Mark of the Fool
Chapter 699: Unnatural Power in the Most Natural Way

“So, the thing about mana regeneration at the highest levels is—” Val’Rok began.

“Wait, professor, there’s something important I need to ask you first,” Alex said, easing into a chair and placing his hands on Professor Val’Rok’s desk.

The lizardfolk wizard was just getting comfortable behind his desk, and paused. “What is it?”

“You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?” He said, eyeing the professor. “I remember the last time I saw you, you were on a diet. Looks like it worked.”

“Ah, thank you!” Val’Rok beamed, licking one of his eyes in delight. He lifted his arms, showing off his now trimmer frame. “Yes, the diet has been going quite well. I’ve thrown in a little more exercise too, hoping to get toned up. Is it really noticeable?”

Alex grinned and gave him a thumbs up. “Your hard work’s paying off, professor. It’s definitely showing.”

The lizardman made a happy little hiss. “I knew there was a reason I liked you so much. Ah, if I could blush you’d have me glowing. But, never mind my slimming journey for now, let’s focus on horrifyingly unnatural magic instead.”

He sank into his chair, rubbing his hands together. “So! I know you’ve had plenty of practise running currents of mana through your mana pool to stimulate its fibres. The truth is, that’s about as far as you can go relying on your natural mana pool; but, there are other techniques that can give you a more rapid mana regeneration rate, unfortunately…”

The lizardfolk raised a scaly hand, tilting it back and forth. “They can only help you so much. The next technique you’d naturally learn would be how to ‘vibrate’ all of your mana fibres at once to create a form of resonance that draws more power from them. But even that would only increase your mana regeneration rate by about ten percent. And that’s about as good as it gets when you rely on what you’re born with.”

He clapped his hands, grinning and rubbing them together like a greedy fly. “But if you modifyyour mana pool with certain ethereal constructions, then you’ll achieve far greater yields when it comes to your regeneration. And, that also expands your mana pool. Does that sound good?”

Alex was nearly salivating at the thought. “It sounds too good to be true, if I’m being honest, professor.”

“Well, that’s because it almost is,” Val’Rok said. “The Manamorphic Augmentation Construct is a very dangerous process. It requires a steady hand, a steadier mind, a mastery of alchemy at a high level, and a mastery of mana manipulation of the mostprodigious calibre. A loose understanding of blood magic is also helpful.”

“Sounds like it was made for me,” the young wizard said. “What are the risks?”

“In the very worst cases, complete destruction of one’s mana pool,” the professor confessed, bluntly. “Or, failing complete destruction, damage to one’s mana flow that could take decades to heal. It’s very risky, to be honest, and very few people even attempt it.”

“Have you?” Alex asked.

The lizard gave him a withering look. “Of course I have! I’ve succeeded too…after three earlier failures.” Reptilian lips pulled back from sharp teeth in a grimace. “And I’ll be even more honest, the last failure was bad. Quite bad…Incredibly bad, as a matter of fact. As in, ‘I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to continue being a wizard any longer’ kind of bad. But after about a decade, I healed, tried again and…well, let’s just say that I have more mana to call on than any three or four of my colleagues.”

He grinned. “It was well worth it. And judging by your skill level—and your previous augmentation—I think you could achieve it without a single failure. Or maybe one. Two at most.”

“Well, you certainly know how to fill someone with confidence, professor,” Alex said sourly.

“It’s not my job to fill you with confidence, it’s my job to fill you with knowledge. Awful, awful knowledge.”

“So far, you haven’t filled me with any knowledge, professor!” Alex countered. “You’ve only told me about how I could rip my mana to shreds and ruin my entire life if I fail at this.”

“You won’t,” Val’Rok said. “But I suppose I should tell you how it actually works. First though, I have a question for you: what is a mana pool?”

“It’s a form of an ethereal organ that both stores and generates mana in mortals,” Alex said. “Some monsters store and generate mana differently, but—for the most part—if you’re mortal and wield magic, you have a mana pool.”

“Excellent, and where is the mana pool located in the body? What is it made of?” Val’Rok asked.

Now it was Alex’s turn to give his professor a withering look. “I’m not some drooling first-year who skipped half his magic lore courses, you’re going to have to try harder than that to trick me. Mana pools aren’t located in the body, they’re located between the body and the soul; that’s why one can still call on their mana if they’ve shed their physical form, like how some dead wizards’ ghosts can still call on their spells. As for what it’s made of? Mana fibres, which are themselves made of a composite of mana, ectoplasm and pure soul stuff.”

“Correct!” Professor Val’Rok clapped. “Now, then, how many arms does Professor Ram have?”

Alex winced. “Um…two…if you count his force arm.”

“Precisely,” said the lizardfolk wizard. “Our dear, grumpy Professor Ram would only have one arm if he didn’t create a force construct prosthesis. Now, how many mana pools do we each have?”

“One,” Alex said.

“Why?” Professor Val’Rok folded one hand over the other on his desk.

“That’s what we’re born with,” the young wizard said slowly before trailing off. “...but what if we each had more than one?”

“Precisely.” Val’Rok grinned. “In the end, a mana pool will always be that. A mana pool. Manamorphic Augmentation Construction is the act of forging an artificial mana pool then carefully attaching it to one's natural mana pool through a form of ethereal surgery, as it were. Creating one is incredibly painful, incredibly difficult, and very prone to rejection.”

“What do you mean, rejection?” Alex asked.

“When one has something foreign in their body, what happens?” Val’Rok asked. “Well, the body expels it, doesn’t it? If you have a splinter in your finger then the splinter will eventually work its way out. The soul is no different. One’s soul usually fights tooth and nail to reject and expel any artificially attached mana pools. But if one has a mindset that would accept something of that nature…”

“Then the soul’s less likely to reject it.” Alex tapped his shoulder. “And I’m used to having something grafted to my soul.”

“Exactly.” Val’Rok reached down, unlocking his bottom drawer then pulling out a book and a bottle filled with a strange, cloudy substance. “Here’s the book of notes I made on how I built my artificial mana pools, and this bottle contains a small sample of ectoplasm. When combined with mana, you’ll find only one substance more suitable…and that’s the very stuff that souls are made of.”

“And I’m not going to be getting my hands on any of that any time soon,” Alex shuddered.

“Yes you will,” Val’Rok said.

“Wait, what now?” the young wizard started dopily patting his clothing like he expected to find a vial or pouch of soul he didn’t know was there.

“No, you silly man,” Val’Rok leaned over his desk, pressing a finger to Alex’s chest. “Right there. From your own soul.”

“Wait…what?” The Thameish wizard stared at him, remembering Hannah’s story of Kelda’s death; how the young woman had obliterated her own soul. “You want me to sacrifice my soul to—”

“No.” The professor shook his head. “Of course not. That’s not what I did. Tell me, what happens when you get a cut somewhere on your body?”

“I bleed,” Alex said.

“And after you bleed? Then what?”

“A clot forms, then a scab, and then I heal.”

Val’Rok looked at him expectantly.

“Wait…are you saying that if I…cut my soul…” Alex paused. “Or cut off small pieces of it, it’ll heal?”

“That’s precisely what I’m saying.” The lizardfolk touched his tail. “If I were to cut my tail off, it would eventually regrow. It would be a terrible, painful process, but it would regenerate. Souls can do the same; if they are damaged—mildly—then they will heal, as good as new, as long as the wound is not severe. You regrow clipped nails and cut hair, right? If I scraped some skin from your body, you’d certainly regenerate it; it’s the same with the soul. If you surgically separate very small pieces of it—and I do mean very small—at different times, you could save those pieces, wait for your soul to heal, then do it again. It’s a slow process, a very slow process, but you could use it to generate the purest material you could ask for when it comes to forging artificial mana pools. The material offers the most efficiency while being legal to obtain in Generasi—since you’re only tampering with your own soul—and it’s the least likely substance to be rejected, for the simple reason that it came from you.”

Alex swallowed. “Sounds…painful.”

“It is,” Val’Rok said gravely. “But I think you have the mindset for it and the will to see it through. Am I wrong?”

The young wizard thought carefully.

‘Something about tampering with my own soul sends chills through me,’ he thought. ‘Even if I use a relatively safe way of doing it. Maybe I don’t have to do something as drastic and should ask the professor for a technique that’s a bit safer—’

Then Alex’s mind paused on one word.

On one name.

Kelda.

Hannah’s friend had destroyed her very soul trying to rid herself of the Mark of the Fool. He was now on the same path as she’d been and was looking for her sanctum so he could find her research and try to refine her process.

‘If I’m going to revert the Mark of the Fool to the Mark of the General…I’m going to have to alter my soul,’ he thought, throwing a glance at his shoulder. ‘I’m going to be interfering with a god’s Mark on my spirit; so like it or not, I won’t havea choice but to interfere with my own soul anyway.’

His hands balled into fists. ‘And better I should get some real practice first.’

“Alright, professor,” Alex took the bottle and book. “Tell me how I can start carving up my own soul for spare parts?”

The lizard wizard let out a very loud—and very mad—laugh. “This is why I love teaching you! Here, you can borrow this.”

Val’Rok sprang from his chair and opened a cabinet in the back of his office. Inside was a sealed, steel box.

He unlocked it with care, removing a strange-looking knife—extremely thin, fine, and nearly transparent. Its edges shimmered as though Alex was observing them through a haze.

It was unnerving, and it felt wrong.

“What is that?” the young wizard asked.

“A soul-scalpel,” Val’Rok said, his mirth fading. He looked at it grimly. “Don’t ask me what it’s made of, but if you pour enough mana into it, you can use it to do what we were just discussing; perform surgery on your very soul.”

“That’d make a terrifying weapon,” Alex murmured.

The lizardman shook his head. “It’s mostly useless as a weapon; to get it to even work, you have to channel both mana and life energy into it to empower it, using a process that’s quite finicky and takes about ten minutes to set up. The soul then needs to be in a state of complete relaxation; it must be calm, collected and at peace, or there’ll be too much turbulence for the blade to handle. A turbulent soul could shatter a blade as delicate as this one. Another thing is; it must contact bare skin, and you must handle it gently. The material is fragile.”

“What’s it called?” Alex asked.

“Bane, Mr. Roth; a very fitting name in my opinion. It’s very, very rare in the material world. I am putting a lot of trust in you by letting you borrow this blade,” the professor said.

“I won’t let you down, professor…but, wait. You say the material is fragile, but what about using it for assassinations?” Alex asked. “Couldn’t you use it to slit someone’s soul when they’re sleeping? Their soul would be at rest, right, so you’re not risking breaking the blade on clothing or something harder, like armour.”

The lizardman paused. “Are you going to make me regret giving this to you? You’re asking me some rather unnerving questions, even by my standards.”

“No, no, I’m not going to use it for any homicides. I promise. I’m just…curious, that’s all,” Alex said.

“Well, you would be correct,” the older wizard said. “If one—albeit gently—stabs just the right spot on a sleeping or unconscious individual, then one could damage the soul to a point beyond its ability to heal. In some ancient societies, assassinations were committed with daggers similar to this in the ultimate taboo; destroying the soul of a target. But, enough talk of such dark things; be sure to use this blade well, use it with care.”

He placed it in Alex’s waiting hands gently. The young wizard shuddered as it touched his skin. It was…cold, in a way he couldn’t quite put into words.

Something within him recoiled.

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