The Undying Magician - Book 3 - Chapter 9 - Mana Arc Conversion (Patreon)

                                           Nathan
                    Year 2850 | Month 4 | Day 6

“To start the process, drink some blood,” the skeleton says, so I grab a vial of blood and down it, making my bloodlust flare as my eyes begin glowing red and the black lines appear on my face. “Now focus inwards on your heart.”

I quickly focus my senses on my heart – one that no longer beats despite me being alive. A side effect of my being a pseudo vampire.

“See how your heart is the core of the miasma in your body? How it is filled with death mana to facilitate the miasma and generate more?” The skeleton says as I look at it, finding just that. And when I nod my head, he continues, “Drink more blood while looking at it. Watch what happens. And pay attention to your stomach as well.”

I take another sip of blood without removing my senses from my heart, quickly finding it to suddenly pulse the moment the blood hits my stomach and turns into miasma after touching the death mana there. And when my heart pulses, the miasma flowing through it starts flowing more fluently and with more efficiency, a tiny bit of the death mana that had been in the heart moving over to the stomach instead and making more room in my heart before that mana begins to regenerate.

“Now take another sip of the blood before using some of your mana to capture some of the death mana as it’s trying to reach your stomach,” the skeleton says, making me frown slightly.

But I do it, taking another sip and trying exactly what he says.

And the moment the fire mana makes contact with the death mana, the fire mana starts deteriorating and the death mana begins thrashing around, destroying my insides in the process and causing pain to radiate through my body. But the amount of pain isn’t enough to make me care beyond discomfort as it’s nowhere near the level of some of my experiments, or the aging process.

I push through, grabbing more mana from my arcs and moving it to the death mana to bottle it up, the pain continuously growing worse and worse through the process.

“After you capture the sliver of death mana, bring it over to your mana arc and it should do the rest of the work for you,” his voice continues. “Be warned that the pain will only grow worse as the death mana travels a path through your body it wasn’t intended to travel, killing all of the cells it passes through in the process.”

Just as he says, the pain rapidly shoots up as I bring the death mana through my body, all of the cells it touches dying in an instant only for them to heal just as quickly. And the pain this time is much worse than before. Bad enough that it is actually annoying.

Not enough to make me let out a sound though as I continue pushing it over to the closest mana arc in my body.

The moment the sliver of death mana makes contact with the arc though, a blazing pain flashes through my body. One that actually makes me let out a short cry as I drop to my knees. But even with this pain, I still manage to keep my focus on the arc that the death mana had touched.

What I find has my eyes opening widen in shock. Although that might also just be the pain. And I close them again just as quickly.

The arc of mana that used to be filled with fire mana is now slowly filled partially with death mana instead. But because the sliver of death mana I took was so small that it wasn’t even a third of an arc, it doesn’t convert the entire thing. And when I try to take some of the fire mana out of the arc after it finishes, nothing happens.

I frown at that, slightly relieved that the pain is gone.

“This process will completely convert whichever arcs you send the death mana to into arcs of death mana that will regenerate and act as if your affinity for that particular arc was death mana instead of fire,” Adalwolf explains as I watch the mana in the arc rotate with the death mana mixed in. “It’ll probably take about three or four slivers of death mana for each arc to be converted, and you should be able to convert them back through doing the same thing but with a sliver of fire mana instead.”

Holy shit… that’s… wow.

I repeat the process a few times, grimacing each time the death mana reaches the arc. Eventually the arc of mana fully becomes an arc of death mana instead of fire mana. So I try to pull some of the death mana out just like I would fire mana from one of my normal arcs, and it works exactly like if it was one of my regular fire mana arcs.

My eyes open wide with awe as I focus on the skeleton and mutter, “I have two elements now…”

He nods while writing something down on a tablet.

I purse my lips and rub my chin slightly in thought before closing my eyes again and looking at the death mana arc. The thing is full of the black and purple death mana, and honestly looks rather intimidating.

When I pull out a sliver of the death mana from the arc and move it through my body, it still continues to kill my cells it passes through, but not at the rate it was doing so before. Which likely means that my body develops a tolerance to death mana the more arcs of mana I have converted to death mana.

“I would like to do a few tests on the death mana after you convert a few other arcs,” he raises his head from the tablet. “Which should be easier to do now that you have an arc of death mana and don’t need to pull it from your heart anymore.”

I nod my head at that, understanding that he deserves the test results considering that he’s the one who taught me how to do this in the first place.

But…

“As long as the tests aren’t over the top, then fine,” I answer him, narrowing my eyes slightly on the words ‘over the top,’ since I don’t want him going overboard.

“Of course,” he answers, his voice sounding as if he were a scientist like he always sounds when he is talking magic and experiments. “And I’ll give you a few death magic spells to alter for your own use once you have enough arcs converted.”

I can’t help but grin at that.

Now that will be useful. I was not looking forward to having to spend time making a bunch of basic spells for death mana and figuring out how to use it on my own.

But with his spells already made, I can just alter them for myself. And hopefully he can teach me a bit more about the death element.

Actually, come to think of it, my understanding of the fire element has lagged behind.

I should spend some time understanding it better to improve my usage of fire spells.

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