Me, My Spirit, And I [Book 1 Complete]

"So what new contraption have you come up with now, Shada?" Alexzandrous asked while looking at the engraved and enchanted wand on the table.

"I call it a Deoxidizer. It uses a Banishing enchantment to remove oxygen from anything it is pointed at," Shada said while piloting the Root golem and gesturing in pride.

"Didn't you say air was filled with this oxygen stuff?"

"Well yes, but the Deoxidizer is tuned to ignore the oxygen in the air. It only works on solids and liquids. Want to help me test it?"

"Hmm, I don't see why not," Alexzandrous said while stroking his long white beard in contemplation.

"Perfect! I had a bunch of samples of various materials sent over by my Company," Shada said as he left the golem to move over to a display table with various rocks, crystals, gems, and other raw materials.

"My goal is to see if I can isolate more useful raw elements. In particular, lightweight metals. Though I'll be honest, I don't know how to identify them on my own, and I'm hoping Analyze will help," Shada said as he hovered intangible and invisible over the table covered in samples.

Alexzandrous was looking between the table and the wand Shada had created in a contemplative manner. He noted that the table was made of steel rather than wood.

"Start with this quartz crystal. It should leave behind silicon and a few impurities. I will then use Material Mastery to separate things and sort them by element," Shada said as he highlighted a collection of quartz with a simple bit of light Conjuring.

"Isn't that redundant? You already used your Skills to get silicon from quartz," Alexzandrous asked curiously while squinting at the place he thought Shada might be in a vain effort to perceive the invisible spirit.

"Not at all. The key to scientific method is repetition. I'm using the quartz to silicon experiment as a baseline to measure the effectiveness of my wand," Shada explained patiently.

Without further discussion, Alexzandrous aimed the wand at the pile of quartz and channeled Essence into it from his pale white hand. He held the wand like an extension of his arm. The wand created a force bubble around the quartz, which levitated just above the table. With a flash and a pop, the wand Banished the oxygen in the bubble from the Material Plane, leaving behind a pile of warm silicon dust.

Shada watched the wand work carefully, making mental notes about how the Essence flowed and looking for inefficiencies. Overall, he was pleased with the result but saw room for improvement.

"Raelis, please note that the wand worked as intended. Efficiency is good, but I might be able to tweak a few rune sequences to improve it. The heat and light are a bit problematic and could cause issues with other substances," Shada said as he examined the silicon dust with his Skills.

With a successful initial test, Shada highlighted the next sample for Alexzandrous, who used the wand on the small diamond. Alexzandrous's face grew puzzled, his bushy white eyebrows drawing close together, when the diamond remained unchanged.

"Did it fail?" Alexzandrous asked.

"No, that was the expected result. Diamonds are actually pure carbon, so there was no oxygen to remove. Nothing happening is exactly what should happen," Shada explained.

"Use it on this random rock from the gardens. I haven't a clue what it's made of, but it should be mostly silicon," Shada said as he moved to highlight the next sample.

Once more, Alexzandrous raised the Deoxidizer and aimed it at the rock. After the flash, heat, and popping sound passed, a pile of mostly silicon dust remained behind. Shada used Material Mastery to pull the silicon from the pile and add it to his other samples of pure silicon. Only a fraction of the original stone remained now that the oxygen and silicon were removed, leaving a pile of unknown elements behind.

"What is this dust made of?" Alexzandrous asked as he leaned over the table, looking at it so closely he practically went cross-eyed.

"Honestly? I don't know, as it could be any number of elements, but it does look mostly metallic. If I'm lucky, it's likely aluminum," Shada said as he used his Essence Perception and Material Mastery to get a feel for the dust.

Shada turned his full focus on picking out the individual notes, textures, and flavors of the Essence inside the pile. With a flex of his will, the dust floated into the air and he began to sort it. It was slow and tedious, but as a spirit, Shada had incredible patience. Split Mind helped him focus on the individual elements. In the end, he had four small blocks of metallic material of different sizes that were slowly showing signs of becoming oxidized.

"I really hope this is enough for Analyze," Shada said as he used his Skill on the four blocks.

"Yes! This is exactly what I was hoping for!" Shada exclaimed while creating a joyful light show to display his excitement.

"Well, don't leave me in suspense. What did you make?" Alexzandrous grumped.

Shada highlighted the largest sample. "This is the metal I was looking for. Aluminum. It's among the lightest metals the people of Earth knew about. It's not only light but can be fairly strong. Airship makers will love it, though it's absolute crap for weapons or armor."

"What about the other three?" Alexzandrous asked.

"Well, those are called sodium, calcium, and potassium. I remember very little about them, to be honest. Bones are mostly calcium. Potassium is an important mineral in food and can be used to make fertilizer, I think. Sodium is found in salt alongside chlorine, which I should be able to isolate now. However, I'll need to create some safety protocols for that, as pure chlorine is toxic," Shada mused as he tried to remember what he knew about various elements.

"Oh, I remember something about certain elements and water reacting weirdly," Shada said as he found a cup he filled with Conjured water. "Now please step back. The reactions can be violent if I remember right. I just can't remember which ones react."

He took a tiny piece of calcium he removed from his samples and put it in the cup of water. He didn't expect it to react, but was surprised when it had a rather violent reaction. The sample started bubbling and the water around it started to heat up. Shada could recognize the hydrogen gas being produced with his Skills.

"Huh, I honestly didn't expect that," Shada said, as he repeated the experiment with sodium and potassium. The fire produced by the sodium reaction made him glad he was using steel tables.

Stolen novel; please report.

Alexzandrous and Raelis stood back watching the bizarre reactions and not knowing what to think. Despite the violent displays, Raelis took meticulous notes.

"Shada, didn't you say that people are mostly water?" Alexzandrous asked curiously and with a bit of trepidation.

"Yes, why?" Shada said with most of his attention focused on the chemical reactions he was observing.

"What happens if this stuff touches someone or, Gods forbid, they eat it?" Alexzandrous asked.

"Burns, corrosion, and potentially death, I would imagine, just like a strong acid," Shada said offhandedly.

Alexzandrous examined the samples with far more caution than before and went so far as to cast a couple of protective spells around himself.

With the Deoxidizer, Shada was able to isolate quite a few common elements. His Smiths and Alchemists were provided samples and some experiment suggestions, but Shada otherwise left figuring out more about chemistry to them.

"So you really want to do this?" Alexzandrous asked during their next experimental session.

"I have to, because if anyone ever figures out what I'm doing, I'll need to have counters ready," Shada said seriously.

A small monstrous rodent was in a cage sitting on one of Shada's steel tables. Shada had captured the creature for live testing. He was reluctant to take this step, but he had to know if extra safeguards were needed for his Deoxidizer.

"You know this is going to kill it, right?"

"Of course. That's the logical outcome, but I need to know so I can adjust the enchantments. I also need to know how terrible it is if I need it in combat. There are spells like Desiccation that can turn something into a dried-out husk, but removing all the oxygen from something's body? That's different," Shada explained.

Alexzandrous carefully aimed the Deoxidizer at the mouse and channeled his Essence. A force bubble surrounded the mouse, which became frantic as it was suspended just above the table. There was the expected flash of light and heat followed by a small localized explosion as the various trace elements in the mouse's body reacted violently with the moisture in the air.

"Hmm, that was not what I expected," Shada said clinically, but with a hint of sadness.

Alexzandrous stared in something resembling horror or shock. His bushy white eyebrows were trying to merge into his hairline and his mouth was opened silently. "What was that?" Alexzandrous asked in outrage.

"I'm not sure, but I suspect something in the mouse dust didn't react well to being exposed to air. It was a bit more dramatic than expected, eh?" Shada said as the annoyed Archmage left the workroom to find a stiff drink.

After the magic of alcohol had worked wonders on Alexzandrous's mood, the experiments continued, but along a different tangent.

"What are you planning now? Exploding trees? Maybe making more toxic waters or caustic air?" Alexzandrous asked waspishly.

"Nothing so dramatic. Duplicators have publicly available books on what can and can't be Duplicated, but they don't know why those items can't be Duplicated. I highly suspect it's because they don't understand the elemental compositions, but that isn't a problem for us..." Shada said leadingly.

"Are you telling me that you can make gemstones? The same gemstones used in jewelry, enchantments, rituals, and other esoterica?" Alexzandrous knew he shouldn't be surprised, but he still was. He rubbed his temples in thought, trying to massage away the headache he felt he should be feeling even if he hadn't had something as mundane as a headache in centuries.

"Yes, of course. If I can take it apart, break it down into its raw elements, then I can recreate it with a modified Duplicator spell," Shada said as if he wasn't about to upend centuries of precedent and potentially cause the price of gemstones to plummet.

"Sure, why not!" Alexzandrous threw his hands up in the air in frustration.

Shada coached Alexzandrous through his modifications to the Duplicator spell and placed a jar of pure carbon in the center of a cleared table. Alexzandrous glared at the jar before his voice began to resonate throughout the mound. He spoke and the Essence shuddered before complying with the intent woven into his words. His hands moved in tune with his words in complex patterns as the Essence listened to what he asked of it. Then there was a crackling sound as the carbon in the jar began crystallizing into small diamonds that matched their sample.

"It worked, and nothing exploded," Shada said cheerfully. "The question is, will Material Mastery work on diamond? Can I shape these into one big diamond?"

"At least in theory, it should be possible. Shapers fuse stone, wood, metal, and glass together all the time," Alexzandrous responded.

Shada bent his Will and Skill to the task of transforming two diamonds into one larger one. The two gems darkened and fused, but the result was not a diamond. "I think I broke the crystallization and it reverted to just a chunk of carbon," Shada said in contemplation.

"I'll return to my own lab while you work on this, Shada. Don't forget you owe me translations and spell decoding for my help with your projects," Alexzandrous said as he left Shada to his own devices.

After further failure, Shada turned to Raelis for insight. "Do you have any thoughts on this?"

"Young master, I might actually. I once helped an alchemist in their work. Some of their solutions would crystallize. The crystals almost seemed to grow, but I never knew why. Does that help?" Raelis asked.

"I think it does, actually. Instead of taking two diamonds and trying to fuse them, maybe I should be trying to add more carbon to the crystal structure," Shada said, putting action to his words as he continued his experiments.

Shaping and Manipulation Skills exploited a person's ability to manipulate the Essence in an object to change or move that object. When the Essence in something moved, the material it was infused in moved also. Shada matched his Essence to the Essence in the diamond, feeling out the shape and form. He then tried copying that pattern into some raw carbon. It was tricky and required all his concentration and several failures, but he was able to force the Essence in the carbon to match that in the diamond. The result was the same as if he had used a Duplication spell—a copy of the original, but non-destructive. After that success, it didn't take long for Shada to generalize the pattern to copy not the diamond, but the diamond's structure. The result was a large, irregular, flawed diamond and his Guide asking if he wanted to learn a Crystallization Skill, which he turned down. He also turned down a Diamond Duplication Skill.

"Well done, Master Shada! Once you master that trick, you could create impossibly large diamonds whenever you needed to!" Raelis said, impressed that Shada had figured it out.

"Too bad I don't have a use for giant diamonds," Shada said.

"Oh, but you're wrong there. Diamonds are valuable for purification rituals. With a large enough diamond, you could have cleansed the taint from the merchant district without banishing everything," Raelis explained.

"I'll have to ask Mother and Vreen if they could use some. I can make them cheap this way," Shada mused, partly to himself and partly in response to Raelis's explanation. "I'll also have to ask Kariss if we should market gemstones. At this rate, people are going to think my Shadow persona is a Dwarf with all the metals and gemstones I'm producing."

"A spirit focusing on recreating material things using magic is rather ironic in and of itself, Master Shada."

"Very true."

---

At dinnertime, when the Aseralis family gathered in the cottage's main room, Shada presented his mother with a bag full of small uncut diamonds and one large fist-sized diamond, much to her surprise.

"Shada, what is this?" Shinobin asked in confusion. "They look like diamonds, but I've never seen one this large or this many in one place."

"That's exactly what they are. I figured out how to mass-produce them during today's experiments. A bit pricey in terms of Essence, but cheaper than they can be bought on the open market," Shada declared proudly.

"That's not possible... well, considering who I'm talking to, I guess I should say that shouldn't be possible. You do tend to do the impossible frequently, Shada," Shinobin responded. "Did you know I could use these in my work, or are you just showing off?"

"I heard they were useful for purification and rituals. I thought you might find them useful."

"Useful?" Shinobin laughed out loud. "They can reduce the Essence cost of purification rituals significantly and reduce the strain on the caster, which makes them more than just useful."

"I could use some for enchantments and divination spells," Vanestra said, leaning forward to examine the large diamond. "In fact, how big can you make them?"

"There really isn't a limit beyond time, Essence, and materials—just like with most things," Shada said in a nonchalant manner.

"I want a diamond crystal ball three feet across. As clear and as flawless as you can produce," Vanestra demanded with quite a bit of intensity.

"What use would you have for a three-foot diamond? I mean, it isn't impossible, but it would take me weeks to make," Shada said. "That fist-sized diamond took hours of focused Shaping."

"For scrying and divination, of course! Do you have any idea how far I could see with a diamond scrying sphere? I suspect I could see a pebble on the moon with it!" Vanestra said in excitement.

Shada sent the mental equivalent of a shrug to Vanestra. "Sure, I can do that, but I want a larger spirit golem and help on the mass production black boxes in return."

"Done! I'll have it finished by the time you finish the sphere, then we can work on your magic boxes," Vanestra said, getting up to start working on the new spirit golem as soon as possible.

"I could use a few for my experiments as well, though nothing like a three-foot monster of a diamond," Alexzandrous said.

"That shouldn't be a problem once I get the enchantments worked out," Shada said.

"Can I get some diamond jewelry? Maybe ear studs?" Luca asked hopefully.

"Sure, if that's okay with Mother, but I suggest having a jeweler cut them for you. Precise angles are a bit hard for me to do," Shada said, which prompted a happy smile on Luca's face.