Chapter 54 - The Rogue Mage’s Inheritance (1/2)

After she saw that tattered notebook. Herti finally understood the root of it all. “Were these… left behind by that rogue mage?”

“Yes. He was a novice mage who was stuck at grade two for his entire life and was discriminated against by the mainstream mages. However, his talent was beyond our imagination, if he had been born at any other time…” Gawain sighed as he looked at the notebook in his hands. “I recently read some of his research notes and in my opinion, this notebook is worth at least half the title of a duke.”

“Ah?!” Herti cried out, dumbfounded.

However, Gawain had not exaggerated at all. The truth was, from a technological development standpoint, the inheritance left by the nameless rogue mage would become more and more valuable as time passed by. Even though most of his research was still at its infancy, Gawain was very certain that when it came to many revolutionary ideas and thoughts, the foundations were the most important.

Gawain placed the notebook on the table and looked up at Herti. “His daughter, Annie, is likely to have suffered from the shadow-related elemental assimilation disease, the rarest type out of the many magical diseases. As a mage, you should be familiar with this type of disease.”

“Elemental assimilation… that is a unique disease from the Violet Kingdom. The chance of catching it is low, but it is incurable.” Herti nodded her head slightly. “I guessed it when I saw the journal.”

In this world where magic existed, there were many things that were completely different from the world in Gawain’s home. There were both pros and cons about this place—-elemental assimilation disease was one of the worst.

These types of diseases which were caused by the invasion of magic, occurred mostly in areas where magic was thick and the elements were active. During the era of the Gondor empire, they took place in the Well of Deep Blue region of the capital. Even during the peak of the empire, it was considered as one of the diseases that were practically incurable. Now, in this era, it was the “specialty” of the Violet Kingdom in the North.

If superpowers were a gift from nature to humans, then the elemental assimilation disease that accompanied it would be the evil in that gift.

Elemental assimilation only appeared in newborns, it was a mutation caused by magical radiation while they were growing in their mother’s womb. Children who had this disease could grow up normally in the beginning. However, as they grew older, signs of specific elemental invasion and assimilation would gradually emerge. The patient’s body would undergo changes during this process and experience partial elemental assimilation, then as normal biological tissue started to undergo elemental assimilation, they would be rejected by the main physical world – other than the very few groups of people who had special innate abilities, any biological elements would not be able to survive in the physical world for a long time. That was one of the fundamental laws of this world.

This process would speed up as the condition worsened and it was irreversible. After more than half of a person’s biological tissues had undergone elemental assimilation, he would be ‘exiled’ by the physical world and pushed into the elemental dimension which corresponded to the element of the elemental assimilation disease.

The person would then die in the crack between the physical world and the elemental world—the remaining biological tissues in the patient would make this process abnormally terrifying, making them feel like they were being torn apart.

The daughter of that rogue mage, Annie, probably had this disease, and it was the shadow type elemental assimilation: the rarest of all the elemental assimilation diseases.

Mages and scholars had conducted a lot of research regarding the different elemental realms with the exception of the mysterious shadow realm, where research was difficult.

“There is no cure for elemental assimilation disease, it can only be slowed down and the best way to do it is to bind the patient’s body using magical power. It’s similar to how elemental summoners use magical shackles to force an elemental being to stay in the elemental world.” Even though Herti was just a novice mage, she was quite knowledgeable about the theories behind this disease. “However, this is harder than binding an elemental being as elemental assimilation disease would worsen, hence there is a need to pump in more magical power throughout the whole process…”

“A grade two mage, especially one who is discriminated against by the Association of Mystics, would not have the power and money to afford such an expensive treatment.” Gawain nodded his head and continued, “Hence, he used his own method: to build an unprecedentedly efficient self-recharging magical formation. He broke the rule that such arrays could only undergo inner looping and made it into an array that would ‘charge’ his daughter. He was pretty much at his wit’s end, since the high level focal points had already been used and the lower level magic focal points scattered in the forest were unable to provide enough power. However, he used his own unique intellect to solve this problem.”

“However, the sudden surge of unusual magic destroyed his magical formation…” Herti suddenly remembered. “If that’s the case, wouldn’t this self-recharging ‘magic web’ have a very huge flaw? It can’t withstand surges of magic…”

“No, it was not a magic surge that destroyed the structure of the magical formation, it has very complete safety precautions.” Gawain shook his head. “When I witnessed the structure of the magical formation, I was sure that it was intact even until the end. According to the diary of the rogue mage, the problem that occured at the end was not the magical array but the ‘Shadow Transformation’ ritual that he started. Magic binding can only slow down the process of elemental assimilation, but it cannot eradicate the root of the problem. At that time, Annie was already on the verge of losing control, hence the rogue mage conducted a very risky ritual that he was unable to control. In the end, he lost control of the magical power created by the magic web during the magic surge.”

“If that’s the case… I have no need to worry any further.” Herti nodded her head slowly before looking at the notebook left behind by that rogue mage with a complicated expression. “I can’t believe it, a downtrodden rogue mage was actually capable of doing such a thing….This large scale magical array pieced together using basic units is different from any other magical arrays that I know of. It basically abandoned all the complex and difficult structures, while bringing out… simplicity to the extreme.”

“Please call it ‘universality’.” Gawain smiled. “The job of setting up an experimental ‘magic web’ in the smithy will…”

As he was talking, he began hesitating between Herti and Rebecca. A technical job like setting up a magical array would obviously be more suitable for Herti. However, Herti was already in charge of overseeing most of the construction work in the campsite. Although she was very competent, there was still the job of building a magic laboratory waiting for her. Gawain really did not wish to continue adding onto her burden. It should be okay to hand the job to Rebecca. Although she only knew how to release fireballs, setting up magical arrays was different from casting spells, especially for such self-charging magical arrays where she only needed to follow the blueprints and build them. This would only need a grasp on the theoretical knowledge as well as computing abilities, but how should he put this…

Everytime he looked at Rebecca, he could not help but look at her as if she was a doofus… can she really do it?