Marcus…
He asked Alta to watch Thalia for a few hours while he got started on finishing the house.
As soon as he made it back home, he began looking over where he could start implementing a new floor level.
With Alta being hired as Thalia’s new bodyguard, he would like to keep him near her at all times including whenever he was away from home. This meant that he would have to make a whole new room for Alta but there wasn’t enough room in the house or on the street to add a whole new room to the floor place.
This meant he would need to add a whole new second floor to the house as well as a staircase leading up to it into the house.
Thankfully the house was built with a solid enough structure to support a second floor so that wouldn’t be too much of an issue.
At first, he was debating on whether or not to make a basement and have Alta live down there but he figured that not only would that be rude but it would be difficult for him to escape if the house were ever destroyed with him in it.
Originally, when he had bought the house, it was designed so that as soon as you walked in the front door, you would enter the living room on the right side with a large facing wall. On the left, there was a wall with a counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. It had stool seats placed on either side of it with the cooking area on the far left side of the house.
Past the living room, kitchen, and dining counter were the two bedrooms.
His own, and Thalia’s unfinished room.
Marcus stood in the middle of it as he thought about where he would start and his eyes drifted over to the living room wall where the TV was placed at.
There was a whole section of unused space to the right of the TV as you walked in that could work for leading into a staircase but he wondered if there was enough room on the street to allow him to build it there.
He went outside and took some measurements and although it would take up the majority of the path that leads to the backyard, it would still work.
He then started writing down floor plans and what he intended to do for finishing the house but right now, he didn’t have too many funds to pay for materials and all the current funds he had coming in were for the business with Alfronn.
Its probably best if he asked Ruvick for help with this one.
As he was making his way over to the cafe, he was wondering if maybe it was right to ask him for help over something so mundane. Although, given the circumstances and how he already knew about the situation regarding Thalia’s magic, it was probably better to ask him anyways.
He walked over to Ruvick’s usual spot and for some reason, he wasn’t there today.
Hmm…
…
Well shit…
He was hoping that having Ruvick as a helping hand would make things go faster since he would need the resources and he has said that he has an abundance of them to access.
This would make things complicated…
But then, a thought hit him.
Azazel had said that all Marcus had to do to ask him for help was to call out his name and he would appear to assist him with anything.
On a whim, Marcus said, “Azazel, I would like your help with something if you don’t mind.”
At first, there was nothing.
Then, a sudden feeling of static electricity ran across his arm and down his hands. He looked down and watched as small bolts of red colored electricity shot out from his fingertips and a change in the air rustled his magic.
When he looked up, there in the seat in front of him sat Azazel. However, unlike how he was dressed in the previous encounters he had with the demon prince, Azazel had cut his hair, trimmed his bear, and exchanged his armor for what seemed like a business suit.
The sharp contrast in how he looked now compared to before made him let out a small chuckle as he said, “You clean up well.”
Looking grateful for the compliment, Azazel’s empty eyes widened slightly and he smiled as he replied, “Well, thank you. Now, I heard you called?”
“To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure you would show up. You surprised me,” he said and Azazel had a strangely hurt expression on his face that only lasted for a split second but quickly reverted back to his usual serious look.
“As I have said before, I intend to aid you in however you might require of me. Whether the task be big or small is irrelevant to me,” he said, with a slight hint of pride in his voice.
Marcus couldn’t quite understand why Azazel was so willing to help him but he decided to accept his help.
“Alright then. Well, I would like your help with renovating my home. I don’t have many resources available at the moment and so I would like you to use your position to help me gain them so I can build a second floor on my house and finish it for my little sister,” he said and Azazel blinked in shock.
“You have a sister? And...you want me to help you finish your home for her?” he said, almost in disbelief.
“If its too much to ask then…,” he couldn’t even finish his sentence as Azazel held up his hand to stop him.
“Of course not! It would be my pleasure to assist you,” he said and he stood up as if he were ready to begin immediately.
Marcus couldn’t help but admire the man’s enthusiasm.
When the two of them arrived at his home, Azazel tilted his head curiously as he observed Marcus’s home.
“I expected it to be...larger if I’m being honest. More grand, in fact. You are comfortable with a home of this...somewhat meager scale?” Azazel asked.
“Meager…,” Marcus trailed off as he fixated his thoughts on that word being used to describe his home before continuing, “Yes, I guess that would be an accurate description of my home. When I was still a child, younger than seven, I had once thought about gaining enough money to buy a large mansion for my mother and any other family and friends to live in. At the time, me and her were living in a small home on a farm in the grasslands of Nebraska. Though there wasn’t a whole lot to see for miles but fields of corn and grass for miles, and although it did feel boring at times, it was still beautiful and peaceful.”
“It certainly sounds peaceful but...if you had indeed once thought about gaining a mansion for your family, then what changed for you to stick with the home you have now? I doubt that money was really the obstacle for you,” he said.
“Well...you are right about money not being an obstacle and while there were other reasons why I couldn’t get a mansion at the time, I still have my reasons for not wanting one anymore.”
“If I may ask, for what reasons?” Azazel asked politely.
Marcus was silent for a moment before he said, “When my mother died and I was left to care for my sister alone, I felt that the space she left behind would make things lonely for the two of us. Having a large mansion all to ourselves without anyone else to fill the vastness it would have… it would feel immensely lonely. For that reason, I thought it would be best to have a small home to keep what little family I still had close together.”
Hearing that, Azazel smiled faintly and said, “I understand now. Forgive me for asking.”
Marcus waved his apology away as if to say the question did not bother him and said, “Lets get to work then.
As soon as he had shown Azazel the drawn out plans for the second floor of the home, Azazel raised his eyebrows in bewilderment.
“This seems like a simple effort. I doubt you would need anything from me to help you finish building your home,” he said and Marcus was both confused and irritated by that response.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked with a small hint of anger in his voice that caused Azazel to flinch slightly.
Seriously, what was Azazel’s deal?
“Well, you wouldn’t really need my access to resources to help build your home when you can simply make them out of thin air,” he said, and as if to demonstrate, Azazel snapped his fingers and a plank of wood appeared in his right hand while a hammer and nails appeared in his left.
“What the hell…? What did you just do? How did you do that?”” Marcus asked frantically.
“All I did was command creation to manifest a plank of wood and some tools…,” he said as he stopped upon seeing Marcus’s eyes glaze over.
“Can you...explain it in a more scientific manner that I can understand?” Marcus asked.
Azazel thought about it for a moment and said, “Well...if I were to describe it in that sense then I guess I would say I am manifesting my will over matter and energy to shape it into whatever I need.”
Hearing that, Marcus stiffened as he realized what Azazel was really capable of.
“You can...manipulate matter. That’s...well that’s just fantastic…,” he said.
“Considering how powerful you are sir, you should be able to as well. You are even more powerful than I am. I am surprised that you do not understand how to manipulate matter in such a way,” he said which shocked Marcus.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, magic is really just another word for the practice of manipulating matter and energy with our souls. Difference being with what I just did compared to normal is that soul selves are what aid in shaping our ability to manipulate matter and energy into a form that is personally familiar to us. However, what I did not long ago was manifest my will on the matter around us, visualize the shape I wish it to take, and then make that a reality. For beings with godlike power and great wisdom, such a feat would be near effortless,” he said and something clicked in his mind.
All the stories of gods turning other beings into animals or cursing them to live as inanimate objects could be true in a certain sense under this understanding.
“Can this be used against other people?” Marcus asked and Azazel frowned.
“Yes but...I would not recommend it. While it is possible to manipulate the matter that makes up another person, you would first have to gain superiority over the control that they have over their own bodies first. I will remind you, magic is the practice of manipulating the matter and energy around us, as well as the matter that makes up one’s own body. You would either have to take someone else completely by surprise or overpower their control over their own body and soul to control the matter that makes up who they are. It would be more wise to attempt to manipulate the matter around you and of yourself rather than the matter of another person.”
“Can you teach me how?” Marcus asked.
Azazel nodded, “Of course.”
Over the next several hours, the two of them used the opportunity for Marcus to practice manifesting his will on the matter and energy around him, though it was incredibly difficult.
It took a lot more focus than he realized because rather than condensing his spiritual energy into a single point like he usually did whenever he fought, instead he had to condense it into a shaped space of whatever he was trying to make while also pulling in matter from all around him.
He also had to practice visualizing what he wanted to make while also understanding the make up of what does into it.
He had to do all of these things at once and it was exhausting.
Seeing him struggle, Azazel said, “To be truthful with you, when I first realized I could manipulate creation like this, it took me centuries of practice to get a grasp on it and I had to figure it out on my own. So far, you are doing rather well being able to shape your spiritual energy and pull matter into that space but analyzing the matter in which you need to replicate and arranging it correctly is what’s making things difficult for you. It will take time but do not worry. I am certain you will be able to figure it out.”
Azazel’s speech did little to boost Marcus’s confidence.
“Nah, I think I’ll skip all that and just cheat,” Marcus replied in an annoyed tone.
Azazel blinked and turned his head slightly but not taking his attention off of Marcus as he asked, “Do what now…?”
For the next few minutes, he spent that time writing rune formulas on a piece of paper that would analyze and calculate the number of atoms necessary to create anything he would visualize by emitting a constant pulse of electromagnetic waves from his body in all directions. The pules themselves would be too weak to effect anything like electronics or machinery and also it would require so little energy to keep going that it would even be unnoticeable to other people if it were drawing from their much weaker souls.
For any normal person, attempting to absorb so much information, not to mention at a constant rate, would absolutely fry their brain and kill them. However, he made it so it is being committed to memory unconsciously and always there for him to access whenever he needed it.
When he finished writing it, he realized that the mark itself would be too small to write by hand so he asked Azazel to manipulate Marcus’s skin to write the letters in such fine and small letters that they would only take up about three square inches of space on the back of his neck.
It was three circles of rune formulas drawn around an icon in the shape of an atom with a bolt of lightning in the nucleus.
Marcus then infused his lightning into the rune formula and turned it into a pseudo curse.
The moment it became active, it was like a jolt in his spine after being doused in ice water.
“Ugh, whoa!” he shouted in surprise as his mind was flooded with information.
It felt different from when he was consciously focusing on something and absorbing information and more like breathing. It felt like he just obtained a sixth natural sense similar to the electro-reception of sharks but magnified to many billions of times over.
He once heard that sharks could sense differences in electricity from over ten thousand miles away.
Marcus had to make sure to tone down the range so that he wasn’t absorbing the information of the entire planet all at once and only focusing on a small radius around him but on such a small and precise manner.
Even so, for such a short range, he still felt light headed from what he was taking in.
He almost fell down from the shock of getting a new sense that Azazel had to catch him and make sure he was alright.
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Just...getting used to this new feeling,” he said.
Holy...shit!
He wondered if this is what Ruvick feels whenever he’s manipulating matter around him.
The feeling of this new sense was almost overwhelming with how sudden the intake of information was coming in.
Though, as is with any new sense, the intensity started to fade as his mind began to adjust to it and he could understand the make up of everything around him.
Then, when he looked at Azazel...he saw nothing but a glowing sphere of pulsing red energy.
“What the hell…?” he said as he looked at where Azazel stood and nothing.
He then rubbed his eyes for a moment and looked at Azazel again.
And there he was, right in front of him.
“What happened?” Azazel asked.
“I don’t know...for some reason I couldn’t see you...I think it may have to do with the fact that the spiritual energy flowing through the atoms in your body is canceling out my electro-receptive sense to the point that its making a virtually empty space in my mind. It makes it look like you disappeared because my senses can’t recognize a body of atoms influenced by foreign spiritual energy compared to neutral atoms or my own. I’ll have to adjust for that…,” he said and he spent the next few minutes working on the pseudo curse until it worked the way he actually wanted it to.
After he was finished, he looked at the rest of the house and sifted through the vast amounts of information he was absorbing and realized, “Hold on...I can just make the whole second floor appear out of thin air can’t I?”
“You should be able to, yes. Especially with the way you set things up with that ‘pseudo curse’ as you called it, I think it should work fine,” Azazel said.
For the next few minutes, Marcus visualized the floor plans, the beds, the paint, the framing, the staircase, the pipes, and everything that would make up the second floor as well as making sure it meshed along with the rest of the house.
As soon as he had finished doing all of that, he focused his spiritual energy into a single point in his fingers and when he snapped them, a pulse of energy covered the entire house and it began to shift around him.
A section of the living room wall had cut itself out and made way for the staircase that led to the second room. From what he could feel, it seemed that the rest of the second floor had finished as he added a two new bedrooms, a large hallway closet space, and a third bathroom.
For the extra fourth upstairs bedroom, he intended to use it as an office space and for storage.
A new bed was already set up in Thalia’s room and Alta’s as well but aside from that, he would let them decide how to decorate their rooms.
After walking through the entirety of the new home, he turned to Azazel and said, “Thank you for your help.”
“Oh, I didn’t do much to help truthfully. You did all of the work,” he said.
“You did help teach me something new regardless. Can I still ask you for help any time?” he asked.
Azazel smiled and said, “Of course. That’s what I’m here for.”
And with a snap of his fingers, Azazel vanished.
In the next few hours, Thalia came by with Alta close behind her and she had a look of disbelief on her face.
“Um...Marcus? I know you said you were going to work on finishing the house first thing after you hired a bodyguard for me but...did you really build a whole new second floor in the time I was gone?” she asked, still not being able to wrap her head around it.
Marcus spread his arms wide as if to make a big reveal and said, “That I did. Welcome to your new home.”