Chương 68: Journeyman Necromancy

A plume of wind buffeted Aaron's hair out of his eyes as he jumped out of the way of Paige's sabre. He rolled around in a smooth motion and thumped his elbow into her back, causing her to grunt and trip forwards. He threw a punch forwards into the stumbling girl, but she regained her balance and ran two steps away before it could make contact. She turned and stood sideways on, pointing her sabre towards his eyes.

"Are you ready to quit yet?"

"Quite the opposite, actually." Aaron put his dagger back in the makeshift leather holster on his belt. Paige shrugged her hands up in disappointment, whipping the sabre into the air with them.

"Come on, not this again."

"I've got it this time. Just fight me." Paige rolled her eyes and put her sabre back into position, aiming towards Aaron. They stared off at each other for a few heartbeats as he smirked at her, and then she struck. She lunged forwards and stabbed towards Aaron's chest, but he was prepared. Steel hit flesh as he chopped it to the side with his palm. A sharp stinging surged through his hand, and blood dripped down his closed fist. He winced and shook his hand off, then healed it up with Manipulate.

The wound—which was a fraction of the size that it should have been considering the size of the sabre—sealed up in a fraction of a second, and the few remaining drops of blood on his palm were the only remaining evidence that he'd been cut. The mana cost to heal a gash on his hand was a drop in the ocean at Manipulate's current level, which was a modest 9. Although it had been stuck there for a week.

"Come on, Aaron, this is dumb. Just because you can heal, it doesn't mean you should keep hurting yourself." Aaron didn't take the bait. He ran at her with a yell and threw a clumsy overhand punch. And of course, Paige effortlessly ducked out of the way. He followed up with a flurry of jabs, each aimed at her head or torso, but she comfortably deflected them with a series of blocks with her fists and forearms. Abusing a gap in her defences, Aaron shoved her hard in the chest, knocking her back a step.

"Come on, try to stab me again." Paige huffed and sighed.

"You're crazy." But she obliged. Aaron channelled Manipulate through his hands, focusing on toughening the skin on his palms. His cold mana layered and folded over his skin, each time becoming colder and colder until it pulsed with icy energy. They were a combination of numb and stiff, but Aaron hoped that the stiffness was due to the strength in his skin, rather than numbness he was enduring. Paige slashed across his chest with the sabre, but he dashed backwards out of the way.

He went to retaliate with a swing of his fist, but the sabre gave her too much reach. It was easily avoided with half a step to the side. She didn't waste any time thrusting the sabre back into Aaron's chest, but he was ready for it. He grabbed the blade with both hands and clamped down as hard as he could. He felt no sharpness or pain, only the pressure of the blade biting at his skin and the force of Paige's strength pushing against him. Aaron looked down at the sabre.

He was holding it an inch from his chest like a vice. Paige tugged and then yanked to free the blade, but it stayed firmly in his grip. Her brow furrowed in frustration. It wasn't helped by the smug, toothy grin Aaron knew she hated so much. With one final attempt, Paige leaned all of her weight backwards, but Aaron had already let go. He swept his foot under her ankle as she fell, launching her full weight backwards into the ground.

"Asshole!" She groaned, rubbing the back of her head as she lay on the floor. Aaron held out a hand, but she had other ideas. Before he could even step his front foot down, she locked his ankle and kicked into the back of his knee, toppling him onto his front.

"Okay, fair enough. I deserved that."

"Damn right you did. We're meant to be sparring, not trying to hurt each other." Aaron grinned.

"Well, in my defence, and if we're being technical, you hurt yourself by pulling backwards so hard and tripping." Paige kicked the side of his hip with his boot, a little harder than a friendly thump.

"Ouch, I guess I deserved that one too." Paige grumbled and pulled herself up to sit next to Aaron. She panted a few times and wiped the sweat off her forehead.

"How's your hands?" Aaron looked down. To his delight, they were clear of cuts. Every other attempt had ended in a painful lesson. He held his palms up to show Paige, who leaned in to inspect them.

"Did you heal them?"

"No. Well, the first time I did. That time, the blade didn't even cut me."

"Good! Now we can stop this crazy training idea of yours." Aaron flexed his fingers, wiggled them one at a time, and turned his hand around, then back again.

"Maybe for now. But once I get this staff fixed, I want to train Augmentation as much as possible. It's rank seven now, but I need it to be stronger."

"That's something I can agree with," Paige chuckled. Aaron grimaced as a shiver tickled his spine. It felt like an icy cold slug crawling up his back. One thing he'd noticed at the journeyman rank is he no longer became itchy when he'd coalesced enough mana to allocate a new talent. Instead, it felt like awful icy-cold crawling sensations around his body. Possibly because his potential mana was much higher, so each incremental increase wasn't such a big strain on his body.

Although he much preferred the itchiness to this feeling. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"New talent?" Paige asked. Aaron nodded.

"Yep, how'd you know?"

"It's the stupid face you pull like you've just eaten a lemon," she laughed.

"Hilarious, I'd like to see you react better," Aaron drawled. Paige groaned as she pulled herself up to her feet. She stretched both arms up, and her back and shoulders popped. She rotated her torso a few times and rolled her shoulders.

"Right, I promised Tim and Alex I'd train with them for an hour before we move on. Show me your new talent next time. And don't expect to beat me with a gimmick again."

"It wasn't a gimmick, it was skill." But she was already walking away, flinging a rude gesture backwards. Aaron smiled and shook his head, then got up and took his tome out of his bag. He sat back on the grass and enjoyed the cool air for a moment. They'd been travelling for a couple of weeks, effectively cross-country. They followed back trails and farm tracks, avoiding major routes. He'd been training each evening, as much as his strength would allow him. He felt exhausted, but today was no exception.

The field they stopped in was nicer than most. It was far enough away from civilisation that Giddeon deemed it safe enough to be out in the open, rather than tucked away in a dank forest. The meadow was teeming with life. Wild flowers of various colours and sizes bloomed everywhere, and with them the sweet scent of nature he'd grown to enjoy. Aaron opened the tome and flicked through to look for ways to spend his mana.

Before he could start reading, a new block of text floated above the talents, covering up the information underneath. The words shimmered and flowed around the page, blurring everything behind them. Notification: Journeyman Level Talents Allocating mana into ranks lower than the mage's current level (for example, if a journeyman takes a novice level talent) will grant an additional enhanced effect. The user will get a choice between three empowerments in addition to the allocated level. Well, that confuses things.

If I didn't have enough to consider already, now there's the option of powering up weaker talents to get an additional random effect. As quickly as he read the notification, it shimmered and fizzled out of existence. The writing below came into focus, showing the new line of Journeyman-level talents. He had a lot of work to do to rank up to Adept. Where his novice level was scored out of 5, Journeyman was out of 8. So he'd need much more mana and training to get there this time.

With the exponential increase in power needed to improve, it made him think about the gap between him and a master, or even a grand master. He looked at the Novice-level talents and skimmed across all schools of magic. Nothing had changed. How does this work? I don't see these three additional empowerments. I guess they only appear once I've invested the mana. That's annoying. How am I supposed to make a good decision when I can't even see what Improvement I'll get?

He moved on to the Tier 3 Journeyman level talents. There were quite a few, so he started with the titles. Somatomancy: Mastery of Undead: Improves the mage's ability to control undead, increasing range, power and reducing mana costs. It also increases the maximum rank of Dominion Over Undead. Osteokinesis Empowerment: Empowers the Osteokinesis ability, making it cost less mana, improving its speed, and increasing the level cap of Osteokinesis and Bone Mastery by five ranks.

Teratogenesis: Lich's Strength: Improves the mage's ability to empower themselves. Physical enhancements can be performed without the need to heal an injury. It is very mana intensive and requires long periods of meditation and channelling to perform. Undead Crafter: Improves the mage's ability to amalgamate objects onto undead creatures, creating new and more powerful entities. Crafted creatures have increased allegiance to the Necromancer and are easier to control.

Scourge mana: Corrupt a source of mana, making it impossible for them to cast spells for a short time. Duration depends on the skill of the caster compared to that of the victim. At rank 1, it also prevents the user from casting spells whilst it is active. Combine with other magic to infuse its properties into creatures and items. Consumption: Corpse Detection: Detects corpses in the vicinity of the mage, including notifying them of the amount of mana remnants in them.

Soul Siphoning: Improves the mage's ability to drain mana remnants from living creatures, including breaking through targets' resistances and increasing its speed, intensity and range. Curses: Curse Resistance: Increases resistances to curses. Curse of Weakened Flesh: Weaken a creature's flesh, reducing their strength, speed, resistance to illness and their vitality. Curse of Brittle Bones: Weaken the bones of a creature, causing pain and increasing the chance of them breaking. Aaron scratched his head.

His original plan was to specialise and become highly proficient in a couple of schools of magic. Now that Tim's curse was gone, he wasn't so bothered about training his own cursing abilities. At least, not as much as he wanted to become stronger and control undead and corrupted creatures. With Selezar on the loose, not only did he need to control the monsters, but also defend himself from whatever he sent at him.

If he managed to gain influence in the city, he could send Harrold's thugs, or even the city guard, after him. I'm settled on taking a talent to improve my control of undead or increase my strength. So that narrows it down to Mastery of Undead and Lich's Strength. Osteokinesis mastery could also be useful. It's great for raising the dead and crafting weapons. Although so could Undead Crafter. But I'm not sure I'm ready to create my own messed-up undead creatures.

They definitely wouldn't like that in Giddeon's Necromancer hunter camp. My best bet is to start working on talents which synergise with the staff as that's probably going to be the fastest way to gain strength. The Staff of Accelerated Manipulation was registered by his tome as an artefact weapon, which he'd never heard of before. But by the rank it was assigned, Aaron guessed he could level it up like his abilities.

This particular weapon was described as giving a multiplicative increase in power and rate of improvement, suggesting that it could have an exponential effect. That's what Aaron intended to find out anyway. Reassured with his reasoning, Aaron settled with Lich's strength. He'd already proven that increasing his body's strength and toughness was invaluable in a fight, and it would work nicely with his staff—once it was fixed, of course.

And with that passing thought, the tome responded and a grey box underneath the talent filled in. Inky grey slowly flooded in and saturated the square. He took in a deep breath as the slithering in his spine slowly eased and then vanished. This was the only tell that the mana had been spent. There was no sudden increase in power or icy cold mana flowing through him. If he hadn't seen the box fill in, he'd have been none the wiser.

They were a few days away from the camp now, and meditating was a perfect way to pass the time in the cart productively. And when he'd amassed enough potential mana, he wanted to see how the enhanced novice talents worked. But he suspected it might take a little while without any monsters or enemies to challenge his powers. But he had a more pressing issue to deal with. He needed to hide his Necromancy and conceal the staff. And apparently there were some rules to follow at the camp to fit in.

But Aaron had his own ideas. He knew exactly the best place for him in the camp to train his skill and go unnoticed.