Chapter 186: Puppet

Jaxir stared at the human outline hovering above the Reality Compendium until more details started filling themselves in.

It only took a few seconds for the proportions to become familiar. The shoulders widened to match his own, the face sharpened into features he’d been seeing in mirrors his whole life, and even the robes forming around the figure copied what he had on right now.

By the time the illusion finished taking shape, Jaxir was looking at himself.

"So that’s what you mean by puppet?"

He leaned closer and moved one hand. The unfinished figure copied the motion, while the magic circle beneath it shifted to show him how much control could eventually be layered into the imitation.

This lesson wasn’t going to teach him how to make some wooden servant or mindless doll. It was teaching him how to build an illusion of himself, one convincing enough to move through a battlefield as though there really were two Jaxir Chances causing problems.

The possibilities were obvious enough that his earlier excitement came right back.

That said, the puppet couldn’t Cast, use Hexes, or contribute any real offensive power. Its job was to draw attention, force enemies to pick which Jaxir to attack, and open up chances while they worked out which one was real.

How convincing that trick got depended on how well Jaxir understood the magic circle, and how precisely he could control the illusion once it was deployed.

Then, he noticed the defensive function.

Damage aimed directly at Jaxir could be split between him and the puppet, with half of it transferred into the illusion’s stored mana instead.

The exchange rate was far better than the Aegis. Every 10 points of transferred damage only burned through 1 MP inside the puppet.

In other words, 1,000 damage aimed at Jaxir would still hurt. However, the puppet could swallow 500 of it for only 50 MP.

"Not bad... though a lot more limited than aegis..."

The protection came with an equally ugly weakness, though, and Jaxir understood it the moment he read further into the lesson.

If someone correctly identified the puppet and attacked it directly, the conversion flipped completely. Every single point of damage dealt to the illusion would wipe out 10 MP from its reserves.

Something that could soak up thousands of damage while shielding Jaxir might vanish almost instantly once an enemy stopped falling for the trick.

That made the illusion itself far more important than its defensive numbers.

A bad puppet would fool someone for half a second, get targeted right away, and watch its mana evaporate before Jaxir got much out of it.

A good one? It could keep an opponent guessing through several exchanges, quietly eating half the damage meant for Jaxir every time they guessed wrong.

The Reality Compendium wasn’t just offering him another shield, it was a lot more complext than that. Jaxir liked that a lot more.

He pushed mana into the first section of the magic circle, curious to see how much worse the cost could get, considering the turret had already eaten over 2,000 MP.

He got his answer quickly. The puppet hadn’t even formed past a pale outline when he stopped, staring at how fast his reserves were dropping and stretching that rate out across the rest of the circle in his head.

Even with a generous estimate, finishing the thing would push well into five figures.

Jaxir pulled his mana back immediately and watched the unfinished copy collapse back into the page.

"You people are insane."

Most of that cost wasn’t even for the defensive reserve that would eventually absorb damage for him.

The illusion itself took the overwhelming majority, just to exist with enough substance, movement, sensory detail, and stability to be worth deploying. On top of that, how much mana Jaxir could store inside it afterward depended on how well he built it.

If his control was terrible, he could apparently spend a fortune making a puppet and still end up with barely enough reserve to survive one good hit.

Jaxir leaned back and exhaled, looking between the Reality and Construct Compendiums.

When he first understood their Branch Abilities, Conjurers had seemed suspiciously versatile. Now, he was starting to see the price tag attached to that versatility.

They could prepare beasts, autonomous Constructs, illusions, and entire fake realities before a battle even started. However, doing any of that well took enormous mana reserves, time, and enough understanding to keep each creation from turning into an expensive piece of garbage.

Being able to do almost everything didn’t mean any of it came easy.

His eyes drifted back to the Construct Compendium, and he caught something new.

The image of his stored Mana Repeater Turret was still on its page. However, a small timer had appeared next to it, slowly counting down from just under 10 minutes.

Jaxir touched the image and immediately understood. The Compendium was running the stored Construct through the Legacy itself, enhancing what he’d made before handing it back.

So the one-standard improvement the book promised wasn’t instant. That took the Construct Compendium off the table for now.

Jaxir wasn’t about to spend five figures of MP on a puppet before he even knew whether the Common turret he’d already built was worth keeping. He definitely wasn’t wasting one of his last Grand Mana Potions just to rush another experiment, either.

He closed the Reality Compendium and looked at the third book lying nearby.

"Alright, puppy book, you’re up."

The Beast Taming Compendium floated into his hands.

Jaxir had skimmed through it earlier without much enthusiasm, only stopping long enough to get the gist of the taming benefits, the spatial beast storage, and Bestial Appraisal.

This time, he slowed down and actually looked through the pages, instead of mentally filing the whole thing under ’stuff for people who want pets to fight for them.’

The first several teachings were just as uninteresting as he remembered. Then, he reached the storage section.

Unlike the Construct and Reality Compendiums, this one already had something stored inside it.

Jaxir paused with his thumb resting on the edge of the page. He expected some explanation, or maybe another lesson, to show up once he pushed mana into it.

Instead, a dark shape slowly rose up through the paper itself. It gained depth until it looked less like an illustration and more like an object sitting beneath perfectly clear glass.

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed.

It was a heart.

It was made of polished black gemstone, with branching veins carved across its surface and a faint pulse of dark light moving from its center out to its edges.

The material looked almost identical to the crystal covering the Black Gem Alpha. Though, it was denser and darker, polished until every edge caught the firefly-like light in the cavern.

Jaxir slowly looked over at the wolf.

Then he looked back down at the black gem heart waiting inside the Beast Taming Compendium.