Chapter 324: Warping Flesh

The idea had come from meat, which was a bit strange.

Meat wasn’t exactly inspirational, unless someone was looking to create a new dish, or an artistic taxidermy object for their library. Alex, however, hadn’t been inspired to make a new culinary breakthrough, and he didn’t have a library.

The idea for a new physical breakthrough had sparked and was burning in his mind as he quietly practised Warp Flesh in his room by moon, and forceball light. He was filled with energy after a two hour session of rejuvenating sleep, and was thinking about the image of power that had awakened some weeks ago when he’d climbed the winding stairs to Val’Rok’s office.

It was the professor’s lunch that had motivated the idea currently playing in his head: sparked from a hunk of meat from the mana manipulation professor’s midday meal which he’d compared to the fibres that make up the edges of a wizard’s mana pool. The lizardfolk wizard had described how a pool’s fibres became hyper-stimulated when a current was passed through them, generating more mana in the process.

That had birthed the curious thought in Alex’s mind and led to some investigating.

A mana pool’s fibres’ function was to produce mana, so they poured more mana out when hyper-stimulated.

And what were the fibres for in a muscle’s typical functions: to lift, pull, support…

…and grow.

So what would happen if they were hyper-stimulated in the same way? He remembered one of his first alchemy lessons from Professor Jules:

“Body enhancement potions work by pouring mana directly into the body, in order to temporarily energise its processes,” she’d said. “This can result in increased strength, speed or vitality, or all of the above if higher grade versions of the potions are used. However, even the focused versions do enhance the entire body: one simply uses particular ingredients and mana manipulation to focus that enhancement on a single physical aspect, such as increasing strength, for example.”

He also remembered another anecdote Professor Jules used in that same class:

“The Tauzhian Empire used to make a practice of raising a caste of children into a sort of ‘enhanced warrior’ through a careful regime of training, diet and a constant supply of relatively low-grade body enhancement potions.”

It was similar to what Kybas was doing for Harmless, fuelling his growth with mushroom-based body enhancement potions. Alex hadn’t seen his friend or the little crocodile for a while, but—last time they’d met up for lunch—Harmless’ body wasn’t exactly ‘little’ anymore. Kybas’ steady supply of body enhancement potions had done wonders.

But could body enhancement potions help adults grow muscle?

Someone must have tried it before.

Alex had scoured the library, looking at books on alchemy and anatomy in between practice and study sessions. He’d learned that long dead wizards had tried to use body enhancement and various magics to increase muscle growth.

The results had been…less than exciting.

There was the case of the Tauzhian Empire, but their process had been fueled by a now extinct plant; trying to replicate their results with modern potion recipes would be extremely expensive, plus the subjects used for the process were children. Still, over the centuries and millennia, the lure of developing the body had tempted others to consider various experiments.

An anecdote on one process that created bloodwalkers—creatures Baelin had mentioned in one of their first conversations about the Irtyshenan Empire—had caught Alex’s eye: it was a brief reference in an account about how such a creature was found in the forests of Kymiland to the empire’s west. A monster similar to the clawed beasts that had attacked Patrizia DePaolo’s ball.

Unfortunately, the books had little more to teach about them:

The process to create bloodwalkers is one of the most highly guarded secrets in all the Empire, which is quite a feat in that land of secrets. They say that even the archons, provincial generals, nobility and knights do not know what strange recipes and combinations go into the creation of each bloodwalker. Only those in the dour order of bloodwalkers themselves know what strange alchemy and fleshwarping is used to transform mortalkind into supernatural monster killers.

Even less is known of the strange concoctions that bloodwalkers craft from their enemies’ vital fluids and organs to increase their strength over time. Many have died trying to gain those secrets. Many more have died to keep them.

Then there were other processes listed, but with scant details. Alchemical baths. Immersion in dragon blood. Vivisection. Implantation of magical items into the flesh. Transmutation magic. Soul-switching into another body. But, all of these either had flaws, limited uses, were expensive, called for legendary ingredients; or were inaccessible to him.

The only simple and somewhat accessible method for physical enhancement he could’ve tried was from a case in Generasi from two centuries ago. In those ancient times, an athlete and member of the aristocratic class had contracted with an alchemist to provide him with a constant supply of body enhancement potions, which he’d guzzle while training for the Games of Roal.

A year and a small fortune later saw him taking the gold medal in the land race. He’d recorded his progress and found there’d been a thirty percent increase in the rate at which he’d built his strength and muscle size, but…considering the thousands of gold pieces spent, it really wasn’t all that impressive.

Others pursuing physical strength had tried body enhancement spells while training instead, but while many of them claimed they’d grown much faster using these methods, any permanent increase in strength was found to have no statistically significant advantage over regular exercise.

In the end, most textbooks he’d looked at had concluded that body enhancement magic and alchemy for permanent growth, was far more effective on those still growing—like children—not adults.

‘No wonder Kybas was desperate to get his hands on a potion supply before Harmless finished growing,’ Alex had thought after one particularly fruitless research session.

In the end, what he’d learned was that others had tried various methods, but so far, he hadn’t found any account of anyone attempting something similar to the mad idea brewing in his head.

So, he’d turned his attention from the few failed methods he’d found, hoping to find something useful in the study of body mechanics. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been that much available on the workings of muscle fibres. A few wizards had looked at muscle tissue through piccoscopes or their archaic precursors, but most seemed to have had little interest in mundane body mechanics.

The one exception in the group were blood magic practitioners.

Blood mages had entire bookshelves on anatomy, with incredibly detailed studies on the humanoid body in them. Some of the findings they’d published were actually quite gruesome and not ethical in the least. Page after page of very detailed diagrams well-suited to nightmares. As Baelin and Jules had implied, wizards had done terrible things to gain knowledge and power, and those of the past weren’t so constrained by modern laws or ethics.

Theirs were the old ways.

Ways that authors of some of those textbooks had seemed nostalgic for; in sidebars they’d commented that: modern ethics in research slowed progress when it came to the accumulation of knowledge.

‘Professor Jules would have some pretty pointed things to say about that,’ Alex had thought while in the library turning page after page and finding very realistic diagrams that would've made most lose their lunch. ‘And I’d agree with her. Ethics and safety are important…mana vampires and Ravener spawn excluded. Actually pretty much anything that tries to kill me excluded. Gotta admit though, there’s a lot of useful information in some of these studies.’

He’d eventually found a book that talked about the mechanics of muscle growth gained through exercise which detailed how muscles tore themselves down then rebuilt. It explained that stressing a muscle by repeatedly lifting something heavy, caused micro-tears to the muscle fibres which the body repaired with larger, stronger fibres over a period of days. There was a balance to it. Too little exertion meant too few, or even no tears to make the muscle fibres increase in strength or size. As Baelin had said, things only developed in the face of necessity, and if the body didn’t need to grow stronger to meet physical demands, it wouldn’t. To build strength, it needed a challenge.

‘No wonder I was so skinny when I was a baker,’ Alex had thought while going through the text. ‘Didn’t need to push my muscles much unless I was lifting sacks of flour. There was only that one assistant who worked the early shift at McHarris’ who was fit, but he also worked as an apprentice stonemason. Everyone else was pretty average.’

A couple of the textbooks had information gathered from some gruesome and highly unethical studies explaining how too much exertion could cause extreme muscle breakdown and create tears so large, they wouldn’t recover properly.

That had let him understand why when he’d focused the Mark on helping him create a training routine more than a year ago, it had guided him to rest as well as training. Khalik had also confirmed that resting between training was key.

The book had also detailed how muscle contractions caused micro-tears.

‘That’s why the Mark kept showing me images of squeezing my muscles when I trained,’ Alex had thought. ‘Now…how do I apply this knowledge?’

He’d thought about Warp Flesh.

Professor Hak had warned the class not use that spell on themselves:

“The control Warp Flesh grants over the body is crude.” She had wiggled her fingers before her face. “Imagine trying to perform a delicate or intricate task with your hands wrapped in a pair of thick, locked gauntlets: you’d find it quite impossible to do anything requiring dexterity. The same applies to this spell; you can make simple changes such as moving, folding or growing skin, twisting muscles, breaking bone, tearing flesh and joints in your own body or even someone else’s, but, if any of you are imagining yourself sculpting your face or physique into statuesque proportions, then I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until your final year: true shapeshifting spells aren’t first-tier spells, they’re at best, fifth-tiers.”

She’d continued her warning:

“The other limit to note is that changes achieved through Warp Flesh are only temporary. The body is…’springier’ than you might imagine, and generally wants to cleave to its natural shape. Using Warp Flesh is like bending a sapling: sure, the tree will curve for a time, but springs back to its natural position as soon as you release it. Unfortunately though, damage caused by the spell is permanent, in the same way that bending a sapling enough to break the trunk will leave it broken.”

From what she’d said, it had sounded like Warp Flesh would be useless for building one’s body since its effects were temporary…but muscle tears—even micro-tears—were obviously damage.

Wouldn’t they remain?

Taking an in depth look through the textbooks, he’d discovered that he hadn’t been the first wizard to consider that idea. Others had tried using Warp Flesh to make micro-tears in muscle fibres, but while they’d succeeded in creating the micro-tears, the tears hadn’t stopped at micro and rapidly grew into mega-tears.

The crudeness of Warp Flesh had been a problem for them.

But would it be a problem for him?

After all, Alex had something those other wizards didn’t have: the Mark of the Fool. At first, he’d been afraid it would actually stop his plan since creating micro-tears might be considered a form of harm. But while thinking things through before wasting time on a plan that the Mark abruptly put a halt to, he remembered it had helped him create his workout routine. He tore his muscle fibres down all the time with its blessing. Besides, since the mortal body tore down and renewed as a normal function of life, if it had wanted to put up any objections, he’d already be a corpse, and that would be the end of the Mark too. Plus, it didn’t interfere with him swatting living things like bugs, muscle fibres were a hell of a lot smaller than insects.

So, it seemed that the Mark would be with him, not rebel and fight him.

It had already let him master mana manipulation surprisingly fast: Warp Flesh enabled a blood mage to apply mana manipulation techniques to their lifeforce directly. Combining that with the Mark might guide him to a level of deftness with the spell once considered impossible. That was what he was hoping for.

Which was why he was now in his room learning Warp Flesh as quickly as he could.

His plan was: start off by learning the spell.

Then practise with it: first on something nasty like a biting insect, then graduate to something bigger, like…one of his own smaller muscles; one that wouldn’t cripple him if things went horribly wrong. If his hypothesis and calculations were right—he’d use Warp Flesh to run a mana current through his muscle fibres, hyper-stimulating them while training. That should cause controlled hyper-contractions, and create a significant amount of micro-tears.

Then, he’d recover.

By hyper-stimulating his muscles while they rebuilt and using Warp Flesh to lightly stimulate them with a mana current, using Mana to Life to feed them life energy, an enormous amount of food to fuel him from a formulated diet, and guidance for recovery from the Mark—he could see growth happening that would shatter its natural limits.

And if this plan worked for muscle fibres? He could try running the same current through his tendons while stretching to increase flexibility. And on his bones while weight-lifting to increase their density.

The results, hopefully?

An utter physical transformation.

He wouldn’t need to rely on enhancement spells or Haste potions to dodge attacks, redirect blows or even overpower monsters. And if he did cast body enhancement spells over himself? With any hope, he’d be able to give Cedric a run for his money. A damn good run.

The downside was that this plan was mana intensive, which would’ve been a problem…if he didn’t have Hsekiu’s technique to turn him into a giant mana fountain. With his mana pool full, Alex poured his all into Warp Flesh until the sun rose. Then before class. Then after class.

And finally, days later…

“What has you so excited today?” Prince Khalik asked, stretching in the gymnasium. “I swear, I thought demons had invaded again with the way you were pounding on my door.”

In the light of morning sun streaming through tall windows, Alex Roth grinned. His right pinky toe twitched from gruelling experimentation using the Mark, and his now mastered Warp Flesh spell.

“Training,” he said, feeling mana rumbling in his pool. His mana fibres seemed to tingle in anticipation. “A special kind of training.”