I wish I could say I waited through the next few hours with a reasonable level of relaxation and calm. Unfortunately, like usual, I could feel the rising anxiety concerning how I would spend my charges, and what my freebie would be this cycle. I wasn't quite as neurotic and panicky as I was for the first, and honestly, the second time. I was thankfully a little more used to the stress, at least enough that I wasn't thoroughly embarrassing myself. Still, I sure as hell wasn't about to sit still and wait, so I eventually got up and started working on the compound, trying to keep myself busy.

  I spent some time refining the wooden paths around the compound, as well as some of my detailed work in the bunkhouses, before settling down in the common area. There, while enjoying a large mug of coffee, I used wood shaping and some of the crafting spells I got from arcane focus creation to carve out a chessboard. I then had the golem gather up a bunch of rocks, which I carefully carved into the chess pieces. I also made checker pieces, since I already had the board and they were easy to make. The process was actually kind of fun, no doubt in part because I could skip the difficult and tedious parts of woodworking with my magic. I made a note to try my hand at magical woodwork in the future when I had some free time. I had been looking for a hobby beyond casual reading, and it looked like I might have found one.

  As I was putting away the chess board and its pieces, tucking them into a custom-grown cubby along the common area, I could feel the approaching end of the current cycle. Once I was done cleaning up, I made my way to the fire pit, warning Alya and Kali that the renewed cycle was approaching. Once the fire was sufficiently fed, I sat down and closed my eyes, waiting silently for the last few minutes to pass, the warm crackle keeping me calm.

  Finally, midnight hit, and the usual sensation passed over me, my charges slowly refilling. When it was done, I could feel seven filled charges in total, just waiting to be spent. As always, however, I continued to sit as patiently as possible with my eyes closed, waiting for my free subject. As it approached, I could instantly tell that something was different. I was used to the charges being more loose, ready to purchase two separate levels of a single subject. This time, however, I could feel it was all one conglomerate.

  It felt more like… three charges linked together for one purchase...

  Suddenly, I could feel the charges latching onto druidcraft, and my knowledge expanded. My confusion at the freebie being spent on a pre-existing subject was scattered immediately as dozens and dozens of spells, rituals, and even some real enchantments settled into my mind.

  As the download settled into my brain, I dove into the new knowledge, eager to see what it contained. Immediately, I could tell that a good chunk of the knowledge was about better control, more complicated creation abilities, and spread manipulations. I could now maintain a large, heavily enhanced orchard at once rather than maintaining the trees individually. Potentially even more useful, I now had spells that created basic plant life, trees, vines, and mosses without any seeds or starter material.

  And then there was what I could do with seeds.

  Combining, mixing, and matching, I could make a redwood tree that grew as fast as bamboo, or make a bed of grass filled with the thorns of the acacia tree, dripping with poison ivy oil. I could even take natural mutations and push them further, cultivating tomatoes the size of my head in a few rapid harvests, rather than decades of work.

  Pushing past what was natural, I realized my abilities allowed even further enhancements to some fruit-growing trees. I could now make several different kinds of magically steeped trees, each growing their fruits with noticeable and permanent effects on those who ate them. I wasn't quite capable of making a peach of immortality, or one of Idunn's apples, but a pear that refined and reinforced someone's muscles, pushing them a few steps closer to their peak… Damn, if that wasn't exciting.

  Of course, being capable of this took me from the edge of what could be considered being a Biotinker and punted me all the way to the deep, dark pit itself.

  I eagerly shared what I could now do with Alya and Kali, who were both very excited. Alya was excited to hear my power had grown once again, while Kali was fascinated by the idea of my enhanced trees. I was already making plans to plant my magical fruit orchard at the compound so Kali could watch over it, and the Genus Loci was extremely excited about the idea. Something about her Loci being the location of an enchanted orchard made her very eager.

  Once the excitement for the new level of druidcraft had passed, I settled in for what was really causing my previous nervousness. I fed the fire, warming me up slightly as I sat down and pulled out my notebook. Over the last few days, I eventually managed to narrow my investment idea to two concepts, one of which I was eager to try.

  My safe option was to simply invest in golem-making, which would no doubt branch off of ritual crafting. I was pretty sure that, at some point, an investment into golem-making would become advanced enough that it would rise above the knowledge I already had from my previous spending. With any luck, just three levels would be enough to do it, hopefully pushing my knowledge far enough to develop golems that could think and reason independently.

  Unfortunately, there was a rather glaring problem. If making golems that were "alive" was possible, then it was not going to be something I found on the first and second levels. That meant I would have to invest multiple levels just to test the hypothesis. That was a huge potential waste, and I couldn't just throw charges at it and move on, especially with how low-yield this cycle's quest had been. I had one charge to "spare," which wasn't enough. Thankfully, golem-crafting was just my backup option.

  My primary idea, something that I learned about from the many books I had bought, stemmed from a concept called animism.

  Animism was a vague word that described the concept of spirits and essences that are tied to objects, locations, beings, and more. Some cultures, like many Native American tribes, believed that almost everything had a spirit and that by appeasing that spirit, you would have a better connection with that idea, object, or living creature. This type of animism was not what I was interested in.

  The aspect I was interested in was a more modern idea that items could be imbued with spirits and energy, simply by being used. It had ties to a lot of different cultures, with ideas ranging from weapons coming to life once they had killed enough people, to treasured objects taking on emotions from the people who held the object dearly. I was hoping that I could find magic that would let me find, strengthen, and give life to these spirits, somehow empowering them to protect and act as heroes.

  It was vague, varied, and unspecific, but I was hoping that by focusing on the concept and modifying it to what I really wanted, Marvelous Mage would do the rest and find me something close to what I was looking for.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  It was a risk, a real gamble, but I had one "free" shot to test it, so I was willing to try.

  I closed my eyes and focused on my envisioned version of animism. I didn't name it outright, as while my idea of animism might be my inspiration, if druidcraft had taught me anything, it was that wherever I was getting this magical knowledge from, their naming conventions did not match mine.

  As I fed the idea, layering it with what I was looking for, trying to focus as much as possible, I slowly fed it a single charge. The idea latched on and sucked it in, a good sign as far as I was concerned. As I purchased the new subject, knowledge flooded my mind, securing itself to me.

  Spiritual totem magic. It was, as far as I could tell, exactly what I was looking for.

  According to what my new subject was telling me, spirits are naturally occurring entities that arise connected to objects, places, plants, and even animals that exist for enough time or have enough emotional energy put into them. In some ways, the most potent and powerful of spirits were the first step to creating natural Genus Loci. Thankfully, here, in a world where magic was so sparse, almost naturally non-existent, spirits could never really get to that point. Instead, powerful places might gain a slight mind of their own, acting in extremely small, subtle ways, barely affecting the physical world.

  And that was only the most extreme cases.

  With only one level unlocked, most of what I could do was use magic to scan for and get a feel for spirits tied to various objects, locations, plants, and more. I could also feed them magic in order to help them interact with the real world to an extent. I could also do the opposite, draining a spirit of its power to quell it, even severe it if I could muster up enough power. It was that manipulation of the spirits that embodied the totem parts, at least at this low level.

  I would take it to the grave, but I now had a weapon that could, technically, maybe hurt Kali.

  I looked around the camp before turning to focus on the trees around us. I stood and slowly made my way to the outskirts of the clearing, the edge of the compound space. I let out a long breath before raiding my hand.

  "Ostendite mihi spiritus qui sunt coram me," I chanted, gray lines of magic appearing around my arm and spinning down past my hand, forming into a circle before flashing once with two arcane symbols appearing for just a moment.

  I blinked away what I thought were spots from having looked at a relatively bright flash in a mostly dark part of the compound. For a moment, I was worried I had actually damaged my eyes before I realized that the spell had worked, and I was looking at spirits.

  Slight, wavering bits of energy dotted the forest around us, each one centered in a large tree. Each of them varied in shade, but they were all flickering black and white, like a color-shifted flame. They ranged in size, with the smallest no bigger than the flame you find at the end of a match, while the largest was no bigger than half a playing card. I only saw one spirit that large, growing inside the oldest, mightiest oak I could find around the compound.

  When I first stumbled on that mighty oak, I reached out and ran my hand along its bark. A quick druidcraft spell told me this tree was ancient, already starting to succumb to its age. And yet, in a world like this one where magic was so sparse, what should have been a great guardian spirit of the forest, one of many, barely had a flicker of any consciousness at all, no more aware than an ant.

  I used my druidcraft to heal the tree, doing my best to add a few hundred years to its life. I was tempted to feed it some mana to try and wake it up more, but I held back. This was not a power I should engage with, at least not without thinking about it first.

  I made my way back to the compound, scanning the iron-oak trees I had grown myself, happy to see that they contained no spirit inside them. Even with only one purchase, I was already seeing some connections between druidcraft and spiritual totem magic, and what I could see told me that what I had done to the trees to grow the compound would have been very much not fun for a spirit. I found myself very happy I had settled in the clearing and not hunted down an ancient tree to serve as my home.

  "Well… The good news is I think I've found what I needed," I said, plopping down by the fire. "With only one charge, there is only so much to go on, so I might be wrong, but I feel good about it."

  "Are you able to create sentient spirits?" Alya asked.

  "I could. Feeding energy directly into a spirit is crude, but it works," I responded. "The problem is that spirits are by nature not human. Their minds are alien, and waking up, say, a tree spirit might make the forest hostile to humans. There is no way to know."

  "Then… that doesn't sound like it works," Alya pointed out, her voice filled with confusion. "You can't work with something if you're worried about fae-style miscommunications."

  "Well, first, it wouldn't be that bad," I assured her. "They aren't going to try and steal my name or trick me out of my firstborn. They just won't be easy for me to understand, like how a night owl doesn't understand an early bird, but a few times worse. But that doesn't really matter, because the spells I know now are clearly precursors to more precise and human-friendly methods later. It's pinging off of rituals pretty hard, as well as druidcraft, and I'm getting the idea that in the next few levels, the totem concept really flourishes."

  "Why does the ability to put energy into spirits exist at the level at all?" Alya asked, sounding genuinely curious. "If it is such a bad idea, should it not be higher up the learning curve?"

  "Well, for one, I don't think that's how this works. The Marvelous Mage system isn't censoring me until I'm ready for certain dangerous knowledge... at least as far as I know," I pointed out, scratching my cheek. "And two, investing energy into a spirit can give whatever its inside special effects. A sword with a powerful spirit cuts better and swings faster, while a castle with a healthy, kind spirit will feel happier and its occupants healthier. You can even curse people with it by finding something with a negative spirit and charging it up before dumping it in their home or their village. You can imagine how bad dropping a spirit that hates humans into a well or leaving it in a hospital would be."

  "How potent would these spirits be?"

  "It can vary depending on their strength, both in how much you feed them and their own inherent strength," I responded, leaning back and closing my eyes. "Now, hold on, I want to spend my points."

  With only a spare thought or two, quickly reviewing what I had learned with one investment, I promptly fed two more charges into spiritual totem magic, quickly followed by another three. I let out a long breath as the river of knowledge poured into my skull, connecting and bridging between my other topics. When it was finally done, I couldn't help but quickly stand and clap my hands in excitement.

  "Good news, we fucking nailed it," I said with wide smile. "Time to show it off."

  Charges So Far

  Geomancy: [x][x]?

  Healing Spells: [x][x]?

  Lightning Spells: [x][x]?

  PM Enhancement Spells: [x]?

  Druidcraft: [x][x][x]?

  Ritual Design and crafting: [x][x][x]?

  Arcane Focus Creation: [x][x]?

  Spell Crafting: [x][x][x]?

  Quick Casting: [x][x]?

  Spiritual Totem Magic:[x][x][x]?