The Undying Magician - Book 3 - Chapter 15 - Successful Negotiations and Elemental Knowledge (Patreon)

                                                                 Nathan
                                           Year 2850 | Month 4 | Day 20

I tap my finger against my wrist, my hands held behind my back as I watch the negotiator scramble to get something out of our negotiation. Something likely meant to establish a deeper connection between us and the outer ring.

They really want to spy on us, don’t they?

Although I have to admit, the look on his face when he heard I could already clear out miasma was perfect. Worth taking time out of my experiments to check out this negotiation.

Also, Claire really is a good negotiator. I’m glad I got her working under me.

She makes managing this little budding settlement easy for me. Mostly because she’s the one who really manages it. I just say yes or no to some big decisions and make a few rules.

A rather nice way of ruling a place.

Have someone else rule it in my stead and instead just sit there and veto any decisions I don’t like.

Claire aside, this magician across from me has been very strange the entire time he’s been here. I can literally smell his anger and hear his heart beating loudly. Smell and hear his pulse rising along with his blood pressure.

But despite all of that, he hasn’t shown much if any anger throughout this entire negotiation.

A rather impressive feat, if I’m being honest.

The two continue negotiating back and forth, but the guy never really gets much out of us. So in the end all we make in terms of deals between us is a simple trade of my mercenary services for knowledge on fire magic, along with the magics of everyone else at the base.

I would’ve had Claire get knowledge on time and space magic too, but there’s never been a time magician before, and the only space magicians are either long dead or are currently terrorizing the Republic.

So there aren’t many if any magicians who even have knowledge on the elements in question.

Which is both a pity and not at the same time, considering how dangerous those elements are.

On the other hand, I realized that I don’t actually need their knowledge on death magic and that asking them for it might make them consider whether I can use death mana or not even if it’s public knowledge that people can only have one affinity.

I can just have the skeleton teach me what he knows about death magic. A better idea overall for more than just secrecy, considering that it’s firsthand knowledge instead of knowledge he probably gave to the nobles in the first place.

After a few more minutes of the rather pitiful looking magician trying to get some sort of deal that will let him develop an actual tie to my Caverns, he finally gives up, sends Claire a glare, and leaves with his soldiers. And I notice Claire smirking at his back when he does so.

Those two really get along, don’t they?

I smirk slightly in amusement at the thought before turning to Claire and telling her, “Good job.” Then I turn around and leave myself in the direction of my lab without giving her the chance to respond.

With that nuisance out of the way, I can go back to studying my death magic spells. And then I can spend some more time familiarizing myself with fire. Something that’s made a lot easier when I can just burn myself to familiarize myself with it.

My understanding of fire has already progressed a good amount due to this over the time I’ve been on this continent. Even if some of it wasn’t on purpose and was instead due to failed experiments.

From what I remember in class, understanding of your affinity comes in several stages. There’s a basic understanding, an intermediate level of understanding, advanced level, master level, and a perfect level of understanding of your own elemental affinity.

Generally though, only Class S magicians ever reach a perfect level of understanding, and even amongst them, I’ve only heard of two to have done it. Both of whom are dead now.

Even the doctor supposedly only has a master level of understanding, same as the skeleton.

And with every level of understanding comes a threshold that you have to break past to get to the next level. Some sort of difficult sort of inspiration or whatever that you need to get that basically improves the quality of your mana in your body along with your ability to manipulate it. It also partially merges your element into your body itself, making you partially immune to your own element. Or at least resistant to it.

My understanding of fire is only still at the basic level, even if I feel it’s getting close to the intermediate level.

It probably would’ve taken longer to get this close to the threshold if I wasn’t immortal though. Since I can experience fire firsthand whenever I want and the pain doesn’t even bother me anymore.

I nod my head to the guards standing guard at my lab before walking inside and heading to the back where I was previously experimenting with death magic. Basically killing a bunch of plants as my test subjects, testing just how lethal death mana is when it touches something with varying amounts of mana.

So far my experiments have led me to reach a rather obvious conclusion.

Death mana is dangerous. It basically has the same effect as necrosis, killing off the living cells of whatever it touches. Although it doesn’t have any direct effect on non-living things like fire mana does.

Death magic is probably the most dangerous magic to a living being in existence since it directly kills the cells it touches. Even just a tiny little spec of death mana, less than a single arc, will kill quite a few cells.

That said, the only way to affect a non-living thing with death mana same as miasma, is to have enough of it that you can use it as a concussive blast. But death mana, unlike miasma, can pass through armor and stuff like that on an atomic level, so it is probably the most dangerous type of mana in direct combat with another magician or living person.

Then there’s the whole ‘can’t die’ thing for someone with a death magic affinity. And while I’m not sure if that includes me or not considering that I can use death mana, it doesn’t really matter since I can’t die anyways.

Anyways, I sit down at the end of the table lined with potted plants and resume my experiments.

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