Lucas had succeeded in his ploy, he had killed his master while keeping his few friends and allies alive. It couldn't have gone any better. 'It seems the arrays were useful enough.'
'We were lucky to have so much time on our hands, otherwise, we would be dead in the ground right now. That spell of Venion was impossible to block at our level.'
'Then shouldn't we be happy that it all worked out well?'
'For all we know, we could've screwed up with the intentions during the fight, resulting in our deaths!'
'But it didn't, did it?'
Part of Lucas couldn't help but scoff at that statement.
In order to create such a big storm he needed to create a bunch of arrays that could increase the amount of water and wind in the air, nature did the rest. The storm had multiple purposes, first, he needed to create weather that would support the spiders. Those monsters were most affiliated with water magic, so the storm was a perfect environment for them because it also got rid of most of the sunlight.
Besides that, he had seen Venion mostly use fire spells to attack the spiders, the storm would only hinder his spell usage.
To lure the spiders he had created a trail of hollow dirt balls filled with pheromones that only the spiders could perceive. 'We couldn't have gotten luckier with that queen spider.'
During his search for the queen he had to hide from genuine Rank 1 spiders, so he needed to control his aura and darkness spell with extreme precision to hide. Once the queen was alone he quickly built an earth dome before making the spider screech for help. To be able to get it alone he had needed a ton of luck, but it seems the gods were in his favor.
He was only caught a few times making him retreat as fast as he possibly could. Running away wasn't possible, but through his understanding of the monsters he figured out a way to escape with only a few wounds.
Now that Venion was dead, Lucas looted his corpse, he obviously couldn't wear his clothes for that would make him stand out. Lowering the hood of the mantle revealed a deformed face. "What the fuck?"
Venion's face was a mess of human features, his eyes were on different levels, his nose was crooked and there was an extra mouth on his right cheek. The image of his former teacher was completely ruined.
Lucas had the urge to barf, but he had seen worse, so he held it in. Looting his corpse didn't reveal much, a simple ring and a small notepad were the only things he could take with him.
'That's good enough, we already have a bunch of stuff anyway.'
'Shouldn't we also take the potions? Perhaps we can trick someone else with them?'
'Hmm, it could indeed come in handy.'
He set the corpse on fire before walking a bit back to get his backpack. Robbing the secret basement where Venion experimented on multiple things netted him a few books and a map. The books were about magic principles and some other things. Two of them had a more intriguing title than the others.
"The Art of Life Drain and the book about Fire Intensification are the only fascinating ones."
Lucas started to travel to the north, not for no reason of course. He had the time to go through the books in the library, and after taking note of his own location and the closest kingdoms, he only had a single choice.
'Frigus is pretty far, this will take some time.'
The reason he was set on going to Frigus was for a plenty of reasons, but the most important was the fact that Frigus was open to practically anything.
'Those books better not have lied, or I'll tear the first library we come across to shreds.'
'It should be true. Frigus is against the rules of the Holy Kingdom which basically rule the entire world.'
'Well that's just asking for a war.'
'Yes, that, or the king will be replaced with a more fitting one. As long as dark magic is allowed, we should hurry there to forge a new identity and get out.'
After sprinting a bit, he decided to rest for a moment, he had just defeated a powerful mage so his body and mind demanded rest. Lucas created a stone hut, which was a simple hollow cube of dirt, before using his backpack as a pillow and going to sleep. He was used to sleeping on hard or uncomfortable surfaces, so a dirt ground was more than enough.
A refreshing nap later, Lucas was ready to venture out again. The excitement was still there, his entire being was happy, he was free after all. The contract was never broken and as long as Robert was alive he could still command Lucas, but the chances that Robert would ever meet Lucas again were low enough to take the risk.
That, and knowing Robert looked favorably at him, he wouldn't screw him over. Besides, Robert doesn't know how to activate it in the first place, Venion only told Havi.
Breaking down the stone hut revealed the beautiful night sky. Stars were everywhere giving off a cool feeling, Lucas stared for a bit, enjoying the sight. Due to the storm he conjured, it looked dark outside, but after sleeping he noticed that he had gone to bed at a very early time.
"Let's get down to it.", he took the book from his backpack, "The Art of Life Drain is an art which siphons the life force from other beings to transmute that force into magical energy that can be absorbed.", the book held a bunch of words Lucas had absolutely no idea what they meant.
Luckily there were some images jotted down next to the paragraphs of text, making it easier to comprehend.
'So life force can be assumed to be the vitality of any living thing, magical energy is the same that's in the core I guess?'
"Yes, that does seem to be the case."
There were a bunch of diagrams about magic, but Lucas didn't understand too much from them. Even with his critical thinking and scheming mind, he couldn't figure out everything. Putting it down, he reached for the other tome.
The book that contained the magical principles, it looked pretty simple to read. But the gap between reading and understanding wasn't to be underestimated. Luckily, it held explanations for beginner mages. After reading it for some time, Lucas came to a conclusion.
"Every spell created with runes is fixed. A spoken rune can force the Magicules in the core to take a certain shape, when this shape comes into contact with the open air it starts to form the spell that was spoken.", reading out the words on one of the pages, Lucas tried to understand what this was trying to say.
He learned from Venion that the Rank of the mage also influenced the runes, but not fundamentally.
"Magicules take on varying shapes and compositions, the runes make them stable and usable for very low-level mages. Higher ranking mages that use the same runes will create more powerful spells with the same runes because the Magicules in the core are of a higher quality."
Lucas tried his best to grasp everything the book was explaining, but he needed multiple moments on his travel to truly comprehend it. At the end, he must've read it a bunch of times through, and there were still some details that escaped his grasp.
"For example; If a rune asks the Magicules to have a certain speed and elemental charge the core will force the Magicules to adopt that elemental charge. But if the quality of the Magicules is higher than the speed becomes doubled with the same composition."
'So there are Magicules in our core that take a certain form with runes, but there are also spells without runes or elemental components?'
The information that he had to digest was a lot for a starting mage without a teacher. At least the book was extremely helpful due to all the examples it provided. It gave Lucas a broad vision of magic and what could be achieved. There were still tons of things he hadn't learned or discovered which motivated him to keep going.
The days passed as he walked north and rested to read again and again. After feeling somewhat confident in the vocabulary used in the book of magical principles, he wanted to give the other book a try.
Looking back at the book about Life Drain he started to read it again. The technique itself was quite special, he needed to spread his willpower to cover a certain area. This in itself was already difficult for him, Lucas spent a lot of time trying to achieve what the book asked of him.
Next to that, there was also the issue of using darkness in a certain form to break the bonds of beings so that their life force could be drained. Luckily the book had the necessary runes to perform this spell. Still, he needed to figure out how to pronounce the runes and become a lot more proficient in them.
The more you use a certain rune the faster the spell can be formed. This holds true to most action, the more you run, the better you become at running, the same principle holds for using runes. The body adapts to the rune and can react faster when it has felt the action a certain number of times.
The technique had more to do with willpower than the actual spell, you needed to force the surrounding life to submit to your power before using the darkness to destroy their tissue to drain them of the energy, hence the name Life Drain.
Once he reached the final page, Lucas was left with a headache and a small note at the end. "Written by Holver Bloom? Who is that?"
'A maniac willing to publish a book about Dark Magic in The Holy Kingdom.'
Lucas realized the implications of that and agreed with himself, "You're right, this man is crazy."
Lucas didn't know everything about the world, but he knew the basics. During his research of the countries, he discovered that The Holy Kingdom was the biggest and most powerful force that cracked down on any Dark Mage they found with an Iron Fist. So publishing a book about that in their own territory spoke volumes of the writer's state of mind.
Staring at the pages of the book again, he found that he didn't really know how to use the technique. So he was back to travelling north, hunting for food and conjuring up water to survive.
A week had passed before he understood how to use the technique. Using willpower in such a complex way took a lot longer than first assumed. But now he had a good grasp of the method, he merely had to test it out.
Using a blade of grass as a test subject he tried to activate the technique. The pronunciation of the rune felt a lot more ancient than normal runes, but he couldn't say how or why, it just felt that way.
He covered the blade of grass with his willpower and tried to force it to give up on its life, his subject needed to feel that their life was meant to be used as a source of energy for a higher being.
The blade of grass didn't have much conscience, so the technique worked splendidly. Nothing really resisted him, the energy from the grass flowed into his body, but he couldn't even notice it. It was so small that neither his body nor core felt anything.
If he focused really hard on his core, he could feel that he gained a minuscule bit of energy, so small it was negligible. Plucking a similar bit of grass he used the technique once more and this time it went almost instantaneously since the grass was disconnected from the ground it could be considered almost dead, so the technique worked twice as fast.
This gave Lucas pause. Two halves, two different thoughts. One was thinking about why the disconnected grass was easier to subdue while the other thought about how much they could devour.
Lucas was starting to get excited from the strange technique. Using the technique on a larger scale required a lot more willpower, but he held steadfast. Spreading his willpower around him, he felt his Mind Sphere run dry, giving him a headache.
After reaching his limit he started to use the spell to drain the energy. The trees in his reach started to resist a bit, but against a human mind, it couldn't do much. Life was starting to get drained from the environment.
Lucas felt like his body was starting to be filled up, energy reached his core and started to improve it. His core started to use the provided energy to stock up first and use the leftovers to start the creation of the very first rune for his first circle.
The technique was done and Lucas was already completely sweating, it was a lot more draining than he initially thought. Using the technique on grass didn't require much from him but using it on such a big area almost damaged his mind. It was comparable to an entire day of solving complex math equations, his spirit was tired.
"I guess that's our limit."
He needed to sleep again, even if he had just slept, his mind was demanding more. Lucas wanted to create another stone 'hut', but couldn't even speak the runes aloud, falling unconscious on the ground.