Electronic devices, like cameras, proved to be something of a middle ground. Shade could not totally remove Jason from their detection, due to the lack of magic to interfere with. What he could do was interfere with the complex process of data translation involved in electronic devices. The result was that Jason appeared as little more than a blur to someone watching the feed. In shadowy conditions that Jason’s magic cloak could make the most of, it was the next best thing to true invisibility.
This was not Shade’s first time in a technologically advanced world and he had a solid grasp of his limitations, which he and Jason had discussed at length. One advantage Shade offered was an uncanny sense of when they were being observed. Jason’s aura senses could do this for living observers, but Shade could sense any camera systems pointed in their direction.
Jason was uncertain if his personal immunity to tracking powers extended to his phone, so he decided to take precautions. After obtaining some powdered silver with surprising ease, along with a few other relatively ordinary materials, he had Taika leave him back at the townhouse until it was time for Jason to meet his uncle.
Shade had ascertained that there were no cameras, other than the one in his phone, the webcam in his new laptop and the one on the desktop computer upstairs. Jason left them all upstairs on the mezzanine while he worked on his new phone case downstairs.
Clearing a space on the polished hardwood floor, Jason prepared for the first of several rituals. First, he took from his inventory the mana lamps he had left to charge the night before. He would need them to temporarily upgrade the anaemic ambient magic to perform even the most basic rituals.
The same lack of magic made the lamps very slow to accumulate charge, however, so he would need to work with haste. He was going to miss Clive and his powers that made performing rituals easier. Jason didn’t activate the lamps immediately, wanting to be as ready as he could so as to not waste their limited uptime.
The ritual Jason wanted to perform required magically charged silver powder. Since he couldn’t source it locally, he would need to take some ordinary powdered silver and add the magic himself. It was the kind of peripheral skill he hadn’t picked up from his skill book knowledge. It was Farrah and later Clive pushing him into expanding his knowledge base that prepared him for these circumstances.
That was not to say that skill books didn’t have their place. His skill book-derived knowledge of artifice would let him craft a very simple magical item once he had magical silver powder.
He started by using the engraving pen he had just purchased to carve a magical diagram onto the back of his new phone case. He had practised with it first, quickly becoming comfortable with its use. The superhuman coordination of his speed attribute and the accelerated learning speed of his spirit attribute allowed him to swiftly become comfortable with simple physical tasks.
His hand moved with confidence as he engraved the phone case. One of the advantages of skill book knowledge was that it was imprinted like a computer file, so he could easily engrave the magical diagram from memory. Like most protection-type diagrams, it was an elaborately embellished pentagram, which made for a visually pleasing design.
He set out the other things he would need: chalk, a bag of powdered lesser monster cores, and some iron spirit coins. He wondered if there was a way to charge the lamps faster with spirit coins. That was something he would need to look at later.
Jason drew out a ritual circle on the hardwood floor with chalk, then activated the mana lamps. He used powdered monster cores to adjust to the ambient magic, which was an easy task given the magically inert conditions. It wasn’t something he’d done a lot, normally relying on Clive’s power to render the step unnecessary.
“Next time I get killed and sent to another universe, I’m taking Clive with me.”
Jason’s thoughts drifted to the other soul who had apparently arrived with him. If it really was an outworlder, Jason still had no idea how to track them down. Searching for a mysterious, naked, bald person with magic powers on the internet had brought up an unhelpful plethora of results.
Setting the mana lamps to raise the ambient magic to just the minimum level for iron-rank rituals would still only give Jason a few minutes. In that time, he needed to charge the silver powder with magic using one ritual, rebalance the ambient magic with a quick second ritual, then use the magically charged silver in a third ritual. He activated the mana lamps, getting results in just a few seconds.
You have entered a region of normalised magic. Your recovery rates will remain at normal levels without spirit coin consumption.
Despite the time constraint, Jason didn’t hurry. Taking the time to do it right would get better results than rushing the job.
“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast,” he muttered to himself as he worked with careful deliberation.
He successfully charged the silver with magic from the spirit coins. He used a simple cleansing ritual to purge the residual magic from that first task, then performed a third ritual as the last step. His hands moved over the magic diagram like an orchestra conductor’s as he chanted out the ritual. When he uttered the final syllable, the magical silver powder became a liquid and crawled onto the phone case in the middle of the ritual circle. The liquid flowed into the engraved diagram and instantly turned solid, leaving a silver diagram set into the black case.
“I think it looks good,” Jason said, picking up the case and turning it over in his hand.
“It is aesthetically satisfactory,” Shade agreed.
“Of course you think so,” Jason said. “It’s mostly black.”
“If you are unhappy with my design choices, I can make some modifications to the vehicle shapes I take,” Shade said. “Gordon was watching something called The Love Bug on television this morning. I could probably do something like that.”
“Uh, no,” Jason said. “Consider my criticism withdrawn with apologies.”
Jason turned off the mana lamps.
You have entered a region of magical desolation. The levels of magical density and magical saturation are extremely low, insufficient to produce spontaneous magical manifestations.
He returned the mana lamps to various places around the townhouse, as separate as he could make them. The further apart they were, the less they would fight over what little magic there was as they charged.
Jason then took his new case and picked up his phone.
“I have no idea if this will work,” Jason said.
“It should be sufficient to prevent non-magical tracking, along with most iron-rank tracking effects,” Shade said. “Anything more powerful will be a large enough effect to be caught up in your personal tracking immunity.”
“Magical tracking,” Jason said. “Am I reading too much into what Uncle Hiro said about the federal police covering up my disappearance when I left this world?”
“It is best to gather more information,” Shade said. “If your world is less ignorant of magic than you initially believed, your actions at the hospital will draw out those who know.”
“Any nibbles yet?”
“I have not seen anyone with auras above normal rank amongst the investigators, but there are some who seemed out of place compared to the others. I am continuing to look into it.”