more.
However, before I could even begin engraving delicate inscriptions on the surface of my heart, I need a better 'ingredient'.
Unlike the lousy attempt of a magic circle on that giant sword, I need to put more effort here. After all, this could elevate me to greater power or straight out kill me.
The ingredient refers to the language and system of writing to create the magic circuits.
Instead of the Latin alphabet, I needed something better.
The alphabet represents the basic sounds of spoken language. English had twenty-six letters, derived from older scripts, but it used too many characters for simple meaning.
It was highly inefficient for magic circuits, which did not need sound representation at all.
I was thinking of using the writing system of the east, which used logograms where it utilized a character for a whole meaning and idea instead of the alphabet's phonetic letters-to-sound translation.
Or maybe I could use the fragment of the lost language and writing system called the Yamato Kotoba, which utilizes both logographic and syllabic systems.
However, my understanding of these languages were simply on the foundational level than most and nowhere close to an expert or native, which was needed to further empower the magic circuits.
Yuthark, the Universal Runes used by the Demon, was a perfect language for magic circuits. Each rune carried magical property delivering meaning and intention regardless of the reader's origin.
But I lacked theory and knowledge to use it properly, the same problem once again.
"Urgh…"
Creating a brand new lettering system was too much work.
I racked my brain for a while.
At one point, I realized that I only needed to change the method of application instead of changing the whole language and writing system.
Then a hypothetical concept emerged from that foundation.
Void Runes.
The idea was, to efficiently save space, instead of spreading the characters to form phonetic words and sentences, I could simply overlap letters on the same spot again and again.
In digital design and typography, this method of writing was originally referred to as superimposing or overlaying text.
Or in the Athera's ancient history of contemporary occult practice—
Sigilization.
Sigils are symbolic representations created by taking a statement of intent, removing vowels and duplicate letters, then artistically combining, overlapping, or merging the remaining letters into a single abstract glyph.
The letters are often rotated, distorted, superimposed, or fused so thoroughly that the original forms become unrecognizable, resulting in one compact, non-linear symbol that encodes the full intent.
With some tinkering, I intended to use a divergent version of sigilization as the basis for Void Runes, where a dense sentence or paragraph is to be compressed into a single void-like blot.
"Can this work…?"
I tested it on the flying sword first, rewrote all of my magic circle's inscriptions of magic circuits with the hypothetical Void Runes.
As expected, an issue arose immediately.
My mind lacked a defined comprehension and muscle memory for writing sentences with letters in one spot and then reading it after the writing was done.
At one point, overlapping all of the letters on the same spot created a bolt of linguistic amalgamation.
The inscription became unreadable and messed up with my brain, even though I remembered every word that I jotted.
This problem won't be permanent, thankfully. I could train, perform mental gymnastics to retain meaning. After all, a magic circuit only needed imparted will, regardless of shape and form.
But before committing, I tried appraising the dark blot with Demonic Essence.
"Holy shit."
Unexpectedly, the moment I did, the ineffable inscription became readable.
As if the letters were displayed clearly for me.
"Nyehehe, this must be the work of Magic Savant."
Since I engraved the Void Rune myself using my own Demonic Essence, the Thaumanthus flower appeared to backtrack the history of the creation of the inscription, which then translated the content of the blot to me without any error.
I grinned. "This solved the comprehension and readability."
After I finished rewriting the sword's magic circuits into Void Runes, the usage of space per-magic circuit became immensely efficient now.
The edges were no longer riddled with letters like an epitaph—which was the fault of using crude alphabets—and there were only small tiny blots representing circuits every now and then representing the magic circuits.
Wait, shouldn't this method be even more efficient than the Universal Runes that the Demons used?
Excited, I activated the circle again.
It got activated!
"Guh!"
A second after activating the magic circle, my Demonic Essence burst out in a great torrent.
I stumbled, clenching my chest, as sharp pain and overwhelming sensation spread through every inch of my body.
『 Oh my~ you somehow attained Enlightenment despite only learning Demonic Essence a few days ago. 』
I tried my best to suppress the feeling of pain through self-suggestion, but that won't last long if this feeling becomes stronger over time—
So, quickly explain what this Enlightenment is and what I need to do, Eli!
『 Enlightenment is a phenomenon when mind and Demonic Essence resonate through a certain compatible, comprehended concept. Demonic Essence expands and rapidly evolves to accommodate the mind's accomplishment. That is what you feel now. 』
Huh, so it is a good thing.
『 As for what you need to do, simply let it happen~ In fact, you might want to use this moment to enact your plan. Engrave your heart now.
Enlightenment makes Demonic Essence sensitive and adaptive, and you can influence or even enhance the result of the phenomenon by simply performing an activity with your Demonic Essence. 』
So basically, it is somewhat similar to how sore muscles after exercise work.
Without further ado, I painfully meditated, brute forced through the overwhelming sensation, and began installing the heart's magic circle.
Using Void Runes, I constructed an entire system of conceptual refinery, supporting the growth of Demonic Essence, and installing as many quality-of-life improvements that I thought of.
The great efficiency of the Void Runes allowed me to engrave more magic circuits than what I could expected on the surface of my heart.
And just like Eli said, my Demonic Essence became strangely adaptive and sensitive to every action. This also allowed Magic Savant to grow exponentially from the simulation, making it directly assist me in creating the blueprint I had in mind, and its translation to the engravings of the magic circuits.
At one point, I entered a state of flow, becoming one with my Demonic Essence, filled with calmness and utter awareness.
I could pinpoint the flow of time, space around me, my own body, and many aspects of what consisted of my consciousness.
In 25 hours, 12 minutes, and 23 seconds, I successfully constructed what I called the Fool's Forge, an autonomous magic circle formation directly fueled from the heart, consisting of 128 loops and 256 magic circuits.
"Looks like after the turmoil, I barely feel the discomfort and throbbing pain in my heart."
I simply waved my hands, and the giant weapons surrounding me started getting engraved with improved version of the telekinesis magic circle I created first.
『 Congratulations on the bountiful Enlightenment, my dear Mesmer~ And of course, the successful creation of the Fool's Forge. 』
My Demonic Essence evolved a new trait, alongside the improvement on all aspects.
Polytasking.
Polytasking allowed my Demonic Essence to handle framed multiple activities at once, connected by common themes or goals.
Since the heart, the basis place of operation and reservoir of my Demonic Essence is directly connected to an evolved Thaumanthus' Magic Savant—together, it let me set a simple blueprint and goal.
In which the Demonic Essence and Magic Savant executed autonomously in utter cooperation.
That was how I, with a simple wave of my hand, asked for a 'telekinesis' magic circle to be engraved on the surrounding weapons.
And it did just that.
"Still, Polytasking used more mental power and Demonic Essence than I expected. It also strained the heart compared to manual engraving."
But that was where the Fool's Forge came in.
Fool's Forge was, to put it simply, an all-purpose forge created by a reckless fool, just like what the name's suggested.
It allowed the creation, tempering, and refinery of Demonic Essence in tandem to demand.
When I use Demonic Essence for something, Fool's Forge immediately activates. It took the needed Demonic Essence portion inside the heart as fuel to create more, stronger, denser, better quantity to fulfill requirements of the action I ordered.
So from now on, the process of my Demonic Essence application went like this—
Thaumanthus determines the needed Demonic Essence, the Fool's Forge takes a portion of the reserved Demonic Essence to fulfill the required quota, and the Demonic Essence prepared by the Fool's Forge is then automatically used to perform that certain action.
All of it happens automatically without my intervention.
"Humu, a textbook genius and a proper savant, that's me~!"
Hypothetically, with this system, there should be no spell or magic circle I could not create or activate.
Fool's Forge accommodated 20 times the efficiency of meditation refining, which should be enough to provide me with the needed Demonic Essence for essentially anything!
Not to mention, this eliminated the need for manual refining unless I need to do direct tinkering.
No more meditating like a martial art hermit!
Of course, I know to not bite more than I can chew.
Forcing an enormous amount of Demonic Essence for the Fool's Forge to provide in such a short time would explode my heart and kill me.
『 Fool's Forge is such fitting name for you. There is always a thin line between genius and foolishness, after all~ 』
"Actually, the correct phrase is, 'there is a thin line between genius and insanity'."
『 And there is a thin line between a foolishness and insanity. 』
I paused for a moment.
"Huh, that makes sense."