Nick placed a clear glass bowl on his metal table and then poured one bottle of the Mimic's blood inside of it. Nick then dropped a random piece of bone from his collection of rank 1 magic beast bones into the clear liquid and within a few moments, the Mimic's Blood became a mix of black and red hues. Nick observed the change and remarked:
"This is supposed to be the blood of the magic beast that the bone originated from. Hmmm...could I use blood made in this way to become a warlock?"
Nick thought over that notion for a few minutes before dismissing the idea as unlikely.
"Magic is too unpredictable, I can't use anything other than the genuine article in my attempt. Even from spell making, I know that the slightest change in the laws of a spell can result in an entirely different result. This blood may seem identical to another Magic beast's but it is still the Mimic's Blood. I don't even know what kind of magic beast that is, if I used its blood to become a warlock I would probably end up a mimic warlock instead of a void dragon warlock."
Nick chuckled at the idea.
"The best I can hope for is to use the Mimic's blood as a sort of reference and since I don't have any blood path methods, I'll have to find another way to derive the blood."
Nick knew that this was possible since he experienced the concept of one path being used to mimic another path through rule magic.
"That's not simple though, since my attainment in rule path is only ordinary and soul path would be of only slight use in this case. It looks like I'll have to make use of my old friend, trial and error."
Nick thought a bit more about instances where he had created useful spells that helped him during his periods of development.
"I wonder..."
Nick quickly summoned a small section of the baby void dragon's finger bone and quickly swallowed it before casting:
(Growth.)
Nick felt no change at first but then suddenly, he found himself having the perspective of crawling outside a shattered egg onto a pile of bones situated on the side of a steep cliff with dark clouds over head. Nick now appeared to be a small dragon that was covered in blue-green scales, had one pair of light, leathery wings and walked on its four legs from which sharp claws emerged. Nick, as a baby dragon crawled around onto the pile and walked over it going from the size of a chick to the size of an SUV within moments. Nick eventually flapped his wings, trying to fly but they could not lift him off the ground.
As if by instinct, Nick scratched at the space in front of him and to his surprise, what seemed like a tear in space opened up in midair at which point Nick placed his head into it but only saw complete darkness even as Nick blinked his bright green, slit like eyes.
The scene in front of Nick soon returned to that of the inside of his safe-house and he knelt down on one knee, feeling a cold sweat.
"Growth uses the laws of what I consume to result in some kind of physical or mental development and this time I received some kind of vision of the behavior of a baby void dragon. This tells me that I could possibly use rule magic to perform my experiments."
Nick rolled up his proverbial sleeves and got to work by making use of his most pronounced skill which was spell making. Nick started to theorize a rule magic spell that he could use to extract the source essence of the void dragon bones which he would need to produce genuine void dragon blood as well as a rule magic spell that he could use to confirm the authenticity of what he produced.
Nick worked day and night on his spells and only stopped to perform observations and experiments that involved the use of Mimic's blood so that he could better understand the nature of magic beast blood. Sometimes he would use small pieces of the void dragon bones to produce blood that was supposedly identical to a void dragon's and made notes regarding the viscosity of the blood, it's color and other characteristics that sometimes even included its taste.
Nick barely got any sleep as he experimented and developed his spells and like this, seven months passed...
Nick sat at his desk looking at his laptop as he rubbed the stubble on his chin.
"It's a good thing that when I bought a new laptop that I filled it with science materials that included biology and human anatomy text books. Its hard to say that I would have made much progress in my spell making without these books."
Spell making required creating laws that could manipulate reality, it was therefore a foregone conclusion that one had to understand the nature of reality in the first place to create useful spells.
Nick summoned his notes from his space band and looked over the three spells that he had developed in recent months, assessing their completeness.
"I only intended to create two new spells but after months of experimenting, I had some inspiration regarding how I could use soul path to help me in completing my objective."
Nick picked up his notes for the first spell and summarized:
"This rule path spell's name is Source and it is able to isolate and separate the fundamental DNA construct from a piece of biological material. I had to read over ten physiology books to even understand what DNA really was. Apparently all living beings naturally descended from a source organism and changes later occurred in the DNA of its offspring that produced the different living beings that exist today. For example, somewhere in the evolutionary chain, a dog and a wolf has the same ancestor. My spell isolates the the DNA model of that common ancestor to get the purest biological sample, well...in theory. Chances are that this spell will ensure that I am able to secure the essence of a void dragon's DNA from the bones minus any possible corruption."
Nick put down those notes and examined his next spell:
"This is another rule path spell that I call Compare. Theoretically, it should allow me to intuit how similar two samples of substances are, 100% similar meaning that they are the same thing and 0% meaning that they are completely different."
Nick put down those notes and picked up the third set.
"These are notes for a soul path spell that I call Soul Refinement. I created this spell based off inspiration from how Source is designed. It should allow me to remove laws unrelated to soul path from souls affected by it, creating purer souls. This would have the benefit of removing characteristics that a soul would have obtained while its host was living. The reason that I needed to rest for so long after I used the Soul Enhance Formation was because the souls that I used had varying laws and aspects specific to them which resulted in a conflict while they were being fused with my own soul. This conflict created an irritation to my soul that presented as a severe headache and left me partially incapacitated. This spell should prevent that from happening again If I use it right. This doesn't have anything to do with me becoming a warlock but another useful spell can't hurt."
Nick felt very exhausted even as he read his notes because creating three rank 2 intermediate grade spells within such a short amount of time took a lot out of him. Nick was, however going to keep going until he completed his goal.
"I think Source and Compare are enough to produce the blood that I need in addition to the materials that I currently have but I also think that it would be better to make use of a magic formation to do it."
Magic formations had the benefit that they allowed the user to do many complex things at the same time with minimal effort. This reduced the chance of backlash from failure to cast one particular spell.
"I need some more time to design a formation. This will be difficult since this mostly involves rule path and not soul path but not impossible."
Nick got work right away by testing his spell Compare on items that he had stored within his space band which soon proved that the spell was a success. Nick could not easily test the other two spells at the moment so he moved on to designing his rule path formation. Nick went through another period of very little sleep and constant work. Formation path required Nick to arrange the laws of multiple spells in a circuit like fashion to create a feasible final result and when having to factor in magic materials, the complexity of the design increased.
Nick practised drawing the formation on canvas paper and worked out the placement of the laws for numerous spells by trial and error. These spells included Source and compare as the core, supported by Copy, Growth and Big. Nick incorporated almost all of his rule path methods in the design of the formation and frequently burnt himself out in the process.
About Two months later...
Nick looked at the large piece of canvas paper on the floor of his safe-house and felt proud. He rubbed his tired and bloodshot eyes and licked his chapped lips.
"The Source Blood Formation is finally complete."
The formation was now drawn with red marker on the canvas paper situated on the floor. Nick had poured his all into creating this formation and his work was finally about to pay off.
Nick sat in the middle of the canvas paper and placed five bottles of Mimic's blood at various points around him. Nick began to speak paragraphs of the various laws that made up the formation in Valteese, slowly activating it. Ten minutes later when he felt the time was right, Nick summoned all of the baby void dragon bones from his space band and placed them all around him in a circular fashion. A few minutes after that, the bones began to melt as the magic power of the now glowing red formation invaded them. After all the bones had been melted into a viscous white liquid, the glass bottles containing the Mimic's Blood which was the only blood path material suddenly broke all at once and then the blood flowed toward the viscous, white liquid bone, mixing with the liquid bone as if the blood had a will of its own.
The resulting mixture then started to heat on the canvas paper and steam. One hour later, Nick realized that he had a dried bronze colored powder all around him that smelt like burnt wood. Nick quickly summoned a small tray and a spoon from his space band and collected the powder. He then summoned his last bottle of Mimic's Blood and used the spoon to throw a pinch of the bronze powder into the bottle. The clear Mimic's blood changed to a deep bronze color which would supposedly be the color of of real Void Dragons Blood; Nick had already confirmed that likelihood through previous experiments. He then placed the tray of powder beside the bottle of Mimic's Blood and activated the formation's other method.
(After mixing and refining, comes stimulating and condensing.)
Nick spoke the name of the method out loud:
"Growth from Source."
The bronze colored powder began to heat up rapidly at which point it also began to crystalize and in thirty minutes transformed into a tennis ball sized block of dull gold crystal. Two hours later after further heating, the crystal melted into a small amount of thick but viscous dull gold liquid. Nick did not know exactly what to expect from his second method since its purpose was to stimulate and refine the characteristics of the 'source blood' which was the bronze colored powder from earlier.
Nick then used the formation's next method:
"Compare Samples."
Just as its name suggests, this method was designed to compare the transformed Mimic's Blood and Nick's end product. The result of the comparison suddenly appeared among Nick's thoughts and he pursed his lips in confusion.
(The results say that the Mimic's Blood is only 46% identical to my end product. That' s weird. The Mimic's Blood should at worst be almost identical to the baby void dragon's blood. Why is my spell using my end product as the base for comparison, indicating that my end product might be more far more complex than the composition of the baby void dragon blood.)
Nick was worried about this discrepancy.
(If the end product was not some kind of blood, then my intuition tells me that the result of the comparison would be a flat 0% or close to it but this 46% means something significant even if it seems relatively low. The transformed Mimic's Blood, according to the logic of my spell is 54% inferior in composition to my end product. Does that mean that my end product isn't the refined blood of a void dragon?)
Nick wasn't sure since there was no way for him to probe for an exact answer. He sighed and said out loud:
"No risk, no reward. Magic is simply too unpredictable at my level. The fact that a clean end product was produced means that I did not fail in execution at least."
Nick finally removed his remaining hesitation and activated the formation's final method.
(Alter My Source.)
At this moment the formation's glow changed from red to ghost white. The dull gold blood flowed out of the tray as if it had a will of its own and continued to flow towards Nick, eventually attaching itself to him, and moving towards his mouth. Soon, Nick opened his mouth and the blood flowed inside of it and then went down his throat. A few moments later, Nick felt all of his bones itch with pain.
"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
Nick couldn't help but scream as he fell backward from the shock of the pain. Within a few moments, Nick became unable to move and eventually unable to scream any longer. The pain was so excruciating that Nick's vision faded to black as he involuntarily twitched like a suffocating fish, urine spreading all over his pants.
One minute later, Nick passed out...
*****************************************
Nick quickly opened his eyes.
"Huh? Where am I?"
He looked all around him but the only things that he saw were many brightly shining white lights. After collecting his thoughts, Nick realized that he was now floating in a strange space that was empty of anything else except him, the many lights twinkling around him and a deep azure backdrop of flowing color.
"Where is this place? I was just in the middle of altering my bloodline and then I ended up here. Ending up in strange places has practically become a common thing for me now."
Nick sighed loudly, not knowing what to do. Suddenly, a loud roar penetrated the surroundings, visibly warping the space around Nick.
"What the hell was that?"
Nick quickly looked all around him to find an answer when suddenly, above him, the space there broke apart like brittle glass and a creature that looked like a large lizard with deep sky blue scales emerged and glided out of the breach in space with its four scale covered wings. This giant lizard had four long, thin legs, a long, menacing snout that exuded a clear mist and strange eyes that swirled with different shades of blue light. Nick soon felt something wrong.
"That's not a lizard, that's a dragon!"
The moment that Nick said this, the dragon turned its head to look at him. The dragon lightly snarled and the space around Nick quaked and twisted as if it was a living thing. The dragon tilted its head using its long neck and then disappeared.
"Huh?"
As soon as Nick spoke, the seemingly twenty meter long dragon appeared over him once again and opened its mouth while moving its head toward Nick. Nick froze in panic with the ambient power of the dragon bearing down on him like heavy rainfall. The dragon quickly swallowed Nick who offered no resistance whatsoever.
***************************************
Nick quickly raised his back off the canvas paper situated on the floor and wiped the sweat away from his forehead. Nick took a look at his surroundings and in quiet glee got up and went to his bathroom to take a look at his mirror, however, what he saw disappointed him.
"There's no change. Most of my significant progress involved some kind of physical change. Where is it now?"
Nick looked at his sweat covered body that smelt of urine and frowned.
"Does that mean that my plan failed, I actually didn't become a warlock?"
Nick felt that was strange since he seemed fine now. If his formation failed to do what it was supposed to do, then he should be near death or at least disfigured.
Nick sighed, saying:
"When magic is involved, anything is possible. That probably means that nothing happening is also possible."
Nick chuckled at himself and a slight glimmer appeared in his eyes.
"It doesn't matter if I failed this time, I'll try again until I succeed. It's not over until I win!"
As Nick shouted that, however, his entire body started to steam with a blue vapor. Nick was shocked.
"What is happening?"
In the next moment, the space around him as well as his own movements froze completely, he was no longer able to even breathe.
(Huh?)
That was Nick's last thought before the frozen space around him expanded and then warped violently. The impact of the change affected the safe-house around Nick, blowing it apart as well as the surrounding terrain, leaving a crater where the safe-house once resided.
The nearby students and soldiers ran over to the scene to see what had happened but all they saw were scrapped pieces of Nick's once pristine safe-house inside of a six meter deep, eight meter wide crater. Everyone noticed that no dirt was actually thrown by the explosion, it was as if the top soil had simply vanished, creating the crater.
The people began to discuss the phenomenon in a frenzy:
"What was that explosion?"
"It looks like the effect of some kind of spell."
"What kind of spell would do this?"
...
Soon, a small platoon of soldiers arrived and one of them who had a pair of glowing purple eyes looked over the crater and muttered:
"Space Magic?"
*************************************
Nick suddenly appeared in midair over a section of forest. He fell rapidly towards the trees but he quickly cast his spell in panic:
(Space.)
Nick's magic energy erupted into the surroundings creating a special space that that extending throughout much of the trees below. Nick willed and he disappeared from his falling position to reappear on the ground of the forest. Just as Nick was about to cancel Space, the special space around him rumbled and warped, causing most of the trees in the vicinity to break apart and fall.
Slade hurriedly warned:
[Quickly, cancel your spell!]
Nick canceled Space and watched as all the trees within a ten meter radius of him crumble and fall to the ground. Nick was shocked and asked aloud:
"Did I do all of that?"
Slade ignored Nicks question and commanded:
[Kid, you need to meditate to gain better control of your magic energy.]
Nick didn't understand what was going on but the situation seemed urgent so he followed Slade's advice. He closed his eyes and began chanting his meditation, drawing in the magic energy from the surroundings whilst the space around him subtly warped and shook without him using any spells.
The amount of magic energy that was being drawn in was immense, far more than usual as the whirlpool of magic energy formed over Nick's head but Nick did not notice anything different about his mindscape except something peculiar about the human figure made of gold light which Nick's consciousness examined closely:
"Where is the symbol for 'Devour' that was previously on the figure's forehead?"
Nick was confused by the subtle difference that he had not noticed before but since he was already dealing with a bizarre situation, he put this matter on hold. Nick ejected his consciousness after about thirty minutes and ended his meditation. He stood up and the space around him no longer seemed to warp and shake.
"What really happened? Slade, do you know?"
Slade replied:
[There has been a change with your body.]
"What do you mean?"
[I mean that many space path laws seem to have developed on your body within a short amount of time, thus the fact that you teleported here without the use of a spell and and is probably the cause space reacting strangely around you. Phenomenon like that happens when a large amount of laws for a specific path concentrate in one area suddenly. Such an event is very common in certain realms that I've been to.]
Nick became excited at that explanation.
"Do you mean...?"
[Yes, it seems that your half baked magic formation did the trick.]
Nick immediately raised both hands in victory as he quietly held his head down. A few moments later, Nick raised his head again and lowered his hands to wipe the tears from his eyes. He quickly tried to regain his indifferent expression but the gleam in his eye betrayed his true feelings.
Nick immediately told Slade about the vision that he had after he used the last method of his formation and Slade took the opportunity to look through his memories. Slade said nothing for a while until the silence became uncomfortable for Nick.
"Slade, did you learn something?"
Slade replied with disbelief in his tone:
[The magic beast that you saw in your vision is commonly called a deep seeker dragon. That magic beast is generally at the peak stage of rank 5 when it matures and it usually lives in areas with peculiar spacial characteristics. According to rumors, it is a very dangerous magic beast as even rank 6 late stage Hero Magicians have a hard time defeating one. A lone rank 5 Traveler Magician would have to run with his tail between his legs if he encountered one.]
Nick was puzzled by Slade's assertion:
"Why did I have a vision of that dragon, is it related to the void dragon?"
Slade conjectured:
[The deep seeker dragon and the void dragon are both space path magic beasts but the void dragon matures at rank 3 while the deep seeker dragon grows to rank 5. It may well be that the void dragon is descended from the deep seeker dragon's bloodline and your formation worked too well in refining the void dragon's blood that you synthesized.]
Nick thought about it and felt that Slade's guess made sense.
"You really were a wisdom path Magician when you were alive."
Slade snorted and continued:
[If you really are now a warlock, you probably have to wait until rank 3 to feel the full advantages of your change since most dragons are born being rank 3.]
Nick replied:
"I don't mind since now I know that I have a far better chance of getting to rank 3 than before I made the change. Right now, my biggest concern is getting out of these soiled clothes."
Nick tapped his space band in order to summon new clothes, however nothing happened.
"What's going on?"
Nick took a closer look at his space band and suddenly thousands of tiny symbols became perceptible to him, as if he was reading a book.
(Aren't these space path laws drawn in Valteese? They definitely are but there are areas where the laws have clearly been erased or damaged.)
Nick was confused by his new ability to see the space path laws on his space band which should be imperceptible to him and by the fact that the laws had been tampered with.
"This seems to have something to do with my sudden change. The power from the laws on my body might have damaged the space band since they are the same type of laws."
Slade remarked:
[That's a good guess.]
"That means that I've practically lost everything that I stored within my space band and even my sword, Pressure Piece. Talk about unlucky."
Nick sighed.
"I guess I can buy another sword and space band or try to fix this one. Why can I see the space band's laws, though."
Slade conjectured again:
[Deep seeker dragons are space path magic beasts with all sorts of space path related talents. Being able to visibly perceive space path laws might be one of those talents.]
Nick could accept that explanation especially since it further confirmed that he was now a deep seeker dragon warlock.
"Fine, now I have to find my way back to the temporary settlement. Which way is that?"
Nick looked around to see if he could identify any land marks since all his maps were still within his space band.
"It's about noon now and the sun was directly over head when I had my little accident which means that the settlement should be somewhere in the eastern direction."
Nick raised his right index finger to the sky as he was about to cast Space but he suddenly had a thought as he remembered the laws for the spell.
"No, no, no. Something is not right about the wording and arrangement of these laws. How this spell is designed now will only lead to the inefficient use of my magic power, giving me half the possible results and requiring twice the amount of necessary magic energy."
Nick soon forgot about returning to the settlement and stood in place, trying to reconfigure the laws for his spell, Space. He stood in his spot, only paying attention to his thoughts and before he knew it, night time had arrived.
"Yes , now that should be how the laws are supposed to be set up."
GROAK GROAK GROAK!
Nick suddenly heard loud feral sounds around him and so he paid closer attention to his surroundings and realized that three lion sized frogs that wore Cheshire like grins, showing their sharp, jagged teeth had approached him without him even realizing it, two at his flanks and one at his back with each about five meters away.
Nick raised both eyebrows in surprise when the three magic beasts took low crouching positions then jumped.
(Shit! They blended in with the darkness and their jumping is soundless. Space!)
Nick's magic power erupted from him and within an instant, it formed a ten by ten by ten special cubed space, containing himself and the magic beasts. Nick willed and all three frogs that were pouncing on him froze in midair. He hurriedly flicked his right index finger three times, casting Sever at the magic beasts who each split into two pieces at their midsections but Nick manipulated the space to keep the blood from flowing away from the cut pieces. Nick then quickly balled his right hand and the space around the magic beast carcasses violently twisted, folding the pieces of each carcass into each other until three perfectly spherical meatballs resulted.
Nick smiled at the result, knowing that such fine control had not been possible with the previous version of his spell.
(This entire time, Space only consumed about 1,000 magical units. The cost of its use has gone down significantly.)
Nick spoke:
"Slade, I think that I've found another benefit of becoming a deep seeker dragon warlock."
Slade asked expectantly after seeing Nick's performance:
[Which is?]
Nick replied with an almost childish grin:
"I've become a space path master."