The OP Lich is a Returnee, Chapter 8 (Patreon)

Chapter 8 – Magic Lesson

“Kaori! I’m so glad you made it!”

The lich in human guise smiled as her sister greeted her the moment she knocked on the college student’s apartment near campus. It had been a couple weeks since she’d come to this world, but suddenly having siblings (to say nothing of a niece and nephews!) was still something she was getting used to, though she wasn’t complaining. And Eri was certainly genuinely happy to see her, though part of that was because she was a magic nerd through and through, and the lich was here to explain the other world’s magic to her.

“Of course, I made it, silly! I promised you that we would get together and talk about magic, right? I might have had a few things come up the last couple weeks, but the word of the Lich Queen is her bond.”

Eri shook her head. “I know this look is some kind of illusion to hide your true form, like you showed off on that talk show, but hearing you talk about being the Lich Queen is just weird. Like you’re something out of an isekai light novel.”

“Hah! Well, I was summoned to another world…”

Eri laughed at the joke, and said, “Fair enough.” She ushered her in, and soon they were sitting at the table. “Now, how do you want to do this? I mean, there’s a lot to know about magic.”

Kaori scratched her chin, considering. “Hmm. Why don’t we start with how magic in this world works, and then I can tell you how the magic I’ve learned is different?”

Eri nodded. “All right, I guess that will work. Well, I guess to start at the beginning, all magic is fueled by Magicules, or magic particles. You can think of them like electrons, if you like.

“Now, magic happens by channeling magicules, directing them to whatever desired effect you want to have happen. Some people have a greater ‘conductivity’, you could say, than others, allowing them to channel more magicules, which allows them to cast bigger spells, or cast more often.

“As far as the actual casting, you can do raw, uncontrolled effects through pure willpower, like a blast of force to knock someone back, but anything more complicated requires the assistance of a CAD. Like the name suggests, the Casting Assistant Device is a handheld computer device that does most of the calculations for you. For instance, with a spell to produce a fireball-type explosion, the CAD would already have the variables to create a fiery explosion loaded, and you would just need to add in target coordinates, and set how powerful an explosion you wanted. Are you with me so far?”

Kaori nodded. The concept of CADs had intrigued her ever since she’d heard of them, and the little bit of web browsing she had done had gotten essentially that much. She could see some benefits to this kind of casting route. But there were some obvious questions that came up.

“Yes, before, you were talking about the body as if all it did was channel magicules. Do you mean that people in this world haven’t learned to pool their mana? Not even infusing it into their bodies long term?”

“What? No, I’ve never heard of that. Not in humans, or other sentient species. I mean, it is obvious that some creatures with magic are just tougher than normal, but that’s from using active reinforcement, right?”

“Not at all. While you are correct that magical ‘conductivity’ is important for any mage, it is only part of the story.” Reaching into her pocket dimension, Kaori pulled out the closest thing she had to a familiar, a Dreadcaw. The undead raven’s flesh and bones had been infused with magic during its creation, swelling the bird to the size of a small child.

“This is my pet, Poe. I created him from a common raven. When I first made him, he was indistinguishable from a normal raven, when not using his abilities. Over the years, however, he has grown, as he’s been exposed to more and more magic. But it is more than just size. You could take one of those magic rifles the crazy people who shot at me had, and they would not even scratch him. Even if they did manage that much, his mana would allow him to regenerate his wounds, in time.”

Eri’s mouth was almost on the floor. As the raven preened itself, before flaunting its plumage at her, she managed to get a hold of herself. “Oh, my goodness! You said you made this? But it looks so intelligent! Most of the zombies I’ve seen or heard about have been mindless!”

Poe clearly took her words as flattery, and posed with his wings outspread. Kaori, on the other hand, just smiled. “Well, your world’s necromancers haven’t really had a lot of practice. Conveying intelligence to an undead requires either an enhanced level of power and skill, or a transference of a living mind into an undead body. However, even with more power, I doubt it would be possible for your world’s necromancers, not without some major retraining.”

She shook her head. “But we’ll get to that in a bit. The reason I brought Poe out was to show you that, even in a nonhuman creature, there are benefits to internalizing mana and building your pool. Actually, it is one of the best ways to advance if you are not one of those who can naturally channel magic quickly. After all, even if you can’t cast spells on the fly, having a stronger foundation is a boon for any warrior. And when you have a pool that you can push at your physical abilities, that can make a strong man superhuman, or allow someone to literally dodge bullets, if they take it to the limits.”

Eri nodded once. The lich could see her sister rewriting her doctoral thesis in her head, even as she tried to take everything in. “How do you do that?”

Kaori chuckled. “Well, the first part is finding your mana. You’re a mage, so you should already have a feeling on how to touch your mana. It is the same process as when you channel mana for your spells. However, instead of sending it out, as a cast, I want you to take it, and hold it, inside of you.”

Her sister took a breath, and closed her eyes. Kaori could feel the flow of the magic in the air as Eri began drawing it in. “Not too much. Not yet. As far as your body is concerned, you might as well be a starving man, suddenly finding an all-you-can-eat buffet. If you go too quickly, or take too much in at once, the results are not going to be pretty.”

“I-I feel it! I can feel it, Kaori! What do I do now?”

Kaori had to smile at Eri’s pure joy. She had been like that, once, when she’d first touched magic. Before the King slapped those collars on everyone. It was a heady experience, to feel that power inside you.

“Good. Now, I want you to picture that power you have, and picture it trickling out, into your body, going through every part of you. Your bones, your flesh. Your brain. Everything. Just a trickle, not all at once. Just a little at a time. Then, when you have the trickle started, I want you to start drawing in power again, but only enough to replace what you are letting trickle out.”

She took a breath. “It will feel odd, at first. Unnatural. And that is because it is. Or, at least, it isn’t natural for a nonmagical creature. Anything born of magic has a natural instinct for this, as natural to them as breathing is to you. But, over time, you’ll find it becomes more and more natural, and eventually, you’ll be able to continue doing it in your sleep.

“The end result? Well, your body will become stronger, faster, more agile, even without active spell buffs. You may also find your memory getting better, or finding you can think more quickly. Your senses may become more acute.

“The mana pathways you lay down as you allow the mana to permeate your body will grow, over time, like a stream becoming a river. And like a river, in emergencies, you can flood those pathways with mana greatly boosting your abilities temporarily, without spells, though you’ll suffer damage in the process. Flooding your pathways is not something to do on a whim. But, when you need that edge to survive the next few minutes, then it is worth the pain you’ll be feeling later.”

“And this flood comes from your pool, right?”

“Exactly. That little puddle you’re forming right now will eventually grow into a pool, and, if you’re lucky, an ocean. The deeper your pool, the more you can use it, both for spells and to flood your pathways. It is the reservoir for your Magick. Without it, you are limited to whatever your stream is capable of in the moment.”

Kaori infused magic into where her eyes used to be, allowing her to see the actual flow of magic in the air. “In the other world, anyone that could be shown to touch magic could draw it in, and build their pool. But that did not mean that everyone who could do that was a mage.

“It is, of course, possible to both send your mana to enhance your body, building a strong foundation with mighty pathways, while at the same time learning to channel magic outside you to cast mighty spells. In practice, though, there is only so much training one can do with a mortal life and mortal strengths and weaknesses. Specialization leads to an easier path to power, allowing you to reach greater heights in one field, rather than being barely adequate in all of them.

“And so, the two basic specializations arose, the path of the mage, and that of the warrior. One focused their magic outward, and the other inward. If a person had twenty units of magic, a mage might devote one to strengthening his body, and the rest to his art, and for the warrior it would be the opposite. In this way, a mage might gain an enhanced mind, from the pathways in their brain being particularly robust, while a warrior might be able to use special attacks, like a slash of his sword that cut foes twice again outside the reach of his blade.”

“But there had to be people who tried to mix and match, right?”

“Of course! There were many styles of hybrids, naturally. People who sacrificed the potential to be superb at one path by walking down both part of the way. Paladins, Hexblades, Spellswords, Sword Saints, and more, they were all hybrids, to differing degrees. A Paladin could never match a Priest for pure holy might, nor a warrior for pure martial prowess, but they had the strengths of both, and the weaknesses of neither.”

“So, you were a Necromancer, right? That means you focused on your spells?”

The lich chuckled. “Ah, well, I was a bit of a special case. You see, those comments I made earlier? I made quite certain to say that they applied to mortals. Once I became undead, I was freed from those limitations.

“I have not slept due to weariness in forty years. I can rest, or meditate, or enter a trance-like state if I wish, but I do not need to sleep like a mortal being. And so, I have had plenty of time to walk both paths. Even in the old world, there were only a few dozen creatures that could even wound me, and the number of beings that could pose a true threat I could count on both hands.”

She sighed. “Of course, part of that was thanks to the whole ‘hero’ bit. My growth was accelerated because of the enhanced potential the summoning gave me. In essence, I came to that world with my pathways fully formed, and my pool a lake merely waiting to be filled. We all did. And, once we started training, that natural head start grew accordingly.”

“So, why didn’t undead rule the world, if they were able to surpass mortals? And who, or what, was able to threaten you?”

Kaori sat back on the sofa and sighed, remembering bittersweet times. “Well, the greatest threat to me, on the continent I was on, at least, was Mieserrynth, Lord of Fire, Bane of Cities, Eater of Armies. He was a dragon who lived in the mountains on the far side of the Demon King’s kingdom of Haerth from the Free Kingdoms, but so long as no one entered his domain, he did not interfere with the outside world. This provided an ironclad defense to Haerth’s western border, and made it so that the only way the kingdom could expand was through the Free Kingdoms.

“The old wyrm was ten thousand years old, according to the stories, if he was a day, but even dragons are mortals. Oh, they may not die of old age, and they can go long periods without eating, but they still need to sleep. This does not hurt their power gain, as they continue gathering strength even as they sleep, but it is in the raw, unfocused way. And the older a dragon is, the more they sleep.”

She shook her head. “Anyways, the reason that an undead did not already rule the continent? Simply put, the ones that had a mind to do such things usually overreached, pushing too far, too fast, too soon. Kingdoms may have died in putting them down, but they would get put down. A lich’s army of corpses tended to leave signs as it was ‘recruiting’, and vampires or wights tended to let their diets get the better of them before they could live long enough to be truly powerful.

“And the ones that had the patience to grow? They were usually unconcerned with such things, like the wyrm was. Ancient guardians of tombs, or an archivist cataloguing a repository of ancient knowledge from an ancient civilization, or a ghost bound to haunt the land of their death. Whatever type they were, they were bound, either to a duty, a passion, or a place, and they did not strike against anyone who stayed out of their domain. Even so, many fell when the lands of the Free Kingdoms pushed against theirs.”

Kaori looked over to her sister with a wicked grin. “Tell you what. Would you like to see a sample of what an Archmage Archlich Hero can do? Assuming we can find someplace big enough to contain the light show.”