I spent the rest of the day testing, refining, and retesting my spear enchantment to find glaring flaws. After nearly ten hours, the end result was...passable. It still did not focus or contain the mana as well as I would have liked, and my Aether destroyed each spear in under a minute, but it would have to do.
I would try to improve my design before the duel, but the answer was more than likely a backup spear or two.
The day's work also revealed how far my core and channels had been rebuilt. Even draining my core entirely multiple times in one day left no signs of strain. While I doubted this would remain true once I brushed the higher gaseous stages, it was one less concern weighing on my mind in the present.
When I rose the following day, I turned my attention towards my defense.
It took me just seconds to pull a Travelers Shield around my body. The spell snapped into place with a quiet hum, forming a green shell that glowed brighter than it had just a week earlier. I waited until it faded, then raised one hand and rapped my knuckles against my chest. Faint ripples spread out from the impact, but I could not feel the force on either hand or body.
The spell had saved my life more than once, and I felt sentimentality toward it. It was the first piece of spellcrafting I had ever done, and that was a significant milestone for any mage.
It was also sloppy, crude, bordering on embarrassing, and something better left in the past. Pride could be saved for something worth it.
The spell had its own set of shortcomings, much like my Mana Bolt. It was even more ravenous than the offensive spell, though I suspected I could now hold it for ten minutes or longer with a full core. The problem was that duration would shrink once I started throwing other magic around, as a mage tended to do.
Beyond that, the protection fell short of my demands. Sure, a thief with a club or some soldier and his favorite spear would never touch me, but that was damning by faint praise. A good set of plate armor would do much the same, and Flynn Sion would burn through both with as much effort as roasting a chicken.
As always, efficiency was the crux of it, and that left me two paths forward, each representing the two categories of personal defense magic.
On the one hand, barrier spells created domes, walls, and other large structures to block magical and mundane attacks. I had read accounts of rock, metal, water, wind, fire, wood, light, shadows, and even pure mana as materials, but the concept remained the same.
On the other, there were armor spells. These mimicked physical armor in form and function, with curved surfaces, flexible joints, layered pieces over vital areas, and force diffusion as common concepts.
Both had advantages and drawbacks. Barriers provided sturdier defenses but demanded more mana and tended to be immovable. Armor sacrificed durability for mobility and efficiency. Barriers could protect multiple people, while armor was single-target. Armor spells required extensive training and refinement, while barriers were quick to learn and master.
My Traveler's Shield was a messy mixture of both. Theoretically, I could move in either direction, but I already knew which sounded better.
I focused and made the shell visible again before examining it. The edge of my "armor" was diffuse, and there was a noticeable gap between flesh and mana. Once, I had dismissed those as negligible flaws, but they now represented failures I needed to correct. My future quite literally depended on it.
Gestures, chants, and the like only existed to narrow a mage's focus and willpower. Eventually, a spell became effortless and reflexive after hundreds or thousands of repetitions. This goal, the apex of spellcasting, was one that all training and practice strove to reach.
The problem was that a spell honed too much became twice as hard to change. One's will moved in two directions, conscious and ingrained, and a mage had to fight against themselves. While I had yet to quite reach that stage with Traveler's Shield, modifying it would still be an uphill battle.
I closed my eyes and focused on the shell, grabbing it with my will and pulling. It resisted at first, with a sensation that reminded me of holding my breath. I felt the mana shiver and pulse, and then something gave. Slowly, it shifted, drawing in closer to my flesh. It took several minutes, but I could sense it grow tight, and when I opened my eyes, the surface hovered barely a hairsbreadth from my skin.
However, that was only one part of the equation. My unconscious will took over the second I relaxed, and the mana rebounded. It expanded back to its original, wasteful size. I sighed, resigned myself to a long day's work, and reached for the shell again.
Several hours later, I had drained my core, refilled it, and drained it again, practicing the spell with almost nothing to show for my time. My armor hovered a fraction of an inch closer, but getting the change to 'stick' would take weeks.
I briefly weighed the merits of weeping. Then, instead of brooding like a child, I turned my focus to the second change. If I had to modify my spell, I might as well do two things at once.
This time, I squeezed the shell rather than move it. My will pushed on both the inside and outside, trying to compress it as I had done with my core and Mana Bolt.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
The shell bucked against my control, and I might have failed if I had not spent months practicing. The lingering instabilities made it a taller task than usual, but my focus had grown sharper by the day. That, and I was fully aware of the value of pure stubbornness.
It was a slower process than shrinking the armor, and by the time I had drained my core, I had only gained a marginal change. The shell was thinner, and I could sense it was denser, stronger, and brighter. Strangely, the drain on my reserves felt a little slower, which was an unexpected boon. Maybe it was more stable?
With more questions for later, I dismissed the spell and refocused on my new problem. Traveler's Shield was not some great mystery to solve. It had glaring flaws with obvious solutions. Instead, the issue was an unfixable one.
My alterations would take too long.
I could perfect the modified Traveler's Shield if I had weeks or months. But I only had six days. Even if I did nothing but practice this single spell, it would still take too long. I needed to figure out a shortcut or, barring that, a backup plan.
After a few minutes, I nodded once, "Armor. Maybe Rowen can get me some armor."
---
"I can't get you armor," Rowen said.
"Ah," I cleared my throat, "Are you sure?"
"Unfortunately, yeah," Rowen looked up from his work, "Spears are cheap and easy to replace. Armor's not. We don't have any that'd fit a kid, either, so we'd need to resize one. I could get you a shield and maybe a few pieces, but nothing worth a damn."
The armor was nothing more than a backup plan, but even losing that one option stung. I sighed but nodded, "Yes, that would work. What can you get me?"
Rowen tapped his pen onto the desk. " A shield or two, vambraces, heavier boots, and maybe a boiled leather chest piece. The last one will be tricky, but I can ask around. Might take me a day or two."
We talked for several more minutes, during which I asked Rowen about the state of the mines. Though I had killed that thing within the forest, another beast had attacked a day earlier while I was unconscious. Even if I had managed to solve the heart of the problem, it might be months until the natural order stabilized.
The mystery of it all nagged at me. That monster was powerful and likely had driven off any beasts from using the pool, but was that enough? Herbivores at least should have been spared, yet I had found one dead without any wounds.
And it was still unnatural. What had changed that man into a monster? Could it be brewing within my body? I had checked my channels and core multiple times since waking up, and they both looked and felt healthy, but maybe it was a slow change.
A part of me wanted to return to the forest and continue investigating this mystery. The other, more pragmatic part reminded me I could not fix this while a metaphorical executioner's sword hung over my neck.
I returned to the cave and settled down for the rest of the night, bouncing between practicing my armor spell, calming any instabilities in my core, and training my sensory skills. The last might help me if Flynn used blinding flashes, but it was a faint hope.
On the third morning, I met with Rowen again. I had something to do, and I had put it off entirely too long. But first, I would need boxes, cloths, a few knives, and a new, preferably abandoned cave where my task would not disturb anyone. Besides me, of course.
---
I tried not to gag as I turned my face to the side. A cloying scent filled the abandoned cave, punching right through the cloth over my face despite its valiant attempts to ward off the smell. I breathed through my mouth and immediately regretted the decision as the sweet taste of rot hit my tongue.
The monstrous corpse laid before me had taken most of an hour to cut open with knives, mana, twisting, pulling, and swearing. One small blessing was that a spatial pouch lacked air, which seemed to keep the rot from worsening.
The thing's skin was thick and tough, closer to armor than anything, and the muscle beneath felt like wood rather than flesh. Its blood had turned into a lumpy, half-clotted, near-black mess. I took samples of each and placed them within glass vials and jars before moving on.
As I worked deeper, I found organs that looked faintly familiar, though only in an academic sense. I recognized the heart, liver, stomach, and lungs, which looked strange. They had been dyed a blackened shade, and some looked twisted and blended with the flesh around them rather than neatly separated.
I leaned closer, placing one gloved hand on the heart before focusing. Most of the mana within its body had fled, but lingering dregs clung here and there, bonded in a clumsy, imperfect way. It reminded me of magically reinforced metal, but not quite identical.
The other organs, the lungs, liver, kidneys, and so on, seemed similarly warped and twisted with hints of strange not-Aetherclinging to their flesh. I examined each, then carved them free with my knife before placing them into separate containers.
Even deeper within, I uncovered mana-reinforced bone. I could sense thin bars of corrupted Aether running along their length, and when I tried to chip off a piece, my knife bounced right off the white surface. I examined the dented edge, shrugged, and grabbed a second blade before trying again.
After retrieving samples of every part of its body, I finally focused on the last part of the monster. It was the thing I had been dreading, as whatever it found might hint at what lay in my future.
A healthy human core was round and small, larger than a marble, but not by much. It should look perfectly smooth, with channels branching off everywhere that grew thinner and finer the further they traveled.
This core was twisted and warped. One side was noticeably bulging while the other was shriveled. Several major channels had broken entirely, and at least two looked wider than they should be, with noticeable slices along their sides.
I placed a hand onto the core, closing my eyes and pushing some mana into the organ. The inside was as distorted as the outside, but I noticed something strange. There were noticeable cracks along the core through which my mana vanished.
No, I realized. Not vanished. Escaped.
I opened my eyes and grabbed my knife before slicing the core and surrounding channels free. I might learn more with better resources, but what I had found already revealed at least four things.
First, whatever mana this creature used was Aether, but it had become twisted and changed. I could not say if that was a function of the beast itself, exposure to the pool, or another factor entirely, but it had started with the same element as me.
Second, this thing had begun life as a human. Magical ape species existed, but none had mana vessels identical to humans.
Third, something had caused extensive damage to its mana vessels to such a degree that it should be dead. Some survived with split cores or channels, but it was near-unheard of even with modern alchemic medicine.
Fourth, one or more of these three factors granted the creature superhuman physical abilities. While its speed remained humanly possible, its strength and resilience were decidedly unnatural.
Now the question became how?
I had several hypotheses but little means to test any safely. Once the duel passed and I returned to Volaris, I could investigate further, but until then, it was a mystery left unsolved.
Quietly, I put away my tools, wrapped the mangled corpse up again to dispose of it later, and made my way back to the first cave. As I walked, there was the strangest dichotomy to my thoughts and emotions.
I could not stop imagining my body twisting and warping as bone cracked, flesh split and skin melted like wax under a flame. I felt no different, but that could be how it began. Maybe it was a slow, creeping rot and decay that spread under the surface until I became something unrecognizable and monstrous. It was a nightmare that I tried to push aside with limited success.
But another image kept asserting itself over the first. I imagined myself shattering stone and sundering metal with a single spear strike. Dreams of moving in an impossibly fast blur, weapon in hand, as I carved through swaths of foes repeated themselves. Strongest of all was a fantastical vision of battling that invader with the purple hair, not as a frail human mage but as an equal. No, as his superior.
If I could gain those secrets, what would I become? And was it worth risking my humanity? The answer was so obvious I almost laughed. If I could reach the end of magic, I would do damn near anything.