Arcanist In Another World-Chapter 27: Operation

When Celme got around to Nomad’s back, Valens finally placed his hand on Nomad’s skull, then paused at the warmth around his bones. It was different from how cold and lifeless a Skeleton’s bones felt. A Lifeward painted the Resonance of his anatomy in his mind. Mana was coursing underneath the solid bones, sprawling from the Heartstone like a web of veins that reached every bit of his bone frame.

Then he gazed down. There, the strong core of Nomad stood in all its glory. Unlike a Skeleton’s rotten core, this one was shaped like a real heart, arteries worming through it and pulsing with a strong beat, creating the set of unique frequencies that belonged only and only to Nomad.

And it was being fed by a lifeline.

He paused at the sight of it. The lifeline was bound to the left atrium of the heart just like how a Skeleton’s source thread was bound to its rotten core, but this one pulsed at each beat of the heart, and more importantly, he could see where it led. Its tip forked out into five threads that grew thinner as they wound toward the chest, their tips ending just an inch underneath the outermost layer of the Heartstone.

These look like… pipes? They’re sucking ambient mana from the air, sending it down to the left atrium. The mana is already clean, so there’s no need for any lungs to clean it. There’s another pipeline over the right atrium too, but it's dormant. Is that an artery under that part? But why? And it leads to… what is this sphere?

Valens frowned at the black, lusterless sphere that appeared in his sound vision. It was cocked underneath the Heartstone, was slightly larger than a nut, but had two different arteries bound to it. One of them led to the right atrium, and the other one was bound into the left atrium just like… a lung.

What’s the point of it, though? There’s no venous blood to cleanse. And I feel a presence there, hidden somewhere deep inside. Can’t reach it with a Lifeward, though.

It was likely something similar to the situation around his own chest cavity where the System stored the mana he’d gained from killing things.

“Be quick,” came Celme’s voice, anxious. “They won’t let you keep at it much longer. Do it now, or leave it.”

Valens gave her a nod, and gazed at Nomad, sweat trickling down his brows. “I’m ready. Let the fog in.”

“Are you sure?” Nomad asked, shuffling uncomfortably over his knee. “Once I let the fog in there’s no turning back.”

“Either you’ll do that and give me a chance to try this, or you’re going to get back to your chief and you’ll become one of those mindless men. Take your pick.”

“Uh…” Nomad grunted, green fog rolling in waves across his shoulders like a cape. It seemed thick enough to touch, but when Valens tried he couldn’t get any feeling of it. Neither real nor false, stuck somewhere between, guided only by an undead’s will. Such terrible, terrible magic. Pretty fascinating, as well, though.

He was about to walk into an untrodden territory here, but then, that's all he was doing this time after he'd opened his eyes to this world.

“Do it,” Celme said.

“I’m waiting,” Valens kept his focus on the Heartstone.

Nomad gazed at the pair of them and paused, gauntleted fist clenched tight. Then he rammed that fist into his chest and sucked in a deep breath. Green fog filled his Heartstone.

Valens felt the change the moment Nomad breathed, and all that fog seeped into the right atrium of his Heartstone like a wave from a cursed river. The nonfunctioning part of the heart, which had been left barren a second ago, slowly filled with Lord Zahul’s fog.

A stream of it trickled down through the artery that was bound to the black sphere and just remained there. If this were to be a lung, then it should somehow cleanse the venous flood to provide clean blood across the body, or mana, in this case.

Except it didn’t.

It just sent that same foul mana toward the left atrium of the heart where it merged into the clean waves of ambient mana that were being sucked by the lifeline from outside. Specks of it soiled the pure flow into a muddy yellow, and then the Heartstone stirred and pumped that contaminated mana through the main artery that fed into Nomad’s mana veins.

The Resonance changed. Nomad’s unique frequencies quieted down, hampered by the muddy fog’s influence, and his presence shrunk low, and lower still until Valens could barely hear them anymore.

So that’s how it is. That’s what the right atrium was for. To spread Lord Zahul’s mana or any other Lich’s across an undead’s frame to take them under their influence.

Valens refocused his attention as foul mana waves coursed through Nomad’s veins, feeding into the bones, forcing them to widen, forcing them to grow unnaturally as if he was being forged into something more.

Cracks sounded in his ears when Nomad’s bones started giving in. His shoulder caps popped and came loose, fissures running over their surfaces. A part of his ribcage nearly split wide open, only to be forged back by Lord Zahul’s fog and made to be thicker.

This venom was making him stronger by taking everything that belonged to him. The worst part was that he should be feeling the pain somewhere deep In his being, but wasn’t sane of mind to understand what to make of it or if he should give any reaction to it.

Stolen novel; please report.

Valens could see how useful this was. Lord Zahul could use his influence to command an army that was stronger than ever, feared nothing, and never uttered a word of protest. But the practice of it was detestable. A kind of torture that even the Inquisition wouldn’t have dared to use on unruly Magi.

Focus.

Right. He had to decide on a course. Do something to stop his pain.

His sound vision concentrated around the black sphere. That was the main gear here that sent the foul mana to Nomad’s left atrium. A lung that wasn’t working the way it should.

This… It's just a piece of metal that generates a suction force. There’s nothing to fix! Whoever designed this had never intended for this thing to do anything other than spread the Lich’s mana.

He couldn’t cut the artery that bound the sphere to the heart. If he did, the foul mana that was constantly filling into the heart wouldn’t have any way out, and would keep accumulating there until the membrane of the atrium burst off.

What else? Think!

Clogging the main pipe through which Lord Zahul’s fog seeped into the right atrium could work, but then there was the possibility of the Lich feeling his lack of influence around the body. So, Valens had to come up with a way that would allow Nomad to inhale the fog, but not get influenced by it. At least enough to keep some semblance of his own mind.

But how? Lord Zahul’s mana was everywhere. Like an insidious sickness, it invaded every part of his body, took the veins in control, and worse, it was stirring in a way that urged Nomad to action.

Nomad shifted under his hand. Slowly, even against Celme’s full strength, he tried lifting his leg from the ground and rising to his feet. Panic grabbed Valens as he nearly lost the skin touch to the skull. He couldn’t let him get away. Not now, after all the things they’d been through.

“He’s changing,” Celme’s voice rang in his ears. “Do something, or he’s going to become one of those mindless corpses.”

“I’m trying!” Valens said, heart thumping in his chest.

“Try harder!” Celme placed her hands over Nomad’s pauldrons and pushed him down. Her fingers strained against his thickened bones. “He can’t rid himself of the influence for weeks if the fog takes control. That’s why the Pact forbids it over the ground.”

“You…” Valens breathed, then looked down at Nomad. “Get back down!” he hissed, sending a pair of Lifesurges to the black sphere, washing it with a wave of lifemana. It sizzled when it splashed against Lord Zahul’s fog.

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He then paused.

Nomad should’ve been screaming, thrashing in agony over the ground, as just now what Valens did was to essentially pour acid over a working lung, but other than a faint wheeze through his teeth, the undead remained stout. And he also stopped resisting.

It worked… But I can’t constantly wash the artificial lung with lifemana. At some point, I would have to let him go back. If I can put a lifemana source in there, though…

Valens felt the sinews around his neck tighten. Fingers of his left hand brushed against the patch around his thigh. He pulled one of the half-full lifemana gemstones from underneath his skin and clasped it tight in his hand. This could work. This could act as a constant filter for the fog.

“This… Is going to hurt,” he said, looking at Nomad’s empty eyes. They were gleaming with the Lich’s fog, but there was nothing under them. Just a soul too lost to be aware of its surroundings.

Heaving a breath, he jammed the gemstone right through the long crack round Nomad’s chest piece and caught it with a pair of Lifesurges from the other side that he stretched out from the Heartstone. The surge threads looked just like a pair of ethereal ropes stretching from the stone that thumped in the Undead’s chest, glimmering a faint blue. They cuddled the gemstone like it was a pristine jewel, then slowly carried it down near the black sphere that was underneath the Heartstone.

Valens opened a hole big enough for the gemstone to pass through around the ribcage. Then once it was in, he placed it near the black sphere.

This is the dangerous part here, but it’ll work. It has to work.

He guided the tip of a Lifesurge toward the artery that kept feeding the artificial lung the Lich’s fog from the right atrium of the Heartstone. Using it like a scalpel, he removed it from the sphere and patched the holes with a wave of lifemana to keep the fog from spilling out into the ribcage. It wouldn’t hold long, but it didn’t have to. A second was what Valens all needed.

The Lifesurge threads knitted the tip of the artery into the gemstone. Then Valens lifted the lifemana wave, and let the fog seep into the tool. It hissed and sizzled, but since the gemstone was only half full with lifemana, only a part of the fog got cleansed by it, which Valens hoped would be enough to trick the Lich into thinking that he still had absolute control over Nomad’s mind.

To end the operation, he took the other artery that was still bound to the black sphere, the one that should've sent the cleansed blood to the heart. He cut the tip of it and stitched it back to the gemstone, leaving the artificial lung completely non-functioning.

I replaced the artificial lung with the gemstone. The difference in pressure is enough to generate a suction force, but this is a temporary solution too.

From the rate at which the lifemana was being used to cleanse the fog, it was clear the gemstone would only last for a week or two. But at least it was better than nothing, and if the lifemana in the gemstone was used completely, Valens could always fill it with his own mana.

If I’m not there to do it, though…

Nomad would have to do surgery to remove the gemstone and somehow fill it with lifemana on his own.

We’ll figure it out later. What’s important is this should give him some time.

Breathing in deep, Valens let his Lifesurges dissolve and watched as the gemstone sent the half-cleaned mana into the right atrium from where the new blend of mana would be pumped across the Undead’s body.

Ding! [Lifesurge(Master) : 5 > 6]

Ding! [Lifeward(Master) : 5 > 6]

“I’ve done what I can,” he then said, sighing out a long breath as Celme scowled at him. She didn’t have to strain against Nomad’s strength anymore as he ceased resisting. His frequencies were still clouded deep under the Lich’s fog, but they should slowly work their way back to the surface.

It took a heavy moment for Nomad to raise his head. “I remember now,” he muttered, voice muffled with pain. “They didn’t die. I killed them all with these hands.”

“What?” Celme asked, but Valens was scowling at a sudden sensation around his feet. He heard something strange just then, as though thousands of ants were crawling underneath the soil, the earth stirring, the walls shrinking as if they were afraid.

“Wait…” he said, gazing deep at the undead and human lines that were about to welcome the Necromancer’s horde. Voices were there under their feet. The earth was changing. He placed a hand on the ground and felt the muddy soil on the tip of his fingers, the Resonance speaking into his mind.

“Under the ground.” His eyes narrowed down. “Dozens of them. Digging their way through the mud.” Valens jerked his hand back, heart thumping in his chest. Celme searched his eyes as he rose slowly to his feet. “They are coming from under the ground. An army of them. Under—“

Bony fingers broke out from the thick layer of mud. Clawed at the earth and widened the gaps. Caught the undead and armored men by the ankles. Caught them well and dragged them down into the mud.

….