62. Improperly Used

Chapter 062
Improperly Used

Inside the Black Room beneath Cyoria, Zorian sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed in concentration. Floating in front of him was a large sphere of water, its surface calm and smooth, without even the slightest ripple disturbing its surface. Around the sphere orbited numerous smaller spheres, each following a different orbit yet somehow managing not to crash into each other.

Without warning, a chunk of crystalized mana sailed through the air and punched straight through one of the smaller spheres in order to slam into the central sphere. The entire system of watery spheres trembled and wobbled for a moment, threatening to fall apart.

But it didn’t. After a few seconds, Zorian succeeded in regaining control. Soon, the only evidence of the impact was the chunk of crystalized mana currently floating in the center of the watery sphere and the fact that two of the smaller spheres ended up crashing into one another, forcing Zorian to absorb them into the central mass.

Zorian opened his eyes and glared at Zach.

“It’s so booooring…” Zach sighed, idly chucking another lump of crystalized mana at the sphere. Zorian temporarily shifted a portion of his concentration at the incoming crystal, seizing control of it telepathically and hurling it back at Zach. It did nothing, though, since Zach just lazily raised his hand and caught it in his palm.

Zorian shook his head in a mixture of amusement and exasperation. They had only been inside the Black Room for ten days at this point and Zach was already starting to get stir crazy.

For a moment he refocused on the water in front of him, causing all of the spheres to merge together into a thin stream and drain away into the miniature cistern which it had come from. Ten seconds later it was all gone, leaving behind only a wet chunk of crystalized mana. Zorian let it fall and caught it in his palm, before turning his attention to Zach again.

Truthfully, even Zorian found the situation hard to bear. They were trapped inside the equivalent of a tiny apartment, they had virtually no privacy and the lack of a clear day and night cycle was messing with their sleeping habits. He felt he could understand that one group that ended up butchering each other a lot better now.

Even so, this was something that had to be done, and they both knew it. The situation was hard to bear, but they were accomplishing things. Zach spent most of his time slowly honing his personal soul awareness and mental barriers, occasionally testing the latter against casual telepathic attacks by Zorian. When he was not doing that, he was either thinking up some way to distract himself or helping Zorian go through the numerous books and documents they brought with them to the Black Room. These gathered texts were either stolen from the stashes of high ranking cultists, looted from the various sites they attacked in their (thus far futile) search for the simulacrum spell, picked up from the aranean treasury beneath Cyoria or simply bought from the stores with their vast wealth. Zach wasn’t much of a researcher, but Zorian appreciated his help all the same.

As for Zorian himself, he spent most of his time going through the aforementioned books, practicing shaping exercises and working on his spell formula blueprints. He could not properly test the latter within the confines of the Black Room, both because of insufficient materials and because of the danger of his experiments backfiring in a small confined space, but a lot of spell formula work was theoretical in nature.

“If you’re so bored, why don’t you finish reading through those scrolls I gave you earlier?” Zorian asked, slowly drawing out mana from the crystal in his palm to replenish his reserves. Since the Black Room was completely cut off from the outside world, all of the ambient mana had been used up by now, forcing them both to use their supply of crystalized mana instead.

“Ugh. Did I ever tell you that I don’t really like reading?” Zach asked.

“Yes,” Zorian deadpanned. “Many times.”

“Well I’m saying it again,” Zach huffed. “I don’t like to read. I especially don’t like to read longwinded cryptic rantings written by demon-worshipping cultists.”

“Primordials aren’t demons,” Zorian pointed out.

“Whatever,” Zach said, throwing his chunk of crystalized mana at Zorian again. Zorian tried to catch the incoming crystal with his remaining free palm, but was a lot less dexterous than Zach and would have likely failed to catch it… if he hadn’t cheated by subtly altering the crystal’s trajectory to hit his palm. He threw the other crystal at Zach, deliberately aiming it over his head rather than straight at him, but Zach still caught it without problems. Was Zach always so accurate, or was this simply a product of endless practice over more than three decades of restarts? “I’m starting to question if those cultist texts are even worth anything. I don’t remember us finding anything useful in them thus far.”

“Well, if nothing else, they have the most comprehensive explanation of blood magic, including actual guidebooks and casting instructions,” said Zorian, picking up a non-descript book bound in brown leather from the stack beside him. The book appeared completely blank at first sight, but if one channeled mana into it in a very specific pattern, words would reveal themselves. “Who knows how long it would have taken us to gather this kind of illegal expertise otherwise.”

Zach gave him a silent stare.

“What?” Zorian asked.

“Mind magic, soul magic, and now blood magic,” Zach said. “It’s like you’re trying to become as sinister as possible…”

“What makes you think I want to learn blood magic?” Zorian asked, raising his eyebrow at him. “I mean, you’re kind of right, but what gave me away?”

“The fact you’ve gone through those books three times already is kind of a dead giveaway,” Zach said. “Since you’re so interested in the idea, I’m guessing there is more to it than stabbing and bleeding people for power, right?”

“Yes,” Zorian nodded. “There are basically three distinct ways to use blood magic. The first one is to simply use it as a power boost to enhance your spells in a critical moment. Needless to say, this is not very healthy for the mage in question. Life force is critical to our health in a way that our mana reserves aren’t. Even a slight expenditure of life force will leave you tired and weakened, and since life force recovers far slower than mana reserves the effects may linger for days or weeks.”

“Huh,” said Zach thoughtfully. “That sounds kind of like drawing upon raw ambient mana to get out of a bad situation, only better because you’re only risking your health instead of both your health and sanity.”

“Pretty much, yes,” Zorian nodded. “As far as I can see, drawing upon one’s life force is superior in virtually every way to drawing upon raw ambient mana.”

“But not every way?” Zach asked.

“Well, it is admittedly somewhat easier to kill yourself by overdrawing on your life force than it is by drawing upon raw ambient mana,” Zorian admitted. “Still, the risks are quite manageable in my opinion. Especially for us, what with our ability to undo any lasting damage caused by training or abusing it.”

“Can we simply undo such lasting damage?” Zach frowned. “How are you so sure this won’t be a problem?”

“That special soul awareness training Alanic is putting me through is essentially inflicting a form of life force damage on me,” said Zorian. “Most of the really big symptoms go away after a few hours of any particular session, but smaller ones linger for days afterwards. I tire more easily, lose most of my appetite, suffer from random cramps and pains and so on.”

Zach seemed taken aback at his admission.

“You never mentioned that,” he said.

“I didn’t want to whine,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “It’s a small price to pay for what I’m getting. Anyway, Alanic pushed me pretty hard in the previous restart, so these things never really had time to die down. Instead, they just kept getting gradually worse as the restart progressed. They were never crippling, but it was noticeable. When the restart ended, however, so did all the health issues I had accumulated in the previous restart.”

“And now?” Zach asked, frowning. “Are you getting sicker all the time in this restart too?”

“No, I’m pacing myself better this time,” Zorian said.

“Good,” Zach said. “Even if you can get your health back, it can’t possibly be good for your mind to spend an entire restart increasingly tired and in pain.”

Zorian hummed thoughtfully. That… was a good point.

“So what are the other two ways of using blood magic?” Zach asked after a while, breaking Zorian out of his thoughts.

“Right. The other two methods,” Zorian said. “Well, the second one is probably the most famous one. Or should I say infamous? It’s basically ritually killing people to extract their life force, which is then used to cast spells. Usually demon summoning.”

“What?” Zach asked, giving him a strange look. “Why demon summoning?”

“Casting spells with someone else’s personal mana is hard,” said Zorian. “It’s not toxic like raw ambient mana, but other people’s mana is extremely hard to shape and control. This is especially true when that mana was taken forcibly from the target. Using other people’s life force has the same problem, only worse, since life force is so much more potent than regular mana. If you want to do anything fancy with your stolen life force, you need to set up long and demanding rituals. It’s much easier to just summon demons with your own mana and use stolen life force as payment for their cooperation.”

“I thought demons asked for souls as payment,” Zach said.

“They accept both, and more besides,” Zorian shrugged. “It depends on the demon, really.”

“Well, whatever,” Zach said, clearly not terribly interested in the discussion about demons. “Since the first method is kind of neat, but situational, and the second method sounds exactly as awful as I feared, I’m guessing it was the third method that got you so interested in this stuff?”

“Right. The third method of using blood magic is related to enhancement rituals,” Zorian said, a bit of excitement suddenly shining in his eyes.

Zorian launched into a quick explanation of the matter. Enhancement rituals were complex magical rituals that granted permanent magical enhancements to the target. Superhuman strength, fast healing, flight, fire-breathing, inherent ability to see mana… these were just some of the many possibilities that a caster could acquire by investing in the field.

There was a price, of course, or else they would already be in widespread use. First of all, there was no such thing as a safe and easy enhancement ritual – they were all very dangerous and difficult, with the slightest mistake having the potential to kill, cripple or render insane. Secondly, enhancement rituals effectively turned the target into a magical creature… and magical creatures needed mana to live.

Every magical creature needed a certain amount of ambient mana just to stay alive and fuel their magical abilities. The more powerful they were, the higher the ambient mana levels had to be to support them. Stepping into an area too thin in ambient mana to support them wouldn’t immediately kill them, but they would find themselves quickly weakening and wasting away. This was the main reason why powerful monsters from the deeper levels of the Dungeon didn’t overrun everything – they would effectively starve to death outside their home areas.

A human, regardless of the manner in which they acquired their magical abilities, also had to pay the price to maintain their existence. A portion of their mana reserves was effectively lost, permanently tied down in the maintenance of the magical enhancement. Their mana reserves’ maximum would be permanently lowered.

It was a heavy price to pay, especially for a mage already suffering from below average mana reserves, such as Zorian. Mages interested in magical enhancements had to think very carefully about whether a particular enhancement was worth the price they would pay for it.

That said, while the price had to be paid… the size of the price was not set in stone. Depending on the sophistication of the enhancement ritual, the quality of the materials used in the procedure and the skill of the mage conducting it, the enhancement could either cost you half of your maximum mana reserves or a mere tenth of it.

Blood magic, by virtue of interacting with a person’s very life force, could allow one to integrate a magical ability extremely well into the target. So well, in fact, that the ability could become inheritable – a true bloodline. In fact, quite a few bloodlines began in this very manner.

Employing blood magic to integrate an enhancement ritual made an already dangerous undertaking even more risky… but the price for an enhancement so well integrated into the target was greatly reduced.

There was still a price. Even with blood magic use, Zorian would still have to give up some of his precious mana reserves to acquire permanent magical enhancements. However, the price was reduced enough that Zorian was no longer willing to ignore the possibility outright.

“It’s not a priority, of course,” Zorian finished. “But I definitely intend to experiment with the field in the future.”

Zach clacked his tongue in dissatisfaction.

“I have to say I’m not too fond of the idea,” he said. “Every time I think of ‘blood magic’, the image of those shifter children from the previous restart pops into my mind.”

Zorian flinched a little at the reminder.

“But I trust you not to descend to that level of depravity,” Zach hurriedly added. “Just… stay away from the whole ‘sacrifice people to summon demons’ part of the field, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Zorian nodded, a little more subdued.

He had originally wanted to point out that Zach could benefit from enhancement rituals even more than Zorian would, but decided this wasn’t the best time to raise that issue.

– break –

Zorian leafed through one of the books on more exotic shaping exercises, searching for something that seemed challenging, but not frustratingly so. Most of the exercises in it were pretty crazy stuff, though, even by his standards. He tried to remember where they had found the book while he leafed through its pages.

After a few seconds, he remembered. It was one of the books they had taken from the aranean treasury. They had also tried to break into that secret room on the ceiling where the Cyorian web presumably kept their real treasures, but failed. Despite Zorian’s growing skill at disarming magical security systems, all they had succeeded in doing was triggering the safeguards and ruining everything.

No matter. He would figure out how to get inside eventually. The setup was quite good, but it was no longer as arcane to him as it once was. He was pretty sure he could figure out how to dismantle the security spells in another five or six attempts.

“Why do you keep bothering with shaping exercises?” Zach asked him, not bothering to actually look at him. He was too busy juggling a dizzying number of crystalized mana chunks to devote too much attention to Zorian.

Showoff.

“Because I still haven’t reached the limit of my shaping ability,” Zorian said, sounding as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Zorian, you’re already starting to get better than me in terms of shaping skills,” Zach sighed. “And my shaping skills are good enough to cast just about every type of magic out there. Including really demanding ones like medical magic. What the hell do you even intend to do with crazy shaping skills like that?”

“You can never have too much shaping skills,” Zorian told him.

“You spent too much time around Xvim,” Zach said. “The guy’s brainwashed you.”

“Every improvement of my shaping skills, no matter how minor, means I spend less mana on my spells,” Zorian said. “For a low-mana guy like me, every drop of mana is precious. We can’t all be inexhaustible mana monsters like you, Zach.”

“Hell yeah! I’m the only one awesome like that!” Zach said, puffing his chest in an exaggerated fashion. Unfortunately for him, the action caused him to lose control over the chunks of crystalized mana he was juggling. They clattered to the floor, some of them breaking up into smaller pieces upon hitting the ground. “Oops?”

Zorian snorted in amusement.

“Did you ever find any clues about your mana reserves?” Zorian asked curiously. “There has to be a reason why you deviate so much from everyone else when it comes to your mana reserves.”

“Sadly, no,” Zach said, stepping over the fallen crystals in order to sit down next to Zorian. “No one I consulted about it has any idea how that is possible. Most people think it’s some kind of undocumented bloodline of the Noveda. Although if so, it’s one that shows up rarely and irregularly, otherwise the enemies of our House would have noticed it and noted it in the past.”

“I suppose there is no chance of you just being very, very lucky?” Zorian asked.

“It’s rather unlikely,” Zach said. “I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that my shaping skills aren’t that much worse than yours, despite the massive disparity between us in terms of mana reserves.”

“Of course,” Zorian nodded. “I assumed that’s just decades of practice adding up.”

“Ha. Well, it’s not just that,” Zach said. “The fact I was able to keep up with the academy curriculum at all, even before the time loop, pretty much shuts down the theory I’m just lucky. I’m magnitude 50 in terms of mana reserves, but I can shape my mana as if I was magnitude 25 at most. That’s too… convenient to be natural.”

“Hmm, yeah,” Zorian said thoughtfully. “Still, magnitude 25 isn’t small at all. I’m surprised you managed to get your shaping skills as high as you did with that as your starting point.”

“I did have a lot of time to get it right,” Zach pointed out. “Considering you managed to catch up to me in a measly five years or so, I don’t think it’s really that impressive. Especially since my shaping skills are as high as they will ever be while yours just keep growing better and better.”

“I’m sure Xvim would be able to find you something to work on if you asked him for help with your shaping,” Zorian teased.

Zach scowled at him, but then suddenly gained a thoughtful look on his face. He kept staring at Zorian for a few seconds, making him increasingly uncomfortable.

“What?” Zorian asked impatiently.

“You know, if you’re really so determined about pushing your shaping skills to the best they could be, you should invest some time in learning medical magic. Or at least, the diagnostic half of it. Many of those diagnostic spells analyze the state of your magic, not just your body. You can use them to map the flow of energies inside of you and get a better picture of your own limits.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

That did make sense, sort of. Zorian already had a decent feel for his own mana, thanks to Xvim’s training, but this still sounded like an improvement in that regard.

“Maybe some other time,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “It sounds interesting, especially if I intend to seriously mess around with blood magic, but it does not fit into my current plan.”

“We have a plan?” Zach asked with mock surprise.

“Okay, so it’s a very loose plan,” Zorian admitted. “But it does exist. What, do you want us to make a step-by-step schedule or something?”

They decided to take a few hours to just relax and unwind. They played cards and board games, exchanged stories and even had a drawing competition. Sadly, they couldn’t agree if it was Zach’s portrait of Zorian or Zorian’s portrait of Zach that was better, so the contest was reluctantly pronounced a draw.

They still had ten days to go. Zorian didn’t regret coming here in the slightest, but damn would he be glad to be out of this place.

– break –

“Finally!” Zach said, spinning around with his arms stretched out to take in the forest around them. “Finally, after years of imprisonment-”

“Only 30 days, actually,” Zorian corrected.

“It felt like years,” Zach continued stubbornly. “Damn, I’d never imagined seeing a bunch of trees would make me so happy. Look, Zorian – trees! Trees!”

Zorian smiled, saying nothing. He too was glad to be out, but he wouldn’t dignify Zach’s overdramatic antics with a verbal response. As if seeking to spite him, Zach walked up to one of the trees and hugged it.