The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

Something was wrong. Jessica was coming apart. Evan hadn't imagined a person's mind could look like this from the inside — he wasn't a god, and he hadn't seen it coming. Left unchecked, the best case was that her cultivation would be ruined entirely; the worst, that she'd end up little better than a vegetable.

He shouted, loud enough to crack the air, unconsciously reaching for the Lich's Wail as he did it. "Jessica — this isn't a bad thing! It means you can summon however you want, without limits!" The sound hit like a thunderclap. Her spreading mental power staggered mid-surge, the chaotic current of her mind slamming into that wave of sound in the same instant. Evan guided her power back into shape, coaxing it to contract slowly. Jessica's eyes came open again, blood at the corner of her mouth, a grateful smile crossing her face before she closed her eyes once more, her mental power settling gradually back into her body.

Evan let out a long breath. He hadn't seen this coming at all. If something had happened to Jessica, the guilt would have stayed with him a long time. Thankfully, disaster had been averted. He looked at her, a tangle of feeling rising in his chest.

Xiaoshuang stared at Jessica, wide-eyed. Jessica opened her eyes fully, and Evan asked, concerned, "Are you all right? I was too reckless."

"It's not your fault. I let myself get too caught up — my mind couldn't handle it for a moment. I'm fine now," Jessica said with a small smile.

"Your magic isn't damaged, is it?" Evan pressed.

Jessica gave him a wounded look. "I just had a mental shock. Does it look like my magic's fine to you?"

Evan startled. "How bad is the damage?"

"I'm teasing you. I took some minor harm, but the doubt in my mind is gone now, and honestly, that's worth it. Now I understand — this is what summoning actually is. The magical world is stranger than we ever imagined. If fantasy-born creatures work this way — does that mean devils and gods count as fantasy-born too?" Jessica asked, echoing the same question Xiaoshuang had raised earlier.

"I don't know. I've only lifted one small corner of a very thick curtain. What those beings really are, I couldn't say — and honestly, the true shape of the world itself is still buried under fog just as thick," Evan said.

"Is your experiment finished, then? I suppose I can go. Shame about that little book of yours — I thought it was a genuine relic, the only surviving copy of something ancient. Turns out it was someone's carefully engineered con, and it very nearly cost me my whole reserve of power." Jessica couldn't help laughing as she said it, and Evan could tell she meant it half as a complaint, half as a joke.

"I didn't have much choice," Evan said. "Once I understood what was actually happening, I knew running the experiment on myself would compromise it — I already know the truth, so I'd inevitably bias the results. Better to have someone who doesn't know anything carry it out, with me as the outside observer, so it stays reasonably objective. That's why I thought of you. Everything went exactly as I expected — right up until it nearly went wrong, which I didn't see coming at all. I'll need to think more carefully before running experiments on people again." He paused. "There's one more test I'd planned to run, once you knew the truth. Given what just happened, we should probably save it for another day."

"You call that result 'reasonably objective'? Not fully objective?" Jessica asked, frowning, not quite following.

"Consciousness is a strange thing — who can really say? I don't know whether my just watching had any effect on the outcome," Evan said.

"That's what you're worried about? I honestly couldn't tell you either way." Jessica had been about to say he was overthinking it, but caught herself, remembering what had just happened. "You said there's another experiment. What is it? Haven't you already confirmed your hypothesis?"

"Fantasy-born creatures don't truly exist in this world. They're only manifestations of human imagination given form. Which means — to defeat them, all you need is complete faith in yourself, ignoring them entirely, and they can't touch you. Your mental power itself is real, of course, but it can't cause direct harm on its own. I want you to summon those same creatures again, and have them attack me. If I'm right, they should be nothing but illusion, as far as I'm concerned," Evan said. Jessica went still at that — though she had to admit, the logic held together.

"You're sure you can take a hit from my summons and walk away unscathed?" Jessica asked, still doubtful.

"Have you ever seen me attempt something I wasn't confident in?" Evan said, entirely sure of himself. He'd already worked through the reasoning, considered every angle, and trusted his own footing here. It demanded absolute conviction — down to the marrow, body and mind both had to believe, without a shadow of doubt, that the attack simply didn't exist. Only then would it truly not exist, as far as he was concerned.

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"With that much confidence, Professor Wang, I won't hold back," Jessica said, beginning her incantation. The fire giant came first — her usual summon.

The moment it manifested, the temperature climbed several degrees. It let out a roar and brought its burning sword down at Evan's head. By then, Evan had settled into a state of perfect emptiness, worried even this might not be enough conviction, and had gone further still — deliberately putting himself into something like a trance, believing from the inside out, completely, without the faintest trace of doubt, that none of this was real.

The fire giant's blade came down, and the air rippled like water. To Jessica and Xiaoshuang, it looked as though the burning blade had passed straight through Evan's body — or perhaps Evan had passed straight through the blade. Neither of them could quite make out which. All they could see clearly was Evan, still standing exactly where he'd been, not so much as flinching, no trace of pain on his face, a faint smile at the corner of his mouth.

Jessica hurried to dismiss the attack. Evan stood completely unharmed. In his own perception, there had been no fire giant at all — only a ripple of mental force, nothing more. Purely a matter of belief, and yet the fact of it held true all the same.

Seeing Evan without a single mark on him left Jessica a little put out, honestly. She knew his reasoning had been sound going in, but having her attack simply disregarded so completely — not just outwardly ignored, but genuinely unfelt from the inside — stung a little all the same.

She gave a short huff and began chanting again. The Water Dragon Beast surged into being, bringing a wall of water crashing down over Evan in an instant — but once the wave receded, there wasn't even a drop of moisture on him, as though he'd been standing in some other space entirely. In that moment, Jessica forgot all her earlier reservations. Summon after summon poured out, fantasy-born creatures filling the dueling ground all at once — a dozen or more of them together, the Blaze-Spitting Fire Tree, the Sword-Form Legend Beast among them. Xiaoshuang watched, stunned, stammering, "Sister Jessica, isn't that a bit much?"

Jessica snapped back to herself and let out a startled cry. "Creator save me — I actually summoned all of these at once!"

The creatures attacked in unison, streams of colored light converging on Evan all at once, as though he'd simply fallen through into empty space. Amid the rippling, water-like distortion, he seemed not to register the presence of any of them at all.

Jessica had never managed to summon this many creatures at once before — hadn't even known she had it in her — and stood there stunned for a moment before hurrying to dismiss them all. Halfway through the thought, she laughed at herself; she'd already fallen back into the habit of treating these creatures as genuinely real. Well, enough of that. She waved a hand, and the summons scattered into nothing.

"Congratulations, Professor Wang," Jessica said, smiling. "Your experiment's a real success. I've just witnessed something extraordinary — a great theory born right in front of me. This is going to be a shining moment in the history of magic. I do have one question, though — doesn't this mean summoning creatures is essentially useless now?"

"Thank you for the kind words, but don't think of it that way. I understand the root cause of it intellectually, but putting that into practice requires believing it at the deepest level of the mind — and to convince myself of it that completely, I even had to put myself into a kind of self-hypnosis first. Most mages simply couldn't manage that, even fully understanding the theory behind it. Once something has been given form, it exists in the eyes of everyone who sees it. As the philosopher Hegel once said — what is real is rational. That principle holds true for magic as well. Summoning is far too broad a category to weaken because of this. If anything, it'll only grow more prominent from here," Evan said with a smile.

"Any other experiments planned?" Jessica asked.

"Nothing for the moment. Thank you again, Miss Jessica. I'll be putting your name on the paper," Evan said, giving a small bow.

"What about my name?" Xiaoshuang piped up, clearly enjoying herself.

"Of course you're included too," Evan said with a laugh.

"Well, that's more like it," Xiaoshuang said, satisfied, then muttered something under her breath that Jessica didn't quite catch — though Evan heard it perfectly well. Even a lich's got a little conscience left in him.

"Can you do this kind of summoning yourself?" Jessica asked, having missed what Xiaoshuang said, though the question stood on its own.

"Me? I understand the essence of it now, though summoning is a broad discipline, and there's plenty I still don't grasp. But yes, I can manage this much." Evan gave a small gesture, no incantation at all, and a roar echoed through the air as a Water Dragon Beast surfaced, rising and falling with an invisible tide. He waved again, and it vanished. Something nagged at him afterward — he was a lich, and yet summoning a water-aligned beast had felt entirely natural, just as it always had before. Had he stopped being a lich somehow? Of course, he couldn't say that aloud, and it wasn't something he could afford to test too openly either.

Back at his quarters, Evan tried summoning from a few other elemental schools, just to check. No luck. Aside from summoning itself, only necromancy answered to him at all — confirmation enough that he remained exactly what he was. As for why summoning let him reach beyond his own school, Evan suspected it came down to having seen through the true nature of summoning itself. It made him wonder — if he ever came to see through the true nature of the elements themselves, would that let him cast every school of magic as a lich, rather than relying on the array hidden in his bracer to fake the rest? He had no answer to that yet.

That question would have to wait. For now, it was time to put the paper together. Evan turned his attention to the notes in front of him. He'd glimpsed the true nature of an entire branch of magic — summoning itself — and now it was simply a matter of putting it into words. The magic lamp burned steady, and the only sound in the room was the scratch of quill on paper.