Revenge of the Sorcerer King 3 - 11

Good morning everyone!

Chapter 11

Oberon

Vials of liquid were sorted in front of me. I had a good idea what I was working with after spending most of the night working on the problem. Other than a variety of the plants that I found were common as the weeds on the side of the road, there was a peculiar mana interspersed in with the mixture.

The tonics weren’t too complicated. In fact, I recognized most of them from before. The Empire specialized in potions and elixirs and I’d taken some time to study them briefly with the ambassador. Mostly as a show of good faith. I’d rate the ones this tower had around mid-level from my memories.

“Master. Be careful!” Maya said with some panic. I was just fiddling with a few of the herbs. “My old master said those cost hundreds of gold coins.”

“Really? These?” I asked surprised at that and she gave me a vigorous nod. Before, most of these could be found easily. I thought back to our trip here and recalled that magical herbs and such were far and in between. As a sorcerer, I didn’t have much use for them, but they did have them.

I concentrated and sent a message. “Helena!”

A few minutes later, the vampire appeared from the shadows. “What is it?” she asked with a yawn. I glanced at the window and realized that it was nearly noon. With Siateth’s darkness and the perpetual storm, it was hard to tell.

“I just need to check something. Is it true these are worth hundreds of gold coins?” I asked with a gestured to the table littered with herbs and other plants.

She rubbed her eyes, but stepped over to the table and looked the plants over. “I’m no herbalist, but I have seen a few of these on the open market. This one,” she pointed at a plant that had red borders on its leaves. Back in my day, they could be bought for a few coppers and were fairly common. “I recently saw going for nearly seventy silver coins.”

“You’re joking,” I retorted almost on instinct.

“Nope. Most magical plants have to be found in dungeons, and most people aren’t going to dive those for a few copper coins.”

“Why… Why is the world’s magic so fucked up?” I mumbled then shook my head. It didn’t matter. I had my goals. I would look into figuring this shit out when the world belonged to me.

“Have you been able to recreate the tonic used to keep the girl alive?” Helena asked inspecting a few of the vials.

“Yeah. The formula was fairly, almost ridiculously, easy. However, they mixed a pattern of mana that I feel is familiar, but I can’t quite reproduce it. I’m worried that it’s a specific person’s mana. That would make it nearly impossible to recreate and I’d have to find a suitable replacement.”

Helena turned on Maya with her hands on her hips. Sadly, she was still shorter than her by several centimeters. “Well? Do you know anything?”

“I… I don’t know what exactly, but my old master would always go into the basement of the tower.”

“Basement?” I hadn’t sensed anything. Though, if it was mechanical then I wouldn’t have noticed it while looking for magic sources. I stood up. “Well. No time like the present to investigate.”

We soon found ourselves on the bottom floor looking around for any sort of switch or mechanism that would trigger a hidden door. I think it lasted for maybe five minutes before I grew tired of wasting time. I held up hand up then used magic to dig a hole straight down. I moved slowly to avoid breaking anything that I might come out on top of.

A solid fifteen meters down, we finally hit gold. A large space could be seen that was lit by Ever Lights. “That just feels like cheating,” Helena commented looking down in the hole next to me.

“You don’t say,” I said then nudged her, causing her to fall into the hole.

“OBERON!” she shouted as she fell before I her a distinct thump. I glanced down and found she was fine.

“Three seconds! So fifteen meters. Thanks for being my stone.” I leaned back quickly as a burst of fire sheered the edges of the hole resembling a dragon’s breath. “Alright! We’re coming down!”

“Master, do you hate the other little girl?” Maya asked peeking around an undead guard. She had gotten used to them quite quickly.

“No. I just like keeping her on her toes.” I formed a mana barrier then leapt into the hole myself. A tiny fist struck the barrier right as I landed putting cracks over the surface. We had been together for some time, but I still didn’t know her true level. I felt it was in the two hundreds, but couldn’t be sure since she would never say when I asked.

“Next time you pull something like this, I’ll remove as many bones as I can and bury them across the continent.”

“Then you’d have to listen to a floating skull. Wouldn’t that be even more annoying?” I clacked my teeth like the lower undead Floating Heads with a laugh. She noisily ground her teeth in annoyance. Taking it as a win, I turned to take in what we found.

Helena squeezed her nose as we looked around. “I guess that explains the smell.”

Bodies hung from hangers along the walls in various stages of decomposition. Death and tainted mana washed over us from every direction. This mage tower had even more secrets it would seem. No wonder they didn’t flee outright with the rest of the town when we attacked. The question now, was how this discovery played into the existence known as Maya.

I walked through the hall taking time to inspect each body carefully. While the bodies were usually injured, a few appeared to have died from other causes. One woman’s corpse looked absolutely prefect. The only indication that she was dead was the smell.

“Maybe it’s a form of blood magic. They used the literal life force from others to infuse into her constantly dying body. That would make the mana constantly unique. The tonic is likely more or less to keep her brain functional. Hell, with how much nutrients and mana she is getting, she is probably smarter than half the country right now. I made it taboo in my time.”

“And it still is. Even more than necromancy. Hell, what Alessa does is borderline breaking the law of the mortals.”

“If this is all, then I can recreate the tonic.”

“You can use blood magic?”

“Yeah, its only water magic of a twisted nature. But, I don’t need to use blood magic. Life force is the driving energy behind necromancy again just twisted.” I waved my hand and turned the nearly three hundred bodies into undead zombies. While all the bodies were decomposing, the oldest body was around two weeks.

If it took this much life force to keep her alive, then Maya’s value must be higher than I initially thought. I still had days of work to decipher everything they tried to implement with her body. Looking at the resources that had been funneled into her creation, I knew one thing. It was someone attempting to change the status quo.

Alessa

Walking into the mage tower, I found a large hole in the center of the lobby. A slew of zombies were climbing out and I wondered what Oberon had gotten up to while I took a break. Helena had been called by him while we were training.

“Sister!” The strange label directed at me caused me to shiver just slightly. It just felt that odd. I turned to the girl that Oberon had for all intents and purposes adopted.

“Maya. Where is Oberon and Helena?” I asked trying to put on a smile.

“Down there,” she replied pointing into the hole. I nodded my thanks and looked down the partially scorched hole. Other than the ladder made from zombies standing on each’s shoulders, I didn’t stop the two. I pulled back worried I’d get in the way if I went down there.

“How you holding up, Maya?”

She looked at me with intelligent eyes. Again, the thought that she was some sort of monster flashed through my head, but the pity about the horrendous changes to her body rivaled it. “The nasty people stink, but master doesn’t. Do you know why?”

“These are fresh undead. They still have blood and guts that are decomposing. Give them a few years and they’ll either evolve into higher level zombies or even higher to Living Deads, or their flesh will completely decompose allowing them to become some sort of skeleton undead.”

“Ah! So master is a high level undead?”

“The highest,” I replied with a chuckle. Though as I thought about it, I wasn’t sure that was the case. When we’d gone to Siateth’s domain, there had been undead there that I felt could end countries by themselves.

“Master will help Maya become powerful.” She made a fist and her eyes sent shivers down my back. I paused as I realized that I might actually be afraid of what this girl might become in the future.

“Oberon can certainly help us become stronger. We just have to stay on his good side or we might end up like them,” I replied with a forced smile as I pointed to the zombies streaming by us.

“Oh. I don’t want to be changed anymore,” she said with a grimace rubbing her hands along her sides.

I held out my hand. “Then lets do our best to be good students.” She took it gingerly and nodded with a small smile forming on her face.

“Okay!”

Maya and I chatted for a while as I waited for Oberon and Helena to emerge from the catacombs. Even as an vampire, I was appalled by the number of undead that made their way out of the hole. The stream finally died down and Oberon flew out of the hole with a flight spell while Helena ascended next to him as a bat.

Oberon landed in front of us and placed a hand on Maya’s head. “And I thought I was bad. I might have to step up my game if I don’t want to be outdone by the mortals.”

“I feel like it was once said that mortal create their own demons. You are simply the creation of the mortals of that time.” She paused. “Does Lucifer qualify as a mortal?”

“Oh yeah. He might not die of age, but I know of a few ways to kill his kind,” Oberon replied with a sinister grin.

I was about to say something when I felt the presence of several of my Familia enter the area around the city. Connecting with them to see why they had came back to the city, I was horrified by the level of pain they were all enduring.

“Ah. The master has appeared. I guess we don’t need the bait any longer,” a woman said before I was blasted from my connection with the girls as their heads were removed.

Screaming, I dropped to the ground grabbing my head as ten beheading’s worth of pain flood into my mind. “I’LL SLAUGHTER THEM!”

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