Supreme Magus novel Chapter 90

Lith first instinct was to run away and test his theory, but he hadn’t returned home to spend his time working, he really needed some real rest while enjoying the luxury of being his real self, with no strings attached.

"Mom, dad, thank you." He replied. "I know how cruel people can be. I learned it from experience since the day I started working as a healer. It started with that noble trying to kill me, and continued by showing me what a man can do to his wife, a parent to his own children."

He avoided mentioning brothers, since despite the passing of years, Orpal’s name kept stirring a lot of pain in his parent’s hearts.

"This village is not perfect, the world is not perfect. But I’ll do my best to remain true to myself and make you all proud of me."

Lith could say that looking them straight in the eyes, since the wording of choice didn’t mention what his morals were or how he meant to achieve his goals. In his mind, it was all a white lie to prevent his family from worrying about him.

He stood up and hugged his family one at a time, feeling the warmth of their embrace and love.

After finishing their meal, Lith insisted to be the one to do the dishes. Elina opposed at first, but before anyone could even move one plate, he had already washed and cleaned dishes, cookware and the whole room.

"Show-off!" Tista pretended to scold him.

They spent the following hour discussing the last arrangements for Rena’s marriage, which brought several grunts from the male side of the family, and Lith’s academy life, which brought several grunts from the female side of the family.

He had lived all his life as a monk, going from home to work and vice versa, and doing nothing else. They had hoped that being surrounded by so many girls, he would have found one of his liking.

- "Dammit, first Yurial tries to set me up with a date, then you, Solus, with all your innuendos, and now this? For crying out loud, who cares about romance at twelve?"

"You would be right..." Solus replied. "If this wasn’t a world where people get married around sixteen and seventeen years of age. There’s only so much time to just hang out for fun or make experience with the opposite sex.

Unless one plans to marry with his first girlfriend or has an arranged marriage, of course." –

After that, everyone had to go back to work. Daylight was precious, and only Lith was actually on vacation. Before going back to his forgemastering lab, Lith visited and treated all the animals in the farm and the farmhands his parents employed.

It would ensure the rise of their reputation and saved them quite some money.

Once back inside Solus’s ruined tower form, he could finally share his enlightment. He had actually offered her to read his mind, to stop the pestering, but she refused.

With the growing trust between them, they rarely accessed each other mind, preferring to rely on their telepathic link, unless it was absolutely necessary.

"The problem with our earlier experiments, is that we were just imitating the form of the forgemastering spell, not his nature."

"Meaning?" Solus asked.

"Well, replicating a fire ball is easy, it’s just an exploding flame. But what does exactly forgemastering do? What does each rune individually? That’s the problem that we overlooked. Fake magic is like true magic with auto-pilot."

He took out the dimensional amulet he had bought from the academy, using Invigoration on it, while Solus did the same.

Unlike for normal unanimated objects, Invigoration was capable of tracing the mana flow cursing through magical item.

It revealed a mana sphere similar to a core, but much rougher and simpler, kept stable by thirteen mana patterns that insulated it from external influences.

"By my maker, how did you get the idea of using Invigoration like this?" Solus was amazed by this discovery.

"Actually, I didn’t. It’s all thanks to that Scorpicore. Remember when it passed me it’s pince-nez to analyse it?" Solus mind nodded.

"That’s the first time that I did it, but back then I was too scared to understand the implication of the lesson the creature imparted me. I don’t know if it did it on purpose to teach me how to recognize cursed objects, or was just trying to convince me of its good faith.

Whatever was its purpose it taught me something new about true magic, and in turn the true nature of forgemastering. Unlike some hypothesized, forgemastering isn’t about feeling the mana flow in an object and enhance it.

On the contrary, it allows to create a pseudo mana core, that has to be literally engraved into an object, and then stabilized by precise mana patterns, that feed on the world energy for self-sustenance and prevent the core from dissipating.

Unlike yours, the pseudo cores have no conscience, just a purpose. Without an external binding they would just dissipate in the thin air. To double check my theory, let’s analyse the cuffs of my uniform too."

The pseudo core designed to store the Ballot was even smaller than the one in the amulet, but more refined.

"Well, this makes sense." Solus pondered. "The amulet can store anything, while the cuffs only the Ballot. To apply such restriction, the core must be more complex. But that means..."

"Odd, I should have exhausted my mana many times over, yet I’m only starting to feel tired now, and I have yet to use Invigoration once." _{freewēbnoveℓ.com}