Nathan

Year 2849 | Month 12 | Day 5

It ends up taking me about two days to finally get some real progress in making the most basic Tier III spell, invigorate. Which was rather annoying, to be honest. Because even after converting my fire mana into neutral mana and managing to navigate it through my own body to use as the test subject, it becomes rather difficult to keep it as neutral mana when my own body has fire mana in it.

What’s worse is that the other mana affinities in my body are rather against the idea of a random neutral mana entering my body and doing things, especially the time mana. So the whole process became a pain in the rear end to finish testing. And that was only after I gave up on using my own body and decided to find a random wild animal to use as a test subject. Or, animals.

Poor creatures. But this will all be worth it in the end.

Besides. I fed them first to give them something in return, and only around half of them died.

Something interesting I found out in the process of doing this though – that wasn’t actually taught yet at the academy – is that any living creature has mana membranes in their body, along with ‘mana arcs’. It’s just that only magicians have any mana in the mana arcs, and the ability to manipulate the arcs. Everyone else just has dead arcs that literally do nothing. Kind of like defects in their body.

Which is interesting to learn about. And probably something that the academy would’ve covered in a later class or something.

I narrow my eyes on the terminal before raising my hand up to the random bear I have strapped to the table. The thing is currently knocked out cold, so I don’t have to worry about it moving as I quickly focus on inputting the rather large script into the magic circle that appears on the surface of the bear’s body. And once I finish, I let out a breath and activate the spell.

Then I close my eyes and focus my mana senses on the inside of the bear’s body, just watching as my spell navigates its way through the complex mana membrane and into its body where it then goes inert for a few seconds on the spot where the circle was directly over.

I let out a sigh of relief and open my eyes again. Then I very slowly grab a knife and position it right around where the mana is before digging it into the creature’s flesh and pulling it back out again. And without wasting a second, I close my eyes and focus on the wound with my senses, just watching my mana begin to act, as it should. But unlike what it’s supposed to do – which is just invigorate the cells into healing faster – it starts to burn the cells, making me grimace as the wound only starts smoking.

Shit.

I pat the creature’s side down before it fully sets on fire and let out another sigh. But this one in defeat.

Another failure. But at least the bear didn’t die, so I can use it for a different experiment.

I reach over and grab the thing by the neck before dragging it across the ground without much struggle towards a cage and tossing it the rest of the way in, closing the cage door behind it. Then I walk over to my desk in what used to be the lab belonging to that magician who made those monsters but is now mine.

The people from New Hope have been silent without even once meeting with me since I left, so that’s kind of strange. But I’ll be going to deliver some food tomorrow, so I’ll be seeing if they’ve begun fighting or not at that point. Because it is highly possible that the two cities have been in combat, but New Hope just hasn’t been able to contact me.

Was honestly kind of expecting them to come running by now. Although part of that is probably because I could use the combat to keep me sharp.

I frown for a second at the thought, briefly noting my slightly lower view of other people since changing into what I am now, only to shake my head.

Doesn’t matter. I’m just gonna continue living as I do, so whatever other effects my loss of humanity brought don’t matter in the end.

I open up my terminal and the simulation software on the terminal before going through the code and fixing something I realized rather quickly was wrong with the code after seeing the results of that experiment. Then I go through and search the entire code, just trying to find any bugs I may have missed before.

Nearly an hour passes as I do this before I briefly glance to the cage at the sound of the bear waking up. But then I ignore it again to leave the room for a quieter place. One without an angry bear.

As I walk though, I can’t help but think back to the times I went to dinner with the rest of my old team.

I wonder how they’re all doing? Or if they’re even still alive?

The thought of them dying in battle somewhere sends a wave of sadness through me, but I just push through it, convincing myself to only think of the present. Because that’s really all that matters right now.

Then I think about the mint ice cream from the academy and can’t help but ponder over if I’ll be able to find any in New Hope when I go visit tomorrow.

Because that would be a very wonderful thing to find. And I’m honestly surprised I didn’t think to ask while I was there.

Although I better bring some extra food to trade just to make sure I have what I need for the ice cream should they actually have some.

My thoughts are interrupted when I hear clanging noise echoing along the wall, signaling that someone is pulling the little rope that I hung up there and attached various pots and pans to in order to make some sort of doorbell outside of the barrier.

Are they here?