Chapter 55 Seven Smidgens

  “That won’t finish them permanently.” Jane said somberly as she stared seriously at the ash covered and smoldering amalgamation of life and death.

  Isaac, who had returned to Lenna’s side, looked up from his kneeling position next to his unconscious wife and furrowed his brow. “Sure, but isn’t that your job?” He questioned the demigoddess of Catastrophes.

  Jane turned and gave him a questioning look. “What do you mean? You just threw them into the ash and left the other two alone to trap themselves.”

  “Yeah, but you are the one in charge of minions. We were in charge of the boss. The boss is dead and I helped with the minions because you are, how’d Edward put it? Ah, yes, an ‘empty cup’.” Isaac countered.

  Jane frowned as she stared down at Isaac. He was technically right but if they wanted to be technical then she also helped them after the fight with ice water. Then she remembered that Shamesh had put up a Reality Wall to protect them from her exploding tornado and her frown deepened. “Fine.” She sighed. “And how, pray tell, am I supposed to do that? I can’t exactly make another exploding tornado again so soon.” She already had over a dozen ideas but just felt like acting unnecessarily difficult.

  Isaac leveled a flat stare at her. “Disintegrate.” He said dryly. “They’ll still be here in an hour or two when you can cast it.”

  Jane looked at him skeptically. “You don’t understand the normal rate that mages regenerate mana, do you?” She asked the obvious anomaly.

  “I know that Shamesh can regenerate around eleven spell levels of mana per hour. I have no idea how much everyone else regenerates.” He told her honestly. He was pretty sure he remembered hearing Alexander say that Shamesh regenerated more mana than he had expected even considering Shamesh was technically a level twenty wizard.

  Jane sighed. “I would normally regenerate around fifteen spell levels worth of mana, considering my mana pool and its natural intake level, but I am a demigoddess. A demigoddess who just rattled windowpanes in their frames across half of the continent. The intake of thoughts, prayers, and believers is pushing me to around twenty eight and a half spell levels per hour. That will lower over time as this event fades from people’s minds and said people stop praying to me about it, but it will never lower the entire way down to fifteen spell levels per hour.” She explained things that Isaac should absolutely not have been told.

  Isaac was not a recognized demigod. As such, there were things that he was not privy to. If he was a real demigod, then he would have known what Jane had just told him as he would also be experiencing the same thing. He most definitely was not. Isaac played it cool however and just nodded along like it was things that he either already knew, already suspected, or weren’t surprising. “Well, that’s still like four or five Disintegrates an hour, right? At a two foot radius of deconstruction, their average size is eight feet, with three limbs, that should only take you like three or four hours. I doubt they’ll be going anywhere in that time.” He replied and pointedly looked over the smoldering undead.

  The undead, that Isaac had left what was left of Lenna’s sword in, had long since stopped thrashing and had even stopped flashing as the sword ran out of power. The undead was missing all of its muscles and the part of its spine that the sword had been embedded in was missing entirely. Some telekinesis could probably help pile up its entire body into a four foot diameter circle.

  Jane sighed and took a seat. Clark had already begun digging through his portable library in search for the right solvent for Shamesh. Isaac was just sitting next to Lenna who was unconscious next to a pile of her armor. And poor Shamesh was still stuck laying on the ground a few feet away.

  Jane looked over at Isaac, Lenna, and Lenna’s pile of armor which was noticeably missing the Bottomless Bag that she had watched blow up from the ridge. “You guys look like shit.” She commented.

  Isaac just stared at her for a moment before he chuckled. “Yeah, we do.” He conceded.

  “Let me see your magic sword.” Jane told him and held out her hand. Isaac shrugged and pulled it out of his Inventory before he tossed it to her. Jane’s eyes, which had turned brown while she wasn’t using any magic, instantly returned to their rainbow look as she stared intently at the hilt. She let out a low whistle. “Damn, dude, how rough are you on these poor enchantments?” She questioned Isaac.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Probably a bit too rough, but usually I don’t have very many other options.” Isaac confessed.

  Jane hummed in acknowledgement. “This is actually salvageable.” She commented. “You somehow managed to burn out enchantments that should have lasted for decades in what, six months, a year?”

  “About, yeah.” Isaac confirmed.

  Jane shook her head. “The mana throughput that this thing has endured is far beyond what any sane artificer would have rated it for. It is still a horribly inefficient weapon though. Like, why would I put a Blade of Oblivion’s worth of mana through this thing when I could just cast the spell instead?” She shook her head again and tossed it back to Isaac. Isaac easily caught it but held off on putting it back into his Inventory.

  “So the artificer who made it should be able to just refill the enchantments?” Isaac wondered.

  Jane shook her head. “No.” She told him. “The pathways are fucked.” She explained very bluntly. “You can just keep using it until all of the metal is burned out. At that point, it’ll take a lot more mana than it used to but it’ll be stable again. The pathways are still there, they are just altered a bit by your mana flowing through them. Right now, the reason why it is unstable at low power levels is because the enchantments are only around twenty percent worn out.”

  Isaac nodded in understanding. “Thanks, I was getting worried there for a while.”

  Jane shrugged. “As for the rest of your equipment, that’s gonna take some work, especially that V’Nova Matriarch Armor. That looks like it was set upon by a bunch of squirrels with Plasma Knives.”

  Isaac blinked owlishly as he tried to process and picture what a bunch of squirrels with ‘Plasma Knives’ would even look like. “What even is a plasma knife?”

  “It’s a sixth level spell that makes a dagger made of plasma held together with spatial and reality magic. You can slash, stab, or throw it. Usually only mages who dip their toes into melee combat even bother learning it but it has gotten me out of a bind or two.” Jane explained. “Great alternative to Whistling Slash when you are bound and gagged.”

  Isaac sighed and laid back on the ashy ground. This was going to be a long few hours. “Clark, have you found what we need yet?” Isaac wondered.

  “I’m in the right book, in the right section even, just give me a moment.” Clark said without pulling his eyes from the table of contents in a tome that was the size of his torso, width, depth, and height. A moment of silence passed before Clark flipped more than half of the book over to get close to what he was looking for. It still took him nearly a full minute to find the correct solvent, a minute of silence as everyone else rested or was otherwise trying not to have a panic attack while trapped in a shell of hardened ash. “This one.” Clark said to himself. “Seven smidgens of pure calcium… Master, who made this recipe?”

  “R.R.” Jane replied. “All of those recipes that look like you are reading from granny Jikan’s cookbook were from her.”

  “R.R. … That was Late Grindleden Era, right?” Clark wondered.

  “Don’t say it like that!” Jane snapped. “You’ll make me feel as old as I am.”

  “Sorry, sorry.” Clark replied with a smirk. “Do you have those measuring spoons with you? I can’t remember the last time you made me use them for something.”

  Jane nodded and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a set of measuring spoons on a keyring. “Here. Don’t lose these too.” She warned him.

  “Be found wherever you are lost.” Clark chanted as he held the keyring firmly in his hand. “There, now I can’t lose them until sunset.”

  “That spell only works until sunset?” Isaac wondered.

  “Yes and no.” Clark replied. “It works by reflecting the light of the sun towards my face if the item in question gets any further than ten feet from me. After dark it’s just useless.” He then turned to his teacher. “Am I going to have to do this here or can I use the lab?”

  Jane waved him off. “I’ll make an exception and let you use the lab. Poor tea guy has been stuck in there long enough.” She told him.

  Clark’s face lit up. “Awesome!”

  “Hey!” Jane clamped down on his excitement. “Clean up after yourself.”

  Clark’s face hardly dimmed. “I will!” He promised and then pulled an entire rolled up ritual rug with a teleportation circle on it out of his Bottomless Bag. “Gia, bless me with the authority to alter your surface and form.” He chanted and gestured to the side with a flat and level hand. The ground next to him was swept to the side and in its place was a flat section of dirt five feet deep and eight feet across. He swept it back the other way and made a nice eight by eight rough square of flattened ground. He rolled out the teleportation rug and gingerly stepped into the center of it after he made sure that it was completely level and wrinkle and crease free. “I’m off.” He told Isaac. “I’ll be back as soon as I can to get Magus Shamesh out of his temporary prison.”

  Isaac nodded. “We won’t be going anywhere.” He confirmed. “Though, he has been fighting back a panic attack for the last twenty minutes.”

  Clark nodded gravely. “Recall.” He spoke the command to activate the teleportation circle and vanished a moment later.

  “How long do you think it’ll take him?” Isaac asked Jane.

  “I don’t know the recipe off the top of my head.” She replied. “Between half an hour and seven hours if he does it on the first try. I don’t think that there are any solvents in that book that’ll take longer than seven hours to cook.”

  Isaac winced. “And that is only if he does it the first try.” He grumbled. “How good of an alchemist is he, really?”

  “Decent.” Jane replied. “If I didn’t think that he could do it on the first try, I would have gone with him. I don’t like keeping the one who gave me such wonderful tea locked in ash any more than he does.”

  Isaac nodded. “Thanks.” He replied. Both he and Shamesh really hoped that Clark would be back in half an hour and not a moment longer. “Shamesh, do you want me to send you into my shadow? Time passes faster out here.”

  Shamesh answered instantly. ‘Yes. Please.’ He sent through their link. Isaac got the impression that Shamesh would have sold his nonexistent kidneys just to get out of the solidified ash a minute faster.

  Isaac’s shadow opened up and Shamesh started to sink into it. ‘Just remember buddy, you will get out of this, better trapped for now than dead.’ Isaac told the young bone creature.

  Shamesh parroted his comment like a mantra: ‘Better trapped for now than dead.’

  Amaranth Serentia V'Nova Wexler