[Hollow King] Chapter 11: Life Sense (Patreon)

[Skill learned: Shape Stone (I)]

Lucas carefully lifted the golden crown from his head and slotted it, prongs first, into the perfectly cut circular slit in the back of the throne. Once only a thin rim of gold remained visible, he activated Shape Stone.

Mana gathered in his fingers, and he pressed them against the throne. In response to his skill, the hard stone beneath his palm softened to wet clay, and he smoothed it over the golden rim to hide it.

The moment he pulled his hand away, the stone hardened, as if nothing had ever happened.

"Phew." Lucas stepped back and admired his handiwork. "It took a full day to learn my first Transmutation skill, but I think it was worth it. Now I just have to hope I don't wake up with my skull fused in the stone."

But he wasn't too worried, as the crown had magically left the crack he'd hidden it in before without disturbing the moss, and he'd woken up with it on his head.   

He snapped A Study on the Nature of Matter shut with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction and returned it to the warded nook in the wall.

I'd have hidden it behind wards instead if they didn't need constant mana to remain effective. I've also noticed my poorly made wards leak mana, meaning a mage can detect their presence. But nobody is finding that crown unless they demolish the throne.

He retrieved A Study on Seeing from the nook and fed a little mana to reactivate its illusion ward to hide his books. As crappy as his situation was, and as desperate as he was to get home, he had to admit seeing a stone wall ripple into existence was a rather novel experience. In fact, even temporarily turning stone into malleable clay was cool.

What wasn't cool was the studying involved.

Trying to comprehend Transmutation skills took him back to his school days, when he spent a summer desperately studying chemistry because their teacher had promised to take the class out for a meal if everyone got an A. In the end, there was no meal. The teacher got headhunted before the results came in, but Lucas went from consistent Ds to an A-grade student. He was good at studying when he put in the effort.

"It feels a little different studying magic while knowing what is on the line compared to my university entrance exams," Lucas sighed as he sat on the throne and basked in the streaks of sunlight. He wanted to hurry and become strong, but knew rushing blindly ahead was how he got killed or worse. Getting imprisoned had become a real nightmare for him, because with his Deathless passive there was no way for him to die naturally.

Hopefully this grimoire has some solutions now that I have a little more mana to work with and have gotten a taste of what lies out there. He fed the grimoire magic and opened it. I need something better than Mana Sense for scouting out enemies—oh, what is this?

The very first skill he saw sounded promising.

Life Sense, and it's listed here as a first-tier spell. He read the detailed explanation of how the skill worked, and he felt a buzz in the back of his skull as the intuition of his inherited bones was stimulated. Good to see I didn't lose my inheritance even after reviving, as I honestly couldn't tell with how difficult Shape Stone was to learn.

Setting the book down in his lap, Lucas did the spiritual equivalent of closing his eyes and focused deeply on his mana. The book explained that he had to load his mana with negative energy and let it echo out like a sonar. The negatively charged mana would be attracted to living things, exposing their presence.

Lucas let intuition guide him, and he could tell this was a skill the old Archmage had used often, as it came easily to him. Negatively charged mana rippled from him, and he snapped his head left as he sensed a presence.

[Skill learned: Life Sense (I)]

Rising from his throne and setting the grimoire on the armrest, he switched to Mana Sense and detected nothing.

"Not a monster then," Lucas mumbled and approached the far wall. Hiding behind a crumbling pillar, a black spider about the size of his palm hung from a silver thread. He stared at it and flinched when it flexed its hairy legs.

Yep, still hate spiders. Lucas shuddered. Especially big ones that belong in Australia. Hold on, if there were goblins, doesn't that suggest there are giant magic spiders and other insects too?

Lucas retreated to his throne with that terrifying thought, never taking his eyes off the pillar. He picked up the grimoire again and read a little more about the skill, casting glances at the pillar before sighing and setting the book down.

"I feel uncomfortable," he muttered. Killing the spider felt wrong. He lived in a decaying tomb, so of course there were resident insects, and he would rather have a spider for a roommate than a swarm of flies.

Is there perhaps a way I could integrate Life Sense into a ward so I'd know if the spider was getting closer?

***

An estimated two days and nights later, it was done. Lucas had reverse-engineered the Life Sense skill into its runic form and figured out how to reproduce its effects with a ward. Kind of.

During the process, a few of his skills had leveled up. Life Sense and Runecraft had gone up to rank III, and Ward Inscription had shot up to rank IV. He had also become more comfortable around the spider after spending many hours trying to convince it to walk over a new set of runes.

It's still inferior to the Life Sense skill, since the ward needs physical contact with a living entity, but now, if something steps onto the ward—he coaxed the spider to touch the ground—a light should appear.

The dark throne room brightened as a ward etched into the room's floor flared with a replica of the Candle Light skill.

"Yes!" he shouted, sending the spider fleeing. "No, wait—ah." his skeletal hand fell to his side. "I was just excited. Please come back."

The spider hissed at him from the shadows, so he gave up. He couldn't hide his excitement now that he had a security system. While he had gotten the idea for the wards from the spider, there were obviously far better applications for a life-sensing ward.

He left the throne room and walked through the tomb.

"Now that my Runecraft skill is higher, I can tell that this whole tomb is basically one massive ward," Lucas mused as he traced his finger along lines of runes atop a doorway that interestingly converged into the library, the shelves serving as a good way to hide many rune circles. Reading them, he assumed this massive ward had obscured the tomb from sight in the past, but it was far too big for him to power. "Maybe when I'm Soul Level 50 or so I can even begin to try powering a building-sized ward."

Continuing through the tomb, he noted each important doorway where he wanted to install a Life Sense ward. Because as long as his phylactery was stored here, this was more than a simple tomb. It was his sanctuary, and if anyone got in here, he needed to know.

Reaching the sealed front doors, he knelt before them and activated Ward Inscription to carve out the runes. It was effectively a flawed seal filled with necrotic mana that triggered when something drew the necrotic mana out of it, breaking the seal. He tried using negatively charged mana like the Life Sense skill, but quickly discovered the mana held its negative charge for only a short time. Necrotic mana was his solution, as it was also naturally attracted to the living.

Overall, the ward he'd come up with was incredibly shoddy, made worse by his first-tier ward-making skills.

All that mattered was it technically worked.

If anyone walks over this, they will feel a chill as the necrotic mana tries to bite at their feet, but it's basically harmless without a skill directing it like Death Touch.

Lucas stood and inspected his ward.

It looks good, but how do I connect it to the throne room? His gaze landed on the lines of wards etched throughout the tomb that could hide the entire building, and he got an idea.

***

The next evening, Lucas sat on his throne with A Study on Seeing in his hand, engrossed in trying to understand a second-tier skill called Past Sight. It let the caster paint a mental image of the recent past by analyzing changes in the ambient mana. It wasn't accurate, as the skill could only guess, and it could be tampered with.

Most used it for detective work or tracking, but in Au's notes, he explains that it was incredibly useful for figuring out how magical experimentation went wrong.

Lucas was interested in it because it was a second-tier skill that didn't seem to require much mana. It was just complicated, and his intuition was being less helpful than expected.

If I can cast tenth-tier magic at level 100, then it's safe to assume that the tiers are tied to every 10 levels. Will my intuition be more helpful for second-tier spells once I'm Soul Level 20? Lucas sighed and put the book down. I sure hope so, because this is a slog.

A Candle Light spell suddenly illuminated the room.

Something had triggered his Life Sense ward. Lucas sat up, but didn't panic. There were many false positives, as all it took was a creature the size of a spider to set them off.

He set the grimoire on the armrest, and his gaze settled on the Candle Light. He had repurposed the mana channels of the tomb's giant ward to connect his Life Sense wards to his Candle Light wards in the throne room. To know which Life Sense ward had been triggered, he had set up the Candle Light wards in a rough map on the floor so he could tell which one was which.

I haven't seen the front door trigger, though.

A second Candle Light rose above the wards.

And now the hallway to the mess hall?

When a third Candle Light ward lit up, Lucas rose from his throne. This wasn't a coincidence anymore. Someone or something was triggering every Life Sense ward as they moved through his tomb.

"They are heading to the study with the black tablet," Lucas muttered as he watched the wards keep lighting up. Whatever it was, it was fast. Lucas stowed away the grimoire in the nook, activated the illusion ward, checked that his golden crown was still firmly hidden inside the throne, and then...

What should I do?

The throne room sat behind the greatest of the illusion wards. He didn't have to step out and confront whatever had invaded his tomb. The Life Sense wards would let him know if they left.

But what happens if they see my status left behind on the black tablet? His gaze flickered to the Life Sense ward on the study's entrance that had yet to light up. If it's a person and they figure out I'm weak, I'm done for. He balled his skeletal fingers in annoyance. If only there were some cloth in this rotten tomb to cover the artifact, I could hide in here and wait them out.

"Elder Lich!" A distant voice that he didn't recognize echoed through the tomb. "I've come to bargain!"