Chapter 44: Troublesome Four

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In those three weeks Edward had also worked on his magic, and after a lot of hard work he had finally managed to complete his modified All Speak. It was a complicated matter, but after a lot of hard work he had managed to do it.

The energy required for the spell was, as expected, more energy consuming than the original one, meaning the burden on the body was stronger.

Runic arrays surrounded him as Edward felt a strong energy enter his body from those, alongside knowledge.

Edward felt an intense headache as he assimilated the immense knowledge that came with the spell. It was trying to enter in his body through force, but thankfully his Spiritual Energy was there to soften the impact and help the knowledge get assimilated.

The assimilation lasted for a couple of minutes, before Edward felt his headache soften. Feeling all the languages he now knew the speak, he felt quite weird. Learning had always been a matter of hard work, but now thanks to a spell he spoke all the languages on Earth, and a few more.

Edward also felt his body had taken a hit, the energy needed to transfer the knowledge had tried to ravage his inner body. Thankfully, his body was much stronger than the average person, who certainly would have died, either from the mental or physical strain.

There was still some damage that had been done, but it was recovering rather quickly under his Chi.

Something else took his attention though, and it was his Chi Reserves. Strangely, a few more drops had appeared. It normally took quite some time to produce even a single drop of liquid Chi, but now several had been produced in an instant.

And as he observed more carefully, he noticed that he was drawing Chi from the world faster into himself now, but the speed at which it entered his body was decreasing.

Finally, as the last bit of damage was healed a few hours later, his Chi absorption speed returned to normal. That's how Edward discovered that having the destructive energy of a spell in his body could actually help his situation.

Edward believe that the presence of the foreign energy stimulated his body, which would then draw in Chi much faster than usual to suppress the foreign energy and heal the damage it did. Edward wanted to experiment more, but he didn't know any other spell. He couldn't ask Stephen or the Ancient One to cast a spell on him either as only the caster would have to pay the price of the spell.

Edward couldn't use the spell a second time on himself either, and using on anyone else could potentially endanger them as firstly, only a strong mind could assimilate all this knowledge, and secondly, he modified it to suit him, not others.

Although Edward couldn't verify his own theory for now, he decided to take it for true, and this changed his future magic path drastically.

Most Sorcerers used the same arsenal of spells, which would be spells that may be used in combat, such as the Bands of Cyttorak or Eldritch Magic.

However, Edward now had the idea to use his spells to stimulate his body and accelerate his speed of cultivation. And using spells like those only put a momentary burden on the body.

There was another branch of magic, much less popular, that would have the user pay a price on a long term, and that would be runes and arrays. Instead of having a burst of energy strike the Sorcerer's body, it would be a constant stream of milder but still destructive energy, which would pass through the Sorcerer's body to power the array.

With this, the array would remain active as long as power was fed to it. For normal Sorcerers, this was a very dangerous kind of spell to use as it would weaken them on a long term and reduce their lifespan by a lot, so for a long time it was only used by Magicians like Zatanna who had magic in their body to lighten the burden.

Eventually, Sorcerers came up with a way to create arrays that would feed on the magic present in the world surrounding them to power itself, but those arrays were weaker.

Edward actually learned all of this in Merlin's book on artefact refinement, and also learned that nowadays even actual magicians like Zatanna or Merlin used the safer method to draw arrays, and virtually no one used the old array system anymore, despite it's better strength.

Of today's artefacts, none that were powered by the old array system exist anymore either, as the moment the forger died, the artefact lost it's power, and was destroyed. So even the most powerful magical artefacts nowadays, such as his Ebony Sword, the Staff of the Living Tribunal and other artefacts of this calibre were only made with 'weaker' arrays.

Of course, the refiner's skill would influence the array too, and even if a Master Class rune master used the old arrays to refine an equipment, it would probably not be able to match a legendary artefact like the Ebony Sword.

Anyway, Edward decided to pick up the old arrays and runes back, as it could only be beneficial to him. It wasn't much about the strength of his body, as entities much more powerful than him didn't dare to use this system, but because of the nature of his power.

Chi was the energy of life, and it was the best possible power to resist a constant stream of energy. Adding in the fact that having a constant stream of foreign energy going through his body would accelerate the speed of his cultivation, as long as he used it within his own limits, it would only be great.

Edward would have learned about arrays and runes even without that anyway. The runes to create his own artefacts, and the arrays to protect his parents. With strong enough runes, even the Ancient One wouldn't be able to harm his parents. Of course, that would need a very high level, but Edward also doubted someone of the Ancient One's calibre would harm his parents.

Of course, although Edward would focus on learning this, he would still learn about the more common spells as their power couldn't be underestimated.

Actually, ever since he mastered the altered All Speak, Edward had been working on not only his runes, but also on Eldritch Magic. This was the most versatile type of magic a Sorcerer could master, and was also something Merlin had become a grandmaster in. Merlin could match the Sorcerer Supreme with nearly only Eldritch Magic, and he had passed down some of his teachings over it in his book, alongside the runes.

Edward was now already able to create a few simple constructs, such as shields and weapons, but they were still slightly unstable and lacked power because of his little experience. He was getting there though.

As for his learning of runes, it was a slow and long process, but Edward's heightened learning ability was allowing him to learn fast.

So during those three weeks, Edward had been working a lot, and it was interjected with a few battles as Serenity. None of them were really anything memorable though as no strong villain appeared, he only went after small fries to relieve some of his stress.

Edward also did a lot of research though, about the limits of his brain. While in the spacetime tunnel, he had met with Eru, the supreme deity of Ea, who had gifted him with information as a parting gift, and incentive to help him with his problem.

And as soon as he went over the information gifted by Eru, Edward immediately drew a link to Chakra.

According to the information he received, there were seven limiters in a human's body, each regulating a part of the body. Those seven limiters weren't really in the brain as he used to think though, but inside his body.

And it led him to the seven Chakras of the human body, which were gates for energy to pass in. Opening these gates meant opening his Chakras, and bypassing his limits. Those seven chakras were: Root Chakra, Sacral Chakra, Solar Plexus Chakra, Heart Chakra, Throat Chakra, Third Eye Chakra and Crown Chakra.

For him to open them, Edward would have to do it one at a time, starting with the Root Chakra and finishing with his Crown Chakra. The reason for this was that the Chakras formed a special path that went from the base of the spine, that is the Root Chakra, to the very top of the head, the Crown Chakra.

Once one of the Chakras were opened, his Chi would enter inside this special path, and stop at the next Chakra. The problem was, to open a Gate, his Chi had to be in contact with the Gate. But only the Root Chakra was accessible from the rest of his body. As for the other Chakras, they were only connected by the special path, meaning that for Chi to come in contact with them, the previous Chakras had to be opened.

So Edward started working on opening his Root Chakra. The only problem was that he didn't know how he was supposed to do it. He had an idea of what it would do, it would certainly increase his physical power, but that didn't help him in opening it.

So he made researches. He still didn't have an answer, but he would read books everyday on anything connected to Chakra and try to find the way to open his Chakra. All the while training on all his other aspects.

Actually, Edward's plan was to continue training, but after those three weeks of calm, something came up.

Ever since a few months ago, many Supers started appearing around the world, some became heroes to help others, while others became villains to serve their own interests…

It was a rough explanation of the situation with Supers, but still rather accurate. Anyway, as with everything, not every hero was equal as some had more popularity than others. For example, Spider-Man and Serenity were barely known outside of New York, while Iron Man was known worldwide because of the people they fought.

One Hero, or rather one team of heroes, who were very much known too, were the Fantastic Four. Edward wasn't sure what made them famous, but they were known all across America, or even beyond, probably because they were often seen operating outside of their home base, Central City.

Anyway, the big event that changed Edward's, as well as many others' routine, was an announcement made by the Fantastic Four.

It was quite simple, they were moving away from Central City, and to New York. This was huge because they were known to have quite a few enemies, many of which don't really care about collateral damage, and they broke quite a few buildings in Central City.

So now that they were moving over to New York, the inhabitants of the city could expect trouble to come alongside them.

Edward expected people to leave the city and protest, but they went against his expectations and quite disappointed him as instead of being mad… they were excited.

On every social media, Edward could see the people of New York were proud of having the Fantastic Four come over to their city, and reacted as if the Yankees were recruiting a legendary player…

That's it, people treated heroes as athletes. As entertainment. They didn't truly realize the trouble Supers brought with them, and that disturbed Edward.

However, it did not change his ideals, and so he geared up for the arrival of the Fantastic Four.

Trouble was coming.