Bloody Mary and the Magical Revolution

Choosing a Mind Rune (Mind 1)

From Mary's perspective, it had been over a week now, almost two, really, since Alexander had been murdered and then reborn into this world of magic as a princess.

Mary shakes her head in dismay at the continued absurdity of that thought; even now, nearly two weeks later, the entire notion still sounds somewhat insane to Mary.

But this was her life now; the universe had dealt Mary her hand, and now she would have to deal with it.

Sadly, for Mary, her new reality, no matter how difficult it was to accept, has caused a significant number of problems for her; some of these issues are physical, though no less catastrophic because of it.

Being a baby again has heavily impacted her ability to physically act, and if not for the presence of Sylvia, Mary has become relatively certain that she would be halfway to madness by now.

The other issues, however, are both more impactful and entirely mental.

Mary, who unfortunately remembers Alexander’s death and subsequent rebirth in grotesque detail, has found herself totally unable to ignore what had happened to her.

The reality of her rebirth, and Alexander’s death, had been extremely traumatic for her.

Learning about her potential future as a slave hadn’t helped matters in the slightest, for Mary, and this has meant that every night since her birth, she has been tormented by nightmares about her past and her potential future.

Mary reflectively grits her teeth as the content of some of those nightmares once again comes to mind.

It had all started when Alexander was mind-controlled and subsequently murdered; he had subconsciously realised that something was wrong and had made several ultimately futile attempts to inform those around him that his body and mind were being manipulated somehow.

Following that was the horrifying experience of being born.

Upon reflection, Mary found that her time in the womb hadn’t been that bad – somewhat surreal, no doubt – but the interest she had originally garnered in investigating mana had been completely overshadowed by her skull being squeezed through a much too narrow pipe.

Even now, she can only bare to think about what had happened in oblique terms.

Following that, she had been confronted with perhaps the most worrying and traumatic sight that Alexander had ever seen, the still-living corpse that was her new mother.

The conversation strongly suggested that the men in that room fully intended for Mary to become exactly like her mother, given enough time.

Truly, Mary had a disturbingly large collection of genuinely worrying memories to torment her at night.

‘But with my newest ambient mana rune, I can finally create magic that can at least stop my mind from tormenting me at night… and that is merely a benefit of what I hope to do; if my attempts at magic work out as I hope, then avoiding that fate should become a very real possibility.’

Thought Mary, intent on soothing her worries.

Her recent breakthrough with a relatively powerful ambient mana rune will finally provide her with the one tool from Alexander’s life that she has regretted the most missing, a rune that could allow her to create weaker spells that can be permanently active.

The ability to create and interact with virtual reality environments.

Mary feels the corner of her mouth quirk upwards as a thought occurs to her.

‘In a magical world would it be proper to call a spell like this a second mind?’

Mary reflected on the thought for a moment and then nodded in self-agreement; that sounded roughly correct to her at least.

A second mind spell traditionally allows the user to artificially increase their available minds; usually, as the name implies, that increase would be doubling the available minds, as it would create essentially a copy of the mage's physical mind.

As a result of this, even the most basic version of a second mind spell would be highly useful for almost anyone, let alone a mage or scholar.

In principle, a singular second mind would merely double the number of thought streams that the spellcaster could manage, and this was a state that was highly dependent on the multi-tasking capability of the caster, Mary. Thanks to her life as Alexander, she prided herself on her outstanding ability to multi-task, even with the absence of Alexander's cyberware.

The limitation of a second-mind spell, which is that it can only create a single mind, could potentially be overcome; by multicasting the framework of that same second-mind spell, the spellcaster could have several or even dozens of minds.

Being able to juggle more thoughts essentially means increasing the user's multitasking capability.

This could help a spellcaster cast more spells at once if they had enough mana.

All of this would be dependent on the mana regeneration capability of the caster; there would be no point to being able to create a dozen artificial minds if they would only last for a few minutes.

Which, of course, was why Mary had instead focused on her mana reserves and her ability to regenerate mana with an ambient mana rune.

However, due to her experience as Alexander, Mary believes that aiming for a mere second-mind spell would be a waste of potential; the ability to create a second artificial mind was wonderful and useful, no doubt about that, but it was the very lowest rung of what could be possible given enough effort.

In the modern world, during the time that Alexander had lived, the world had gained the ability to use computer concepts on real physical people.

For many years, computers had the ability to virtually increase the number of calculations they could handle without the hardware to match the increase.

Additionally, the hardware could be overclocked to increase the speed of the calculations.

When the brains of humans got involved in operations such as this, it was typically called time compression.

Time compression, at least in the modern world, was the ability to artificially increase the speed of a human’s thoughts without changing or negatively impacting the physical hardware present; in essence, it allowed a human to perceive time in a slowed-down and exaggerated manner without cooking their brains to cinders.

Mary had her doubts that a regular second-mind spell could safely utilise such a concept as time compression; if the minds were too closely joined, then increasing the speed that a second mind thought at would increase the speed that her physical mind thought too. That would be a very dangerous thing to attempt, at least not without a great deal of trial and error.

Potentially years of experimentation would likely be required.

Mary did not have years, and restricting herself to the sort of magic she remembered from fiction was a fool’s errand regardless.

Her objective was to create a virtual reality instance using magic and then use that instance to create, among other things, a version of her mind that could not only safely experience time compression but could be duplicated as needed to vastly increase her multi-tasking capability.

A goal she was certain she could now reach with the appropriate application of some lateral thinking.

For a person from this world that only knew about things like computers and simulations from inherited, half-understood knowledge, most of which has leaked through via quips and references from otherworlders.

Creating something like a mental simulation would be extremely difficult for them, perhaps even impossible, and could at a minimum take multiple decades at least to complete.

The general life span of humans would heavily hold such innovative people back, and this world's tendency to hoard knowledge would certainly not help with such developments.

But unlike the native people of Terra, Mary remembers her life on Earth and is already familiar with everything she needs to know to succeed.

Alexander had personally created many of the tools that Mary intends to duplicate using magic. With the knowledge she has inherited from him, Mary is certain that she can do so.

She has his knowledge and the memories of entering dozens of different virtual realities; she remembers the advantages of using simulations for essentially anything the people of Earth could think of using them for.

She can even reluctantly remember the very day that Alexander died, when he had spent hours experiencing what, for him, was an unprecedentedly high-level time compression.

Thanks to her previous life, Mary even has plenty of experience creating mental instances of her mind to increase her multi-tasking capacity.

‘But what magical concept, what keyword, do I use as the foundation?’

While Mary is certain that what she wants to achieve is possible, it must be; otherwise, her future is much less assured than it would otherwise be. She is equally sure that mental magic such as what she is aiming to create can be made using any number of runes.

‘I could probably use something like an illusion rune, but the formulaic logic necessary to get that to work how I want it to would be a stretch.’

According to what Mary learned about magic, intent matters.

If she used an illusion rune with the intent of making a false mind, then it would probably work if she forced enough logic and intent onto it.

‘But the problem is that I’m already reaching my limits for formulaic logic; ironically, I would need mental magic in order to get an illusion rune to work as mental magic.’

Mary huffs to herself, amused at the circular logic.

‘What about the other options then? Runes don’t need to be restricted to singular words or concepts known to this world.’

Mary notes, chewing on that rationale.

‘If intent matters so much, could I use a simulation or virtual reality rune directly?’

It could, Mary reflects, work out if she did that.

‘Or why not go even further? A false world rune, or would that be running before I could crawl?’

So far, she had created runes using singular concepts that the world and its mana would recognise, and although multi-word runes might work—potentially very well—it seemed that developing them would require months of experimentation to function properly.

‘In theory I have months to spare; I even have years before they will consider enslaving me. But time wasted now is time permanently lost; I need to advance immediately, not in a few months’ time.’

Above all else, one of the two future books that Mary would be reading over the next few weeks would be covering runes in greater detail; it was highly likely that the introduction to runes would at least mention multiple-word runes.

‘So, experimenting on something that might get answered soon would be a waste of valuable time.’

Then what keywords did that leave Mary to create her second-mind magic with?

'Simulation is a singular word; it would almost certainly work given what my thoughts on that keyword are, but it might be too restrictive, with too much focus on simulating things when I would also need it to store and process information.’

Due to such a potential restriction, Mary ultimately dismisses 'simulation' as a keyword for now, although she swears that she will revisit its possibility later, of course. No doubt it would be a valuable addition to more complex mental magics.

But that would be for later.

‘A mental rune could work; my immediate goal has me aiming to create mental magics, so mental should be a great fit then, shouldn't it?’

Mary considered that possibility for more than a few moments; it was a perfectly logical choice.

But there was a better fit for mind-related magics than a mental rune, wasn’t there?

‘Of course, I'd already thought of using the mind rune back when I was creating my telepathy spell; it would have been a stretch then, requiring too much logic to control the connecting of minds, but what about now? The first part of what I want to create is a second mind magic; it is right there in the name.’

A mind rune was the most obvious choice for a second mind spell. As far as keywords go, it fit perfectly. In the same way, the telepathy rune was perfect for creating a telepathy spell; with it, Mary should be able to create a second mind straight away, with almost no logic attached.

Mary frowns, considering the possibility further.

Her very first use of the rune would be to create a second mind passive magic to increase the speed at which she could get to the meat of her actual project: the creation of a truly simulated mental environment.

She envisioned a place to store various programmes, which would, of course, include a mental library, not only a place to store her spells, her runes and the logic attached to them, but also all the books she had read; any mental partitions of herself would be able to use them as references at will.

All of this was essential for replacing the so-called magic grimoires that Sylvia had mentioned, the alleged physical books that mages of this world used to store their magic spells.

If things worked out how Mary wanted, then the spell would essentially be a magical computer that would exist in her mind.

Fortunately, Mary had plenty of experience, not only with computers in general, but especially with computers that existed mainly in her mind.

Naturally, one of the main problems with such a project would be the energy cost; if the knowledge of Earth stayed the same, then a simulated environment would take a great deal of power to consistently run.

On Earth, the incredibly robust global electrical grid, powered by fusion reactors, made it possible for so many simulated environments to exist without crashing the global network.

Of course, Mary had spent so much of her recent time and effort creating a sufficiently powerful ambient mana rune with the intent of creating her first permanent mental magic, completely aware of the potential energy draw necessary to get such a magic to work.

But the main project, the spell that she would be basing so many of her hopes on, would no doubt require more than a single mind rune to work properly; she would no doubt be updating the spell structure consistently for years even in the best-case scenario.

This was a problem, as one of the purposes of having a mental magic library was to enable her to create and memorise significantly more complex magical formulas.

Would Mary be able to safely transfer the first version of a mental library to a secondary, more advanced spell?

Or was there going to be a lot of wasted effort in her future?

Mary sighed in dismay, shaking her head furiously to dismiss her most recent spiral.

‘This is the problem with being an almost immobile baby. Alexander might have had a tendency towards introspection, but his cyberware provided him with a multi-tasking capability and connection to the outside world that I lack. No amount of introspection could get him lost in his head as much as I’ve been getting these last weeks.’

Mary would create and use a mind rune; it was the only logical option available to her.

Worrying about the future, about roadblocks that she wasn’t even close to reaching, was pointless.

Mary nods; with her decision made, she closes her eyes and begins the now familiar process of creating a magic rune, careful to use a minimum amount of mana in its creation to avoid creating a rune too power-hungry for her purposes.

With over a week's worth of experience in rune creation, she had been creating multiple runes per day, if only to gain further experience with it; it takes Mary a few blissfully short minutes to create her new mind-rune.

Mary mentally pauses as she looks at her newest rune in abject surprise.

‘Why is it so small?’

Mary asks herself, frowning, before she turns her intent towards the rune and learns something incredibly surprising.

‘Nascent?! “Wah?!”’

Mary's surprise is so total that she physically exclaims.

Over the last week Mary had asked for Sylvia to tell her all of the level and power tiers for runes; due to this, she knows what this word means.

‘How did I get a 6th-level rune?’

Mary asks in amazed disbelief.