Reincarnated As A Peasant - Book 2 Chapter 25: The Small Gate

Landar

After leaving the gate guards, and heading outside the city limits, it didn’t take long to find a small river. The land here was riddled with small tributaries that came and went with winter.

The hard part was finding one with a shoreline that wasn’t entirely frozen. The ground was wet, which meant in the winter it froze and hard packed easily. Only around the deeper faster moving rivers would there be enough of a current to keep the ground from freezing completely.

“This is the third one we’ve tried lad,” Gragon said as he stuck his knife into the side of the river we had found. Most of the trees in this part of the forest had lost their leaves, but a few evergreens still held their color and provided protection from the soft but frigid wind. “And this one ain’t no good neither. We’ll need some magic, or some hardened tools to dig.”

I smirked. Magic might work. “Let me try something. I’ve been uh . . . studying this spell matrix with a friend. I dont’ have most of it memorized yet, but … I have enough of the circuits down to see if I can warm the ground here a bit.”

“Spell circuit?” I just looked at him. I didn’t know exactly how much I could or couldn’t share about human techniques and teachings with him. “Right, humans always have to come up with their own names for things.” He rolled his eyes and I couldn’t fault him for it. “Go ahead.”

He got up and backed away from the little patch of sand he had found and declared ‘good enough’ for what we were planning on doing with it.

I breathed out, pushed the mana through my body careful not to over saturate and make myself sick. That was something that Professor Dugal warned about. If a spell caster forced too much mana into their system without proper control, it could make them violently ill. Fever, body aches, and the like were just some of the side effects.

To me, it sounded an awful lot like mana poisoning. When I asked about it, he had said it was exactly the same illness, just more short term rather than fatal. Though too much mana through an unprepared body could have a deadly effect.

“Do not neglect your physical training, wizards. Only through improving your body, mana channels, core, and mana pool, can you increase the limit of what you are able to tolerate.” His words rang in my head now, as I made my mana flow evenly and easily through my system.

I pulled the mana through my body, and out through my hands. Slowly at first, but as the pores in my skin adjusted, I pushed it a little faster.

What I had done in my initial experiments with magic had been to move mana from my body into another object directly. That’s how imbued strike worked, for instance. Or to use mana in my own body somehow to enhance it. This? This was proper spell casting, even if only part of an actual spell.

“One expresses mana externally by condensing it through circulation, and then expressing it slowly through one’s natural, miniature skin orifices.” Dugal had explained to the students. “These orifices are called pores. It is where your sweat excretes from, and if they get clogged, it makes it harder to properly spell cast. And could potentially lead to minor skin irritation and infection. The acne mister Winston suffers from,” he had pointed towards a young man whose face was pock-marked with acne scars.

To his credit the kid hadn’t so much as winced. He just kept taking notes, ignoring the snickering from those around him.

“And others, are examples of these infections gone haywire. Or the bodies pours being malformed, or in a temporary state of malformality due to puberty. Such issues usually have only a minor impact on spell casting, unless the entire body is afflicted. But even a minor delay in forming a spell during combat, or in an emergency, can mean life or death to a spell caster. This means, dear young pupils, that proper hygiene is a wizard’s friend! The clearer your skin is, where you wish to express that mana outward, the easier it is. And the more your pores become accustomed to mana transposition, the faster they will function at doing so.”

I felt more than I saw the mana pour from my hands, and arms. Slowly seeping into the air. It was still tied to my will, but it wouldn’t be for long unless I gave it something to do. I focused on that connection, and suddenly the mana became visible to me. Like the colored auras after I inspected someone.

I needed more mana for what I wanted to do, and so I had to keep pushing.

From what I understood, the inspection ability I had taught myself as a kid, was a mixed spell. Mana and ‘life mana’ or more appropriately in my mind, Chie. And it wasn’t really even a spell anymore, as it was tied into my mind meridian, and my mind spirit. I had, inadvertently, stumbled upon something that only those with extremely high levels in both life and mana cultivation could typically do.

Life cultivators had to brute force the information by running their aurora directly over someone, while low level mages and western adventurers had their mind spirit guess from the data they got from their mundane senses.

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What I did blended the two techniques together.

It was a pale imitation of what true masters learned to do at levels ten and higher, but it was still amazing I learned it just after ascending from nothing. Or so, “System” had explained to me the night before.

You should probably focus now. You have enough mana.

Right, thank you System.

I’ve decided my name should be Sid.

Sid?

Yeah, Sid. But we’ll talk about it maybe after your spell? Unless you want mana feedback, and to be sick for the next few days.

I refocused and found System, no, Sid, had been right. Mana pulsed around my hands in a red and yellow aura. I had aligned the mana to fire while it had been inside my mind. Alright, now to shape the spell. I flexed my aura around the mana, and inforced my will on the magical substance. Shaping it, forming the basic ‘heat’ and ‘direction’ circuits I had memorized earlier from off Victors sheet.

Sid helped by keeping the memory fresh in my mind, the image was clear and after a few moments I had the raw magic in roughly the right shape.

Do you think this will work? I asked Sid.

I don’t know, why are you asking me? You’re the one with more ‘do crap and see if it works’ experience than anyone else I know.

You only know me.

I also know the she wolf. Now, are we going to do this or not?

I sighed, and smoothed out the lines a bit more. Though I knew I was stalling more than anything else. It didn’t help much. Remembering what I knew about centripetal force, I decided to try something I hadn’t been told to do. I cycled the mana through the circuit faster, and faster.

The lines sharpened, and I felt power building. I hardened the mana along the outside of the shape, forming a kind of tunnel through which the rest of it flowed. But before I could finish I found that as I circulated it faster and faster, I began taking in mana from seemingly nowhere.

Ambient mana. Careful, too much unaligned or misaligned mana will cause this thing to fly apart.

Noted, thank you.

Any time boss!

I finished hardening the spell, and then with a flick of my will sent it flying down into the patch of dirt. But instead of going down onto the dirt before activating as I had anticipated, the moment I tried to push it away from me, the hardened shell broke.

And the mana reacted.

Fire erupted out of my palms directly into the dirt where they had been pointing. As soon as the circuit had activated I felt the mana inside me begin being pulled along with the external mana, and before I could cut it off all the grass around me had been burned to a crisp, and my mana pool was nearly half empty.

“Holy Ancestors—”

“Holy shi—”

That is awesome, boss! Wait, do you know what you just did?

No?

You cast your first, real, actual, proper spell! You weren’t scheduled to do that for another month at least, and even then Dugal had it on the syllabus you should be casting something called ‘mana ball’. Useless sounding spell if I ever heard one.

Then uh, what did I just cast? I asked as I brushed soot off my clothes. I had looked at the syllabus, and while I didn’t agree that mana ball was going to be entirely useless as it was the basis for a lot of other offensive spells, it did sound boring on its own.

Jet of Fire! I didn’t realize it before when you chose the circuits, but i’ve checked with the central mind at the school and yup! It matches! A bit crude, and the central academy spirit is a bit of a prude about this stuff. But she agrees with me, that you pulled it off!

“Woah.” The heat quickly dissipated, and I found my shoes had been signed black along the outside. “I’ll uh . . . i’ll need new shoes.”

“Damn your shoes boy. You’re uh . . . well.” The dwarf went up to the spot of burnt ground. Snow had melted, winter grass had burned, and a few other hibernating shrubs wouldn’t be coming back during the spring. He put his knife into the blackened sand and it went in easily this time almost to the hilt. “We have the sand we need. Grab those buckets boy. Let’s fill em up.”

***

We made our way back with two buckets of soft sand each. One of the on duty guards came out to meet us, and even saluted as we passed. He didn’t need to, but the gesture was a welcome sign that I hadn’t just scared them. But hopefully given them some actual motivation to do their jobs.

Half way back to Apple Core Court we nearly got lost. But thankfully Yolanda showed up.

“Can’t let you be getten lost me’lord.” She tipped an imaginary hat to me with her good arm.

“I thought you’d be in hiding after the gangers saw you with us.”

“Nah, they know I’m just a guide for an extra bit of coin. Besides, the way I hear it you scared the shit out of damn near everyone down here, and the gangs will be laying low for a while. Which means, I’m with you until things blow up, or blow over.”

I chuckled. “Fair enough I guess. Do you have a family that needs protection?”

Yolanda shrugged. “Ma and da are on the work crews, and no one knows who my cibs are. The gangs know not to mess with them or the real watch shows up and starts busting heads after everyone goes to work. Or worse the gray priests show up and start preaching to everyone about duty, work, love, and all that tripe for a few months and annoys everyone. Then no one likes em for a while after that.”

I laughed at that. Roland wouldn’t like hearing that the people here think the Grey are annoying. “You’re not fond of the gray then?”

“They’re alright. But most come round here aren’t worth their salt. Sure they heal a few people, fixem up with a bit of magic or somethin. And they let ya say what needs said. But they don’t do nothing about any of it.”

Probably because they can’t. City politics. Well, that’s over now. At least, as far as I’m concerned.

“Fair enough. Well, we have to hurry back so we can get those buildings fixed up enough to survive the coming storm in a few days. You’re welcome to find a spot among the people there if you like.”

“Sounds good, m’lord” she said it almost flippantly. “Was goin to steal a spot if you didn’t offer one anyway. Good to know you know your business though. Come on, I know a shortcut.”