Norman stumbled slightly as he appeared from the teleporter. Despite Grobert’s assurances that these devices were perfectly safe, they weren’t nearly as seamless as the ones in Grothlosburg.

The subtle wrongness of the teleport seemed to grow the more nodes you passed through, and he had passed through five or six of them to arrive here. There seemed to be a vast difference between the crudely constructed ones Grobert had been able to cobble together versus the ones made with hundreds of years of refinement.

But he arrived in one piece, so he couldn’t complain too much. Improvements could always be made over time.

The cave housing the teleporter was pitch-dark and he stumbled around for a bit until he located the magical lamp. As it came on, the soft orange light drove away the darkness and he got to see what awaited him.

It wasn’t much. Just a ten-by-ten room with a hallway that led off in one direction. There was a small cot against one wall, that didn’t look all that comfortable, and that was about it. This would be his accommodation if he got stuck out here for more than a day so he would try to avoid having that happen. Under the cot was a crate filled with supplies. There was no food in the box but there were plenty of potions. If Norman starved to death or got lost in the jungle, he would resurrect back in the cave as an undead.

Speaking of resurrecting, he took out the golden phylactery and placed it on the bed. Then he looked through the box and grabbed a few items for his experiments, mostly a bottle of his blood, both living and undead, some bones, and a sachel containing a mobile spell circle. Grobert had placed these items here for him a few weeks ago.

The mobile spell circle had been a recent invention of Kalia’s. It contained gold-plated pieces that could be connected like puzzle pieces to create a spell circle.

He was happy she had figured out how to make permanent spell circles without having to use solid gold. Her work, enchanting the Bone Armor, had given her the idea. Each piece was a hollowed-out bone covered in a thin layer of gold. Light and durable as well as easy to assemble.

He knew she was only months away from perfecting the technique. From what she told him, she had already tested a successful spell circle made from a single piece. That was still a ways off from being able to make a phylactery using her method, but it was a great start.

Norman turned his attention back toward his task and made his way through the tight tunnel. His armor occasionally scrapped against the hard rock walls, but other than making an annoying scraping sound, it left no damage on the dense armor as he continued down the long straight tunnel.

It took almost ten minutes for him to come to the exit. It was a thick stone door with enchantments much like what his workroom had back in Ashvale. He pressed his hand into the center of the door and the enchantments flared to life. There was a soft grinding noise as the door slid outward, allowing the tree-filtered sun to enter the once-dark cave.

He was forced to blink a few times to adjust to the light before stepping outside and taking in the view.

There really wasn’t much to see. It was just as Grobert had said it would be. Thick vegetation and trees covered everything except the small rocky outcropping that he was standing on. It was the bevy of sounds that really surprised him. The noise from all the life in the jungle was nearly deafening.

While it was nice taking in the scenery, he had work to do. Norman pressed on the back of his amulet and Scar appeared next to him.

After appearing, the terror bird stuck its beak in the air, inhaling deeply before letting out a low happy trilling sound.

There was a rustling off to the side and Norman looked over to see three ostrich-sized dinos wander into the small clearing. The same kind he had used to make Scar.

The three twitched their heads back and forth, unsure of what to make of him and Scar. Something they did seemed to anger Scar and he screamed at the trio. Thankfully it wasn’t the sonic scream, but it was loud. So loud that the entire area went quiet and the three smaller dinos bolted for the safety of the jungle.

Seeing that he got his point across, Scar chirped happily. Norman chuckled and rubbed his mount's neck. “Now that you are done scaring the locals, we have to get going.”

Norman mounted up and the pair took off through the thick foliage.

Scar had no issue navigating the tight turns and thick underbrush. And as long as Norman leaned close to his neck, he avoided most of the whipping branches that kept trying to knock him free of the saddle.

Only once did they come across another large predator. Scar stunned the much larger beast before it could even react to their presence then he tore its throat out with his razor-sharp beak.

Not one to waste a free corpse, the body went into a spell anchor and the pair continued their journey.

About an hour later, they finally stopped.

Norman had been inspecting the landscape, looking for a decent place to set up his experiment, and he thought he had just found it.

It was a rather flat expanse of jungle, perfect for laying out a spell circle. The area was still covered in trees and undergrowth, but he had a plan to fix that.

He hopped off Scar and began checking the area. “Feel free to hunt the area, just don’t go too far.”

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Scar gave a chirp before rushing into the trees.

After giving the area a good once over, he decided it was good enough for what he needed. He cast Flaming Skull and ordered it to burn away the trees and brush. It would clear an area far larger than he needed, but that was fine.

As the spell gleefully spewed its deadly fire around him, Norman mentally went over his plan.

It had taken him months of experimentation to come up with a viable spell to test this theory. Intricate didn’t even begin to describe the complexities of this multidimensional spell form. It was so detailed that his Transfer spell wasn’t up to the challenge of recreating it in physical form. And even if it could, it would look like a solid ball.

But if anyone could see the spell form in Norman’s head, they would truly understand the monster he was about to unleash.

And the only thing this spell was meant to do was attempt to crack open a soul so he could know if it was possible. It would take hours for him to fully visualize the spell in his mind for instant casting, so he began the lengthy process immediately.

With most of his attention fixed on building the spell, he vaguely followed what was going on around him.

The shorter plants looked like they went from healthy to dust in a moment, while the trees appeared like someone was smoking them like a cigarette from the ground up. Thick rings of ghostly black fire would race up the trunk, leaving only ash in their wake. Once the entire plant was consumed, a thick pile of ash would come crashing down, spreading around the area and coating everything in grey, including Norman.

Occasionally in the distance, he would hear Scar scream as he caught something.

After what seemed like hours, but was probably only thirty minutes, the destruction stopped. There was a rough ring of ash about four hundred feet wide, where nothing stood and nothing lived.

Even the ever-present sounds of the jungle had ceased from the area as larger animals fled from the destruction as well as Scar’s hunting, and the smaller creatures were either terrified or consumed by the nether fire.

Pulling a bit of his concentration back from building the spell form in his mind, Norman cast Mana Vacuum to clean away the dust. It wasn’t really designed for that, but it was the only spell he had that produced wind.

Thankfully the light ash was easily pulled to one side of the clearing by his spell, leaving dead black dirt for Norman to work with.

With a clear area, Norman began pulling out the pieces for the mobile spell circle. The spell circle he was setting up was simply the containment circle for the spell he was building in his head.

Once done, it covered about half of the clearing. He had never actually cast the spell in his mind, so he wasn’t sure just how large it would be, so he erred on the side of caution.

With the mobile spell circle in place, he focused entirely on the spell in his head.

Eventually, the last piece of the spell snapped into place and he felt his exhausted mind sigh with relief. He dabbed away at the blood dripping from his nose.

Just because he had practiced doing this daily since he had come up with the spell, didn’t mean it was easy. What he hadn’t mentioned to Kalia, was how many times he had died recently due to trying to imagine this spell.

She had only asked him when the last time he was undead, and he told her the truth. He skipped the whole undead phase with his testing by sacrificing way too many grazers. The reason he had kept this from her was that he didn’t want to worry her, and it wasn’t like he could share what he was working on either.

With the spell form in place, he stepped inside the circle on the ground and activated it. A kaleidoscope of shifting lines sprung forth inside the shield circle and Norman was glad he made it large. The spell form took up about twenty feet of the space and seemed to writhe and twist like a living thing.

He could hardly take his eyes off of it, it was exquisite. But soon reality set in and he pulled out a tiny bone. Inside the tiny bone was a single soul of a worm-like bug found in Normenia.

Originally, he was going to just use one of the rodents that Princess had been created from, but after learning souls had upper limits of growth, he decided to start with something smaller. Something easier to break.

He released the small bone as one of the twisting lines of the spell snaked toward him, and it seemed to be drawn into the formation like a magnet. After a moment, the bone floated back out, changed. Where once it looked like a simple bone anchor, it now crackled with light and energy.

This was the trigger he had added to the spell. It was the one feature he had tested many times before today.

He set the bone trigger in a small padded metal case and tucked it into his pocket before stepping outside of the circle.

After whistling for Scar, he filled the barrier circle with an entire bottle of his magical blood and rode off back toward the teleporter.

When he deemed he had gone far enough, he stopped and turned around.

As much as he would like to watch the spell activate up close, this construct was a complete unknown, so he decided to take extreme caution. They were probably a mile or so away from the spell, but he still cast another barrier around them right before pulling out the trigger and activating it.

***

He blinked and looked around. He was back in the cave with the teleporter. “What the hell?”

Obviously, he had died. But 'why' was the real question.

Knowing he needed to see what happened, he quickly resurrected Scar and the pair hurried back to the test site. Only they were brought up short as their previous path now ended on a cliff.

He gaped at the destruction. While he knew a soul would be a font of power, that was why he had come out to the middle of nowhere to test this spell, this… this was wildly outside of his predictions.

A massive gaping wound, that seemed to stretch forever, now scarred the landscape. He couldn’t even judge just how large the zone of destruction was as the far side wasn’t visible in the distance. As for the bottom, it vanished into darkness and mist from water flowing over the sides. It looked like a god had scooped out the ground with an ice cream scoop. Everything was just gone. There was no debris, no sign of an explosion, it was simply as if it vanished. Even the trees were cleanly sliced away along the edge.

Norman shivered at the destructive potential of one tiny soul. If he had gone with his original idea of using the rodent’s soul, it was likely the cave with the teleporter, and his phylactery would be gone.

He only wanted to come up with an alternative energy source for spells and magical technology. But this changed things. Any thought of using souls to power stuff was quickly wiped from his mind. This sort of destruction was not something he could ever unleash upon the world. This was worse than nuclear weapons.

Did abandoning this line of research make him a coward, or a pragmatist? He didn’t much care. This power terrified him and he wasn't afraid to admit that. He wasn’t blinded by idealism. Norman knew this sort of power would eventually be turned into a weapon.

With his mind made up, he turned Scar back toward the cave and rode hard. Once back, he stored his friend inside a random spell anchor and began setting up a spell that would destroy the teleporter and any sign that he had been in this area. With the spell complete, he set a timer on it for ten seconds and stepped into the teleporter and the long trip back to Ashvale without hesitation.

He knew what he had unleashed today was far too dangerous for anyone to have power over. And that included him.