Ch 7 Protecting Woburn (Patreon)

Pinned until the next DM chapter is out. Below this is the first four chapters of Sage of Humanity edited and reworked.

Edited by Aldous

New Sage of Humanity chapter

Chapter Seven

Protecting Woburn

He led her silently out of her building. The guards seemed very surprised to see Woburn, but Lily ignored their reaction. She had too many things to do before the spell could be cast. The place he was thinking of was on to a street that had a huge mansion on one side. There was nothing on the side of the street Woburn was showing her except a wide-open field of grass. She told him it was perfect and couldn’t see why the colonel would get upset. He agreed to start building the structure she wanted. It wasn’t going to be very big. It would be about a two-hundred-foot-square building. That was basically the size of her bedroom.

He got started on building it as she left to buy cores from the store. She needed a core for every one hundred feet, which meant she needed three hundred and thirteen cores. While that would be as expensive as the generator, it was still only the second-most expensive thing she bought for her spell. She had to buy a backpack to put all the cores in. Once she had them all, she went to the gate and exited the fort. She got some odd looks as she left, but no one stopped her. Then, starting by the gate, she buried a core containing a simple signal spell. It was a new spell, so she was only slightly surprised when she heard her double ask the normal questions she’d been asking since Lily had first started creating spells.

You have created a new spell. Name your spell.

Do you want to name your new spell ‘Anchor Signal’?

Do you wish to share this spell with the rest of humanity?

She named her spell anchor signal, because that was what she built it for. She also did what she always did and shared her new spell. It was a very basic spell with only six spell balls, so casting it went pretty fast. She still used her grimoire to make sure she got it right, but she didn’t have any problems with it.

Then she moved on, counting her steps. Ten minutes in, a heavily-armored truck started following her. They didn’t stop her from burying the cores, nor did they dig them up, so she just ignored them. It took her all day to place the cores in the ground and the truck followed her the entire time, but she got it done.

It was getting dark by the time she got to where Woburn was building the place she was going to store her generator. To her amazement, he was already done when she got there. It was a red brick building that had a green, metal door. The roof was also brick and slanted slightly to a peak, which Lily assumed was for the snow to slide off in the winter.

“I took the liberty of moving your generator out of storage and into the basement. I hope you don’t mind.” Woburn said, looking extremely eager.

“No, that’s cool.” Lily said, as she walked into the building.

Inside, the building was empty except for a trapdoor that led to some cement stairs. She quickly walked towards the open trapdoor and, holding on to the far edge, she walked down them. To her amazement, Woburn had dug the basement really deep; like, four floors deep. It wouldn’t matter to the spell, but she hadn’t been expecting it to be so deep. He had also lit the stairs with mana bulbs to show the way.

At the bottom, she found her generator sitting, ready to be turned on. It was six by six feet of machinery, and about four feet tall. On the top of the generator, it had five receiving rings. The receiving rings were where a person attached, wired, or anchored whatever they needed the generator to power. Lily flipped up a bunch of tiny mirrors that encircled a metal bowl that had wires sticking out of it. She pushed the wires into the hole once she was done, setting up the two by three inch mirrors. She faced them towards the center of the bowl. Then she pulled out her grimoire and opened the page to where her new defensive spell was.

“You’re not going to start now?” Woburn asked, standing by the stairs.

“Might as well. I’ve got a lot of work to do.” Lily replied, not looking at him. She started the generator - all it took was flipping a big, yellow handle. Once it was on, there was no way to turn it off. She could close the spigot, but the generator would always be on, from now on.

“It’s late. You need to eat then go to bed.” Woburn replied over the quiet hum of the generator, sounding a little worried.

“It’s fine. I’ll get started here, then I’ll take a nap before I finish.” Lily said, placing her grimoire on the generator so she could reference it when she needed to.

“What about eating? You haven't eaten anything since noon.” Woburn replied.

“I’ve got a sandwich in my backpack. I’ll eat it before I go to sleep.” Lily answered absently, as she started to slip into her soul and pull a root from her mana well.

She did take a nap late in the night, and even ate most of her sandwich. She didn’t leave the basement though. She ate her sandwich leaning up against the wall of the basement while looking through her grimoire. She used her backpack as a pillow once she was done eating. She had found she had trouble sleeping on the bed back in her apartment, but she didn’t find the hard floor of the basement all that uncomfortable to sleep on that night.

She woke up a few hours later, according to her phone. Then she got right back to work. It was just after twelve in the afternoon when she finished writing out her spell on the little mirrors with mana. Once the spell ball condensed it anchored itself on a mirror, where the generator trickled some mana to keep it active, letting Lily move on without too much trouble. She had to use all of the mirrors on the generator to get her spell done, but knew once she set it off it would only take up one receiving circle.

“Ready?” Lily asked, holding the last spell ball with her own mana.

“You sure this is going to work?” Woburn asked, really sounding worried now.

“Yup.” Lily lied. Then she released the last spell ball, which fell into the mirror. Then the spell went off. All five receiving circles flashed white as the spell balls collapsed into the center receiving circle. Then the huge spell ball fell into the generator, pulling the mirrors in the circle closed. Then a whoosh of mana exploded from the generator and her spell formed.

You have created a new spell. Name your spell.

Do you want to name your new spell ‘Woburn’s Magic City Force Field’?

Do you wish to share this spell with the rest of humanity?

“It worked!” The ghostly boy yelled happily. “I can feel it all around me. Oh my. The System says it’s a top-tier, B-rated force field!”

Lily on the other hand wasn’t that happy. Looking at her new spell through her soul, she noted a few things that weren't up to what she expected to happen. For one thing, even on the lowest setting, the spell was leaking far too much mana from the generator. That, she knew, needed to be fixed. She also spotted several places that were much too weak for her tastes.

She wanted to take the spell down and correct the problems, but once the spell went off it was really hard to remove it. She really didn’t want to take the spell off the generator if she could help it. The problem was it was impossible to change a spell while it was working. At least when it was anchored on a generator it was impossible to change.

“Can I create a new spell to correct the first one?” She asked herself, staring at the generator.

“On my.” The ghostly boy said even more excitedly. “There is enough mana leaking from the generator that we can set up a mana farm. We can hang them on the walls. It won’t be as strong as cores, but we can make a lot of money off them in the long run.”

“Mhm.” Lily replied, still looking at the generator, lost in thought.

“I’m going to set that up.” Woburn told her. “We can split the profits fifty-fifty. I’ll take care of everything.”

“Mhm.” Lily replied, not paying attention.

A few minutes later, while Lily was writing her thoughts on how to improve the spell, she heard a bunch of voices yelling from the top of the stairs. She looked up to see a crowd of military people rush down the stairs with their rifles zeroed on her. The first two people stopped by the stairs with their guns aimed right at her, while the others circled around the generator. Not knowing what else to do, she raised her arms in the air.

“What the hell is going on down here?” She heard the voice of the colonel scream, in a very angry tone.

When he reached the basement, Woburn, who she thought had abandoned her, popped into existence in front of the colonel. They started talking, but they were being too quiet for her to overhear. She turned away to look at the people in front of her she spotted Church standing off the side, crouched over with her gun aimed at her. She gave the woman a slight wave, but the paladin ignored her, which Lily admitted was fair.

“Who authorized you to do that!” The colonel yelled, as he stepped around Woburn and started walking towards her.

“I did.” Woburn replied angrily.

“Woburn, we don’t have the budget for this.” He yelled a bit quieter.

“This isn’t coming out of our budget.” Woburn replied, sounding annoyed. “She paid for everything. The only thing I used was building materials, and I’m paying for that out of my savings.”

Lily slowly lowered her hands as they argued. No one told her to keep them up, so she dropped them all the way to her sides. She waited for the argument to end as she thought about how unsatisfied she was with her new spell. She knew she had to do something about it. She couldn’t leave it like that.

“I can do better.” She muttered out loud as she thought it. “I just need some time.”

“Lily, it’s a top-tier, B-rated shield.” She heard Woburn say. “It will stop soldier demons.”

She didn’t look up as she suddenly got a really good idea on how to fix her work. “I can get it working better.” She told him as she grabbed her grimoire off the generator. She started writing, not wanting to forget her ideas. Not really paying attention, she started walking up the stairs. It wasn’t until she was halfway back to her apartment that she realized that she probably shouldn’t have left. She looked back, but didn’t see anyone following her. Shrugging her shoulders, she walked back to her apartment.

Time flew by as she came up with ideas, only to toss them out when she realized they weren’t good enough. She made several trips to the outer walls to check on the force field. On the first trip she made out there she found that her spell had vaporized all the cores she had buried in the ground. It was not supposed to happen, but worked in her favor as it made the force field harder to take down. She made a note and moved on. She kept on making trips to the wall to experiment until it started to snow. She made one last trip to see how the snow affected the force field, which was not at all - but it did give her a huge idea when she saw the snow fall through the force field.

Time flew by as she lost herself in her work. She barely noticed the other snow storms. She stopped going out for food when the store owner offered to have someone deliver her order once a week. She heartily agreed.

She kept on working until, one day, things fell into place, and smiled as she let the spell fall apart before it could be released. It worked. She quickly wrote her observations down then let her grimoire fade away. The method she had worked out was something very different from anything she had tried before. She couldn’t help but smile.

“Woburn!’ She called out.

“I’m not someone who can be called upon like a servant.” She heard him say a second later.

“I’m done.” She told him.

“Lily, you don’t have to do this.” He said, walking up to her table. “This force field you created out there, it’s amazing. I have other cities calling me, and wanting me to thank you for the spell. Do you know who awesome that is?”

“Whatever.” Lily said, dismissively. “I can make the spell so much more powerful. Meet me by the generator. You’ll love what I came up with.”

“Ok, but, after this, please promise me you’ll take a vacation.” He replied.

“Sure.” She said, running to her shower, removing her clothes as she did. After a quick shower, she used repair on her clothes before running out to the elevator.

“Sage Wilson.” A guard yelled out as she started running out of the building. She stopped and looked over at the desk. She felt her cheeks go red when she noticed the short lady she had insulted a while ago.

“Yes?” She asked.

“Ma’am, the building association wants me to ask that you check your messages. You have some paperwork that needs to be turned in.” The lady guard explained.

“Oh, sorry. Can you tell them that I’ll get it done tonight, if all goes well” Lily replied, vaguely remembering that Woburn had said she needed to sign some paperwork back when she bought her apartment. In fact, it was the reason why she had bought her phone, even though she used it for its apps now. She had never checked her messages. She had forgotten she even had the option.

“Another experiment?” The lady guard asked, looking and sounding amused.

“Nope, I’m gonna upgrade the force field.” She told the guard.

“You can do that?” The male guard asked, surprised.

“Keep your fingers crossed.” Lily replied as she turned and ran out the door.

She ran into the colonel, who was waiting at the bottom of the stairs talking to Woburn. “Can you say for sure this will work?” The colonel asked, turning towards her.

“Nope.” Lily replied as she stepped past him when he went to stand in front of her.

“Will it affect the force field we already have?” The colonel asked, sounding worried.

“Yup.” Lily said, as she started casting her grimoire spell. She had to stop as the colonel grabbed her arm.

“Colonel, this is the property of a private citizen. That makes it mine and Woburn’s. The generator is mine and so is the spell. That makes the force field the property of said citizen, which is me.” Lily said, pulling her arm away from the colonel. “I can do whatever I want with it.”

This time, the colonel didn’t stop her from casting her grimoire spell. She quickly finished the spell and put her grimoire on the generator before flipping the pages to the correct place. When she finished, she looked up, getting ready to cast her spell until she spotted a bunch of things hanging on the wall. They were black mechanical devices that were about two feet tall and about six inches wide. They had a glass front to them, through which Lily could see a cloudy, white stalagmite growing up from the bottom of the device. She counted fifteen of the devices placed in three rows on the wall. They were spaced evenly across the entire room.

“Mana crystals.” Lily reasoned as she took them in. “Woburn said he could create a mana farm. I guess he did.”

Shaking her head, she got back to work. The spell wasn’t really one spell, it was four that she was hopeful would collapse into the spell she had already cast to create an entirely new spell. The four spells she was about to cast should correct what she saw as problems with the first spell, while adding a lot of things that she had thought of after she had cast the spell. She had experimented and practiced the spells, but she was worried that she would mess up. Mainly because of how many spells she needed to keep active at the same time. She quickly adjusted the receiving circles on the generator and got to work.

She cast the first spell and felt it wanting to collapse immediately. She sent a flood of mana into it to keep it active as she moved it to anchor on her chest. Once it was anchored, she cast the second spell. Like the first one, it tried to collapse, but she flooded the spell with mana to keep it active. She started to get really tired as she felt her mana flow out of her like a river. She knew she didn’t have a lot of time, so she quickly cast the next spell. Like the others before it, the spell wasn’t a complete spell that could last on its own. She added the spell to the outpouring of her mana and struggled to keep standing up as it drained her of mana. Finally, she cast the last spell, gasping as what felt like nearly all of her mana poured out of her while she struggled to keep all four spells active.

The next part was really hard, but at least she didn’t need to cast any more spells - she didn’t think she could, if she wanted to. She bumped into the generator as she got ready to offload the spells. She had to do it as fast as she could. She knew it would be best if she could drop each spell into the receiver at the same time, but she couldn’t do that, so she would have to rush and do it as fast as she could.

She started pushing the spells away from her chest and back towards her hands. This was the most difficult part of the process. Once the spells from her chest reached her elbow, she had to pull them back when they tried to collapse into the spells that were hovering above her hands - which were trying to fall back into her hands to reach the other spells as well. Struggling to keep the four spells apart, she dropped her hands and let them go towards the receiving circles. The two spells on her hands fell onto the mirrors and started to paint themselves. As they did, Lily quickly pushed out the other two spells into the last two receiving circles.

The first two spells she had dropped into the circles completed a little bit before the second two. Lily took a step back as the two huge spell balls collapsed into her old spell in the middle. The spell wobbled a bit, but remained stable until the second set of spells formed into their spell ball and collapsed into the middle spell ball, creating one huge ball. Lily watched the spell stabilize, letting the air out of her lungs as the five spells collapsed into each other, creating a huge spell ball with what looked like a spell chain inside it. Lily pulled out her phone and took a picture of the spell ball, not sure if it would come out or not. Then the spell went off.

A wave of light blue light exploded and she felt the mana flow across her soul. One second she was standing in the basement next to the generator and the next she was falling from high in the sky towards a grass plain. She only fell for about a second, and before she had time to feel the fear of falling, she hit the grass on the ground. The ground wasn’t hard and she felt no pain as the grass rolled over her, burying her in the ground, but she didn’t stop falling even though she was completely buried by dirt. She knew it was real, or at least she thought it was real, as she could taste and feel the dirt as she fell through it.

Then she passed through it and she found herself falling upwards, like she had passed through the planet. She could see the ground behind her fix itself as she fell upwards. The ground got smaller and smaller as she fell upwards, then she passed through some clouds and the ground was gone. She could feel the wind pull on her clothes as she fell upwards and she watched the layer of clouds get smaller.

Then the world exploded into tiny boxes that shot off in all directions, leaving tiny silver trails behind them for a second or so. Once the tiny boxes disappeared there was only darkness left behind. Even as the world became only darkness, she still felt like she was falling, but there wasn’t any wind anymore, just the feeling of falling. She had a sudden flash of fear that she was about to get trapped in the never-ending worlds of storms that had tried to crush her and the dark nothingness that had tried to pull her apart, one tiny atom at a time. Then she hit something.

That something gave, and after a few seconds she fell through it. As she fell backwards through it she saw it was a ball of light that looked horribly familiar. Horrified, she looked behind her to where she was falling and her worst fears came to be as she saw her hellhole in all of its glory while she fell towards her complex.

“No!” She screamed, horrified that she would be trapped once more, but she felt something shift just before she hit the ground and…

...She opened her eyes to see Woburn and the colonel hovering above her. It took her a second to realize she wasn’t falling anymore and that she could feel the ground safely under her. She took in the sound of the almost silent hum of the generator and the overwhelming feel of ozone all around her. But she felt something else. She felt her hellhole hovering somewhere close by, but not, at the same time. It felt like it was close enough that she could reach out and touch it, but, at the same time, it felt billions or trillions of miles away.

Then she heard her double whisper to her.

You have created a new ritual. Name your ritual.

Ritual? She had created a ritual? Was that what her double was calling it? She took a few seconds to think it over and she was ok with calling it a ritual instead of a spell. Casting four spells at the same time was insanely hard. She approved of calling it something different.

Do you want to name your new ritual ‘Woburn’s Advanced Magic City Force Field’?

She smiled at the name. She had named the last force field after Woburn because it felt right, but now she named it after him because it sounded funny.

Do you wish to share this spell with the rest of humanity?

“Yes.”

“You okay?” Woburn asked, bringing her attention back to Earth. Even as she focused on Woburn, who hovered above her, she could still feel her hellhole floating nearby.

“Yeah, just fell through the universe again.” She told him as she sat up, only to nearly fall back down again.

She felt dizziness hit her as soon as she sat up. The dizziness was followed by a wave of exhaustion. She grabbed her knees to keep from falling backwards as she struggled to keep her eyes open. She took a few deep breaths, fighting off the dizziness. The dizziness slowly faded, but the exhaustion stayed with her. In fact, she felt like her body ached with how tired she was.

“You did it.” Woburn said beside her. “The system classified the force field as S class.”

“That’s cool.” Lily said, fighting to stay awake. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a mushroom that she had kept for an emergency. She popped it into her mouth and the dizziness faded away, along with some of the exhaustion. She was still tired, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been.

“I can feel it, like a fog that is floating through the city. I can… There are three demons inside the city. No, one demon and two who are influenced by demonic magic.” Woburn suddenly said, looking off into the distance.

“What!” The colonel yelled from behind Lily. She flinched, instinctively moving away from him because she had forgotten he was there.

“The demon is dead. I killed it. Working on the two influenced… and they’re free. I sent them to the infirmary. They’ll need help and support.” Woburn said, still looking off into the distance.

“What do you mean…?” The colonel started to say, but Woburn interrupted him.

“There was a demon hiding in the city. I used the new force field to kill it.” Woburn said,turning his gaze towards the colonel for a second before moving it towards her. “This is amazing. It’s not really a force field anymore. It's more like a cloud that is filling me. I can see everything from about ten feet from the walls to… well everywhere inside me, from about a mile up to a mile below the ground. I have complete control over the… spell’s defenses. I can see who is human and who is not, and I can use it to kill those who are not. Plus I can use it to remove… so much. Did you know there are fourteen people who are cursed? I can cure them. And they’re cured. Oh, they were demonic curses. I guess I can only see demonic magic. This is nice.” Woburn said, rambling.

“Woburn, are you ok?” The colonel asked, sounding worried.

“Oh, yeah.” Woburn said excitedly. “I’m just learning what this... oh, it was a ritual. Ha! The System recommends five people to cast it. Wow, you are really awesome, Lily.”

“Thank you.” Lily said, standing up. She felt a little embarrassed at how the System classified the new force field. She thought it was just a different name because of how hard the force field was to cast. She never thought there would be more to the naming than a simple classification difference. Then she smiled in her head when she realized just how cool it was to cast a spell meant for five different spell casters.

She examined the ritual that was being powered by the generator. It felt very stable, but it was eating a lot of mana. She walked over to the gauge that showed how open the spigot was. She tapped it, thinking it was wrong because it was only showing that it was open to twenty-four percent. The needle didn’t move.

The spigot was open much wider than she had set it, but the generator was built so that it would automatically open the spigot more if there was more pull on the mana. Still, she felt like the ritual was eating far more mana than it should. She walked around to see the gauge that was labelled ‘hours’. It was counting down the time left for the source inside the generator to decay. It was showing a very slow decay. Standing up, she looked around, confused, until she saw the mana farm. The mana crystals were melting. She had an aha moment and went to the manual control for the spigot. She bumped the dial up a bit, by point four, so the spigot opening was reading twenty-four point four.

“Stop!” Woburn yelled. Worriedly, Lilly let go of the dial and spun around to find Woburn facing her with his arm stretched out.

“You just increased my perimeter by twenty feet.” He told her. “It hurt.”

“Oh, sorry.” Lily said, feeling really bad. “I had to increase your mana flow if you wanted to keep your mana farm.” She told her ghostly friend. “I can back it down again, but once the crystals melt it will automatically open up again.”

“No, it’s fine.” Woburn said, letting his hand drop. “It was just a surprise. Next time, if we need to increase it, we should do it much slower.”

“Ok,” Lily replied. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t think about what would happen if I increased it.”

“It’s okay.” Woburn said with a small smile. “You know what this means though, right?”

Lily nodded her head. “You can increase the size of the fort anytime you want.”

“Yes!” he replied with a huge grin. “I can grow really, really big.”

“Okay, I need to report all of this.” The colonel said, from behind them. Lily turned around to find the colonel rubbing his forehead. “No more adjustments or spells or anything else until I say so.”

Lily frowned but nodded anyway. She wasn’t about to mess with the ritual or the generator until she could study it a bit more, but, still, she was a bit annoyed at the colonel. This building was hers and Woburn’s. He didn’t have any right to tell her not to mess with her force field. She knew he was in charge of everyone's safety, but the ritual was hers and hers alone. She could shut it all down and return the generator if she wanted to. She wouldn’t - she made it to protect Woburn, and she would never leave him without it. Still, it irked her that the colonel thought he owned it, and that he could tell her what to do with it.

She smiled at Woburn once the colonel had left. They talked about what he was feeling and seeing through the force field, and discussed other ways to use it. The force field currently extended thirty feet from the walls, and it was extremely strong at the edge of the force field, as it was anywhere else in the fort. It was also extremely stable - mostly because she could see Woburn constantly making adjustments. Looking at the ritual here at the generator, she could see when he took control over parts of the spell to do whatever he was doing before letting it go. It was the most complex spell she had ever seen. That made what she named it feel wrong. She thought they should stop calling it a force field since it wasn’t one anymore, but Woburn told her that, since she named it a force field, they were going to have to call it that. She made a mental note to be very careful about naming her spells and rituals from now on.

Finally, after a round of yawns, Woburn recommended that she get some sleep. He told her that he wasn’t going anywhere. She smiled at his stupid joke and walked up the stairs. Outside their building, she looked around. Outwardly, there seemed to be nothing different than before she set her ritual off, but she could feel the difference. It was like there was a heavy blanket pressing down on her. It wasn’t uncomfortable. In fact, it was the opposite. It felt calming, like wearing armor that would protect her against anything and everything. It felt good.

She passed the guards, who were sitting behind the desk in the lobby of her building. They were different guards than before. She nodded in greeting and remembered she needed to sign the papers, but she was just too tired to do that now. Instead, she rode the elevator up to her floor and stumbled into her apartment. She didn’t make it to her bed, but instead crashed on her couch. She was out like a light.