Chapter 7: Why is Obtaining Infinite Power So Hard?

It happened years ago. I was practicing magic, building my mana reserves, and pushing my elemental knowledge to the limit, when I finally reached it. The limit.

There was nothing else to learn, nothing else to improve. I’d spent nearly 300 years in complete isolation achieving perfection, and finally, I was there. The efforts of several lifetimes were, at that moment, completed.

Jubilation would be an appropriate emotion at such a time. Glee, joy, gaiety, anything that indicates some form of happiness would’ve been welcome. Even a sense of satisfaction would’ve been enough. Instead, I was overwhelmed with a crushing emptiness. I’d reached heights nobody had ever dared attempt to climb. I was no longer just an archmage; I was the archmage. My birth sigil granted me all 4 primordial elements, as well as the ability to perform life magic. I’d mastered all of them, and am now indubitably the most powerful mage ever, and one of the strongest beings to ever grace the earth.

So why did I feel nothing?

What was the point of everything? The long years, The long hours, The endless suffering as I pushed myself to the limit every day. Why did any of it matter? If I can’t even bring myself to feel happy about this achievement of achievements, what was the point?

I was alone. I’d always been alone. Since the moment of my birth I’d known I had a mission. I was born with one of the most powerful sigils ever granted to a mortal, and I needed to utilize it to its fullest potential. Having such a strong conviction alienated me from my fellow peasantry, but why would I concern myself with the matters of lesser folk?  By the time I was 12, I’d become more powerful than most court mages. By the time I was 15, I was on par with an archmage. By 18, I was in the runnings for the strongest mage ever born. At the age of 25, I’d reached levels even mages of legend had never dreamed of approaching.

But that wasn’t enough.

I was gifted. To not continue pushing my limits would be a waste of what I was given. I’d realized that the limiting factor of my growth was the world around me. I had very few relationships, but the scant time spent with them was time that could be better spent training. If I wanted to reach the absolute peak of my abilities, I needed to leave everything behind.

With one final favor from my final friend, I locked myself in a temporal space; A physical plane that I created with my mind where time moved at a fraction of the outside world.

Years and years and years and years and years. Hundreds passed as my powers flew from extraordinary to godlike and ultimately to utterly nonsensical in their strength. Finally, I’d reached the limit of all 5 magical domains I’d been granted. Most humans would receive one or two, lucky humans would receive 3, and exceptionally lucky humans would receive 4. 5 was a number reserved for only a handful of privileged few in all of recorded history. I’d pushed myself harder than any of my predecessors and mastered my sigil, whose limits were far loftier than any other being.

But… what was the point?

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Never once in my entire life had I stopped to ask myself that question. I’d obtained supreme power, but I had nothing to do with it. Even after everything, I had nothing.

Emptiness.

It was then that inspiration struck. Of course I felt empty! I’d reached the limit of my birth sigil, but why did that matter? I’d reached an arbitrary limit, but that didn’t mean anything! There are way more than 5 domains of magic, so why should I be happy with only having mastered 5? 

For the first time in my life, I cursed the limits of my sigil. My sigil, among the strongest ever granted, was also my limiting factor; It was the only thing holding me back. I needed to obtain a different sigil. One without limits; One that I could use to obtain true ultimate power. Then this emptiness would be replaced with something. The reason for this void inside of me was that I hadn’t truly pushed myself to the limit yet!

And so, I set to work. There’s only one way to obtain a new sigil, and that is to obtain a new body. I needed to be reborn into a body without limits. I needed to be granted an origin sigil.

Utilizing every bit of knowledge I’d accumulated over hundreds of years of life and another 10 years of nonstop study, I formulated a completely novel sorcery to grant me my wish. I was going to give my life for one last gambit.

It’s a complex, finicky, downright dangerous spell that a less competent mage would call impossible. Again, who cares what small-minded people think? In order for the spell to succeed, I needed to lay out an intricate series of runes, and then fuel the spell with a bunch of mana, before making a quick switch to my life force, killing me. Due to this, it was impossible to test, so it would either succeed, or it wouldn’t be my problem anymore.

I’m currently sitting cross-legged in a cave surrounded by runes, having just thought through everything that brought me to this point. All the runes are connected by a thin line, which extends towards the circle I’m sitting in. Today’s the day I risk it all in the hope of something better. The circle I’m sitting in begins to glow a blinding blue as I force my mana into it. One by one each rune on the cave wall begins to glow that same blinding blue as I force an absolutely ludicrous amount of mana into each one. Slowly my mana reserve begins to dwindle, and I begin to feed the runes with my life in order to keep the flow steady. The whole cave is dyed that same blazing blue as I feel my body growing weaker. This is it. This is either the end, or the beginning, and I’m ready to find out.

It’s now that I’ll take a break to explain a bit more about sigils and their nature. When an individual of an intelligent race is born, there’s about a 20% chance that they will be granted a sigil. This sigil grants them the ability to manipulate mana. In other words, they can use magic.

The sigil that I’m chasing after is quite a strange one, the strangest one in all of existence, in fact. An origin mark essentially means that you don’t specialize in anything. In exchange for having no specialization, you can learn any discipline of magic. Lacking specialization makes the initial learning curve of magic exceptionally high, far too high for most beginners to overcome. Even if they do manage to actually cast some spells, things only get harder from there as spells get increasingly complex. Origin marks are considered quite bad for this reason. Specialization is required to simplify the learning process and make magic possible, but it’s also limiting. In theory, someone with an origin mark can learn magic of every discipline if they can actually get over the initial hurdle, so they theoretically have no limits. They have a higher barrier of entry and receive a higher ceiling in exchange.

This is why I want the origin sigil, I will have access to every school of magic, and consequently, no limits. Normally, an origin sigil is essentially the same as being born without a sigil at all. Without any specialization, even though magic is theoretically possible to learn, it is impossible in practice. That is unless you are an incredibly talented, handsome, charismatic archmage having another go at life with all 350~ish years of your memories intact. Then you might be able to use it to achieve unlimited power.

Just a thought.

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