Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

Wolfe smiled at Stephanie. "It looks like we won't be stopping you from remaining as a Cat today."

Both her and the Mana beast snorted in amusement at the joke, but it was the Mana Beast that spoke next.

"Breaking the transformation wouldn't stop her from being a Cat anyhow. I've seen her studying Transformation Magic from the Inheritance Spell that you granted her as your Family member. Or is she one of your Consorts? It wouldn't surprise me at this point, with all the time that she spends sleeping with you." The hound laughed.

"Just a Family member, and part of my first Pentacle." Wolfe laughed.

Wolfe started to draw the spell on the Whiteboard so that he could get a feeling for the complex activation sequence that came with the array. Grand Magic earned its reputation as the most complex of spells, and even with the natural attunement to the flow of Magic that came with being a Fifth Rank Magi, Wolfe was still having issues handling the interwoven flows without them getting tangled and twisting into a knot of useless energy.

Having the Mana Beast here should have been a help, but while it could tell him where he went wrong, it didn't have the capacity to do it on its own yet.

The spell's minimum requirements needed nearly all the mana that Wolfe could handle, so unless he fed the mana to the Beast, it couldn't meet the minimum requirements, and even then, it still lacked the mental capacity to handle all the different flows at once until it was more mature.

Wolfe didn't know how large a full-grown Mana Beast was supposed to be, but right now, it was the size of an adolescent large breed dog, so he assumed it wouldn't get too massive, compared to some beasts, like the Chimera. Though even if it got to twice the size of the Saint Bernard that it resembled, it could be considered somewhat huge. Especially with as fat and fluffy as it was.

"You're almost there. It's just a matter of pacing. You are hurrying too much to try to keep it from collapsing, but the increased speed makes the flows even more unstable as they form. If you slow down a bit more, they should begin to stabilize." The Mana Beast encouraged him.

Wolfe looked at the completed array diagram on the whiteboard and sighed.

That was right, and so was the Mana Beast. No matter how heavy the strain was, he had to slow down to keep the flow from getting unstable.

Slowly, Wolfe began again, sweating with the strain of holding multiple mana flows at the same time as he finished the spell, and the array finally snapped into place, filling the room with a sense of cleanliness that reminded him immediately of the Mana Beast.

Stephanie sighed in relief and began pushing raw mana out through her aura, a practice exercise that new Witches did to get used to the feeling. But as she recovered and new mana began to fill her aura, he could already feel the difference in her aura.

"This would be wonderful for the witches who were forced to cast so many Cursed Talismans." Wolfe muttered as he watched Stephanie stretch out on the bed, enjoying the fresh mana.

"Yeah, I agree. You should make a copy and give it to them." The Mana Beast agreed happily.

"I sense ulterior motives." Wolfe noted.

The beast gave him an innocent look and didn't say anything, which only made Wolfe more suspicious.

His glare made the beast fold in mere seconds, and it blew out a heavy breath that made the tentacles on its face flutter.

"Fine, it would be excruciatingly painful as it tore apart the mutated cells, and someone would have to actively heal them at the same time, since they've mutated so much of their body with curse damage that it would kill them to lose that many of their cells at once. It's not just their skin at that point, most of them have mutated entire organs."

"So, this spell could well kill a bunch of people in the Fortress City?" Wolfe asked.

"Not ones that I would miss." The Mana Beast replied with a canine shrug, which was more of a bob of its head that raised its shoulders.

Again, Wolfe was reminded that magical beasts had a very different standard of morality than he was raised with, but somehow it was still understandable. Why would it care if someone he didn't like died? For one, he probably killed them on purpose, and for two, if they weren't so corrupted, he would have most likely eaten the body.

"Alright, I will make a second one to take with me to go see Priya, and they can decide how much of the city to cover with it. But I'm going to push for the whole Fortress City, and then they can deal with the fallout. They've got witches everywhere, I'm sure they can heal the slow cleansing of Curse Damage from each other." Wolfe agreed.

Stephanie made another silver plate for him, and Wolfe placed it on the table to start over again. The second casting was even more stressful than the first, and he was nearly ready to pass out when he finally managed to get it to activate. The mental strain of casting even two spells was enough that he felt like he had been awake for weeks straight and intensely focused on a task.

He had told Priya that he would be there in three hours, and it had already been over one hour, so he really should get going, but he wasn't sure that he could fly in this state.

The mana beast put a paw on his leg and gave an approving growl.

"Just give it five minutes of rest and the strain should fade from your mind. You did a good job, even by the standards of a Mana Beast. Here, I'll cast a spell to help refresh you so that you can get that disc to the witch city. Just promise me that you will activate it once you're there." The beast demanded.

"You have my word. I wouldn't have made it if I wasn't planning to use it. I'll spread the effect to cover the whole city if I can so that they'll be safe from the curses of the Foreign Witches." Wolfe agreed.

"You're not bad for a biped." The Mana Beast laughed, and Wolfe felt a refreshing flow of mana through his body, clearing his mind and melting away stress while he flopped down on the bed to recover for a few minutes.