Chapter 949: Back To Studying...Ew

The crystal dimmed, leaving him looking at his own faint reflection in its surface. He remained in the chair for several seconds before placing it beside the books. His room seemed quieter once her voice was gone.

Beyond the narrow window, the White Citadel remained almost as active as it had been during daylight. Skeleton workers carried supplies through the lower districts, while constructs continued their patrols along the outer walls. The few living inhabitants from the Dark Continent had gradually adapted to neighbors who considered midnight an excellent time for construction.

Bastos slept eventually. The citadel had little reason to bother, although its endless activity rarely required Ludwig’s attention. Nobody knocked on his door to ask him to settle an argument, and no farmer was waiting outside with a complaint he had to pretend to understand.

There were no rebuilding crews panicking because the Marquis had decided to carry half a wall himself. There were fewer interruptions, fewer responsibilities, and considerably fewer interesting reasons to leave his room. Celine was not here either, which contributed more to the boredom than he particularly wanted to admit.

Ludwig looked back at the table and opened the Algad tome. Studying had somehow become the most interesting thing available to him. That was a depressing thought, but at least Kaiser had a reason for forcing so much of it upon him.

The lich wanted Ludwig to improve his control enough to manipulate Authority. Becoming a better mage was certainly part of the process, but Kaiser’s attention remained fixed on the condensed Gluttony they had extracted from the pig. It was still their only reliable example, and nearly a month of research had done very little to change that.

Kaiser had tried unraveling its outer structure, separating tiny fragments, and applying magical pressure to loosen whatever held the Authority together. Every attempt had failed. Changes in temperature, controlled resonance, soul manipulation, and necromantic extraction had produced much the same result.

The marble remained intact. Kaiser could probably destroy it if he truly committed to doing so, but that was precisely what he refused to attempt. Breaking their only sample just to establish another way of accomplishing nothing would be an expensive form of stupidity.

Instead, he had decided that Ludwig needed to create another example. That required a degree of magical control Ludwig had never possessed, regardless of how much destructive power he could bring to a fight. His existing abilities gave him access to pieces of Authority, but access was a long way from understanding how to make those pieces remain outside his body.

The Sixth Circle represented an important boundary in a mage’s education. Earlier circles relied heavily on established forms, formulas, and prepared structures that guided Mana along familiar paths. A mage could become quite effective by learning those structures without understanding every interaction taking place inside them.

At the Sixth Circle, that understanding became essential. A mage was expected to recognize why a structure worked well enough to begin altering it deliberately. Beyond that waited the true experts, people capable of modifying existing magic, developing personal spells, and working around restrictions that lesser mages still treated as absolute.

Kaiser wanted Ludwig at least standing in the doorway. Unfortunately, his understanding had advanced faster than his body’s ability to support the magic it described. He simply lacked the Nephilium needed to sustain a full Sixth Circle spell.

When Ludwig complained about this, Kaiser gave him more books. When he complained to Van Dijk about Kaiser’s response, his master somehow made the situation worse. Now both of them expected progress, and neither considered Ludwig’s irritation a particularly compelling reason to stop.

He had briefly considered disappearing into the Dark Continent until they forgot about the matter. Remembering who he was dealing with had ruined that plan almost immediately. They would not forget, so he might as well get on with the reading.

At least most of the material concerned dark magic, which Kaiser considered the best foundation for the control Ludwig needed. His explanation had begun with a statement Ludwig still found irritating. He remembered the argument clearly enough that he could practically hear the lich saying it again.

"Dark magic is pure."

Ludwig had stared at him across the open book. Kaiser appeared perfectly serious, which somehow made the statement worse. He had even waited as though expecting Ludwig to appreciate the observation.

"You understand how stupid that sounds. Dark and pure generally aren’t words people put together."

"Purity has nothing to do with goodness."

"I didn’t say goodness."

"You implied it. Pure water can kill a man."

"That is an oddly specific argument."

"Drink enough under the wrong conditions and it can disrupt the body. The point is that purity is not morality. A poison can be pure. So can a curse, death, or magic."

Kaiser had tapped the page between them with the patience of someone explaining a simple idea to a particularly stubborn child. Ludwig looked down at the diagram, then back at him. He suspected the lich was enjoying the argument considerably more than he was.

"And dark magic?"

"One of the broadest magical foundations available to you. Fire is narrow. So are Water, Wind, and Earth. Each concerns itself with a particular set of properties."

The lich had taken a sheet of paper and drawn several circles upon it. Then he added a larger circle around them, tapping the space within its boundary. Ludwig watched the explanation develop with growing suspicion that it might actually make sense.

"Dark magic can imitate properties belonging to all of them."

"Imitate. Not become."

"Exactly."

That distinction had turned out to matter considerably. A black flame could produce heat, spread across fuel, and behave enough like fire for anyone watching to recognize it. Darkness still remained within the spell, however, making it different from an expression of pure Fire magic.

The same principle applied to fluid structures resembling water, pressure behaving like wind, and density imitating earth. Dark magic could borrow those properties, blend them, and alter the result without surrendering its own nature. Understanding precisely which properties had changed was where the difficult work began.

"Mix enough colors and eventually everything becomes muddled. Add black, and the result becomes black."

"That isn’t how every pigment works."

"You understand the metaphor."

"Unfortunately."

Kaiser had reached across the table and tapped Ludwig’s chest. Ludwig looked down at the finger before meeting the lich’s gaze again. The satisfaction on Kaiser’s face suggested that the argument had reached the conclusion he wanted.

"Darkness overwhelms the distinction while retaining something of what it absorbed. Learning to control those differences is an excellent place for you to begin."

Ludwig hated when Kaiser’s explanations made sense, mostly because it left him with fewer excuses. He had continued through dark structures, shadow manipulation, necromantic channels, black flame, and theory concerning the interactions between souls and magic. Formations aligned with Death had proved easier than most of the others.

That much was hardly surprising. Necromancy had always responded to him more readily than ordinary elemental magic, and being undead apparently remained useful when studying undeath.

Some rules liked consistency.

Over the past month, techniques he had once considered unnecessarily complicated had become almost embarrassingly simple. Ludwig lifted one hand above the open book and gathered Dark Mana over his palm. He altered its shape, compressed it, then divided it into three smaller currents.

The currents circled one another until he reversed their direction. None lost stability, and he did not need to stop and reconstruct the arrangement to keep them moving. A month earlier, he would have required a spell structure to guide the same process.

"Fine."

Kaiser might have had a point. Ludwig watched the currents complete another rotation before closing his fingers and allowing the Mana to disperse. He lowered his hand and returned his attention to the book, slightly less inclined to resent everything written inside it.

His progress in Necromancy had been even more noticeable. Several spells that once required more precision than he possessed had become usable. None were grand rituals or dramatic enough to impress Kaiser, which was probably fortunate, but Ludwig could already see how they might help him.

He could reinforce damaged undead tissue without rebuilding an entire body around the injury. He had learned to temporarily stabilize a fractured soul-link between a necromancer and a summon, and he could suppress the instinctive aggression of simple undead without completely dominating them. Each technique demanded attention to details he would previously have overlooked.

More importantly, he could now distinguish between forms of necromantic energy he had once treated as the same substance. Old Death Mana behaved differently from energy freshly released by dying tissue. Soul residue carried properties absent from corpse-bound necromancy, while artificial undeath differed from undeath that had occurred naturally.

Authority existed beyond all of those distinctions, but Kaiser wanted him to understand the distinctions first. If Ludwig could not recognize small differences between energies he already used, he would have little hope of controlling something as difficult as an Authority fragment. Forcing it into a stable physical form demanded more than deciding that he wanted it to happen.

He looked toward the small locked case on the opposite desk. The Gluttony marble rested inside, unchanged after nearly a month of examinations, experiments, and arguments. Ludwig rubbed his temples as he considered how much work that little object had created.

"All this for one stupid ball."

He turned another page, and Algad greeted him with a diagram containing forty-three separate annotations. Ludwig counted them before realizing that counting was simply another excuse to delay reading. He leaned back and looked toward the ceiling.

"Kaiser."

No answer came from elsewhere in the room. Ludwig listened for approaching footsteps, though he had little reason to believe the lich would appear simply because his student had reached another unpleasant page. If anything, Kaiser would probably consider that evidence the lesson was working.

"He knows."

The room remained quiet, leaving Ludwig alone with the diagram. He sighed and leaned over the book, pulling his notes closer so he could begin. He did not need sleep, which unfortunately meant he had no excuse to stop reading.