"Ugh,"
Memories aplenty suddenly surged into Magnus at that very moment. Twenty-eight years' worth of memories flooded like a tsunami, almost eroding Magnus' weaker seventeen years and corrupting his personality.
'Is this why those characters tend to get younger when they are transported? For safety reasons?' He thought in the midst of all the memories.
He felt himself slowly withering away. His soul was becoming someone else.
But something that should have happened was given no chance to. Some kind of power nullified all probabilities of it occurring.
Magnus felt another power wash over him, dousing his brain in cold water. It sorted out the memories he received into an organized file that he could 'access' whenever he reactivated this mysterious power of his.
"Could this be the effect of a Blessing?" Magnus muttered as he struggled to stand up.
Upon looking around, he discovered that he had been lying on the floor, but no blood could be seen. There was also a lack of injuries on his body.
Recalling the words on the Scroll of Entry, Magnus wondered just how this body of his had perished.
Just then,
"We have received news that the 'great thief' who the police had been pursuing has been identified. His name is Klaris, hailing from the small town of Thawsore. His appearance is as you can see..."
The oh so familiar sound of a newscaster's voice rang in Magnus' ears at that moment. His eyes darted instantly to the source of it and there he found some kind of holographic television. It was displayed from a small box with a circular gemstone at the centre.
He saw the appearance of the person named Klaris and felt a weird emotion welling from within him. The source was the bundle of memories he had just gained.
It was fear. And large amounts of it.
"Now that I think about it... that face is awfully familiar..." Magnus muttered. "No way... That's me! Well, more accurately, I own that person's body now!"
Break! Bang!
Magnus almost snapped his own neck as he glanced at his room's doorway in shock. The memories regarding the house's layout appeared in his mind. It told him that his front door had just been breached.
Conveniently, it also came with a soothing emotion that helped silence the instinctive fear that came from the previous owner's body.
"Police! Show yourself, Klaris! Hand over what you have stolen!"
"Shit..." Magnus muttered as he turned to his bedroom window.
'Two-story apartment... Three and a half-metre drop... Escape route... Oh, Klaris prepared one.' Magnus was supplied with every memory he requested in two seconds. It was quite a slow transfer right now, but he believed that it likely had something to do with this power of his being new and uncultivated.
Magnus vaulted out of his bedroom window and struck the landing based on his own experience. He rolled just as he heard his bedroom door get shattered open by some mysterious force that tore it to shreds.
Mud stained his clothes, but he wasted no time brushing it off. He lunged to his right and dove into the alleyway beside his house. Out of the corner of his eye, he witnessed a man wearing white looking out of his bedroom window.
"There! Target spotted! 2 o'clock!"
A series of commands were swiftly passed down as Magnus just continued to run. He turned a few street corners and passed by a few disgruntled civilians wearing weird garments.
Thud!
Still, Magnus ended up crashing into someone wearing white just as he was about to make it to another intersection.
"Get out of my way!" He yelled hurriedly, as he turned the crash into a judo throw. The policeman was slammed into the ground with a grunt.
Whoosh!
Just as Magnus was about to stand up, a blur of movement caught his eye, to which he instinctively dove back into the muddy ground. A body flew over him at that moment, and Magnus swiftly dashed in the opposite direction of the policemen.
He kept running and running.
'Their weapons are out now!' Magnus cursed as some projectile flew past his face, slashing his cheek just as he ducked beneath a faulty arch.
A burning feeling erupted from the wound as blood dripped down.
'Klaris' plan is not going to work! I need something else.' Magnus hurriedly went through Klaris' memories in search of some other resource he could utilize.
Information on Blessings and Curses surfaced.
"One's Blessings are written on the right wrist. Curses are written on the left. Effects can be deduced based on the verses and lines..." He muttered aloud as he ran.
Due to his split focus, he nearly ran head-first into a wall. He still ran into the wall, but luckily, he just bruised his shoulder as he allowed himself to bounce off and preserve momentum.
He quickly pulled up the sleeve of his right arm and took out a circular device from Klaris' pocket.
"This should be the Molecular Text Reader or MTR for short..."
Without it, Magnus wouldn't be able to peek at the Molecular Text that made up his Blessing.
With silent anticipation, he first saw information on Klaris' Blessing. At the same time, he recalled what Klaris knew of his own Blessing. If Magnus would write all the information on the scroll, it would look like the following,
{=[ Mirror World Thief ]=}
- When invoked, create a Mirror World based on the user's memories. One item can be taken out of the Mirror World with every invocation. When retrieving living beings, said living beings will have no soul nor consciousness to speak of.
Invocation:
"I am the thief of mirrored creation,
The cloned child,
The descendant of greens,
And the walker of reflections."
{=[=o=o=o=o=]=}
It was an amazing Blessing to have, but the price—Klaris' Curse—which acts as the balancing force, was brutal. From Klaris' memories, that was likely how he was killed. His Curse was triggered without him being capable of fighting back... But that will be a topic for later.
For now, what Magnus wanted to know most was the extra Blessing he was somehow gifted with. He looked deeper into things with the MTR. Sighing in relief, Magnus found what he needed,
"It's really there. The power that had supplemented me earlier without me asking..."
Unfortunately for Magnus, he was not given specific information on what this Blessing did. All he figured out with his scanning was its invocation. And from the invocation, he had a few imaginative guesses.
"He should be close! The other sectors have yet to discover the target! Keep moving! Double time!"
The sound of commands being thrown out was awfully close now. Perhaps only a few more turns and he would be discovered.
"Let's hope this plan works," Magnus said, worriedly. But a smile could still be seen on his face.
It was a manic smile, showing just how much adrenaline was coursing through his veins at that very moment.
First, the Mirror World Thief.
"I am the thief of mirrored creation,"
Magnus' soft voice seemed to pull onto something within him, activating a power so magical and mysterious.
"The cloned child,"
He felt his wrists heating up in response to his words. A transfer of energy from his left wrist to his right seemed to be occurring.
"The descendant of greens, and the walker of reflections."
Crack!
Suddenly the world before Magnus' eyes changed. He was now facing himself. The real, original, Magnus Avary. A confused version of himself, at least.
They were both inside his flat, sitting on opposite sides of a small, square dining table.
"Who are you?" Magnus number two asked, pausing in his movements.
"I'm you, but in a different body," Magnus replied.
"What do you mean— Whoa!"
Magnus lunged out instantly, breaking the decorative vase on his table. Food flew into the air as Magnus No. 2 backed off in a rush, but Magnus was too explosive in his movements for the former to react.
Magnus swiftly gripped the clothes of his old body and wrapped around Magnus No. 2 like a snake.
"I am the thief of mirrored creation!" He restarted his invocation despite the chaotic struggle.
"The cloned child! The descendant of greens! And the walker of reflections!"
Crack!
The Mirror World shattered, and Magnus found himself back where he was, in a musty old alleyway that hasn't been maintained in years.
"Next!" Magnus hurriedly recalled another incantation. The deciding factor in his life and death.
He kept his hands on his old body as he spoke hurriedly,
"I am the master and maker of the Hivemind,
The mind behind minds,
The one who stands above humanity,
And the one civilizations despise!"
Mysterious energy burst forth from Magnus at that moment, as he quickly decided on his target.
"My old body!" He exclaimed in a hurry.
And the next thing he knew, he could see two perspectives. One was looking at Klaris' body while the other was looking at Magnus' body. It was weird, but it was also draining some kind of energy from him at a rapid pace.
As the power coursed through him, Magnus gained the intuition that came with it. He knew vaguely of what he could do, like how a person has a general estimate for how far they can reach with their hands.
"To think that this Blessing had this part to it... How efficient!"
In the next moment, Klaris' body evaporated as wisps of light, leaving Magnus, in his truest form, behind. Klaris was basically unsummoned.
"He should be here!" A policeman suddenly appeared, but when he saw Magnus there, sitting in the mud, with his orange hair and cyan eyes, he couldn't help but pause.
"Kid. Have you seen any black-haired man pass by? He should be tall and lean with bags under his eyes and a pale complexion."
Magnus tried his best in acting. Frowning and clutching the side of his head, he made a show of his 'injuries.'
"He used me as a springboard and went that way."
He said, pointing in a certain direction. The policeman, draped in white, nodded solemnly and proceeded to leap up onto the roof of a nearby building.
It was a five-metre high jump.
"Damn..." Magnus was surprised by such physical abilities, "Hiding was indeed the right choice."