The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

Understanding what mental resonance meant, Evan asked, "What does the array itself look like?" The question felt abrupt the moment it left him, and he added quickly, "If that's not something you can share, never mind."

He didn't notice that Emma's eyes had lit with the same hunger for the answer. Ortlando smiled. "Nothing especially secret about the array itself. It's a fusion of three arrays from the Compendium of Magic Arrays — the Mana Resonance array, the Mental Unity array, and the Convergence of All Things array."

He gestured idly in the air, and the three arrays flickered into being, merging into one vast, sprawling structure. "The array itself is inert, though — it takes enormous quantities of magical material to power it. No telling how many mages have gone bankrupt chasing legendary rank. That's exactly why mages built schools in the first place. Hollingburton's strength is what secures the endless flow of material behind it, and that's precisely why the strong keep growing stronger."

He rattled off, almost in passing, the sheer scale of material required for various components of the array. Only then did Evan understand — wealthy as he was, he couldn't even fill a single corner of an array like this. He gave a rueful laugh. "So this is the first I've learned that forging a legendary mage takes a fortune beyond what an ordinary person could ever hope to bear, let alone the experience needed on top of it. Are mages simply built from stacked resources, then?"

Something in Evan sank a little at that. He'd always carried some genuine attachment to Hollingburton, but had thought of it, in the end, as simply one chapter in his life — now it seemed he couldn't afford to leave at all, not if he wanted his path in magic to continue.

Still, some part of him sensed that couldn't be the whole truth. Ortlando continued, "That mages are built from stacked resources is only half true. A mage also has to be a genuine scholar — the deeper one's study of nature runs, the more easily mental resonance is triggered. It's a real mystery, honestly — no one fully understands why that connection holds."

"And advancing to demigod status — does that work the same way?" Evan pressed, having started down this road, he might as well see it through.

"Among humans, only the Pope has ever reached demigod status, and that wasn't through ordinary advancement at all — achieved through a rite of divine descent. It's happened before in human history, but only ever by accident, and no one's ever worked out a repeatable method for it. Some believe a real path must exist, only that humanity simply hasn't found it yet." Something in Ortlando's mood dimmed slightly as he spoke — he was, after all, a legendary mage himself, and a high-ranking one. "Enough — I've drifted off topic talking with you two. Let's get back to legendary items."

"What sets a legendary magical item apart, exactly?" Evan asked.

"A legendary magical item may carry a sigil array on its surface like any ordinary one, but underneath, its nature is entirely different — a true summation of the alchemist's craft. The internal composition varies from item to item, but because of the mental resonance involved, it produces genuine vibrations in the surrounding environment, strong enough to actually alter conditions around it," Ortlando said.

"So only a legendary mage can craft a legendary item?" Evan asked.

"Essentially, yes," Ortlando said.

"We'd only be helping hold the item's shape while you craft it. Wouldn't it make more sense to bring in another legendary mage instead?" Evan asked.

"Now there's an idea — though I don't know any of them well enough for that. You two watch us work instead, and speak up if anything seems off," Ortlando said, delighted, as though the thought had never occurred to him before — no matter, better late than never.

Evan and Emma exchanged a helpless glance. What could either of them say? The man was headmaster, and a legendary mage besides — there was little room to argue.

The forging was set for three days later. Evan and Emma arrived on schedule, and the space around them shifted — all three vanished, reappearing in a half-plane where a towering crimson structure rose before them, eighteen stories high — the Tower of Fire, also called Mars's Tower. They entered and settled on the third floor, and a shimmer of water-light announced Heathermere's arrival.

Both of them stood at once. "Honored Lady Heathermere, good day to you!"

"No need for formality. Ortlando asked me to help out, and I've read Emma's paper myself — genuinely interested. Walk me through the process in detail," Heathermere said.

"Of course, my lady." Emma laid out the full account, Evan listening alongside her. Though the original idea hadn't been hers, she explained it thoroughly enough that Evan found nothing left to add.

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Once she'd finished, Heathermere considered it for a moment, then turned to Emma. "I hear you crafted a crescent blade. Show it to me?"

Emma gave a small gesture, and the blade appeared in her hand. She passed it to Heathermere, who swept a trace of mental power over it and understood at once, giving her praise. "Genuinely ingenious work. Show me how it handles."

The blade lifted into the air, flaring crimson at once, trailing several cubits of fiery whirlwind as it darted up and down as naturally as an extension of Emma's own arm. Heathermere nodded.

Next came the forging of the legendary item itself. Ortlando had chosen to craft a Wing of the Fire God — unfurled, it formed a great fiery wing ten cubits across behind the wearer's back, astonishingly fast, capable of both offense and defense — a sweeping pass with the wing's edge cut like a blade in attack, or curled into a protective sphere in defense. Once forged, he tested it and found it responded exactly as intended.

Evan, watching from the side, picked up a great deal from the process.

With some material left over, Ortlando forged two gem-set talismans on the spot, offering them to Evan and Emma as compensation for their trouble.

These talismans were no minor thing — crafted using the new method, worn on the body, each could absorb three legendary-tier attacks in succession. A genuine treasure for personal protection. Both thanked him warmly, and Ortlando saw them out.

Once back, Evan found himself dwelling on the question of triggering mental resonance. It was a real problem. If what Ortlando said held true, Evan's only path to legendary rank ran through Hollingburton entirely. Some part of him kept insisting there had to be another way. Did the Church operate the same way? What about the Druids and the dark elves? Evan was only now beginning to grasp the deeper currents running beneath this world — why Hollingburton cared so much about the Gael Mountains, why it had sent legendary mages all the way to Burk Town over the matter.

Evan had assumed at first that Hollingburton's pride alone had been at stake. Now he saw the reasons ran far deeper than that — and the Druids, the dark elves, the vampire clans besides, none of them would ever give up their stake in Burk Town willingly. Evan let out a quiet sigh. The deeper he looked, the more questions surfaced. He'd assumed Ortlando held him in some special regard — it seemed that wasn't quite the whole picture either.

Evan even found himself regretting handing over the magic gemstone vein to Hollingburton so freely, and the magic crystal deposit he and Emma had found besides. If he'd mined those himself, the wealth would have been staggering — and even slowly, he wasn't short of labor. That was one real advantage of being a necromancer: skeletons served not only as a fighting force, but as tireless laborers as well.

Evan returned to his quarters to find Xiaoshuang just back from the mountains. Since receiving her flying sword, she'd grown genuinely fond of it despite its mere three forms, practicing constantly until her fluency with it had surpassed even Evan's own with the crescent blade — though her understanding of swordsmanship itself still fell well short of his.

Evan laid out everything he'd learned. Xiaoshuang shook her head. "I don't really understand you humans. Why chase after strength like this? Things are fine as they are."

Evan gave a rueful laugh. "We humans aren't like you fairies. Maybe it's ambition, always wanting to stand above everyone else — that's exactly why humans became the masters of this world. Your kind is different. Even something as powerful as a unicorn never becomes master of the world."

"What good does being master of the world do anyway? Doesn't everything return to nature in the end regardless? I really can't understand you humans," Xiaoshuang said, disdainful.

Evan sat with that a moment, and found her reasoning held some real weight, though something about it still sat uneasily with him — something not quite right. Was he still human, in any real sense? He had ages of time now stretching before him to spend as he pleased — no telling whether this body could truly sustain it all, though it seemed, for now, built to last a very long while indeed. Why wasn't that enough to satisfy him?

Evan sank into thought, and gradually his thinking clarified. He looked up. "I understand it now. It's humanity's instinct for the unknown that drives its progress — desire alone doesn't make a species dominant. Look at Nobi's goblins. Ten thousand years ago, that same hunger for the unknown drove their own great flourishing. Something happened since, and now goblins have lost that hunger entirely — which is exactly why, across those ten thousand years, they've become synonymous with laziness and filth. I want to be eternal, unbroken, chasing after an endless sea of knowledge."

That left Xiaoshuang genuinely stunned. After a moment: "Fine, I'll admit that sounds like it might make sense. But becoming a legendary mage takes a fortune. Even with enough wealth, that's only half the battle — you'd need enough accumulated knowledge besides, and an experienced legendary mage to guide you through it. Only then would you have any real shot at legendary rank. And that's just the beginning."

"No matter. As long as there's hope," Evan said, confident. "Besides, I still have the goblins' faith behind me — maybe I can find an entirely different path. And I'm a knight too, close to breaking through to Great Knight rank myself." He kept one thing unspoken — that nameless mantra within him. He'd fully recovered by now, the stars within his body multiplying again, already surpassing what he'd carried before his injury. He'd been comparing his own two kinds of cells carefully lately and found that though the revived cells made up less than one percent of his total, comparing them under the microscope against a living cell taken from someone else, the gap was unmistakable — his revived cells were, in every measurable way, flawless.

That was the real secret he carried. He decided to pursue both paths at once — integrating himself into this world's society to secure the resources he needed, while also turning his mind to his own cultivation, searching for a better method than the one already laid out for him.

He looked at Xiaoshuang, something occurring to him. "Xiaoshuang, where's your magic gemstone?"