Somehow, we were met with only very mild suspicion when we offered the people in idiot-village, as we had come to call the community of lucky fools who had been hanging on despite their, objectively, horrible decisions, complete lack of planning and general incompetence. It was as if these people had some sort of divine blessing of luck, but only applicable in such a way that it ensured their survival without adding anything to their quality of life. Thus, they were living in a state of squalor, their shelters barely livable and giving the impression that a stiff gust of wind could spell disaster for them, to say nothing of their food storage. That, too, was kept in a poorly enclosed space, though that might have been partially on purpose, as I had a feeling they were using the various scavengers caught in the traps set around their storage to supplement their supplies.

And yet, despite these horrible conditions they were in, they managed to hang on, without even contemplating leaving and trying to join one of the other groups. Instead, they just continued onwards, like some stubborn fraternity who kept failing their exams but, somehow, managed to pay the bills on time every week, thanks to some ill-timed lottery win or something along those lines. It felt like this place shouldn't be possible and yet, here it was, defying my considerations about reality. A part of me wanted to test these people to see if there was some sort of divine magic in play, keeping their conditions as they were, or if one of them was suffering from some sort of cursed blessing or something like that. The results were incredibly interesting, though during the few times I had been in the area, I had been unable to find anything that indicated a supernatural cause unless one wanted to count supernatural amounts of stubbornness.

Regardless of the reasons for the odd conditions these people were living in and their weird behaviour, it came as a benefit to me. They accepted my offer quite readily, without asking too many questions and what few questions they asked were fairly pointless. Who cared how the enchantment would look like on their bodies, it would primarily be placed on their torso, shoulders and thighs, all areas that clothes could easily cover, it wasn't as if I was planning to carve runes into their faces.

Similarly, did it truly matter if the procedure would hurt when I offered them an opportunity to multiply their individual strength and power, thus greatly increasing their continued chances of survival? Maybe they believed that their state of continuously just hanging on would last forever, though I couldn't fathom why they didn't try to improve their state, it was utter madness. A useful case of insanity in this particular instance but insanity nonetheless. After a moment of consideration, I decided to add a note to check if I could detect some mental abnormalities, maybe try to use some Mind Magic and look if something stood out, alongside a complete scan with Blood Magic, just in case the situation was somewhat analogous to that of the Withered, where a strange magical fungus had taken over Undead, Shattered and even normal animals alike, turning them into fungoid husks of their former selves.

Soon after we gave the initial offer to empower one of them, we were ready to proceed. The guy in question, a roughly thirty-year-old, fairly fit male named Joshua, sat at level twenty-five and was, quite frankly, utterly unremarkable. Average in too many ways to count, to the point that I doubted I would have been able to pick him out of a line-up, simply because he was so ordinary. The most interesting thing about him was his receding hairline, but other than that, there was nothing I could see as a truly unique feature.

Hopefully, that unremarkable status would change with the enchantment, giving him something special, even if that might only be a special demise, teaching us something new about magic.

The tests, performed by Luna and myself, were quite thorough, trying to see if there was anything special about Joshua as an individual or as part of the idiot village. The more we looked and searched, the more our disappointment grew. His elemental affinities were moderately low, with Earth being the strongest of them all at a level that meant he would need years of dedicated practise and study to externalise the gift, while the others were even lower, to the point that I doubted any amount of practice would allow usage of these elements. His original attributes, as best as we could determine, sat pretty much at ten, with a few outliers at nine and eleven, respectively and when it came to traits, which we determined with a combination of Mind Magic, Observe, Inspect and a plain old interview were a small surprise.

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Namely, he actually possessed a trait called 'Average Joe', essentially pushing all his attributes and inherent abilities towards some mythical average, which might explain why the guy was so screwed. If the system used the average at the time of the change, he might have been cheated out of a few interesting things he could have received in those early days, when the Astral was still settling. Now, getting such a trait or ability would require a whole lot more work and exposure, though given our current plans, the trait might be an enormous boon to us. With nothing special about him, we didn't have to worry about something special interfering with our work. We would have to wait and see.

A part of me wondered just how gullible and relaxed this guy truly was. I certainly wouldn't have gone into the forest with a group I knew little about other than the fact that they were far more powerful than me but he didn't seem to mind. Curious, I subtly tried to use my Mind Magic to get an idea of why he was so accommodating and what I found surprised me.

While he truly wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, he also wasn't as dumb as I had thought; he had simply realised that there was little he could do if we wanted to do him an injury. He was aware of the fact that I had created Jademoon Tower, even if he had never been to it, meaning if we wanted to destroy their community, it would be trivial. I even stumbled across a few things that indicated that their community wasn't as homogenously idiotic as I had thought but I was still learning how to read minds and didn't get all that much on that particular topic.

His self-control was tested quite a bit when we reached the ritual chamber I had prepared just for this, a simple, yet incredibly sturdy, building with little more than its four stone walls, the roof and a slab of stone in the middle, acting as a mix between altar and hospital bed. Certainly not comfortable but I was a little limited in that regard, unless I was working in snow and ice, which brought its own problems. Luna could make things cushy and comfortable but it required a lot of effort, which we hadn't put into this chamber.

"Now, please strip down to your underwear and get on the table," I ordered him, noticing the deep, calming breath he took before obeying with a rapidly reddening face. I considered giving him a few words of comfort, telling him that he had nothing physical I was interested in but I decided against it. He didn't need the comfort, he merely needed to obey.

"As you were warned, if you move during the procedure, it could easily fail. We also can't use anaesthesia of any kind, part of the procedure involves giving you a regeneration factor, which uses your current physical state as its basis, so if we put you under, the regeneration would try to put you under, too, leaving you in what amounts to a comatose state. Thus, you will now be immobilised until the procedure is finished," I explained and the table he was lying on suddenly extruded bands of solid stone while letting his body sink in a little as the table moulded itself to his form. His face remained uncovered, allowing him to breathe, but he wouldn't be able to do more than twitch a little.

"We will begin now," I told him, before pulling out the tools Lia and I had prepared for this, the small knife, the subtly different versions of Crimson Ink and the exacting plans we had written down, just to make sure I didn't miss anything or made mistakes. This wasn't just another cat, nor was it one of our volunteer dogs, this was the first of our last series of tests, if it succeeded, we would have something truly remarkable, especially if the mental alterations and vulnerabilities we had added worked out.

Taking a deep breath, I made the first incision, ignoring the pained whimper coming from Joshua. This would take a while.

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