Book 2, Chapter 28

Under normal circumstances, a mana battery’s job was to provide a source of redundancy to the ambient mana in the air. Most enchantments, at least the ones I’d made or interacted with in my previous life, were designed to keep themselves powered indefinitely, but experiments could have unintended consequences on the local mana pressure, and in order to preserve complex or expensive enchantments, mana batteries functioned as backups just in case the ambient mana temporary dried up.

Here, of course, there was no ambient mana. All of the lab enchantments had to be powered directly from the battery, which gave Freak a convenient spot to pool his resources and saved him from the tedious task of adding more mana to each individual enchantment.

If I cared at all about preserving the lab’s integrity, I couldn’t have moved that pillar of granite. The enchantments were rooted in it, and freeing it looked something similar to the process of pulling a stump. The roots got left behind while the main trunk was cut away. So it was here. Each enchantment I severed caused something else to fail, though rarely did it happen immediately. The grow room’s lights were the first to go, those having been enchanted to pull from the battery directly and not having any sort of internal reservoir.

I left the mana shielding in place until the end. Without wasting time on a more thorough examination of how exactly the enchantment had been performed, I could only guess at how long it would last. If it was at least half an hour, that’d be enough for me. I had my eyes on a few specimens in the grow room I wanted to salvage but which weren’t in a state where they could be harvested just yet, but everything else was going to get sucked dry and its mana stored in the battery as soon as I was done cutting the granite pillar loose from the floor.

There was one other enchantment I was hesitant to cut, so much so that I traced it to its source in the ceiling above the menagerie. It was some sort of mental effect that I suspected was designed to aid Freak in keeping his pets under his control, similar to a necromancer needing enchantments to grow their horde to impressive sizes. It had been modified since Freak’s flesh crafting victims were still alive, but the basic principles were the same.

It was kind of clunky, but it technically worked. The enchantment had been modified extensively, making me suspect that Freak had needed to update it each time he finished a new project. Maybe he’d gotten lazy about that, considering how badly a few of the more grotesque creations had reacted to my process. Even now, with my floating near the ceiling in total darkness while I examined the enchantment, I could hear them pacing back and forth in their cells, agitated.

Once I’d confirmed that the enchantment had enough mana in it to not break immediately upon removal of the lab’s battery, I went back and began the process of using stone shape to split the pillar from the ground and shrink it to a more manageable size. I ended up with an oblong rock about five inches long that still weighed at least five pounds after I added a gravity twist enchantment to it.

In practice, what I had was an inelegant storage crystal. It was designed to power enchantments, which made accessing it to manually draw mana from its reservoir difficult. Adding mana to it, however, was as easy as could be, and right now that was what I needed. I could begin the process of draining Freak’s lab completely dry, or at least as dry as I could get it in the next half an hour or so before the mana shielding enchantments collapsed. I suspected if there was any significant source of mana left at that point, somebody would notice and come investigating.

I considered sticking around to see if I could ambush another member of the Wolf Pack, but I suspected it wouldn’t just be one person, and that whoever showed up would be ready for a fight. Freak had been a difficult enough opponent that I was hesitant to take on two more mages that might be equally strong at the same time, especially not ones fully armed and armored. I shuddered to imagine how much worse the last fight would have been if Freak had been able to down some of his potions or had started with his full menagerie under the influence of his puppet master spell.

Instead I spent my time mana draining Freak’s circus of abominations one after another. Once I took the time to examine them individually, I found a great deal of animal and monster hybrids, some of which would live for a long time before they starved due to lack of mana. Others were destined to die a much quicker death once I stole what they needed to survive. Regardless of how well the beasts would have fared if left to their own devices, I killed them when I was done.

There was no sense in leaving any resources for my enemies to recover. Each body went through the open chute near the cutting table to be dumped into the lake below. Their corpses could feed the fish down there. I might even take the time to go down myself and hunt that other big one if the mana battery had room for it. It was almost full already.

Before I left, I located Freak’s soul hook. Such a tool had its uses, but it wasn’t something I wanted left lying around where my enemies could find it. It also wasn’t something I personally had a use for. I took half a minute to transmute it from rune-engraved steel into a handful of sand, then scattered it across the floor.

While I worked, I considered where the best place to set up my new alchemy lab would be. Ideally, it would be some place secure where I could create my own grow room, but that wasn’t necessary for what I needed to produce. I could expand the crucible chamber I’d hidden back in the wastes, but it would be difficult to obtain more resources after my pilfered stash ran out.

If I was willing to put the time, effort, and mana into it, the best thing to do would be to recruit some of the Arborists back home to tend to my gardens. I already had a corner of one of their greenhouses being used to grow a few things for me; it wouldn’t be a stretch to put up another greenhouse exclusively for my use. I had no doubt I could trade them something for their services.

The problem was that I’d been exiled. There were a few people in charge who would not take well to me showing back up and acting like I’d never left. But then, I did have enough power in my hand to flatten the entire village if I needed to. People like Karad and Solidaire couldn’t stop me anymore.

Was it even worth it to deal with them, though? There were plenty of other places I could set up a new village. I could probably poach at least a few people from Alkerist, and getting my family out of there would ease my concerns for their safety, if only because I had a constant fear that the Wolf Pack would send more people to retake control of the village and my father wouldn’t have time to let me know so I could return to defend it.

One good thing about the wastes was that it didn’t so much have seasons as it did slight fluctuations in temperature and very little in the way of rainfall, so while we’d need to plant a crop of food immediately, we wouldn’t be waiting on the weather. As long as I picked a place near water and applied liberal amounts of mana to the seeds, it wouldn’t take even a month to get our first harvest.

It was something to talk to my parents about. Despite how the village treated Father, the idea of leaving it didn’t appear to have ever crossed his mind. It was easy to see why. He’d been born and raised there, and other than some childhood exploration and a few days out in the wastes after Noctra had kidnapped him, he’d never really left.

Mother would probably argue about leaving her garden, but I could easily transplant the entire thing. I might even convince her to let me help her ignite her core. That would make those tasks far easier for her to complete, though I suspected it wouldn’t be a strong enough argument to convince her to leave the village.

As for my sister, she’d probably see the whole thing as some sort of adventure. There’d be no need to convince her it was a good idea as long as she thought it sounded fun. If nothing else, I could entice her with offers of magic lessons. According to Father, she’d been experimenting on her own anyway.

I set aside a few plants while I worked. A light orb floated around overhead, bathing me in the sole pool of illumination left in the lab. Once I’d finished the grow room, I ransacked Freak’s personal chambers. Most of my loot was in the form of books. There was no magical equipment to be found; apparently, he’d worn what he owned into battle and I’d destroyed the robe and brewer’s ward stone when I flash froze him and broke him into pieces.

The books were about what I’d expected, mostly alchemy recipes and botany guides that I was interested in skimming through to get a better grasp of what kind of local supplies I could expect to find and what the best uses for them were. There was also a single book dedicated to crafting and maintaining workshop enchantments, though it appeared to be nothing more than a beginner’s guide.

Those I kept. The rest was comprised of a surprising amount of erotic fiction—I hoped it was fiction at least, but I wasn’t willing to dive into the contents to make an accurate judgment about whether the characters really existed—that I left behind. They had some use as paper to be recycled for future use, but… No. I’d find other sources.

There were some other personal effects I opted not to take with me after checking them over. Freak had apparently been a collector of masks and had a variety in wood, stone, metal, clay, and, creepily enough, animal flesh. I hoped it was animal flesh, at least. That one was well-preserved, but I wasn’t eager to figure out where the leather had come from.

With that, my looting was complete. I’d decided while I was working that I’d be delaying my exploration of the inner city for another day. The teleportation beacon I’d set up was well-hidden and had enough mana to last two weeks before it started to degrade. That gave me plenty of time to sort through my haul and decide on my next steps once I spoke with my family.

If Alkerist’s leaders would cooperate, I’d set up the alchemy lab in one of the rooms available in Noctra’s old lab. If they didn’t want to cooperate, I might just do it anyway. If not there, I could use some space at the arbor, or I might begin construction on a true home of my own out in the wastes. I had the mana for it now. Either way, I expected to secure some help from the head of the Arborists. Shel had to be bursting at the seams with questions for me by now.

Gathering up the few plants I’d spared to take with me, I began the slow process of teleporting back home. I left behind a lair thoroughly stripped of anything that had the slightest value and a single enchantment that would watch for about two weeks for anyone entering Freak’s lab, record what they said and did, and then last for another month before it ran out of mana. As long as I returned to claim it before then, it would be as good as if I’d been there myself.

It was an expensive spell, but worth it. If I was lucky, I’d get the identities of at least one other Wolf Pack mage. If not, well, I’d still gained a massive amount of mana. Today was a solid win for me.