The reservoir, while incredibly useful, had certain limitations. First was the maximum capacity. I estimated that when fully charged with primal energy, it had roughly 10% of the stone’s maximum potential energy. However, the energy could be regulated and, most importantly, recharged as fast as I could pump energy into the orichalcum.
Second, was what I was defining as energy leakage. Determining how much energy left the reservoir due to this leakage was a challenge, which required hours of testing.
I deduced that the closer I got to the max capacity, the higher the leakage. At maximum charge, the loss was roughly 5% of the total capacity per minute. This decreased as the current energy level decreased. That meant, if I desired to keep the reservoir at max capacity, I needed to input at least 5% of the total max charge per minute or 0.08% per second, which, with a decent campfire, was easy with my gold and silver heat absorption ring.
A single campfire with maximum energy withdrawal using my heat absorption ring could add roughly 0.5% of the total energy capacity to the ring per second, since, after testing, it took four minutes to fill.
The calculations were rather inaccurate since I had to account for the increased leakage as the orichalcum filled with primal energy. Interestingly enough, the orichalcum emitted a soft yellow glow as it was filled with primal energy.
It took roughly an hour for the energy in the reservoir to reach effectively zero, via leakage only.
The quality of the arcane circle design made a massive impact on this leakage; drawing the circuit into dirt made the leakage nearly five times worse.
I was rather excited to see how efficient platinum was compared to gold and silver, only to be utterly crushed.
Platinum, for some reason or another, was horribly inefficient to use; even dirt was better. I drew shape transformation into the dirt, and while I needed a large amount of energy over a long period of time to do any large-scale shape transformation, with my reservoir, small transformations were simple. So, I melted down a few pieces of jewelry and formed a six-inch-wide ring, then used that as the basis for a simple Candle circuit.
It actively resisted the primal energy to the point where I had to push my binding to its maximum to actually get the candle to ignite.
I had roughly five pounds of platinum, a rare and valuable metal, but useless for magic. I almost regretted giving away most of the gold.
“Why would I ever want to limit the amount of power my circuit has by using platinum. I could just change the binding using my animus.” I muttered.
Then, just like that, I realised the answer.
“Alloys! of course,” I said, shaking my head. Different metals, different efficiencies; however, the difference was relatively minor, perhaps a four or five percent at best, with gold being the best. If I combined gold and platinum, I could precisely control the power of an arcane circuit without the animus.
This revelation also led to another conclusion: the stoves and burners, with mechanical controls to change the height of the flame, could work by simply swapping out the rings for incomplete arcane circles for different alloys of platinum.
The system of gears and levers to control the switching would take some time to engineer, but I could if I had the resources. More complex mechanisms like the horseless carriages, though, were beyond my skills, for now.
This meant that for the immediate future, the platinum was useless to me. The black silk sack I threw into my pocket before leaving the vault contained a handful of small chickpea-sized cut diamonds.
It was an odd experience, staring down at a handful of invaluable gems, each one was worth ten golden royals at least.
Eight golden royals, 95 silver eagles, seven platinum rings, one with Azurite, three platinum necklaces, two platinum bridal bands, three sets of platinum earrings, one with rubies, and a stunning jewel-encrusted five-pointed platinum crown.
Ignoring my magical tools, such as swords and energy rings. My total wealth had to be roughly seven to eight hundred golden royals, depending on the value of the gems. It could be significantly more if the pieces were historically significant, which I was quite sure the crown and a few of the necklaces were.
Amusing as it was, carrying all this on my person was dangerous, and I intended to bury the treasure until such a time that I would need it.
The final and most intriguing item was the scroll. After an hour of examination, paying attention to every rune, using every ounce of my understanding and magical knowledge, I found nothing. The entire thing was nonsense of the highest order, with no perceived structure.
It said something, I was sure, but what was hiding beneath the unending sprawl of runes was beyond my ability to decipher. It was as if it were made specifically to confuse the mind and befuddle wits.
I sighed and tossed the scroll into my pack. “Do any of you have any ideas?” I asked the burnt corpses around me.
After my dramatic departure, there were, of course, a few followers who deemed the risk worth the reward. It seemed that showing a perceived limitation in my magic was the perfect catalyst for these opportunists to throw caution to the wind and attempt to kill a magus. Their just reward was being burnt alive trying to stealthily assassinate me in the night.
I rested in the middle of a large track of rocky terrain somewhere in the northeastern center of Aneira. The grass was short and thick. Thin waist-high trees and even shorter shrubs dotted the terrain. The sky was overcast and looked to be getting ready to rain. At this moment, I was in a bit of an impasse.
I had the foundations of every transformation, except for nature. It was the only barrier between me and fleeing south to Helios or Ferosia. A magus on the run was not a magus who could create and innovate on their ideas.
There was only one place that would certainly have the information I desired, and that would be the Imperial capital city, Felantier, which was also home to the Magisterium and the College of Mystic Science.
I did not dare to presume I could steal from them. To even attempt it would be the height of stupidity, yet here I was heading north to the capital. There had to be a way to get that information, hopefully in the form of an Ocularum. Yet I could find no solution to the problem. I almost wanted to turn back, to take my knowledge and flee south and find some long-term lodgings and practice my magic.
I couldn't care less about my own people, the Northmen. Perhaps there could be information there about my father, but I didn't care to trudge through an icy Tundra. If I ever headed south, my mother would give me answers, willingly or not.
Shrugging, I stood searching the fools who tried to kill me, finding only a few bits and two eagles. One of the men had a crossbow, which I stole and strapped to Cole.
~
After traveling for an hour, I buried most of my treasure under an odd-shaped stone in the middle of a field, leaving me with eight royals, three diamonds from the small sack, and the diamond ring I stole from headman Jules. The rest, including the ring with the large azurite jem and jewel-encrusted crown, I left buried.
The enchanted sword, while impressive, was a dead giveaway since no one in their right mind would use a metal sheath. It had to be left behind.
Opening my map, I gauged how long it would be before I reached a town. Traveling through this massive rocky grassland was considerably slower than a highway, but it offered more safety. More than likely, Heywood would increase the bounty significantly as soon as he reached Greystone.
Enoras, of course, would react badly to his hard-earned wealth and no doubt ill-gotten gems and jewelry being foisted upon the peasants. This act will sew discontent, firmly placing me as the hero in this story.
Their attempts to smear my name will fall on deaf ears and only serve as fuel for the commoners' anger towards their betters. Whether those peasants were jailed, killed, or brutalized didn't matter to me in the slightest. In fact, I hoped he would be brutal and merciless in his attempts to retrieve his lost goods. The only worry was: how would Heywood respond?
Two Weeks Later.
After enough travel, I reached the outskirts of Jorhas, a small town a hundred miles south of the imperial capital. It was a little larger than Portsmouth but had no wall. As I approached, guards in simple brigandine and armed with clubs were walking about, looking travelers over, but not stopping or harassing anyone.
It was raining rather heavily, so someone approaching on horseback with a hood pulled low was significantly less suspicious.
This close to the Capitol, I assumed that most people were, at least by proxy, a part of the Magisterum’s information network. But I was hungry, had almost no food, and hunting was not one of my skills.
‘One day and done. Leave in the morning, keep to yourself.’
It didn't take long for me to find an Inn; it was a small building, but inside was reasonably well furnished. Surprisingly, the place was empty of people even though the town sat on a highway. I wasn't in the mood for any conversation, I paid the owner for a room, clothes, a wash bucket, and food, and collapsed into the bed for some much-needed rest.
~
“They say she has enough fire to burn entire armies to ash and melt the armor off their shoulders in seconds.” The old man said to the two children, listening eagerly. I sat in a corner of the main room nursing a bowl of stew while listening to the conversation from the other patrons.
No one paid much attention to me, which was fortunate. Now I sat in the main room of a tavern listening to an old man tell my story.
“Not a moon ago, Myr, using magic, scaled the massive fortifications of Greystone, secreting her way into Merchant Enoras’s home, stealing thousands of royals worth of valuables.”
The children gasped, “What she do with the treasure?” the young boy asked.
The old man smiled, stroking his long beard. “After she escaped, she walked into town without mask or a hood. Then, without hesitation, she threw the treasure into the crowd, bathing men and women in gold and jewels.” The old man paused, his enraptured audience hanging on his every word. “Then what did the people do after seeing this generosity? Did they take the bounty? No, the people, grateful for the blessings of gold, allowed her to leave; not a one raised a hand to stop her.”
“Where is she now?” The girl asked.
"No one knows, but word spread that they done cut the bounty,”
‘What?’
“What?” The boy asked.
“Aye dropped it to 250 royals, no land, no noble title. At this point, ain't no one but the desperate gonna risk their lives fignin’ a magus.”
‘Why would they do this? A significantly lowered bounty would reduce the number of people coming after me, allowing me to operate freely. Is that the point? Give me a false sense of confidence as they track my movements?’
I bit my lips as I considered how Heywood would use this to his advantage.
‘Lull me into a false sense of security and attack when I’m the most unprepared? If they understood my personality enough, they would assume that I would head north to secure more power. Would they really risk attacking me in the Imperial Capitol?’
I sighed and leaned back into my chair.
‘None of it really matters if I can't get access to Enchanting knowledge. I just need that last puzzle piece, and everything else is just hard work and study.’
Hoping that I would find some answers in the scroll, I studied it night after night without any progress. Either the scroll was entirely nonsense, or what was written was so cryptic that it would require years of study to answer.
‘I’ll be patient and travel cautiously; if they think I’ll act without caution, they are sadly mistaken.’
A fat man walked into the inn and sat next to Ruben, interrupting his storytelling. “Hey, Ruben, heard the news?”
“What is it?” Ruben asked.
I got up and turned to leave.
“Duke Rembrose is throwing his lot in to get his daughter the crown.”
There were five people in the empire with the ducal title. Duke Mendel, the liege lord for Baron Redstone, who controlled much of the south. Duke Rembrose, who governs the lands just south of the Gracian Mountains. To the east was Duchess Chass, who had the largest land under her, though half of it was taken up by the Dalianar Forest, the Storm Peaks, and the Great Tar Flats. The flats and forest could hardly be called her land, but official maps said otherwise.
Duke Korass, who rules the land just north of Mendel, and finally Duke Arledan, who governs the western region of the empire. The competition the dukes were having to get one of their daughters to become the empress consort was of little interest to me.
I did hope a war would break out, however. It would be a splendid distraction since most dukes had a few magi in their service. The Magisterium’s eyes would be focused on that battle instead of on me.
Even from Greystone, I had been hearing about the competition. A massive amount of coin in bribes, trade agreements, gifts, ancient artifacts, anything and everything that could get them the throne would be offered.
Nevron Kelian the V, a man roughly my age, was apparently being rather mercurial with his selection. It wasn't a concern of mine, regardless of who he chose.
~
I traveled south for a day, turned east, and made a massive loop back towards the north. If Heywood intended to lull me into being reckless, I would do the exact opposite; become even more paranoid.
I used a simple shape transformation to attach a ring to the end of the stirrup on the crossbow.
Recoil was a problem I wasn't able to fix at the moment, but I found roughly three percent of the total power of the reservoir was the most my shoulder could tolerate without pain. Even at such a low power, the force behind it was incredible. Far surpassing the energy furnace. Then, adding a massive amount of torque to the bolt and heating it near white hot made for a deadly weapon that could burrow halfway into the bark of a thick oak.
I grinned at the smoking hole left behind. Any normal armor wouldn't stand a chance against it.
The final step was to add regulation runes to properly mimic the throughput from me changing the binding strength with my animus.
The arcane circle to control the storage needed the orichalcum inside the sphere of influence to store and extract the primal energy. What if, instead of orichalcum, a normal metal were added? Using iron resulted in it simply transmitting the energy as if the orichalcum was already at its maximum capacity.
Without it, there was no transfer of energy. This opened a new paradigm for me. If all I needed was a bit of metal inside the sphere of influence, I could use any metal as a sort of switch to turn on and off a circuit without the need for an incomplete arcane circle.
My campfire was burning brightly, with my heat absorption ring constantly filling my amulet.
I created a binding between it and a small flat stone with the arcane reservoir circuit, and the output of that circuit led to my cookpot. After binding everything, nothing happened. Then I took out my dagger and placed it inside the sphere of influence for the circuit carved into the stone.
The arcane reservoir activated, and since iron either couldn't store any primal energy or stored almost none, the energy was transmitted to the cookpot. In seconds, the water heated and boiled.
‘Interesting. I can remotely activate a circuit without being anywhere near it.’
Of course, I could do the same thing with my animus, but a mundane person could now do the same. I only needed to create the initial binding. With alloys of platinum, not only could they turn it on and off, but they could also control the relative strength of the circuit. Placing platinum inside the sphere of influence for the energy storage reduced the throughput to almost zero.
‘So many ways to use this, especially with alloys of platinum, even better than replacing the circle.’
I was rather confident I could build the stoves and burners in Darion’s Dish. I just needed to sit down, remain stationary, and study. But not yet, there was one last hurdle, one last piece I needed, before then.
I took a deep breath and bedded down for the night. The air around me was comfortable and toasty as I considered where I should go and what I should become after I learned enchanting.