Aozaki Aoko [550-552] (Patreon)

Chapter 550: Isolating the Plague

According to the records in this book, each of the eight layers of the Arcane Octad is documented in a separate Ebon Star Tower. To completely disable the force field shields around the two central towers, all ritual components must be obtained.

The problem is, two of these towers are located in the very center of Ythryn City, inside the force field walls... So, outsiders can at most go through six layers of the ritual, disabling six-eighths of the shield.

The book also explains that teleportation is prohibited in the core area of Ythryn City, and entrance or exit is only possible through specific teleportation circles. So bypassing the shield with teleportation magic is not realistic.

The book Aoko has only records one layer of the eightfold ritual, which is: “Press a wand made of Nether Oak against your heart and recite an incantation.”

For Aoko, to obtain a Nether Oak wand, she must first find Nether Oak, then go to the wand shop in Ythryn City, and use the crafting methods left behind to make a Nether Oak wand herself.

By analyzing this ritual layer, Aoko realized that if only two Ebon Star Towers were reinforcing the shield, she would have enough power to force open a gap in a short time. That way, as long as she could enter the two central towers, she could obtain the remaining two ritual components and completely disable the shield.

However, considering Mystra’s warnings, there are enemies in Ythryn City that she’s currently unable to deal with.

Aoko suspects this is probably the city’s ruler: the lich archmage, Iriolarthas.

Aoko has fought liches before. Some were weak, like Sofina, who she beat up, destroyed a body of, and who couldn’t really get back at her.

But if we’re talking about the master of a Nether floating city—a lich archmage of that level—that would be a different story.

If she wants to take on a true legendary spellcaster, she must be one herself; otherwise, it’s very difficult to win a spell duel, unless Ao unseals her Fifth Magic—otherwise, she’s guaranteed to lose.

Aoko is about one and a half caster levels away from becoming a true legendary spellcaster. She possesses the knowledge system of the legendary metamagic savant. Once she breaks through to 20th level, she can begin legendary spell research and learning.

All this takes time. Aoko has already noticed a strange radiation in this floating city. Ordinary people would be infected by the magical plague after staying more than twelve hours, eventually turning into Nothic monsters.

With various protective spells, the team can resist for about twice as long—twenty-four hours—but that still isn’t enough for Aoko to stay and research magic until she breaks through to legendary status.

“Hmm…” Aoko read the book carefully, finger to her lips in thought, but soon a smile returned to her face—she’d found a simple, obvious solution.

“Everyone, help me with a test,” Aoko closed the book and called out. “I want to see if the magical plague infection here can be paused.”

Edgin and the others exchanged looks, then immediately followed Aoko’s instructions—she’d never been wrong about things like this before.

Aoko cast Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion against a clean wall. Then she summoned a group of unseen servants to move all the books from the library room into the mansion.

This took about two hours. During the process, Aoko explained her plan to Simon and the others. Everyone agreed it was a good idea—otherwise, no matter how lucky or diligent they were, twenty-four hours wouldn’t be enough to explore Ythryn City,

let alone complete the Goddess of Magic’s mission.

With the last bookshelf emptied, Aoko and her teammates entered her mansion. The spacious, bright Kuonji estate parlor was now piled with mountains of books, barely leaving any place to stand.

No one complained. They all knew the next stretch of time would be the key to whether they could operate in Ythryn City long-term.

Aoko’s plan was: Because the mansion is a temporary demiplane anchored to the Material Plane, can it isolate them from the magical plague’s infection progress?

While the servants were moving the books, Aoko used detection spells and sensed the radiation that caused magical plague infection, confirming that the infection had a progress bar.

So, if they left this radiation environment, how long would it take for the accumulated infection progress to subside?

Could the accumulated magical plague be removed by divine magic?

She started by testing Holga, who had the lowest magic resistance. Aoko drew several vials of Holga’s blood for analysis, and found that after an hour in the mansion, Holga’s internal magical plague concentration dropped by about ten percent.

This result greatly pleased Aoko and was good news for the whole team: as long as they didn’t stay outside the mansion for more than twenty-four hours straight, they didn’t have to worry about infection. The only trouble was, Aoko’s search for the Mythallar core in Ythryn City would not be a quick job—

They’d have to take it slow, searching for each ritual step in the outer six Ebon Star Towers, bit by bit.

Since this was now clearly a long-term, slow-paced mission, everyone relaxed, the tension of entering Ythryn City faded, and they all went back to minding their own business.

That is, except Edgin, Holga, and Doric, who had little to do. Aoko and Simon still had to work like apprentice laborers for a great archmage, continuously reading and sorting the library's books.

They kept only valuable books; useless novels and poems were returned to the library shelves by unseen servants.

After a break, it was now the second day in Ythryn City. Doric was helping Holga maintain weapons, while Edgin sorted through the books Aoko and Simon discarded, keeping stories and poems he found valuable.

Aoko made a discovery: the tower they were in was the residence of an Ebon Star arcanist of the Abjuration school, so most of the preserved books were about abjuration.

Though much of the ancient knowledge was outdated, Aoko’s spiritual sense kept growing, as she regularly found new spells to copy into her spellbook for future study.

If she could find something like a ninth-level forbidden spell in the Abjuration Tower, could she find chain contingency in the Evocation Tower?

Chapter 551: The Anvil of Disjunction

On the third day, Aoko’s team spent time each day searching the Abjuration Ebon Star Tower and longer periods in the mansion to clear their accumulated disease points.

Aoko tested her lesser restoration (divine magic). It did reduce disease points somewhat, but not by much—better than nothing.

The Abjuration Tower was much like the Nether Spire Aoko found on the tundra. By comparing the books she took from that spire, Aoko confirmed it was indeed one of the Ebon Star Spires—the one for the Illusion school.

That was good news: at most, seven towers were supplying power to the central shield, so they had less work to do.

From abjuration texts, Aoko found a spell worth learning: the 8th-level abjuration spell “Prismatic Wall.”

This spell conjures a wall of seven-colored light; anything passing through suffers a variety of effects, much like the evocation spell prismatic spray.

The wall’s shape can be adjusted—like a sphere to trap targets, who must face seven effects to escape.

This was Aoko’s second prismatic spell. Her previous one was 5th-level evocation “Prismatic Ray,” much weaker.

In her opinion, Prismatic Wall should really be evocation, but the Faerun standard is: “If a spell banishes or wards, it’s abjuration.” So, it’s abjuration.

Besides studying abjuration, Aoko made good progress on phase-shifting arrays and animating spells.

She could now build a room where phase-shifting magic worked, though she couldn’t yet duplicate the golden crystal disk—the material was too special.

Progress on animating spells was slower. She could make simple animated spells like “Animated Magic Missile” or “Animated Burning Hands,” but not “Animated Bigby’s Hand” yet.

She discovered Netherese arcanists could grant intelligence and personality to animated spells, which involved a special “Enlightenment Spell.”

Normally used on familiars—her new raven familiar, Big Guy, was enlightened by her.

But animated spells are a unique category, between ooze, construct, and elemental. Enlightening them is much more complex; Aoko hadn’t figured out the method yet and needed more study.

On the fifth day, the team finished exploring the Abjuration Tower and found a magical anvil at the top, guarded by three Nothic monsters.

These creatures, mumbling incoherently in Loross, couldn’t be reasoned with. Aoko didn’t hesitate—she hit each with disintegrate, precise and eco-friendly, with zero negative feedback so far.

The most important treasure at the top was the magical anvil, engraved with bright blue runes—inlaid sapphire, as it turned out.

On the anvil was a matching rune-engraved hammer; the two resonated magically.

Nearby was a frozen coffin in a wall niche, containing the corpse of a Netherese arcanist.

After careful inspection, Aoko concluded the arcanist was truly dead, not a lich with a phylactery,

nor any kind of undead—just a mage who’d chosen to freeze his corpse here.

Judging by his clothes, he was probably the Ebon Star mage of this Abjuration Tower.

Aoko found no wounds, and after so much time, the cause of death was impossible to determine.

No mad experiments or materials were found here, indicating this Ebon Star mage was traditional and conservative.

So, why would an abjurer keep an anvil at the top of their tower?

Aoko stepped forward, running her hand over the dense sapphire runes—the cold hid surging magic currents, and something was triggered.

“Place your magic item here, and let us destroy it together.”

A voice echoed in the round chamber, startling the others, but Aoko was inspired—she instantly understood the runes’ purpose.

This was an “Anvil of Disjunction.”

Aoko placed a magic trinket with continual light on the anvil, picked up the rune hammer, and tapped the ring three times. The magic aura on the ring instantly vanished.

“Oh, no wonder it’s in the Abjuration Tower,” Simon muttered. “That’s just like Mordenkainen’s Disjunction.“ Simon’s familiar with 9th-level spells—he still has that helmet.

“Yeah,” Aoko shrugged, “but whether it’s as powerful as Mordenkainen’s Disjunction, I’m not sure—I’m not rich enough to test it on a high-grade item or artifact.”

The anvil itself was a treasure, and Aoko had no reason to leave it, so she forced it into her extradimensional pocket, expanding it with raw magical power.

By the way, she and Simon kept about a quarter of the Abjuration Tower library; the rest was returned to the shelves, or her pocket would’ve overfilled.

Expanding a pocket space in the Astral Plane is tough (it’s like compressing a physical object into a .zip file). If Aoko didn’t have insane magical output, she couldn’t do it at all—and even so, it was exhausting.

With the Abjuration Tower done, next step was to find Nether Oak and make a wand. She’d already found clues about its location from the texts.

Chapter 552: The Old Evil Nether Oak

In the now-tidy mansion hall, Aoko and the team sat around a coffee table, on which lay a detailed map of Ythryn City marked in ancient Loross.

The material resembled parchment but was tougher and more flexible, a bit yellowed with age.

To help the others, Aoko used a marker to translate all the key locations into Common.

“We need to do a few things,” Aoko said, looking around. “First, we need to gather the five ritual components. Including the Abjuration Tower we’re in, we have the first layer.”

Aoko circled the Abjuration Tower’s location—sector 4 of Ythryn City—then marked the other six Ebon Star Towers.

The others followed along, nodding.

“So, we just check each of these towers in order?” Edgin asked. “Doesn’t sound too hard.”

“If you exclude the two central towers, clearing the outer ones isn’t hard,” Aoko confirmed, “but each ritual layer is different. The first already requires us to find Nether Oak and make a wand—we can’t be sure about the later ones’ difficulty.”

“One bite at a time, one thing at a time,” Holga said cheerfully. “Let’s go find that oak tree first. Where is it?”

“Here,” Aoko pointed at an oval area on the western edge, “Sector 10, the botanical garden. Hopefully, we can find usable Nether Oak there.”

“A two-thousand-year-old oak…?” Doric mused. “Such an old tree is probably a treant by now. Given the city’s magical plague and negative energy…”

“Treen—Treant.”

“So our enemy might be an evil treant?” Simon finished.

“Not guaranteed,” Doric hedged, “maybe it’s just a magic oak and we just need to cut a branch.”

No one believed it would be that easy; a fight with the Nether Oak was inevitable, making Aoko ponder which spell to use.

Wood is weak to fire, but she couldn’t burn the tree—she needed it for the wand.

Other high-damage evocations were probably out… would she have to use enchantment spells to control it?

After dismissing the mansion, Aoko’s team set out for the botanical garden in sector 10.

The journey wasn’t peaceful—Nothic monsters and gargoyles were everywhere, and sometimes electrical sentinels ambushed them. It kept everyone tense.

But they fought through every enemy with a steady pace and made it near the botanical garden.

In the oval basin, dense woods grew, canopies covered in golden leaves, rustling in the cold wind—unlike the dead, chilly air around Ythryn City.

Circling the garden, Aoko noticed grayish steam occasionally venting from hidden pipes, forming small clouds overhead, which then rained down, irrigating the plants.

Besides this working weather system, the garden was covered by a hemispherical illusion dome.

The shield wasn’t abjuration, but some illusion to simulate the sky.

“So many trees…” Edgin scratched his head, “Which one’s our target?”

“When in doubt, pick the biggest,” Doric suggested. “Like the one in the middle—the tallest, and its trunk has a face. That’s surely it.”

“It doesn’t move?” Holga shaded her eyes. “Should we just ambush it, cut some branches and run?”

“I don’t think that’s wise,” Aoko shook her head. “That’s a senior starwood treant—likely able to control and turn other trees, and there are plenty here.”

“You know best,” Holga said. “If I get killed by a tree, that’s just embarrassing. Better safe than sorry.”

Aoko nodded, then, with Simon, buffed everyone with all kinds of resistances and animal enhancements. They followed the mossy stone path to the center.

As they walked, they felt the surrounding trees glaring at them, but closer inspection showed only normal trees, swaying in the wind.

Aoko’s team reached the huge, human-faced oak.

Its eyes were closed, face in an expression of contemplation, occasionally snoring.

The tree was really asleep.

Aoko was a bit embarrassed, but now she confirmed it had become a giant treant, and with an alignment detection, found it was neutral evil.

If lawful evil is devil and chaotic evil is demon, then neutral evil is pure evil.

This kind of being doesn’t like order or law, only cares about self-interest—pure and simple.

…Better just use an enchantment spell, Aoko thought. There’s no reasoning with a neutral evil creature,

especially not when you’re about to harm its interests.

As she considered her move, the huge Nether Oak shuddered, yawned, then slowly opened its cloudy eyes, looking at everyone, finally focusing on Aoko.

“…Same old rules,” the oak said in a sandpaper-rough voice, “You mages want my branches for wands—you have to do something evil. If what you do is evil enough, I’ll give you a branch. Otherwise, forget it.”