The Undying Magician - Book 3 - Chapter 8 - Results (Patreon)

                                                             Nathan
                                      Year 2850 | Month 4 | Day 6

Over the course of a month, I spend my days split between the Undying Caverns and the Dark Forest as the skeleton performs tests on me – none of which are harmful to me at all – until today where the very first thing he says when I enter his treant is, “I’ve figured it out.”

My eyes widen with both shock and glee.

“Then tell me,” I state, not bothering with pleasantries since I know by now the man actually prefers blunt answers.

The skeleton closes the book he had open in his bony hand before answering, “I’ll say this now, but you’re not likely to be able to use any space or time spells in the near future. Not until you at least become a Class A magician.”

I wince at that, the words not really being what I wanted to hear.

“But to answer your question, I have figured out a way to trick your body for long enough to use a spell with the time and space mana,” he explains as he pulls out some sort of magi-tech board and has it float to land on the ground, following which is shows an X-ray image of my body along with the time and space mana, especially that of it in my bones. “The easiest way to use the time or space mana in your body is through you eating something, detaching it for a very short period of time during which you must carefully use your own mind and the typical visualization process you use to train mana arcs to grab at the time or space mana inside. But while you’re grabbing it, you also have to force a significant quantity of your own mana to replace it.”

I close my eyes and begin doing just that after reaching into my pocket, grabbing a vial of blood, and taking a sip of it. But I only manage to drag out a ninth of a single arc of time mana, and even then I only barely have enough mana to replace it out of my entire set of mana arcs. And after I replace it, the sliver of time mana fades away thanks to not being a full arc, just as slivers of arcs always do when they aren’t being used in a spell. Then the fire mana I had put in my bones to replace it slowly morphs into time mana somehow as the time and space mana merges back into one, the effect of my bloodlust going away.

I open my eyes again to find the skeleton nodding as he says, “As you can see, to be able to make any use of the time or space mana in your body, you’ll have to be able to pull out entire arcs of mana at a time. But you can’t do that without having at an estimate around nine hundred or so arcs of mana. The amount a Class A magician has at the very least.”

That has me sighing with regret.

Then again, the very fact that I’ll be able to use the two elements is a boon in and of itself, even if it won’t be for who knows how long.

“Don’t be too disappointed, while you won’t be able to use time or space mana for a while, you can use death mana,” the skeleton says, a slightly scary glint shining in his flaming eye sockets. “The process to use it is quite similar, but also different at the same time. This time you’ll be eating something to raise the activity of the death mana in your body, and then you’ll be able to more easily interact with it and draw it out. But this one you won’t have to replace with any other sort of mana.”

My eyes widen with a hint of excitement to them. But that excitement dies down just a tad when he adds, “Although the process will likely hurt, and the death mana will need to regenerate just like your regular arcs of mana.”

“If it’s only pain, then I’m fine,” I state with a wave of my hand.

“I thought so,” the skeleton says, nodding his head once. Then his expression – which I’ve learned to read over the time I have spent with him despite it just being his eyes and jaw location that actually change – takes a dark turn as he adds, “Now, if only I had a way to get rid of your average talent, you really would be the perfect creature.”

“Wait, can you?” I can’t help but ask, feeling a glimmer of hope.

Hope that is crushed when he shakes his head and says, “No. If your body wasn’t locked in time, then I would be able to. But the only reason I could turn you into a mutant was because of the time and space mana infused into the mutagen. And that mutagen was a completely random incident that came about by an experiment with various other magicians working on it and random chance thanks to a space magician opening a hole to the plane of time. Something like that isn’t repeatable.” He glances at me, “Unless you could somehow convince a Class S poison magician and another Class S space magician to assist me in an experiment that will most likely fail and would take a long time to complete?”

I shake my head.

That’s impossible. Especially since the Doctor is the only known space magician currently alive today.

“Unfortunate,” he says with a shake of his head. “Perhaps it would be fruitful to capture your doctor and force him to… no, there would be too many chances for him to ruin the experiment, and he doesn’t have any reason to help. Best to get rid of him if you get the chance in the future.”

“Agreed,” I answer as the board that he used to show the process that I had just done earlier shifts to show the death mana in my body.

“In that case, I’ll start teaching you how to separate some of the death mana and store it into your arcs in the place of your fire mana,” he says while motioning to the board.

Not what I was hoping for, but still something that I can use. Death mana is powerful after all.

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