Experimenting, of course.

With so many captive and lustful subjects within my grasp, it seemed only natural that I make use of them to settle my intellectual urges as well as my more carnal ones. A lust for flesh, a lust for knowledge, a lust for power-all could be sated at once. Both of my 'metamagic' abilities along with my favorite spell warped the goblin's bodies to **** degrees throughout the evening, getting Throbbing Spells up to 4, bringing the new Carnal Exaltation up to 3, and getting my fifth level in Augment Body.

Whereupon, I started to experience something that I probably should have noticed before, and only luck had prevented me doing so: something was preventing my from progressing further. Internal Toxicology was having a similar issue-I just hadn't noticed because I had basically switched to using Fruiting Body for my chemical needs since. Whenever I used my level 5 skills, instead of the slow satisfaction of working towards a goal-that of my next level- I had the peculiar feeling that something was just on the tip of my tongue-like there was some last little piece of knowledge preventing me from moving forward in that skill. Just sheer repetition wasn't helping-I was as good as I could get with these two using them the way I currently was. I couldn't merely improve my execution, a new strat was needed-to borrow a term from my speedrunning days.

And so, I looked for ways I might modify my casting, tinkering as the sun went down. Whether trying to redirect the way the energies left my body, controlling them for longer once they were within the goblin's, or focusing them to the finest point I could imagine-nothing seemed to amount to anything. That annoying feeling just sat there, gnawing at me. Just like a coding problem where I was just one tiny step away from cracking something open, and being stymied was frustrating. Heck-I used Meditate a few moments not to replenish my reserves, but to simply calm down at times.

Sadly, when I finally decided to throw in the towel, I hadn't cracked the code yet. I'd like to think I was at least closer, since I now definitely knew a few things that definitely weren't the missing piece-but I ultimately still didn't have the breakthrough I needed. However, that wasn't to say that it was all completely for naught. At one point, I tried modifying parts of the brain-under the theory that perhaps modifying the brain to accept a body might allow for more **** changes. Other than brief splitting headaches on their part before I reduced things back down, didn't have the affects I wanted. But focusing on smaller parts, and a new skill popped up under my list:

Augment Mind(Spell)(Level 1)-Increase or decrease strength of a mental construct or emotion of the mind of touched target by up to 5%. Max of 5% per level changes can be made to one construct or emotion. Limit tracked separately for, and doubled for, critical casts.

How exactly useful this will be will depend on how 'subtle' it is. Still, not a bad tool to have on my belt. Already planning on Augment Body to help tailor the minions my breeders will produce to suit my purposes, being able to lean their minds more a desired direction will be handy, especially given how I passed on children being loyal intrinsically for faster levelling and regeneration.