Calian’s notebook – Magical research :

It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated the Notebook. Since last time the greenhouse has been transported to the Clearing, next to my house. An unexpected event happened with boars but they were dealt with before they could cause any damage (well physical damages but not the point).

I now live full time in the Clearing (I should seriously consider renaming it), and that means that it is now my own magical laboratory equipped with a source of mana and I’ve gotten my first delivery of materials to study. That brings us to the topic of today, how I’m going to obtain more magical knowledge to develop more advanced magic here. My memory is severely limited as for any human, and I can only remember the most mundane spells. However if I ever want to go back home to hold my parents in my arms I’ll have to develop an interplanetary teleport relay. The odds of me managing to go home are low, but as long as it’s not completely zero I’ll try my damn best to go back.

Now, Aedwinn, my mother, gave me the key to access virtually any magical knowledge by teaching me our historical Viridian religious ritual. The ritual isn’t complicated per se, but what comes after the ritual is, I’ll be confronted with a god, or should I say a higher being, it has been proven they aren’t gods a long time ago.

While the ritual isn’t too complex for a single mage to pull off, it requires quite a lot of mana, nothing too crazy but the greenhouse clearly hasn’t enough kick to start it flawlessly. If I were to force it, it’d at best fail, at worst drain my life essence to sustain itself. It’s admittedly quite hard to tear open the fabric of reality to reach another world. So I’ll upgrade the greenhouse, I’ll get myself a forest !

It’ll be better on every point, the mana regeneration will be better, the mana density will be higher, the biodiversity will ensure that the mana cycle is more complex and more affinities are created, it’s a win-win really : I get more mana, the forest becomes healthier.

Plus, kickstarting the mana generation of part of the forest should give me a glimpse in the feasibility of an even bigger project, bringing magic to the whole planet. But I’m getting sidetracked again, if I want to make the forest my personal mana generator some plastic sheets won’t be enough. Hell, any material won’t be enough. I’ll have to carve some runes, and some really experimental ones at that.

I’ll have to design runes that can hold the mana inside a designated area, that way I’ll make a two kilometers (1.25miles) circle of runes all around the clearing that will act as a wall keeping the mana generated inside. I don’t expect the efficiency to be as good as with the greenhouse, since I think a lot of leaks and inefficiencies with the runes are to be expected, but the lower efficiency will be offset by the far larger production area. The most important goal of that project is to give me access to ambient mana assisted magic anywhere in the clearing. That will make running my experiments much easier.

The rune creation process is what I’m most anxious about, there are many ways to do what I want, but I don’t know which one is the best. I could use a supercharged mana capture rune, it’d permanently pull the mana towards the clearing, the center of the formation. It’d be quite cheap and create a gradient of mana concentration, with the highest density being in the Clearing and the density slowly decreasing as we get further away. It’s cheap and not too complicated but the efficiency wouldn’t be spectacular, I expect a lot of mana would leak even if the rune doesn’t consume that much by itself.

My second option is a mana repulsion rune, it’s an expensive option that is often used for experiments and research in the empire. It’s used to keep the mana out of an area. I’d just inverse the target area to keep the mana in and not out, or keep the mana out of the exterior world if you prefer. The efficiency would be good, as in the rune wouldn’t let much mana leak out, but it’s consumption would be higher than the mana capture rune, putting them on an equal footing.

A third option would be a modified mana shield, it’d be tweaked to block passage in both ways, and as such also trapping the mana inside, the draw would be in between the other two runes and the efficiency would be almost perfect with almost no leakage of mana outside.

The mana capture rune would be the less discreet because a lot of mana would leak out and any trained mage would be able to feel it from really far away. But no mage is present on earth so it’s not like it would matter too much. The mana repulsion rune is promising but more expensive than the previous one for the same efficiency. The only added benefit would be the stealth provided, but once again no mages are present, so the argument is rendered invalid.

The final option, a modified shield is the most exotic and promising one. It accomplishes two objectives at the same time, keeping mana in and keeping things out. The keeping things out is really tempting me because boars you know. But seeing the size of the shield and the materials I have at my disposal it won’t be able to hold it’s own against anything really serious about getting in except animals and unarmed humans.

///

Calian closed his notebook and walk along the edges of the Clearing, thinking about his options. Converting a whole forest to produce mana was something never done by anyone before. He was basing his whole reasoning on common sense and theoretical magical knowledge. He’d never studied mana theory too deep, poring over the basics was just part of his academy courses, and Calian had been winging it from the start. He was lucky the greenhouse had worked at first try.

Calian shook his head, trying to refocus on the problem at hand. The shield was tempting but would be a hassle to build because the runes were complex and would definitely require a lot of materials to anchor. The mana repulsion was fun and Calian was sure it’d be alright to build but it didn’t have any other strong point.

The mana capture solution… It was both the best and the worst. Short term it’d be quite the poor choice, the mana concentration would be overall lower than all the other solutions and the discretion in case of a mage roaming nearby was nil. But long-term it fitted quite well Calian’s objectives. The mana capture system would let a lot of mana leak, so much so that some plants might awaken and slowly start their own mana cycle in the vicinity of the Clearing. Calian had estimated that if he let it run for a few months the whole forest in a 15 kilometer (9.5 miles) radius could be magically awakened.

That didn’t seem like much, but with correct placement of other mana capture relay points the mana concentration in the clearing would increase over time, and the mana concentration of the whole planet might start to go up. It was a dangerous trail of thought that was leading Calian to think of events so big in scale he didn’t even entertain the thoughts for too long.

After a bit more walking and internal debate Calian stopped, his decision firm, he was going with the mana capture rune, the shield would come later, plus it’d be relatively cheaper to focus on a purely defensive runework instead of also including mana. It was often better to have two efficient specialized system than a single inefficient one.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Calian marched toward the edge of the Clearing where a pile of wood was, it was the leftover wood from when he’d felled the trees of the Clearing. He made a dozen large planks float and follow after him as he turned toward the house. Calian set the planks on the porch and went to retrieve large beams of steel and a bit of the silver Alexander had delivered him. With all his base materials gathered he sat next to the greenhouse and started to chop the wood logs in smaller pieces.

Calian wanted a radius of at least two kilometers (1.25 miles) filled with mana around the Clearing, which meant that the circumference of the circle he’d have to cover in runes was approximately 12.5 kilometers. It’d be a long walk and an even longer prep work to make all the rune anchors he’d need.

Runes were magical spells anchored in an object and powered through diverse means. The most basic runes could be activated simply with ambient mana, other would need an exterior mana source like a mage or a crystal. The spells anchors, called rune nodes or rune anchors are the beating heart of the rune, as long as they’re intact the rune scheme will hold together and produce its effect without issues. Rune anchors can be incredibly diverse and inscribed with all sorts of spells, they are mostly made of mana conductive materials that are easy to replace or repair, and their size will determine their area of effect and the strength of the spell inscribed.

Calian had always favored fewer and larger rune nodes to numerous smaller ones, as such he decided to carve 206 of them in the wooden planks, which would allow him to space them evenly by 61 meters (200 foot), it was quite the large number, but he was admittedly making a large runescheme even by the Empire standards.

Small wind blades were chopping the planks in even blocks that Calian would later carve more intricately. Once all the planks had been chopped, Calian was surrounded by 206 cubical blocks of wood. The mage slouched and drowsily made his way toward the greenhouse. He’d been straining his mana reserves to finish cutting the planks and was feeling the aftereffects of magical overexertion. He had a discreet headache making his whole head pulse, his breathing was a bit ragged and his cardiac rhythm was too high for his comfort. Calian knew straining his reserves was the best way to slowly grow his mana capacity, but the method was both uncomfortable and slow.

As Calian was resting he reviewed his knowledge on higher beings. While he was circulating mana Calian closed his eyes and started his inner monologue, the trick that had saved him more than once before an academy exam.

“Higher beings are existences that come from outside our dimension, universe, realm, the definitions vary but the idea is the same, they don’t come from here and don’t obey the same rules physical beings do. It’s agreed upon that they mostly consider interacting with humans as a game, but some of them do take that game quite seriously, mostly higher beings involved with various factions. The “god” I’m about to contact had some involvement with the Viridians and is somewhat opposed to the god of the Lashton, a country that has been historically at war with the Viridians for religious reasons.

Involvement with higher beings is often considered as a curse more than a blessing because the gods are fickle creatures that enjoy the struggles of humans. Throughout history, most people that drew gods’ attention either perished or went through terrible tribulations and only a minority managed to overcome. It is why to call upon a god is mostly seen as a last resort solution that few in history attempted. I wish I had other options than call a god but I can’t fathom any other way to access any books about magic. Plus, the foreign knowledge and headaches I received soon after being teleported on Earth are proof I’m already the focus of a higher being, I’m already neck deep in problems, might as well make the most of it.

Hey, I’m getting distracted here, higher beings obey different rules than we do, but they’re still somewhat bound in what they can do. It’s extremely hard for them to interfere with the material world directly, that’s why they mostly trade knowledge or supernatural abilities. They seem to have a strange source of knowledge they can draw upon, some devised they can somewhat interfere with the weave of fate but no proof has ever been given. While higher beings having difficulties interacting with the physical world is a boon because they cannot descend into it directly or kill people on the spot it is also a curse because what they are mostly interested in is ways to affect the world indirectly. That means gods mostly want to barter promises out of people. It has been reported that a priest once accepted to serve a god for the rest of his life along with all of his descendants in exchange for enough powers to annihilate an incoming army.

During the ritual I’ll need to be particularly cautious because any misplaced word can alter the outcome of the deal with the god. Any loophole they can find they’ll exploit.”

As the mage’s mana reserves neared the full mark he stopped reviewing his knowledge. He knew the basics about higher beings, but it was like he knew the basics about mana, just some superficial knowledge anyone had. Like with the greenhouse, he’d have to wing it and pray for the best.

///

The next step in creating the mana capturing runescheme was inscribing the anchors, to do this Calian brought a few of the wooden cubes in the greenhouse and grabbed a pencil. On a first Cube Calian greyed out with extreme precision everything he was going to carve. He had to be as precise as possible because the efficiency of the runework would increase if every anchor had the exact same measurements.

With his first cube correctly colored Calian grabbed another cubes and started to carve it slowly with a little mana blade spell. The mana blade creates an ultra-thin blade of mana that can easily carve most materials. The concentration required to conjure it and its efficiency didn’t make it very popular in combat, but it’s widely known as a useful tool for any magical crafter.

Calian labored for most of the day to carve the blocks to the point of forgetting to have a lunch. He had almost finished to carve everything when the lack of light made him realize he’d spent most of his day carving chunks of wood. A bit dizzy after spending several hours unmoving and concentrating on a single task, he went for a little walk in the wounds to stretch his legs. He lit his way with a light orb spell, while eating some beans directly in the can.

Still feeling energetic, he went back to the greenhouse and lit the area with another light orb spell. He once again grabbed the wooden cubes and his pencil, conjured his mana blade and went for another round of carving. The twenty or so wooden cubes left to carve didn’t last long because he’d learned almost every move needed to carve an anchor with all the carving he’d done during the day.

When all the carving was done Calian decided to call it a day, a quick levitation spell had grabbed all the chips of wood and Calian followed with a small fireball spell that ignited the wood chips. When the makeshift firework was done burning, he scooped all the ashes and dispersed them in the soil of the greenhouse to bring nutrients to the plants. His cleaning session done, Calian went back to his makeshift bed and settled comfortably under the heavy blanket. He listened to the calm sounds of the night forest, sometime the cry of an owl or the scream of an animal would disturb the silence but it only added to the quietness of the place according to Calian. Amidst all his plants in his little greenhouse Calian drifted in his thoughts, slowly falling asleep.

///

“Yes Arnold, come in.”

“Hello sir,” bowed a bald man with a pair of glasses, “We’ve received a new report of the teleportation network guild, they want us to investigate some coordinate they retrieved from an error in their teleportation platforms. Since we’re already quite overworked I wanted to assess the message important with you.”

The other man mumbled something under his breath before responding while rubbing his forehead, “They have almost all the infrastructure to do it themselves but no. Of course we have to do it because ‘it’s your specialty’ ! They know we’re already overworked because of the strange activities of the Skaesun and to add insult to the injury they ask us to investigate their errors ! Just put it at the bottom of the pile. It’ll be done in a year or two.” The man gave a toothy grin, satisfied of his little revenge.

“Yes sir, I’ll do so, I’m glad I checked with you !” said with a polite tone Arnold. With a simple nod from the man he decided the case was closed and went to leave the office.

Just before Arnold could close the door the man called, “Arnold !”

Arnold sighed internally, what had he done this time ?

“If they call to ask us how it’s going, just tell them we’re processing it and don’t give more details. If they insist you can send them my way” he concluded with an even more malicious smile.

“Yes sir ! I’ll do just that ! Thanks for the reminder,” answered Arnold, before adding to himself once he’d closed the door of the office, “What a twat !”