Dragon Tale - Chapter 4.1 (Patreon)

'Compatibility is key for a Take Over mage. The more compatible one is with their target, the more they gain from taking them over. And the longer. The increase in ability in their base states most Take Over mage's see in the process, does not last forever, and each person has a limit to what they can gain from their targets. Though, even when that limit is met, it is possible to continue further enhancing the Take Over form by hunting creatures of the same genus. The form can draw individually upon a target, or entirely, using one as a base and drawing smidgens of strength from the rest to increase the one. A warning though, the more powerful a Take Over form becomes, the more magic power it takes to maintain. Many have gained powerful Take Over forms they cannot maintain for more than a few seconds, and wasted all their prior efforts by not pursuing the magical power depths needed to use them.'

Brody frowned as he closed the book he was reading. A general study on Take Over magic he'd found at the library and added to his reading material over the last month since he met Elfman Strauss.

Though it did not contain instructions on how to learn or use Take Over magic, it did contain a general overview of how it worked.

'A limit, huh?' he mused inwardly, placing the book down on the table he was sitting at, besides his empty dinner plate. He was on break at the moment, but would soon get back to it.

That made sense, otherwise Take Over mage's would be the most powerful type of mage of all. There were herds of creatures out there that could number in the tens of thousands, like bison and such. Or even just cows.

While they were weak individually compared to most mages and stronger creatures, they were strong compared to a normal human. Adding even a tenth of a cows physical strength and such to ones self, ten thousand times over, would still create a powerhouse.

So yes, there being a limit to how much one gained from any specific Take Over target, on top of that limit being arbitrarily decided by compatibility with the target, really did make sense to him.

For most magical creatures, at least according to the book, the limit was one. The fact he'd taken over twenty six forest vulcans in total at this point in time, seemed to be nothing more than extraordinary.

And was probably because of how he he gained his magic in the first place. Because, he'd also got a book on vulcans.

Forest Vulcans as it turned out, tended to be the strongest of the few different species of them. And they all tended to live in herds. And usually, were not much bigger than a grown man, nothing at all like the ones he'd been dealing with.

Those were referred to as 'Gorians'. Forest Vulcans, and they were unique in that regard amongst the vulcan species, tended to every now and then have outliers that chafed under the leadership of another vulcan, and strayed from their usual target preference of humans for Take Over's, to their fellow vulcans.

They tended to backstab their own herd or pack members when the chance presented itself and used Take Over on them to get stronger. Usually, they would only manage to get a few though, before the whole pack turned on them and the strength boost from the betrayal while making them stronger individually, did not make them a match for the whole pack and they were driven off, forced to live in seclusion.

While he hadn't hit his own limit yet, he was sure he would at some point. Because not even vulcans themselves could gain infinite growth from taking over their own brethren, and the most talented among them generally topped out at around thirty, but those guys were super rare apparently.

Perhaps Rog was one of those insanely talented ones? He had been pretty damn big from what he remembered.

Well, either way, he'd find out soon he was sure. Because he'd also learned something interesting about Forest Vulcans. And it was that, they loved strawberry's, and in fact could smell fresh ones from near a mile away apparently.

…Brody wasn't sure how that worked when the book explained that their sense of smell wasn't much better than a normal humans.

It was probably magic bullshit.

"Baloo." a chirp in front of him brought him from his thoughts and he looked up to see Blue smiling at him, sitting beside an empty plate of his own.

"Enjoy that, huh?" he grinned at the spirit.

"Baloo!" Blue nodded happily, spreading his arms wide.

Chuckling, Brody placed his hand on his book and concentrated. It shimmered and disappeared a moment later as he stored it inside his Requip space.

It had taken him a full two weeks of effort, but he'd managed to get it down. It was a very simply magic apparently. Not quite as simple as Transformation Magic, which even after a month of trying to learn it alongside Blue, he'd only gotten to the Intermediate Stage.

…Where as Blue had reached the Advanced Stage and more or less mastered it five days in.

And to think Blue was supposed to be part of pretty much the weakest type of Celestial Spirits.

Shaking his head, Brody stood up, grabbing his bowl, alongside Blue's, while the drill nosed spirit hopped up atop his shoulder and made his way into the kitchen.

He found an elderly woman with long grey hair cleaning dishes at the sink inside humming a tune. Her back was hunched, and wrinkles crinkled around her eyes, but she looked pretty good still for a woman in her early sixties, and it was clear to see she was once a beautiful woman in the past when she was young.

"Hello dear," Enna, Garrick's wife greeted him with a smile, "How was your dinner?"

"It was lovely Enna, thanks." Brody replied, handing her the plates.

"Brilliant, it's always a joy to hear when one enjoys my cooking," she gave a dainty laugh, before looking at the blue spirit sitting on his shoulder, "And what about you cutie-pie?"

"Baloo!" Blue cheered back happily.

"Then I can go to sleep tonight a happy woman." she beamed, turning to deposit the dishes in the sink and get back to cleaning.

"Need a hand?" he asked.

"No, no that's fine dear," she waved him off, "Besides you have a lot of work left tonight, no?"

"It's not that bad, besides I have stamina in spades." Brody shrugged. It didn't feel right leaving an old woman to clean dishes for him, and Enna was a sweet motherly woman.

Who sadly was barren due to an injury she received in her youth and hadn't been able to have children of her own, and treated him very warmly.

"Yes, yes I'm sure you do dear, but off you go, go do your actual work." she snorted, and waved him out of the kitchen like a naughty child.

He snorted, but did as he was told.

"Alright monkey boy?" Garrick grinned at him as he entered the bar, getting a chuckle from one of the regular patrons sitting at one of the stools at the bar, Billy was his name, and actually the librarian at the Onibus library.

he furry green tail poking out of his backside wiggled as Brody rolled his eyes.

A partial take over. Something he'd taken to using through his days ever since meeting Elfman. He'd gotten the idea to use it to train his control with Take Over, but honestly, he basically just used it as an extra limb to help with work, it was like having another arm.

The boost it provided to his abilities compared to a full Take Over, was about a third at most, if that, but it was much less draining.

"Oh by the way," Billy pushed up his glasses as he spoke to Brody, "I managed to find that book you were looking for, you can come pick it up tomorrow."

"Oh, cool, thanks." Brody grinned. It wasn't anything special he'd asked him to find for him, but simply just a book with details on the kind of wild life around Mt. Hakobe and beyond.

_________

The next morning, after his usual work out and breakfast, Brody went with his usual routine of heading to the East Forest as he did every day, to hunt forest vulcans and train.

Though, things were a little different today.

Because today, he was carrying a bag full of fresh, ripe strawberries. He wasn't planning on roaming around hunting the remaining forest vulcans in the forest.

He was going to set the perfect bait down and have them come to him. Sometimes, it was best to think smarter, not harder.

So that was what he did, making his way to his usual training clearing and taking a seat on one of the smaller boulders.

'God, Maker Magic would be hella useful right about now.' he mused. Stone make, or even some form of metal make, like Iron Make or something would let him create some great equipment to use.

He had no idea where to start on learning such a thing though. Maybe he could put out a job request for some guild mage to do it?

And he thankfully had a Requip space to store it, though it would probably be a tight fit. He wasn't exactly Erza Scarlet in capacity after all.

…Yet.

Setting the bag of strawberries down, Brody reached in and opened up the casings they were in, before reclining back on the boulder.

'It'll probably take a little bit before they come, assuming I've not hunted them all down yet.' he mused, he'd averaged one every two days or so for the last month, but it was taking longer and longer now to find them in the forest around Onibus.

Holding his hand out, he focused his attention inwardly, and a few moments later, the air rippled, a notepad and pencil case appearing in his grasp.

"Now…let's see." Brody mused to himself.

Blue, had been lamenting the fact that whenever he went out to hunt vulcans, he would send him back because the spirit was no use in a fight, even though he wanted to come.

So he was going to design him a form that suited him, a battle form, like Panther Lily's so he could fight in his own way.

And he had the perfect one in mind.

It was a big dog.

And it had drills too.

It was just a matter of if, his skill would be enough to draw it out good enough for Blue to get a good mental image.

It was a good thing he took art classes in school. Though, for the first two years of high school, it was actually mandatory where he had lived before appearing here.

_________

Luckily for Brody, his art teacher had been very hot, so he'd made sure to take extra lessons from her, as a typical hormonal teenager would.

He was not proud of it, but for the him of twelve and thirteen years old, being around the older, pretty woman who tended to lean over his shoulder to see what he was working on at times, pressing her soft, lush body up against him, was a fun occasion.

He'd had to get pretty good at the whole art thing to get her attention at all. But, that was pretty much his thing. He'd never really been the most talented guy out there, as his attempts at Transformation Magic could attest to, but he was stubborn as all hell and could stick with something for long ass periods of time until he was satisfied with his ability.

So twenty five minutes later, he grinned down in satisfaction at the freshly drawn image that stared back at him.

It was a large, canine, more wolf than dog. With huge claws and razor sharp teeth. Fur of an ebony black, with almost like flame blue fur-design running mid-way up its legs and a long spiky blue mane. Its long tail was tipped with a silver drill, alongside a horn-like version atop its forehead, and two drills jutting from the outer thighs of its back legs. Twin blades jutted out from its lower back, while two spikes came from its upper back, almost looking like speakers, and where its chest started after its underbelly, a blade shone proudly.

"Not bad at all from drawing from memory." Brody chuckled to himself. Sure he'd changed the colour scheme up a bit. But it looked exactly like Dorulumon.

Well…if not a bit bigger. He'd drawn a reference to himself beside the massive canine creature as a scale, and made sure it was bigger than him, but not too big.

It needed to be big enough to give Blue a big enough physical enhancement to fight in, but not too big that it drained magic too quick and exhausted him.

But yeah, definitely not to sha-

"Outta way dumb Dog!" a stupid voice interrupted his thoughts and a second later, a forest vulcan came flying through the foliage around him, landing face first on the ground, a second one following with a powerful leap and delivering a smashing stomp into its back and driving the wind from its lungs, "Strawberry mine!" it beat its chest victoriously.