Chapter 65 A frustrating Field (Patreon)

Before too long, the Heirs were on their way back to the Adventurer’s guild. The new weapons were all stowed away in Sarah and Aarl’s dimensional pouches, and they strolled down the hill chatting and being cheerful. There hadn’t been any alcohol, so Nathan was even completely sober.

They arrived back at their suite of rooms in a celebratory mood, with Aarl especially not wanting to sit down and relax. He pulled out the twin swords again, examining their shining curves in the main room while the rest of the Heirs sat down on the various couches.

Sarah asked the obvious question. “What mana types are you thinking of having imbued?”

Aarl looked up from the swords, and turned towards Stella. “It seems best to have mana types that could be recharged by Stella? I realize I am assuming your willingness to help me.”

Stella blew a raspberry and waved her hand at him. “Truly the most difficult task.” Then she sobered. “I would agree to charge your weapons for as long as we are on the same team.”

Aarl nodded back seriously. “In that case, I believe force would be an obvious choice. An unbreakable blade that extends the size of the sword and cuts with such a fine edge would be powerful.” He looked down again, considering the swords in his hands.

“But I don’t believe that I should do that to both swords. It does seem like I should limit myself to mana types you have available, so that recharging is easier.

“Fire seems a lesser choice, but better than air. Herdin made it sound like air would be actively harmful to the weapon unless we’re worried about poison gas. Earth mana does not seem an option. I find myself hoping that your Insight of lightning is going well.” Aarl grinned expectantly at Nathan and Stella.

Stella rolled her head around, flipping her braid over her shoulder. “Fine! Fine! Let’s get on with it. Nathan? It’s time to teach me of Lightning.”

Nathan nodded agreeably and cracked his neck as he sat down next to Stella. He spoke to the other Heirs. “Fair enough. We’re close, might get to it as soon as tomorrow. This probably won’t be too interesting to y’all, so you might want to find something else to do.”

Then he focused on the lessons of electricity and magnetism. They had already gone through some practical exercises with the generator, and Stella understood that things were more complicated than they seemed, having messed around magnets and charge enough to accept that there were invisible, hidden forces moving things around.

And it was up to Nathan to explain what those forces were. He needed to connect the math he’d been teaching Stella to the evidence of her eyes. He’d been taught to do a full derivation of all of Maxwell’s laws, and he wanted to instill at least a bit of the logic of those processes into Stella, if not necessarily walk through every aspect of the math.

But math was just a language for describing the world precisely, and Nathan was going to take it as far as he could. His [Lecturing] was certainly helping out - concepts were easier to explain than they should have been, and Stella was likely to interpret Nathan correctly when he made things ambiguous. Honestly, Nathan wasn’t sure how much of that was his Skill and how much of it was Stella being smart.

Regardless, Nathan wanted to start with describing how electric and magnetic fields were generated. Over that evening, Nathan walked Stella through the first two of Maxwell’s laws, governing how electric charges created electric electric fields and magnetic dipoles produced magnetic fields. Nathan was glad to revisit the ideas and go through the math behind them.

He’d always found it elegant that under Gauss’s law, static electric fields were created by imbalances of charge, while the law for magnetism basically meant that there were no imbalances of magnetic sources and sinks. If you broke a magnet in half between the two poles, you created new poles at either side of the break point.

The math was almost supplementary to helping Stella create the right kind of field simulation with her magic. They went out to the practice field, where Stella left a few glowing orbs in the air to illuminate the darkened area. Nathan was sure to close and latch the gate before they moved to the far side of the practice area, under the 70-foot drop that Nathan felt so well-acquainted with.

Then Nathan helped Stella understand how a charge moved in the presence of electric and magnetic fields. He used his spear to write out the equations in the sand. Then he had Stella conjure up some simulated fields and traced how a charge would spiral around magnetic field lines via the right-hand-rule. Electric field flow was a bit easier, since a charge would follow electric field lines towards an opposite charge, or away from a similar charge.

Part of the trick was to explain how most fields were not simple, but that multiple contiguous sources tended to complicate real-world problems enough that applying the math was hard.

This is really so much easier to explain with a 3-dimensional model. I’m jealous. I had to learn by drawing X’s and bullseyes on paper.

{Low-tier Lecturing 10 achieved!}

Yay.

They left off there for the evening, though Stella wanted to keep going. She was starting to see the elegance of the way electricity and magnetism worked together, orthogonal yet complementary to each other. And she was hungry to complete the puzzle.

Oh I can’t wait until I get through Ampere’s law and Faraday's law and show her that light is a combined electromagnetic wave. That realization is mind-blowing.

But, it was getting late, and Nathan reminded Stella that they still had time. He wasn’t planning on running off into the wilderness anytime soon, after all. He’d prefer to come back to this tomorrow, when they were fresh. She looked frustrated, but acceded to his request.

—

The next morning, Stella was anxious. They did their exercises and she managed to keep her peace, though Nathan almost caught her asking him multiple times while they were running. Despite the fact that it was hard to talk because of how hard they were exercising.

She kept silent over breakfast, looking at the other teams around them sullenly.

Finally, as they were leaving class, she asked Nathan if he’d skip class to teach her math.

Ok, that’s just hilarious. I’ve skipped class for other things. But never to do math. Well. I think I was late to class a few times because I was busy doing math, but that’s different.

The rest of the Heirs teased her about it, and Stella just pouted and murmured. “But I wanna learn about lightning.”

Nathan raised his hand respectfully. “That’s a pretty great argument. Still, after lunch. We have time.”

Nathan was glad they hadn’t skipped class - they were learning more about Giantsrest and what forces they would deploy on the field. The military might of Giantsrest was primarily in its mages, who had an almost feudal-like structure, with the Archmages of the Ascendent Academy standing at the peak.

Then there were various tiers of researchers, lecturers and proctors beneath them, owing their loyalty and education to their sponsors above. The pattern continued on down to the lowest of students, who typically were the children of existing mages. It was common for male mages to have a lot of kids in Gaintsrest, which sure didn’t diminish his hatred of the place.

The more Nathan heard about the Ascendent Academy, the more he felt like it exemplified the worst excesses of academia back on Earth. People fought tooth and nail to climb the pile. Once they were atop it there they had ultimate authority over those below them, bordered only by others of the same authority. It seemed a life of polite violence, with brutal politics that could lead to you being demoted, killed or mind-controlled if you misstepped. You trod on those below to ascend, wary of being backstabbed by those at your side or squashed by those above.

Apparently the Enslavement mages who raided from Giantsrest or managed its slaves were considered ‘lesser’ mages, since they had needed to leave the Academy to pursue riches or recognition. The highest calling for a Giantsrest Mage was to ascend to being an Archmage, rich with magic and wealth. The ‘best’ way to do this was by demonstrating magical genius with your learning and original projects. That would let you catch the eye of somebody above you, who would count on your support when you rose in power.

And that was because Giantsrest also fought duels. Many of their duels weren’t dangerous, focusing on judging magical power and control with only reputation on the line. Of course, when a low reputation could result in somebody [Dominate]-ing you with no consequences, their duels were hardly without stakes.

What a damn snake pit. And it’s all based on magical might.

Nathan found the discussion of the structure of the Ascendent Academy helpful to understand his enemy. However, this lesson was focused on what made up the military might of Giantsrest.

Almost every Giantsrest mage would know [Mage Armor], and most of them had force mana as well. In contrast to Gemore traditions of Force mana, the Giantsrest force constructs tended to be invisible, but smaller and somewhat harder to pierce. Most Giantsrest mages could cast basic mental spells like [Paralysis] and [Daze], with spells after that depending on the specific build and mana types of the mage in question.

Enslavement mages with [Mass Daze] or [Dominate] were fairly common in Giantsrest forces, and they tended to have several spells focused on controlling a group of enemies and preventing them from closing the distance.

Aside from mages, Giantsrest didn’t have much of a formal army. They had no standing forces - not even of slave soldiers. Instead it was all just the personal possessions of various Archmages and the mages below them. The relevant ‘possessions’ being slave soldiers and golems.

Golems were expensive, and usually required one or more people to be sacrificed to empower the golem core with motive force. But, they were strong, hard to kill and their bodies could be further enchanted. Excellent guards, but their lack of flexibility and mobility in rough terrain tended to be a problem in the guerrilla wars that Gemore liked to fight.

The slave soldiers were mostly pretty uniform - they weren’t supposed to win fights, they were supposed to prevent anybody from running up to the Giantsrest mages while they were casting their spells. They tended to be lower-performing servants or artisans who were considered expendable. That meant they didn’t tend to have specialized martial classes.

The slave soldiers were mostly armed with a big shield and a spear. But the mental spells used to control them were brutal and left fairly little in the way of autonomous thought. The slave soldiers wouldn’t break until the mage commanding them was dead and the fight was obviously lost, at which point they would lie down and die.

I know enough military history to know that being unbreakable is incredibly important to large-scale conflicts. Morale is to the physical as three is to one and all that. No wonder Gemore doesn’t fight Giantsrest in the open field.

There were some specialized slave soldiers - different Giantsrest mages had their personal forces trained in different ways according to their whims. Some archmages had cadres of specialized archers, assassins, heavily armored linebreakers and more. They were trained from birth along specific lines, guided towards specific classes and could be terrifyingly potent.

I think those guys are going to be my biggest weakness. I probably stand a good chance against an Archmage in a confined area right now if they don’t already know to use non-conjured elemental magic against me. And I’m only going to get stronger. But one of those elite slave soldiers could probably take me apart. Something to watch out for.

Finally, there were the slavemasters. These formed what middle class there was in Giantsrest, and tended to be middle management and overseers where more initiative was required but a full mage wasn’t justified. The overseers weren’t often seen in combat situations except for slave raids, where their specialized classes helped get new slaves organized and moving quickly.

I don’t think I’ll have a problem with killing them too.

After that enlightening lesson, the Heirs had an enjoyable lunch, where Stella encouraged everybody to eat quickly so they could get to the practice fields as quickly as possible. Aarl and Sarah went back for seconds, then thirds that they didn’t really eat while Stella glared.

They still left the dining hall earlier than most, and beelined for the private training area.

There, Nathan finally turned to the derivations and logic behind Ampere’s law and Faraday’s law. Stella already accepted from seeing the generator that a moving magnetic field could move charge to make current, but unifying all of it and describing the surface integral so that she got it was taking a little while. It was the nice part of tutoring somebody one-on-one - you could ask questions socratically and be sure they understood everything, and weren’t just nodding along.

While this was ongoing, the rest of the Heirs were doing various kinds of weapons practice or running drills. Sarah had worked up some dummy cartridges from spent casings, and was practicing rapidly reloading the revolvers, as well as incorporating them into her usual cycling of weapons. Nathan knew she was planning on going out into Old Gemore with Stanel and Beatred later to practice with the rifle at long ranges.

Khachi was working on quickly summoning divine mana to enhance his shield and hammer without requiring a lengthy prayer. He had gotten much quicker on the shield, but was having trouble imbuing the divine power into his hammer as quickly. Aarl was going through sword drills with the new sabers, getting an exact feel for their weight and also working out the best ways to draw them from his pouch nearly instantaneously.

Finally, Nathan was satisfied that Stella had understood Faraday’s law, and why changing magnetic flux caused a voltage over a wire.

Then it was time for the Heirs to break and go to individual tutoring. Stella was walking towards her parents but looked back towards Nathan with a twinkle in her eye. ‘I’ll be right back.”

She exchanged a few quick words with them, pointing back towards Nathan. Dalo looked like he was starting to argue while Kullal raised her hands placatingly. Then, Stella turned and stormed back towards Nathan while Dalo shot him an admonishing look.

The short red-haired mage waved to her parents without looking back, then walked up to Nathan. She gestured back to the practice area. “Let’s keep going. I want to figure this out today.”

Overall Status:

{Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Magic Absorption 6

Permanent Talent 2: High-tier Regeneration 6

Talent 3: None

Class: Spellbreaker Juggernaut level 52

Class skills:

Stamina: 620/620

Juggernaut's Wrath

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Juggernaut's Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Utility skills:

High-tier Focused Mind 6

Mid-tier Earnestness 9

Mid-tier Sprinting 5

Mid-tier Spellsense 7

Mid-tier Notice 6

Mid-tier Identify 4

Mid-tier Dodging Footwork 3

Mid-tier Enhanced Memory 10

Low-tier Lecturing 10

Low-tier Tumbling 9}