Deus Necros

Chapter 503: Equivalent Exchange

He remembered the very first night, in the Tower’s top floor at Van Dijk’s study, stumbling through Algad’s sentences as if they were a foreign tongue, and the pain that followed with each word he read. he was somehow expected to already know. Since then, the name had gathered shadows. It was there, but not everywhere. You found Algad where the world forgot to lock the door.

After having done some research and asked about him a few days ago Ludwig learned a few truths.

The inquiries had drawn thin smiles and turned backs. Truth travels slower when it’s been burnt before. But enough scraps had clung to rumor to assemble a picture.

A whole collection of Hcil Algad was deemed too dangerous for the public, and was branded as heretic and dark knowledge. Making them incredibly hard to obtain as they were burnt to a crisp.

He could almost smell the ash of old libraries in the phrasing, “too dangerous”, a label that usually meant “too honest” or “too useful for the wrong hands.” Bonfires had eaten the bulk of the man’s life’s work, and the world called it safety.

But Ludwig has one of his volumes in hand. It was an old looking leathered book, it wasn’t thick but felt very heavy. The texture was quite… worrisome as it felt like it was some form of skin instead of leather.

He turned it over in his hands and tried not to dwell on the grain, fine, tight, almost human in a way that made his scalp itch. It weighed more than its size permitted, as if ideas had mass and had been left to thicken inside. The corners were smooth, not from care but from use.

“Dark Theory of Magic. By Hcil Algad, Volume 3.” Ludwig muttered.

Saying the title aloud steadied him. The words carried an austerity that promised no comfort, only clarity sharpened to a knife.

“This looks pretty advanced… but aren’t you missing the first volumes to be reading from here?”

Thomas drifted closer, eyes skimming lines he could not turn. He sounded smugly pedagogical, like a tutor ready with scold and sigh.

“I realized something about this guy’s works, though it’s part of a set, in itself it can be considered a separate segment, each book can be read by itself.” Ludwig said as he opened and began scrolling through the pages.

The pages rasped in a slow, steady rhythm under his thumb. Algad did not invite; he demanded. Each paragraph unfolded like a mechanism: term, proof, consequence. Ludwig let his breath synchronize to the movement, taking the information in the way a runner learns to take a hill, steady, unpanicked, accepting the burn.

Almost immediately, the same pang of pain flashed through his mind, but unlike the first day, this was far tolerable. Almost similar to the headache one feels when its been long since they last had coffee.

The pressure built behind his eyes, a narrow-band ache that pinned thoughts together until they sparked. It was the particular pain of having your definitions rearranged. He grimaced, blinked, and read on. Tolerable. Useful, even, if endured.

Spending close to three hours, Ludwig finished reading the book. Though it didn’t help him one bit in solving the issue he was having with avoiding Master Van Dijk’s spells. It did give him a wider perspective.

He closed the volume carefully, letting the cover find its rest. The lamps had not dimmed, but the light felt thinner, the room wider. His problem, Van Dijk’s rain, remained a wall. But the shape of the wall had changed. Knowing what a surface is made of does not make it less solid, but it tells you where to strike.

Dark Magic after all was basically all theory and risky craft. Quite the major portion of it was sacrifices and rituals for unholy entities who would share some of their power when given something in exchange. A novice Dark Mage will always end up in an unfair trade, but a wiser more experienced one will always come out on top.

Algad had written like a jurist drafting contracts for reluctant gods. The arithmetic of it was simple in premise and brutal in practice: an exchange must be made, and the art lies in naming the price so that you pay in sand and receive in iron. Fools bleed themselves dry; the patient bleed the world and leave smiling.

Ludwig looked at the Codex and realized that what he was missing was just that. An equivalent exchange. All the spells that the Lich had in his book were somewhat of an exchange being done. But the Lich never specified which thing to exchange with, nor which entity to do the exchanging with, no wonder although the spells looked almost perfect without that part… none of them will function.

His thumb tapped the Codex’s words again, the spells of the Lich inside. There, empty space where a name should be. There, notation where a seal should sit. The structure had been left intact but the heart withheld, either out of paranoia or pettiness or a desire to make any thief work for it. The missing keystone wasn’t a rune. It was a bargain.

Dark Bullet and Dark Tide were simple, the exchange was costing Mana and Ludwig had that. But for other more advanced spells…

He felt the slow curl of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Payment he could make. Payment he should not make. That was the calculus now. He slid the Codex closer, the page shivering once in the lamplight.

Ludwig’s lips curled, “I think I figured it out,” he stood up as he opened the pages and scrolled all the way to a simpler looking spell.

Salem’s head tracked the movement lazily, tail-tip flicking in a punctuation mark. The lantern gave a tiny, curious thrum. Ludwig planted his feet and let his shoulders loosen, as if preparing to lift a weight.

Ludwig raised his palm facing forward as he read through the Codex. “Umbral Rupture.” He muttered.

The word landed like a pebble dropped into a deep well. Light gathered at his palm, a seed of cold brilliance, then unspooled into a thin smoke-cord that sank into the air as if it were water. Across the room, space pinched in on itself and made a sound like a hair being plucked. For a heartbeat, the surface of reality dimpled, then smoothed, leaving only a smell like struck flint.

“Ah, unfortunate looks like it failed…” Thomas said disgruntledly.

He sounded disappointed on principle, as if failure were more entertaining when it happened dramatically. He leaned his chin on Ludwig’s shoulder with theatrical pity.

A small shake however from the lantern and the small smirk on Ludwig’s face made Thomas immediately wary.

The lantern ticked once. Salem’s ears pricked. Ludwig did not move his hand. The smirk lived only in the set of his mouth and the light that narrowed his eyes.

[You have Learned Umbral Rupture]

[You have Failed to use Umbral Rupture due to the lack of a target.]

[Your Proficiency in Umbral Rupture has increased slightly]

The notices skimmed the edge of his sight, crisp and clean as carved slate. Success tucked inside failure like a blade inside a cane.

“Well,” Ludwig said as he looked toward the Lantern, “This wasn’t so hard now was it?”

His voice stayed friendly, almost apologetic, as if he regretted proving a point. The lantern’s silence turned brittle. Salem blinked slowly, unimpressed, then began to wash one paw with studied indifference. The lamplight hummed, and somewhere far below, the Tower’s old stones settled with a whisper, as if making a note of the name of the new spell.