Chapter 53: Chapter 53 A light touch of Undeath

They passed the village of Stonefall in the mid-afternoon, and Nathan saw why it had that name. The small collection of houses were built atop a steep crag of rock, with a switchbacking road leading up the rock. There were a few watchtowers but no wall around the village, and Nathan saw why - anything capable of climbing the hundreds of feet of sheer rock would be able to scale any wall. There was a sturdy gatehouse at the top of the road, and it looked like multiple large spherical boulders were braced such that they could be rolled down various parts of the road to where it met the flatter ground at the bottom. There were also other rocks piled on the ledge above the road and ready to be cast on attackers, ranging in size from Nathan’s torso to his head.

Stonefall indeed. Anybody coming up that road is either friendly or paste.

Off to one side were a few more crags of the gray stone, which looked like they were being quarried along specific veins of darker stone. The other side of Stonefall seemed to be some clay pits - even if Nathan didn’t see any rivers or other water features. He wondered how they got water up there.

Magic, probably.

The land grew a bit rockier after that as they started to approach the larger hills where the tomb was located. It was still a ways off, and the Heirs picked a campground located in a small dell where they would have good visibility in a close range around them, but their camp wouldn’t be visible miles away.

A few games of sword-axe-spear later, they’d divvied up the watch schedule. Nathan was amused that it was basically the same with rock-paper-scissors, but with fire emblem rules.

Nathan ended up on middle watch, which was no fun. But he’d been better rested in the past weeks than any time Nathan could remember from Earth. The combination of good exercise, no computer screens and easy meditation meant Nathan wasn’t having trouble getting to sleep. He was also in the best shape of his life. He figured he could handle one night of interrupted sleep.

Granted, it was sleeping out in the open, without a huge amount of camping supplies.

Nathan had to correct that opinion as the Heirs started pulling supplies from bags of holding. Stella didn’t seem to have a tent in there, but she had a large blanket and several padded bedrolls that would be far more comfortable than sleeping on the solid ground. Aarl started cutting firewood as Sarah set up a cooking pot under a tripod, and Khachi was setting up tripwires around their campsite.

They were nothing much, just cords tied tightly at ankle-height between bushes or trees with a bell in the middle of the cord. Nathan helped Khachi surround the camp with them, covering the easy approaches with a double or even triple layer of tripwires with just fifteen minutes of work.

Stella looked over at Nathan apologetically. “I think you need to stay off the blanket. It’s enchanted to be self-cleaning… and I don’t want you to break it. You can sleep here though?” She flattened a section of bare earth with a combination of force and earth mana, then laid a bedroll atop it, before throwing a blanket over the assembly.

Man, I am sure glad I’m not doing this on my own. And that the Heirs’ parents saw fit to properly equip them for this stuff. I wonder if the Heirs appreciate the value of all of this preparation. Probably, since they knew what to do. I’ll need to figure out how the hell I’m traveling if I can’t use dimensional storage.

Soon enough there was a small fire cracking in the center of their camp, with a savory stew bubbling above it. Day switched to night with all of the suddenness of a lightswitch, revealing the spread of continents overhead. Nathan accepted a bowl of stew from Aarl. It wasn’t up to the standards of the Adventurer’s guild, but it was savory and filling after a whole day of hiking. When they were done, Sarah scrubbed out the bowls with a magical cloth.

The Heirs weren’t quite ready to go to bed. Instead, they spent some time watching the world displayed overhead while chatting.

Nathan pointed upwards. “Do you ever want to go there? See that continent there, with the white patch invading the black? Don’t you want to go see what that is?”

Khachi answered after a few seconds. “No. Gemore is the place I will live and die protecting.” He paused to gesture around the dark plain. “I may venture from the walls, but I will always return. I wish to learn of my father’s people eventually, but I will never leave Gemore behind.”

There was a brief moment of silence before Aarl spoke next. “I want to see what’s out there. Explore beyond where the maps lie. But going somewhere where I can see Gemore above my head is too far. I want to be able to return to what is familiar, to hold that lifeline close.” He looked over at his sister, and she elbowed him before responding herself.

“I think my brother speaks for both of us. Though that might change.”

There was another minute of contemplation before Stella answered. They didn’t pressure her, it wasn’t that sort of gathering. Everybody was watching the sky, appreciating the gentle light of the lands above. When Stella did speak, it was quiet and somewhat uncertain.

“I want to go as far as my magic can take me. Dalo told me that you cannot expand your limits without pushing them. I want to keep pushing the limits of magic until I can travel above my head, to the world on display up there. I want to see what causes that blight we see in the sky. I want to have the power to fix it if it needs fixing. I want to see Gemore above my head, then come home with new secrets and Insights that can’t be found here.”

Nathan propped his head on his arm to look over at Stella. Her eyes were fixed overhead, burning with firelight both internal and reflected. “I want to see all there is to see, learn magic undreamt of in the Ascendent Academy. Gain access to every type of mana there is, and learn how Davrar works. I think I’ll need to leave Gemore behind to do that. But it will always be the place I started, and no matter how far I go I’ll want to return some day.”

There was another moment of silence as people processed that. Nathan was half-expecting somebody to chime in with a sarcastic comment about Stella’s overreaching ambition. But this was a serious moment, a moment to bare your heart. They all respected each other too much to spoil that.

Stella spoke again, looking towards Nathan. “What about you Nathan? Gemore isn’t your home. Do you want to return there? Do you know where it lies, or can you only point it out overhead?”

Nathan looked up again, searching for any familiar continents on the off-chance he could spot the Americas up there.

Nope.

“I can’t point out my home overhead, and I don’t know how to get there. But even if I did, I’m not sure I would return anytime soon. I have found a purpose here in opposing Giantsrest. And… I find myself wanting to explore. I want to see more of what Davrar has to offer. There are so many mysteries here, waiting to be discovered.”

I can make a difference here, probably a greater one than I could make on Earth. I knew of a hundred scientists who could step into my shoes on Earth. But I’m the only person with antimagic that I know of on Davrar. I need to see what I can do with that.

Nathan almost told the Heirs about Earth at that moment. But he held back, in the end.

You are reading story Ends of Magic: Antimage LitRPG at novel35.com

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Nathan grumbled about being woken in the middle of the night to take the middle watch, but it was a quiet time. The sky was clear and beautiful above him, the night was quiet and serene. He sat there meditating with his eyes and ears open for hours. It was incredibly calm and tranquil, only interrupted on the hour by the faint trill of the enchanted rock they used to keep time.

When it was time to wake Khachi and Sarah for the third watch, Nathan almost regretted it.

I wonder if I can develop [Focused Mind] into something that replaces sleep. I don’t understand the biological need for sleep, so I probably can’t cover it with [Regeneration]. It’s probably better to develop [Focused Mind] into something that can be used during Rage though.

With those thoughts, Nathan fell asleep for the second time.

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The next morning Nathan awoke to the smell of roasting meat. After a wonderful breakfast of thick-cut bacon, they set off for the undead tomb.

It wasn’t far, and their first signs were a few wandering zombies. They weren’t fast, or particularly dangerous. Sarah took them out with headshots from a few hundred feet away. Even when there was a cluster of zombies they didn’t figure out where the projectiles were coming from until they all dropped to the ground missing some critical cranial component.

It wasn’t hard to follow the concentration gradient of zombies to find the tomb. It was a rough hole in the side of a hill, clearly dug out from the inside. As Nathan watched, a few more zombies spilled from the opening and started walking without direction. Sarah sighed and reached into her dimensional bag, but Nathan held up a hand.

“Hold on. I want to see if my antimagic works against the necromancy animating the zombies.”

Nathan handed his spear to Aarl for safekeeping and walked towards the zombies as they ambled down the slope. He was curious about the spell that animated the undead - it had to be pretty complicated, but apparently happened naturally? Nathan wasn’t worried about being bitten, these weren’t the kind of zombies that could infect you. If they killed you then you’d probably become a zombie due to the presence of ambient death mana that undead gave off. But Nathan was pretty sure that normal zombies could only threaten him if there were at least dozens of them.

He got pretty close before they noticed him, and used the time to study them. The zombies were wearing the remains of some kind of wrap. It looked like the colors had been vibrant, once. But time and decay had spoiled the clothes and much of the body underneath. The bodies looked like they’d been badly mummified, with patches of extreme decay and patches that seemed surprisingly preserved.

The zombies let out a low moan and trudged towards him. He moved so they’d approach him one at a time.

I can experiment on the last one. Let’s see how quickly I can take out the first two.

He took a few steps forward and speared his right hand into the neck of the first zombie. His fingers punched through the slimy skin, releasing fluid all over his hand. Nathan’s hand was covered in stinking gore, and he yanked his hand back. In the moment before he did so, the slithering feeling of death mana was clear.

Ew Ew ewww

The zombie lurched towards him a few more steps, head lolling. It was slower than it had been. Nathan drew back the same hand, clocking the zombie in the face. More gore sprayed, but Nathan absorbed more of the mana from the body and it fell over and lay still.

The next zombie lurched forward teeth first, trying to grapple and bite. It was a small body, though the face was thankfully degraded enough that Nathan wasn’t really looking at it as an ex-person. He moved quickly to avoid the grab and laid his fouled hand on the zombie’s head. Nathan focused on the feeling of the mana in the corpse, figuring out what he could about how the mana worked.

Weird. It’s kind of like a spell, but not following smooth lines. Like water flowing through natural channels instead of straight canals, just like it’s following natural pathways in the corpse.

The third zombie was approaching, so Nathan closed his right hand around the second zombie’s neck and squeezed. The slimy mana flowed into him like it was being sucked through a straw. Nathan shuddered at the feeling.

I think my limit on fighting undead is going to be my stomach.

He quickly knocked the feet out from under the third zombie, then stepped on its arms before running his hands over the mobile corpse. It was a struggle to not absorb too much mana from the undead as he examined it. Nathan focused on the clinical nature of his examination as various secretions covered his hand and flakes of dried flesh started sticking to them.

I think my immune system is boosted to hell and gone with [Regeneration], which is probably a good thing. Damn this is icky. There’s a reason I decided not to be a med student!

However, he got a pretty good idea of the mana flows in the zombie’s body. The nexus was in the head, and mana circulated out from there into the limbs to keep the zombie moving. He’d been right before in that the death mana seemed to flow naturally through the body. Each path wasn’t particularly complicated, but the fact that the pattern spread across the entire body in delicate flows made it overall more intricate than most of the spells Nathan had run across.

Following a hunch, Nathan felt around the ribs and spine again, following pathways from the chest muscles back to the spine and into the head. It seemed to follow the nervous system with some degree of precision. Nathan mapped the death mana following the intercostal nerves around the ribs.

Huh. Death mana naturally follows nervous system pathways. I bet I could give a necromancer some juicy Insights about how the nervous system works.

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