Chapter 54 — The Wild Mage's Legacy

When Hetty saw the battered old notebook, she finally understood where all of this had come from: "These are... left behind by that wild mage?"

"That's right. A low-tier mage cast out by the mainstream mage circles, one who spent his whole life stuck at the second rank—yet his talent was beyond anything anyone could imagine. This age simply never gave him room to develop it," Gao Yang said with a sigh, gazing at the notebook in his hand. "Over the past few days I've read through part of the research notes inside. In my view, this notebook is worth at least half a duchy."

Hetty was dumbstruck. "Wha—?!"

Yet there was not a trace of exaggeration in what Gao Yang said. In fact, viewed from the perspective of technological development, the legacy left by that nameless wild mage would only reveal ever greater value as time went on. His research was all at a very crude, initial stage, but Gao Yang knew perfectly well that for many epoch-making concepts and ideas, "the initial stage" is the most valuable stage of all.

Gao Yang set the notebook on the table and looked up at Hetty. "His daughter—the child called Anne—most likely has shadow-attribute elemental assimilation. You could call it the rarest of all mana sicknesses. As a mage, you should be no stranger to this disease."

"Elemental assimilation... that's a disease unique to the Violet Kingdom. The incidence rate is very low, but there is no cure," Hetty said with a slight nod. "I guessed as much when I first read those diary entries."

In this world where magical power existed, there were many things utterly different from the world of Gao Song's homeland. Some were good, and naturally some were bad—elemental assimilation was among the very worst of them.

This affliction, brought on by the erosion of magical power, was most often seen in regions rich in magical force and active in the elements. During the age of the Gondo Empire, it occurred most frequently around the Deep Blue Well in the imperial capital, and even at the height of the Empire's power it ranked among the diseases that were all but incurable. In the present age, it was the "specialty" of the Violet Kingdom in the north of the continent.

If transcendent power had brought the people of this world a gift from nature, then the elemental assimilation that came with it was like the malice mixed into that gift.

Elemental assimilation appeared only in newborns. It was a mutation caused by mana radiation while the fetus developed in the mother's womb. Children afflicted with this disease could grow normally at first, but as the years passed they would gradually show signs of being eroded and assimilated by a specific element. The patient's flesh and blood were transformed in the process, slowly becoming semi-elemental; and as normal biological tissue was bit by bit converted into element, they were likewise rejected by the primary material world. Apart from a very few races possessed of special gifts, no elemental being could long exist in the primary material world—such was the natural law of this world.

This process accelerated as the disease deepened, and it was irreversible. And once more than half of a person's biological tissue had been elementalized, they would be "exiled" by the material world, pushed out into the elemental plane corresponding to their elemental assimilation.

And then they would die in the crevice between the material world and the elemental world. The biological tissue remaining in the patient would make this process unspeakably horrifying—like being torn apart.

What the nameless wild mage's daughter Anne suffered from must be this disease—and specifically shadow-tending elemental assimilation: the rarest of all elemental assimilations.

Mages and scholars had studied the various elemental planes for many years, but research into the mysterious Shadow Plane alone had advanced with the greatest difficulty.

"Elemental assimilation can't be cured, only delayed. And the most effective way to 'delay' it is to bind the patient's body with magical force—just as elemental summoners use magic shackles to forcibly keep an elemental being in the material world," Hetty said. Though only a low-tier mage, she was quite well versed in such theoretical knowledge. "Only this is even harder than binding an elemental being, because elemental assimilation keeps deepening, and the whole process requires a continuous infusion of magical power..."

"A second-rank mage—and one ostracized by the Arcane Council, at that—has neither the ability nor the money to sustain such an expensive treatment," Gao Yan nodded. "So he used his own method to build a self-charging magic circle of unprecedented efficiency, broke the iron law that such circles can only run internal cycles, and turned that circle into a device that 'charges' his daughter. You could say he was forced into it, because all the great mana focal points had already been claimed, and the scattered secondary mana focal points in the forest could provide hardly any energy at all—but he solved the problem with his own special gift."

"But that anomalous surge of magical power destroyed his circle..." Something suddenly occurred to Hetty. "In that case, doesn't this self-charging circle—this thing named the 'Magic Web'—have a huge flaw? When magical power surges, it won't be able to withstand it..."

"No. The surge didn't destroy the circle's structure; it had very thorough safety measures," Gao Yang said, shaking his head. "I saw the structure of that circle with my own eyes at the time, and I can confirm it was intact right to the end. According to the wild mage's diary, what went wrong in the end wasn't the circle—it was the 'shadow conversion' ritual he performed. Magical binding can only slow the process of elemental assimilation; it can't root it out. By then Anne was on the verge of losing control, so the wild mage risked performing a ritual he had no way of controlling. As a result, the magical power generated by the Magic Web during the surge exceeded his capacity."

"If that's the case... then I'm not worried," Hetty said, nodding slowly. Then, with a complicated expression, she looked at the notebook the wild mage had left behind. "It's truly hard to imagine that a down-and-out wild mage could make something like this... This large circle, pieced together from basic units, is unlike any magic circle I know of. It has cast off almost all complex, abstruse structures and pushed... simplicity to its utmost."

"Please call it 'universality,'" Gao Yi said with a laugh. "As for the work of laying the experimental 'Magic Web' in the smithy..."

As he spoke, he hesitated between Hetty and Rebecca. A technical job like laying a magic circle was clearly better suited to Hetty; but Hetty was already shouldering most of the work of coordinating the camp's construction. Capable as she was in that regard, the task of building the magic laboratory still awaited her, and Gao Yang truly did not want to add to her burden. Handing it to Rebecca seemed feasible too—though she could only cast Fireball, laying a magic circle was not the same as casting spells yourself, especially a self-charging circle like this one. She need only complete the construction according to the blueprints; all that required was a grasp of theoretical knowledge and calculating ability. But then again...

Every time he looked at Rebecca, he couldn't help but get that look in his eye, the one you'd give a dopey deer... Could this girl really handle it?

As if sensing Gao Song's hesitation, Rebecca bounced up before Hetty could say a word. "Ancestor Yan! Ancestor Yan! Give it to me, give it to me! I can do it!"

"Are you sure?" Gao Yang gave her a deep look. "This project is more important than you can imagine. You could call it a foundation—a prerequisite for many of my plans to come... Can you handle it?"