Chương 71: Chapter 70: Progress

++Joining Garamon's army was primarily a means to an end, a way of exposing myself to other lands and their other magics. Had I known what it would actually lead to in the end, I would have joined even sooner. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. Agrian woke up to something jabbing hard and sharply into his face, jerking his head back in surprise as bleary eyes shot open and his limbs flailed and tangled in the quilts.

He was already fully awake by the time he fell out of his bed to hit the floorboards, and even more so once he'd clambered to his feet and shot a glare at the attacker. Isabel was standing right over where he'd just been lying down, not smiling but somehow radiating an unspoken glee all the same. Her outstretched finger was being wiped on the hem of her dress, as if simple contact with Agrian's skin had sullied it.

"Isabel!?" he groaned.

"What the hell is this, what are you doing?"

"I have joined the army," she told him, then walked out without even another word of elaboration. Agrian just lay there for a moment, processing. The processing didn't take long at least. Agrian lunged to his feet and followed his sister, called after her in a daze. He was still in bedclothes, and though the hall he followed Isabel into now was empty he wouldn't have cared if it were jam-packed. She was probably banking on him waiting to get dressed so she could escape without a confrontation.

"What do you mean you've joined the army?" his legs were still longer than Isabel's and he caught her in mere moments, but hovered his hand back rather than grabbing her. She didn't like it when people touched her, and tended to seek vicious, long-lingering revenge upon being man-handled. Now, though, she just ignored his question as he waited for her answer. Agrian asked again, and Isabel sighed irritably.

"I am warning you ahead of time so that you are not taken by surprise, beyond that I do not owe you an explanation."

"I'm your brother!" he snapped. Isabel kept walking. Agrian could have chased her, but what would that do? She would either answer him or not, and right now it seemed like she would… not. No, Isabel's game was always this. Throw something at him and simply ignore whatever he had to say about it. If he was going to get his way here, he'd need to do it through action rather than conversation. Agrian headed to his room and paced, thinking things through.

It was hard with the anger boiling in him, and that was probably just another deliberate part of Isabel's plan. Keep him enraged and stupid. Well she'd underestimated her big brother this time. He calmed himself as he walked and his mind slowly assembled something resembling a solution. Agrian took a seat and picked up a pen. He'd never liked writing before, always found it bothersome and tedious, always found his fingers slow and clumsy when compared to the infinite dexterity of his mana.

But he enjoyed it this time, because he was fuelled by the notion of throwing a wrench into Isabel's schemes for once.

I was in a good mood. My meeting with the Duke had gone surprisingly well—setback with the marriage aside, it was nice to find out he was one of the few beings on this planet that was almost not an idiot—and I was reassured to know that Agrian was reacting to my revelation in just the way I had planned, gawping and whining but not actually doing anything, like usual. And that was the least of what I had to look forward to.

I approached the corridor leading to the dungeon, my dungeon, with something close to a spring in my step. Everything was intense and vibrant in a living body. That meant grim grudges and solar-hot hatred, but almost as good as that was when levity overtook me. I felt the urge to let out a sound that would most certainly not have been dignified for the inventor of necromancy. You seem happy. Has the world ended?

Sascithius' question had the note of mockery he always spoke with, but it bounced off me as the door closed in my wake. I felt the press of magics running over it now, my defences and obfuscations had only gotten more advanced in the two years since this first became my lab. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Something like that," I replied. It was actually nothing like that, but I enjoyed drip-feeding him false information about the real world. It was my hope to slowly build up an idea of some near-utopia in his mind, so that when he eventually escaped this room he would be struck by crushing disappointment. I had always enjoyed practical jokes like that, when I was powerful enough to perform them. A big change, anyway. I can tell. What's going on?

"I will be departing soon," I told my former apprentice.

"Probably for months at least, perhaps years. Do not worry, the Grandmaster will not interrupt you while I am gone, you can feel free to… meditate." Sascithius demonstrated his knowledge of modern languages by cycling through a rather impressive list of slurs as I made my way round the room to ensure it was all in order before I left. It was all as I had left it, the equipment at least. My primary concern was mainly reserved for only two parts of the laboratory.

In one corner I saw my efforts at cultivation, the living tissue still lazily growing, and rapidly dying, despite my best efforts at controlling the environment and sustenance. My latest attempt had already begun to rot, oozing a foul-smelling, incandescent sludge that looked halfway between magma and pus. Your latest batch of decomposing sludge is the finest one yet, Sascithius mocked. He was not wholly wrong. The experiment was a work in progress, and one that had been stuck in progress for a year and a half.

My more successful experiment lay a few yards from it, an attempt at producing arcane fields able to isolate and contain magical forces, anything from spell matrixes to, hopefully, souls and spirits, without causing them harm. That was unfinished too, but as I checked it now I found the decaying spell matrix I had left active within the field last week had still not quite fizzled out yet. It should have lasted a day, and here it was more than seven later.

A few improvements, and I might use this to transport Sascithius to the leyline. A few more from there and I may be transporting the leyline, or else snatching its power for my own ends. Stop ignoring me! my former apprentice snapped. I blinked, coming to focus once more and realized he had been whinging at me while I studied my works.

"No," I told him. Sascithius continued his complaining, but I tuned him out as usual. He did not have much of interestto say outside of those occasions I could probe him for the rare scraps of knowledge he had that I did not. It was Gyrat that distracted me next, lumbering over and leaving a trail of saliva on the floor as he looked up at me, panting eagerly. His body had been warped into a mess of additional limbs and sinking flesh, glistening slightly with bodily oils.

Nonetheless, despite his mangled appearance, I knew his limbs carried the strength of a dozen ordinary warriors.

"Oh, you are still alive," I noted. The animal reared up to me, exposing its belly. I sighed and gave him a rub, watching him squirm and grunt in delight.

"You have helped me make a lot of progress," I told him, which he seemed to enjoy even more.

"Now I want you to continue doing as you have been doing and keep watch on my laboratory, understand?" It was difficult to say how much Gyrat did understand, but I was confident he struggled more with communication than comprehension. He would follow these instructions and follow them well. This lab had been my sanctuary for the last two years. I had learned and experimented here, and made progress, but I could not help but think I was missing something.

And that was partly what motivated my decision to join the army. Irucci was, supposedly, a land steeped in black magic. Black magic, such as necromancy, was illegalised for being a potential danger to the Gods, and therefore useful to me. Whatever I could learn in a place like that would surely aid me. I gave my guardian another pet, then headed out of the dungeon and moved on. I was only halfway through the Winzorth Institute before being stopped in the hall by someone else. Other Gyrat.

The boy had not grown much since we first met, he had been a few years older than me then and already near the end of puberty. His blonde hair was more combed now, however. Cropped short. His face had lost a lot of baby fat, and he had taken to doing something odd where he seemed to square his jaw and deliberately suck air out of his cheeks. I did not know what that meant, but it made him look stupid.

"Good afternoon, other Gyrat," I greeted him.

"What do you want?" I had learned to handle my would-be-suitors gently, because bruising their egos made them extremely unmanageable. Kept carefully satisfied, though, and they could prove remarkably useful. It was extraordinary how much I could get with a brief smile and a polite request. Though in true human fashion, Gyrat managed to find something to take offence at anyway here.

"Why do you call me 'other' Gyrat?" he asked.

"Who's the original Gyrat?" I did not feel the need to answer that, and especially not to give him any information about my pet warrior.

"It does not matter," I told him.

"Did you want something?" I was quite eager to slip by and continue preparing for my departure, but the boy seemed, as usual, just as eager to eat my time. He nodded, but took long moments to actually answer me. His lips and throat moved silently, like they were working themselves up to a difficult task. What was so difficult about speaking I truly could not have guessed. Perhaps it was the fact that Gyrat normally required his mouth to breathe.

"I was wondering if you'd be free for dinner with me this week," he finally managed with a smile clearly forced to hide his nerves.

"Just the two of us."

"I cannot," I told him.

"I am joining the army." I moved past as he was left standing there gaping, and only allowed myself to smile when I was well beyond him.