Increasing Magnitude

Reminder that my Patreon is now live, and as of 8/4/2023, all subscribers will have early access to a week's worth of chapters for Strange Salvation, with higher Tiers getting access to other goodies as well. Aside from that, likes, ratings, and comments are all appreciated!

The exercise that, after some experimentation and testing, Ahsch and his inner circle had come up with to train the Dominant Mage’s magical ‘stats’ was, he decided, probably the worst thing he’d ever encountered. After all, in the interest of efficiency, he wanted to push against all the various limits of his magical powers as one, to try and grow his weird ‘all-equal’ statline. Therefore, the exercise he ended up using worked all six of the ‘stats’ at once. Overall, it was one long, rather torturous loop: as quickly as he could, he shoved Mana out of himself and tried to condense it as much as he could in a ball, as far away as he could manage. From there, he brought it back as fast as possible and reabsorbed it, only to send it out once again. The trick was to A) do it all at once, in parallel, and B) extend each aspect of the exercise into the others - the trail of mana he extruded to form the ball should be fast (to push his Throughput), but also as thin as he could make it, with the mana as densely packed as he could manage. Due to some incidental things - such as generating more Mana than he could push out - this achieved a well-balanced workout that not only pushed the limits of the obvious stats, but also worked his Mana Pool, since he was trying to contain more Mana at the end of a cycle than he was supposed to have, after Dominant’s Tithe ticked over and dumped a crapload of Mana on him.

Still, it was a rather… unpleasant experience. Similar to patting his head while rubbing his stomach, only he was also winking his eyes at different rates, hopping on one foot, and kicking out the other at odd intervals, whilst spinning in a circle and singing a different song every second. Technically possible, but the amount he’d have to internalize the various aspects of the exercise to make them almost automatic - though not so automatic that he forgot to push their limits - made it so that it would take weeks of practice to perform at the level he wanted to.

However, it was only a matter of several days before he got results - likely thanks to the very slow growth he enjoyed from constantly tinkering with his spells. There wasn’t much in the way of fanfare, no ‘system window’ or anything. But a simple check internally quickly revealed that he had a 20th Thrall ‘slot.’

For a long moment, he just sat there, somewhat surprised. Then Ariin, who had been training nearby, all but slammed into him as she hugged him tight. “Congratulations, brother!” she exclaimed.

Ahsch smiled, hugging her back. “Thanks,” he said, laughing softly. “It… feels good. Making progress like this.”

“And yet, you barely do any physical practice,” Avery drawled as she walked into the training room, dressed in what Ahsch could only describe as hotpants, the medieval equivalent of athletic shoes, and a breast binder. He had to force himself not to drool for a second. “I thought you liked being all strong and manly and holding down your simpering little fucktoys?” his wife continued.

Ahsch rolled his eyes. “I’m an ‘outsider,’ remember? My physicality comes from my mystical prowess.”

She waved his explanation away. “Yeah, but… not working out? Sweating and showing off?” At Ahsch’s blank glare, she giggled. “Okay, you’re enough of a pretty boy to not like sweat, but showing off? Don’t tell me it doesn’t appeal to you,” she ended in a sing-song voice.

Shaking his head and chuckling, Ahsch gave his wife a shrug. “I’ll train enough to not be caught off-guard as my magic keeps growing. But past that..” he shrugged again. “Actual physical work-outs won’t do me much good, and I’d rather show off more… interesting… things…” he slowly trailed off as Avery began stretching, including some rather… provocative poses that involved splits, bending way over backwards, and almost flashing the room as she put one leg up over her head.

Her smirk let everyone know that she knew exactly what she was doing, and was enjoying every moment of Ahsch’s distraction. “No, no, go on,” she said. “Please, tell me more about how much you’d rather deal with your ‘interesting’ - by which I assume you mean ‘hoity-toity smart-boy’ - things.”

Ahsch’s eye twitched, then he glared at Ariin when she began to giggle uncontrollably.

Avery, try bending backwards while you have your leg up… yeah, yeah, just like that! Mahat’s voice devolved into giggles as well as Ahsch sighed.

“Why do you all insist on tormenting me?”

“Because we love you,” Ariin answered, kissing his cheek, then nibbling on his earlobe. “And we enjoy getting you all riled up… and annoying you…”

Shaking his head and trying to concentrate, Ahsch continued his routine. Even if he’d seen some progress, that was no excuse to stop for the day. Habits had to be formed and kept to truly pay off. After a little more teasing from his girls, they left him be and returned to their own training.

Once he was done with pushing his mystical limits, Ahsch did as he’d told his wife and moved on to the physical. Mostly, his goal there was to maintain comfort in his own body, to make sure he wasn’t ever unsure of how strong, or fast, or durable, or flexible he was. Some mundane exercises to test his tolerances, plus going through some of his combat techniques with his spear, prevented him from being surprised by his gradual growth. It was a lot like how a voice changed during puberty - oftentimes, if you heard the voice regularly, you wouldn’t even recognize the difference until you heard a recording, or looked back, or tried to sing a particular song. As long as he kept up-to-date on the changes of his body, he expected he’d never be off-guard by them if he had to push his body to the limit for any reason.