NOVEL NEXT Chapter 39: Magical R&D
After their night of rest and morning of delicious breakfast, Ren Xiyang put the mages to work. Aaron and some other staff took the two healers to slowly visit the various villages and towns, while Maria and some other staff took the earth mage and the water mage around the Rosewood fief to survey the land.
Ren Xiyang switched between accompanying both groups in-between visiting the village chiefs and town mayors to consult with them on various matters and check on their local implementation of the charity lunches.
He was able to watch the healers casting their healing spells on occasion. He was also able to watch the earth and water mages cast their earth and water detection spells.
He didn’t ask them to teach him—that was beyond the scope of their tasks. But he listened to their pronunciation. And he spread his senses, trying to detect the flow of magic. Since he wasn’t the one casting the spells, he couldn’t detect anything at first and could only see the magical result.
After a few days of watching them, he was eventually able to detect the slight change in heat. After all, movement was energy and that could microscopically heat up the nearby air.
But it would be much better if Ren Xiyang could cast these spells himself, so that he could grasp what was happening. It made him really, really to play and study and cast magic himself, instead of doing admin and meeting with various Rosewood village chiefs and town mayors.
After half a week of this, Ren Xiyang made an executive decision: admin and village visits could wait. He wanted to study magic and there was nothing stopping him.
It was now evening.
Ren Xiyang had returned to the summer manor. Dinner had been eaten, and all administration work had been cleared off his desk. There was no meeting with Rian on this particular night.
Ren Xiyang moved some magic textbooks onto his desk, but he ultimately didn’t open them. Despite having learned more spells, he still couldn’t understand the structure behind the ‘language’ of the spells. It didn’t come naturally to him.
He had some ideas about the magic of this world, and he wanted to explore it his way.
In his previous world, the different physical and elemental abilities were strictly separate. As a fire ability user, he couldn’t manipulate earth or air, let alone cast healing spells.
But this world wasn’t his previous world.
In this world, magic was split up into different flavours—‘normal’, fire, water, ice, earth, plant, metal, wind, poison, psychic, lightning, light, and shadow. But fundamentally, it was all simply magic. And while he was able to use his fire abilities just like in his previous world, the magic itself, its source, was indeed different.
During the zombie apocalypse, ability users gained ‘magical’ energy by absorbing the crystal cores in zombies’ heads. It was found out that ability users also had these crystal cores in their head, which become one of the motives for murder and violence between humans in those end times.
This meant that the ability-energy was focused in the head, and it was innately tainted.
But here, Ren Xiyang was becoming more and more clear about the fact that magic came from a ‘well’ or ‘pool’ in his chest. It was different again from the ‘dantian’ in xianxia novels that was located below the navel.
He needed to fundamentally change his thinking about magic and develop a new method for this world that worked for him in this world.
He didn’t want to cast spells that felt unnatural to him (and forced him to speak). Instead, he wanted to directly manipulate magic into affecting the world just like how he worked with heat and fire.
The first step was to access that magic.
Ren Xiyang directly created the simplest flame.
Magic from inside his chest travelled down his arm, out of his hand, to create and sustain that flame. In the process, ‘unmarked’ magical energy transformed into fire magic, and then into heat and fire.
He stopped and started the flame again multiple times, just to feel the difference in the magical flow in his body.
Then, step by step, Ren Xiyang reduced the heat of the flame while maintaining the flow of magical energy. It was akin to when he was preparing for a large attack: gathering the energy so that he could use it in one explosive burst.
The less heat the little flame gave off, the faster the ‘unused’ magic built up.
Ren Xiyang grimaced when the magical flow stopped, and the ball of magic spontaneously transformed into a bright ball of fire. It was likely that the magic in his body was fire-mage-tinged, due to being a fire mage.
He should go to sleep, but he didn’t want to until he was successful in some way.
So he created the little flame again, and slowly reduced the temperature until it was down to human body temperature. He reduced it again until it became the ambient temperature in the room, and almost undetectable in terms of his heat-detection—if it weren’t for the raw magic.
If he pulled it carefully with his opposite fingers, he could stretch the ball of magic. If he pinched, he could pull a piece of magic out.
It had a natural tendency to burst into flame the moment Ren Xiyang did anything wrong. But as he played with it, it started to hold its unmarked nature for longer; it started to squeeze and stretch more easily under Ren Xiyang’s fingers.
This kind of unmarked magic was invisible to the naked eye. He could use this method to make unexpected fire magic attacks that suddenly right on top of an enemy (or surprise Rian).
Ren Xiyang unconsciously smiled.
He played with the pure magic ball some while longer before heading to bed.
The next day, Ren Xiyang woke up feeling energetic. He checked out the farms in the early morning and had breakfast, and then went straight back into his magical research.
He played with some fire for warm up, and then he played with pure magic to improve his familiarity.
And then he started off with casting some of the non-fire spells that Rian had taught him.
He wanted to see: how did the water magic or air magic or light magic feel in comparison to fire magic? How did the magic in his body transform into non-fire magic to fuel the spell?
With trial and error and a lot of practice, Ren Xiyang was eventually able to directly turn unmarked magic into water magic to manipulate the water in his cup and turn unmarked magic into air magic to create a breeze around him.
With some more practice, he was able to turn unmarked magic into psychic magic to sense surrounding objects despite closing his eyes, and into light-healing magic that could sense the rush of blood through his veins lying near under his skin.
Further testing and investigation were required before he would try to use magic to sense and manipulate his own pituitary gland, but he had proved to himself that it was possible.
He could directly manipulate magic! (Sudden miniature fire balls aside.)
Ren Xiyang felt an unfamiliar feeling…or was it a long-forgotten feeling?
It was the feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment from solving a problem and discovering something new for himself.
Suddenly, there were hundreds of things Ren Xiyang wanted to try out!
Days passed.
Kel and the other servants gathered in the kitchens, as they usually did during dinner.
It had been a whole five days since their Earl started spending copious amounts of time inside his suite. He still surveyed the farmlands, and he still ate the meals that Kel bought up to him, but he didn’t have any meetings with the staff or other Rosewood residents. He didn’t even come down to the kitchens to make any new dishes.
“What do you think the Earl is doing in there?” one of the servants mused.
“He looked well, didn’t he?” Mrs. Cooks asked Kel.
“Boys, at his age…They don’t normally act like this, do they? They normally like running around in the summer.”
“Maybe he has a secret illness, maybe that’s why he has been hidden all these years?” one servant guessed.
“He looked fine,” Kel protested. “If you want to see the earl, you can simply head out to the farms early in the morning.”
“I saw him this morning,” came a quiet voice. The speaker was one of the farmers, and not so familiar with the indoor manor servants. “He did some magic, he made rain fall on the fields.”
“Mages are really powerful,” one person said enviously.
“Yeah,” the farmer affirmed, “it was much easier for Earl Rosewood to water the plants than it was for us.”
There was a brief silence as everyone inadvertently imagined little Earl Rosewood carrying buckets of water around to water the fields.
“Well, we’re still getting paid…”
“The charity lunch at Redmond is tomorrow, so Earl Rosewood will definitely appear,” Mrs. Cooks said confidently.
The other staff found that this was reasonable, and it put a lot of their worries at rest.
“Hm, then what do you think Earl Rosewood would cook next?” one of the cooks asked.
“Has anyone found any new ingredients at the markets lately? Then we could ask Earl Rosewood!”
“How about I make some noodles tomorrow?” Mrs. Cooks said. “What kind would people like to eat?”
Mouths started to salivate as different people called out different dishes; it was very lively in the kitchens.
Ren Xiyang had no idea what the staff were talking about. He emerged in public the next day.
For some unknown reason, the staff around the Rosewood manor gave him knowing looks and faint smiles, and Mrs. Cooks seemed particularly happy. But since Ren Xiyang was also happy with his magical research progress, he smiled back at them.
There were even more people at the Redmond charity lunch this week than previous. Ren Xiyang was smoother when it came to healing this week than previous.
Since Ren Xiyang was out and about, he also took the opportunity to ask Sir Allen Copper for a wooden sword.
Sir Allen Copper was extremely confused. He gave his, “Yes, My Lord!” and hurriedly asked the servants around the Rosewood summer manor about the matter of spare swords. One of the Rosewood guards showed him the late Earl Roland Rosewood’s personal armoury. He spent over an hour deliberating over the best wooden sword and the best proper sword to send to Earl Ayden Rosewood.
After very careful selection, he carried them up to Earl Rosewood’s suite.
“My Lord, I have found some swords for you.”
“Oh, thank you, Sir Copper,” Earl Rosewood replied, taking the swords.
Sir Allen Copper gave the earl a curious look, but he held back asking about whether the earl wanted some sword tutoring. Over the coming days, Sir Allen Copper would be very curious, but he would never see the earl practising with the swords.
Ren Xiyang had no intention of telling anyone what he was doing with the swords. It was going to be a little surprise for a certain prince~
Later that evening, the staff reconvened in the kitchens once more.
“I was right,” Mrs. Cooks said smugly.
“He smiled a lot today!”
“I know, I saw it too!”
“See, I told you that the Earl was fine,” Kel complained.
“So, what was he doing in his room all day, though?”
“Didn’t you see? The earl asked for Sir Copper for some swords!”
“Young boys like swords.”
“Somehow, I don’t think Earl Rosewood is doing what you would expect with those swords…”
“At the end of the day, it’s just Earl Rosewood being Earl Rosewood,”
The staff had a round of agreement. Whatever the earl was doing, they were sure it was going to be great.
Ren Xiyang: I haven’t surprised Rian lately.
Rian: 😳😳😳