Industrial Mage: Modernizing a Magical World

05 - A Peculiar Organism

Jack frowned as he observed the tall woman in the third stage of the Blight through the spell construct in front of him—it let him zoom in to view things without needing expensive lenses and glasses, and it didn't cost him too much mana. Her flesh was rotting, and she appeared to be quite feral. Growling through the rope tied over her mouth, she writhed back and forth as her claw-like fingernails raked across the floor.

"That looks bad." Miller said, standing next to him.

Jack didn't argue.

Jack was actually quite frustrated. Curing the tainted was possible, but it required significant mana—the higher in the stage the tainted was, the more mana it required. Trying to cure a woman in the third stage—by far the most progressed they'd encountered—was so challenging that the room was a complex web of magic-reinforced stone. Their precautions had failed in the tainted they'd worked on, and the man had died, and now he was in Jack's retinue of summons. Regardless, they still didn't have a proper understanding of how this sickness worked.

"Sir Jack," Miller said. "Is it possible to cure this disease? Could we cleanse it from all the people infected by the Blight?"

"Yes and no," Jack answered, and he went on. "I've found patterns."

"Patterns?"

"Yes, the Blight is almost alive. Yet dead at the same time. It eats at the lifeforce. I'm arriving at the theory that whatever makes the Blight work, these small organisms, they're the antithesis of mana itself—eating on lifeforce to mate. However, like everything in nature, it has a predator."

"Mana."

"Precisely. And said mana needs to penetrate these organisms—not only that, but it somehow needs to identify which movement pattern its dealing with at one particular time."

"This... organism, it has different movement patterns for everyone?"

Jack hummed thoughtfully, then shook his head. "The moveset isn't infinite. However, there's enough variation to give us trouble given that we cannot pre-program our spells to detect each movement pattern. Even now, I'm working on a spell that will target them en-mass, but if just a few get by..."

"They'll re-infect those already cured," Miller finished for him.

"Indeed. So, going forward, I need a way to somehow add a detection system which will not only detect the movement pattern of each individual the Blight infect, it needs to differentiate so mana itself can change its movement while intercepting the organisms. Not only that, these blight-organisms self-replicate—somehow, it requires them to eat lifeforce, or more like, eating lifeforce triggers their mating process—and that's causing there to be even more new variations in the moveset to be developed as this... species evolves.

"So, somehow, the spell also needs to copy new information and send that information back so we can analyze and send a counter movement. Aaaand, that's ignoring the fact that I'm still clueless as to how I can make the mana remain inside the soap. Mana isn't static, you see, it always—always—looks for a new medium to move to.

"That means, in our case, that the mana will 'dissipate' from the soap—in reality, it's just moving from one medium, soap, to another, air or anything else in the environment."

Miller put a hand on his chin. "That sounds... hard. To be honest, you're already developing a spell way beyond the skill of an average [Mage]. How did you learn all this? Do you, perhaps, have a master, Sir Jack?"

Jack ignored him, continuing to stare at the patient in contemplation.

"I've never taken on such a big challenge, but the problems are like exhilarating puzzles for me; I love solving puzzles, Sir Miller," Jack grinned, giving Miller a side eye. "Why do you think I chose to become a [Necromancer]? The human body, or any species' body, for that matter, is a huge puzzle I can't wait to solve."