A bead of sweat dripped off Norman’s forehead as he worked. It had been raining for the last few days and with the hotter-than-normal temperatures the humidity had become an oppressive blanket of moisture that he couldn’t escape. It didn’t help that Norman had sequestered himself in his workshop. The room was never designed with proper airflow in mind and had turned into a sauna from the hot and rainy weather. He would need to speak to Grobert about fixing that at some point but he didn’t let the conditions stop him from continuing his work.
Two weeks had passed since he started his experiments. During that time, Norman only managed to get through a quarter of the symbols that made up his Resurrection Spell. And that was after he figured out which set of symbols controlled the mana requirements for the spell. Due to the complexity of the spell, it used more than one symbol to control mana.
Norman discovered this fact when he located the mana control symbol he discovered in his previous experiments and tried to tweak it. When nothing happened, he knew it was linked to another symbol within the spell circle’s structure. He eventually figured out which symbol it was but it took him most of a day of experimenting to discover that fact. Norman would have liked to do more on a given day, but he was limited by his resources, both internal and external.
Even with his expanded mana pool and tweaking the mana requirements of the spells, he could only cast the spell twenty-five times a day. Despite that limitation, Norman learned quite a bit during that time. The first thing he realized is that he had been extremely wasteful in his casting of the spell.
Not so much on resurrecting the greykin. Humanoids required a significant bit more mana to revive than say a small animal. Norman knew mass played a role in the spell, a small animal for example used less mana powder to activate the spell than someone like Eugene. What he hadn’t known, and had figured out over the last few days, was that he could tweak the mana cost that the spell pulled from his body.
This entire time Norman had been using the same amount of internal mana to activate a spell for everything regardless of its size or mass. He slapped himself for being stupid when he came to that realization. It should have been obvious. He also realized he could probably add that same symbol pair to his other spells to further reduce their mana use. He had already written that down in his mess of notes.
With all the experimenting Norman had done over the years, he would be blind not to see that the energy that powered magic had multiple states. Even though he thought it was odd that both forms of energy could come from the same source. It was why he had originally started calling his internal power ‘mana’ so he could help differentiate the two forms of energy that were required to power a spell.
Norman shifted his thinking a bit and decided to call them internal and external mana. Then again, it might be better to call it personal mana and environmental mana. Although, even that wasn’t quite right. Whatever he decided to call it didn’t truly matter. What was important was to distinguish between the two forms of energy.
From what Norman had gleaned, internal mana acted as the trigger. While external or environmental mana – like his blood – acted as the focus.
An example of this could be seen when Norman did his original tests with the ferals. He had cast all the spells himself, but when he switched to a blood type not linked to him, the ferals instantly turned against him. Yet it was still his internal mana that had powered the spell.
It was fascinating.
The discovery also helped him come up with a hypothesis as to why the undead blood may not work the same way. It was probably the same reason Norman couldn’t use the plentiful environmental mana like water mana or earth mana to power his spells. They just weren’t compatible.
It would need more testing before he could verify this line of thought though. But if he was right, it seemed like this system of magic didn’t see the greykin blood as actual blood. Or thought of it as too different from blood to be used as the magical catalyst for a blood ritual. It would make sense considering his magic circles were blood magic-based.
Would that mean Norman would have to invent a completely new form of magic? Undead magic? The thought of coming up with yet another novel form of magic excited Norman. But he couldn’t focus on that now, he needed to finish his current tests.
Most of what he discovered with his resurrection circle had to do with the Soul Communion side of the spell.
He found out he could empower the souls within the circle by tweaking a few of the unknown symbols. Norman had to cut that line of testing off when the animal soul he was using in his experiments broke free of the circle and attacked him. The little critter almost managed to kill Norman. This was despite him having been using his Hidden from Death spell. It seemed the spell wasn’t nearly as effective as he once thought. Considering how many deficiencies or wasteful symbols he had uncovered so far in his other spells, it wasn’t that much of a surprise.
He still had some phantom pain from where the creature's soul had tried to rip him open. If the ghost had been any smarter, it would have just dove into Norman’s body and torn at his insides. It was still immaterial, but his tweaking had given it the ability to affect the material. Making it a terrifying adversary akin to the imatti that floated about the fog lands. Only worse since this creature actively sought to harm him.
With this new knowledge, Norman probably could recreate the imatti. He wouldn’t do that though, because mindless ghosts that feed on life energy were not what he wanted wandering around Ashvale. Especially not with living people now wandering the streets. Sure it was only two now, but there may be more in the future.
Despite the danger, Norman wasn’t all that worried about himself. He had a backup phylactery if he died again. Although it would be annoying and painful, it wouldn’t be the end. And while he could revive Anna if one of these ghosts got free, that would just be awkward and embarrassing.
He did jot down a note about looking into creating wraith guards with the spell though. He could think of numerous uses for an intelligent undead that could sneak in and out of places unseen. Spies and assassins were at the top of that list, but also a hidden guard force that could not be stopped. That would take some discussion with his advisors and further testing before he pulled the trigger on that idea though. Norman had to remember he wasn’t alone anymore.
Norman focused on the newest symbol he had been working on. He hadn’t figured out what the symbol did yet. Seeing he had reached a dead end, he started mucking about with the other half of the spell circle, the one that contained the vessel for the soul.
After a bit of monkeying about with the symbols, the ones Norman had previously learned the function of, he figured out what that unknown symbol did. It turned out that that symbol’s purpose was to allow the first spell circle to interact with outside spell circles. That’s it. A rather simple symbol that opened up a whole new host of possibilities for Norman. If he could add the linking symbol to his attack spells, who knew what he could create? And that was just one thought off the top of his head.
After doing his normal tests by checking every possible orientation of that symbol, Norman realized it only had four states. On, off, and two unknown states that Norman hadn’t been able to figure out yet. He even tried removing the body from the second circle to see if any of those other states would let him create a body from the soul's image, but the symbol didn’t work like that. It didn’t seem to change the function of the spell, only how it linked to other spells.
That gave him an idea. Norman asked one of the guards to fetch him one of those pig analogs, alive.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Instead of having the corpse in the second circle, Norman shoved the angry pig thing inside, then he drew the Soul Communion spell, but had the link set to one of those unknown states.
When the spell was completed, he was left with the soul of the pig sitting inside the Soul Communion circle, and the soul of the poor confused rodent stuck inside a body it didn’t know how to control.
Looking at this outcome, you might think, well it just changed the spell's function. But you would be wrong. The spell was designed to transfer energy, and souls were a form of energy.
Norman giggled in delight, the spell allowed him to swap souls around. But that still didn’t explain what the final state did. He spent another day trying to figure it out before giving up. He was sure he would figure it out eventually, but he couldn’t afford to spend all of his focus on that right now, no matter how interesting a puzzle it might be. It was time to start experimenting with the magic circle that held the body.
There were a few familiar symbols in this spell circle. Ones that he could now recognize on sight. There was the mana control symbol. Norman hadn’t yet seen a spell circle that could work without mana. He would have to play with that later to see if it was true. Next Norman spotted the linking symbol. Although it was drawn in the transfer state. He supposed that made sense otherwise the spell wouldn’t have ever worked.
The next symbol Norman recognized was the barrier symbol. It was just a circle within another circle, so there was no way to change its orientation. Norman had tested that symbol by removing it from the Soul Communion spell. When he did, he found out that it just let the energy of the spell spill outward. Which was fine with a simple spell like Soul Communion. The only energy involved was the initial summons and it still worked, it just allowed the ghost to roam freely until dismissed.
It did irk Norman a bit when he learned of this symbol's function. Had he wasted all that time reinventing the wheel by coming up with inverted spell circles? When he could have simply drawn a spell circle around what he wanted to protect and just added that one symbol? He didn’t currently have that answer and didn’t have time to test it out. But he was pretty sure the reversed spell circles weren’t completely useless. Then again this discovery certainly didn’t make them look nearly as outstanding as he first thought they were.
Norman refocused on his experiments but quickly ran into a dead end while examining the circle. It wasn’t anything more than a container. One designed to hold energy. There was nothing that would allow Norman to tweak the settings so to speak to change that. He was able to optimize the mana cost and figured out the four symbols that allowed it to hold the different types of energy.
When he tried to change any of these symbols the spell simply stopped functioning. All of these symbols were linked and seemed to be locked to one orientation. That made it impossible for him to determine which specific energy each symbol was responsible for. That was new. He still hadn’t figured out what caused symbols to become linked like this. Was it the spell itself? Or something he couldn’t see?
He jotted that question down for later and moved on to the last circle used in his resurrection spell.
He was quickly disappointed. The twisted circle that transferred energy from the first magic circle to the second didn’t give him any insights either. All it did was move energy. Although Norman was able to figure out that each individual symbol moved a different type of energy. He was able to count four types. Mana, life energy, the soul, and an unknown type of energy. Norman decided to call this last state of energy ‘matter’. Since he couldn’t see any other way for the spell to transfer the physical components of a body otherwise. And he knew from experience that the spell broke down the entire subject. That energy had to go somewhere.
You would think this would give him some insight into the energy retention symbols for the storage circle, but no. The symbols were completely different with no defining characteristics between them. Norman removed all but one of the symbols and activated the spell.
The spell failed but not before some of the energy got siphoned into the twisted circle. This allowed him to figure out what the individual symbols did. After that, he moved on to the orientation of those symbols.
Changing the orientation of the symbols either stalled out the transfer or reversed the direction. But reversing the direction didn’t change how the spell operated since the other spell circles were still set to send and receive essentially. That gave the energy transfer symbols only three states. Forward, reverse, and stop. Simple enough.
Was Norman just missing a fourth state of matter to make the spell work for creating bodies from soul images? He decided to stop everything and test this.
Norman spent a full day redesigning the spell to accept two transfers into one. It may sound easy, just add a third circle and attach another transfer circle to the container circle. Yeah, no. That was the first thing Norman tried. But there was no way to connect the overlapping transfer circles to the energy storage container where the body got rebuilt.
After struggling with it and growing frustrated, Norman finally figured out a solution. A simple one he should have realized sooner. Instead of adding a second transfer circle, he simply extended the original one by adding a second twist.
It worked, sort of. Norman now had the ability to create a body from nothing by using biomass and the soul. The only issue was it only worked with biomass that matched the soul. Norman couldn’t get the spell to work with one of the dead pig things to revive the rodent. And while he could shove a soul into a body it didn’t belong in, he hadn’t mentioned the gruesome outcome of that test, it apparently didn’t work for creating a new body.
Norman could use dead humans of any type to revive another human, or a gron for another gron. That was less than ideal though. Norman would rather resurrect those people to add to his population instead of wasting their bodies. But it was good to have an alternative if he needed it.
So that left him with the phylactery. He had always assumed it would come down to that, but he had hoped for an easier solution to this problem.
Before he lost himself in weeks or months of trying to figure that out, he decided to see how the city was coming along. He was still the leader after all, and he had spent far too much time locked away than was reasonable. Norman chuckled at that, Grobert was probably having a conniption at Norman’s inattentiveness.
When Norman stepped out of his workshop, the castle was quiet. That wasn’t a surprise. Everyone was quite busy lately with the rebuilding of the city. He made his way outside and was greeted by two guards, Nolix and Lohr. This surprised him, he would have thought these two would have more important things to do than guard Norman.
“Shouldn’t this posting be for less important people?” Norman asked ruefully.
“No sir,” Lohr replied gruffly. “With Grobert and Eugene busy, they decided you should have the best guards keeping an eye on you.”
It made sense, but Norman doubted anyone was going to attack him. Then again he had been wrong before.
“Well, I’ll make sure to thank them the next time I see them. I’m going to go tour the city.”
The men nodded and fell in behind Norman. Both were decked out in their full death knight armor and carried two glistening steel spears. Yeah, they glistened.
Norman nodded toward the weapons, “what's with those?”
“Magically enhanced by the jorik,” Lohr grumbled.
“And what sort of magic is it?” Norman asked curiously, having never seen magically enhanced weapons before.
“Armor penetration,” Nolix spoke up for the first time, causing Lohr to harrumph.
“Hardly. The spell simply weakens the material bonds where you strike, allowing you to push through tougher material easier. It's nothing special.”
“So… Armor penetration?”
Lohr grumbled. “Yes, essentially.”
Norman hid his smile. While he could appreciate being clear and concise, it was way too much of a mouthful to say what Lohr had said. Much simpler just to say it adds armor penetration to the weapons even if that wasn’t technically true.
The three continued to chat about mundane things as they made their way into the city. It was immediately clear how things had changed and improved since Norman had locked himself away. The streets were clear of rubble and plants once again. Even the exterior of some houses looked to have been repaired, and the number of people had increased significantly since he had last been around. There were so many people now it was almost like the city was back to normal. Seeing the city coming back to life brought a tear to Norman’s eye.
He rubbed it away, mumbling about allergies.
Norman even spotted an Alacala merchant, he had to blink a few times, thinking he was seeing things, but nope, there he was. The man bowed respectfully toward Norman as they passed.
“When did they start showing up?” Norman whispered to his guards.
“A few days ago,” Lohr answered. “They are desperate for food so wanted to arrive as quickly as possible.”
Norman nodded, “Are they getting what we agreed to?”
“No grains as of yet. But we were able to supply them with over a hundred of the local grazers to take back with them.”
“That’s not going to cause us issues later, is it? I don’t want us overfarming the wildlife.”
“As far as I know, these were taken from multiple herds not located near the city.”
“Good, good. How are they keeping them from running off?”
Nolix chuckled. “The grazers are terrified of the zitha mounts. So they just plod along with their heads down.”
Norman laughed at that, seems those stupid lizard horses were good for something. It was good to see everything was starting to get back on track. Unfortunately, his mirth and good humor vanished when he spotted Anna.
He had put it off long enough, it was time to sit down with the woman and have a serious discussion.