Chương 117: Chapter 110: Tiny Lives

Modifying a spell by changing a single word was far easier than creating an entirely new spell from scratch. Lira had experienced this before when she created the book-cleaning spell, the book-summoning spell, and even the first spell she had ever created, Wind Manipulation, which had been an adaptation of the Fire and Water Manipulation spells she had learned from primers. So she wasn't surprised that Tony had been able to modify Life Watch into Small Life Watch.

He had spent years working with the spell, which had most likely given him an intrinsic connection to the magical concepts involved. More importantly, he had possessed the drive to carry the project through despite his limited knowledge of magic. Lira picked up her copy of The Truth Untold and opened it to the section she had marked earlier. Tony had described the process in detail.

He had taken Life Watch and altered its scope by introducing Diminution, allowing the spell to perceive things far smaller than ordinary vision could detect. But there was a problem. Spells could only have an odd number of words in their incantations. That left Tony with a choice. He could add a second word, turning the spell into a Tier Two spell, or remove one of the existing words from the original incantation to make room for Diminution.

Normally, one might think that creating a Tier Two spell would be more useful than creating a Tier One spell, but that ran into another problem: the soul's adaptability and readiness to receive a spell. The first thing Lira had learned about magic had come from the governess's book series, one of the few resources on magic she had possessed at the time.

It explained that a person needed to know three cantrips within a discipline before they could imprint a Tier One spell, and three Tier One spells before they could imprint a Tier Two spell. This knowledge had later been confirmed by the books donated by Emberborn. It was also why the Flight Magic Primer she had found was currently gathering dust. Trying to imprint it without the necessary foundation would probably kill her.

So creating a Tier Two spell had not been feasible for Tony, who only knew three mind-related cantrips and one Tier One spell. Instead, he needed to remove one of the existing words to make room for Diminution, and that meant Clarity had to go. Lira began writing. Life Watch Pika. Cipos. Syneth. Kalaba. Velar. Mind. Amplification. Interpretation. Life. Clarity. Then beneath it: Small Life Watch Pika. Cipos. Syneth. Picos. Kalaba. Mind. Amplification. Interpretation. Diminution. Life.

Lira believed that the order mattered and she agreed with Tony's choice to place Diminution immediately before Life, suggesting that it was a modifier to the concept of life rather than a separate restriction. At least in theory, that should work. Lira closed her eyes.

"Pika. Selan. Tureth." She entered meditation once more. Eagle Eyes allowed her to perceive things from a distance. It placed no restrictions on what could be seen and simply enhanced her natural vision. Life Watch went a step further by focusing that enhanced perception specifically on living targets. Small Life Watch needed to do something more extreme. It had to change what her mind considered a meaningful visual signal, allowing it to distinguish structures far below the limits of ordinary perception.

Lira focused on her most recent experience testing Life Watch. If her normal field of vision was a square, Life Watch essentially placed a smaller square around, let's say, a distant bird and magnified it until it filled her normal field of vision. She could then focus the spell further, placing another square around the bird's head and making that her entire field of vision. But Tony had highlighted something important in his rambling.

Making something appear larger because it was far away and making something larger because it was too small to see were fundamentally different things. A mite sitting on top of a bee was difficult to spot with the naked eye even when he placed his eye directly in front of the jar that contained them. There was a limit to human perception that distance alone could not overcome. So the spell's focus wasn't simply about making things appear closer, it was about making them bigger.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Life Watch could make a bee appear as large as a cow and then make a mite appear just as large. That was perhaps twenty times amplification followed by another ten times amplification, resulting in roughly two hundred times amplification. But could it go further? Could she make a tiny dot no larger than a grain of dust appear as large as a cow? A four-hundred-fold amplification? A thousand-fold?

What would the limit be? The light was already there, so the information existed. That level of amplification was simply a natural progression. As long as something smaller and living existed, the spell should theoretically be able to perceive it. Lira focused on that idea. Pika. Cipos. Syneth. Picos. Kalaba. Click. The spell was imprinted, and she opened her eyes.

"Now let's see if the tiny lives are actually there." Pika. Cipos. Syneth. Picos. Kalaba. She watched and focused her spell. All she was able to see were the detailed ridges she usually saw, though they appeared a little segmented, almost as if they were made of tiny bricks. She remembered Tony explaining that the spell had first failed to focus properly until he tested it on stagnant water.

There, he had been able to see tiny creatures that were themselves relatively enormous compared to the even smaller life forms that existed around them. Lira needed to do something similar. She headed toward the stables. Stagnant water was easy enough to find, but she didn't want to waste time searching through every forgotten bucket when there was something far more readily available. The horse trough. What could possibly be more stagnant than water that was constantly filled with dirt, straw, and horse saliva?

Lira approached the trough and peered into the murky water before crouching beside it. She didn't want to waste any mind power on reducing the distance. Well, here goes nothing.

"Pika. Cipos. Syneth. Picos. Kalaba." The world expanded in front of Lira, and she froze in surprise and confusion. For a moment, she couldn't even understand what she was seeing. The water that had appeared completely still and lifeless a moment ago was now filled with movement. Tiny shapes drifted through an enormous translucent landscape, swimming, twisting, and colliding. Some were little more than translucent blobs with tiny structures moving inside them.

Others were even smaller, long and thin, moving through the water with a strange, almost mechanical rhythm. There were hundreds of them... no, thousands. She shifted her focus. The spell magnified a smaller region of the water, and even more creatures appeared. It was like looking at an entire world hidden inside a drop of water. She focused again, this time on one of the large translucent blobs, and noticed tiny hairs, or perhaps legs, helping it navigate the environment.

It moved forward for a while before suddenly changing direction. It moved toward a much smaller organism. The smaller creature tried to flee, but it wasn't fast enough, and the larger organism engulfed it. Lira watched, horrified and fascinated, as the tiny predator consumed its prey. They're eating each other. The realization struck her with surprising force. She had expected to find the next level of creature that was just smaller than mites. Instead, she had found an entirely new ecosystem here.

Predators and prey, competition for resources... Life. All of it was happening at a scale so small that she had never even known it existed. Lira slowly shifted her focus onto one of the prey creatures that had been eaten. Unlike the predator, its body was much more opaque and elongated rather than round, with thin, short hairs and longer tentacles. Lira couldn't help but think it looked evil. Drinking stagnant water does make people sick.

I wonder if it's one of those creatures that are the invaders Tony talked about. She watched it drift through the water, examining its strange shape and movements. Then she focused again and was able to locate even smaller creatures. They looked like shelled peanuts, two semicircles fused in the middle. Lira stared. It just keeps going. There was always something smaller. Always another layer. Lira slowly looked at her own hand, and her skin filled her vision. It was a landscape.

Tiny serpentine creatures lived alongside more spherical structures. Even the skin itself was made of countless bricks, a flaky surface that was not much larger than the creatures surrounding it. The knowledge was overwhelming. Lira slowly released the spell, and her vision returned to normal. For several seconds, she simply sat beside the horse trough, staring at her own hands. At that moment, she understood how Tony must have felt. She understood why the poor man had gone crazy.

He had been rejected by his peers, dismissed by higher ranked scholars, and spent years trying to prove something that nobody else wanted to believe. And when he finally succeeded, the truth he discovered had been far larger than even he had expected. He had tried to explain himself. He had tried to share his breakthrough, but no one believed him.

They couldn't fathom that someone like him could create a new spell, and the knowledge he shared was too far outside their understanding for them to take it at face value. Lira couldn't help feeling a little sorry for him. She stood and brushed the dirt from her dress. She was going to need to create a water-purification spell because she wasn't going to drink those evil things. No. That was her irrational fear talking. She had drunk from the well all her life.

If something was wrong with the water she consumed, she would have gotten sick long ago. No, she needed to consolidate the reality she had just discovered with the medical knowledge she had learned before she started making decisions. Lira started walking back toward the library, her mind racing with possibilities. As she entered the library, Lira noticed Lyth sitting at his usual table, happily reading from the new books they had acquired. She slowed down. No, it was not the prince who caught her attention.

It was the bodyguard sitting behind him. It wasn't Henry; instead, one of the four royal guards who had accompanied them on yesterday's trip was there. Lira's expression tightened. Henry, The guard who was Prince Lyth's shadow without ever missing a day had decided to take a day off today, of all days? No. Lira did not believe in coincidences. She had a sinking feeling that she knew exactly what he was doing.