The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

Hollingburton, having lost faculty to an attack, tightened security across the school and issued a formal condemnation to the Church. Pope Clement VIII responded with a public statement, claiming he'd had no knowledge that the Inquisition had acted on its own initiative, and promising to discipline those responsible.

The times had shifted, though, in ways that reached far beyond this single incident. The Reformation had already begun exposing the old Church's failings, and while the new faith never rejected the Creator himself, the Age of Exploration was quietly reshaping the nobility from within. A new class of self-made wealth had risen among their ranks — and, more surprising still, some of the lowest-born, having ventured across the seas to the new continent, had climbed into positions of real standing themselves. Not nobles by blood, but hungry for political power all the same, encroaching steadily on the Church's own spiritual authority. Even the Pope found the ground shifting beneath him.

Driven by practical necessity and widening horizons besides, new knowledge and new currents of thought kept surfacing, and the old order stood on increasingly shaky ground. The Pope had no choice but to make certain concessions — the Inquisition's persecution of witches had already been halted, and though the charge of heresy still existed on paper, it carried far less weight than before.

A good age, in some ways, and a difficult one in others — everything new pushing forward with real vitality, while everything old clung stubbornly to its old ground, unwilling to yield. The clash between old and new played out constantly, mostly out of sight.

Ortlando knew better than to press the Pope too hard, and let the matter rest there for now, though he tightened the school's security measures further and turned his attention more fully toward the floating city project, recognizing its value as a genuine deterrent.

Evan recovered slowly. Through this stretch, he kept a low profile, teaching his classes and spending his free hours combing through a great mass of research material. More and more students had begun signing up for his lectures — hardly surprising, given he could draw on real experience to illustrate his points, and some students had even fought alongside him before. His class only met once a week, though word had spread that Evan knew swordsmanship, and quite a few students sought him out privately, hoping to learn from him.

Evan didn't hold back, teaching them the basics of swordplay freely. Somehow word of this reached Ortlando, who promptly arranged for Evan to hold a biweekly extracurricular session, folded formally into the school's physical education program — which, until then, had consisted mostly of ball games.

The class was elective, drawing nearly a hundred students across every year, and eventually formed its own swordsmanship society, quickly becoming one of the school's five major student clubs.

The five major clubs were the Flying Ball Club, the Magical Plant Cultivation Club, the Magic Items and Alchemy Club, the Seven Noble Arts Club, and the Swordsmanship Club — though plenty of smaller clubs existed too, some with barely a handful of members, even a Treasure Hunting Society, an eclectic mix all around. That the Swordsmanship Club had risen so quickly to prominence caught more than a few people by surprise.

The swordsmanship Evan taught wasn't complicated, but it demanded real, patient effort. Most of the mage students who took it up did so out of curiosity, without much intention of going deep, let alone reaching sword-force. Evan found this genuinely disappointing at first, before catching himself with a wry laugh — he'd been treating them like Tina without meaning to. They were mages, after all. Better to think of it simply as physical conditioning.

Evan returned to his office, where Byron the potions professor stood to greet him warmly. "Good day, esteemed Arcanist. Another paper of yours published in Magic. Congratulations." A flicker of envy showed in his eyes.

Evan blinked, then understood — this had to be the paper on magical items. He hadn't given it much thought at all; he hadn't written it. Emma had, though his name appeared as second author.

"I didn't write a word of that one. Emma did all the work — I only talked it through with her a bit," Evan said with a smile.

"Just talked it through, and your name still ends up on it. Emma's a graduate kept on at the school — with this paper out, her promotion to associate professor is all but guaranteed. Why does nothing like that ever come my way? Next time you have some bright idea, bring me along," Byron said, half joking, half genuinely serious.

"Of course, of course," Evan said, deflecting with equal ease.

Just then, Avaz walked in. Everyone greeted him with a laugh. "Rare sight indeed — you've barely set foot in our office since taking over the Magic Items Department. Something must be up, bringing you here today."

"There is, actually. Headmaster Ortlando wants some faculty to help forge weapons for the floating city ahead of time — mainly magical cannons," Avaz said.

Stolen story; please report.

"The floating city's almost finished?" Evan asked.

"Not quite. October, at the earliest, most likely. But he's given me the cannon blueprints and asked me to draw on the school's resources — mainly fire-aligned mages, ideally ones skilled in crafting magical items," Avaz said.

"Not me — I'm a necromancer. Byron, though, he'd suit it well — he's fire-aligned. And Shirley too, though she's earth-aligned rather than fire. You'll need sand molds and the like for casting cannons — better mages handle that than ordinary craftsmen," Evan suggested.

"Good. Besides these two, who else should I ask?" Avaz said.

Another teacher signed up as well. Byron looked genuinely pleased that Evan had thought of him first — as a potions professor, he'd always considered himself better suited to teach Black Magic and Defense, and Ortlando's refusal to let him take that course had left a lingering grievance.

He didn't dare blame Ortlando outright, so his resentment had quietly settled on Evan instead over time. Evan had noticed this himself, though he paid it no mind, simply overlooking Byron's small jabs — which only left Byron more frustrated, and the resentment ran deeper for it. Today, though, with Evan putting his name forward first, Byron's satisfaction eased that resentment back considerably.

Evan sensed his envy well enough, though there was little to be done about it. He had no patience to spend maneuvering around Byron — the man simply couldn't grasp the kind of things Evan concerned himself with. Evan's own life stretched far beyond ordinary limits now; there was no reason to quarrel with someone whose whole natural lifespan barely reached a century. Byron was, after all, only a senior mage, with a long road ahead of him before legendary rank might extend his life at all — and for a man closing in on fifty, that prospect looked increasingly remote.

What Evan didn't realize was that this same line of thinking, quietly surfacing in him, had already begun laying a subtle obstacle across his own magical path — one he remained entirely unaware of.

Watching the three of them celebrate in the office, Evan tidied his desk and pulled out a borrowed book to read. Avaz spoke up. "Wang, there's something else — Emma asked me to find you."

"What is it?" Evan asked, curious.

"I don't know the details myself. Emma went to see the headmaster and meant to come find you in person, but since I had business here anyway, she asked me to pass it along. She's over at the Magic Items Department — just head over whenever you can."

Evan set the book down and made his way to the Magic Items Management Department. Emma was already waiting. "You're here. Ortlando wants me to help craft a special magical item, and I don't feel confident handling it alone, so I've roped you into it as well."

"What kind of special item?" Evan asked.

"You know magical items come in many varieties. Setting aside one-time scrolls, there are some rarer categories worth mentioning. Broadly, there's enchanted items — the kind anyone can use, like scrolls, containing a magic core or ground core powder, needing no additional mana input, though limited in uses. Then there's the second category, usable only by mages, requiring a certain amount of mental power to activate — though knights and other ability-users can use these too. Within that category, there's ordinary magical items, legendary items, and divine artifacts. What we crafted — our implements — match ordinary magical items in raw power, but for flexibility and control, they outclass even legendary items," Emma explained.

Understanding settled over Evan. Ortlando had likely read their paper and taken a real interest, hoping to apply their method toward crafting a genuine legendary item. But a legendary item was a different beast entirely from an ordinary magical one, and Evan, being no legendary mage himself, knew little about how such things were forged.

"I've never crafted a legendary item myself, but I'd be curious to see how it's done," Evan said.

"Good. Let's go find Ortlando, then," Emma said, pleased.

They found Ortlando in his office, and he greeted them casually. "Sit. I've read your paper — genuinely fresh thinking. I've also seen Emma's crescent blade in action — remarkable work. The two of you have solved a real problem in the magical world: control over magical items. Most magical items strike in a straight, unadjustable line, which is why, despite the sheer number of items out there, most mages only really favor defensive ones — wearing them, triggering them with a trickle of mental power, releasing a countering field the moment they're struck. Offensive items, by contrast, tend to be one-note in their attack, so people gravitate instead toward brute-force area spells for real damage."

"Our implements are the exception to that pattern," Evan said. "We started simply wondering whether hiding the sigil array inside the object itself, the way divine artifacts do without visible sigils, might work — the power output turned out no better than before, but we found, quite unexpectedly, that control became remarkably easy."

"Though we've no experience at all with legendary items," Emma added.

"Do you know how a legendary mage actually comes to be?" Ortlando asked.

"No, we don't," both said, shaking their heads.

"A legendary mage is rare precisely because reaching that rank requires sensing one's own resonance with the rhythms of heaven and earth. Every person carries a particular vibration — what we call the pulse of life. Advancing to legendary rank requires a specially designed array, one that stirs that vibration from outside, triggering a resonance within one's own mind. It's a genuinely dangerous process — anyone who hasn't grasped elemental will, if that resonance is triggered passively, will go mad and die within days without exception. Even a mage who has grasped elemental will won't trigger the resonance safely unless their own mental vibration matches the elemental pulse exactly — get it wrong, and at best you lose ground in your cultivation, at worst you die outright. Which is exactly why not every Arcanist can become a legendary mage," Ortlando said, laying out the path to legendary rank in an even, measured tone.

"Without exception, you said. So how did the very first legendary mages ever manage it?" Evan asked, skeptical of the framework.

"That was pure accident. Early mages, exploring the natural world, stumbled onto certain phenomena that produced a resonance close to their own, found it strangely pleasant, and achieved legendary rank without meaning to. It was only much later, through extensive experimentation, that a proper method was worked out and passed down," Ortlando said.