Antimage: An Isekai LitRPG Adventure (Ends of Magic Book 1), page 60
Aside from mages, Giantsrest didn’t have much of a formal army. They had no standing forces – not even of slave soldiers. Instead it was all just the personal possessions of various archmages and the mages below them. The relevant “possessions” being slave soldiers and golems.
Golems were expensive, and usually required one or more people to be sacrificed to empower the golem core with motive force. But they were strong, hard to kill, and their bodies could be further enchanted. Excellent guards, but their lack of flexibility and mobility in rough terrain tended to be a problem in the guerrilla wars that Gemore liked to fight. Kill the person directing the golems, and they would revert to the simplest of orders.
The slave soldiers were mostly uniform – they weren’t supposed to win fights against high-level Gemore Adventurers, they were supposed to prevent anybody from running up to the Giantsrest mages while they were casting battle-winning spells. They tended to be drawn from lower-performing servants or artisans who were considered expendable. That meant they didn’t tend to have specialized martial classes.
Slave soldiers were usually armed with a big shield and a spear. But the mental spells used to control them were brutal and left fairly little in the way of autonomous thought. A slave soldier wouldn’t break until the mage commanding them was dead and the fight was obviously lost, at which point they would lie down and die.
I know enough military history to know that being unbreakable is incredibly important to large-scale conflicts. “Morale is to the physical as three is to one” and all that. No wonder Gemore doesn’t fight Giantsrest in the open.
Giantsrest did have specialized slave soldiers – different mages had their personal forces trained in different ways according to their whims. Some archmages had cadres of specialized archers, assassins, heavily armored linebreakers and more. They were trained from birth, guided towards specific classes, and could be terrifyingly potent.
I think those guys are going to be my biggest weakness. I probably stand a good chance against an archmage in a confined area right now – if they don’t already know to use non-conjured elemental magic against me. And I’m only going to get stronger. But one of those elite slave soldiers could probably take me apart. Something to watch out for.
Finally, there were the slavemasters. These formed what middle class there was in Giantsrest, and were the middle management and overseers for when more initiative was required, but a full mage wasn’t justified. The overseers weren’t often seen in combat situations except for slave raids, where their specialized classes helped get new captures organized and moving quickly.
I don’t think I’ll have a problem with killing them either.
After the lesson, Nathan had to spend a few minutes controlling his anger. It had been an enlightening lesson, but it had reminded Nathan of what was going on across the mountains while he lazed around in Gemore.
Over lunch Stella encouraged everybody to eat quickly so they could get to the practice fields as soon as possible. Aarl and Sarah went back for seconds, then thirds that they didn’t really eat while Stella glared. They still left the dining hall earlier than most, and beelined for the private training area.
There, Nathan finally turned to the derivations and logic behind Ampere’s law and Faraday’s law. From seeing the generator, Stella had accepted that a moving magnetic field could move a charge to make current, but unifying all of it and describing the surface integral so that she got it was taking a little while.
It was the nice part of tutoring somebody one-on-one – you could ask questions Socratically and be sure they understood everything, and weren’t just nodding along to get to the next part of the lesson.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Heirs were doing various kinds of weapons practice or running drills. Sarah had made some dummy cartridges from spent casings, and was practicing rapidly reloading the revolvers, as well as incorporating them into her usual cycling of weapons. The more she practiced, the more Nathan saw that the revolvers were quickly becoming a weapon of choice, even if she wasn't live-firing them very often. Nathan knew Stanel planned to take Sarah out into Old Gemore with Beatred later to practice privately and at longer ranges with both types of firearms.
Khachi was working on quickly summoning divine mana to enhance his shield and hammer without requiring a lengthy prayer. He had gotten much quicker with the shield but was having trouble imbuing the divine power into his hammer as rapidly.
Aarl was going through sword drills with the new sabers, getting an exact feel for their weight and also working out the best ways to draw them from his pouch and trigger the enchantments nearly instantaneously. They weren't empowered yet, but it didn't stop Aarl from practicing.
Finally, Nathan was satisfied that Stella had understood Faraday’s law, and why changing magnetic flux caused a voltage over a wire.
Then it was time for the Heirs to break and go to individual tutoring. Stella walked toward her parents but looked back at Nathan with a twinkle in her eye. "I’ll be right back.”
She exchanged a few quick words with them, pointing back at him. Dalo looked like he was about to argue, but Kullal raised her hands placatingly. Then, Stella stormed back towards Nathan while Dalo shot him an admonishing look.
The short, red-haired mage waved to her parents without looking back, dismissing them. She gestured back to the practice area. “Let’s keep going. I want to figure this out today.”
Chapter 66
Very Very Frightening
Nathan looked over at Stella’s parents. Dalo had a peeved expression on his face while Kullal merely appeared curious. Dalo almost started striding in their direction before Kullal grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back. They had a short conversation before taking to the air and flying back to their home.
Doesn’t seem like my place to get involved with family discussions. If Stella wants to keep learning about electricity and magnetism instead of her parent’s magic tutoring, I’m not gonna say no. We’ll deal with it if it becomes an issue.
They moved back to the practice field, and Nathan launched into the topic of Ampere’s law, which described how a moving charge created a rotating magnetic field. He didn’t go into special relativity and the concept of reference frames but was able to communicate the idea well enough.
It felt like [Lecturing] was pushing at its boundaries, ready to Develop but awaiting an appropriate Insight. It was only low-tier, so it made sense that it would be easier to Develop.
Stella examined the latest set of equations as she played with her floating sand simulation of a moving charge.
She looked back up at Nathan. “Okay, I think I understand these forces. Now, how do I use them to make lightning? And what about light? Is that going to require a whole new set of mathematical equations? I’m still interested, but…”
Nathan was lost for words for a few seconds. He’d kind of forgotten the ultimate goal of all of this – allowing Stella to generate new types of mana without having to take up a class skill.
He scratched the back of his head. “Well, it’s not too much farther to get to light, actually. Though we’ll be missing some of the details…”
Stella shook her head. “I can think of so many amazing things I can do with lightning now that I understand how it works! But how do I get there? I need to manipulate charge with magic, but what’s the first step? I don’t just want to understand it, I want to use it!”
She was starting to get frustrated – which was fair. She’d just spent a ton of time learning several college classes worth of math and physics, all with the promise that it would let her shoot lightning.
And now the last leap was the final stumbling block. Nathan thought for a moment.
Natural sources of lightning. Well, there’s the obvious one. And Stella has air mana. Not water mana, but static is all about friction between insulators anyway.
Nathan grinned, then turned to Stella. “Okay, so static electricity is what makes lightning. Static shocks are imbalances of charge that are generated by rubbing things that don’t conduct electricity against one another. For normal lightning, it’s usually about collisions between water, but static can happen when air rubs against itself too.
“I want you to try using air mana to make a bunch of woven bands of air, which are rubbing against each other. Have two different flows, each moving in a different direction and converging on different points. Maybe make the flows with two different gas compositions, if you can?”
Stella frowned at his description, especially when he mentioned making the streams of air have different compositions. She sighed and threw up her hands. “Why not! Let’s try it out.”
She gestured for Nathan to step back. The mage spent a few minutes fiddling with empty air, concentrating intently on something invisible to Nathan.
Then she banished the attempted spell with a frustrated gesture. “No. That doesn’t work…. How about this?”
She fiddled with the spell some more. Nathan would’ve loved to help, but he didn’t understand how to make a spell all that well, so he trusted that Stella could figure it out.
The mage turned back to Nathan, digging her fingers into her auburn hair in frustration. “That doesn’t work either. It feels like cheating, if all I needed to do was rub some air together, and not learn all of that dumb math.” Then she paused. “I wonder… force spells can block lightning, but they start acting strange afterwards. I wonder if they build up charge?”
She turned and jogged back to their suite, Nathan following along behind the agitated mage. The sun was setting and people were heading to dinner, but Stella ignored them and went into the main room, where she pulled out the generator and gestured for Nathan to spin it.
He obliged, putting his back into it. He didn’t know what Stella was planning, but he was going to let her apply the knowledge she’d learned.
Soon enough there was a faint sparking between the generator wires. Stella stuck her finger into the gap, her face intent. The sparks had to sting, but she left her hand there for a minute. She withdrew her hand and conjured a small pane of force between the two wires.
“Keep turning it. I want to see…” She left the force block there for twenty seconds, then reached her hand back into the device. There was a much larger pop this time as Stella’s hand approached the pane of force. She jumped and shook out her hand.
I think the force pane acted a bit like a capacitor, storing a charge. Wild.
She examined the construct before dismissing the force pane and making a more complicated force construct with two panes that joined together in a narrow spike. The spike was aimed at her, and Nathan frowned at the force construct.
But she hadn’t told him to stop, so Nathan kept spinning the generator. After a moment, faint sparks started to bounce around at the point of the force spike. Stella grabbed a spare magnet in one hand and closed her other hand around the point, hiding the sparks. She moved the hand holding the magnet to be next to the hand covering the sparking spike.
“I understand that this is just a moving charge, a current. I know how it’s made, by a moving magnetic field. I can guide it with my magic.”
Her hair started to stand up. It was still tied in a tight braid, but strands escaped and fluttered around her head. Stella extended the hand holding the magnet away from her and pointed her finger out. Faint tendrils of electricity started jumping from her finger, as if it was a van de graaff generator. She started chuckling, ramping up into a full-blown cackle as the tendrils grew stronger and the distinctive crackling of electricity discharge ramped up.
“And if I wrap it with a spinning field from the magnet, I can guide it…” The manifold tendrils narrowed down to a cone, then to a line of crackling electricity extending a foot away from her hand.
The door opened and Khachi walked into the room, turning to ask about the crackling noise in the room. He nearly walked into the faint line of electricity which reached out towards his armor. He fell over on his ass as Stella, still laughing, discontinued the spell with a flourish.
She stood there for a moment, cackling and raising both hands in triumph. Her hands twitched involuntarily and looked faintly burned. She turned to Nathan and gave him a hug, magic robes be damned. Nathan hugged back and was rewarded with a static shock for his trouble. It almost interrupted his attempt to hold back his antimagic as Stella’s still-staticky hair climbed up his nose.
She pushed away, beaming ear-to-ear. “I have two new mana types now. One for electricity, another for magnetism! I’ve never heard of that one before, so I doubt there are many existing spells for it. But that just means I get to invent them!”
She spun, full of excitement, and hugged Khachi as he climbed to his feet. He looked down at Stella and gently patted her on the shoulder.
He turned his attention back to Nathan. “That seems to have gone well?”
Nathan nodded, also smiling. “I think Stella might need some healing though. Please make it thorough.”
She blinked, looking down at her hands. “Oh. Ow. Yes please.”
Khachi sighed, shaking his head as he bent over Stella’s hands, muttering a long prayer to heal the electrical burns.
Those can be scary as hell – getting zapped can leave you with mild skin burns but lethal internal burns.
He urged Khachi to keep going, and he obliged, sweeping Stella with multiple passes of his healing magic.
Stella was having trouble staying still, prancing around the room with excitement. “Electricity! And magnetism! Dragon’s breath, that’s exciting.”
Her enthusiasm was infectious, and Nathan couldn’t help but prompt her. “Congratulations, you understand one of the four fundamental forces of reality! And there’s one more part to it. Light, remember?”
She turned back, a bit flushed. “One of the four? Don’t you think we’ve done enough for one evening?” She stopped talking, mouth still slightly open. “What am I saying? Teach me of light, O master of the mountain!”
Nathan grabbed a slate, making a quick sketch. Once you understood Maxwell’s equations, it was easy to make the jump to generalized electromagnetic waves. You could figure it out yourself if you just thought about it, and all Nathan needed to do was guide Stella in the right direction.
“This is simple. Say you have an independent magnetic field, without a source. Don’t worry about how it started. It just goes from nothing to this vector, then dies out again.” Nathan looked up, judging Stella’s reaction.
She was calming down but looking doubtfully at the slate. “But it can’t come from nothing.”
“Bear with me. Once it goes away, since there’s nothing causing it, it’s a changing magnetic field. So what does that make?” He prompted her by gesturing with the chalk.
“An electric field.”
“Right. Which would be in this direction, perpendicular to the original magnetic field, if slightly offset. But then you have an electric field with no source, so that goes away. And that makes…”
Stella was looking at the slate with some concentration. Nathan could tell she was connecting the dots. “That makes a magnetic field without a source. Just like what you started with. But farther along.”
She looked up at Nathan. “And that’s light? Just alternating electric and magnetic fields? It would just keep going until it ran into something. It’s not a physical thing, just a perpetuating alternating field, traveling perpendicular to the field directions. Just a force...."
Nathan smiled. All it had taken was a little push.
Congratulations, you have Developed the [Low-tier Lecturing] utility skill into [Mid-tier Lecturing].
Utility skill: [Mid-tier Lecturing]
This skill will help you explain concepts in the future, smoothing over gaps and aiding greatly in explanation and understanding. Will not help you convey details you do not know, and will not help you suppress people’s doubts about what you are teaching.
Nathan commented on her statement. “Effectively right. Light is electromagnetic waves. And more than that. You can’t separate out the two fields in light, and they don't really have a directionality in quite the way that it seems. They're also quantized because it’s like a packet of waveforms moving along. I can explain some of that with math, but it gets even more complicated.”
Stella barely heard him. She was looking off into the middle distance, her jaw hanging open. “It’s. Wait. That’s too big…” She sat there, mumbling for a moment.
Khachi squinted at them like they were speaking a different language. Which they essentially were.
Yeah, the language of math, built to describe physical reality.
Stella sat down heavily on the couch. It seemed like the idea Nathan had given her was too big for her to process all at once.
And I didn’t even go over the full thing. You kind of need special relativity and frames of reference to properly understand it. Maybe later!
Khachi spoke up, looking concerned. “Stella? Is there a problem?”
She looked up at him, her gaze unfocused. Then she raised a hand in the air, and it flashed with sparks and a flickering light. The sparks were unfocused and jumped back to Stella’s own hand. She twitched and pulled her hand back as it was shocked, her hair rising into the air once more.
A scabbarded knife on the table next to her had jerked, and Nathan could feel the magnetism mana from here. It felt like warm wires dragging over his skin. He guessed she’d just poured a bunch of electric and magnetic mana together, trying to make light in the way that Nathan had explained.
Mid-tier Identify 5 achieved!
Khachi looked even more worried. “Stella? This is the wrong time to experiment with even more new mana types. Look at me.” He stepped closer, wary of the way her braid had started rising on its own. He shot a desperate look to Nathan, who took the hint.
Nathan stepped forward, burrowing through the aura of charged mana. He grabbed onto Stella’s hand as it reached upwards once again. “Stella, hold on. Don’t go too quickly. Lightning is dangerous, don’t try to make up spells with it on the fly. That’s how you kill yourself. You know better than this.”
