11. Blood Magic

After these two birthdays I also finally had an inkling about the last missing „stone", which was probably a condensed blood crystal. from my willingly given blood, mana, mental and soul energy, which was just basic blood magic. Sadly, most cultures outlawed blood magic as evil, but we Ollivanders knew better. It still took Andy six months to get a book on it, as knowledge was not that easily traded for us Ollivanders.

This, as I already know, comes from our passions eventually killing us, if we acquire some knowledge too soon. The hard part, as Andy said is: „To know what is too advanced for someone", as there is no indicator which shows our skills in a particular subject. Which gave me an idea for my first lifelong project, that being finding a formula for that, which I tried for these six months and which also ended in utter failure. Henry laughed about it, after I explained what I wanted to do, calling me a maniac to think I could already do that, as even the best of arithmancer of us Ollivanders cannot make it, as even that figure lacks the knowledge of the required fields, as it is needed in the calculations. He did though make that calculation for arithmancy, though it is still incomplete and he doesn't share it with anyone, as most passions would kill after seeing it. That also was a common occurrence for us Ollivanders, before the ban on knowledge sharing came into effect. It is especially hard for masterpieces of these crafters and scholars, as those sadly hardly see the light of day.

Creating the blood crystal only needed two months of my time. The first one being used to read about the beginning stages of blood magic and the latter creating it. The method for that is bleeding into a special bowl, which isolates the energy inside of it, letting one drop of your blood fall into that bowl every seconds, while also infusing magic, mental and soul energy, though from the last one only minuscule amounts, once a day. I took a lot of blood replenishers in that timeframe and just meditated, while infusing everything into the bowl. I also kind of overcharged it with my magic, as I had more than enough of that, but it hasn't shown any abnormal effect till now.

For that one whole month I couldn't do anything except bleeding and infusing my energies into that bowl, so I still didn't up the ante of my second skin, but the current level was luckily more than enough for now, as I still acclimate to the new feeling of feeling.

Though that was the plan for the next ten months, slowly cranking the setting up to its highest while meditating and at least up to medium or hard for my daily life. At the same time, I also inserted the new blood crystal in the last remaining whole on the big rock, after which the crystal started to slowly dissolve, which I only realized after a whole week had gone by. If I go from what I had seen till now, it will probably take a little more than ten months to disappear completely.

In that week I had meditate, except for the daily necessities, and also cranked my second skin up to medium, which was damn uncomfortable, but still bearable while meditating. I also finally finished sorting all my memories into timeframes, which took one and a half years longer, as I had not accounted for the new memories in my previous calculation. This also started the daily ritual of sorting my memories, which I had mastered after another month of constant practice, until I did it automatically, in real life time. This slowed down my thought processes though, but not by that much.

After this month I also tried out the hard mode for the first time, which went better than expected, as my body just froze from sensory overload, which is a good way to achieve complete stillness for meditation, as I still did not have that down, as that is very hard to achieve and it is also a hallmark for a grandmaster of the mind arts. The huge problem is that complete stillness means complete, no breathing, no neurons firing completely severing the flow of information between your mentality and brain for that time. Which was a few seconds for me, before my second skin automatically went down a mode, as it sensed the life threatening danger to me. After that I started to periodically switch into hard mode, while also trying myself to get my body stiller and stiller, which went way quicker than I initially expected. I started with switching into hard mode once a day, and slowly tried to go higher from there. I can currently keep in hard mode for 60 seconds and just today overcame the frozen body to breath meanwhile, but my second skin still went down to medium a moment later. The next time though, I was able to hold hard mode for a total of two hour, which with practice went to twelve hours max currently.

This needed three months of near constant practice to achieve, but also meant that my advances in keeping my body as still as possible slowed down tremendously. I also started using medium in my daily life halfway through, which I have already acclimated too. The next step is incorporating hard mode in my daily life, which also went way better than expected, as I finished that after another month, which also meant that I could have it activated constantly. The current feeling is my body getting used as a mobile ant hill, which is basically ants crawling on your skin amplified by a factor of 1.000 for hard mode, 100 for medium and 10 for easy. I asked Henry one time, about if normal humans could withstand something like that and after showing him a few seconds of this feeling, which was his idea, he just said: „Hell no!", which was that.

After I had the hard mode down, I started with hell, the same way I started with hard. It just took way way longer, as I wasn't even close to finished even as my tenth birthday approached ever the closer.

My tenth birthday was a lot bigger than all other birthdays combined, as most Ollivanders, who could make it, came, which numbered in the thousands. They basically just needed an excuse to have a get together. It ended with me excusing myself after no more than ten minutes, as I was near a panic attack and after every trick I knew didn't help, I just started to meditate, while also upping the mode of my second skin to nightmare accidentally. Unexpectedly that helped calm me down, though it also nearly killed me through the sensory overload all my body experienced, this time the sensation being a high imperceptible whistle and weak vibrations triggered by that whistle, which was pure torture, as I felt every atom in my body vibrate. After my second skin went down to the easy mode, I just sprinted to the toilet, nearly hitting the doorframe, before throwing up the whole content of my stomach. There, I remained for the remainder of the day, before calling it a day and went sleeping, my first real sleep in a while. After that I realized, that while meditation can cover most of the normal sleeps effect, it cannot cover everything, as the feeling just hits different. After I asked Henry a few days later, why he didn't tell me, he just said: „Some things you just need to experience. I am honestly surprised it took you that long." After which I started relearning sleeping a real sleep at least once a month, as, as a matter of fact, your body can forget how to sleep a real sleep. The hours I was plagued by automatically starting to meditate instead of sleeping were annoying, which is probably an understatement.

After that I reset the intensity of my second skin to hard and slowly but surely implemented the hell mode into my daily life.