Zeal of the Mind and Flesh: A Cultivating Gamelit Harem Adventure (Spellheart Book 1)

by Marvin Whiteknight

  “Alright. So, the grade of a spellheart only applies to the grades that are within the range that are useful to cultivators like me. Which means that I can push this spellheart beyond top-grade if I want to.”

  “That’s true, but I would caution you against that. Top-grade is top grade because it’s as concentrated as you can get the zeal of any particular aspect and still expect to be able to fuse yourself with it. You could get higher than top grade by building a larger spellheart, but then you would be unlikely to survive the process of forging that spellheart into a dantain. Though… chaka’s are known to be incredibly resilient. Maybe you could go bigger.” Illiel shrugged.

  “Interesting, though the point is moot if I’m unable to bond with this spellheart at all.” I focused on the little amber gem. I’d been trying all morning to get it to respond to me, but no such luck. I wanted mind control powers, and this damned rock was being stingy!

  I sent my mind into the spellheart once again. My attention delved within it and soaked right into the stone. I felt like I could push and pull it with my mind, except one little piece was fighting me, rejecting my will at every turn. After a few seconds it tossed me out, just like every other time.

  “Forcing it won’t do any good. If you couldn’t bind with it by now, you’re not going to.”

  I stared angrily at the spellheart. “I feel like I should be able to. Most of the stone seems like it likes me. It’s just this region right here,” I pointed to a little jagged portion of the stone with a crack running through it.

  “It happens sometimes,” Illiel shrugged, “there are impurities in nearly all spellhearts. Some are even put there deliberately by the people who grow them. Gurthari probably introduced a drop of her own blood while she was growing the spellheart from mid-grade to high-grade. It’s a common tactic to make your spellheart unusable to anyone who kills you.”

  “If only I could just avoid that part... hey, is there any reason why I can’t just chip that part of the stone out?”

  Illiel blinked. “As in, just knock the impure region of the stone open and pull out the part that isn’t working for you? I’ve never heard of that being tried before. I know it’s possible to use fragments of spellhearts, but they’re usually much weaker so most of the time people just work around the impurities.”

  Well, just because something hadn’t been done didn’t mean it couldn’t be done. I knew the opposite to be true more often than not.

  I pulled out my earth spellheart and used its power to make a shallow bowl in the floor. It wouldn’t do to lose any pieces of this thing when it shattered.

  I’d commandeered a nail and hammer from a nearby pile being used in the construction work. They weren’t ideal tools, but this would be a crude job anyway. I wasn’t familiar with how spellhearts shattered. Did they break into shards? Did they shatter like glass or flake like slate? Or maybe they were like some sort of resin that would deform when struck? I’d need to figure out a way to build a microscope or some way to look at these things up close. If I had a better idea of how they worked, maybe Mac and I could come up with some way to cheat.

  Not knowing what to expect, I stuck the nail roughly where I wanted to split the spellheart. Having figured out approximately how I wanted the spellheart to crack, I pinned it into position and took a deep breath. One well-struck blow.

  Or at least, that’s what would have been best if this spellheart had been hard and brittle. I thought I could shatter it like glass, but under the force of the nail, the spellheart became soft and pliable.

  Unfortunately, because of this tacky property I couldn’t cleanly break off the piece I wanted. Instead the spellheart tore with a sickly split, like hard candy torn in two. I ended up with two major pieces and a bunch of tiny little fragments. I passed them off to Illiel for inspection

  “Well, I’d say this is upper-low grade in terms of the quantity of zeal inside. Not great, but in terms of quality the internal structure of the zeal in the crystal is still high grade.” She passed the stone off to me, which I placed off to the side.

  One by one, I picked up the pieces that didn’t have a trace of the blood drop that had given me so much trouble. Those I gathered all together. The impure pieces of the stone I set to the side for now.

  “Tell me, Illiel, when you use a zeal accumulation technique you are taking zeal from the ambient environment and gathering it into a solid form. The spellheart is the physical manifestation of that accumulated zeal, right?”

  “That’s correct. That’s why cultivators search far and wide for locations that contain high quantities of the zeal of their affinity. Higher concentrations make it much easier and faster to absorb,” she had a look of confusion on her face, not sure where I was going with this.

  “So, if I crushed a spellheart entirely into individual particles of zeal, I could spread them around and enhance the density of zeal in the local area?”

  Illiel nodded in realization. “That’s one technique cultivators use to increase ambient zeal density, but it’s a crude method. The vast majority of the zeal is lost. It really only works if you’re slaughtering many mystic beasts or other cultivators and collecting spellhearts by the dozen.”

  “That loss assumes that I’m spreading the spellheart dust out into the air though. What if instead of just blowing it around I dissolve it into something, like water?”

  “You’re talking about alchemy now. I’ve heard of such things being done as well, but the alchemists guild jealously guards the recipes and techniques they use. Clans proficient in alchemy will accumulate great wealth and the power that comes with it,” she glanced at me in surprise, “don’t tell me… do you know some alchemy?” Illiel asked with eagerness in her voice.

  I winked. “Don’t tell Sava. Now, what I need is a good solvent…”

  The first thing I tried was water. Water is a pretty good solvent in most cases. I wasn’t a chemist, but I’d taken some interest in it while attending school. Direct mind-machine links meant that, while you couldn’t download an entire field of science directly into your head, it was much easier to learn about a variety of subjects. I’d taken chemistry as my elective for the sciences, and as a result I’d had a few dozen textbooks and a couple of years of laboratory time uploaded to my brain. Nothing too fancy, since I was on a budget, but I knew about valence bond theory, resonance, and aromaticity.

  I never thought that this knowledge would come in handy. After all, during the twenty-second century, the real chemists spent years under accelerated learning to understand what they had to know since there was just so much prerequisite knowledge needed to even comprehend the cutting-edge techniques and theories, let alone try to do research. And even then, humans with years of accelerated learning were scarcely more than lab assistants for the AI’s that specialized in scientific research. Mac’s assistance would have been helpful right now.

  Still, I knew enough that I had a couple of ideas. I had Illiel gather up a set of the smallest glass containers we had. These were my test tubes. I also had her light the fire. I’d probably need heat.

  I picked up one of the smallest pieces of the mind spellheart and dropped it into my bowl. If only I had a graduated cylinder and a scale, so I could properly measure the volume, mass, and density. Though, I hadn’t seen Sava ever use such tools, nor had I seen Gronk selling them. Perhaps they hadn’t been invented in this world yet.

  As expected, the room temperature water did nothing, but if reaction rate was the issue, I might be able to accelerate things by increasing the temperature. I pulled a few embers out of the fire and stationed them around the glass. I was worried the sudden increase in temperature would shatter this medieval-era glass, but it held. Maybe glass making was further along than I thought. Or, more likely, the glassblower had reinforced her creation with zeal somehow.

  Alas, the boiling water didn’t noticeably dissolve the mind spellheart either. Disappointing, but not something I wasn’t prepared for. Maybe it was dissolving the spellhear
t, just not at a noticeable rate. I’d have to test that theory later. Maybe I’d save one of the tiny grains and let it sit in the fire for a few days.

  “I don’t think alchemy is something you can just pick up, Theo,” Illiel said to me consolingly. “If that weren’t the case you wouldn’t have clans and sects fighting over who can raise more skilled alchemists. After all, even a moderately skilled alchemist can raise up an entire clan to greater power, since their skills can serve to massively improve the cultivation bases of everyone who benefits from their creation. Some of the fantastic pills and elixirs can raise someone from the heart wielder realm all the way to the true mage ranks in the blink of an eye.”

  “I know I’m not the most talented.” I responded, “But I’m not trying to predict the folding patterns for an amino acid chain here. I’m just trying to dissolve something.”

  All right, no more messing around. I scraped some wood ash out of the fireplace. I didn’t recognize the type of wood, but it looked like a hardwood. I should be able to make lye out of it. Hopefully.

  I got a pile of it boiling in water, skimming the stuff off the top and collecting it in a pan. I filled the pan cup by cup while Illiel talked.

  “I think... now don’t hold me to this, but when I was young, my mother had me tested for alchemical talent. I had a moderate degree of talent, but nothing special. In the end she decided that it wasn’t worth it. After a year of study, I’d only learned to make the most basic cultivation aids. But, one of the things I did learn is that a great many things in alchemy are made from elixirs, which always start with a base. That base is usually made from a zeal-infused liquid. Blood, water, milk of a sacred cow... anything that contains high concentrations of zeal. I usually used pre-made bases, but one of the things my tutor once mentioned was that a good alchemist could make a base for an elixir out of a source for zeal. The best could simply meditate and pull the zeal out of the air, like when cultivating a spellheart. Breaking down an existing spellheart would be a bit easier.”

  “What did they do? How did they dissolve it?” I asked curiously, hoping that Illiel would have whatever piece of knowledge I was missing. As it was, I was planning to just keep trying different solvents. Maybe I’d get something that would work, eventually.

  “Well... the thing that makes spellhearts useful is that they’re a very stable state. Stable unless without the will of a cultivator, that is. The intent of a sentient creature can influence the zeal and cause it to ever so slightly reshape the laws of the natural world around it. This effect is especially profound when a cultivator has a connection to the zeal they’re using, but it’s possible to some small degree with ambient zeal floating about. Otherwise nobody would be able to accumulate zeal in the first place.

  “Alchemists need to be able to interact with zeal they aren’t bound to. This is one of the things that stops most people from being able to become alchemists. It’s a skill that’s trained like a muscle that must be carefully honed.”

  “So, what you’re saying is, if I want to infuse my solution with the zeal from the mind spellheart, I need to think at it and make it fall apart?”

  “I suppose you could think of it that way. It’s much harder than you’re making it out to be though.”

  And so that’s what I did. I sat before the mind spellheart fragment sitting in the glass of water and thought at it. Nothing happened. I squinted and held my breath. I’d expected to go red in the face, but surprisingly, the tiny spellheart fragment fell apart. It shattered in two just as easily as if I had struck it with a hammer. Easier, actually. This was a clean cut, unlike my butcher job.

  And then I did it again, and again, and again.

  Bit by bit, I divide the spellheart fragment in half. The pieces shrank and shrank. Now, I wasn’t planning to keep dividing pieces until I reached little specks too small for me to pull apart. For one, there were quickly dozens of fragments, and many of them were too small for me to see already. But what I did realize was that my divisions weren’t completely efficient. Every time I cut the spellheart in half, a portion of it was lost. Dispelled into the ambient environment. It was less like cleaving the spellheart in half and more like turning a piece of it in the middle into nothing. Or whatever happened to zeal that was used up.

  Normally, this loss would be a bad thing. My crude work with a hammer and a nail was a more efficient process with less waste, but in this specific case it was that waste I wanted. The ambient environment around that shard of spellheart was my elixir base. Illiel explained that this was a rather simple procedure compared to what a more experienced alchemist might be required to do, but she was impressed that I could do even this much without formal training.

  Soon, the tiny fragment was gone, and the acidic solution had taken on an ever-so-slightly amber color.

  “Does this look right?” I asked Illiel, who was staring at the glass in surprise.

  “That... yes, it feels like an alchemical base to me! I can’t believe how quickly you did that! Making a base solution of concentrated zeal with a spellheart took my old tutor a full day of work! And you did it in just a few minutes of sitting here. Admittedly, you only used a tiny spellheart fragment, but still...”

  That’s when I had a great idea. If a spellheart was like a crystal, and I could dissolve the spellheart, then I could probably recrystallize it as well. The biggest scrap piece of spellheart suffered the problem of having the blood-drop impurity in it that rendered that portion of the spellheart unusable. But recrystallization was one of the most common techniques for purifying a substance.

  I quickly got to work. I’d never actually done a recrystallization in the lab, but my chemistry elective included two hundred hours of simulated lab work in an accelerated virtual environment, so I knew how it should be done. Probably.

  I mixed up another batch of acid. I’d need to secure a wider variety of solvents, so I could test for a good one. Ideally, I wanted a solvent for which the spellheart was highly soluble at high temperatures and weakly soluble at low temperatures. That way I could dissolve a high concentration of my impure spellheart into a solution and then cool it into a crystallized, purer form.

  It took a bit of work to gather all the supplies, but Illiel was an eager lab assistant. She knew enough of alchemy to predict what I’d need and was happy to help. Apparently, alchemists in this world use recrystallization as well, and it wasn’t long before she realized what I was doing. The main difference was that in this world recrystallization was considered an advanced technique only a fully qualified alchemist could perform. And even then, many didn’t know the secret to doing so.

  “I can’t believe you’re an alchemist!” Illiel gushed again. “And a talented one at that! It’s so rare to find a male elf who can cultivate with any degree of success. Your level of talent with regard to cultivation was rare enough, but being an alchemist too? I’m suddenly thinking the Songstone Clan might be in a better position a few years down the line than they ever were mining low grade zeal crystals.”

  I smiled. “Well, don’t talk too highly of me yet. I still haven’t really done anything.”

  But despite my words, the recrystallization went smoothly. There was a noticeable amount in loss, but I saved what I could of the solution. I’d evaporate the solvent off entirely and do this again a couple more times to try to get as much as I could out of the mind spellheart.

  After three recrystallizations, there was no evidence left of the blood impurity.

  “These crystals are so pure! You can’t find spellhearts of this quality by killing mystic beasts! These have obviously been processed by an alchemist!” In my estimation, Illiel was entirely too excited by some simple chemistry. I’d have to teach her to do it herself in a bit, since she looked so enthusiastic about it. I already knew Sava would beat the secrets out of me if I didn’t share them with her the first chance I got.

  “Well, we’re not done. A bigger spellheart is better. This pile of tiny crystals doesn’t do me nearly the goo
d that one big crystal would.” I pulled out the intact fragment of Gurthari’s mind spellheart. This was the piece I had bonded to. Luckily, I have this piece here. I can use this as the seed crystal. Then I can have all those tiny crystals build on top of it to make one big crystal. I just have to keep things happening nice and slow, and let each tiny particle falls into position."

  “No, you don’t,” Illiel said. “you’ve already bound that crystal to yourself, so you can accumulate new zeal directly onto it. All you need is an environment ready to supply a large amount of zeal.”

  I grinned ear-to-ear at the sudden realization. I wouldn’t have to wait weeks for a big crystal to form. I could just pull zeal directly from the surrounding solution directly onto my crystal.

  It took a bit of concentration to get things going. This wasn’t my normal position for cultivation, and I was doing something new. But soon enough I had the same zeal accumulation technique working as what I now routinely did with my earth spellheart. I tried to generate a cyclone of zeal, with my spellheart at the center.

  Except nothing was happening. I told Illiel as much.

  “That’s because the cultivation technique you use is for earth zeal. Mind zeal behaves differently. It’s like thousands of tiny strands that wriggle and writhe. Collecting them is like scooping up a handful of tiny worms. They won’t stay together for long.”

  “Then how do you build up a spellheart with them?”

  “The Unblinking Eye has a few techniques. One of them, the simplest method, is made available to even new members. It involves simply sticking these writhing worms into your spellheart one at a time. That’s rather inefficient though.”