First things first, I need to determine which land I need to buy.
I took the map of America I picked up on my way home and got to work. First, I marked all of the pathways on the map alongside the radius of land to buy to mitigate any movement the pathways might have made.
Eight pathways existed in the USA, three of which were under major cities, so they were off the table.
Another three were in bum fuck nowhere like a middle of a desert or straight up mountains.
That left two options, one on the east and one on the west coast.
The next couple of days were spent compiling information about the land and anyone associated with it, with the help of my favorite fluffy organization and some lawyers, as mortal law was not a specialty of mine or my broker.
On the third day, I finally got the papers with info on both places.
Aaaaand not good. Both were already owned by companies intending to build housing projects or some storage on the land. Both companies had already started their projects, so buying that land right now was not possible.
I could try moving to another country, but that was harder. Europe had many old powers still around, and Asia had the same, making the competition harder. Africa and South America got the short end of the stick during the colonial era. While the hidden world was relatively fine, I did not like the existing infrastructure and political regimes. Australia was relatively isolated, and the local powers were not very welcoming to newcomers.
The best option was the USA, with relatively fewer powers, a strong presence in international politics and law that could be easily avoided with enough money.
I started looking through the compiled info. As they say, if not by legal means, then by illegal means. While mind control and other magical means were out of the question, doing some jobs for some rich people, bribery, or just pressure through connections were fair play.
Aaaand finally. I got a lead. Not the best one, but a lead.
The land on the west near Boston and New York was owned by a small development company, but as it is with American capitalism, the smaller company was owned by a medium company and the medium company by a big company, ES Electric, and it was the big company that I was interested in.
The CEO, Mark Rusel, should have enough influence and money to get me the land. And why would he do that? you might ask. Well, that is where the interesting part comes in. The big company recently made their move towards the air transportation industry, and soon after that, the CEO''s daughter was kidnapped around a week ago.
That was common knowledge, with the kidnapping being sold to the public as a typical ransom attempt, but the information I got from my broker was much more interesting. The company made its move because, during research into electric engines for cars, which was its original field of expertise, it found a new technology that should allow for the production of electric planes. As one can imagine, that is a fortune in the making. The company quickly patented the technology before anyone could steal it, but that did not sit well with Doeing.
Doeing was an established airplane company known for its shady business. Just a couple of months earlier, some whistleblowers had gone missing, and that was not the first such case. Doeing was overall evil, as most corporations are, but they put in some extra effort into the bad part.
After ES Electric wouldn’t sell the technology, and many threats and even an assassination attempt, they finally got the daughter of the CEO. The CEO has enough shares to make the decision to sell technology, but he is not stupid. The guy knows that technology is the only thing keeping his daughter alive, so they are at a standstill.
Perfect for me. The only bad news is that, according to my sources, the girl was transported out of the country out of her father''s sphere of influence and disappeared. Finding her would be a pain, even for me, but not impossible. Well, first, I need to locate her and get a photo or something for negotiation leverage.
It was time to get to work. There were many ways of localizing someone, but most required mana to fill the world or a strong connection to other plains to get information from otherworldly entities.
But I had an idea. Shaking with excitement about my first attempt at summoning magic and a judgment ritual, I made my way to the house where I had previously fought the spawn. I went inside the house and started on the first step of my plan. Back in the days of magic, the exact locations of the veins and pathways were marked and prepared for any ritual, but now I had to do it the old way by hand.
Starting in the relative center of the house, I began drawing runes in a spiral-like pattern, with each next rune around 1.618 from the previous, forming a spiral. Next, I placed an empty mana crystal in each of the runic nodes of the spell circle and activated the spell. Looking closely at the mana crystal, I could see a bit of energy seeping into it.
Nice it worked, Holy shit it actually worked. It was a simple gathering-charging circle, but it was probably the first one operating in a long time, and it was made by me on the first try. After patting myself on the back for the excellent rune work, I started on the second part.
Taking out some finely crushed mana crystals, I spread the mist-like powder around. Looking closely, there it was. The mist moved alongside the movement of mana. With the small vein, the movement was minuscule, but it was there. I followed it and finally found its origin. Sure enough, it was in the hallway, probably right where the guy died.
I sat cross-legged next to the opening and started on the ritual circle. The ritual of judgment, or appraisal, as some later called it, was one of the easier ones. Basically, write the name of the god in a summoning circle and the requirements of what you want appraised, and then power it up with a mana crystal or your own mana, and you are done. Just provide something on which the appraisal can be printed. Scroll paper is the best, but it can be dust on the ground just as well.
I drew the circle with the pentagram in the middle, wrote the name of the god at the top, and copied the instructions from the book I had with me. Due to its popularity, appraisal was one of the rituals that easily survived the Inquisition. Everyone could cast it. Depending on what you used in the spell, you would get numerical descriptions of aspects of yourself and the skills you possess. How much detail and what scale was used depends on what you write in the spell, but there was a catch.
If you are not an appraiser, you can’t learn anything new, so if you are cursed but don’t know that, the spell will not say you are cursed, for that you need an appraiser, a follower of the god of records to cast the spell. But it was still valuable. The judgment would be without bias and emotion. If a narcissist and a depressed person ask for an appraisal of their charisma, both get numbers based on what the average person thinks of them rather than their perceived greatness or their lack thereof.
I set the spell for numerical descriptors, with 10 being the human average, as it was customary. Also, I did not include information on skill levels compared to the average, as that would take way too long with this small mana vein.
I finished the circle and activated it with a deep breath. A couple of seconds later, after I almost thought I had messed something up, letters in dark blue ink started to show on the parchment provided.
Name: Samuel Alhazred
Age: 27 years
Race: -
Dexterity left hand: 15
Dexterity right hand: 16
Speed left hand: 16
Shit. I immediately realized my mistake when I saw the letters. I wrote it as is in the book, and it must have been written for some sort of a warrior as bodily details started to show on the paper, details I did not care about.
Like a person quickly hitting escape on a page that might freeze the PC, I reached for the mana crystal. But it was too late. The mana was siphoned out of it, and the spell stopped by itself after the last information.
Charisma: 3
Great, we''re adding insult to injury, are we? I’m surprised it didn’t call me a loser while at it. I went over the spell once again, wiping the parts about my body and telling it to average everything into one stat, as I did not have the mana or time to get everything.
I separated stats that I was interested in. I also removed charisma-based stats from the spell. I did not need commentary on my lack of social skills. Finally, I produced another mama crystal and redid the ritual. My stats started to show in the dark blue ink on the scroll partchment.
<hr>
Name: Samuel Alhazred
Age: 27 years
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Race: -
Stats
Body: 16
Intelligence: 22
Wisdom: 14
Willpower: 22
Mental defense, fear-based: inf
Menta defense, other: 24
Soul: 18
Skills: Multilingual, Authority over mana, Authority over mind, Eldritch madness, Eldritch tongue, Servant to the abyss, Spell casting, Ritual casting, Curse weaving, Full Astral Projection
Secrets: Fire, Space, Death, Mind
Mysteries: Space, Death, Curse, Soul, Mind
Enigmas: Eldritch
<hr>
Not bad, if I say so myself. The stats were the most straightforward to understand. The body was average overall for dexterity, strength, and speed, but hand-to-eye coordination, etc. 16 was not bad. I was relatively well-trained. My father always said, ‘Nothing’s better for holding down an unwilling sacrifice than Brazilian jiu-jitsu’ to keep my body in shape.
Intelligence was the processing power and ability to learn, the base for any wizard. 22 made me probably one of the best currently, but nothing to write home about if considering the possible heights.
Wisdom, the ability to act on the given information and predict the outcome, could be better. Still, I guess that comes with a lot of theory and practice but not many opportunities for actual experience.
Willpower, the mental muscle, the will used to move mana and manipulate the mind. The most important stat for any spellcaster, 22 is also good but not inhuman.
Mental defense for fear, as I thought I''m immune. For other types of attacks, 24 was very high, but if you interact with the void, not much can damage your mind afterward. From what I understand, it is also scaled with willpower. If I wanted a detailed calculation, I would need to find an appraiser, which would be tough since I don’t think there are any of those around anymore, at least for now.
And soul. It was tough to get this stat since you needed to be aware of your own soul in the first place, but I got it. 18 was a lot for the strength of a soul, considering the hard and dangerous training needed. It scales a bit with mental strength, but not that much.
As for skills, multilingual was just knowledge of a couple of languages: Black speech, arcane, Abyssal, Elvish, English, Arabic, and Latin. Black speech to talk to the dead. Arcane for spellcasting. Abyssal for well, the abyss. Elvish for trying and failing to impress elven women. English is obvious. Arabic due to my family roots. Latin was more for archaeology. Quite the list, but Black speech, Arcane and Elvish were very close, know one you know all the rest.
Authority over mana was the ability to control ambient mana for lower-level spells to not use one''s own. It was an ancient skill no longer practiced since you needed, well, ambient mana. The only way to learn it would be to crack mana crystals, lock the mana in a room, and try controlling it, which was a waste of mana no sane person would attempt aside from my family. Especially for a useless skill in a world without mana, but my father did it, making me even more certain that he knew something.
Authority over the mind, the ability to navigate the mind, and to use mental energy. Nothing unusual. Most could do that to some extent.
Eldritch Madness, that one was strange. My family called this ability The Blessing of the Abyss, but the spell used the most common name I see, and others called it the eldritch madness. This was the inability to feel fear of any kind. Eldritch tongue came with that skill, the ability to speak in the language of the void.
Servant to the abyss was the contract I had with the eldritch god.
Spell casting, ritual casting, and curse weaving were three different applications of mana: the runes and mana control for normal spells, the ability to interact with ritual circles, and the ability to weave curses using symbols.
And finally, Full Astral Projection, the ability to push the soul out of the body. Useful for training the soul but dangerous, exceptionally so, as it leaves the body without any control and leaves the soul bare without the shell of the flesh. But it also allows for interacting with other souls and is a must-know ability for any mage interested in souls.
Secrets and mysteries were representations of knowledge, but the thing that caught my attention was the enigma. I did not think the spell would recognize an enigma. Was it because I recognized it as such? Enigmas were not common, and some said they were not real, but here one was technically made real by the spell.
With all the excitement, I almost didn''t catch the one thing on the sheet. The race was left blank. From all I knew, I should be a human. I was not sure who or what my mother was, but I never showed any signs of a bloodline awakening, and god knows I looked. But then again, what was the line for being human? Were the effects of my contract enough for the spell to not be comfortable calling me one? God, I could use an appraiser right about now. Blank also meant that I might have asked for it in the spell in the wrong way, but I had no way to tell. Well, there''s no use in dwelling on it. I went over the spell once again to make sure everything was fine and dropped the subject. At least for now.
It was time to summon something. finally.
After a couple of swearwords about how many mana crystals I had to use to summon a small bug with this low magic concentration, I was done with the summoning circle. The whole operation was made easier by the base being reusable from my previous ritual.
Taking a bunch of moon powder, an alchemical ingredient made during a full moon, I kneeled in front of the vein and started to chant in the arcane speech, tracing runic shapes in the air with one hand while pointing my staff at the opening with the other.
After a few minutes, I finally threw the powder into the middle of the circle under the vein, finished the chant, and waited. For a second, I thought that I might have messed up. But then I could feel something akin to a reverberation, a wave traveling through the vein like a string being pulled and then released, and after a while, pop.
A weird creature showed up.
A Moonhunter Dragonfly. Similar to a dragonfly in shape, the creature was all white with a black head and two large eyes, looking like two moons replacing eyes in esocket. If someone looked closer, they would notice that the craters and colors of the moon-eyes didn’t align with the moon in our orbit.
The creature hovered over the circle, looking curiously around, only to freeze a bit when it noticed the moon through the opened window.
I whistled at it from the lack of things to do to get its attention. How do you call over a Moonhunter Dragonfly from another dimension? Should I have gone with pstpstpst or mooooooon mooooooon or something?
But my musings were cut short as the creature turned to me. I took out more of the powder from my pocket, and the thing made for it as I quickly pulled my hand back as if taking a dog''s bone right from underneath its nose.
The bug froze in the air now, with a bit of hostility behind its strange eyes. The feisty little thing was probably judging if it could take me on. I locked my eyes with it, raising slightly from my knees, making myself look hostile, and the bug moved back a bit.
Now it was time to bargain.
I took out a photo of the CEO''s daughter and laid it on one side, with a bit of the powder next to it. The offer was clear, and the creature probably was used to bargains, as it moved back a bit without thinking.
I increased the powder. It was still a reasonable offer, but the creature moved back again. Now I started pulling the phono to myself as the bug quickly moved forward but still hovered away from me.
I added a pinch to the powder on the ground, and the summon landed on the photo, the bargain was made. Now, it was time for the creature to work. I could see it turn its head towards the night sky, and the bug’s moon-like eyes started to spin quicker and quicker.
I waited with bated breath. If I could find the girl on the first try, it would be a fantastic, quick job.
But the hunting ability of the fly was not that great. The catch was, the fly could hunt anything that was currently lit up by the moon as it looked through the moon’s light itself, so if my target was inside during the night and away from windows, you know like a kidnapping victim in a hideout for example, it wouldn’t do shit. I was hoping that at least one of the people on the list was currently next to an open window.
The eyes stopped spinning, and the summon started to gouge itself on the powder. There was no reaction. I sighed. After the meal was done, I laid out the next photo with the same amount of powder.
It was one of the possible so-called “cleaners” working for a corporation that seemed to disappear after the kidnapping.
Their identities were strongly protected, and while the frumentarii were good with magic and myth, they weren''t that good with technology, sadly. So, getting addresses or real identities was almost impossible when they were protected by a giant corporation.
Nothing again, I breathed out as the creature started to gauge itself on the powder. I repeated the process with three more photos, swearing at my crumpling amount of powder, and finally, on the fourth photo, the creature froze.
Good.
I focused on the bug and felt a tug on my subconscious, similar to the one made by the spawn but not hostile. Looking through the eyes of a bug was a pain, and getting anything from it would be hard, but I had to try. I focused on the tug, allowing it to enter my mind, and concentrated as hard as possible.
I saw the world from the moon, with a vision that was almost 360 degrees, like I was looking through some weird camera. The unnatural way of seeing was beamed straight to my brain, and I could feel a headache coming on.
My vision quickened as I flew from the moon with the light, everything turning to blur as I gritted my teeth to avoid puking from the ride. Finally, I could see a man. He was apparently on the job, dressed in black, in the garden of an apartment complex. I assume someone was about to have an accident.
But now came the most challenging part. I needed to get the address. I could see everything around me, but getting letters through my distorted vision was a pain. I desperately looked around as I felt the vision slip from me. There was a number—I think 44. But 44, what street? The number was big enough to read, but deciphering the distorted letters was another thing.
The vision was ending, and the image was becoming blurry. Now, I couldn’t even make up the letters. I strained my mind to get something, to cling to the image with all the mental strength I could. But no such luck, the distortion was getting worse and worse.
Finally, with my last thought, I looked up towards the horizon, and there it was. This had to be Manhattan, and the thing in the distance would be the Freedom Tower, so this was an apartment complex on the right bank.
The vision ended, and a sharp headache assaulted me.
I looked at the bug considering if I should risk redoing the vision to get more info, headache be damned but the summon, now visibly rounder, was apparently full as the creature slowly and lethargically made its way towards the vein.
I chuckled a bit as it got stuck on the entrance. It was now rounder from the powder, barely fitting through. Finally, after giving it a bit of a push, the summon was gone, and I fired up the Maps app to look through the street view, finally localizing the apartment complex.
I hoped to get more substantial info, but the night was young. I assume that whatever job the guy had, he would do it later in the night when everyone was asleep. I should have around three hours before he was gone, and I could get there in two.
Somebody was going to go missing tonight, and it wasn’t the people in the apartment.