*Terrasin deVon Almistraus*

“I am a fucking idiot.”

Terrasin was watching Lucas groan with his head in his hands. It was actually quite amusing.

She had read through his book regarding agriculture- and frankly it seemed to be the product of genius. When she said as much, Lucas had laughed and muttered something about the ‘shoulders of giants,’ and said that the smallest advances are the biggest hurdles. That made it all the more hilarious that he had been this distressed for the past twenty minutes.

“I can’t believe I forgot to develop a fucking syringe before I did all of this…” He was grabbing his hair, not quite tearing at it, but obviously beside himself with frustration.

“Can’t you just make one now?” That seemed the obvious answer to the problem.

“The samples have already been mishandled,” Lucas sat up and stared at the egg and blood in front of him. “I am skipping so many fucking steps that it isn’t funny. It should still work… Probably… Maybe… I don’t have time to fucking reinvent a microscope and redo the whole process.”

Then Lucas started muttering under his breath to find alchemists and metallurgists and give them the notes to make it themselves. Terrasin, however, had to ask, “I am still not sure why time is so important, while as fast as possible would be nice, the front line has held for millennia, it can wait a year or two- For that matter, what are you even trying to do?”

“I need to inject these,” Lucas gestured a hand towards the samples. “Into these eggs, without killing the eggs.”

“Inject?” Terrasin understood the word that his collar translated, but the only time she had heard it used was in cooking. What does it have to do with medicine? “And why do they need to be alive?”

Lucas had specifically asked for fertilized eggs and demanded they be treated with absolute care. He had even had some people put together a box that he claimed was to ‘incubate’ the eggs. The word was translated, but Lucas still had to explain it, meaning that it existed in Terrasin’s language but she had never heard it used.

“In order to treat the a large number of people,” Lucas sighed, leaning back. “I need a large amount of the disease. I can grow the pathogen in these eggs and then use those to multiply it with other eggs, until I have enough to actually vaccinate the population.”

Lucas had had Heidall institute a ban on eating chicken eggs, and had Julian claim that it was for a magical ritual to prevent disease. Lucas had also said that the reality was that they likely did not have enough eggs to actually vaccinate the entire population and had set out an order of priority for who would actually receive them.

“As for the time constraint…” Lucas sighed again, he had been doing that quite a bit over the past couple days. “If all mitigating factors are removed, population growth is essentially exponential- except that there are mitigating factors, and more importantly, I cannot implement my changes across the entirety of humanity at once. In your world, information is slow to spread, it could be years before it reaches the majority of human ears and perhaps decades to actually convince people to change to them. And after all of that, the effects of this will start to show maybe thirty years later. Therefore, I must handle this before I turn to improving combat potential and making weapons, it will be a slow boil that will reinforce everything else I do and ensure a lasting effect.”

Lucas had interesting thoughts, he often seemed to have no real plan for what he is doing, while at the same time keeping in mind a series of larger goals. He was not very disciplined in many respects, and he was not even that good at making plans- but he did have a knack for digging his teeth into that larger goal and never letting go of it.

Then, he sat straight up, his eyes focusing strongly on the egg in front of him. Terrasin nearly had heart attack from his sudden movements and his intensity.

“Why didn’t I think of this before?” Lucas seemed to be talking to himself, he had probably forgotten she was even there. “I could just do this-”

The egg exploded, covering Lucas in fluid and shell fragments. Lucas stumbled back, knocking over his chair and swearing impressively. Terrasin had been shielded from the miniature explosion, but Lucas was a mess.

“What did you do?” Terrasin was trying not to laugh, but she couldn’t help herself from giggling.

“Fucking shit!” Lucas continued to swore as he started to wipe himself off, “I will have to ask for Julian’s help with this probably- I tried to put a small hole in two place in the egg using magic, and then I was planning to use magic to inject the infected material.”

“As you can see,” Lucas gestured down at himself. “I used a bit too much force.”

“Just a bit,” Terrasin did not hold back any more and started laughing, “I will send for Julian for you.”

*Lucas Jaeger*

Well Lucas was glad that at least someone was amused by his mistakes, he however was lamenting his own naivety. He took so much for granted until he had taken up this project. Even something as simple as washing hands with soap in hot water as a complicated affair in this world, nevermind things like latex gloves, syringes, or a even a drill capable of putting the holes he needed into the egg itself!

What a headache- But did he even need to go through with it? If he could modify random things in the air to provoke asthma attacks, why couldn’t he just make the pathogens from scratch? Potentially dangerous, but he supposed that the least of these samples was just the common cold, hardly an issue if it was not contained.

Because that was a professional and responsible thought, Lucas berated himself. If, and it was a big if, he could do it, it wasn’t something Lucas could teach others. Even if people were responsible with the knowledge now, it would only be a matter of time. So he still needed to develop, however barbaric and archaic his methods may be, a system that even non-magical people can use to create vaccines and save lives.

Still, as long as he was here if he could do this he may actually be able to get a dose to everyone…

Well, he might as well try, but how to get the accuracy he would need? No, first how would he turn energy into matter? Sure they are different forms of the same thing, but that didn’t mean that lightning could be turned into a rabbit. Well, in theory it could be- and with magic, Lucas may be able to turn that wildly fantastical hypothesis into a reality.

Or maybe he should simply get the material from elsewhere and rearrange it? Lucas picked up an chicken egg and considered it. Inside that shell was all the materials needed to birth a chick, and life was all made of the same things. He would kill for the machinery to properly perform a polymerase chain reaction, but despite that wonderful discoveries utility, it would still be inadequate for what he was considering.

Using Taq polymerase, primers, and heat you could replicate fragments of dna exponentially- a simple, yet brilliant, concept that still fell short of replicating the complete genetic code of an organism. But that was far too complex to start with. He had to work backwards, break it down into its component parts and reconstruct a facsimile with magic.

Did he have the skill with magic to do this? No, not really… However, the history of humanity was making tools to make better tools to make better tools to actually do something- so he would replicate the process of development to build the tools he needed.

No, he didn’t even have the power to do this- unless.

*Julian Gandr*

“So he needs to drill holes in eggs?” Julian had a better understanding of what Lucas was doing than most of the people in the castle, but he had to admit this seemed a bit strange. Lucas had not entirely explained everything considering how little time he had to talk to Julian, and half of that was Julian teaching him magic!

“So he says,” Terrasin was walking beside him as they headed towards what Lucas called the ‘lab.’ “He also needs to inject those ‘samples’ of his into them.”

That sounded like a pain, considering that he would apparently need to keep the egg alive the whole time. At the very least he would be able to tease more knowledge out of Lucas during this. Julian opened the door and stopped dead- if felt like he had hit a wall of magic, and at the center of it was Lucas.

“What the hell is this?” Julian shouted, unable to believe what was in front of him. Terrasin looked at him in confusion, unable to sense the magic that was occuring. Julian did not have time to explain, what the hell had Lucas done. “Lucas- what is going on?”

The storm of magic collapsed instantly, folding in on itself and Julian could see it forming a complex structure, more complex than anything he had seen before. Then it was over, and Lucas was standing there, simply looking confused.

“I would think that would have worked…” He muttered, Julian coughed to get his attention and Lucas jumped.

“What the hell was that Lucas?” Julian asked seriously, looking him dead int the eye. “You don’t even have the magic potential to produce something like that, whether it worked or not.”

“Hmmmm,” Lucas thought for a second, as if weighing whether or not to answer. “I guess it is fine to explain… Based on our discussions I concluded that this ‘soul’ you speak of works much like a generator would, and from Heidall’s description of priestly powers in their case it is acting like a motor. Now, I am not an engineer, but if it is that basic it will be easy enough, the key point is that there would be something driving the ‘souls’ to produce this energy. So I thought that instead of using my own power I would simply tap into whatever that was by working backwards from my own magic.”

Julian was slack jawed. What the hell was this man talking about? A power driving the souls of mages? But-

“Did you succeed?” Julian managed to ask, despite his confusion.

“Ah, no.” Lucas frowned, “The construct took more energy to run than it generated, though I have no idea why… I must be missing something, well for now we will have to do it the hard way.”

“But... You shouldn’t have…” Julian sputtered, “it isn’t possible.”

“What wasn’t possible?” Lucas seemed mildly confused.

“That construct…”

“That was far to complex of a construct,” Julian finally was able to be decently coherent. “You have barely started learning!”

Lucas looked at Julian like he was crazy, “complex? It was more or less a dc generator, albeit one that I had attempted to rig to produce magic. It is not my are of study, but the basics of generators and motors are easily understood. The coiling structure was standing in for something like copper wire- or in this case the body. The interior section is similar to a magnet, and I suppose you would have to call it an artificial ‘soul.’”

Julian heard something thump on the floor behind him, and turned to see that Terrasin had fainted.