Dominant's Tithe

Mitchel's gaze darted between the three cards. Exhibitive Creation was basically a non-starter for him - no matter what happened after all this, he couldn't imagine a situation where he'd be perfectly comfortable walking around in the nude all the time.

Between Dominant's Tithe and Ecstatic Generation, it was essentially a question of constant, passive generation, or being able to fill up fast, but then needing to pace himself.

Well, that and if I can stomach enslaving people versus trying to hit all the multipliers, he grumbled to himself.

In the end, the combination of the office lady talking about familiars and his knowledge that he was atrocious at managing his resources the way that Ecstatic Generation would require, made him pick the first of the three options.

Even as he opened his mouth to inform the office lady as much, the cards burst into confetti and the woman in question was sighed. "Took you long enough," she muttered. "So now, boons. Boons are going to make magic easier for you - learning it, casting it, or otherwise utilizing it; it depends on the boon in question. It looks like each boon will cost you 1 point of Magnitude... huh. That's a lot more efficient than most people, they're usually spending a total of 2 or 3 Magnitude over their component sections. Maybe your stupid singular-number thing is actually useful?

"Whatever. Anyway, the system's going to give you a crazy technical description - part of my job is to summarize it for you, and give you an overview of what the ability actually does. I can also give you a couple suggestions here and there, but, well... some of your abilities are weird, so I don't know how much I can tell you."

This time, 16 different cards floated up in front of Mitchel. Annoyed at not being able to get a word in edgewise, but finding himself unable to complain - or worry about that inability - he dutifully read through the options. There were a lot of interesting choices, some of which he picked as a matter of course - a second Mana Generation method was pretty much a no-brainer, as far as he was concerned, and he picked up Ecstatic Generation, going off of the office lady's suggestion that having a passive choice like Dominant's Tithe would benefit from an active option. He waffled on a couple, going back and changing his mind about a few several times, especially Corruptive Magic. On the one hand, being able to make people ally with him easier seemed good, especially comboed with Transformative Trinket. On the other, he felt like he was already treading dangerous moral waters with Dominant's Tithe, and having a passive, corruptive influence he couldn't prevent seemed like asking for trouble. And sleepless nights. Most disturbingly, the office lady didn't seem perturbed by the corruptive aspects of the Boon, but the perverted nature of just about everything that was 'weird' about him.

Along side the moral and efficacy questions, Mitchel also considered his Magical Magnitude. He only had 15 'points' to use, and he needed to keep some of it to be able to use any of these boons. At the same time, depending on what happened going forward, he would potentially have time to get used to his new powers, allowing time for his stat line to get back to that 15. The office lady had said he'd probably double his magnitude within a decade, though that raised the question...

"As I said, you probably have some level of exponential growth with your stats, weirdo," she said before he could even ask. "So, that being the case, you're probably going to have double whatever Magnitude you end up with at the end of all this within a decade. Given you already seem to have some Boons you're not going to pass on, you won't be hitting 30 Magnitude anytime soon, but depending where you end up, that may not be a problem. No, no, don't ask, that's someone else's problem, just focus on your Boons!"

...good to know.

In the end, Mitchel ended up choosing 11 Boons, but ended up with 5 Magnitude left over, since one was the Familiar that the office lady had promised to reimburse him for due to picking up Dominant's Tithe. He made one last quick pass over his choices, just to make sure he was certain:

Ritual Amp: Changes the benefits of ritual casting from ([Component Trait]x5)x50 to ([Component Trait]^2)x50. Obviously, with his potentially exponential growth, this would scale hard as time went on, and he wasn't losing out as long as he kept his Magnitude above 4.

Secondary Generation Method: Get a second Mana Generation method at half the effectiveness, while keeping side effects. Obviously, having a second method for generating mana was good, even if it was only at half the effectiveness. Plus the side benefits were still fully intact, so no accidental pregnancies thanks to Ecstatic Generation.

Pierce: Would allow his magic to penetrate defenses against magic and overcome forms of anti-magic. While his familiar and any thralls he - hopefully never - bound would protect him, he'd want to be able to penetrate any defenses, or overcome any antimagic effects to win the fight.

Object of Worship: Gain power from worshipers, and magic within his chosen 'domains' would be even more effective. A chance at literal godhood was too good to pass up. Also, it seemed like it would mesh spectacularly with what his chosen Mana Generation methods wanted.

Cleansing Light: He could answer the prayers of his worshipers, granting them temporary access to one of his spells; he'd also be able to summon angels to do his bidding. Building off the previous choice, what good was being a deity if he didn't help his worshipers? And he could see a potential to use the angels as his thralls for Dominant's Tithe, which while the office lady didn't confirm, she didn't say it wasn't possible either.

Transformative Trinket: While he originally chose it to go with Corruptive Magic, he decided to keep it to eventually make 'holy artifacts' or something, and because they could help with his Ecstatic Generation.

Mystic Fluids: Turn the sexual fluids of others into mana potions. If he was going to have what amounted to sexual servants, he might as well make the most of it!

Sexual Learning: After an hour of sex with someone, learn an innate magical ability from them. Pretty much the same reasoning as the previous choice.

Familiar of Flesh: Have a familiar that would already be obedient and allow him to kickstart his Mana Generation without - much - moral pondering.

Parental Mastery: Control what his children would inherit and be able to breed with more things. He figured that as long as he was already messing around with reproduction via Ecstatic Generation, he might as well go all-in.

Innately Mystical: Gain three extra innate spells, on top of the three he would already start with. He had to think hard about this one, given that he already had Sexual Learning, but the chances to expand his repertoire right away was too tempting to pass up.

Mitchel nodded to himself, satisfied, and turned to tell the office lady, but she was already waving her hand to dismiss the Boon cards. "You're finally done?" She nodded to herself before he could even start to respond.