“Every year, new students ask me this question: Alchimagus, how can I cast more than two spells without running out of mana and having them fizzle out faster than a rat’s fart in the wind?”
“No, they don’t actually say it like that. Would make my job a hell of a lot more interesting though. Flattery is nice, but it starts to grate on the ears after a thousand years. Anyway, it’s a stupid question. Archangel’s feathers, kids these days rush ahead trying to cast a Tier 3 [Fireball] but their Tier Zero [Light] spell formula still leaks more mana than Gardenia’s shithole of a house does water.”
“YOU HEARD ME RIGHT, OLD BAT! Now, apart from shoring up their mana manipulation skills, there are two other ways mages can cast more spells, and both involve increasing your mana capacity. One, you can spend decades living in the Hamada desert or some other mana-rich environment, and maybe you’ll be able to eke out a few extra spells. Or, you could throw back some mana potions to completely overload your body with mana. That’ll give a much larger boost to your capacity, but in exchange mana poisoning will kill you.”
“I know some of you smartasses are probably about to pipe up with your scrawny little voices and tell me you can just use healing potions to counteract the symptoms of mana poisoning and outlast the affliction, so I’ll just preemptively correct your correction, because you’re dead wrong. Sure, it’ll work the first time. The potion will heal your body, restore the degradation, and whatnot. What about the second time? Since you’ve already drunk a potion, your body’s saturated with healing mana.
“It’s like watering a plant. The first time, the dirt’s dry, so it’ll absorb all the moisture. But if you try to water it over and over, now the dirt’s soaked through and the water will just fall right through without taking hold and without having any effect. Eventually, your precious little healing potions will do literally nothing and you’ll die anyway.”
“If you heard that and still want to try your luck, be my guest, you moronic, brainless-”
-Grand Alchimagus Ilysia “The Foul”’s drunken rant during dinner to the Academy of Silvath
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Footsteps echoed on the damp stone floor, the acoustics of his dungeon perfectly designed so each noise would ring in the ears of the experiment fodder. It brought their terror to a head, made them fearful and obedient, too busy hoping he’d pass them by. He could sense the dread hanging in the air like a noxious poison. It was the scent of unkempt bodies and festering wounds, the moans of pain and screams of horror, the dulled eyes of prisoners who had no hope left and no longer reacted even when the Doctor stopped directly before their cell, his shadow falling upon them like a harbinger of death.
Let them suffer. It was what they deserved.
The tether of a [Mental Communication] spell gnawed at the edges of his mind, seeking to latch on and hurrying him to a room specially warded against scrying. A quick pulse of his [Sense Life (Intricate)] Skill ensured there were no living things inside the room nor within ten meters of the outside. Only once he had verified the lack of eavesdroppers, magical or otherwise, did he accept the spell.
[How is the project? No difficulties, I hope?] The woman’s mental voice was silky and bewitching like a siren attracting victims.
“Yes, madam. The experiments are progressing smoothly. But fine-tuning the process is still necessary, I haven’t quite been able to suppress the effects of mana overload yet.”
[I see. And what of the number of test subjects?]
“We’re a bit short right now, but it’s nothing for you to concern yourself with, madam. What of the situation on your end?”
There was a long sigh on the other end. [It’s just one official meeting after the other. The diplomatic party from Arkranas is becoming more hostile by the day, yet the Harmony faction keeps stubbornly advocating for peace. Any attempt I make to bolster our war preparations, they strike down immediately. To them, it’s all or nothing. Either we negotiate peace or we return to being a colony of Arkranas after they destroy our military. However, things are speeding up. Vaelin Blackstone has returned to the city. Something about how the monsters are rampaging down in the Abyss. Your lab might only be located in the upper levels of the Abyss, but you should still be wary.]
There was a sharp intake of breath, and he ignored the cautionary warning. “The ‘Depths’ Sentinel’ is in the city? Madam, this is a wonderful opportunity-”
[I know, I know. If we can win him over to our side, it will be a great help for our goals. He might not have an official political position, but we’d be fools to disregard his reputation and influence over the Adventurers’ Guild. The problem is, those Harmony bastards know that too. Neither of our groups have made contact with him yet because we’re scared of pissing him off, but it’s a race to see who can make the first offer. Keep me updated on the project. We need success now more than ever. Once everything is perfected, we can finally move on and begin applying the procedure to the mages in our military.]
Though his master could not see him through the spell, he knelt on one knee and bowed his head regardless.
“I will not disappoint you.”
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His assistant dragged the newest arrival into the experimentation room while the girl kicked and screamed wildly. The Doctor’s glasses glinted in the white glow from the dozens of [Light] orbs hovering overhead, and he tilted his head back and sniffed pretentiously. He’d hardly get any data from this if the girl was as fragile as she looked. He might have brought her in himself, but that was because no one would bother looking for someone who was evidently an orphan.
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The words of his master weighed heavily on his mind. It had been a year since the project had begun, but the number of human experimentation trials that could be called a success amounted to only one. And of that one, his zealousness had resulted in both the escape of the subject and the destruction of the previous lab.
The assistant, who he couldn’t be bothered to learn their name, deposited his newest experiment on an elevated table at waist level. The Doctor looked down at the struggling girl and spoke.
“[Stay Still, Please].” His skill instantly rendered her immobile for a few seconds. Her eyes widened as her muscles froze and her limbs refused to obey her. It was a good skill. Certainly useful in this exact repeating scenario.
He palmed a syringe in his hand before injecting the contents directly into her arm in one smooth motion. Instantly, she began flailing as if being burned alive. The purple liquid was a two-in-one; it combined the properties of a high-density mana potion with a long-acting healing potion. The former would completely oversaturate the subject’s body with mana, forcing them to absorb it instinctually and enlarge their mana pool. The latter would continuously repair and effectively counteract the degradation that occurred when the body was overloaded with mana.
His eyes wandered away from the writhing, shrieking figure lying on the platform as he took several steps backward. His skill had worn off at this point, but it didn’t matter. The important part was over. 077’s teal irises were now streaked with bloodshot veins and primitive howls tore out of her throat as if the pain had rendered her a savage beast. He knew from other experiments that the subjects usually fell unconscious after the injection. Still, most had exhibited signs of being able to feel the pain despite that, and he had no idea why. Truly fascinating.
Entire institutions and nations across the world have known about this method for centuries, yet few people ever attempted it themselves due to the nearly certain risk of death. However, he was different. He had created a regenerative potion that circumvented the conventional issues of reduced effectiveness, by ‘distributing’ the healing over a longer period and thus allowing a test subject to survive until their body finished absorbing the excess mana and returned to its natural equilibrium. Of course, this came with its drawbacks, chief among which was that his version only slowed the decay instead of fully healing it as a normal potion would. For his purposes though, that was irrelevant. The Doctor cared not what state the subject was in at the end so long as they were still alive for him to collect data and record the increase their mana capacity had undergone.
The door behind him slammed open and he turned, ready to berate the assistant that had interrupted his musings, but the man’s flustered and reddened face made him pause.
“S-Sir! There’s a massive horde of monsters approaching the entrance to the lab! A-and b-behind them, it’s a-” The assistant’s voice was a projection of abject terror, and he clung to the door handle since his shaking legs failed to support him.
The sound of many, many feet or paws hitting the ground reached the Doctor’s ears.
A few hundred feet past the open door, past the long corridor of cells containing his test subjects, the specially enchanted steel wall ruptured inwards, releasing hundreds of grotesque monstrosities that crowded the narrow tunnel. Each and every one was running as fast as possible using the path of least resistance. Directly towards the experimentation room, and by extension, him.
He reacted instantaneously. The spatial storage ring on his left hand flashed with a pulse of mana, and a rolled-up single-use scroll of [Long-Range Teleport] appeared in his other hand. They were ludicrously expensive, especially in a city like Arkress without a resident spatial mage, but his master had spared no expense to secure his safety from monsters, or otherwise. Tearing it in half immediately, the area around his body was encased in a purple glow. The scroll version of the spell took a full minute to charge, and he couldn’t move from his position, otherwise the spell would fail to include him in the teleportation.
A group of horned, bull-like beasts were the first to reach the end. They trampled the assistant, who was still frozen in terror, hooves puncturing through flesh and bone, blood spattering across the rocky floor. He ignored it and braced himself for combat, clutching vials of acid and explosive reactants, but to his surprise, they ignored his presence. Instead, they threw themselves at the dead-end desperately, smashing through the wall at the cost of blunting or even cracking their horns. The force of their charges sent shards of stone ricocheting everywhere, piercing his white lab coat but deflecting off his plague doctor mask. Other monsters soon followed suit, disregarding him and racing through the already-cleared hole, heading further upwards. He saw flying birds with ragged plumages of filthy feathers, shadowy wolves with six eyes and just as many limbs, and many others. All carried the smell of rot and pestilence endemic to the environment of the Abyss.
Is this what my master meant when she warned me of rampaging monsters? But why are they just ignoring me? Where are they running to?
Suddenly, an invisible pressure descended on him. Every one of his senses screamed of imminent death. It was a voice in his head, a hand on his shoulder, forcing him down and telling him to fear what was coming. Barely raising his head from the gravity that compelled him to kneel, he realized that the stream of monsters had already vanished.
No… it’s not that something was attracting them, they were running away.
As the seconds til his teleportation ticked down and the cavern began to collapse, the middle of the room fractured, revealing a yawning chasm. The few remaining [Light] spells were useless; it was as if they weren’t there at all. The kilometer-wide Abyss was draped in a darkness that seemed impenetrable.
Then the sable gloom parted like bothersome curtains swept aside, and he saw a colossal something rising from the depths. The next moment, the teleport activated and the Doctor was gone, vanished in a purple flash of magic.
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An hour later, the lab and the holding cells were in a state of utter ruin. Of the test subjects, some had tried their luck at escaping during the chaos and were instantly clawed or stomped to death by the tide of fleshy abominations flooding through the cramped passageway. The remaining ones whose cell doors hadn’t been knocked down by repeated collisions were crushed by collapsing walls or ceilings.
Within the experimentation room itself, the fissure was slowly expanding as the Abyss reclaimed its territory from the artificial structure. Grey dust stubbornly hung in the air, clogging it with the bitter tang of metal. All was quiet; almost unnaturally so. The terrifying creature the Doctor had caught sight of had already returned to the bottom of the Abyss
As the floor silently sloped further downwards, myriad objects of various shapes and usages rolled off, tumbling a long, long way, such that the sound of their impact with the ground could not be heard. Beakers, flasks, a pair of tongs, a table.
The girl slept with a peaceful look on her dirt-streaked face, as the mana thundered inside her like a raging torrent. The potions had run their course, but she had yet to wake. Her body teetered on the edge of the void; then, with a soft sigh of the wind, she slipped right off. Shimmering dimly, she fell like a comet, down into the deepest and darkest Abyss.