And then she wakes up in a tolerably comfortable office chair, in front of a basic desk, with a small, leatherbound book resting atop it. 

Not bleeding out.

Not cold.

Holy shit she got shot. She died. What the fuck.

She scoots the chair back from the desk, tucks her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around her legs, and rocks there, gasping and panting.

She rocks and rocks and rocks for a minute or three, and then suddenly... stops. Her breathing steadies, her feet go back to the floor, and she closes her eyes, taking a deep breath.

She may not know how she survived dying, but she's definitely not going to get caught unprepared again. Okay, she thinks to herself, let's take stock.

Book, desk, lights, what's in the drawers? Notebook and basic pens with no evidence of branding, interesting. Next step, the book. She opens it.

Introduction

Your world is one of countless worlds, some so close as to be nearly indistinguishable from your own, some so distant that the very foundations of physical existence there are completely alien to you.

This book was made in one such world. It comes to you now because you are needed. A distant world is under threat, and you have been chosen to save it.

Bound into these pages by enchantment and ritual are a number of cantrips: spells you can learn, and refine with practice into powerful tools of magic. Here also are several quests: tasks you can accomplish to gain more power. You will need that power to complete your ultimate goal.

Read through the book carefully. Think about what you might need. Then, spend your allotted points to gain cantrips and accelerate their growth. You can allocate points with an act of will, and revoke them the same way.

When you are content with your choices, close your book, place your hands on the front cover, and say the following words aloud:

I accept this gift and its burdens.

Your selection of cantrips will be finalized and you will be sent on to your destination.

The space in which you encountered the book was created to be a safe and restful haven for careful thought, and warded accordingly against mental damage from solitary confinement; but if you delay your choice long enough to test those wards, you will be sent on to your destination as soon as they begin to fail, with any unallocated points distributed randomly among available options. 

The current status of the wards is healthy: more than one week remaining.

What. 

That reads like a fucking CYOA. 

She eyes the book suspiciously, a hint of a grin stretching across her face.

If she died and got scooped to here, then there's very little the people responsible for putting her here with this book couldn't have already done to her. Given that the book claims she'll be empowered and sent on even if she doesn't explicitly agree, it's probably not a trap based on her accepting a tainted contract — assuming the book isn't lying. Only option she has to watch for tainted contract stuff — and unfortunately an imperfect option — is to read the book in its entirety.

Information

Cantrip Basics

Unless otherwise specified, each cantrip can be cast at will, as often as you want.

Schools: The ten schools of magic are Attack, Sensory, Protection, Healing, Summoning, Interaction, Enchantment, Manipulation, Travel, and Effect. Each cantrip belongs to one or two schools.

Upgrade Areas: Each cantrip has four Upgrade Areas, which begin at Tier 0 when you gain the cantrip. With practice, you can train them up to Tier 3. If you allocate points to an upgrade area, you will accelerate your growth in that area tenfold up to the level you purchased. Each tier includes the effects of all tiers below it where applicable, and you can choose to cast any cantrip at a lower tier.

When purchasing acceleration, point costs are not cumulative within an Upgrade Area: buying Tier 3 at the listed cost grants you Tiers 1 and 2 for free.

Focus: Some cantrips Require Focus. They take active mental effort to maintain, and it is very difficult to maintain more than one at once.

Except for Prestidigitation, every cantrip that Requires Focus has one Upgrade Area whose Tier 3 effect removes required focus from that cantrip.

A cantrip which both Requires Focus and has a listed Duration will only take active mental effort when trying to manage multiple simultaneous castings; it will be effortless when cast alone.

Overmagic: Once you have brought all four of a cantrip's Upgrade Areas to Tier 3, you can begin making progress toward its Overmagic. Each Overmagic is personalized to the caster, and grants one passive and one active effect. The passive effect cannot be suppressed except by the caster's will; the active effect exhausts the cantrip when cast, leaving it unusable for several hours, though the passive effect will remain. Active Overmagic often has a similar range, duration, method, etc. to its associated cantrip, but will usually be significantly enhanced in at least one and potentially several of those areas.

Unless otherwise noted, cantrips avoid harming the caster: a caster cannot be burned by their own Fire Bolt or put to sleep by their own Lullaby. It is possible to learn to use harmful cantrips on yourself intentionally, but it is always harder than using them the normal way.

Some cantrips summon spirits or other beings. In cases where a suitable source of beings is not available, or at the caster's discretion, Summoning cantrips may instead create them, using the summoner's own mind and soul as a sort of foundation or template from which to build a suitable spirit. These created beings are often consistent across separate castings of the same cantrip. (When a spirit is being summoned in their capacity as e.g. a dead person, and the spirit of that dead person is not available, the spell will fail rather than construct a facsimile. Spirits of the dead being summoned in their capacity as guides or wardens may be replaced if unavailable.)

Most cantrips have specific listed durations; some take instantaneous effect and cannot be held for any significant length of time. The default cantrip duration is 1 minute, which can be assumed to apply to all holdable cantrips without a listed duration.

One advanced caster, or multiple casters working together, can overlap the effect of a single cantrip with itself by casting it multiple times simultaneously on the same target. While some cantrips stack straightforwardly when multicast in this way, others will be subject to diminishing returns: two overlapping castings might provide only one and a half or one and a quarter times the effect of a single cast.

Mastery Level

There are six possible Mastery Levels that describe how well a caster has trained a given cantrip.

	Mastery Level	Requirements
1	Novice	Able to cast cantrip
2	Apprentice	At least one area at Tier 2  OR All areas at Tier 1 or above
3	Journeyman	All areas at Tier 1 or above and at least one area at Tier 3  OR All areas at Tier 2 or above
4	Master	All areas at Tier 2 or above and at least two areas at Tier 3
5	Grandmaster	All areas at Tier 3 and Overmagic achieved
6	Archmage	Overmagic mastered

Huh. Kind of has some D&D vibes, and some names that match exactly. Interesting that it's effortless and at-will for the most part. Hmmm.

Okay.

She gets out the notebook and gets ready to take notes.

Training

When training a cantrip, you must spend a certain number of hours repeatedly casting that cantrip while focusing on pushing it to the limit in the areas you wish to train. The mental strain involved is similar to holding a cantrip with Required Focus, meaning that training a single cantrip with Required Focus is equivalent to holding two Required Focus cantrips at once under non-training conditions. Luckily, this strain does not increase when you train multiple areas of a single cantrip at once.

The amount of training required to train a cantrip to the next Tier in a certain Upgrade Area is the same as the point cost of purchasing acceleration to that Tier, and the number of hours required to achieve one point's worth of training depends on which tier you are progressing toward and how many areas you are training at once, like so:

Tier	One Area	Two Areas	Three Areas	Four Areas
0 to 1	8 Hours/pt	14 Hours/pt	18 Hours/pt	20 Hours/pt
1 to 2	20 Hours/pt	35 Hours/pt	45 Hours/pt	50 Hours/pt
2 to 3	80 Hours/pt	140 Hours/pt	180 Hours/pt	200 Hours/pt

Even if you don't train a cantrip, you can make slow progress with routine use. Routine use is at best ten times slower than active training, meaning it would take you 80 hours of solid casting with a single cantrip to gain your first point's worth of progress toward Tier 1 in one area, and you cannot make it more efficient by training multiple areas at once, nor can you direct your progress toward a specific chosen area; the progress you make in this way will land in arbitrary places, though lower tiers will always be completed before higher ones.

After you finish training a cantrip's Upgrade Areas, developing its Overmagic will require you to spend one thousand hours (or less, with acceleration) in focused meditation, contemplating the cantrip without casting it. You cannot meditate in this way while under any significant mental strain, such as training another cantrip or holding a cantrip with Required Focus.

Once you have developed a cantrip's Overmagic, it takes a further 10,000 castings of the Overmagic's active effect to master that Overmagic, at which point using the active Overmagic will be as easy as casting the base cantrip and will no longer exhaust it.

Teaching

Once you have mastered a cantrip to at least the Apprentice level, you can begin teaching it to others. Under most circumstances, you can only teach someone to begin casting a cantrip at the Novice level; if they want to make further progress, they must train it on their own.

Teaching is incompatible with training: you cannot train any cantrips while teaching.

Unless you teach with Grandmaster or higher mastery, your student(s) will be limited to a certain number of uses of the taught cantrip per day.

The time it takes you to teach a cantrip, the level of preexisting magical ability a student needs in order to learn it from you, the number of students you can teach it to at once, the number of times your students will be able to use the cantrip per day once they learn it, and their potential for further training, all depend on your mastery level for that cantrip, as follows:

Mastery Level	Requirements	Class Hours	Class Size	Usages per Day	Improvability
Novice	Cannot Teach	-	-	-	-
Apprentice	Awakened magic capacity	300	1	2 to 3	None
Journeyman	Latent magic capacity	100	4	4 to 8	Up to Tier 1
Master	No requirement	40	9	9 to 16	Up to Tier 2
Grandmaster	No requirement	15	16	At Will	Up to Tier 3
Archmage	No requirement	5	25	At Will	Up to Overmagic

Enchanting

Another way to increase access to cantrips is by enchanting them into items. You can do this with any cantrip you have mastered to at least the Apprentice level.

Enchanting is incompatible with training and teaching; you cannot enchant an item while training or teaching any cantrips.

When you enchant an item, you temporarily impair your ability to use the cantrip for a short while after you finish enchanting. The impairment stacks; if you impair your use of a cantrip by 80% and then 80% again, it will be down to 4% of its original effectiveness until the impairment expires. While a cantrip is below 10% effectiveness, you cannot enchant more items with it.

By default, enchanted items have a certain number of charges (which may be infinite) and lose their magic once all their charges are expended. At Journeyman or Master level, you can choose to instead enchant an item that has fewer available uses, but recharges all of them over the course of 24 hours.

The use of magic items is generally restricted to those who have some magic potential, although at the Archmage level you can get around that. You can also set your own restrictions on the use of an item; these are set as you enchant the item and cannot be changed afterward. By default, all such restrictions work on a whitelist basis, with new criteria adding more users rather than narrowing the pool further.

• "Broad group" restrictions are things like gender, species, or world of origin. 

• "Specific group" restrictions are things like being related to a specific person, or having a certain disposition to a specific person, like "loyal to me". 

• "Specific users" allows you to whitelist individual people you can identify.

• "Restricted users" allows you to whitelist individual people you can identify, but have the item set to revoke the access of anyone who fails a previous restriction.

The time it takes you to enchant an item with a cantrip, the level of impairment you sustain in the process, the maximum tier at which you can enchant the item, the number of times the item can cast the cantrip before being exhausted, requirements for who can use the item, and restrictions you can set on users, all depend on your mastery level for that cantrip, as follows:

Mastery Level	Time	Impairment	Power	Number of Uses	Potential Users	User Restrictions
Novice	-	-	-	-	-	-
Apprentice	20-30 Hours	80% for 5-9 Days	Tier 0	2-4 Total	Awakened magic	None Available
Journeyman	5-9 Hours	30% for 1-2 Days	Tier 1	10-16 or 2-4	Latent magic	Broad Group
Master	1 Hour	5% for 3-5 Hours	Tier 2	17-25 or 5-9	Any magic	Specific Group
Grandmaster	20 Minutes	None	Tier 3	At Will	Any magic	Specific Users
Archmage	5 Minutes	None	Overmagic	At Will	Anyone	Restricted Users

Okay, teaching and enchanting is awesome and she is going to abuse the ability to empower others. That's so great. The training times are huge but oh fucking well it's magic.

Transformation

One more thing you need to know before the quests section.

When you finalize your choices and accept the gift of power, you will be transformed en route to your destination. Your new form will be a hybrid between several different beings, some of which you may have heard of, some of which you likely haven't. The main ingredients are Klyntar, Blacklight, and Iuuau. There are also a few bottles of magical ink in the mix, and several more odds and ends beyond this book's capacity to describe.

At its heart, your new form is a transdimensional networked symbiote with an unparalleled capacity to absorb new forms of matter, energy, and life and integrate those things into itself.

Host Bond

As a symbiote, you will require at least one sapient living host at all times. You can survive without a host for at most a few minutes, and the discomfort involved is severe. While hostless, you will have a strong instinctive drive to reconnect.

It is possible to eventually achieve independent existence by constructing a viable body for yourself and transferring your main host bond to it, but it will be a long-term project, not something to expect to complete within a few years.

You will be provided with a host when you land; your host will be the recipient of their own grimoire, just as powerful as yours, and may have other abilities. You and your host are intended to work together as partners, and have been selected with that goal in mind, though due to constraints of the medium neither of you could be consulted beforehand.

The host bond integrates body, mind, and soul. Biologically, psychologically, and spiritually, you and your host will be in many senses effectively a single being. Maintaining mental separation is a trivial effort, but it is an effort, and may break down in times of extreme shock or stress. Your mental connection with your host cannot be disrupted by any external means.

You have some control over the fine targeting of effects aimed at you and/or your host. At your discretion, you can present yourself as a shield to block effects from reaching your host, or withdraw yourself to let effects pass through you to reach them, or integrate yourself and your host to present a single unified target. You will instinctively make use of this ability even when a spell or psychic emanation is arriving too quickly to afford time for conscious thought.

Your host bond also offers significant benefits for learning cantrips. Any cantrip that one of you has gained, you can teach to the other; as each of you master your cantrips, the other's training in that cantrip will accelerate, as follows:

Mastery Level	Training Multiplier
Novice	1.5
Apprentice	2
Journeyman	6
Master	15
Grandmaster	40
Archmage	120

Additionally, there are a few quest rewards that will automatically transfer across the bond once gained, and more that you will be able to absorb from your host or augment them with as appropriate. 

As part of being so closely joined to your host, you will be able to alter their mind, body, and soul on the most fundamental levels, allowing you to grant them abilities you gain from the sources of magical, biological, and spiritual power you absorb and integrate. Use this power with caution, at least at first: it is always harder to undo something than to do it.

Your default physical manifestation will be a suit of amorphous living matter that surrounds, covers, protects, and augments your host, transforming their outward appearance into a larger, more physically powerful form. It is also possible for you to conceal yourself within your host, using your dimensional transfer abilities to store the excess matter in your internal pocket dimension. When fully concealed in this way you are virtually undetectable to external scrutiny, even magical scrutiny, unless you choose to make yourself visible. Intermediate states are possible, and can be very useful once you learn how to mimic the outward appearance of clothing.

Absorption

You can absorb most things into yourself. Living animals are a particularly potent source of both raw biomass (important for your continued growth) and patterns of adaptation (which you can integrate and analyze to augment yourself and your host).

Absorbing a living being can be a difficult, messy, and potentially lossy process if they resist. Unwilling subjects may need to be subdued before consumption.

Once you have fully absorbed a being, it is possible to reconstruct them if you have the biomass to spare. Reconstructed beings will be manifested out of your own matter, and so you will have an even deeper level of control over their attributes than you do over your main host, while being able to revoke their physical manifestation at will. If the absorbed being has a conscious mind, you can choose whether they remain conscious while unmanifested, or are effectively paused until you allow them to resume; you can communicate telepathically with any conscious minds you have absorbed, and allow them access to your senses at your discretion.

In addition to living beings, you can also absorb spell effects, other magical phenomena, exotic energies, souls, dead matter, and many other things. Dead animals are a useful source of biomass but considerably more difficult to extract patterns from than living animals, though it's still possible to reconstruct their abilities with enough examples to work from. Nonliving nonconscious forms of energy are a useful source of new powers and abilities, but can be much trickier to integrate than abilities gained from living beings.

Absorbing disembodied souls allows you to reconstruct them in the same sort of way as absorbed living beings, though you may have to provide them with new bodies if the soul doesn't contain enough information about the original. Fitting a soul to an unaccustomed body can be a tricky proposition, but is well within your power if you choose to develop the skill. Souls can also offer new forms of magical energy and other abilities, depending on their nature and composition.

You can reconstruct absorbed dead matter nearly as easily as you can reconstruct living beings, and this can be useful for transporting items. When you arrive at your destination, you will have a copy of this book already absorbed and able to be conveniently manifested at will; but since this book is not quite inanimate, you will also be able to read and write in it in its disembodied state, to keep logs or check quest progress. Normal books do not work that way and will need to physically exist in order to be modified.

You need to absorb a small baseline amount of matter or energy each day in order to survive. Normally, this requirement is fairly well taken care of by your host eating a little more than they're used to, but if your host can't access food, you may need to resort to assimilating large chunks of dirt; inorganic material is a much less efficient fuel for you than biomass. Magical items are better, if you can get them. You can stave off starvation and thirst for a very long time this way, but fueling your host rather than letting them fuel you is a state of affairs your body was not designed for and cannot sustain indefinitely. It is unwise to rely on it for more than a few months at a time.

If you do begin to truly starve, your body will first consume all its spare biomass, leaving you eventually with nothing except a vestigial presence inside your host. Only at that point will your host themselves start to feel the effects of starvation. If your host finds enough food and water to sustain their own life, you can ride along with them indefinitely that way, and eventually reconstruct yourself out of whatever resources their body can spare; if not, your body will instinctively consume theirs once they die, and you will have a few minutes to find a new primary host before dying yourself. Your previous host will stay with you in the same way as all other beings you have consumed.

Dimensional Networking

Your body contains an internal pocket dimension that seamlessly links all parts of you.

By default, parts of your body cannot sustain themselves without the physical and biological structure of a host body. This means that, by default, you cannot sever any part of yourself from your host indefinitely: severed parts will collapse and retract automatically into your pocket dimension after a few seconds.

However, it is possible for you to bond to multiple hosts, including hosts you reconstruct out of your own matter. Reconstructed hosts provide the physical and biological scaffolding to allow you to maintain multiple independent points of contact with the world, but they do not provide the spiritual integration that your soul and body need to survive, so they cannot replace your primary host completely. 

While bonded to multiple hosts, you can effortlessly facilitate deep mental connections between all of them.

The amount of body mass that a host can sustain is proportional to their own body mass. A reconstructed fruit fly might be able to scaffold as much as a teaspoon of you; a reconstructed elephant could easily scaffold several tons and potentially quite a bit more.

Whenever you learn a form of magic that involves creating or altering a pocket dimension, you can use that magic to expand and augment your own internal storage. Although it is quite large to begin with, it can still benefit from expansion. If you take the Pocket cantrip (or gain any similar magical ability) and use it to provide alternate access to your internal storage, you can instantaneously absorb anything and anyone that enters your pocket dimension by portal; they are, after all, effectively already inside you. If you choose to refrain, however, you can allow things to enter and leave without being absorbed.

Although it's not trivial, it is possible for you to learn how to construct yourself an independent body from scratch, without an existing consciousness, and manifest it fully as more than just a projection of your own body mass. At that point you become effectively self-hosting, able to use yourself as your primary anchor. Expect to learn this trick within a year or two if you focus on it fairly exclusively; also, expect that for your first year or two in your new world, you will have plenty else to focus on.

Gwuh.

Sable just stares at this for a long moment, processing the fact that this innocuous-seeming book has just promised to inflict something even more extreme than her wildest daydreams of being an inkblot.

Holy fuck.

This CYOA is calling her out so hard right now. Not only would it be making her an inkblot, but it would be making her dependent on having a host, which means everything revolves around being good to her host so that she can best collaborate with them, which is just what she's about. On top of that, she is blushing so hard about the call out on the vore thing. She explicitly has power benefits from eating people, and can even restore people afterward. Fuck.

Fuck.

Once she catches her breath, she starts making a list of animals to eat for patterns. Her host is going to be so protected and empowered.

• Bats
• Cats
• Wolves
• So Many Spiders
• Fish
• Sharks
• Scorpions
• Something for electroperception
• Homing pigeons
• Something that sprays secretions a long distance

She can come back to this later, but there are lots of options. She'll have to depopulate a few zoos, if she can persuade her host.

Quests

You have a very significant task ahead of you, and in order to complete it, you will need more than the power this grimoire could offer on its own.

Quests are automatically generated for a grimoire's recipient based on their particular strengths, weaknesses, needs, and abilities. They are designed to be feasible to complete, though not necessarily easy. Because of the nature of your task, your quests may be especially difficult, the better to offer you more power once you finish them.

All quests grant rewards. Some of them additionally grant points, which have already been included in your starting points total at the start of the Cantrips section. Some rewards take effect at the start of the quest, like the point rewards; others take effect when the quest is completed, which may be at the end of its timeframe or at the moment when you accomplish its goal.

Some quests, especially the more powerful ones, have penalties for failure. If you run out the quest's timeframe without finishing it, or if you violate the conditions of an ongoing quest, the penalty will apply. It is meant to be possible to complete all your quests without failing any, and this book will track progress and time limits so you can stay organized and not have to worry about maintaining access to a calendar or figuring out which things do and don't count.

Quest List

The Warmth of the Sun

Timeframe: 6 Months ⧫ Initial Reward: Points
Final Reward: Magical photosynthesis ⧫ Penalty: Reward retracted

You must rise before each dawn, and greet the sunrise while repeating the following chant: 

Life-giver, Light-bearer, Warmth-sender, Earth-carer.
Your gifts are cherished and your beauty is praised.

You need to be facing the sun, unblocked except by natural obstacles (hills and clouds OK, walls and windows no), unless you are imprisoned or otherwise unable to reach the sky; in that case, face the sun to the best of your ability.

Pen and Ink

Timeframe: 6 Months ⧫ Initial Reward: Points
💧 Final Reward: Substitute writing for any verbal component
Penalty: Reward retracted

You must keep a daily log of your usage of magic in the blank pages at the end of this book, recording every cantrip you cast within 24 hours of casting it.

Dark Desire

Timeframe: 1 Year ⧫ Initial Reward: Points
Final Reward: The cantrip training boosts that you share with your primary host
are also shared throughout your host network. (Duplicate boosts do not stack.)
Penalty: Reward retracted, and you become permanently slower at absorption.

You must consume and assimilate a person that you have an honest, positive emotional connection with, making them forever a part of you who you can dissolve, reform, communicate with, and alter at will.

Absolute Honesty

Timeframe: 1 Year ⧫ Initial Reward: Points
Final Reward: Aura of sincerity when being honest
Penalty: Reward retracted, and you are cursed to
always seem dishonest on a first impression.

You will be compelled to never knowingly tell a falsehood for the duration of this quest. You will be capable of resisting this compulsion, but if you force yourself to lie despite it, you will immediately fail the quest.

Soul of the Healer

Timeframe: 1 Year ⧫ Initial Reward: Blessing free at Tier 1
Final Reward: Tenfold accelerated development of 
Blessing Overmagic (stacks with purchase)
Penalty: Lose access to Blessing, and all beneficial cantrips you cast
will cause pain for you and the target in proportion to the benefit.

You must heal at least four unique people per month from serious conditions that would not have healed properly without medical attention. You must refuse all direct compensation for these healings.

Curious Wanderer

Timeframe: 1 Year ⧫ Initial Reward: Phantom Steed free at Tier 1
Final Reward: Tenfold accelerated development of 
Phantom Steed Overmagic (stacks with purchase)
Penalty: Lose access to Phantom Steed, and your sense of direction becomes
cursed, leading you astray whenever you navigate unaided.

You must visit at least four dozen locations, each at least 200 miles from the rest, and in each place have some experience particular to that area such as touring a local museum, visiting a local landmark, or sampling a local dish.

Grimoire

Timeframe: 10 Years ⧫ Initial Reward: Ink-enchantment ability
Final Reward: A ritual for turning a magic book of cantrips into a true grimoire
Penalty: Your copy of this grimoire will vanish,
and you will be stripped of all magic it granted.

You must construct a book, of at least 100 pages, that is made of exclusively magical components. Then you must fill it with one hundred different cantrips, each enchanted at the Master level into a separate page while writing the cantrip's name on the page with magical ink, a process which will leave the cantrip bound inertly into the book. This book has no direct use, but with the ritual granted by the completion of the quest, you can elevate it into a true grimoire like this one, binding it to your chosen recipient at the same time. You will be able to construct more books afterward by the same means, though it will always be a significant undertaking. The quality of the result depends substantially on the quality of the ingredients, so make sure to use the most magical components you can find.

My Focus Is Unparalleled

Timeframe: 5 Years
Initial Reward: Hold up to X castings of any Focus cantrip at once
Capstone Reward: Increase your effective Mastery level by one when teaching.

For every cantrip which Requires Focus (Prestidigitation excluded; 50 available) that you train to the point of removing required focus, add 1 to X. Capstone reward is achieved when X is 24.

Effective Improvement

Timeframe: 5 Years
Initial Reward: Selectively reduce the effects of a cantrip down to 1/X
Capstone Reward: With a few hours of meditation, you can establish a teachable variant of any cantrip you know to at least Master level that omits some of the original's effects completely.

For every cantrip with an Effect (56 available) whose Effect you train to Tier 3, add 1 to X. Capstone reward is achieved when X is 24.

A Little More Time

Timeframe: 5 Years
Initial Reward: Hold any cantrip for up to X times its natural duration
Capstone Reward: You can make spell effects permanent; each
permanent casting exhausts the cast cantrip for 1/X years.

For every cantrip with a Duration (55 available) whose Duration you train to Tier 3, add 1 to X. Capstone reward is achieved when X is 24.

Compressed Casting

Timeframe: 5 Years
Initial Reward: Enchanting speed multiplier up to X
Capstone Reward: Increase your effective Mastery level by one when enchanting.

For every cantrip with a Method (42 available) whose Method you train to Tier 3, add 1 to X. Capstone reward is achieved when X is 24.

Aim Far

Timeframe: 5 Years
Initial Reward: Cast any cantrip at up to X times its natural range
Capstone Reward: You can cast cantrips originating from any of your active spell effects.

For every cantrip with a Range (39 available) whose Range you train to Tier 3, add 1 to X. Capstone reward is achieved when X is 24.

Overcharge

Timeframe: 5 Years
Initial Reward: In a single casting, multiply a cantrip's effects up to X times
Capstone Reward: You can multicast active overmagics as well as ordinary cantrips.

For every cantrip with an Intensity (32 available) whose Intensity you train to Tier 3, add 1 to X. Capstone reward is achieved when X is 24.

Finesse

Timeframe: 5 Years
Initial Reward: Add or exclude up to X specific targets when casting a cantrip
Capstone Reward: You can exclude from mass casts not just single targets but whole classes of targets, defined similarly to the "broad/specific group" restrictions on enchanted items.

For every cantrip with a Target (28 available) whose Target you train to Tier 3, add 1 to X. Capstone reward is achieved when X is 24.

Save the World

Timeframe: Indefinite ⧫ Initial Reward: Points
Final Reward: Dimensional navigation ability

Your new world is in danger, and you must save it.

Of course there are quests. That's predictable. They seem straight-forward enough: morning chant at dawn, log cantrip use (that'll be easier due to being an inkblot), eat so—

What.

She has a quest to eat someone.

What the fuck.

A quest to eat someone she likes.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

She has never been this called out in her life.

After blushing, hyperventilating, and then calming back down, she breaths slowly for a bit and then reads through the rest of the quests.

The honesty one will be good for her. She'll need to prioritize healing cantrips. The travel will be fun. The grimoire is going to be a fucking mess of a challenge, but she'll figure it out together with her host. Metamagics are neat and thankfully don't have penalties. She'll try to do as much as she can with them anyway.

And of fucking course the world she's heading to is in danger. Dimensional navigation is a decent reward for saving it, though.

She sighs.

Cantrips

You begin with 240 points to spend. You have used 0 of them.

There are 100 cantrips in this book. Each costs one point to unlock. The point costs to purchase acceleration to higher tiers are listed individually. Purchasing overmagic acceleration costs 10 points every time, but is listed individually with every cantrip for display purposes.

And then it goes on to list all the cantrips in detail.

That's a lot. Well, she works her way through them, one after another.

• Acid Splash: Tolerable attack spell, has some utility, more painful than she'd like.
• Alarm: Informative, crucial utility component.
• Alignment: Information, useful for trust questions.
• Alter Object: Fabulously useful crafting spell.
• Animal Aspect: Exceedingly meh. Animal forms aren't very inspiring.
• Animal Friend: No. She does not want a pet.
• Arcane Eye: Information spells are good.
• Banish: Knockback can be surprisingly useful, but need to grind before it's viable.
• Bleed: There are totally uses, aside from attack ones. It's also maybe hot.
• Blessing: Healing spell! With free accel to T1!
• Blink: Teleport. Hell yes.
• Blood Money: Huh. She won't have blood anymore, so she'd have to get her host to bleed for her, but that might not even count. Could she even train this?
• Charm: Information about people, and a charisma boost. Is it mind control? It's probably not mind control? Can she afford to pass up the advantage?
• Circle: Oh huh. That's potentially powerful.
• Cloudshape: Very neat melee and evasion buff, but useless at the start.
• Cog: If she can't solve problems without making temporary people, things have gone badly wrong. Low-priority backup option.
• Color Ray: Versatile attack spell. Be a Legend knock-off.
• Commune: Straightforwardly useful information spell.
• Counterspell: Disrupting other magic is always useful.
• Crystal Shot: Useful for the fact that cantrips can be embedded in the shards, but the range doesn't impress her.
• Dancing Lights: Light source is useful, mid at best for communication purposes.
• Daze: Very useful mind whammy. Can see combat uses as well as espionage.
• Detection: Information spell, decent.
• Disguise Self: Not enormously useful if her native symbiote biomancy turns out as capable as she expects. Any utility, but not lots.
• Divination: Thinker powers continue to be best. No chance she'd pass this up.
• Druidcraft: It may ever be useful — case in point: the grimoire quest — but she wouldn't take it if not for that.
• Eldritch Blast: Solidly disabling attack spell, non-lethal, but arguably torture at the higher levels.
• Facsimile: Fucking beautiful for infiltration — copy nearby keys or keycards or ID cards, anyone?
• Faerie Fire: Kind of aesthetic light spell, with niche uses. Has any utility, though.
• Featherfall: Important safety cantrip. She would really rather have this and not need it than the reverse.
• Fire Bolt: Classic attack spell. Absolutely worth it for certain fights.
• Fist: Snrk. "I cast fist." Heh. Seriously, she won't have fists. Well, she could have fists eventually, and possibly her host's fists count?
• Fog: Nice stealth and theft cantrip? Not massively impressive? Would be better if it could have an extended duration?
• Forcedisk: Conjurable shields? Eventually becomes a weapon? Kind of good, actually.
• Gate: Think with portals. Think with portals. Yes. Could she level it up to portal cuts eventually?
• Ghost Words: Tolerable investigation cantrip, but temporary intelligence is still kind of fucked up.
• Glow: Decently useful, especially if there's a uniquely-identifying nature about the enemy, whoever that turns out to be.
• Goodberry: Extremely beneficial cantrip. It starts at extremely nourishing food and gets better from there.
• Grease: Degrading someone's footing at the right moment can make a surprising amount of difference in a fight, and it goes away after.
• Guardian: Hopefully this isn't constantly making people? Sounds useful, though.
• Guidance: Helping her host accomplish things is Best Cantrip. Yes please.
• Gust: Interesting, potentially useful, but not major.
• Haste/Slow: Time magic? Hell the fuck yes.
• Healing Hands: Directable, possibly stronger than Blessing, but can't be set up in a location and left behind as easily.
• Heroism: Just a little grinding and this can be another Boost Her Host cantrip.
• Hideaway: Maybe this could help expand and furnish her pocket dimension?
• Infestation: She's not Skitter. This isn't her style, and she still doesn't like making temporary intelligent life. Maybe the summoned queens are resummoned, so they can exist again and not just end? She flips back to earlier mentions of summons, then sighs with relief. At least if she resummons she'll get the same ones. Still not sure if she'll take this.
• Investigate: Pretend to be Holmes or Lisa? Yes fucking please.
• Jinx: It's mean, but sabotage is sometimes necessary. Doesn't want to need to use this, but it would be bad not to have it if she needed it.
• Jolt: Attack spell with a less-lethal option (can't call tazers non-lethal). Can imitate Mag from Warframe at higher levels. Decent.
• Knock: Magic lockpick. Strong espionage uses.
• Life Bubble: Life support in hazardous environments. Fucking useful.
• Lifelink: Given the beastly amounts of biomass she could accumulate, this could be decently useful. Plus, can empower at higher levels.
• Lock: Magic lock, defensive cantrip. Handy.
• Longstrider: Not really helpful as a pure travel spell, compared with Blink or Gate, but very useful as a traversal spell.
• Lullaby: Area disabling cantrip? Sounds fucking useful.
• Mage Armor: Armor that doesn't compromise style? Yes fucking please. Let her host dress however she wants while being as protected as she can manage.
• Mage Hand: A classic. Moderately useful, though goop tendrils can do a lot of what Mage Hand can.
• Magic Missle: It's a classic, but the force levels are strictly capped at what would be threatening to normals. If the destination has Brute ratings at all, this becomes kind of useless.
• Magic Weapon: Okay, this is actually useful.
• Mark: Useful in espionage.
• Mask: Decent stealth? She might be able to do better than the low levels with symbiote biokinesis, but it could still be useful?
• Mending: Repair charm is handy.
• Message: Decent comms spell.
• Minor Illusion: Could be useful.
• Mirror Image: Could be a great distraction in a fight, if she can cast it on behalf of her host.
• Mold Earth: Great for construction?
• Muffle: Decent addition for stealth.
• Murk: Good for psyops? Does she need psyops? She might need psyops. Not great for stealth.
• Navigate: Really cool travel spell actually? Kind of niche but awesome?
• Pact: She likes this one. Solid cantrip for trust gaps in important situations, but also it just resonates.
• Peacebond: Maybe a half-decent disarmament option, but takes a lot of grinding to be worth it?
• Penumbra: Stealth and agility at the same time? And it's aesthetic? Shiny.
• Phantom Steed: Can she convince her host to learn to ride a motorcycle? Somehow, when she reads this, she gets a bone-deep craving for a partnered vehicle spirit and motorcycle travel.
• Pocket: Access to and upgrades for her pocket dimension!
• Prestidigitation: The Classic.
• Purify: A classic miracle, absolutely worth having.
• Raise Dead: Is this resurrection or zombies? Zombies. Ugh. No thank you.
• Ray of Frost: Non-lethal disabling spell. Worth a try.
• Recollect: A hack to recover everything she knows about whatever setting she and her host end up in? Yes fucking please.
• Rune: Moderately versatile delayed-action cantrip?
• Scholar's Touch: Book accelerator? Awesome. Pull data from drives at a touch? Better still.
• Scour: Like a more manual cleaning spell than Prestidigitation, but could be useful if it's not easily classifiable as dirt?
• Scribe: Not enormously useful for an inkblot until it gets to the point of conjuring the content of arbitrary books that aren't currently present, at which point it's a little broken.
• Seance: Could be useful for investigations? Maybe?
• Shape Water: Waterbending. Enough said.
• Spirit Bow: Decent attack cantrip? Kind of want it for the versatility.
• Stabilize: Could be useful if there are injuries too severe to heal quickly enough.
• Thunderclap: Knockback is useful sometimes.
• Tongues: Absolutely essential. Holy shit.
• Toughness: Significant buffs, useful for ally buffing as well.
• True Strike: Lovely melee buff.
• Unseen Servant: Not very useful to her given that she can run multiple bodies as a symbiote.
• Upgrade: Very situational, but could ever be useful.
• Vicious Mockery: Cruel. Probably not usually worth it.
• Vigor: Excellent comfort and life extension buff.
• Warding Gesture: Solid defensive cantrip.
• Web: Not enormously useful given the symbiote features.
• Wellness: Extremely useful for responding to disease.
• Witch's Brew: Useful for less hands-on healing.

That is so many cantrips. On the one hand, she gets to be Very Magic. On the other hand, this is a very big build to work through.

First order of business, initial purchases. Unlock everything she rated better than "meh", because she can always make up for not buying acceleration by spending time, but she can't burn time to unlock cantrips she doesn't buy now. So she skips Animal Aspect, Animal Friend, Cog, Crystal Shot, Dancing Lights, Disguise Self, Ghost Words, Infestation, Magic Missile, Peacebond, Raise Dead, Seance, Unseen Servant, Vicious Mockery, and Web. She's spent 83 points, leaving 157.

Next order of business is buying acceleration, starting with the ones she considered "essential" or "hell yes" or equivalent. Tongues gets accelerated to T2 all around. Pocket gets accelerated all the way to overmagic, because she's about to be a pocket dimension. Hideaway should help with that too, so it gets T2. She really wants to give her host a safe home. Goodberry to T1 just to make sure she's not a caloric burden on her host at all. Guidance to T1 to better help her host. Blink goes to T2 all around except for Method, which gets T3. Counterspell gets T3 all around because no-selling magic is always important, and sometimes there isn't time for a chant. Recollect to T1 to make sure she can pull arbitrary episodes of shows she's previously watched back, so she has metaknowledge. Mage Armor gets accelerated to T2, because that will be better than symbiote clothing in most circumstances.

She's down to five points already? Hm. Accelerate Heroism's Target aspect to T1, just so she can easily cast it on her host. Investigate gets the Source area accelerated to T1, so she can use her target's knowledge. And that's all her points.

Oh shit hold on. Getting somewhere to stay the first night may require an ID. By the second night she'll be able to let her host into her pocket dimension, but the first night she might need a hotel.

Maybe she can fabricate an ID from her own material, but she'll need a bunch of color samples and material samples first, whereas Minor Illusion should handle it well enough for a shitty motel for one night if she grinds it enough. How high does she need it? At least four points, ideally six. Okay. Where can she find six points?

Not buying any acceleration on the duration of Mage Armor saves her three points, she'll just have to recast often. Halfway there. And then dropping the acceleration on the opening and duration of Hideaway gets her another seven, since she just needs the walls and furniture from that spell. Okay, she buys acceleration for effect to T2, senses to T1, and duration to T1 on Minor Illusion. Four points left. Maybe put those into Investigate? Yeah, she can upgrade target and intensity to T1.

Is there anything else she needs to change here? She looks over her list again.

Her gaze stops on Haste/Slow for a moment. Time magic is so fucking cool.