*Lucas Jaeger*

  Lucas rushed over to check on Terrasin, and thankfully she was already waking up. She didn’t seem hurt, but clearly she had received a great shock from what Lucas had said. He had to admit, he had been distracted by his own thoughts and his attempt to generate magical energy artificially without actually thinking about how others would react to it.

  Lucas had called himself an idiot not too long ago, but this was more confirmation than he would like to have seen. Obviously, this would be a massive undertaking for the people of this world, perhaps even a blasphemous one. It was a pity it had not worked though, and Lucas had no idea why it had not. It did generate energy, but not as much as was required to maintain the construct, so he must have missed something.

  “My apologies,” Lucas said as Terrasin woke up. “I was lost in my own thoughts and had not considered the effect my words would have.”

  “Lucas…” Julian was shaking slightly, perhaps Lucas was still underestimating the importance of what he had done. “What you were doing belongs to the realm of the gods- No human could possibly even attempt it.”

  Lucas frowned, “Clearly humans can do it, because I got that far and I am human.”

  “No, you are the Hero.” Julian shook his head, and Lucas saw something like awe in his eyes. He had really fucked this one up… “I had never put much stock in it before, but this…”

  “No, no!” Lucas felt he needed to correct this hurriedly, “it is quite simple in principle, don’t you dare start worshiping me!”

  “Lucas,” Terrasin spoke, managing to get up with Lucas’s help. “You said… You said you created a soul.”

  “Well, yes.” Lucas could see where their misconception had started, “but not quite what you are thinking.”

  “Explain.” Julian was still shaking, “please.”

  “I didn’t so much create a soul as create a shell of one?” Lucas scratched his head, “I am still not sure what a ‘soul’ is in this world, but I still doubt it is what you think it is. Regardless, I was able to touch my own ‘soul’ by extending magic into myself and then I merely replicated the, well I guess you would call it exterior, of it and used it as part of the construct.”

  “But- Th- that is… Impossible!” Julian was stuttering and hyperventilating, and now Lucas was worried about him fainting.

  “Near as I can tell,” Lucas replied. “Your ‘magic’ has no actual limits. If you had brought a physicist over instead of a biologist, he or she would likely have been able to do so much more.”

  This, well he would charitably call it an experiment, had led Lucas to some interesting observations. First, that the energy of magic was converted from its original form to magic by the interaction of the body and soul, and that this action was terribly inefficient. Second, that there was far more energy that could be tapped than what was. And third, that there was essentially no limits to what could be affected by magic if you had the knowledge and power to do so.

  In other words, this world's magic was beyond miraculous. Someone who could fully understand both magic and the laws of the world would be a god for all intents and purposes.

  That was neither here nor there though, because the knowledge that would require was far beyond what Lucas could imagine. Still, now that he knew this much he would try and push it further himself… The sheer potential of it…

  “Lucas…” Terrasin looked at him imploringly, he always was weak to this kind of thing… “Please don’t try that again. It is blasphemous and probably dangerous.”

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  “It is definitely dangerous,” Julian agreed. “I could imagine it running wild and destroying the city!”

  Well… Lucas figured that he could probably induce cold fusion with magic if he actually understood physics better, so yeah, there was a potential of that…

  “I will certainly leave it for now,” Lucas could agree to that for a time. “I often try to run before I can walk, and I think I will need many more lessons before I attempt that again. However, I don’t think I can really turn away from the potential I saw there.”

  “The danger…” Julian began, but Lucas interrupted him.

  “The potential is so far beyond me Julian,” Lucas sighed in exasperation. “That you really would have done better with a doctorate in quantum physics. If I am able to even unlock a fraction of that potential… Well, for one thing I might be able to go home with it, and I would definitely be able to wipe the demons off the planet. More importantly, we have work to do.”

  Lucas managed to push Julian to doing what he needed, drilling the holes in the eggs and injecting the samples. They would need more eggs in two days when Lucas harvested the pathogens from the eggs and used the new eggs to multiply the samples again.

  With that taken care of, Terrasin left to get some rest. She was still shaken from the words that came out of Lucas’s mouth, and Lucas thought it was best that she rested regardless.

  Julian, on the other hand, began to pester Lucas for details.

  “Look, Julian.” Lucas sighed, “my world has a set of concepts called the Laws of Thermodynamics. On the whole, it isn’t important for you to understand that, and I wouldn’t be a good person to teach you about it because I only know what I need to for my job, plus a bit that I learned from curiosity.”

  “The important part is that a consequence of the first law is that you cannot create a perpetual motion machine, in other words, you cannot create energy from nothing. This taps into another law, the law of conservation of energy, which states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. The summary of that means that ‘magic’ is not something spontaneously created by ‘souls’ and bodies, but is converted from other energy into magic by that interaction, which implies that that energy could be tapped by something else artificially.”

  “I think I understand parts…” Julian muttered, “But I don’t think I fully understand it…”

  Lucas sighed, this was not his area of expertise! He knew jack shit about this kind of thing.

  “Regardless, wasn’t there some important message? You mentioned it briefly earlier…” Or at least Lucas thought Julian had, but it had been in between the barrage of questions and warnings, and he was not quite sure.

  Julian’s face darkened, “Though the kingdom is staying out of it, the Duchies to the south and the ones to the west have condemned our actions and may be gathering their soldiers.”

  Lucas groaned, “Well it would be too easy otherwise, right? Fuck me… Can’t we negotiate?”

  “Probably not,” Julian did have a bit of a smile as he brought up the next point. “They believe that Lady Versi has… Ummm, ‘convinced’ you to help her grab power in Francinea.”

  “Well, I suppose rumors like that were bound to occur.” Lucas was not surprised at all by that much. If anything was surprising, actually, it was that it had taken so long. “The question is whether or not they believe that or are just using it as an excuse to attack.”

  “Both, probably.” Julian shrugged, “but your main issue is that most of the forces here are supporting the front line.”

  “Let me guess,” Lucas had a bad idea of where this was going… “They won’t help in this kind of struggle.”

  “That's right,” Julian confirmed. “and that includes me. There was a bit of a grey area in the actions I took for you before, having to do with your opposition to the Duke, but the way they wrote their condemnation makes it clear that they are not opposing you, but Lady Versi.”

  “So I suppose I am stuck with the personal soldiers of the nobility and whatever I can scrounge up.” Lucas scowled, “Fine, if that is how they want to play it.”

  “Actually,” Julian hesitated and then continued on. “I don’t think we really have a chance against the forces that will be arrayed against us. Undoubtedly, they will have connections with the border troops and be able to exploit that to open our gates or obtain information.”

  “I promised to build you guys weapons, right?” Lucas’s grin was practically evil as he thought of all the things he could do. “Perhaps it is time to show you some of the possibilities, sometimes people in my world forget that biologists must be chemists too. And everyone knows that you go into chemistry to blow stuff up!”

  Lucas found it funny that the same thing that was used in fertilizer could be used to make improvised explosive devices, and Lucas was very familiar with the process of producing Ammonium Nitrate. Going from that to a bomb was as easy as falling off a log, and Julian had just demonstrated his versatility in production by helping with the vaccines.

  “I am going to have to borrow you and your subordinates for a while.” Lucas almost felt bad for the people coming against him, they had no clue what they were marching in to.

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