Chương 3: Anathema

Lorenzo spent the next five hours intensely focused on spells. First, he spent a short time testing Lock. The verbal invocation worked both ways, locking and unlocking the security case with equal ease, but only through touch. That made no sense given his spell range was supposedly six meters. It took him half an hour to realize the problem. The Guide had codified the method he'd used to bridge the mana from mind to lock as part of the spell. He'd taught it a crutch.

Relearning it properly meant figuring out how to manifest mana where he wanted without treating it like a stream of water running along a convoluted pipe to his target. It took him another hour to figure out how to manifest the mana directly where he pointed, condensing it from his reserves without the physical path. Once he understood that, casting it at a distance worked perfectly. And the simplified casting was everything it promised, which made him all the more suspicious.

He understood as well as anyone that nothing in life was free. But he couldn't see what he was losing out on by allowing the Guide to manage the casting once learned. Enzo attempted casting without pointing next, but that failed completely. Both verbal invocation and manually manipulating mana required a physical gesture to work. He made a note to experiment with it later and moved on. His priorities were simple and time sensitive. Attack and defense. The basics he thought would be required to survive.

He wasn't quite sure yet what he would be surviving against, but he wanted to be prepared anyway. A healthy dose of paranoia never hurt anyone. Besides, it wasn't even paranoia. Something kept shrieking outside, and he'd already seen two instances of people being attacked with magic. That one of the two had come from him was irrelevant. Shield came first. Or, rather, Shield refused to work for two solid hours. He tried using pure Mana Control the way he had when creating Lock, threading mana into a barrier.

Every thread of mana he drew out, shifted into position next to the others, added to the mental load. But a barrier required a lot of surface area and the mana dispersed before he could complete even a hand-sized section. And each attempt drained his reserves completely, forcing him to sit and absorb before trying again. It was impossible. The breakthrough came from a mixture of desperation and a dumb idea that might generously be called insight.

If he'd wanted to inscribe a shield onto a surface, he'd trace the shape and let the material do the rest. Enzo then drew a circle in the air with a thread of mana, the energy forming a loop roughly the size of a dinner plate. Then he focused, willing it to become a shield. His mana responded immediately, drawn from his reserves to complete the spell. The barrier solidified in a second, a flat disc of condensed purple energy hovering in front of him. It held for only a few seconds before the spell collapsed.

The Guide codified his second spell on the spot. Again, Enzo could see the benefit of simplified verbal casting, because the Guide formed the spell construct instantly, bypassing the time to shape the form manually. He also unlocked another skill, reassuring him that his efforts were moving along the right path.

— Spell Forms (Level 1) learned Mana Control (Level 2) → (Level 3) Mana Absorption (Level 1) → (Level 2) — Spell Codified: Shield (Level 1) Type: Arcane Description: Creates a barrier of condensed mana that blocks physical and magical attacks. — Forming his third spell, Bolt, followed the same principle of discovery. The process felt familiar now that he understood the basics. That didn't mean it was without failures.

Attempts at arrows and other pointy shapes fell flat, requiring even more meditation to refill his reserves. Finally, though, he created something that worked. It was a simple spell form. A circle and two V-shaped lines, overlapping at the tip, to create something of a cone. Conceptually, the base carried the intent of containment, while the three-dimensional X-shape, when viewed from the base, carried the idea of a vector for the mana to fire along when the spell released. Which it did.

Immediately punching a hole in the far wall. He winced at that. And while the process had taken hours of work, the effort wasn't wasted. Lock showed that spells could be crafted using threads directly, while Shield and Bolt demonstrated something more systematic. Individual threads could be merged together, each one holding different intentions, like lines of code or parts of an engine, together creating a more complex spell form. There was a logic to it, even if the rules seemed a little abstract right now.

— Spell Forms (Level 1) → Spell Forms (Level 2) Mana Control (Level 3) → Mana Control (Level 4) Mana Absorption (Level 2) → Mana Absorption (Level 3) — Spell Codified: Bolt (Level 1) Type: Arcane Description: Projects concentrated mana as a damaging projectile. — More practice seemed smart. Before he was forced to rely on untested magic in an actual emergency. Enzo flipped the coffee table onto its side and backed up a few meters. He extended his hand toward it, palm out, and spoke the invocation.

"Bolt." Magic erupted from his palm and shot past the table entirely, punching another hole through the wall before dissipating. He winced again. There was no reason he should have missed such a big target. His aim had been spot on. Enzo adjusted, angling his hand downward more.

"Bolt." The projectile tore into the floor, ripping a chunk of wood free and sending splinters spraying across the room. He threw his arms up to shield his face. He frowned. Annoyed. Both failed attempts were ridiculous. His aim couldn't possibly be that bad. For the third attempt, instead of aiming with the flat of his palm, he instead pointed his index and middle fingers directly at the table's center.

"Bolt." The energy lanced forward and punched through the table exactly where he'd targeted. The wall behind it again cracked from the impact before the spell dissipated.

"Yes!" Victory. Then Enzo looked at the damage. At the holes in the wall. Crater in his floor. Shredded coffee table. Cracks in the plaster. Sort of a victory. He didn't know how he was going to explain the damage to the landlord. If they had even survived the rain. Enzo crossed to the window again. The sky had shifted from black to a deep red, with the sun beginning to rise somewhere beyond the blood-soaked haze. Dawn. Maybe six in the morning, give or take.

The rain had eased further since he'd last checked, a steady fall rather than the torrent it had been, but still enough to soak anyone caught without cover. He'd been awake and working with magic for hours. The lights in the apartment flickered on for a few seconds, then died. The power had been doing that all night, ever since the television cut out. Brief bursts, followed by long stretches of darkness. His phone worked intermittently, turning on for seconds or minutes before shutting down again.

Both the cellular and Wi-Fi signals remained completely dead. Enzo frowned. Other than the blood rain, the sky was as clear as it could be. There were no storms, no lightning, nothing that should have been interfering with communications or the power grid on this scale. None of it made sense. The thought sounded stupid once it settled. Raining blood capable of giving people magic made even less sense, but he was rolling with it. For all he knew, mana didn't like radio stations and cell phones.

It was a mystery for later. With the sun rising, he had more immediate concerns. Enzo pulled up his status again. — Status | Name: Lorenzo Locke | Class: Wizard | Mana Perception: 12 meters | Spell Range: 7 meters | Mana Capacity: 130 units Skills | Mana Sense (Level 2) | Mana Control (Level 4) | Mana Absorption (Level 3) | Spell Forms (Level 2) Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Spells | Lock (Level 1) | Shield (Level 1) | Bolt (Level 1) Techniques | None — Four skills. Three spells. He felt a small sense of pride. For all he knew, he might be the most powerful wizard on the planet right now. Enzo pushed the emotion down. Catalogued what he knew. Mana Sense determined how far he could perceive mana. Mana Absorption governed how much mana he could store in his reserves. Mana Control affected how effectively he could manipulate his own mana, and at what range.

And Spell Forms represented his ability to create shape-based magic. Each spell drained a specific amount of mana when cast through simplified invocation. Lock required the least, maybe ten units. Bolt cost slightly more at twelve. Shield demanded the most at fifteen, likely because maintaining a barrier took more sustained energy than a quick burst or precise manipulation. Understanding his limitations might be what kept him alive if he ran into anyone deciding to take advantage of the chaos.

He hoped for the best, but he'd never left any outcomes he could control up to chance before. And he wasn't about to start now. Poker nights excluded, of course. Enzo glanced around the room. Given the circumstances, he wouldn't be driving. The university was maybe a twenty-minute walk from his apartment. Under normal circumstances. But he was going to be wading through sloshing alien monster blood the entire way. That still sounded ridiculous.

A part of him wanted to drown in disbelief, rejecting the entire situation as impossible. Except that the holographic windows full of information and his success in casting actual magic made the denial kind of difficult. Unless he was going crazy. That was a possibility. One he discarded. Immediately and with prejudice. What mattered was that he couldn't be sure everything would go as planned. Whether predictably good, or paranoid, yet also predictably bad.

Best to prepare for the worst and hope for something marginally better. Enzo looked around the apartment and started gathering what he needed. The old walking cane came first, pulled from the back of the closet where it had been leaning since he'd upgraded. The height was off, almost an inch too short, and the grip had worn smooth in places, but it would have to do. Beside it, he found his old hiking gear. Boots, rain jacket, full-length pants. All picked for the Sierras during the wet season.

He had touched none of it in four years. Hadn't been able to. The mountains and trails he'd loved before the accident weren't kind to bad knees. He pushed the thought aside and pulled the boots on. Waterproof and sturdy. Hopefully alien blood proof too. He laced them tight, then pulled on the rain jacket and pants. Too warm for a San Francisco summer, but better than being soaked in blood again. A backpack came next.

He grabbed one from the closet and threw in a couple bottles of water and some protein bars from the kitchen. Just something to keep him going if things took a strange turn. Stranger, rather. His eyes drifted back to Murph. Still sleeping. Her breathing was steady, but she hadn't moved since they got home. That worried him more than he wanted to admit. Taking her to a vet should have been his immediate priority, but he couldn't imagine that working out well.

Surely they would be closed or otherwise packed with panicked people. And he'd seen what happens when groups of people panic. Enzo crossed to her bed and knelt down, reached out slowly and felt around her ribs, checking for swelling or breaks. Murph whined softly in her sleep, a pained sound that made him wince, but he found nothing concerning.

"Sorry, girl," he murmured. He patted her head gently instead.

"I'll be back soon. Be good while I'm gone." Murph didn't respond. He stood and topped up her dry food bowl, then filled her water dish. She'd need it when she woke up. If she did. Enzo shook the thought away. He took one last look at Murph, then opened the door and stepped into the hallway. He turned back and pointed.

"Lock." The mechanism engaged with a satisfying click as the magic secured his apartment. That would never stop being surreal. To his surprise, a new notification popped up. — Lock (Level 1) → Lock (Level 2) — All that earlier practice with the spell hadn't triggered a level up. He wondered if that was because it was the same lock, or if maybe he'd earned enough progress during the practice that the apartment door just pushed it over the edge. He shrugged and headed for the stairs. The hallway was quiet.

No noise from the neighbor moving around, no television bleeding through old walls. Just the muffled sound of rain hitting the building's roof. Dried blood on the floor before the exit caught his eye. It was the mess he'd made yesterday, now dark and congealed. He told Mrs. Okita that he would clean it up. Enzo glanced at her door. It was closed and quiet. It could wait until he got back with Valentina. A few more hours wouldn't matter.

Enzo pushed the front door open and passed through, pulling it closed behind him. Returning to the street was like stepping onto the set of a horror movie. The rain had slowed, but it had also been going non-stop for almost eighteen hours now, by his estimation. Blood pooled everywhere. Half a foot deep in places, flowing in thick streams toward storm drains that had long since overflowed. It moved heavier than water, clinging to everything it touched. Cars sat abandoned, some with doors hanging open.

Bodies lay where they'd fallen, partially submerged. The rain continued to fall in a steady drizzle, creating a red mist that hung over everything. He started walking. The cane's rubber tip slipped on the first step, skidding across submerged pavement before catching on something solid. He adjusted his grip and shortened his stride, testing each placement before committing his weight. By the second block, he'd found the rhythm. Slower than normal but steady enough. Faces appeared in windows as he passed.

People watching from safety, their expressions ranging from fear to desperation. Everyone was hiding in their homes, waiting for something to change or for help to arrive. He didn't blame them.

"Hey!" A voice called from a nearby stoop. An older man stood half-sheltered in his doorway.

"It's not safe out there! You need to get under cover." Enzo waved an acknowledgement but kept walking. The feeling of being watched followed him down the block. Dozens of eyes, all seeing him wade through blood-soaked streets while they stayed inside. They probably thought he was crazy. Maybe he was. He'd just spent the night casting magic. A shriek echoed from somewhere to his left. Down a side street, maybe two blocks over. Not the direction he was heading, but close enough to make him tense.

Enzo stopped and listened. Rain drumming against his hood. Blood flowing in gutters. Nothing else. He waited a few seconds, then pressed on. Alert. The movement ahead still surprised him. A figure stumbled out of an alley between two buildings. The person moved wrong. Hunched forward, arms hanging loose, gait uneven like the joints weren't bending quite right. Enzo stopped. Hesitated. The figure's head turned slowly in his direction. Too slowly, twitching, as if the neck muscles were fighting the motion.

Glowing purple eyes locked onto him. Everything seemed to freeze. The rain kept falling, but the world went silent as some ancient survival instinct deep inside his brain awoke. His vision narrowed, filtering out everything else. Somehow, despite it looking human, Enzo just knew. The thing with glowing eyes, staring at him with a mere forty feet of blood-soaked pavement between them, was dangerous. But it was deeper than that. The thing felt wrong. His instincts insisted on it. That the man in front of him was…

anathema to his very existence. Then it threw its head back and screeched. The sound cut through the silence like a knife. Inhuman. Raw. Hungry. It broke into an erratic sprint. Enzo stumbled back a step, the cane skidding across the slick pavement. The thing moved fast. Too fast for something that had looked barely able to walk a second ago. He let the cane fall and planted both feet. Threw his hand up, palm out.

"Bolt!" The spell erupted from his palm and shot wide, missing the creature by several feet. The thing's head rotated mid-sprint. Almost to a full one hundred and eighty degrees, tracking the bolt as it flew past. Enzo saw the projectile unravel after a few moments, the energy dispersing into nothing. The head snapped back around, arms rising toward him. It was still coming. Splash. Thud. Splash. Thud. The sound of its footsteps pounding through the blood matched the rhythm of Enzo's own heartbeat. Getting closer.

Getting faster. He forced himself to focus. Sharp breath in. Hold it. His left hand gripped his right wrist, steadying his aim. His right hand closed into a fist, but with his index and middle fingers pointing forward. The thing closed the distance. Splash. Thud. Splash. Thud. When it was roughly twenty feet away, he exhaled.

"Bolt." Magic shot from his fingertips. The projectile closed the space between them in a fraction of a second, aimed perfectly at the creature's face. Its mouth opened. Its eyes closed. And it inhaled the magic. Enzo froze. His brain stuttered, trying to process what he'd just seen. The spell had gone into its mouth. Disappeared. Like it had never existed. Survival instincts took over. His left hand shot up.

"Shield!" A purple barrier materialized from his outstretched palm just in time. The thing's momentum arrested violently as it collided with the spell. Its legs and hips kept moving forward while its head and shoulders slammed into the solidified mana. The shield shattered from the impact, fragments of the energy dissipating into the air. But it had done its job. The creature hit the ground hard, legs flailing in the air a moment before joining the rest of its body. Enzo didn't hesitate.

He rushed forward and slammed his right boot down on the thing's neck, pinning it in place. Pain lanced up through his knee. He'd expected it. Ignored it. His right hand aimed down at its torso, fingers pointed.

"Bolt." The spell tore into its chest. Ribs caved inward with a wet crunch. The creature spasmed once, then went still. Warmth bloomed inside his mind. Enzo stood there, breathing hard, boot still pressed against its neck. His heart hammered against his ribs. His hands shook. He stared down at the cavity, already filling with blood. Its own, and from the rain. The man's face, moments ago twisted and enraged, now looked peaceful and normal. He stumbled backward. He'd just killed something. Someone.

His instincts had been so overwhelming that in the moment he'd been certain of the creature's wrongness. That it would stop at nothing. Kill or be killed. But now all he saw was a man. A very dead man. His cane lay a few feet behind him, submerged in the blood. He retrieved it and leaned on it, hands still shaking. A notification caught his attention. Grasping for any distraction, Enzo pulled it up. — Attunement (Level 1) Learned.

Bolt (Level 1) → Bolt (Level 3) Shield (Level 1) → Shield (Level 2) Eater Eliminated → Bonus Mana Capacity Provided (+10) — New Guide Entry: Eaters Classification: Universal Hazard Eaters are corpses reanimated through mana saturation. Any creature containing a sufficient mana concentration at the time of death will reanimate as an Eater. Ambient mana absorption by deceased tissue can also trigger reanimation if mana centers remain intact.

Cultivation-types demonstrate increased aggression, physical strength, speed, and durability. Destroying the heart is most effective. Manipulation-types demonstrate increased cunning, ambush tactics, and the ability to express magic. Destroying the brain is most effective. Complete decapitation of both types remains an expedient alternative.

In the exceedingly rare instance that a creature with mastery of both manipulation and cultivation becomes an Eater, it is highly recommended to notify your local authorities instead of attempting to deal with the threat yourself. Behavior: Singular drive to kill and consume mana sources. Caused by the slow mana bleed of non-living tissue. Mana preferentially bonds to living hosts, while dead tissue cannot retain absorbed mana, creating a perpetual cycle of consumption.

Progression: Eaters grow stronger and larger as their mana reserves grow. Sufficient accumulation results in evolution to higher threat classifications, eventually culminating in Star Eaters capable of stellar consumption. Note: While Eaters prefer living targets, it is not uncommon for them to consume others of their kind when alternative sources become unavailable. Legal Requirements: Galactic law mandates immediate reporting or elimination of all Eaters.

All citizens must ensure the proper disposal of deceased mages, including family, friends, companion beasts, defeated opponents, and any casualties witnessed. Failure to comply constitutes a Class-1 violation, the punishment of which is death. Note: Eaters that have advanced beyond the initial stage typically require two to four mages of equivalent Tiers to engage safely. Reward: Eater elimination provides permanent mana capacity increases. Bonus capacity caps at a 1: 1 ratio to base mana maximum.

Increasing base capacity through the advancement of Mana Absorption increases the bonus capacity too. Warning: All mages will reanimate as Eaters upon death. Initial threat level correlates directly to stored mana capacity at the time of death. — Blood dripped from the hood of Enzo's rain jacket. Contrary to what he'd hoped, reading the notifications did not distract him. Did not make him feel better. In fact, he felt decidedly worse after realizing what was happening.

Earth hadn't been introduced to mana through steadily rising parts per million. They'd been introduced to it through the inundation of a Star Eater's blood. Which probably contained the accumulated mana of its entire lifetime. Or its deadtime. And it was raining down across the planet. Killing people. Soaking into everything. Including the corpses. Multiple screeches rang out from the surrounding blocks, echoing the one he'd just killed.

Enzo dismissed the notifications and headed for the university as fast as his knee would let him.