At some point, my life in this magical world became completely looped, repeating events over and over again, but at the same time continuing to feed my inner world.
Food for the mind is new knowledge, but the main thing is that it does not rot. There were already problems with this, in particular, the Ban Ard library - the education system, as my mentor Palladius said, is slightly sucking. Firstly, the library only contained books that were not of great value to magicians. To gain access to useful knowledge, you had to find mentors, patrons or have a lot of money. Because of this, our male educational institution was noticeably inferior to the female one. Aretuza - there, the dissemination and storage of knowledge was treated more "carelessly" - was given to everyone who wanted it.
What in Ban Arda could get you punched in the face and taken away, in Aretuza, according to rumors, was given to young witches on a silver platter with a ripe apple. Besides, even the works of our professors had serious shortcomings. They were written more often than not by men, not writers. A man, of course, would write about everything and explain it anyhow - as he understood it himself. Whatever came to mind, that's what we would write down, therefore, the chip had to digest a ton of disinformation, subjectivity and allegory.
Meanwhile, as its owner, I am happy to celebrate Groundhog Day.
It's morning and the sun is shining. I'm returning to the Academy after my inhuman experiments, accompanied by the professor of necromancy, who is giving a free lecture, but a damn useful one. Then I head towards the dorms and tidy myself up a bit, changing clothes and gathering supplies for a tiring day.
Breakfast is delicious, but sad.
The AI was telling me straight out that many foods were not suitable for my diet. It was strict, aimed at the rapid and proper growth of my small body. Like a blacksmith working with tools before forging, I needed to eat right and use all available resources for proper growth. The lack of vitamins also told me that I should quickly find my own source of food or income to buy vegetables or fruits through a mentor. Money can help solve many problems, but gold does not just lie here. And if it does, then for a maximum of a couple of minutes before the bandits rob the dead.
Breakfast is not eternal, after it there are lectures on safety, world history, politics, arithmetic, religion, control (psychology), names and their meanings (anthroponyms), the basics of plants (botany) and the world laws of nature. Every week we study these subjects.
To magic and its basics, to how to use it and what to do with it, how to cast spells correctly, all this is forbidden for first-year students. And the lessons are held as befits a medieval society.
The lesson begins - the professor is not there - there is time to sleep.
On rare occasions, teachers come to note attendance or tell a few excerpts from their drinking session yesterday. What is the lecture on control worth, in fact, just psychology. Professor Kor told how he had outsmarted the innkeeper for a couple of Novigrad crowns yesterday, using his speech skills (oratory skills). After that, he opened a bottle of strong vodka, the smell of which could be felt for tens of meters, and staggered out of the classroom.
When the lessons were over, I managed to fully restore my mental, psychic and physical condition with the help of the chip. An hour-long workout and a hearty lunch helped with this like no other. Cheerful and full of energy, I went first to the library to translate books into electronic format - in my head, and then to Pallady - a professor of necromancy, finishing lectures for senior courses.
I was interested in what he was spending the money he had paid for my education at this place on. But I didn't ask him personally, "Alice" did a great job of deciphering it.
It's not about the rector's frivolous approach to teaching his students, but about the complexity of the profession of a typical sorcerer. We are obliged to know basic safety precautions when working with power, in particular, how not to die with a hundred percent probability, reducing this risk to a minimum. So far, they simply explain to us that it is dangerous to cast spells, and then they tell us about a hundred different types of consequences of improperly used spells.
What happens if you make a mistake with a typical fantasy fireball? A student full of power and gifted will stretch out his hands and command the force to release a fireball from his hands. The force is not stupid, it will ask the caster's brain the following things: is there an understanding of the structure of magic, have all the equations been calculated according to all the formulas, have the runic words been pronounced, is the emotional state of the young sorcerer stable and how much energy is in the environment and inside the magician to perform the spell.
What if you don't calculate the formula? Then the ball might miraculously appear, but without a trajectory it will explode right in the magician's hand. And the sorcerer is an ordinary person. A vivid example: what if a soldier detonates a grenade in his hand? Oh, bitch, it will happen.
As for the rest, control is necessary. It is difficult to cast spells with a clouded mind.
Meanings of names - for casting curses, protection from demons, studying the works of ancient sorcerers, where they put hidden messages in names.
Politics - the best of us will become advisors to kings, court wizards with great power and influence; it is important for us to know all the laws, their interpretations and workarounds, including external (the world of ordinary people) and internal (the magical world).
Arithmetic - for calculations when weaving spells, setting the direction vector and level of destruction. And also, so that "if you exhaust the reserve, miscalculate your strength or something else, try to light a candle in a half-dead state - then you will remove the "half" from your life; I, as an authoritative professor, tell you this, stupid degenerates."
Religion is closely intertwined with the real world. Witches - not sorceresses, but witches, really do receive power from the deities; their magic has a unique and dangerous shade. Gods can work with witches, less often without intermediaries, even an ordinary peasant can see the influence of the goddess Melitele on their lands. And finally: we, sorcerers, by duty will have to work with preachers - priests of these gods. Quoting the teacher, we can say: "all priests are bastards, you see them, strain your brains and think about your words."
World Laws of Nature - tells about natural places of birth of monsters and curses, as well as about places of power and much more.
The most interesting thing is probably botany. We can create potions, but most of them are toxic to normal people, so it is necessary to know what, in case of unforeseen circumstances, can become fatal for both you and your client. Mutants, special people, are able to pay handsomely for deadly toxic potions of the highest quality for specific events. In the future, we will study alchemy, and the knowledge of botany will help us get rich or die - as luck would have it.
However, we do not teach magic, its weaves and so on. Even my mentor simply demonstrates the charms of necromancy, explains all the intricacies of his discipline and constantly provides food for thought. However, he never trains directly. His decision is understandable, because in a whole month I have learned one thing: being a user of the dark arts is damn dangerous. It is necessary to persistently prepare the student before letting him into the very hell.
Palladius is well aware that Rector Hen Gedymdeith, aka Gerhart of Aelle, will soon depart for the next world. He is already over four hundred years old, and due to his active necromantic practice, he has developed health problems. If his student, Palladius, also dies, then hundreds of years of research, painstaking work and a bunch of corpses sacrificed to magical science will go with him. Centuries of work will sink into oblivion. To prevent this, it is necessary to preserve the knowledge in some reasonable form - in a new student - a living student.
I am quite an interesting candidate. I have a large magical reserve, which gives hope for the safety of my personality and my brain, in which knowledge is stored; sorcerers with a large reserve are harder to kill. According to the mentor: my reading and writing skills were probably received from the village priest or headman, of course, with their blessing. In addition, I do not divulge secrets, I respect our craft and the mentor. I am ready to carry out any order of Palladius, even if it contradicts morality, such as, for example, assistance in working with corpses. Good help, after which there is no childish hysteria, and the workshop remains clean. Unprepared people, as a rule, tear further than they see, when working with corpses.
The last thing that distinguishes me from all the other candidates is the most important. The child's psyche is the most amazing tool. It is best to teach the dark arts of sorcery to those who have not yet developed morals, and a formed personality to boot. I am a homeless boy who has almost completely lost his memories of peaceful days in the village. Therefore, almost anything can be implanted into the head of such a candidate. The sooner, the better. Then the boy will take the information for granted. This is logical from my and his point of view.
And, in fact, this is how I spend my evening and night time.
Within a hundred kilometers radius we find cemeteries and dig up fresh corpses there. I dig up the corpse and tie it up. The mute driver takes everyone to the shelter, then returns to the cemetery and covers up the tracks. Most often, he adjusts the situation to the actions of marauders or corpse eaters, or, at worst, makes the place look like an ordinary cemetery. The latter is less preferable, since it is impossible to completely eliminate the tracks, and some peasant will definitely suspect something, looking at the dug up grave. But this is no longer our concern. The mute is paid money to think about how to cover up the tracks of necromancers. We do our research.
The mentor pours some solution on a rag, saying that it will protect us from harmful and invisible creatures of nature - bacteria, mostly. We wrap these rags around our respiratory tract and get to work. Mutants are actually allowed to use these mixtures. But not us, we are ordinary people in the flesh.
We use gloves soaked in the "mask" potion and protective clothing to prevent infection from entering the academy. The plague may be suppressed, but the culprits and carriers of the disease will be punished. The culprits will be found quickly. Not many have the privileges to leave the academy without any problems. The mentor has such privileges, as do several researchers. According to the official version of the academy, he and his "errand boy" are busy studying the dead soil.
It seems that the spell of the adept Ban Ard completely removed the ammonia from the soil. Completely ruined the fields, and without information from the future, no one will be able to understand "how it happened."
I know this, but I have wisely declined to undertake anything like introducing a system of artificial ammonia removal. The only exception is the threat of extinction of our race from starvation. Not a village, not a county, but the whole world.
There are reasons for this. The savior of humanity, Haber, conducted experiments on the synthesis of ammonia to save people from hunger and barren lands. Successfully, humanity did not die of hunger. But at the same time, the German scientist was known as the creator of biochemical weapons. One flowed from the other, in my opinion. Experience is like that, learn to build a bathhouse, you will build a house.
First of all, I am for the natural course of things; humanity must develop independently. Helping or putting spokes in the wheels is risky or pointless. The meaning can still be argued, but if you introduce variables from my technological world, the consequences will be catastrophic. The moral of the Middle Ages is that people here are evil and without brakes; give them nuclear bombs, they will destroy the earth. Give them food for thought in the direction of creating good technologies, people of this time will distort everything and figure out how to use it to achieve power and defeat enemies.
There are only two types of enemies: internal and external. Everything is clear with external ones, they were, are and will be. The main thing is that you need to learn to work with them - to pit them against each other, to get an unbiased assessment of your actions from them. In extreme cases, make them allies to achieve common interests. Friends are too unreliable variables for this. Enemies, on the contrary, will subconsciously try to do everything better than you, to prove their superiority. Even if it concerns your achievements, they will give it their all and show with superiority how it should have been done. Not realizing that they are just puppets of your plans. Enemies are needed to use them, generally speaking. This is the opinion of a modern person, but not a medieval citizen. The latter have only one thought: "the enemy must be destroyed, no enemy - no problem." And no one even thinks about internal enemies.
I have an inner enemy to constantly fight - my own mind. It is the starting point of all my possibilities, the quintessence of everything that is meant by the word "I". If I am overwhelmed by emotions, then disaster. I need to look soberly into the future, to give a fair assessment of my plans, to generate a picture of the world with my mind, so that I can clearly foresee the impact of my actions. By dwelling on the past, ignoring the present, I will only close the door to the future. Therefore, instead of trying to change this morally obsolete world, where people's hearts are rotten from the point of view of a man of the Jupiter era, it is necessary to focus not on technology, but on magic - on myself and my newfound abilities.
Magic is present in many gifted people, sorcerers and mystical creatures. This area is little known to me, and its capabilities and shortcomings are shrouded in mystery. But this is a very promising area. No one will be able to copy my stock of experience or distort it, unlike technology. Each of my decisions and actions will be determined by exclusivity. Then I can freely act within the framework of my interests, while a radical restructuring of the world is not part of my plans. Strengthening magic and its influence on the world? Perhaps. This is a new path and a milestone.
There are many examples from science fiction when advanced technologies were introduced in the Middle Ages. Then there was a technological boom, humanity began to die less and reproduce en masse, build factories and plants... destroy the planet.
But what if it is magic? What if magic becomes the main prerogative for humanity, instead of technology, which usually leads to disaster? My homeland, where the chip was invented, was not a paradise utopia. It had many problems, and solving one of them with the help of technology, one problem inevitably gave rise to two new ones. If I take something from this, then only for myself and under my personal supervision. I just need a good microscope to study the blood that my mentor Palladius manipulated.
"What are you thinking about, my little friend?" Palladius asked, lying relaxed on the couch and reading the worn pages of notes. I only glanced at him briefly before returning to my work.
Artificial intelligence projected instructions on the correct method of dissecting a human being before my eyes. Necropsy - from the Latin "corpse." Section - from the Latin "cutting." Corpse and cutting.
Easy to understand, but difficult to execute. Fortunately, this young fellow was a good specimen, with no visible signs of cadaver worms or prolonged rotting. He was thin, weak, and short. It was an easy task for me, but not easy for a child my age. Sometimes I had to make small mistakes, which were, in fact, natural. The deadly smell in the closed room and physical fatigue made themselves felt. There was no need to even pretend.
First, I had to carefully prepare the work area. Half an hour earlier, I had laid the corpse on a wooden slab that had absorbed the rot of a dozen people. Then I had to clean the corpse a little, undress it, and only then start cutting the skin. With a sharp knife, I made a long cut down the middle of the body, starting from the neck and ending at the pelvic area. It was hard, but relatively easy compared to how difficult it was to slowly split soft tissue and muscles with improvised tools to gain access to the internal organs. I respect the dead, so even when making deliberate mistakes, I tried not to turn the corpse into a bloody mess. This required physical strength, attention, and a lot of experience, from which the technique develops.
The next step was the most important one - a thorough examination of the organs inside the body, such as the heart, lungs, liver and stomach. For a novice necromancer, it is useful to look for various signs of disease, tumors, hemorrhages and other anomalies. The light was dim at best due to the many lamps, and I had to constantly squint and draw in what I could see with Alice.
I am not a slave to technology, but technology is my servant.
Therefore, it is necessary to rely largely on your personal judgments, sometimes checking them for truth with the help of artificial intelligence. When the conclusions are more or less finished, then the most difficult thing for individual researchers begins - memorizing the information. Before writing it down, it is necessary to take samples - "it is not good to waste and it is not necessary to wash your hands again".
By the way, dismantling corpses is a necessity. Any component of the human body is useful in various disciplines of magic, such as using blood for curses or using tissue and organ samples to create monsters. Many sorcerers spend years to understand their enemy and how to fight him. And how to understand and fight? There is one hypothesis. Study the monsters, create a similar monster - which requires different components - including different parts of the human body, make changes to it with new weaknesses, and eventually release the beast. It is an interesting concept. Some monsters can reproduce by mating, and nothing prevents the sorcerer from releasing a "typhoid" female. She will give birth to new children with a new weakness, such as strong sensitivity to poisons or cattle diseases. And individuals of the infected monster, when they grow up, will go to other places and will continue to create a time bomb. Thus, even a village man with a pitchfork will be able to knock down such monsters in two or three hundred years. A long, but somewhat effective method of fighting monsters.
- Tsy... - the mentor tsked after a minute of my silence. - What a wrong youth we have. In our time, they were kinder to their teachers, responded to their questions, and were not consumed by the passion for rummaging around in other people's intestines... Drown me! I completely forgot! Tsyk... I'm a shitty professor if I forgot about such important things.
Palladium rose abruptly from the bed, almost crumpling the pages in his hands due to the emotional shock. He quickly approached the corpse and peered into the organs.
- Kid, listen carefully and remember the prices of various organs. Many sorcerers in the academy and beyond will value a dozen hearts well, but will be very greedy for a hundred stomachs. But those who will tell you to go to hell for a hundred stomachs are ignoramuses and idiots. Any organ has its price, you just need to find a buyer. Remember, one day you will need money. And there are many sly people in the world who are capable of deceiving and ripping you off...
He began his next half-mad lecture.
I immediately remembered the first autopsy of the peasant woman. Then Palladius said that I needed to study the body for diseases, although I did not yet understand why. But the answer was found quite quickly. In order to raise healthy and unhealthy dead people using basic necromancy, it is necessary to use a different approach. Medium necromancy uses a different method, it allows you to literally pull all the dead out of their graves and send them into battle - regardless of the state of their bodies. But with the basic method of resurrection, you have to study the structure and condition of the corpse. Which tissues are intact and which are damaged? How will they react to the impact of the force? Will it happen that control goes away, and the dead try to attack the summoner?
A striking example is a brain tumor. This detail alone can add a fly in the ointment; and unintentional errors to the spell calculations. Therefore, few people in the world use basic necromancy, but without a base it is impossible to move on to the intermediate level. Perhaps there are other ways to develop this discipline, alas, for now I use what they give me and do not complain.
In the future, I will have to develop new spells and improve old ones in any case, to get rid of limitations. I hate it when something or someone hinders me without offering anything good in return. Perhaps, creating my own school of necromancy - my own unique direction - sounds very exciting and attractive. For this, I am ready to listen attentively to the mentor.
He won't advise any crap.
— … in Temeria, it's better not to trade in the organs of corpses, or living ones either. Especially in Vizima, they take it seriously there. But if you really have to, I have one extremely unreliable dwarven dick there, who tried to screw me over a couple of times. Now he buys and sells without a dick, but he's still in business. If you want, I can introduce you.
Faith in all good things dies last.
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