Low-Fantasy Occultist

Chapter 403

As Nick walked out of the lecture hall, his mind raced through everything Tholm had just explained, and more importantly, what he had shown.

The image of the weapons floating while the books stayed still kept looping in his mind.

It wasn’t that the power exerted had been anything special, and he was pretty sure that if he took his time to work on a kinetic spell, he could successfully target specific items among a bunch just as well, but that wasn’t what had happened.

No, that had been a completely different kind of magic, and it annoyed him how well it worked compared to the basic kinetic magic he’d been practicing.

He’d believed that, at least in that aspect, his old world’s magical traditions had been superior, but that was clearly not the case.

Marthas might have given me a hint, but it was easy back then to attribute that to him being a freak of nature.

Fortunately, he wasn’t as restricted as the average mage and had already been working on something to bridge the gap between the two schools.

He looked at his hand, flexing his fingers. His Kinetic affinity had always been the workhorse of his arsenal, reliable and very blunt. [Push], [Pull], [Blast] had been the foundation for most of his spells, even shaping his elemental magics, but he hadn’t done much to improve them since then.

The only attempt he’d made was [Quake Push], and even that was just a basic evolution, needing [Structural Weakness] to become dangerous.

I’ve already seen what happens when spirituality is combined with elementalism. What rule stops me from applying the same to kinetics?

Tholm had explained that faith magic was more like commanding reality, using the power and authority of a divine being to make it happen. What would occur if he directed his emotions toward kinetic magic? And more importantly, what emotion would be best suited for it?

Making distance irrelevant could be the move. Or maybe making it so it can travel through obstacles?

Both were worthwhile attempts, but when he considered the emotion needed to inspire such ideas, he found it difficult.

Wrath was explosive. Avarice was absorbing. Mercy was a natural means of communion. But this refusal to acknowledge a barrier, this absolute certainty that one’s will could reach out and touch the target regardless of what stood in between…

Well, there was only one emotion he could think of that would drive him to do such a thing, and that was Pride.

Hubris, Nick corrected, as a slow smile spread across his face. The sheer, unadulterated arrogance of believing that nothing gets to tell me ‘No'.

If he could fuse Kinetic mana with the spiritual concept of Pride, he wouldn't waste it on creating a blast that hit harder, considering he already had powerful destructive spells.

No, he would craft something that completely ignored a shield's existence, bypassing any barrier and transmitting the force directly to the enemy.

He’d have to be careful, since spiritual magic in and of itself was already covered part of that niche. Developing the spell just right wouldn’t be easy, especially with all his current responsibilities, but with enough time, he could do it. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that it was the right path, especially considering the kind of enemy he’d face in the future.

That, Nick decided, is a project worthy of dedicating myself to.

But he couldn't test it yet. Not properly. Firing kinetic blasts at a wall wouldn't teach him anything about bypassing complex magical matrices. He needed a target that could resist him, something that could mimic the layered, reactive shielding of a high-level mage or a priest, without risking the safety of his friends.

It’s not like I could ask Tholm for hours of his time every day to work with me on this, and the only other option would be the Tower’s wards, but if I’m honest, I’d have a better chance of hurting Tholm than of successfully bypassing those.

That meant he needed supplies. His personal stores were filled with demon parts and dungeon loot, but he was short on the specific, mundane reagents necessary to craft high-grade dummies.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

The next morning, after the lessons ended, he slipped out of the Tower and into the crowds of citizens, trying his best to blend in.

It wasn’t that he thought another Hound of the Deep would come baying at him in the middle of the day, but unless he draped the [Mire of Avarice] over himself, he didn’t feel safe moving alone, especially after he’d been found despite his ring. So he preferred sticking to populated places, where the ether was much harder to interpret, particularly because the occasional pulse of divination magic was still ongoing.

Navigating through the crowds of the market district, Nick headed toward The Alchemist’s Satchel, a high-end supply shop known among apprentices for not asking too many questions.

As he walked, he kept his ears open, curious about what Alluria’s citizens thought regarding the current tensions.

"...finally clearing out the rubble on Madeline Street," a baker was telling a customer, pointing at a group of robed men directing a construction crew. "Those priests of Ulter don't mind getting their hands dirty. Saw one of them lift a beam that three men couldn't budge.”

“I heard they even helped bless the boats last night, and the catch the fishermen came back with was truly prodigious,” the customer replied, accepting a loaf of bread. “After everything that happened, it feels good to have someone working for the benefit of the people.”

Nick frowned as similar conversations repeated throughout the district, then forcefully smoothed his expression. The feeling, it seemed, was universal. The people were tired of fear. They were tired of the Tower’s distant, abstract protection and of the nobles' squabbling. The priests were here, on the ground, fixing streets and healing coughs.

Politod was right, he thought, stepping around a cart of flowers. They are filling the power vacuum, and they're doing it with a smile.

Of course, a few people were skeptical, some simply because their personal faith conflicted with Ulter’s, and others because all the newcomers signified even more change, but they were in the minority.

He arrived at the shop and quickly bought the reagents he needed, from pure quartz dust for stability to powdered fossilized bone for regeneration, along with a few cores from earth-based monsters.

The shopkeeper was chatty, praising the upcoming festival and mentioning that the Temple of Sashara had bought out his entire stock of incense at double the market price.

“Double?" Nick asked, incredulous, as he vanished his goods into his ring.

"Aye," the shopkeeper beamed, clearly more than happy with such generosity. "Said they needed the good stuff to properly cleanse the city, and I’m nothing but a pious man.”

Nick’s interest was piqued, as that didn’t sound like typical festival work, but he held back from asking for more details, doubting the shopkeeper was in the know.

He left the shop, but instead of heading back to the Tower, he wandered toward the western districts, where most of the festival would be held.

As he approached the docks, the activity grew more intense, and he realized that the place had changed a lot since just a few days ago.

The usual clutter of crates and nets had been cleared from the waterfront, replaced by rows of white pavilions. A massive stage was being set up near the water's edge, built with white stone that Nick was surprised to find had no echoes of earth magic, meaning it had been naturally dug and imported.

He leaned against a bollard, pulling an apple from his inventory, and taking a bite as he watched the work.

These priests seem to be of a lower rank than those with the Hounds. I suppose even Ulter’s faith doesn’t have an endless supply of those.

Still, even though they hadn't surpassed level forty on average, they kept working hard, scrubbing the cobblestones with water magic until they shone like new, erecting new tents, and laying the groundwork for more.

All in all, there was nothing particularly suspicious about their work. They definitely weren’t secretly constructing ritual circles as he feared, nor were they pushing others off their spots on the docks.

If anything, they were being quite generous, paying fishermen to move further up the Valis’ stream and freely blessing their boats.

But as Nick watched, [Empyrean Intuition] began to sense something just a little bit off.

With some effort, he adjusted his focus, overlaying his perception of the ether onto the physical world.

It wasn’t something he did often because the two dimensions followed different laws, and trying to understand them at the same time strained his mind. However, thanks to his soul’s newfound resilience, he could manage it when the occasion arose.

And what he saw explained a few things.

As he had already assessed, there was no Great Work being prepared under the pretense of setting up a festival, which made sense since he doubted the Archmages would have failed to notice. However, wherever the priests built, the more blessings they shared, the ether rippled briefly, its eddies colored by those actions and the people's gratitude.

If it had been just one or two occasions, the ether would have returned to its natural state within a couple of hours, and the effects would have been washed away, but this was a coordinated effort.

And Nick didn’t need to look elsewhere to realize that similar scenes were happening all over the city, with priests of every faith working together to transform the local ether into something different.

Pushing away from the bollard, Nick decided he’d lingered long enough, if the occasional glance he received was any indication, and began making his way back to the Tower.

I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like that. What would they even gain by tainting the ether like that? I guess their faith magic would become easier, but it’s not an actual Work. The effect will fade if they stop, and the resources needed to keep it active are considerable.

However, it was obvious they were doing so and must have had a reason. Nobody, not even the most devout religions, would waste that much time and effort for a minor change.

Options flashed through Nick’s mind, from the wildly outlandish, like this being a setup for a full-scale attack on the Tower, to the reasonable, like it all being part of a plan to make it easier for their priests to perform their rites.

Yet none of it convinced him. He was missing something, and although he had already learned enough to have a grasp of the big picture, he had no idea what was coming next, and that was making him nervous.

A few turns before the Tower’s plaza, he sensed a presence’s interest grow as it noticed him.

For a moment, he wondered if it was another priest being led to him by their hounds, but he quickly realized it wasn’t the case.

Scarlet red robes didn’t make for a very stealthy approach, but this witch had managed to blend in well enough to avoid his notice until she caught sight of him, and while he usually knew better than to follow strange women down dark alleys, he could sense she had something important to tell him.

He subtly shifted his course, entering a side street, and from there, followed her until they stopped in front of a nameless shop with just three symbols on its sign: an eye, a hand, and a spiral.

“Well, come on in, then,” she said, her ruby red lips quirking up, even as she concealed a frisson of discomfort at how quickly he’d noticed her.