[Hollow King] Chapter 10: Tiers of Magic (Patreon)

Lucas stood in the study before the black tablet, having scoured the entire tomb for invaders and something else.

Clothes.

His rotten black robes hadn't revived with him, leaving him as bare as an Elder Lich could be. Hoping his predecessor had prepared for this, he'd searched every chest and room for anything he could wear. Unfortunately, all he found were rusted buttons fastened to moldy rags.

Dusty air shifted through his hollow body, making him feel oddly naked, but he didn't have time to waste.

Anna and Sophie were waiting for him.

"Let's see how much stronger I've become after that short outing," Lucas muttered, placing his palm on the artifact. His markings flared with violet light as he fed the artifact his mana. "Well, I can already tell I've grown by how little of my mana this artifact draws now."

Silver words crawled across the artifact's surface, starting at the top and replacing the old, faded words from last time.

[Name: Lucas]

[Race: Elder Lich]

[Soul Level: 7]

[Inheritance: ██████████]

Besides becoming clearer, nothing in the first four lines changed except his level rising from 2 to 7. The real change came after, as the three skills he'd known were quickly overwritten by a more extensive list.

[Necromancy: Death Touch (IV), Bone Mending (III), Raise Dead (II), Aura of Fear (I)] 

[Runecraft: Runecraft (II), Ward Inscription (I)] 

[Divination: Mana Sense (II)] 

[Abjuration: Lesser Barrier (II)] 

[Spatial Magic: Unseen Hand (III)] 

[Evocation: Candle Light (I)]

[Arcane: Mana Bolt (III)]

"They are separated by schools of magic now," Lucas mused, focusing more on his newest skill, Aura of Fear. The artifact sensed his interest and drew a little mana to explain.

Aura of Fear (I) - Release mana through your body's markings as a shadowy haze that instills [Fear] in everything nearby. The reaction of those caught by Aura of Fear ranges from simple trembling to outright losing the will to fight. The skill costs mana to maintain, and its potency is based on the mana committed. However, the [Fear] debuff fades over time and can be countered by strong wills or mind-cleansing effects.

"Or by something scarier than me, like the Orc leader," Lucas grumbled. He still remembered that the mere act of opening the wagon door had sent all the trembling goblins fleeing for the hills.

His gaze flickered to the other Necromancy skills he'd learned. Death Touch was his highest ranked at IV because he used it so often.

Death Touch (IV) - Channel necrotic energy through direct contact to impair living tissue.

"Well, that's a surprisingly simple description for my favorite spell. But what does the IV mean exactly?"

Instead of the black artifact, the ancient voice in his head provided the answer.

[Skill Rank: A visual indicator of your mastery in a skill compared to its known perfected form. As the rank increases, every aspect of the skill improves, such as mana cost and casting speed. There's also a chance for the skill to gain new properties at higher ranks]

"New properties at higher ranks?" Lucas glanced at the ceiling, as if the voice was coming from there. "Are you able to tell me what the max rank is, at least?"

He expected the voice to ignore him, but it seemed to be in a helpful mood for once.

[Rank X is the highest skill rank. Upon reaching it, you have achieved absolute mastery. Perfected skills can be merged together to form imperfect higher-tier spells]

"Wait, wait, wait—" Lucas glanced down at the black tablet again. "—you're telling me I can combine skills? Like, let's say... Death Touch and Unseen Hand? Could I inflict necrotic damage with a spectral claw?"

[The ability to combine basic skills into higher-tier ones is what makes an Archmage so fearsome]

"I see... and I've only learned so many different skills because of the Inheritance, and I assume they are leveling up faster than usual?"

The voice fell silent, but Lucas suspected he was right. Having skimmed through the grimoires before and tried to learn skills outside his inherited disciplines, he'd gotten a taste of how tough learning magic really was.

Lucas leaned over the black tablet, his bones creaking as he did so.

"Tiers, where did I hear that before?" He drummed his fingers until he remembered. "The spatial grimoire mentioned dimensional portals were in the realm of tenth-tier magic. Does that mean all my current skills are first-tier, and I'd have to combine them all the way to the tenth tier? But then what about the Frost Nova spell in the grimoire? If I learned it, would it start at the first tier?"

The ancient voice broke him out of his musings with an answer.

[The tier of spells a mage can cast is tied to their Soul Level. An Elder Lich at your Soul Level can comfortably cast first-tier skills and manage up to second-tier, though skills beyond a mage's tier are far more mana-intensive and are more likely to be defective or outright fail]

"Skills can be defective or even fail?" Lucas parroted in surprise. If he ever managed to open a dimensional portal, it had to be perfect. "What Soul Level do I need to comfortably cast tenth-tier magic?"

[A mage at Soul Level 100 is considered a tenth-tier mage]

"Then reaching level 100 as quickly as possible is my goal," Lucas concluded, returning his focus to the black tablet. He fed mana and focused on each discipline, hoping to get more detailed descriptions. The silver squirmed across the surface and formed a whole new section in the top left corner for him.

Necromancy: An Elder Lich's specialty. Necromancy involves raising and controlling the undead, mastering death magic, life-force absorption, curses, and necrotic energy manipulation.

Soul Magic: Manipulation, perception, binding, preservation, extraction, and damage of souls. A forbidden art often used alongside Necromancy to create superior and intelligent undead like Liches.

Runecraft: Creating magical formations, wards, barriers, traps, enchantments, ritual circles, and long-lasting spell structures. Can also be used to imbue curses and other effects into objects.

Spatial Magic: Teleportation, storage spaces, spatial barriers, portals, displacement, and manipulating distance. Known as an extremely difficult, mana-intensive discipline popular among Archmages.

Abjuration: Defensive magic that includes magical shields, spell negation, sealing, anti-magic techniques, and protection against other mages.

Transmutation: Manipulating physical matter and magical materials. Useful for modifying bones, repairing your body, alchemy, altering terrain, and eventually constructing specialized undead bodies or monsters.

Divination: Magical perception, scrying, detecting mana and souls, identifying spells, analyzing magical objects, and limited prediction.

Even with the descriptions, Soul Magic was still a little confusing to him, and it didn't help that he lacked a grimoire to explain it.

"Out of all of these, Necromancy has come to me the easiest, and Transmutation looked the most confusing from the grimoires. I should have enough mana now to start looking into Divination skills so I can hopefully avoid running into a strong monster like that orc again."

Lucas skipped the rest of the skills since they were self-explanatory, and his attention shifted to the section outlining the passives, immunities, resistances, and weaknesses that made an Elder Lich what it was. His palm shifted down, revealing the first of them.

[Passives: Phylactery, Undead Physiology, Deathless, Soul Sight, Necrotic Affinity, Undead Dominion, Polyglot]

"I really should have read these before leaving the tomb," Lucas sighed, seeing the first passive listed. The very thing that had saved him, at the cost of his precious memories.

Phylactery: An item of immense importance that holds an essence of your soul. So long as the phylactery remains intact, you are immune to [True Death] and will regenerate at the phylactery should your physical body be destroyed. The cost of creating a new body is whatever your soul deems most important, whether that be wealth, memories, or even the life force of your loved ones. Repeated revives in quick succession can incur soul damage and corrupt you into a Demilich.

Lucas stared at the description and realized it was even worse than he had thought. The cost wasn't fixed to memories—it was whatever he valued most.

"If I lose all my memories, what would it go after next? Can it reach through dimensions and drain Anna or Sophie's life force to fuel my revival?" Lucas shuddered at the thought. "Surely not... right? I mean, the way this is worded, the immortality the phylactery provided sounds more like a curse than a blessing. Because so long as the phylactery remains, I'll be forced to revive over and over, losing everything I love in the process."

Lucas took the golden crown off his head and stared at his reflection. He didn't need the ancient voice in his head to tell him this was his phylactery. It was a good choice for a phylactery, as unlike everything else in this tomb that had rusted or rotted, the golden crown remained pristine.

I can't believe I almost let the goblin steal my phylactery. If it had succeeded, would the crown have ended up on that orc's head? What would have happened if I died and had to revive? Would I have woken up in that wagon at the cost of my memories, only to get smashed to pieces?

Lucas carefully put the crown back on his head. I'll have to create a better hiding place for this thing.

His gaze passed over the next passives, and the black artifact explained each one.

Undead Physiology: You have no heartbeat, blood, lungs, metabolism, or biological organs. This frees you from the need to breathe, eat, drink, or sleep.

Deathless: Your aging has ceased completely. Natural death is now impossible for you.

Soul Sight: You can perceive souls and ghosts.

Necrotic Affinity: Necrotic and death-aligned mana is naturally compatible with your body and magic.

Undead Dominion: Lesser undead instinctively recognize you as a superior undead existence. Their reaction will range from avoidance to outright servitude, depending on the level difference between you and them.

Polyglot: You can speak many languages and quickly pick up languages through passive immersion.

"Compared to Phylactery, these all seem beneficial rather than curses," Lucas mumbled with a sigh of relief. "Though Deathless confirms that I can't die, besides having my physical body smashed to pieces or whatever other horrific ways of dying this world has in store for me." A raspy chuckle escaped his skull. "It's also good to know that undead will respect me, but only if I'm a higher level than them..."

He paused as Kyle's plight came to mind. The human's town was under siege by undead, which suspiciously lined up with his awakening.

"I wonder if I'm high enough level now for those undead to fall under my control," Lucas mused, tapping his chin. "If I had an army of undead, I could maybe stand up to that orc."

The image of him leading an army of undead against the orc ended with the drunk orc smashing them all to bone dust and obliterating Lucas again.

"I suppose any undead that would willingly serve me won't be strong," he sighed and put that idea aside. He would get revenge on the orc for robbing him of his wedding day memories someday, but that would have to wait. He needed to get stronger first and learn many more spells.

His attention returned to the black tablet and the last two categories of his status page.

[Resistances: Blunt Damage, Necrotic Damage, Cold Damage, Pain, Mental Influence]

[Weaknesses: Holy Magic, Radiant Damage, Soul Magic, Lightning Magic, Fire Magic, Consecrated Ground]

He chuckled at the resistance to Blunt Damage. Clearly, the orc's tree-sized club hadn't cared much for it.

"So resistance doesn't mean I'm immune. That means I can still be mentally influenced, but I'm simply more resistant to it, which isn't good. As for my weaknesses, all of them make sense, but what exactly is Consecrated Ground?"

Consecrated Ground: Land sanctified with holy magic, typically maintained by a Dawnkeeper through ward stones placed around towns and cities. While standing on it, the undead cannot passively regenerate mana. Furthermore, corpses buried on Consecrated Ground cannot be raised. Its strength depends on the power of whoever consecrated it and how well its wards are maintained. If neglected, Consecrated Ground will fade away.

"Ah, mention of the Dawnkeeper again," Lucas mused. "Kyle said his town's Dawnkeeper passed away, and the Zenith have yet to send another. Did he hope to find the ward stones maintaining the Consecrated Ground and reactivate them himself?"

That sounded impossible, considering Kyle hadn't possessed a lick of mana, and wards were magical by nature.

"Maybe he was locating them so a mage from his town could activate them later?" Lucas drummed his skeletal fingers on the black tablet. "Actually... does his town even have any mages? A fire mage should be able to deal with the undead problem, but perhaps mages are rare in this world?"

Shaking his head, Lucas withdrew his mana and stepped away from the black tablet.

"I now know I need to hit level 100 before having a chance to open a portal to see Anna and Sophie, but first," he took the golden crown off his head, "I need to absolutely cover this place in wards to hide this so even gods can't find it."