Ch73.Storm - Part 1.

After finalizing the last few preparations regarding my Runes, I immediately made my way back to my house and entered my private room which was completely isolated and there was no chance of anyone disturbing me while I created my last few Runes as well as rushing forward and linking them together in order to become a Circle 2 mage!

I have made sure to put in much more work with regard to my preparations this time, therefore, I have absolutely no doubt that I have the ability to create these last few Runes.

I have also stocked up on quite a few different potions, just in case I run into any unexpected problems and need emergency therapy. I have also made sure to prepare a newly captured 'prisoner', and have left him tied up, unconscious and close by, just in case something goes wrong and I need a new body. I really don't want to go back to being something like an insect, that would make returning to a humanoid body annoying as hell.

Anyway, after completing all of my preparations, I turned off the lights and sat down in the pitch darkness allowing the shadows to completely cover me, I then proceeded to clear my mind from any distracting thoughts and create my remaining Runes in one short sprint.

This process, as expected, was completed without going through too much trouble. After completing those Runes, I spent the next two days familiarizing myself with all of the changes I went through after creating those Runes and understanding there locations.

In that time I also made sure to relax a bit and have a short break, focusing on recovering my Magical Energy and all of the mental stress I had to go through while creating four Runes in a very short amount of time.

On the third day, in another short burst, I completed my second Magical Circle!

As soon as my second Circle was created, I felt as if the world was changing around me. A burst of much thicker and purer Magical Energy Rushed towards me at an alarming rate and all of the shadows in the surrounding room felt as if they became alive!

I instinctively knew that I could connect to any shadow in the room, enter my Shadow Space from my current position and then exit from any one of the shadows I connected to. I don't know how I could tell the different shadows apart since they appeared to me as one big one, but I just could.

This room immediately started to feel like 'home' and, somehow, I started to truly gain an appreciation for these shadows. This is a very weird experience and I don't understand if this is normal occurrence or if there is some unknown variables with my second Circle.

I will need to do some more experiments on my current strength as well as if the placement I decided to go with created any unexpected or suppressing results in the utilization of my Circle.

It will take a while to understand all of these changes, but before that I need to check up on the situation with Derolo!

It is time to take that fucker out! . . . But first I need to eat, 'I am fucking starving!'

I leave my room and walk towards the kitchen to grab a massive meal, I should have stacked up on way more food during my little 'closed door' session, all I took with me was a bit of dried meat as well as some tin food and that was not enough at all! I need some beer and some nicely cooked red meat!

After stuffing my face for a while, I eventually made my way to my office and called Birdhead over to get an overview on what has happened in the last few days.

Luckily not much has changed regarding the situation and everything seems to be going as planned.

This time I plan to spend a few weeks to familiarize myself with my newly enhanced strength and the best way to be able to quickly get used to my current abilities is to just fight it out! Therefore, for the next week or so, I am going to get back into the Academy traditions and fight it out with whomever is ready to get beat up!

As I arrived at the academy, the first thing I did was finding my newly appointed bodyguard, Emilior, I had a few short bouts with him and I must say, the results were fucking impressive!

I obviously lost every time we fought, but I have made some serious progress and have even managed to get in close a few times, utilizing my Shadow Link, I was able to jump between the surrounding shadows, and get much closer to him than usual. His fighting style has changed from a standard long distance mage to an all round berserker, therefore he is much tougher to handle that when I first met him.

My general strategy was to try and rush in while getting as close as possible to Emilior, and then as soon as I was in a position to strike, I would immediately transform into a Humanoid Panther, increase the size of my arms and legs as I charged in, increasing both my power and reach.

I refrained from using my poison breath and a few of my more offensive moves, purely because I really couldn't find an opportunity to use them against him in an effective manner. Anyway after running a few tests on him, I went ahead and fought with a large variety of students for the rest of the week.

This allowed me to gain a much better idea of my current strength and lay out a few plans that will allow me to, hopefully, defeat Derolo.

Now I just need to put my plans into action, the first thing I did was gather my Shadow Guard and ask whether they were able to discover the traitor yet, and sadly no progress has been made on that side just yet, so now I have to enact my plan.

This plan is pretty basic, but since I am not much of a thinker, I believe that this is the best method to discover any traitors within my Clan.

What I am going to do, is split up the Clan members, who are part of the Nightclub, into separate groups according their roles within the club. I will give each of them a different task while I 'explain' that I am going to be receiving a large shipment of drugs from the drug dealer soon and that they need to be prepared to receive and store this shipment.

I am going to give them each a different version of some more 'sensitive' details and then give each group a task that they need to complete in order to receive this shipment. I will ensure that I tell them that this information is classified and that they are not to tell anyone, not even the other Clan members!

After I leave these meetings, the Shadow Guard will monitor every single clan member and then take special note of any member who starts acting differently or suspiciously. I will also get a few of the better Shadow Guards to monitor Derolo and see what version of this information he receives, from that I will be able to know what group the traitor belongs to as well as hopefully discovering the specific individuals and the method they are using to contact Derolo.

This may not work, but I truly do hope it does, if not, I will have to just wait a while before I am ready to roll out the 'loyalty' plan. This plan will cost me a fortune, so I am just saving up some spare cash in order to complete this one off, massive payment and ensure that it doesn't seriously affect my various businesses.

After having my meeting with the various nightclub groups, I made my way back to the Academy and went through to check in on Oga since I have received news that the final Encryption method has been completed.

As I arrived at his lab, I immediately started asking whether he had actually completed the encryption method and not just 'enhanced' the previous attempts and his response was…

"Yes! Yes! Yes! It's really done, why do you keep asking me even after I said so? … So Stupid!"

He then excitedly 'dragged' me to one side of the lab where he showed me some type of complex filtering contraption as he started explaining, "After Multiple tries at the traditional encryption method I realized that it can never be completely safe. I then thought to myself… Oga you are obviously smarter than everyone else, so why don't you just create your own method? I was then like .. Yes I was being So SO SO Stupid!! …."

"That led me to start thinking, what if I could change the original plant to biologically appear and 'be' the same as another kind of similar plant but retain its original effects? . . . After thinking about this possibility, I was like, that will be super easy! Then I just created this machine here!!!"

"It is so so Cool!!! It works by physically transforming out original herbs and drug substances into into completely different ones while still retaining their original effects! We can then use the newly created plants and substances to breed or grow the altered ones that are genetically one plant while having the effects of something completely different!! ..."

"If anyone were to try and decode the drugs, no matter how hard they try, they will end up discovering the 'wrong' base ingredients!!! I have even made sure to add another layer of traditional encryption on top of this, soooo that nobody will be suspicious... Why am I am so clever?! Why has nobody done this before!? They are so Stupid... "

He continued to go on a rant as he continued to explain some more on these complicated matters, I understood the base idea, but the technicalities were far beyond the current me, I must make a note to get Oga to note down some of his ideas and mentalities so that I can memorize them for possible future uses when I want to dive into these 'technical' subjects.

I must say this Oga is truly an absolute genius! Now that my products will be 100% secure, I can let go of my worries and go through with the second stage of my plan!