Charlie Quinn.

Another two weeks passed as we began to learn more about the magic of this world while also experimenting with Creation Magic.

Creation Magic was simple and not at the same time.

It worked kinda like my shard but at much lower level and quality. It couldn't attach concepts to stuff for example.

But it could alter the physics by easing the effects of it via scientific-ish processes.

For example, on a sword it couldn't attach a 'cuts everything' concept but it can be used to make the blade sharper and more durable, make it condense water on the blade for auto cleaning and other minor effects that stack up to become a sword that can cut through most anything.

It was a minecraft enchantment type thing, not a conceptual anchoring like my shard.

A fascinating art.

I liked it.

And as we both practiced, we got better at it.

Even Yue was working hard, being all adorable and devoted.

It was very endearing.

At the end of the two weeks, we had some results at hand.

Yue built automatic ward dispersers with her free time despite the extensive meta-math required for such a thing.

Her discipline really was Applied Meta-math huh?

While I call them ward dispersers, they are actually a tool to aid in percieving magic and the nature of magical things using the data on their effects. How did it get that data? Using a little foresight magic.

The same thing she used in Hajime's eyes in the story. Here she was even more dutiful and ended up making these.

Sure, they also made it easy to break through wards via a method similar to the mystic eyes of death perception but their primary use was in understanding supernatural phenomena, their nature and the effects they have on the world on a micro and macro scale.

They also happened to look like VR goggles, just more rough and metallic looking with gems and minerals embedded into it like a fly's eyes.

Disgusting looking but very useful.

Meanwhile I focused on charting out a method to poison the wellspring and kill the old gods that way.

After all, if Yue was to be believed magic here smelled like some sort of bodily fluid. It was the sense it gave her at least, after she had completed her ward dispersers.

I checked and realised she was right. Magic did have some innate connection to the old gods like a body part would.

So my theory about the energy rings surrounding the multiverse being the true bodies of the old gods was true?

Wow.

Odd way to confirm it but impressive nonetheless.

Of course, that's not all I did. I also strengthened the demon sealing boxes to be able to contain a niffin. Because today, something was about to happen.

Today, Alice was going to try to revive her niffin brother. And she was going to fail. And I was going to be there to save her, making her even more indebted to me.

As night fell, I informed Yue of what was about to happen and we made our way to the Van Pelt fountain, the place where Alice's brother Charlie turned into a niffin.

As we neared we could hear Alice singing some song I didn't recognise.

The glasses did though.

Don't you forget about me from...The Breakfast Club?

That wasn't the weird part though. The weird part was the plethora of magical batteries and the curious presence of Margo and Eliot by her side instead of just Quentin. Even Todd was here.

What the fuck?

That's not how it's supposed to go in the original story!

In the original timeline, Alice calls Charlie, he comes but it's not what she expected. He tries to kill her, but Quentin saves her using the previously mentioned niffin box, which is basically an enchanted wooden effigy of a coffin that binds the niffin to the wood permanently.

Then they have a fight and Alice drops out for a couple of months.

But now, it seems she has not only completed the spell, she also got help!

I recognised that spellwork and magic circle with the batteries. It's what Quentin used to niffin Alice back to human in season 3.

She won't fail this time. Meaning she won't need my help.

Fuck!

Have I changed the timeline that much?

I worried, stopping in my tracks.

Just then Eliot spotted me.

"Oh hey, there you are?" Eliot waved me over with a smile while Margo looked at me like chewing gum on her shoe and handed another 20 to Eliot.

"Another bet?" I asked amused.

"Yup." Eliot replied through a pearly set of whites on full display, "She bet you wouldn't come and leave Alice to her fate. I knew better. You're too much of a softie to do that. And see!"

"Guilty as charged." I shrugged.

Why change a good misunderstanding?

"I figured Alice wouldn't accept my help with how standoffish she was being at the start so I planned to come by 'coincidentally' as backup in case Quentin fucked up. Which to be honest, is pretty likely."

"Then why the contracts, you douche?" Margo asked annoyed at having lost the bet.

"To keep these two mercurial idiots in check. I could use the one order I have on then and make them stop this in time if need be.

Also, because I have a thing with Dean Fogg."

"A thing? Like a ..." She made sexual gesture.

"No! No. A contract. It has a clause relating to people I have deals with. It....could have prevented Quentin's expulsion and any backlash Alice would have suffered if the niffin went rogue in here and all else failed."

"Like that demon sealing box?" Eliot asked.

"Yup."

"Sure. You just happened to have very convenient deal with Fogg, is that right?" Margo scoffed skeptical as always.

"Uh yeah? It's how I was able to get Yue enrolled mid semester. It's a pretty sweet deal. Though it only works once per person. So no more fallbacks for you two." I gestured at Quentin and Alice.

Alice looked at me with a newfound look in her eyes and smiled.

"Thanks."

"It's okay. But I see you won't be needing my help."

"No she won't." Margo replied proudly.

"Uh huh?"

"Yeah. After you left being all cryptic about the 'technically, the spell should work' thing I forces my way into this little conspiracy-"

"It's not a conspiracy." Alice huffed.

"Shush. The adults are talking." Margo cut her off playfully, "And then, I, in my boundless benevolence-"

"She was like a curious kitten." Eliot spoiled it.

"Eliot!" Margo protested.

I chuckled.

Margo cleared her throat and puffed up again.

"So I decided to help poor, little Alice out."

"How nice of you." I praised.

"Of course." Margo gloated, "But don't get used to it."

"Yeah we won't." Quentin snarked.

"What was that?" Margo snapped.

"I meant thank you." He quickly backtracked.

Pussy.

"That's more like it." Margo grinned, and Alice started singing again and soon.....

"Alice." Quentin pointed at the other end of the fountain plaza.

All eyes turned to where he was pointing and there stood a man in his twenties, blond and blurry, pulsating with immense magic power, his eyes glowing blue as wisps of magic escaped from his cracked skin.

Steam seemed to be coming off of him as he turned to look at us in a decidedly inhuman way.

Creeped me out thoroughly.

Immediately, Eliot and Margo began to cast a ward around the plaza while Quentin and Todd began to chant a mantra that lit up the magical batteries. They began to vibrate, buzzing like a beehive and the outer layers of the batteries began to flake off one by one as Charlie came closer.

"Charlie, is that you?" Alice teared up and ran to him.

"Alice." He muttered, yet his voice echoed out, sounding as if it had come out from a synthesizer.

"Oh my god, Charlie. I can't believe it's you. I missed you so much, I don't know what to say...." She grabbed his hands, gasping with barely contained sobs when suddenly steam started to come out of her hands too.

She winced and tried to jerk back but Charlie grabbed her back in an iron grip.

"Charlie, what are you doi- It hurts! Charlie!"

Charlie in return just began to laugh like a kid on the playground burning ants with his magnifying glass, a manic look of sick joy in his eyes.

He was ...gone. Just nuts.

But of course, Alice refused to see that.

"You're just confused, Charlie. It's okay. We're going to help you. Bring you back!" She assured him taking a quick glance abck at Eliot and Margo to see how they were doing.

But Charlie instantly appeared between her and them, poking her face with his finger, sending an electric shock into her, that made her collapse onto the floor, a twitching mess.

Then he turned to look at the rest of us, curiously.

"Bring me back? From what? There is nothing to bring back!" He cackled.

"This is perfection!"

Alice came to her senses again and looked up in horror as Charlie grinned back at her.

With a thought and a snap of his fingers, the wards fell apart and Margo's nails flew off her fingers.

She fell to the floor crying out in pain and Eliot stopped to tend to her.

All the while Alice begged him to stop and come to his senses.

To no avail.

I sighed and stepped forward and without a word cast a ward across the plaza made from my own refined magic based on Marvel's eldritch magic procedures.

He can break this world's magic but Marvel's? I doubt it. At least it won't be easy.

A shimmer of burning orange cast out like a net, sparking and fizzling as it entrapped Charlie, binding him tight.

"Oooh! New magic! How does it work? How did you trap me?" He wondered gleefully, pushing out with all his might. One by one, to my surprise, the net began to break, the magical twine of eldritch energy snapping as a pulse of blue burned through it.

Damn! Niffins are powerful!

Few things are able to break my magic. Even the haxenpaxen I stole from Dana Wallens couldn't break through and it's literally an anti-magic creature.

Then as the net broke he disappeared into a cloud of steam.

In an instant he was upon me, slamming against my forcefield in futility.

"You.....you lab coat boy are a bundle of wonder aren't you? I will have fun tearing you apa-"

I shot my pistol through his face, dissipating it.

Of course that wasn't going to stop him. His face reconstituted almost immediately, and he chuckled.

"Did you think you could take me down with a plasma bolt?"

"Nah. Just expressing disapproval of your shitty two bit villain monologue." I snorted, "You'd think a guy with infinite time could come up with better material."

Niffins have some slowed perception of time.

It's how he analyzed the attack this fast, in the middle of reconstituting himself.

In the books, niffin Alice traveled to the beginning of time and saw the world be made and remade.

Niffins can time travel without worry because magic exists in this world across time and niffins are magic itself.

No wonder he's gone cuckoo. Or it could have been his shade.

The shade was the part of the soul that made you human. It gave you feelings, emotions, love and kindness, empathy too.

Without it people act like psychopaths. Though having one didn't stop you from being a psychopath so I don't really see the point but eh, not my problem.

Now that I think about it, did these guys account for his lack of shade?

Because niffins lose their shades, technically being classified dead and what not.

"What is this thing? A forcefield? Why can't I teleport into it!? Like one of those stupid gacha toy balls with the ridiculously tight cap." Charlie pummeled the forcefield, crying out in frustration.

"Atatatat. Naughty kids don't get the gacha surprise. They get a spanking!" I channeled a bit of the forcefield away and spanked him in the ass with, now that I knew he was vulnerable to it.

"You! I will enjoy crushing you like a maggot!" He cackled, but the anger in his eyes betrayed his true feelings.

I grinned.

"Try me bitch!" And slapped him again, sending him flying across the plaze, crashing against the wards I had put up.

"You guys getting close now?" I asked Todd and Quentin and they nodded.

"Almost." Quentin replied.

"And done!" He slammed his palms together forming a hand seal and chanted one final line.

Charlie got up from his prone position against the wards, furious at me when he noticed his body flickering.

"...no.....No! NO! NOOOO! STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOI-" He cried as Eliot and Alice joined in.

Slowly and steadily, his flickering got worse and the cracks on his skin began to fill up and his body became more and more corporeal until finally he fell to his knees, gasping for breath, unable to maintain his new weight below him, before he fainted, collapsing to the floor.

And with that, Charlie Quinn was back in the world of the living.

And all it cost was Margo's fingernails.

Great cost to benefit ratio.

I even got to help, making Alice indebted to me.

Now there was just one problem remaining with this whole debacle.

"So....how did you guys get his shade back from the underworld?" I asked acting all innocent, jabbing Margo with a healing serum, as Quentin and Eliot's eyes went wide in horror and Margo just muttered.

"Fuck me."

I grinned.

"Gladly."

"Tch." Margo clicked her tongue, playfully grinning, "Asshole."

And broke into an involuntary chuckle as Yue pinched me in the arm jealously.

________________

MC helps Alice again and beat the shit out of a niffin.

Next time, plans for the underworld.

Thanks for reading.

Extra chapter at 600 powerstones.

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