*Mercury POV*
*Date: July 20th, 2000*
*Location: London, England*
The first thing I needed to do was make sure not to view this world's future, otherwise I would be forced down that particular path...possibly, precogs might be able to, but I wouldn't. No, the best thing to do would be to view realities so similar to my new one that you could spend your whole life searching but find nothing different beyond maybe a rock on Pluto being a slightly different color.
After all, who said something on Earth had to be completely different to be called a parallel timeline? Perhaps certain novels, fanfiction, and other various pieces of fiction, but reality was often far more disappointing than you'd think. Even though I could tell it wouldn't be quite as effective as the originals, my kaleidoscope was merely following the same steps he laid out, following him in this magic's function rather than discovering the root and the second true magic by myself.
So I wouldn't have his exact authority over the magic, but the replication of it should be easy enough, alongside traveling to other parallel worlds. As I manipulated the space I found myself in, making calculations I didn't know of in my first life but now inexplicably do, it was both terrifying and awe-inspiring to see/feel. Each time I opened up a new mirror, I saw the wonders this magic could show me, but also the horrors as I saw entire worlds burned either by Zion, Type-ORTY, or the Crimson Moon somehow in a couple.
These worlds were already lost to me, so I kept going back, back to the period I found myself in. To a place where I could accurately gather information without the internet, which could be easily manipulated under the right conditions. Taking a peek into these realities revealed that while a few things have changed, it didn't change enough to derail my timeline entirely, Type-ORT was buried beneath the Amazon forest like in most nasuverse worlds besides the one where the grand order took place. The Dead Apostles, both the ancestors and their servants, while they wandered the Earth, humanity had their own weapons at their disposal to fight against them.
The Crimson Moon, though, was the most difficult to keep track of, as in some timelines, he was asleep for one reason or another. In others, he ruled as a warlord, toying with humanity, and this action would be repeated for a while. Every time I try to get a basic grasp of his potential plans, I get a whole slew of variables, just like whenever I tried to pinpoint the type of people that would arrive either before, alongside, or after my own, it changed each time, leading to an entirely different story.
Meaning that this path of information gathering would not be fruitful in the long run, but perhaps seeing what I'm working with instead could be helpful. With that said, I dismissed the kaleidoscope and got up from my chair and began passing back and forth whilst rubbing my chin.
"So the chances of both Zion and Type-ORT being in a temporary stasis are possibly high, with varying degrees of the dangers of Dead Apostle Ancestors, alongside their ghouls."
"That leaves only two major problems are my fellow 'players', my other, and Crimson Moon; those would be the most immediate dangers."
"The other stuff already present in Worm, though, are consistent, the Endbringer attacks, the various parahuman organizations alongside the gangs in Brockten Bay, and the Gesellschaft." Just saying that name sent a shiver down my spin as though my body's ancestors just hated thinking about Nazi's for some reason.
"Based on my viewings, though, another variable will be Taylor Herbet herself, alongside a few others, once you get down the timeline far enough when things start getting out of whack, so to speak."
"Depending on the reality, Taylor Hebert may have alternate powers, or her personality may be overridden entirely, alongside a few others."
"That's also not accounting for the other characters that appear in the story itself, as they could be options as well for people to reincarnate in." After saying that, I stopped in my tracks and scratched my head in frustration.
"Honestly, you'd think talking about it or saying something out loud would give you perspective, but it only proves that I need to find divination-based magic to study once I complete my current ones." I could probably get a lot of use out of a checklist or something like that to keep track of both short-term and long-term goals.
"Wonder if this place has a training area?"
Honestly, it was probably my safest bet to start figuring out the spells, and the runes/sigils I already knew, alongside the primordial ones. Sure, it would take an absurd amount of mana to use, but that was one of the good bonuses that came with the second true magic was its ability to draw mana from parallel worlds to power one's spells and Magecraft.
.....
Apparently, this place was so large that I needed to make use of a map that whoever made this tower generously provided, which allowed me to make my way to a large-scale empty room. Normally, when you think of oen, you think of a place filled to the brim with training weapons, and training dummies, things like that.
Yet it contained none of that, and instead it was just a large empty space. Essentially, it was a good place to practice one's Magecraft if I was being honest, as some of the spells can be... volatile.
[Reshape]
A simple spell of the alchemical branch of Magecraft, something that essentially shapes how an object looks. For example, if not given a directive or a shape to shift into, the basic shape would be a square, a simple 3-D square that rose out of the floor. Well, it didn't really rise so much as appear slowly, as it was small, not even large enough to see without really looking.
Meaning that the amount of mana you channel into a spell can also determine how effective it is, with perhaps some not operating as such. Meaning the minuscule amount of mana I used to activate the Reshape spell, alongside having no proper direction, resulted in the small cube I was looking at.
That gave me an idea.
[Reshape]
This time I put a bit more oomph into into, knowing how large I wanted the object to be alongside the shape. Alongside this would be the added benefit of a bit more mana, allowing me to shape the floor in front of me, alongside the square into a tree, one that reached my height, alongside a few branches to make it more tree-like.
Yggdrasil, the tree that held together the nine realms and was home to the Norse Pantheon, one whose legacy has been besmirched by humans who knew nothing of their might and power. Something I would want to take care of myself eventually, because even if I didn't care for the gods, that didn't mean they didn't deserve respect...even the Olympians to an extent, at least, well, some of them like Hestia and Hades anyway.
I began feeling the tree itself, wanting to see if it was still as hard as the floor, meaning that while it was shaped like Yggdrasil, it still lacked the tree/living organism part of it.
"Perhaps when I have more free time, I could try to teach some students, and see if any of them would dare walk the path Odin walked."
It was a curious question when you think about it, the tools were certainly there, but the mystery and mechanism behind it were left behind in the age of gods. Perhaps if I transported them to a world where it persisted like Highschool DXD or perhaps Percy Jackson as well, if you want a less...erotic world, so to speak. Honestly, that one interested me more so than DXD, I mean the ability the mist has to hide mortals from the sight of gods unless they were clear-sighted somehow.
I mean, did Hecate alone control the mist, binding mortals to the Egyptian, Norse, and quite literally every other pantheon still walking the Earth? Perhaps they had sections underneath their control where the goddesses of magic had control over the mist itself to hide themselves from mortal sight.
No matter what could be tested at a later date, right now, I was more focused on testing my spells, seeing if they still worked in this new world.
[Flames]
I wrote down a simple rune sequence, not using the primordial ones yet, and instead relied more on the modern-day version. Once I was done and I chanted the spell, a small flame appeared where I wrote it, before quickly disappearing. A simple spell, but one that required a bit more money than perhaps a spell of similar nature in a different branch of Magecraft.
Perhaps I simply didn't see the worth yet, and was using a weakneed rune, one that I poured very little mana into.
"Well, that's why the scientific method exists or would it be better to call it the magic method?"