Low-Fantasy Occultist Isekai

This wasn't the first time Nick had to adapt a spell on the fly, but it was definitely the riskiest one.

Spiritual magic had a way of tainting every spell it touched that was hard to articulate, but he knew that if he allowed the Phobos' natural ability to take control of his [Wind God's Third Eye], he would lose it forever.

That wasn't necessarily a negative. The resulting magic could potentially be even more useful, for all he knew.

The problem was that he didn't know. The risk was far too high. And yet, the process had already begun. Thus, Nick fell deeply into the vortex of magic, concentrating on his [Arcane Circuitry] to track every subtle change.

Well, the good thing is that since all of this is happening inside me, I have a lot of agency. The bad thing is that I don't really know how to make it stop.

He could try to forcibly separate the two magics, but [Wind God's Third Eye] was already frayed at this point. It would take days of meditation to fully recover, and even then, it might never return to its original state.

Which meant he needed to do something different.

Taking a look at the Phobos' magic that he had pulled out revealed a more complex structure than he'd expected. Sure, its origin was a pure spirit, something that had probably existed for eons, given how primal the emotion that birthed it was, but what he was seeing was more than that.

The fear sensitivity he had known would be present. However, the majority of the matrix was driven by a desire to discover more of itself, to peer through the layers of reality, and to let nothing escape its terrible gaze.

Hmm… I could probably do something with that.

After all, [Wind God's Third Eye] was already a spell born from his desire to know. Sure, the applications were different, but not so much in nature. If he could just…

Grabbing hold of the raw mass of magic flowing into him, Nick began to pull it apart. Along with it came chunks of his own spell, but he wasn't worried about that now that he had seen the underlying similarities.

If push came to shove, he was confident he could reconstruct enough of [Wind God's Third Eye] to need only a day of effort to get back to normal, but he doubted he'd need to.

There was an opportunity there.

He already knew that spiritual magic was shaped by emotions. Whether it was fear, anger, lust, or more benign feelings, it didn't really matter. The concepts that made it work were the same.

And so, Nick took that part of himself that trembled at the sight of the unknown, that primal portion of his brain that couldn't comprehend all the wonders he created, all the things he could see with his own eyes.

That had yet to be affected by his vastly increased power.

That could serve as an anchor, and as he went to attach the Phobos' magic to it, he felt it slot in without needing to force it, as if it had always been meant for that.

[Wind God's Third Eye] then followed, becoming the new structure of the spell. It flowed and molded itself to the new space he had carved out in his soul, filling everything he allowed it to, much like air would fill a vacuum.

And the more esoteric part of it, which allowed him to look into the ether, absorbed all the leftover power. The Phobos' natural ability to peer through the layers, to find prey, became just another extension, mending the frayed areas and creating something greater than the sum of its parts.

By the time Nick finished adjusting the matrix, the storm he'd been summoning had already dispersed, and the sun had begun to set.

He sat up with a stretch, tentatively allowing his senses to reach beyond his body.

Colors he hadn't previously known revealed themselves to him. New shades, conveying information that his mind found difficult to grasp, poured in, requiring a few minutes to adjust.

Fortunately, his mental stats had long since surpassed mundane limits, and instead of his brain leaking out of his ears, he was gifted with a vastly enhanced perception.

Two pulsing blobs of purple lay just a few feet away from him, and he knew without even having to process it that they were the two thunderhoof calves that had somehow survived the ordeal.

Both were absolutely terrified and had almost no control over their bodies, but Nick could see the loop of fear imposed by the Phobos begin to loosen as their inherent magic resisted it, now that the spirit was gone.

It took only a moment to send a burst of calm into them. Nick watched as the spiritually charged bursts flew through the air, much faster than his earlier [Spirit Blasts] had been capable of.

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When they struck, the leftover magic finally fell apart, but instead of bolting, as their instincts must have been screaming at them to do, the two calves lay there docilely, blinking at him with wide, copper eyes.