LXXIX (79)- Cloning a Clone

Another perk of Anata’s blood transfers was that the energy it gave him could help substitute for sleep. Kizu still needed a couple hours of rest every night, but gone were the days where he walked around in a zombified state.

He used all that newly found spare time to practice his spells. He decided to focus on his enchanting for the moment, to get it as high as possible. In his most recent class, Professor Kateshi explained the process of unenchanting an object. An extraordinarily difficult feat unless performed by the original enchanter. It required a complete understanding behind the intent of the enchanter at the time of creation. That meant the mage needed to tap into skill with enchanting in combination with either divination spells or an extremely powerful enhanced spellsense. However, even if a different enchanter did manage to figure out the intent of the original spellcaster, it still cost a great deal of blood to undo a spell. Substantially more than creation. And uniquely complex enchantments or artifacts found in the World Dungeon were nearly impossible to destroy, which was why something like Sojan would never be successfully disenchanted.

Kateshi used to work as a professional cursebreaker. One of the best in Hon. As such, she had more insight into the spellcraft than anyone else Kizu was likely to ever meet. He decided that with the high blood cost and having an expert immediately on hand, this would be the quickest means at increasing his enchanting ranking.

Surprisingly, Professor Kateshi readily agreed to let him experiment with cursebreaking. She even supplied a sack of wood, each small plank with its own different enchantment.

“It will always be easiest for the creator to manipulate an enchantment,” she explained to him when he approached her after class. “Tweaking and changing enchantments is par for the course when building an enchanted object. Most often, dispelling an enchantment completely is off the table, as it requires too much blood to be a viable solution. So, what we cursebreakers do is attempt to twist the meaning of an enchantment. This essentially breaks it."

As per usual, before Kizu could question her further about channeling into enchantments, Kateshi dismissed him in favor of one of her other duties. The professor was now even busier than before the midterms. A couple weeks earlier, she had embarked on an expedition to their school excursion site with Professor Grove and some of her previous delving companions. They had been in charge of scoping out the site for any potential dangers and speaking to the locals. Not to mention she was the professor who worked directly with Sene for the Student Council, on top of her duties as at the medical wing. And she performed occasional maintenance on the James. It seemed like the academy dumped a lot onto her plate.

Originally, Kizu planned to disregard her warning and brute force his way through the planks, with Anata at his side to refill his lost blood. But that turned out to be far more difficult than he initially believed. He simply lacked the power to smash through over two thirds of the enchantment barriers. Which was especially frustrating since the planks were enchanted by the Enchanting D and E classes. Students with rankings far below his own.

Instead, Kizu had to be a bit more clever. First, he assessed the planks with his spellsense to look for anything familiar. Then, he would probe at it. If he found any notable weaknesses, he channeled into them, exacerbating them until the enchantment collapsed.

The simpler enchantments proved far more challenging. A piece of wood enchanted to enhance its weight up to four times when triggered under a specific circumstance was easily thwarted. However, a piece of wood enchanted only to be four times its weight at all times was significantly more difficult to break. It left a lot less openings for him to seize on. What he found he could do, though, is add onto the enchantment. It was tricky, but the simple enchantments also let him guess the intent of the enchanter easier. And, with that understanding, he could add a further step. With his own enchantment mixed in, it left the enchanted plank easily exposed for him to shatter or manipulate it.

"What's that?"

Kizu looked up from the current shard of wood he experimented with. Aoi strolled across the Owl's Respite’s deck, using a humerus like a baton to point at the wood in Kizu's hand.

"An enchantment," Kizu said. "It's designed to attract other pieces of the same type of wood. Like a wood magnet."

"How is that useful? Seems extremely niche to me. Is the magnetic pull powerful?"

"No. As far as I can tell, the only use is to verify another wood species inside furniture."

"That's silly. Come help me instead."

He held back a sigh. "With what?"

"I'm working on a project with Sojan. But an extra pair of hands would make it easier."

Kizu looked down at the small mountain of unenchanted wood beside him. Over four hours of work. He supposed a break wouldn't be horrible for him. Taking the piece of wood back from Aoi, he restacked it in his enchanted pile.

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He looked over at Anata. Yesterday, the half-Blood Lord girl had gotten into his pack and found some of his vials from his expedition into the World Dungeon. Most notably, she found the unused transfiguration potions designed to transform him into a fruit bat. And, likely believing it to be some sort of beverage, she had downed it. He was incredibly grateful he had used up all the explosive potions. He really needed to add — ‘teach Anata self-preservation’ to his to-do list.

Regardless, now Anata was obsessed with the idea of being a bat. She couldn’t fly, but just dragged herself around on the deck. Currently, she was trying and failing to use the little hooks on her wings to climb up a dilapidated wooden chair Sojan had dragged out onto the deck a few days back. Kizu decided there wasn’t much risk in leaving her alone for a few minutes to check on whatever Aoi wanted. The boat’s rails were far too high for her to fall over while in that form.

He followed the necromancer princess into her laboratory. It had been over a week since his last visit, and Aoi had not slacked off with her renovations. The sheets of paper she had gathered from the gnome necromancer’s laboratory were now pinned all across the wall with strings spread between them, linking connections between the pages. A couple boards were haphazardly spread across the hole in the floor over in the corner of the room with the massive reptilian foot floating in a tank perched atop it. Beside it, a smaller, human-sized mutated lizard leg floated in a jar. Kizu recalled lugging that up along with several other tools scattered around her table. But several new additions that he had not carried up now also accompanied the macabre collection. The most notable was a half-assembled cylindrical tank in the center of the room, like the one they had found the necromancer’s body within.

Sojan stood in front of it, wiping it down with a cloth. He turned towards Kizu as he entered behind Aoi.

“Oh, good, you’re here!” Sojan said, sounding chipper. “I was wondering when Aoi would drag you into this as well. There’s only so much I can do with this body’s blood limitations. And it’s so inconvenient absorbing blood with an orifice like a lowly spawn. Not nearly as effective as a good stab.”

“You haven’t been drinking human blood?” Kizu narrowed his eyes.

“No, no. Of course not. Which leads me to an entire different list of complaints. Fish was something a bit unique and completely foreign to me a couple weeks ago, but now it’s so mundane. I want something fresh! Something new! Something with a bit more kick to it!”

“Which is what I’ve been helping him with,” Aoi added.

“More like the other way around,” Sojan said, rolling his eyes. He leaned back against the glass tank behind him. “This poor little body can only do so many loads of junk for you before it eventually snaps.” To emphasize his point, he popped his shoulder out of its joint with a grin. Kizu’s stomach churned at the sickening creaking pop of the gnome’s bones rubbing against one another incorrectly. Then Sojan shoved it back into place.

“That’s why we’re doing this.” Aoi waved at the tank behind him. “To produce more bodies for him to use.”

Kizu frowned. “This sounds like a horrible idea. The last thing we need are a bunch of Aoi clones running around. I’m pretty sure the academy staff will notice you messing around with soul magic if duplicates of you start popping up in town.”

“No, no. Not for cloning my body. Not yet, at least. The resources and amounts listed throughout the notes are all designed for a gnome’s body measurements. I could maybe clone a child version of myself. But that’s not my goal right now. It wouldn’t work as a back-up life for me without the proper soul strengthening ritual enhancements on myself first. Instead, what I’m doing is cloning Sojan to have spare bodies.”

“You’re cloning a clone?”

“Exactly! In theory, it should work just fine. And Sojan is the perfect test subject since he can tell me exactly how the bodies function and any flaws in the process. He understands his body far better than you or I.”

“More importantly,” Sojan cut in. “I get more blood. Humanoids are so fragile. One wrong move, and all the good stuff spills out. And then I’m left sleeping for a hundred years inside another box.”

“What do you need me for?” Kizu asked.

“See all this stuff?” Aoi gestured around at the necromancer equipment scattered around the room. “Sojan got most of it for me from the laboratory down in the mines. With his current body, he can get into the room without triggering a reaction from the phantasm guardian. But he can’t get it up here very easily.”

“Why?” Kizu asked. The nature of the request already poisoned his thoughts with an inkling of dread.

“Look at these!” Sojan held up his arms. “They’re noodles! This gnome was a scholar, not a coal miner.”

“And I am?”

“You got a great set of muscles on you last I checked! I noticed a bit of atrophy and your leg’s seen better days, but still a million times better than what I’ve got. I’ll tell you what, you insert me into your spine and I’ll do it myself!”

“You can also spend your blood jumping across the lake to the ship,” Aoi continued. “Sojan can’t use his excessively. And animal blood substantially dilutes his power.”

“Then use your skeletons,” Kizu said.

“I tried that. They got a bit up here, but they can’t carry much more than about ten kilos at a time. Come on, Sojan can get it all past the phantasm first. Mostly I just need you to jump it over to the ship.”

“Fine. I’ll go do your errands,” Kizu said. “But I get a favor from you in exchange. I plan to set up a plant nursery on the ship and you’re going to help.”

If Aoi was concerned or curious about the favor or his sudden announcement about his intentions to start a nursery, she didn’t show it. Instead of questioning that, she clapped her hands together and instantly started to ramble on about the object details of what she viewed as first arrival priorities and what items could wait until later to be picked up.

Judging by the verbal list’s length, Kizu suspected he wouldn’t be getting back to his enchantment practice anytime soon.