Lucas had succeeded in his ploy, he had killed his master while keeping his few friend and allies alive. It couldn't have gone any better. 'It seems the arrays were useful enough.'
'We were lucky to have so much time on our hands, otherwise, we would be dead in the ground right now. That spell of Venion was impossible to block at our level.'
'Then shouldn't we be happy that it all worked out well?'
'For all we know, we could've screwed up with the intentions during the fight, resulting in our deaths!'
'But it didn't, did it?'
Part of Lucas couldn't help but scoff at that statement.
In order to create such a big storm he needed to create a bunch of arrays that could increase the amount of water and wind in the air, nature did the rest. The storm had multiple purposes, first, he needed to create weather that would support the spiders. Those monsters were most affiliated with water magic, so the storm was a perfect environment for them because it also got rid of most of the sunlight.
To lure the spiders he had created a trail of hollow dirt balls filled with pheromones that only the spiders could perceive. 'We couldn't have gotten luckier with that queen spider.'
During his search for the queen he had to hide from genuine Rank 1 spiders, so he needed to control his aura and darkness spell with extreme precision to hide. Once the queen was alone he quickly built an earth dome before making the spider screech for help. To be able to get it alone he had needed a ton of luck, but it seems the gods were in his favor.
He was only caught a few times making him retreat as fast as he possibly could. Running away wasn't possible, but through his understanding of the monsters he figured out a way to escape with only a few wounds.
Now that Venion was dead, Lucas looted his corpse, he obviously couldn't wear his clothes for that would make him stand out. Lowering the hood of the mantle revealed a deformed face. "What the fuck?"
Venion's face was a mess of human features, his eyes were on different levels, his nose was crooked and there was an extra mouth on his right cheek. The image of his former teacher was completely ruined. Lucas had the urge to barf, but he had seen worse, so he held it in. Looting his corpse didn't reveal much, a simple ring and a small notepad were the only things he could take with him.
'That's good enough, we already have a bunch of stuff anyway.'
'Shouldn't we also take the potions? Perhaps we can trick someone else with them?'
'Hmm, it could indeed come in handy.'
He set the corpse on fire before walking a bit back to get his backpack. Robbing the secret basement where Venion experimented on multiple things he got a few books and a map with him. The books were about magic principles and some other things. Two of them had a more intriguing title than the others, "The Art of Life Drain and the book about Fire Intensification are the only truly interesting ones."
Lucas started to sprint to the north, 'The kingdom in the north is open to everything, even dark magic is allowed. They are against the rules of the Holy Kingdom which basically rule the entire world. Since they have opposing leadership, war will eventually break out, or the king will be replaced with a more fitting one. As long as dark magic is allowed, I need to get as much as I possibly can out of it.
After sprinting a bit he decided to rest for a moment, he had just defeated a powerful mage so his body and mind demanded rest. Lucas created a stone hut, which was a simple hollow cube of dirt, before using his backpack as a pillow and going to sleep. He was used to sleeping on hard or uncomfortable surfaces so a dirt ground was more than enough.
Time passed and Lucas eventually woke up refreshed as ever. The excitement was still there, his entire being was happy, he was free after all. The contract was never broken and as long as Robert was alive he could still command Lucas, but the chances that Robert would manipulate Lucas were low enough to take the risk. Besides, Robert doesn't know how to activate it in the first place, Venion only told Havi.
Breaking down the stone hut revealed the beautiful night sky. Stars were everywhere giving off a cool feeling, Lucas stared for a bit, enjoying the sight.
"Let's get down to it.", he took the book from his backpack, "The Art of Life Drain is an art which siphons the life force from other beings to transmute that force into magical energy that can be absorbed. So life force can be assumed to be the vitality of any living thing, magical energy is the same that's in the core I guess?"
'Yes, that does seem to be the case.'
There were a bunch of diagrams about magic, but Lucas didn't understand too much from them. Even with his critical thinking and scheming mind, he couldn't figure out everything. This mist of confusion didn't last too long. Thanks to the book of magical principles, Lucas learned a lot about how magic truly worked.
Every spell created with runes is fixed. A spoken rune can force the Magicules in the core to take a certain shape, when this shape comes into contact with the open air it starts to form the spell that was spoken. Magicules take on varying shapes and compositions, the runes make them stable and usable for very low-level mages. Higher ranking mages that use the same runes will create more powerful spells with the same runes because the Magicules in the core are of a higher quality while also fulfilling the conditions of the rune.
For example; If a rune asks the Magicules to have a certain speed and elemental charge the core will force the Magicules to adopt that elemental charge. But if the quality of the Magicules is higher then the speed becomes doubled with the same composition.
'So there are Magicules in our core that take a certain form with runes, but there are also spells without runes or elemental components?'
The information that he had to digest was a lot for a starting mage without a teacher. The book about magical principles was very helpful due to all the examples it provided. It gave Lucas a broad vision of magic and what could be achieved. There were still tons of things he hadn't learned or discovered which motivated him to keep going.
Looking back at the book about Life Drain he started to read it again. The technique was quite special, he needed to spread his willpower to cover a certain area. This in itself was already difficult, Lucas spent a lot of time trying to achieve what the book asked of him. Next to that, there was also the issue of using darkness in a certain form to break the bonds of beings so that their life force could be drained. Luckily the book had the necessary runes to perform this spell. Still, he needed to figure out how to pronounce the runes and become a lot more proficient in them.
The more you use a certain rune the faster the spell can be formed. This holds true to most action, the more you run the better you become at running, the same principle holds for using runes. The body adapts to the rune and can react faster when it has felt the action a certain number of times.
The technique had more to do with willpower than the actual spell, you needed to force the life around you to submit to your power before using the darkness to destroy their tissue to drain them of the energy, hence the name Life Drain.
A week passed before he could use the technique, using willpower in such a complex way took a lot longer than first assumed. But now he had a good grasp of the method, he merely had to test it out. Using a blade of grass as a test subject he tried to activate the technique. The pronunciation of the rune felt a lot more ancient than normal runes, but he couldn't say how or why, it just felt that way.
He covered the blade of grass with his willpower and tried to force it to give up on its life, his subject needed to feel that their life was meant to be used as a source of energy for a higher being. The blade of grass didn't have much conscience so the technique worked splendidly. Nothing really resisted him, the energy from the grass flowed into his body but he couldn't even notice it. It was so small that neither his body nor core felt anything.
If he focused really hard on his core, he could feel that he gained an extremely small bit of energy, so small it was negligible. Plucking a similar bit of grass he used the technique once more and this time it went almost instantaneously since the grass was disconnected from the ground it could be considered almost dead, so the technique worked twice as fast.
'Let's see how much we can devour!', Lucas was starting to get excited from the strange technique, somehow it fitted him. Using the technique on a larger scale required a lot more willpower, but he held steadfastly. Spreading his willpower around him, he felt his Mind Sphere run dry, giving him a headache.
After reaching his limit he started to use the spell to drain the energy. The trees in his reach started to resist a bit, but against a human mind, it couldn't do much. Life was starting to get drained from the environment. Lucas felt like his body was starting to be filled up, energy reached his core and started to improve it. His core started to use the provided energy to stock up first and use the leftovers to start the creation of the very first rune for his first circle.
The technique was done and Lucas was already completely sweating, it was a lot more draining than he initially thought. Using the technique on grass didn't require much from him but using it on such a big area almost damaged his mind. It was comparable to an entire day of solving complex math equations, his mind was tired.
"I guess that's our limit."
He needed to sleep again, even if he had just slept, his mind was demanding more. Lucas wanted to create another stone 'hut', but couldn't even speak the runes aloud, falling unconscious on the ground.