Over the past two days, whenever Frederick had a spare moment, he took out a few grains of wheat to examine.
When he left Chestnut Village, he'd asked for a handful of enhanced wheat seeds. Whenever he had some free time, he studied them closely and even chewed a few.
But he still couldn't find any difference between these seeds and ordinary wheat seeds. Mixed together, they were impossible to tell apart—until he met an expert.
He was now in a place called Oak Village, where the headquarters overseeing the canal excavation had been set up.
There were civil engineering experts at Weissenburg University. Building on Frederick's surveying and design work, they had optimized the canal's route, shortening it from sixteen kilometers to less than ten, and planned to build a dedicated commercial city at Oak Village.
Though the route was shorter, it now required cutting through several hills, so the overall amount of work had barely changed.
The craftsmen and workers from the Stonemasons' Guild in the City of Nuremberg had begun arriving after receiving thirty percent of their payment in advance. Frederick had come to meet with their master craftsman, Edward, and discuss the construction work.
The civil engineering experts from Weissenburg University were working here too, led by Vice Principal Manuel.
As soon as the Necromancer saw the wheat seeds in Frederick's hand, he asked, "Headmaster, where did you find these? They're so full of vitality."
"Oh?" Frederick asked in surprise. "You can tell?"
Manuel sat down in a nearby chair and took the seeds Frederick offered him. After examining them, he said, "We Necromancers are evil people who manipulate life force, so we're especially sensitive to it. It's like how a drunk can tell which liquor is stronger, or a rider can tell at a glance which horse is better."
Frederick had never talked with him about necromancy before. Since there was still some time before the project meeting, he asked, "I heard you can manipulate corpses too?"
"Sure, but they have to have died only a few days ago, while they still have muscles."
"Necromancy that manipulates corpses uses a kind of simulated life force to give them false life. In our hands, they're like puppets on strings."
"That's why ordinary people see us as devils. Some people even make us key players in their schemes."
"For example, someone might poison his father, then have a Necromancer manipulate the corpse into announcing, as if he were still alive, that all his property should go to the murderer."
"There are even more disgusting things. You'll find out when you're older."
"We show up on battlefields too. We can make dead soldiers die a few more times."
"Back when Constantinople was in turmoil, a warlord demanded that we hand over all the women at the university and in the library for his troops to abuse."
"We told him he and his officers could come in first and pick their favorites, then poisoned them all at a banquet."
"After that, I manipulated the warlord's corpse to order the road to the harbor cleared. But they saw through the ruse halfway there. His behavior didn't match his usual manner. We'd only just begun retreating, so we ended up fighting."
"All the senior officers in that army had died by then. I made the dead soldiers stand up again, and that finally scared the rest away. In the end, we all escaped aboard ships and left Constantinople."
Frederick understood, but had one more question. "Huh? I thought Necromancers could control skeletons."
Manuel shook his head. "Those are Undead Mages. Their specialty is Virtual Soul. The control cores Aumert studies for Golem Puppets were developed from their work."
"In our eyes, Undead Mages and Golem Puppet makers are just different branches of the same magical system. Both revolve around Virtual Soul. The Undead Mages use Magic Element Muscle to control bones, while Golem Puppet makers create Magic Muscle and Metal Skeletons themselves."
"But don't say that to Aumert. They hate being compared to Undead Mages."
Frederick understood. The world of magic really was full of wonders.
He pointed to the seeds. "Matthias enhanced these. Supposedly, they can increase the yield."
Manuel suddenly understood. "I see. No wonder. He once asked me for advice about life force."
Frederick asked curiously, "So, did he infuse the seeds with the same false life force used in necromancy?"
"No." Manuel shook his head. "The life force in this wheat is real. I think he used some method to increase it and make it more active."
"This wheat is livelier and hardier than ordinary wheat. It should definitely produce a higher yield."
"He really is a genius. This sort of thing only existed in theory, yet he managed to make it happen by controlling it externally."
"In theory, if this method could be used on people, it could make them immortal."
Frederick was shocked by this magic that defied the laws of fate. Maybe I should ask Matthias if his QQ number is 337845818.
"But that's only in theory." Manuel shrugged and handed the seeds back to Frederick. "The human body is like a sieve, and life force is like water. As the body grows old, more and more holes appear, and the water leaks out faster and faster. In the end, no amount of life force is enough."
"So far, there's no consensus on how life force affects the body. The only thing everyone agrees on is that more false life force than the human body can withstand will cause mutations."
"There's another important point: no one has ever determined whether enhancement can be controlled."
"My teacher's teacher once tried to enhance his own life force with false life force. He spent a long time refining the theory, and then... his sphincter turned into something like a pair of wings."
"My teacher experimented with a chicken. It grew six wings and died not long afterward."
"I don't dare follow in their footsteps, and I don't let my students venture into this field either."
"Compared to humans and other animals, plants are much simpler, and they're more tolerant of mutations."
"The plants Matthias used to grow were awful. People made fun of him for ages. He must have found the pattern after countless failures."
"As I understand it, he strengthened the parts of the wheat that produce grain, but only to a limited extent. I'd guess he strengthened the roots too."
Frederick was completely baffled. He couldn't figure out the principles behind it, so he decided to think of it as something like breeding plants with cosmic radiation.
"I'm curious about something else." Another question occurred to him. "This magic is so powerful, so why does it look so ordinary?"
Manuel laughed. Now that's the sort of thing a child would think. The flashier the magic, the more powerful it must be.
"You can't judge magic by its appearance." As he spoke, he raised his right hand. A few breaths later, a black sphere the size of a ping-pong ball appeared above it.
The sphere reflected no light at all. It looked like charcoal—plain and unremarkable.
He smiled and asked Frederick, "What do you think of this magic?"
Frederick looked it over from every angle, but couldn't see anything special about it.
"This magic is powerful, right?" he asked.
Manuel didn't answer. Instead, he raised his left hand and formed another identical, equally plain-looking black sphere. Then he said, "Which of these two spells do you think could kill you in one blow?"
Frederick's expression turned serious at once. He looked from one to the other, but couldn't find any difference between the two black spheres.
In the end, he could only shake his head. "I can't tell."
Manuel gestured for Frederick to follow him outside.
They went beyond the village and found two large trees inside the canal's boundary line, both marked for felling. Manuel barely moved. The two black spheres flew toward the trunks, growing larger as they went.
The trunks were wide enough to take two or three people to encircle. When the black spheres, each a meter across, touched them, the trees seemed to melt like ice in hot water, corroding away before their eyes.
Frederick's mouth twitched. Damn it, both of those could take me out.
Then he and Manuel ran for it—the trees were falling toward them.
Once they reached safety, two more black spheres appeared in Manuel's hands. Frederick examined them carefully and found they looked just like the previous ones.
Then Frederick got a faceful of them. Nothing happened to him at all.
On the way back to the village, Manuel said to Frederick, "You can't judge a spell's effects or power by its appearance alone. These days, mages deliberately disguise powerful spells to make them look like simple ones."
"A small mistake in a magical battle can cost you your life, so you have to use every trick you can think of."
"By extension, when mages invent new spells, they'll specially design their appearance so outsiders can't make out the spell's Magic Array Circuit. But there's nothing superficial about what's inside."
Frederick looked enlightened. So that's a thing.
Before you continue