Underworld - Book 8 - Chapter 28

After inventorying all of the orbs and Spell Emulators, I watched the large silver dome as it started to crumble and dissipate. It too was a proof of concept that had been extremely successful despite how rough it was.

Returning to my Earth Incubus Form, I played with summoning mirror panels from the ground. I had to admit that the ability to raise a golden pillar from the ground at will was pretty awesome. I could do the same with platinum and titanium. Platinum was visibly whiter than silver, so it almost seemed like it should be a better reflector, but that simply wasn’t the case. Copper also had an interesting look to it.

I found Aeris still hovering in the same spot. I wasn’t shy about prying with my perceptions. The Aether looked to have been completely absorbed.

Flying took her so little effort that I suspected she couldn’t be more comfortable if she wanted to. Hers was a life without muscle cramps.

Her focused expression softened right before her eyes fluttered as if she were coming awake.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” I called.

She gave me her mischievous, purse-lipped smirk. “Not quite,” she called. She cast Heal into the air over my head and rushed over to hug me as she looked up at the blanket of light energy. She whined joyfully.

“Healing wind,” I said smugly.

All it took was a geeky reference to probably the most used name for a healing spell in surface world history. Her giggle caused her whole body to quiver.

“So how’d you do?” she asked.

“Everything worked better than expected. How do you feel?”

It was at that moment that two obnoxiously powerful faes decided to join us.

“Did you hear the conversation yesterday?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Not really. I know there was one, though.”

I gave her a quick summary through mind-speak as the red and silver fairy-like beings landed with this lich behind them.

“Congratulations on your new school of magic, Mistress Aeris,” Winmor announced.

My wife glanced at me before momentarily considering what I’d said. It happened quickly, so when she responded it was like no time had passed at all. “Thank you, Master Winmor.”

“Yes, congratulations, Sister,” Winesta called without the same confidence her brother carried. Before either one of us could react, she flew forward and landed a few strides away, lowering her head. “I’m sorry for the way I treated you at the Head Mistress’s party. I felt threatened by the wind wisp’s legendary status. Please, forgive me.”

Instead of quickly receiving her apology, Aeris hovered there studying her for a long moment. The vibe was growing uncomfortable when the wind sprite said, “So you’re going to teach me advanced wind magic?” Only then did she betray a grin.

“It would be my pleasure,” the fae said with a curtsey. Her expression remained serious.

As soon as her grip on my ribs lessened, I knew what she was going to do before she did it. Wisp Aeris whooshed over to the fae, and he reemerged as a sprite before embracing her.

The fae woman didn’t know what happened. She stood woodenly at first.

“Your forgiven,” my wife reassured her.

Only then did the woman fae soften and hug her back.

“Sorry to hurry this along,” I said, walking forward to join them. “But when I said our schedule is busy, I was being quite serious. Master Muller informed me that we needed to head to the transportation array to head to the next mana vein. You guys are welcome to join us—I’ll pay for your passage—and if you wouldn’t mind helping Aeris better understand her wind magic Winesta, I’d be grateful. And if there’s no challenging my wife and putting her in danger while I’m unlocking a new school of magic, I’ll even compensate you.”

“I wouldn’t…” The fae began but her shoulders drooped. “There’s no compensation necessary. I’d be honored to be of service to our talented ally.”

“Sister,” Winmor walked over and said in a low tone. “We have somewhere we must be tomorrow.”

“Is it something that can be postponed?” I asked, holding up a grandmaster dark orb.

Winmor immediately started shaking his head, while his sister scrunched up her nose like what I said didn’t make sense.

As dangerous as they were, I saw value in having this max level wind magic prodigy show my wife a thing or two while I was unlocking my next school of magic. If I’d learned anything from my little time being Underworld-wealthy, I knew how to encourage others to help us. Even though they were max level fae, they were still young. Did they have means to make a lot of dark coins? Absolutely. Could they make a million in a day just for hanging out and offering their advice? Not so much.

“Master Elorion,” Winmor began. “My sister is more than willing to help your wife with her wind magic while I keep an eye on their safety without cost to you.”

Transforming into a Trueblooded Vampire, I began to make a master dark orb before their eyes. “I don’t consider it payment. I’m just spending a little bit of my time to reward you for your help.”

“I told you,” the crimson winged fae said, yapping at his sister.

“He was using the structure to reflect the light,” Winesta said in exasperation. “How can a light mage make master and grandmaster orbs of the opposite alignment?”

I corrected her assumption. “I wasn’t using the mirrored dome to make dark orbs. Instead, I’m working on a product, or series of products to release at the Fair. But I can create dark orbs because of the Blue Magic Core Creation and because my first school of magic is dark.”

“Its time for us to go,” Shamash announced. “Decide quickly what you’re going to do.”

“We’re coming,” Winmor replied for them.

His sister looked at him in confusion. “But tomorrow.”

“Can be delayed. Not only will you get to see how you measure up to a real wind wisp, but we can help our allied generals and make some coin at the same time. There is no end to the cost of war.”

“Great,” I said with a clap. “Shall we?”

Aeris gave me an uneasy look.

I gave her a wink.

Winmor wasn’t shy about placing himself right next to me as he began to question me about what I had in mind for the Fair. When I was about to insist I couldn’t say anything, he held up his hand and said he’d be willing to sign a short term magic contract.

Looking back at Shamash who was floating along side the other lich while in his butler form, he nodded and said, “It’s a feasible option.”

I shrugged. “Why not.”

And so, the liches pulled out another magic scroll and confirmed with one another before offering it to us to review. Then I realized what liches were. They were lawyers. Magic Underworld lawyers.

We went through the process as we walked, and only after we signed it—Winesta joined her signature—did I give them a summary.

The change that came over Winmor’s face… It was like he’d won the lottery. The guy was suddenly hopping up and down as if there was a trampoline under our feet, which there wasn’t. At least he was mindful enough to keep his comments to mind-speak.

“You’re going to make laser guns?”

“I mean, something like that, but they likely won’t be in the shape of a gun,” I replied. “How do you know about laser guns?”

“When learning about the surface world, we are shown media of Flash Gordon, Battlestar Galactica, Alien, Predator, Doctor Who… It’s fascinating how weak humans always seem to find a way to overcome much more powerful enemies.”

Aeris beat me to it. “Where can you get them?”

“There’s surface world specialty shops,” Winesta informed her. “But a lot of the better merchants have their own collection of things from the surface for sale, so it’s a good idea to shop around.”

All it took was for my wife to look at me.

“As soon as we get a break from unlocking our schools, we’ll go check it out,” I promised.

The air around her quivered with enough force that I could hear it over the array formation being activated. Within a few minutes, we’d stepped through the portal.

***

When imagining Earth and what an Earth Vien might look like, jugged peaks and rock faces of imposing browns and greys came to mind. Not this. It was like an outcropping of crystal the size of a small tree. No two crystals were the same size, nor the same color.

This vein was smaller than the light vein, but its influence in the open region seemed to have more impact. It was rich in ore and gemstones one could see with the naked eye. The settlement that had built up around it was much more prosperous and nearly three times the size. There were no hurriedly put up buildings. It was just the opposite. The city was designed around the vein and the rich gemstones surrounding it as if it were billionaire row overlooking central park in New York City.

There was one other thing we saw when we arrived. People were on the streets. Most of them were servants going about their daily duties, but there were a few succubi walking about in what could only be described as a much more laid-back environment compared to Matriarch Crown.

We didn’t waste time heading to the mana vein. This time we weren’t stopped by the max level succubi in charge, but a team of stewards and stewardesses that managed the much larger population of people coming to unlock the earth element. There was nothing like the hour we’d gotten with the light vein. Two other people were approaching this one from different angles so as not to interrupt each other.

As for the fae that were traveling with us, I had Shamash create a contract that defined Winesta and Aeris’s interactions. It wasn’t fool proof, but it gave me some peace of mind since I would be busy for a while after I touched the Aether and began cycling it through my system.

Since this was my second school of mana, everything went off without ceremony or surprise. As for the pain, it was more like an annoying itch you were encouraging to move further into your system.

Despite my fears of something happening, Aeris and Winesta hung out and trained while I unlocked my Earth Magic. Winmor watched my Spell Emulators. Why not have them create some Solar Orbs in the downtime? The fire fae was older than me by about ten years, but it didn’t seem that way. I had a feeling it was part of the fae’s nature. He wasn’t funny in the way my vampire friend Sai had been. He was just really easy to hype up. I’d been tentative in the way I explained what I had planned for the fair, but it didn’t matter.

When I finished unlocking my magic a day later, the guy was still filled with boundless energy and going on about the possibilities.

The more time we spent with them, the more I realized how right Shamash had been. Even Winesta was matching Aeris’s giddiness after figuring out a trick with wind’s downforce. Not that my wife needed such knowledge to fly. Since these fae had wings from birth, the average one’s knowledge of the way air worked as they flew was pretty advanced.

We arrived at the blue magic vein city while our new friends, or should I call them business partners, had to attend the meeting they’d delayed while I unlocked my Earth Magic. This city was in the north and shared with the Seafaring Elves. Regretfully, we didn’t see many elves or succubi. Not until we got to the vein, and even then, access was strictly split in half between the elves and succubi. The succubi had access to the southern side while the elves used the north. It reminded me of a big city where everyone kept their eyes down and minded their own business.

I currently had the head of a Trueblooded Vampire and body of an Earth Incubus. As we walked, I made Grandmaster Earth Orbs which took much longer than the light magic variety. It had the intended outcome.

Earth Magic Mastery

Rank: Advanced

Level: 93

It still wasn’t fast, but I’d gained another two levels after making four orbs. Even though I had the knowledge to cast higher level spells, in this case it was my body holding me back.

Before coming to Matriarch’s Crown, I couldn’t imagine a place where unlocking magic was so systematized. Technically, if I hadn’t cared about the order, I would’ve been able to unlock several elements while still in the Dungeon Level without much issue. Just having access to every element didn’t have much meaning. It’s not like I’d use every spell available to me with the elements I unlocked. I didn’t use all of my shapeshifting forms either.

True wealth in the Underworld meant options. But even unlimited options were limited by your natural talents and how you chose to use what was available to you. It was like playing a game of chess with thousands of pieces on a board you couldn’t see the boarders of.

To be honest, it was probably for the best that our options had been limited during our early days in the Underworld. The possibilities could be overwhelming. It had allowed us to grasp the basics of the world before—this. Going from vein to vein and unlocking each primary school of magic was as simple as making a doctor’s appointment.

It would’ve been nice if reality was more balanced like a game. If you mastered a game, you could know how you’d stand against other players, or people in this case. But in this world, there were just too many options and variables. And even if you unlocked every school, the order was important because using a vein lost its effectiveness the more you used them.

There were too many people around to use big spells. There were pockets of people just waiting in the open square around the vein as the person who was unlocking it stood or sat in place while they were doing their thing with the Aether.

The most interesting thing about this one was its look. Or more precisely, how it changed when someone drew near. Its natural state was something like floating water drawn out into branches. It was the closest thing to neutral energy I’d seen beside when I used Alpha Bolt. When someone approached, however, the closest branch would change to their most dominate mana type and even take on characteristics of it.

When Aeris approached, the quicksilver-looking Aether branch ballooned into midst. She touched it with her fingertip before retreating.

“This one’s weird,” she said under her breath before closing her eyes to focus.

Taking in our surroundings, it was tight so I wouldn’t be able to make use of the assembly line-sized Spell Emulators. I still had options. I wasn’t surprised that no one had discovered our identities either. I’d learned in Hallow that, even thought high level vampires could tell my vampire form was a blue magic form, if I didn’t give anyone a reason to look, then they would just believe what their eyes saw.

Aeris’s disguise wasn’t much more difficult. Winesta had suggested using makeup of all things. My wife did look a lot like a dark elf without the exaggerated eyes, and we could hide her ears with her hair. Elf ears weren’t always exaggerated, and half elf ears weren’t always distinguishable from human. After the addition of some purple eyeshadow expertly done by the fae, Aeris was ready.

“How do I look?” she asked seriously. She hadn’t worn makeup since entering the Underworld.

I was careful with my wording. “It’s unnecessary, but you look hot.”

The makeup didn’t hide her blush.

I made sure we weren’t blocking the way and raised up a stone structure around us. It was tall and skinny, but not that tall. The problem with tight spaces was that the heat built up when I used Astral Body. It gave me an interesting challenge to solve while she was unlocking her blue magic.

If she was in her wisp form, I wouldn’t have much to worry about, but as a sprite, she even had to deal with bothersome things like breathing. Instead of creating air vents that some random dark elf teenager might try to pour stuff into, tried to make the rock porous. For some reason, not all rock liked to be porous. It’s not like I had a template to follow. Instead of a wall that mimicked the characteristics of an air filter, I created, you guessed it, air vents. They were tiny round air vents, but they were still more vents than pores. At least there was air flow and Shamash could keep an eye on her.

I segmented the structure into two. Hovering above them in the upper section, I began to coat it with a silver mirror. The plan was to limit the channeling to my body to control the temperature. There was a thick enough slab of earth between me and them to save them from the heat.

And so, I began. It was going well at first. I kept one hand in my Earth Incubus state to continue leveling the form while also making up slightly for the -50% debuff to all magic other than light. I also coated it in a transparent layer of silver. It should keep it from heating up. Then I began to make solar orbs in mass.

It wasn’t long until I had a heating problem. It wasn’t that the temperatures were reaching the melting point. I was dealing with thermal expansion. In other words, the mirror finish of the silver was distorting due to the high heat. It was even worse on my silver coated hand.

I didn’t even consider aluminum even though it was often considered the second-best reflective metal. It was even worse than silver. So I decided to go with platinum. I almost went with palladium which was actually a better reflector, but high temperatures affected it more. It was a metal used to make white gold. It was actually rarer and more expensive than gold on the surface.

Platinum had one other thing going for it. It didn’t go through any chemical changes when being heated so there was no tarnishing either. For this use case, it was about as good as I could get.

Even though my Earth Magic didn’t have permanence, being able to summon rare metals in mass and manipulate them as I liked was an odd experience. After coating my little chamber with the metal that visibly looked whiter than silver, I had an idea. I couldn’t create any of these metals and have them last, but could I create an earth orb with their characteristics?

It wasn’t platinum, palladium, or even silver I tried first. It was gold.

I already knew one of the characteristics of the earth element was that, unlike the light alignment, there weren’t just two aspects. Instead of just life and solar, every mineral, and even combination of minerals could be considered a different aspect. The sheer number of aspects made summoning individual ones much easier. There was still a purity issue I’d likely have to deal with until I reached grandmaster, if I ever did, but I could already summon much purer earth aspects than I could with light even when I’d been at the master rank.

When the golden master orb began to form, I had a bit of a giggle fit. It was like the giggle of a mad scientist and master villain combined. Sadly I was confined in a pillar of rock so no one could hear the sound. A few minutes later, I had a golden marble resting in my palm.

I know I was supposed to be working, but I may have taken some time to make a few master orbs of all the metals I had easy access to. It was cheating, and I was rewarded for it.

My Earth Incubus Form leveled up to 84, while my Earth Magic Master reached 94. It was possible that I was missing experience with a larger variety of what I might as well consider earth aspects.

I did get back to making solar orbs but could tell the difference between platinum and silver’s reflectivity right away. What platinum did let me do was turn up the light. It could handle the heat, so I energized my Astral Body even more.

Surprisingly, we made it through Aeris’s unlock process without any outside mischief. Maybe only the dark elves of Andheree Raat were crazy.

As soon as Shamash informed me she was done, I got rid of the stone pillar and found my wife looking up at me in a half squint. It wasn’t the light I was giving off that was hindering her ability to look at me. I’d seen this look from her before. She was using Mana Sight on me.

Even if that were so, she wasn’t channeling enough to steal my essence. Neither did I sense her presence in my inner world.

I said through mind-speak, “Channel more into your eyes. I learned shapeshifting by watching other shapeshifters. You might even be able to steal some blue magic spells from me. Xaphan was able to control whether I stole blue magic from him or not. Let me see if I can do the same for you.”

“No, wait—” she began to reply.

Shamash cut her off. “This is not the place. You’re making a scene.”

I was then that I glanced around and saw we were causing a disruption. “Sorry,” I called, cutting my Astral Body. Thankfully, I had been mindful enough to stop energizing the form.

Transforming into my vampire form, I landed and grabbed Aeris’s hand. It was probably impossible after what I’d just done to hide my identity from anyone, so I hightailed it out of there.

Using the transmission crystal in my ring, I reached out to Master Mather and received confirmation of where we were to head to next. It was my turn. Nature Magic, here I come.

When we stepped through the portal to the next place, I noticed Aeris was quiet. “How is it?” I asked.

She shrugged.

That was not the response I expected.

Instead of verbalizing what was wrong, she pulled up a popup window, spun it around, and showed me.

Congratulations!

You have unlocked Blue Magic!

Note: Due to the nature of your True Form, you are incompatible with body modification and transformation magic. This may limit the types of Blue Magic you can appropriate through Creature Observation.

I read the note a second time just to make sure. Its meaning was obvious. No Shapeshifting. I guess we should’ve guessed as much. The lich had warned us.

She looked dejected.

“That’s terrible,” I said sarcastically. “This means I’ll just have to wear you like a wind cloak everywhere we go. And it’s not exactly easy for the wind to hide. Everything is ruined. Or you could just ride on my head like I’m a mount.”

“I wanted to give wings a try,” she pouted.

Then I swooped her up and kissed her on the mouth. Pulling back, I said, “I know your bummed, but there’s always the lesser Pillars like Animation, Core Creation, and Necromancy.”

Holding her with one arm, I held up a golden marble with the other. It was a large marble.

Her face lit up, but she was still confused. “A golden orb? What’s it made of?” she asked.

“Guess.”

She gathered mana behind her eyes using Mana Sight instead of looking at it through the wind spectrum like a real blue mage. She needed a lot more experience looking at things in the mana realm to tell directly, but she was too bright not to guess. “It’s gold.”

“The closest thing to it without being gold,” I responded. “It’s actually an earth core made with Gold Aspect.”

“But doesn’t that mean it’s gold?”

I shrugged. “Kind of.”

Putting her down, we chatted as we headed toward the nature vein. I showed off several lesser blue magic spells and had her cast Mana Sight with a lot of mana channeled to it. It was nowhere near as easy as it had been for me. Not just that, I learned she had a mastery I’d never had.

Ability Duplication

Level: 1

Duplicate creature abilities through Creature Observation.

1% chance to duplicate through normal observation.

Note: The chance improves with channeling. The higher the mind stats of a creature, the more resistance they have against duplication.

Next Level:

+.5% chance to duplicate.

So even after maxing the mastery, she’d only have 50%? And that didn’t calculate in the mental resistance of creatures. She did have one thing going for her though. A good deal of mana. Also, I hadn’t forgotten the lesson I’d learned from that first imp. One of the easiest ways to learn Blue Magic was to have someone cast it on you. So I cast Pain on my wife.

No, I didn’t go there, but I did cast Flamethrower without any extra mana channeled to it. It sounds worse than it was. Even in her Sprite Form, temperature didn’t harm her in the way it did most creatures. She could definitely still be hurt by a hot enough flame, but not this pathetic thing. It also worked. As did Ice Shard. Through mana manipulation, I turned the Ice Shard into a snowball, but it still counted. After it took us an hour to manage those two spells, Shamash insisted we get back to unlocking schools of magic.

And that became our pattern over the next week or so. We experimented with our new magic when we could, but there were more important things for us to focus on. There’d been several cases where my magic had suffered because I hadn’t fully explored it or lesser spells affecting it, however, Shamash made a point that we couldn’t deny. It was better to put effort into advancing what you knew would work than wasting time on something that might not.

After I unlocked Nature, Aeris was at an impasse. She was sure she wanted to unlock Light and Blue Magic, but as for others? She just wasn’t sure.

Shamash agreed in the end that it wasn’t a bad thing for her to wait. So it became her just following me around as I unlocked the remaining school of magic I had planned. Against my own desires, I didn’t unlock Magma. Not only was it a rare sub-element, but the more I learned about the reflectivity of metals, the more convinced I became that it wouldn’t allow me to create a better mirror or lens.

I moved on to Water and Wind next.

Winesta was kind enough to show up with her brother and continue her instruction of Aeris while I circulated Aether for hours on end. Winmor took on managing the Spell Emulators and made sure solar orbs continued to churn out. By the end of our first week in Matriarch’s Crown, we were done visiting all the veins we currently had interest in.

Next up, unlocking Blue Magic Forms, teaching Aeris more spells, and generally trying to figure out what to do with all these different spell trees I had hardly looked at. Master Mather was also working on procuring the rest of the Spell Emulators we’d decided on. That meant he needed money. When we met, I handed over most of the dark orbs I had left. There was enough for a few decent purchases, but I was down to mostly a few thousand master dark orbs and the stockpile of solar orbs I was slowly creating. I’d gone from billionaire to investor. An investment that should work, but it was still a gamble.