Chapter 2

Finally after weeks I have created the mana channels from my soul to my hands. Although it took forever, I think that I finished much faster than anyone else would have; probably due to my nature as a new type of spirit or soul (whatever it’s called).

Over the weeks while I was creating the mana channels the man who has me here in this cage, doctor Faust, was busy pouring over notes and books, mumbling under his breath, suddenly screaming eureka, and running all over the place. I am honestly unsure if he has even slept the entire time. Currently he is at his desk near my cage with mountains of books, a few are moldy and some have been chewed on by rodents. There is one particular book he is reading right now while taking some notes: The Origin of the Automata.

The automata were the only anomaly to the spirits being attracted to a baby being born and attaching since there is nothing organic about them. They are a race of clockwork machines that are born by being built to a specific specification that only they know of. Out of all the races they are the newest, excluding me, being created approximately 3000 years ago by the long gone Allagan Empire. Since the automata do not age, there actually is still automata that were created in the empire still walking around.

I am going to assume he is reading the book because they are the only exception to the rule that souls bind to only living things with the potential for complex thoughts and intelligence. If I remember correctly, when I was read the book it stated that the reason why the Automata were able to have the soul attached were their cores. Not much is known about these cores except for the fact that as long as their core is intact, they still live even if they were missing a body for a millennia. That means that the core is where the soul is stored.

Hm, I guess that means my blood that makes up my entire being has the same quality as the core of an automata. Well, that’s as far as this line of thought will reach today, also I am really excited about trying magic for the first time.

Remembering the simple light spell I send a small amount of mana to my hand and force it into the air. Since I am not trying to add an affinity to it a small ball of blue light appeared. Apparently mana is blue so guess if a water affinity was added it would turn into water? Meh, I won’t be able to test that since I don’t have that affinity.

Now that I think about it this is really easy, maybe I am just really talented with magic? Well, no problem with that, it just makes my task of escaping easier. I dispel the magic light and it dissipates into the air. I sit down and start thinking about how I can train my magic ability: there is a few ways I can go about it.

Firstly I can just play around with this simple light spell with affinity-less mana in order to increase my ability with handling magic in general. This is a good plan but it might be lacking in combat and situations that need practical magic.

Secondly, I can practice using fire magic so that I can learn how to use it effectively. While probably a great idea, I am stuck in a cage that won’t give me enough room to avoid burning myself. Thirdly, I can practice and learn how to use blood magic however it is used. Learning how to use this magic will be difficult in general since I have no clue about how it’s used.

Lastly, I can attempt to learn what my unknown affinities are and how to use them. Out of all the possible things I can try this will be probably be almost impossible to figure out.

Thinking about the ups and downs of each of these methods, I am really leaning towards training the blood magic and just testing the unknown affinities just to figure them out.

I start by summoning the mana light again and I start adding the blood affinity to it. Immediately my hand warps a small bit and blood flows out and into the mana light creating a ball of blood in the air. Well this is disappointing, it turns out blood magic is what I used to create my body in this form. It probably has its uses but honestly I was hoping for something cooler or so.

Disappointed I continue testing blood magic and I discovered it actually is different than what I used to create my body and it is really useful for me. I was able to instantly turn my hands into spikes and create a sword out of a large portion of my body. The sword was two times as tall as I, rectangular shaped, double sided blade, thin at the bottom and getting thicker at the top, and since it was made out of my blood magic it was light enough for me to swing with one hand. I decided to call the spell that made my hands into spikes: Blood Lance, and the large sword, Blood Zweihander (even though I only used one hand). Naming spells serves as a way for the magic to be cast quicker, some people yell out the name but honestly that’s just unnecessary, the name only needs to be thought.

The really useful thing I found out about blood magic is that it only uses my mana when I am actively morphing and changing the blood, once I am done it doesn’t use anymore mana and the blood I morphed gets a hard white coating on it. This makes really sharp weapons and serves as a pretty good armour. I would create armour but that’s actually how hard my skin is at this moment, it would probably compare to iron with how hard it is.

My tests with blood magic actually went on for weeks, the previous bit is just the summary of what I had discovered that was of great interest. Well I did discover that by creating a hollow body I was able to make myself bigger but it was at the cost of mobility and balance. I honestly wonder if it is possible for me to become large than I am right now but that will just have to wait.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Once I was satisfied with the tests with blood magic I moved onto just manipulating affinity-less mana. I spent another few weeks just experimenting with this and actually discovered quite a lot and proved my doubts about learning this magic wrong.

It turns out this magic that I have now come to calling arcane magic is very diverse in its uses and is very well suited for battle. For example, my first realization that it could be harnessed for combat was when I attempted to compress the light ball and was given a tiny pea of magic. I lost concentration for a moment and this pea of magic shot off a laser that ricocheted off the caged and shot back into my upper left arm, severing my entire arm. It was also at this point that I discovered that I do feel pain, honestly while extremely painful it was a useful experiment in many ways. I learned that this arcane magic can be used in combat; I do feel pain; and lastly, my blood magic allows me to reattach severed limbs in mere seconds.

The lasers are the simplest version of combat arcane magic can do I discovered but it isn’t the only thing I can do. By using arcane magic it is possible to enchant weapons for a short period of time so that they are stronger than usual. A barrier created out of magic can be used to defend against simple magicks and projectiles like arrows. It can be used for lighting and creating illusions by distorting light beams. The possibilities of arcane magic is endless only limited by what can be mana can be used by the caster and their imagination.

By this point I realize that I can probably escape but honestly I want to attempt using my other affinities first. I firstly attempt the silhouette affinity first, summoning a magic light I inject the ball with the image of the silhouette. Immediately I realize something is wrong as I am no longer in the cage but now standing on top of rubble in the ruined temple.

Everything here is stained with blood including the white broken blocks of stone I am standing on. I look up remembering that the roof had collapsed and all I see is a void devoid of anything at all. Remembering not to panic I calmly analyze my situation. After using that unknown affinity I am back in the temple which is now covered in blood and has almost completely collapsed. Last time when I was here there was a book that I opened and then I was back in the regular world.

Based on that I start looking around the rubble to see if I can find that small book. To begin, I get off the stone I am standing on which would be easy for a normal sized humanoid since it is 5 feet off the ground but I am only 2 feet tall. Two seconds after trying to climb down safely, I slip and fall down and slam onto my back causing me some pain. While recovering I notice that the stone is held up by something and there is a 2 inch crack allowing me to see under it. Underneath the stone I see a smashed altar which is just barley holding up the rock and the book lying next to it, just out of my reach by 6 inches.

Using blood magic I rearrange the blood in me to get rid of my left arm and double the length of my right arm so I could reach the book. The moment my hand touched the book I was transported someplace different.

The place I was now was and endless black room with a ceiling and walls that couldn’t be seen. The room was not empty, in fact far from it with thousands, possibly millions, of ropes stretching taut all over the place in random directions. Some led straight up, other across and some used other ropes to go in a jagged line.

I did not know what to do as I didn’t have the book anymore and there was no clear direction to go. Wait, I actually never tried to ‘will’ myself out of here, if this was caused by my own magic then by trying to stop it I should be able to leave. I try this and immediately I am back standing in the cage.

Well I have no idea what that magic was since it doesn’t seem like my body actually ever left the cage since this was the position I was in just as I was about to cast the light spell and both of my arms are normal, I didn’t fix my arm after the book was obtained so I only had one really long arm. Based on what happened it seems this affinity is responsible for that weird occurrence that happened during the meditation for affinities.

Honestly that was a quite interesting event and it makes me want to try this other affinity that I have which is the line. This is going to be interesting to test out.

I summon the magic light and then I begin to imagine the line affinity affecting it. Again I immediately notice something is going wrong. I wasn’t transported to another dimension but the magic light starts to vibrate and get brighter. It gets so bright that I am unable to see and this lasts for a short time, about 5 seconds.

Once my eyes? (I don’t know what I have) readjust to the dim light that illuminates the room I realize something immediately. My right arm which I hold out to summon the magic light is no longer held out in front of me and I feel a bit lighter.

In plain and simple terms, my entire right arm has disappeared.

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Author here.

Sorry for long wait but the series is not dead, just real life is kinda getting in the way of writing. Also this chapter is shorter than my 3k word count goal because the point I wanted to end it at just came way too quickly.

The next chapter might take a similar amount of time to come out since I am really busy with work right now.