Seven days have passed since I cast my first spell, and almost a month since I arrived. Over this time, I've noticed several things. When I'm not busy, my mind drifts quickly to thoughts of the past… before my death. How is my family? Are they still alive? Or perhaps I died long ago? These are questions I'd rather avoid, because it's obvious that reuniting with them is impossible. So I've focused my efforts on mastering magic.
My little amount of pure magic had tripled through constant use—but it was still very little. I could only cast nine low-level spells before my reserves needed to refill. That meant I had to be creative with my use of magic until I had a surplus.
The book described many branches of magic, but the main five were:
Military Magic
Runic Magic
Alchemical Magic
Ritual Magic
Conceptual Magic
Military magic was for combat in all forms, whether on a battlefield or alone. Runic magic was the art or science of inscribing a spell into a physical object to make it magical. Alchemical magic was the transmutation, combination, and manipulation of elements—physical or otherwise. Ritual magic involved creating complex spells through rituals; it wasn't useful in combat, but had large area-of-effect applications—like casting barriers or curses over a country. Conceptual magic was strange—it covered everything that couldn't be well-defined, such as soul, mind, being, "the world." Because of its risks, it was mostly taboo; the book only had five spells in this category, all improving the mind in various ways, temporarily or permanently. And the book itself was no small thing—it seemed to be around one hundred pages, but the index claimed over three thousand, including not just spells but verified magical theories.
I decided to focus on the magics I had enough energy to use—namely alchemy and runic magic—because these two didn't require much power. It's not that I wasn't learning the others, I just couldn't use them. Literally, casting a fireball the size of my head would eat half of my total reserves—and that's after tripling last week's capacity. Alchemy consumed little energy because it only required a spark to use the law of equivalent exchange, and runic magic simply involved embedding a spell formula into an object with minimal magic input—very efficient energetically. But you couldn't make any mistakes—or the object would break, the spell would fizzle, or worse, the runes could explode.
I reduced my spell-casting time to two seconds—about a third faster than before, which felt like an achievement.
…
Exactly one month after my arrival, I was attacked by a beast when leaving my shelter two days ago. My traps didn't work on it—it flew. Now I have an ugly scar on my arm, sealed by alchemy instead of healed.
I killed the beast quickly before it could tear my arm off. I used an alchemical spell that redirected ambient air like a serrated blade. The spell nearly decapitated the creature, but it fell on me, almost crushing me with its weight. It was still alive, but when it tried to move, it tore its own head off.
"I must improve my defenses so this never happens again," I told myself, touching the still-throbbing scar on my skin.
Maybe a rudimentary cannon would be the solution. I'm an alchemist—or at least an apprentice—and a lack of materials isn't an obstacle. I gathered red sand and transmuted it into an aluminum-steel alloy—relatively easy because of its low energy demand and because I kept the original form.
Once I had a large chunk of metal, I shaped the pieces. It wasn't as easy as before—not because of energy cost, but due to the geometrical complexity. Imagine describing a shape only through formulas: it's a pain when the form is more complex than a cube or sphere.
Anyway, each cannon piece fit together. It was crude but theoretically functional: a one-and-a-half-meter-long barrel, with two forty-centimeter mouths—one for loading, one for firing. Internal mechanisms used kinetic force generated by runes to push the cannonballs. A metal base allowed directional aiming.
The runic part wasn't truly difficult, just tedious—like programming in low-level code. First I made it so that each time it fired, it reset itself to fire again. Next, I prevented the cannonballs from jamming when one was shot. I also programmed the runes to recognize a magical signature—my own. Then I set it up so the cannon would fire at anything moving above the ground that didn't bear my magical signature.
With that, the prototype was ready. To test it, I tossed a stone into the sky and the preloaded cannon fired a rock; the small stone didn't even touch the sand before turning to dust.
"Perfect. I should make more of these in the coming days. I don't have much pure magic left," I said as I watched my reserves dwindle until I could only cast one basic spell—so I took out my magic book.
…
Another month passed. I improved my base from two vines-covered rocks to a roughly three-story stone tower, with four rune-powered metal turrets at its cardinal points. The tower itself took twenty-two days to complete. There were eight more turrets placed around the red sand area. I also built a small artificial lake—about ten meters across and five deep. It was rough and brutalist—geometric flat shapes, stark aesthetics.
Besides structural changes, I created rune-traps to automate food collection. They worked like this: I inscribed a set of alchemical runes that, when triggered by sufficient pressure, would swiftly move sand to create a deep hole, crystallize the hole into glass to prevent sand from refilling it, and then form glass spikes to impale the prey.
But that created a problem: scavengers would gather around active traps and eat the catches—or confront me when I checked them. They moved in packs, which was dangerous.
On the bright side, I managed to quintuple my pure magic compared to the previous month. I could now cast forty-five low-level spells—but only one mid-level one, which consumed about eighty percent of my total reserves. So, energy was still a struggle.
I also finished reading the Dragon-King Vritra's book. The magic it described is possibly among the most powerful. The book was extensive, though not as large as the human magic tome.
First: what is a dragon? A dragon is an extremely dense concentration of magic—a pure magical consciousness merged with abstract concepts like power. A dragon is basically magic energy densely bonded to a functionally superior mind that embodies one or several concepts.
The definition is very similar to what one might imagine a magical god to be. Dragons—even if they weren't conceptually unique—come with predetermined concepts like power, magic, limitlessness, and draconic essence. Over their lives, a dragon could acquire more concepts, shaping itself and those ideas.
In other words, dragons were gods of magic—they were fragments, big or small, representing concepts. That's why a dragon's death doesn't kill the concept it embodied.
And dragon magic is basically bending magic through sheer force of will—creating what a dragon would call a spell. How spells interact with concepts: the more you use or resonate with a concept, the more it becomes inscribed in you as a new part, along with its associated ideas.
That's why, even if dragons had "flesh and blood," they were nearly impossible to kill. You'd need a weapon specialized for slaying dragons, which is not easy to obtain. Otherwise, if their body was destroyed, their soul would simply reform into a new equally powerful body.
So, to defeat a dragon you must not only kill it—you must also seal its soul if you lack the correct weapon.
"So that's why Ddraig and Albion were so powerful—they're more conceptual than physical, and control abstract concepts like increase and decrease of power," I said while sitting, eating the smoked meat of the creatures generously offered as my dinner.