NOVEL NEXT 106 - Magic is Complicated
Div was focusing on his first attempt at shaping his new preservation spell when a branch snapped in the forest, echoing sharply through the village.
Startled, he raised his head in the direction the noise was coming from.
Nothing.
"Did you hear that?" Gennorina said, walking closer to him.
Div nodded. "I don't see anything."
Everything had been so silent that any random noise was enough to startle them. Maybe the branch of a tree had broken, pulled down by the wind.
"I'm going to look for a stone," Gennorina said, walking away. "Suce is being a little difficult."
"Suce is an earth spirit. I'm not expecting something like that to lower its standards when it comes to its main element."
"Yeah, but I have no idea what makes a good stone. I should have asked the mountaineer you captured before we left. What was his name? Tougen? He was a stone mage, right?"
It was too late.
Both returned to their occupation. Lugsellos hadn't interrupted his training for the noise, likely because he was confident in his skill.
Div reminded himself that he had Trap Detection, he shouldn't be that anxious.
He took a flower in his hands and focused. He had a few ideas he needed to experiment with.
The goal was to stop the plant from decaying. To do that, he made sure to stop himself from tapping into his own mana reserves. Adding more rot-attuned mana to the flower would be counterproductive.
First, he wanted to try the obvious solution. He doubted it would work, but he would gather useful data for later.
His idea was to completely eliminate the rotlife in the flower and seal any points of entry so that external rotlife couldn't infiltrate the flower.
Getting rid of the rotlife was easy enough.
His experiments had shown a pattern to these small organisms: rot-attuned mana attracted rotlife, rotlife ate matter—mostly dead matter, but sometimes not—and then released rot essence.
Div started by displacing all the rot-attuned mana in the plant. As expected, the rotlife followed.
"I wonder where rot-attuned mana comes from…"
The flower was continuously emitting a trickle of rot mana. Div couldn't quite make sense of it. Perhaps it was simply the natural order of things: dead matter creates rot-attuned mana.
Possible. He took mental note of his observation.
With that, the flower had mostly stopped decaying. The issue was that no matter what Div did, the trickle of rot-attuned mana was always going to attract rotlife.
He tried putting the flower in a vacuum of rot-attuned mana, creating a bubble void of his mana around it. His hope was that rotlife wouldn't be able to find the flower if there was no trail to follow.
Unfortunately, it didn't seem to change anything.
Still, it was better than leaving the flower with no protection.
Not a lot better, with the curse already slowing down decay. Add to that the other sources of decay that had nothing to do with rot, and his attempt looked a lot less impressive. But a small improvement was better than nothing.
Div recalled his struggles when he first awakened his Rot Heart, food visibly spoiling because of his lack of control, the fear and powerlessness he had felt. It made this spell all the more important to him.
Skill leveled up: Rotlife Sense Lv2 -> Lv3
Now, what he did couldn't be considered a proper preservation spell. At best, it was a relatively crude display of mana manipulation. He had just removed mana from the plant and its surroundings, nothing to write home about.
More importantly, the effect wasn't self-sustaining. He wasn't planning on constantly keeping an eye on all their rations. That would be ridiculous.
Well, if there was no better option, he'd rather do that than starve. But he believed he could formalize a self-sufficient spell.
He briefly debated trying out his second idea first. If he was honest with himself, it was a lot more exciting and would open more doors for his magic if he succeeded. But that was the crux of the issue: he wasn't sure he could do it.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
His goal—what if, instead of purging rotlife from the dead plant, he could simulate the natural rot cycle of a living one? If he could use rot essence, it should be doable. But he had no idea where to start.
Since that was the case, he decided to start with his basic preservation spell.
The idea was simple, automating it wasn't.
The more he thought about it, the more issues popped into his mind. Since they would store all their food in the same place on the boat, he needed to ensure the rot-attuned mana extracted from a fruit didn't end up in the vegetable stored next to it.
Then again, if he had to enchant every food item individually, it would take forever. Maybe it was better to focus on a larger spell that would cover their entire storage.
However, the bigger the spell, the more rot-attuned mana would be channeled outward. There was a risk it would create a beacon of sorts for the very rotlife he wanted to protect his food from.
He would have to design the spell to expel rot-attuned mana in several directions. But that would add more components, making balance harder to strike. The more patterns and sources of mana there were, the more likely it was that something would go terribly wrong.
Now that he was planning to store all their food in a single spell, a single mistake could destroy everything.
Maybe he should sort each ingredient and put them under different preservation spells. Or group them in a way that one spell failing wouldn't impact the rest.
"Ahh," Div groaned in frustration. Creating his first spell, Turn, had been a lot easier. Things tended to be when one was looking to destroy instead of preserving.
"No luck?" Lugsellos called from a distance. His friend was seated on a bench, looking at the forest.
"It's not a matter of luck. Just more complicated than I thought."
"I hope you didn't expect magic to be simple," Lugsellos said, smiling.
"No, don't worry. I'm having fun. It's like solving a puzzle where I have to make up some of the pieces."
"Is…"
Lugsellos' answer was interrupted by a loud bang, followed by tremors in the ground. Both of them stood up at the same time.
"Genno," Div said.
"Has to be her and Suce," Lug nodded. "Let's go."
Worried for the druid, they ran as fast as they could, taking mere seconds to cross the entire village. Div even used Blighted Passage to save some time.
Finding Genno and Suce wasn't a challenge. On top of the massive sound they had produced, the quantity of earth and nature-attuned mana being released into the air made their position evident.
Like every village in the Lien River basin, this one was surrounded by a wall. It wasn't as tall as the walls of Bavacium, nor as majestic as the wall of trees. Built of crude stones piled one on top of the other, it was barely high enough to prevent a man from climbing over it.
Or, rather, it used to be. When Div and Lug arrived where the wall once stood, all they found was rubble and a flustered Gennorina standing in the middle of it.
"Suce!" she screamed. "Why did you do that?"
Earth-attuned mana flared around her.
"We could have gotten you that stone without destroying the entire wall!"
"What do you mean it's not important? The wall was supposed to protect the village from beasts."
"Yes, I know there's no one left in the village and that beasts have left this region. But…"
Lug and Div looked at Genno having a conversation with her bonded spirit. Surely, there had to be a way for them to communicate mentally.
"Ah, guys," Gennorina finally said, noticing them. "Look at what Suce has done!"
"Are you hurt?" Div asked, walking closer.
"She's not," Lug said, answering for her.
"Ugh, Lug, please don't do that," she said.
Lug quickly apologized.
"At least, Suce found a stone he likes," Gennorina said. "It will be a lot more comfortable for him going forward."
"Which one is it?" Div asked, gesturing vaguely at the mountain of rubble that was once a wall.
"Ah…"
Gennorina looked left and right, trying to locate the stone.
"Suce?" She asked. "Can you find it?"
The earth spirit moved, and with it came a flood of earth-attuned mana.
It stopped in front of a pebble and quietly seeped inside.
"Great," Gennorina said, sighing in relief. "I was worried it would pick a boulder. This will be easier to carry. I should pick it up before I forget."
Gennorina walked to the pebble and bent down to reach it. Wrapping her hand around it, she grabbed it and pulled.
"Ah!" She groaned. "Why is it so heavy?"
"How heavy?" Div asked.
"Come try it out," Genno said.
"Me too," Lug said. "I felt it, but I'd like to experience it for myself."
With their Evolved-Rank physique, Div and Lug were able to carry the pebble that was hosting Suce. With difficulty, but they could carry it.
"A property of earth-attuned mana? Or earth spirits?" Div guessed.
"Yes," Gennorina said. "The pebble itself isn't heavy, it's Suce. You're going to have to move by yourself when we're off the boat, big rock."
Suce slowly exited the pebble. Div didn't need a way to communicate with spirits to see how disappointed he was.
"Don't worry," Gennorina consoled her bond. "I'll get stronger until I can carry you comfortably."
A pause.
"Hey! Don't doubt me like that. I'm pretty strong for my size. Worst case scenario, I'll evolve. That should be enough…"
Lugsellos put the empty pebble in her hand, urging her not to lose it. He was about to add something when he stopped himself.
"Someone's coming," he said.
"Friend or foe?" Div asked, lowering his voice.
"I can't tell. They're curious about the abandoned village. Let's hide and see."
"Suce," Gennorina said, putting the pebble on the ground. "Get in there, don't leave until I say so."