The OP Lich is a Returnee, Chapter 157

Chapter 157 – The State of the Seal

It was lucky that I was at the front of the procession, otherwise someone would have seen my smile as the lieutenant tried to cover the fact that yes, he was flirting. Of course, the fact that he actually sounded genuinely interested in her work and wasn’t just reacting to her beauty meant that I didn’t put a stop to it right away, especially since Eri didn’t seem to be upset with the attention. Then again, she hadn’t had much time to date while preparing for her dissertation, even before the kidnapping. So having someone flirt with her was probably a welcome change.

My attention, however, was focused ahead. I could feel the power welling up in this place. Unlike the other seals, which had been contained, until their power was freed, raw magic was infusing everything here. The mortals might not have noticed, but all my undead and I could feel the difference. My research indicated that most of the mountain was comprised of andesite and basalt. Not exactly uncommon in volcanoes of this type. Well, at least that is what it was supposed to be.

The magic in this place had infused the stone, making it much more than mere andesite or basalt. The leaking magic of the seal was infusing all of the elements into the stone, in equal measure. Because of this, no one element presented more than the others, which is why the mortals had not yet noticed the change. After all, there were no mines in use on Mount Shasta, so no one would have had the chance to dig. If they had, they would have quickly found that even their best equipment would do no more than scratch this stone, even if they brought all their might to bear upon it. And there was no blasting this stone without using enough conventional explosives to remove half a mountainside, and, still, it would barely make a dent!

This was a place of Primal Stone. Such a name was not given to a specific type of rock, like basalt or granite. Instead, it was more akin to a state of being, like liquid, gas, and solid. Or perhaps more like plasma, but less transient.

At a base level, there was regular stone. Unmodified by magic, easily worked and managed, as people had done for thousands of years, even without magic. But then, you had Mana Stone. This was rock that had begun to absorb mana, changing it into an excellent conductor for magic, which is why it usually formed the wardstone or anchor for many powerful wards.

If left unharvested, Mana Stone began to aspect, and become Elemental Stones. Fire Stones, Water Stones, Death Stones, and so on would form in places where those elements pooled, without sufficient channels to bleed off the mana into the world around them. Channels like the ley lines that connected the seals.

In rare cases, two or more elements would pool together, and cause Mystic Stones to form. A Lava Stone would form from the combination of Fire and Earth, for instance. The rarest Mystic Stones were those of opposing elements, and even then, the rarest by far was what came to be known as Sagestone, combining Life and Death mana.

Rarer still than Mystic Stones was naturally forming Primal Stone, which combined all the elements, and did not aspect. Primal Stone came in three types, Augmenting, Negating, and Chaotic. Each affected spells and magics cast in their area differently. Augmenting enhanced their effectiveness. Negating snuffed them out, and Chaotic caused random effects to happen when someone cast magic, for good or ill.

However, the alchemists and enchanters of the other world had long ago figured out the secret to artificially create Mana Stones, Elemental Stones, Mystic Stones, and, yes, even Primal Stones. Doing so required a large investment of time, energy, and materials. Especially materials.

If one took a thousand kilograms of Mana Stone, they could, perhaps, gain two hundred kilograms of the Elemental Stone of their choice. Gather two thousand kilograms of Fire Stone and Earth Stone, and you could, if you were lucky, obtain one hundred kilograms of Lava Stone. Bring together ten thousand kilograms of each type of Elemental Stone, and you would be able to receive fifty kilograms of Primal Stone.

For the Hero Summoning done in Athelia that was, the kingdom had gathered one hundred kilograms of Primal Stone, of the augmenting type, to focus and enhance the ritual magics. Because of that, only one hundred souls had been sacrificed in order to perform the spell, when otherwise it would have taken far more, or the King would have had to invest more power, and more mages, into the work. Those stones also helped with my own return, and they would have been the center point of the explosion that no doubt followed in my wake. After all, the power I had invoked was no less than what had shattered the Azores, but I had always intended for the power to rip the land of Athelia apart.

Here on Earth, though, the Prime Seal had been partially broken, and so the entire mountain was in the process of being converted to Primal Stone. Given that the light spells we cast to let the mortals see were not changing colors, or turning into waterfalls or becoming raging infernos, or anything of the sort, it was safe to say that it was not Chaotic Primal Stone. And since the spells were working at all, it was not Negating, either, but Augmenting.

I thought about letting the Lieutenant know, but there was no point in it. Best to set eyes upon the seal itself, and the guardian, before considering what I ought to tell him about this situation. Fortunately, the mana was not so intense that I needed to worry about any of the untrained mortals suffering from mana toxicity. They lacked the ability to process mana fluently enough to actually suffer from the mana density, unless it got far worse.

There was some concern for Chihomi, Eri, and my disciples, however. They were used to drawing in mana subconsciously, by this point, and they lacked the experience my troops and I had on managing such things. A good analogy would be a mortal human, used to normal air at sea pressure trying to breathe pure oxygen, as the pressure gradually increased. Oh, one or two atmospheres of pressure, with pure oxygen, was not much of a problem. For a limited time, it would probably even improve your performance. But after that, well, things could get very ugly, very quickly.

“Eri, Chihomi, Naya, Ya.” The mortals snapped to attention as they heard me call their names. “Concentrate on the mana around you. If you cannot feel the difference, then you must stop drawing in mana, for your own safety. Even if you can feel the change, you must move from subconscious to conscious cultivation, paying great attention to your levels as you do so.”

“Mistress,” Ya said, her eyes unfocused as she tried to ‘see’ the unseen, “what is happening? I had thought that the air was just getting thin, and that things were getting hot.”

“Simply put, you are experiencing highly concentrated mana in the atmosphere for the first time. The other seals all had structures in place, to keep this from happening. This one likely did, as well, but they must have been damaged when the seal ruptured.”

“Is there any danger to the rest of us?” Lieutenant Hughes asked. Not unreasonably, I heard a bit of fear in his voice.

“No. None of you have begun growing your mana pools. Even you, Lieutenant, only channel magic, rather than wielding it. However, I would caution against casting any spells here. Same goes for the rest of the mortals. You have not trained for this kind of atmosphere, or the conditions, so you cannot properly manage your output. You might try to light a cigarette and end up sending an entire building up in a fireball. No comment on your control, but this is just what happens if you decide to put rocket fuel in a soccer mom’s minivan. You get explosions and tears, if you are lucky.”

“So, the leaking seal is causing something like a gas leak?” Naya asked as she visibly fought to halt her cultivation. I’d made sure that my disciples had gotten to the point where it was like breathing to them, and, like breathing, doing it manually was not something they were accustomed to, meaning it took more focus than the act ought to.

“The mana in the air is purer than anything you’ve tried to use before, yes. This has two effects. First, and most obvious, is that you can far too easily overpower spells unless you take the environment into account, and have the training to scale your output accordingly. Second, and the reason I told you all to stop subconsciously drawing in mana, is because your bodies have not yet advanced to the state where they can handle these energies. Picture running two hundred volts through wires only rated for one hundred, and you will understand.

“But that is not the only danger. The mana is affecting the stone around us, turning it into an amplifier. If you don’t know how to take that into account, your magic will be more powerful, and spread further than you intended.”

The Lieutenant’s second in command, Sergeant Scott, gasped. When eyes turned to her, she said, “Well, I was wondering, would that amplification thing apply to the ritual? And, if so, what would happen if it was unsuccessful?”

“Very good,” I nodded. “That is the proper question to ask. And the answer is that, in some ways, it will make the ritual easier. If it fails, however? I expect that, instead of being able to find beachfront property in Nevada, the coastline would be more likely to reside in Colorado or New Mexico. And Earth’s orbit might be affected slightly.”

“Well, that’s not concerning at all,” Eri muttered.

I just chuckled and continued forward. The mortals were aware of the dangers. The ones who had training were focusing on keeping themselves safe. Their fears did not concern me, at the moment. Not that I disregarded them, but I was focused on the larger problem.

If the conditions around the seal had degraded this much, then there was some question whether I would be able to safely unravel what was left. After all, the other seals were made in such a way that they could be undone with something other than brute force. It wasn’t easy, even for me, but it was possible. But those seals had all been intact, and undamaged. Not like this one.

Eventually, we got to the heart of the mountain, and a great chamber, roughly the size of a sports arena, opened up before us. I heard the mortals wondering how a cavern of such size had never been detected before, but I knew the answer. As with the Seal of Air, in the Azores, this place had not been fully ‘here’ until after the damage to the Seal was done, causing the dimensional barriers to break down.

I ignored the carvings along the walls and upon the floor. From a glance, I could see that they told the same story as the other markings we’d found at the other seals. While interesting, and definitely something that I would have my people record for future study, if time permitted, that was not what drew my focus.

Six hundred and sixty-six human forms were arrayed around the cavern all kneeling arms upraised. All actual people, petrified by the power that had been channeled here. There were looks of pain on the faces, perfectly preserved after all this time, but not fear or hatred. These people sacrificed themselves knowingly to seal magic away, then.

Not all the forms were undamaged, of course. One sixth of their number had some damage, where the seal had cracked, and unleashed its power in a cone. The forms nearest the seal were barely more than broken statuary, while those at the furthest reach of the blast looked as though they’d been hit with a sandblaster, their features worn away.

Turning to look at the seal itself, I saw a crystal, with all the colors of the different types of mana flowing through it. Once, they had been in balance, but there was a long crack up one side, allowing the powers to trickle through. The only reason the crack had not spread further was because a dragon lay across it, claws gripping the sides of the crystal and holding them together. For a moment, I thought the dragon dead, but then its head turned, and looked at me.