Chapter 33 Burning Questions (Patreon)

The next few days were peaceful. They sat around in the desolate mountains, occasionally hunting and keeping watch for any further probes from Giantsrest. None appeared, but the threat of Giantsrest seemed to grow more real by the day.

More obvious was the Fortress of the Face, lighting the pass with flickering light day and night, though the fire elemental never reappeared. The enormous statue of the beautiful woman’s face was always there, seeming to stare at them with flaming eyes.

The tension grew, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Everybody tried to distract themselves with hobbies. Nathan spent a good deal of his time working on the [Regeneration] manual. Instead of leaving it out he gave the notes to Khachi for safekeeping and feedback.

They all tried to hang out and chat about things like normal, but it felt like a hollow effort at distraction. Sometimes it worked for a while and they’d get caught up in a discussion about the ecology of stalkers or how the technology of earth could be used on Davrar. But then the conversation would lapse, and a nervous silence would follow. It was clear they were all thinking the same thing.

In a few days, we fight in a battle larger than any we’ve ever seen. If we lose, Halsmet and Gemore will be enslaved.

They trained as much as ever, but with a stoic certainty instead of anything resembling desperation. They were all well over level 81, and had picked up every possible skill rank and Development you could get from training. Nobody was going to Develop a pivotal new Talent.

Instead they focused on practicing their current skills, gaining that extra little bit of polish that would help an ability shine. It wasn’t anything that would make a huge difference, but every little bit counted.

There was one exception, and that was Nathan teaching Stella magic. He thought she was so close to figuring out how to use light and plasma mana to make a laser. She could do bright beams of light that burned their way through things, but Nathan was willing to bet that with a proper laser setup she could manage something that would be better described by the phrase “death ray.”

After one somewhat frustrating session in the evening, Stella turned to Nathan with a bullish look on her face. “Some time ago you mentioned Insights too dangerous to teach. Ones that would lead to blasphemous destruction.”

The light of the far-off dungeon reflected in her eyes, reflected flame replacing the purple glare of the mana she’d been channeling. “Would that Insight let me destroy the Giantsrest army?”

Nathan sat down heavily, contemplating her question and the implications of his answer. A nuclear spell could definitely destroy an army, but that didn’t mean he wanted to teach her how to mess around with atoms.

After a pregnant pause, Nathan spoke with an unhappy grimace. “Yes, it could.”

Stella didn’t say anything, just looked at him expectantly.

He clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back, looking up at the swirls of cloud that partially obscured the worldscape above. “It’s… yeah. A spell like that could destroy an army. If you can learn it in time. I haven’t wanted to teach it to you before, but maybe I should reconsider with that army on the way...”

I’ve been deliberately avoiding teaching her about molecules and atoms. If we wanted to go to the nuclear option, I’d need to start there. Then describe what an atom is, and how to split one apart - or fuse them. You get energy by fusing anything lighter than iron, or splitting anything heavier. The ingredients from fusion are pretty easy to find, but if you split gold it’ll still generate energy. It’ll be more controllable, but would produce more radiation, I think.

But could she pull it off in just a few days? She might be able to do it with charges. Generate a plasma and intentionally slam atoms together, or yank apart the individual protons inside atoms. It might work, but won’t be simple and it would probably be hard to do at a distance.

Nathan shivered as he considered ideas for helping his friend turn a gold coin into a bomb that would make a mile-high radioactive fireball.

Stella caught the gesture but didn’t push, patiently waiting for him to finish his thinking. The other Heirs had heard her question and were listening intently, not sure what to expect.

Let’s think about the moral and safety issues separately. First, am I ok with Stella being able to blow up a city? She’s been a bit less… power mad since everything that happened in Halsmet. She just gained a mental protection skill that hopefully means she can’t be mind-controlled into blowing up cities or giving up this Insight. The oncoming army is a clear and present target that I have no qualms about nuking. If it could just not exist that would be great, and a nuke spell would be one way to make that happen. I can always ask her to swear to never use it on a city full of people.

What about safety? If we focus on building a containment spell first then maybe we could handle it. But that would take time to do right. Probably more time than we have.

He sighed heavily. “I don’t know if we could do it in just a few days. I’m worried about doing it safely. This is the kind of magic that your dad was terrified of, and it’s more dangerous than almost anything else I can think of.”

Except maybe somehow generating antimatter. But I’ve got no idea how we would even start trying to do that.

He met Stella’s eyes. “I’m sorry I’m reluctant. This Insight almost destroyed my world. The way you think about Endings - that’s this Insight, to me. It gives people the power to destroy the world. Once it’s known, it feels like only a matter of time until somebody somewhere with power has a bad day and decides that today is the day the world ends. Maybe this Insight spreading is what causes the next Ending. The history of my world infecting yours.”

Stella’s expression had transformed into a grimace as Nathan spoke, and her mouth was a wry grimace as she opened it to respond.

Nathan raised a finger to signal he wasn’t done. “That’s not a no. It’s better to have a tool you don’t need than to not have it when you need it. This might not be the last army we need to destroy.”

The Heirs looked on in surprise at Nathan’s words, and Stella’s scowl became an anticipatory smile. “Brightness shines in my eyes.” She snorted. “Now, give me the cost of waking this dungeon.”

Are we really doing this? I wish I’d done it weeks ago, so we had a solution to that army that wasn’t the Adventurers fighting and dying against the Questor of Giantsrest.

Nathan grimaced, thinking through the challenges ahead of them “That invisible death your dad talked about - every spell using this Insight will generate it. We’ll need to talk about containment and protection, as well as how to only activate this spell from far away. Even a tiny version of one of these spells will make one of your fireballs look like a tiny match.”

Stella nodded seriously, appearing attentive and accepting of what he was saying. But inside he could tell she was just bubbling over with excitement, ready to dive into a new field of magic.

I get that. I’m excited to see what magic can do with these Insights too. But I wish she was a little bit more scared of it, or at least a bit more experienced with magnetic, force and electricity mana. We’d be less likely to become radioactive dust riding a mushroom cloud.

Khachi interjected, a frown on his face. “If this Insight is such a prophecy of death, I do not agree with sharing it. You and Dalo shared the same target in agreeing to smother this Insight. It has been only days, but now you seek to leave that path.”

The wolfman shrugged stolidly. “But this Insight is your hoard to distribute - and your responsibility should it be misused. Hear me, I hope that neither of you are responsible for greater evil than this spell can do good. By the dead gods, don’t bring the Endings upon us. We swore to defeat them, not speed them up.”  His glance at Stella wasn’t wholly benevolent, but she was too focused on Nathan to note the implication.

In fact, Stella seemed to have barely heard Khachi at all. Nathan eyed her eager expression worriedly, suddenly indecisive.

If she has this Insight, she’s going to use it. Even if it’s not on an enemy, she’s going to want to blow up a mountain. And then the knowledge of this Insight is out. Every mage that hears about it will try to track us down and take it, or recreate it on their own. Dalo already has some knowledge of nuclear magic, just not the Insights to use it in anything but the most crude ways. If people know more is possible, it just takes one smart mage to figure it out in some way. And then we’ve got the next Ending.

He remembered Kia’s prophecy. “The outcome will determine when the Ending of History begins.” What if that line didn’t refer to the battle, but to this choice, here and now. If Nathan taught Stella nuclear magic, then he was opening a giant can of worms regardless of the oaths she swore.

If Stella starts tossing around nuke spells, war changes. Even if we manage to limit the information and only she can cast the spell, it still changes everything. Both our enemies and allies will make strategic plans around her magic. Stella probably won’t be able to adventure anymore. She would be too important.

Sarah spoke up, idly twirling her knife through her fingers. “This question seems heavier than a castlebear. But I’ll ask a lighter one.” She glanced between Nathan and Stella. “Can you really teach it before the army gets here? Is it the better path to finish the Insight of these ‘lasers’ you were working on?”

She’s giving me an out, and she’s not wrong.

Nathan blew out a breath, then nodded. “We can’t do this that quickly. Not safely. There are at least three or four individual Insights before we get to the truly destructive spells, and a lot of ways to die on the path.”

A high groan emitted from Stella’s mouth, like she was a boiling kettle.

“If we rush, then we’ll probably all die.” Nathan said. “The only way to do this safely is slowly. There are a lot of precautions and safety steps.”

“Well, that seems like a reason to fart ice.” Aarl had been passively watching the conversation, but the latest comment had drawn his attention. “Learning cataclysmic magic with an army charging down on us seems like baiting the castlebear to me. There must be other solutions.”

Stella hunched down, putting her arms over her head. “True aim. I want to learn it, but now is a bad time. Let’s think of other ways to kill the problem.”

The fire of the Fortress of the Face flickered across the pass, and Nathan’s eyes narrowed. “I’m five levels away from 243 on [Implacable Antimage]. If I fight the dungeon, then I will probably get there.”

“Harpy’s tits.” Sarah said. “I thought I was blazing my path. I’m at 204.”

“197 here!” Aarl chipped in, seeming unbothered to be a few levels behind his sister.

Stella smirked at both of them. “I’m at 219. Crushing the mages of Giantsrest who seek to challenge my natural magic is worth adamant to Davrar.”

Khachi’s eyebrows raised. “I am level 176. Advancing rapidly by any measure, but not as fast as my teammates I see.” He turned his attention to Nathan. “Congratulations on your rapid leveling. Killing your enemies has that effect.”

Is it just me, or has he gotten more judgemental as he’s attuned himself more to the shard of the god of righteous battle?

Sarah cast a wry look towards Nathan. “Funny to hear you proposing fighting the dungeon after refusing it caused Brox to leave.”

Nathan rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, don’t remind me. I still think it’s dangerous, but less than trying to figure out the city-destroying magic in just a few days. The class Development will give me an advantage if I have to fight Badud. It might not be the ideal place to develop [Airwalking], but I can probably make it work for that too.”

“This Giant is not solely ours to slay.” Khachi’s voice was emphatic. “The power of the Adventurers is behind us, and we do not bear the weight of this battle alone. We freed Halsmet, but we do not need to be the champions of every victory.”

He looked around at the other Heirs, brows drawn down. “What would our parents say, if they knew we considered challenging an unapproved dungeon for the levels? What of Jolba?”

Stella blew air through pursed lips. “Hear me, that elemental scares me. It almost killed us when it was hungry. How much worse will it be in its lair, fighting for its life?”

Nathan grimaced. They all had a point. It had been hammered into them that dungeons were dangerous, and you never went in one without a plan and approval from the guild. They weren’t about to get that approval now, even if they explained how close Nathan was to his class Development.

It’d be a damn big risk, no matter how you look at it.

Aarl bore a pensive look. “Hold. Let us consider other options for the battle, ones with less risk.” He frowned around the landscape for a moment. “I just had an idea - what was Kia’s prophecy again?”

Nathan’s eyebrows raised as he recited the prophecy from memory, then listened to Aarl’s proposal.

–

Nathan and Stella spent a lot more time working on the laser Insight. They quickly achieved results, but they weren’t exactly what Nathan was hoping for. It was basically a light spell with extra steps.

Granted, the resulting beam of light was well-collimated, which meant that it didn’t diffuse much over long distances - but the spell wasn’t much stronger than Stella’s normal beams of magical light. They could effectively blind enemies and burn skin, but they wouldn’t be incinerating their targets anytime soon.

After the latest test, she kicked a rock in frustration, watching it bounce down the slope. “The reflection part of the spell isn’t working well enough! It can’t hold the light in long enough for the energy to build up. A good [Mage Armor] can block this spell.”

Nathan frowned, deep in thought. He wouldn’t have been able to contribute much without his mana senses, but because of them he could tell what Stella was talking about. He also didn’t think the reflection was the fundamental problem. “I think the real issue is that the lasing medium is too impure. We’re just using atmospheric plasma. It should work, but different components start emitting earlier than others. All the energy you pump in gets bled off at lower intensities by the contaminants, so it doesn’t properly lase.”

“Are those words? Or is this all a blasphemous trick?” Aarl’s voice was dry as he polished his armor, though it didn’t seem to need it.

“Hear me, I’m not sure.” Sarah said in reply. “But the spell keeps changing, so they’re either speaking twisted sense or it’s a bigger joke than I can expect.”

Stella frowned at them and tossed a gust of wind at the twins that set their hair fluttering. Then she turned to Nathan again. “But how do we fix it? Do I have to purify the gas? We figured out how to do that, but it takes such a long time that the spell wouldn't be useful in a fight.”

Nathan shrugged. “The lightning capacitor spell also takes a long time to prep, and that was pretty useful. At the very least this will tell us if I’m right and we need to figure out the lasing medium, or if it’s more important to work on the reflective part of the spell.”

Stella sighed and dispelled the magic that maintained the mirrored tube of plasma they’d been using for experimentation. She isolated an area about the size of a person and started casting the air magic spell that would draw the oxygen out. It was a spell they’d worked out a long time ago based on some Insights from Stella’s parents and some input from Nathan. They’d never had the chance to use it, since the spell was slow, imperfect and easily disrupted. It only removed about three-quarters of the oxygen in an area, and any wind or movement in the area would disrupt the effect.

All of that should have been a problem on the gusty mountaintop, but Stella was a powerful mage used to thinking laterally to solve problems. After the initial spell she built a shell of force shields to protect her bubble of altered gas, then layered several oxygen-removal spells to speed up the effect.

Then she turned her attention back to Nathan. “I need to tune this spell to remove other gasses, right? All except the one that we want. Which one is that?”

“We probably want nitrogen.  I think nitrogen plasma emits in the near-UV and it should be the most common gas.”

Assuming Davrar’s atmosphere is like Earth’s. So far assumptions like that have held. What else could the filler gas be? If it was oxygen or carbon dioxide then I would be dead. If it was helium I’d be squeaky. Argon would be possible, I suppose.

They spent nearly an hour setting up a dense mesh of spellwork to freeze out the water and carbon dioxide, then pull out the argon. The spells ended up conflicting with each other and having to be layered through a series of intermediate shells.

Nathan stared at the abomination of spellwork floating in the air in front of him. “Yeah, this is never gonna be a combat spell.”

“Maybe I can store the resulting gas in a dimensional pouch and pull it out when I want the laser spell.” Stella wrinkled her nose, straining to maintain so many different spells. “My parents would fart ice if they ever saw this. Let’s not tell them.”

Khachi snorted from where he was watching over the pass. He looked over his shoulder. “What would we tell them? The two of you are the only ones who can sense the mana.”

It took another ten minutes for Stella to judge that the hacked-together spell had accumulated enough purified nitrogen to test the spell. She released the magic with a sigh, wiping her forehead and manipulating the magical tube of compressed gas with reverence.

Aarl blinked at it in confusion. “Ah, what a wondrous construction of magic. Shouldn’t it be glowing?”

“It’ll start glowing in a second. Maybe I’ll aim it at you.” Stella said, before starting to assemble the experimental laser-spell around the tube of purified gas. After the light-magic mirrors were in place, she started pumping energy into the tube, smoothly transitioning from air mana to plasma mana as the gas flashed to plasma.

Nathan stepped closer as the energy density exceeded anything they’d achieved before. “Hold on. Make sure it’s aimed carefully. Everybody look away from the target.”

The Heirs rolled their eyes as they all looked away from the chunk of dead wood that the experimental spell was aimed at. Nathan proceeded to ignore his own advice, watching the already-burnt wood and paying careful attention to Stella’s spell.

The energy in it was continuing to grow, and Stella had modified the reflective light magic to work best at the specific wavelength that was being emitted. The photons were beginning to pile up inside the lasing tube, and they were partially magical in nature - enough for Nathan to feel.

“Make sure the end facing the target is weakest.” Nathan said, even though he could feel she’d already built the ‘cap’ of the tube to fail first.

Stella didn’t respond, simply clicking her tongue and increased the amount of energy further. When that didn’t do anything, she ramped up the amount of energy further.

Nothing happened for another few seconds, and Nathan was about to tell Stella to ease off when the end of the lasing tube failed like it was supposed to. The entire mountainside was illuminated by barely-visible light, and the log exploded as a chunk of it was vaporized in a split second. A wood splinter bounced off Nathan’s cheek, and he frowned at the amount of dangerous light mana that accompanied it

Khachi held his hand up to his eyes, divine magic already playing over his face. He heaved a heavy sigh. “Magical experimentation always leaves wounds to heal, sure as prophecy. You can’t use that spell on a battlefield if it blinds us each time.” He walked around to heal each Heir, spending the longest time on Stella. She had been watching the log out of the corner of her eyes, and was still trying to blink out the spots.

She spoke excitedly even as the wolfman worked his own magic. “By Kalis it worked! I got a skill rank for that. I could use a light-mana shield to block that wavelength, that’ll protect us from the spell.”

Nathan nodded. “I also think there was a lot of unaligned light in there, see if you can nudge the light to be bouncing between the ends of the tube, not around the sides.”

{High-tier Lecturing 7 achieved!}

Stella sighed. “The spell can always be improved. But the gas escaped when the laser fired. I’d rather wake a dungeon than collect more before every shot.”

Nathan shrugged. “Maybe you can store it. Or set up a magnetic construct that prevents the plasma from escaping, Then you could fire multiple times with each spell.

She sighed. “Muckgrabber’s filth. It’s a good idea, but that sounds like a spell to regret. Think about how neat it’ll be to hit somebody with that spell from a mile away, then send lightning along the path of the spell. Then do it again. I can definitely charge it faster too.”

Stella threw up her hands in a mix of frustration and excitement. “Yes, ok! I’ll do it. Do I have any airtight jars left over…”

{Overall Status:

{Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Aura of Antimagic 7

Permanent Talent 2: Perfected Body 8

Talent 3: High-tier Slow Fall 10

Class: Implacable Antimage level 237

Deepened Stamina: 7378/7410

Antimage’s Impassivity

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Implacable Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Improved Antimagic

Strenuous Agility

Hand-to-hand Expertise

Class: Magekiller level 88

Regenerative Focus: 980/980

Catastrophic Blows

Battle Stealth

Mage Infiltration

Forgettable

Unsuspecting Strike

Antimagic Stealth

Spell Redirection

Lethal Index

Utility skills:

Battle Meditation 9

Leadership 6

High-tier Sprinting 8

Magical Perception 8

Alertness 2

Magical Intuition 8

High-tier Dodging Footwork 10

Mental Fortress 4

High-tier Lecturing 7

High-tier Tumbling 8

Mid-tier Noticeability 8

Low-tier Quiet Movement 4

Low-tier Disguise 4

Mid-tier Battle Cry 3}