Throne of Magical Arcana

After pressing the last key, Lucien slowly removed his hands from the keyboard. A feeling of accomplishment rose in his mind. Through the three weeks of diligent practice, now Lucien could play the masterpiece relatively fluently with some simple skills. Of course, it was not perfect, but Lucien believed that Mr. Victor could easily tell its value.

“Lucien… you…” Felicia was standing beside the door with her hand on the doorknob, looking very confused but also surprised.

“Felicia, sorry, I didn’t notice you were here.” Lucien stood up and pushed the piano stool under the keyboard, “What did you say?”

“The song you played… was quite impressive. You’ve… made great progress.” Felicia looked away. She was not used to making compliments, especially to Lucien.

“Thank you, Felicia.” Grabbing his music sheets, Lucien walked to Felicia, “I gotta go now. It looks like a storm is coming.”

In the Month of Harvest (September), there was always a downpour every few days. The weather today was very muggy, and the sky was much darker than usual.

“Yes… Sure. See you tomorrow, Lucien.” Felicia was kind of distracted.

When Lucien came downstairs, he saw Athy asking the servants to do cleaning there. Lucien walked toward him asked, “Mr. Athy, did you see Mr. Victor? I have something to tell him.”

“Mr. Victor just left for the cemetery. I’m afraid he might not be able to come back until late.” Athy was always polite and serious, “Would you like to leave a message?”

“It’s alright. I’m not in a hurry. Thank you, Athy.” Lucien waved his hands. He could talk to Victor in person the next day. Tonight he had some magic experiments to carry out, which were his priority.

In the last few weeks, Lucien managed to read the journal, Arcana, many times. With the help of the literature stored in his spirit library, his basic knowledge foundation grew more solid. Combining that with what he had learned about vibrational frequency, Lucien improved the spell “Homan Oscillation” and created two new apprentice-level spells.

For most apprentices, the development of their spiritual power often was much faster than the accumulation of their knowledge. Lucien, on the other hand, was facing a totally opposite situation due to his background. His spiritual power was still insufficient for casting ten apprentice spells consecutively at a time.

…………

In the early evening, on his way to auntie Alisa’s place, Lucien noticed that there was a new secret message on the wall.

“We have news about the evil creatures. Tonight. Ten o’clock. The same place,” said the secret message.

Lucien kept walking as though he saw nothing. In his mind, he was guessing the intention of this message. He never attended the meeting after his first appearance, so it seemed they were using the information to lure him.

Another reason that Lucien was this cautious was the raven he saw last time on his way back home from the apprentice meeting. When Lucien first encountered the raven, he didn’t put any thought into it, since there were countless ravens in Aalto. However, afterwards he recalled what he had read in the notes – raven was the most common summoned pet. The more he thought about it, the more concerned he felt. Now Lucien couldn’t help worrying that the message might be a trap, in case it would probably have been set by the raven’s master.

However, the attraction exerted by the information was irresistible. Lucien always yearned for the Crying Soul potion, which could reveal the power hidden in a developed body. He had been looking for the ingredients for quite a long time. Now, he already had the Corpse Mushroom and the brain tissue of the Aquatic Zombie, so Lucien wanted to get Revenant Dust and Moonlight Rose as soon as possible. Except for using the blood of a revenant to summon another, Lucien couldn’t come up with a second way to get any revenant dust in Aalto, especially under the watch of the church.

Chewing his bread, Lucien was thinking carefully, struggling between his feeling of insecurity and his desire. Finally, Lucien decided to accept the invitation. However, before going there, he needed to be prepared.

…………

Nighttime, in Lucien’s lab.

On the magic circle carved on the stone table, a cup-sized black container was being heated over the blue fire, in which a certain kind of thick red liquid was boiling.

Lucien’s face looked very serious. He was stirring the liquid in the container with a long ceramic stick. In his right hand, there was a test tube with some black liquid in it. Pouring it into the container, Lucien slowly mixed them up.

Every drop of the black liquid brought a gauze of white mist. As if it was alive, the red liquid kept shrinking fiercely and became thicker and thicker, like gel. Lucien knew that a tiny mistake would cause a devastating explosion. He must keep concentrating.

Mixing all the black liquid with the red one, Lucien pressed his right hand on the circle and use his spiritual power to change the way the circle worked. Many red thin lines emerged and covered the container. Meanwhile, Lucien started casting. A white beam of cold light showed up between his fingers and flashed into the container.

Heat met cold, but the magic red lines prevented the gel from exploding, and it slowly became more stable.

When the white mist around it slowly disappeared, only a small amount of flame-colored gel was left in the black container. Lucien carefully put the very thick gel into a glass tube and sealed it, which was the last step required to make the Flame Gel.

Lucien found the making process in the witch’s notes. According to her description, he guessed the Flame Gel should be as powerful as napalm.

In order to improve its power, Lucien was about to add some nitroglycerin into the formula, but in the end he decided not to, because he didn’t want to turn his new lab into a heap of ruins for being too hasty.

In a box in the corner of his lab, there were seven tubes, each of them containing different potions. Two of them were Flame Gel, two other were Storm, which was used for fast healing and boosting energy, and the last three were Brown Owl, which could accelerate the speed of spiritual power recovery.

Lucien put all seven glass tubes, along with the Flame Gel he had just made, into the small pockets of his black robe. They were made specially for safely carrying different potions and magic reagents.

Then, he opened his own notes lying on the table, in which he wrote down the structures and the principles of the two new apprentice spells that he had created. Based on his knowledge of vibration and frequency and after hundreds of tests, Lucien improved the spell Homan Oscillation, and thus he had his own new spells: one called Bat Screaming and the other The Professor’s Oscillating Hand.

After closing the notebook, Lucien climbed back to the room and lay down on his bed to have a bit of rest.

Lucien left his shack that night at nine forty.