Chapter IV.XV (4.15) - Lunch Studies

  Kizu ate lunch on Owl’s Respite. He’d considered eating up at the academy but decided against it. He had a free period after lunch so it was a better use of his time to get down to the ship and work on his projects down there. As he munched on a sandwich, he watched Dog, the capybara, lazing about on the shore. Ione had insisted that he allow the jungle animal to make its home in the cove and Kizu normally wouldn’t mind. Who didn’t like capybaras? His only concern was the monster that lived in the cove. Nobody had seen the monstrous jellyfish creature since it devoured Inari and Kateshi, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t return at any time. And a lone capybara swimming along the surface might look like the perfect snack.

  Kizu glanced over to the side where an abandoned fishing rod lay on the deck. Sojan was gone as a result of their last meeting with the cove’s monster. Most likely abandoned on the rocky bed deep below the surface. He still hadn’t come up with a solution to retrieve the enchanted dagger.

  The image of Inari’s head exploding as the jellyfish wrapped its tentacles around the warlord and pulled him in flashed through Kizu’s memory. That sight wouldn’t be leaving him anytime soon. A constant reminder of the dangers unknown magical beasts posed. No. He wouldn’t be descending into the depths of the cove anytime soon. Sojan would need to wait a while longer.

  “If only there was a way to retrieve him remotely,” Kizu muttered. “A spatial spell that could transport him to my hand or a way to pull him up with the fishing rod.”

  He looked over to Dog and frowned.

  “Maybe if I learn how to summon an aquatic creature? Ione can create kappa. And I think she said it was a pretty simple summon. It might work. I need to ask her about that.”

  Kizu wiped the crumbs off his hands and walked over to the captain’s cabin. Normally no one was allowed inside the cabin without Aoi’s specific permission. She’d even designed the door handle to remain locked for anyone other than her. Her…or Kizu. It was his ship too, after all. And she hadn’t protested too much, since he normally didn’t have any interest in necromancy. He very rarely exercised his ability to access the workshop. But today he wanted to check something.

  Surprisingly, Aoi’s laboratory had come out of the attack relatively unscathed. It looked largely the same as it had last semester. Vats lined one wall and shelves filled with bottled body parts on the other. Her old wooden table in the center of her laboratory had been replaced by a sleek new enchanted one that hovered. Colored a pristine white, Kizu suspected it was a tool used by medics more often than necromancers. Still, as fascinating as her new table might be, Kizu wasn’t here to examine that.

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  The vats contained different body parts. A few were empty. Kizu stared into the now empty vat that had once contained his grafted leg. It was next to a vat that was far larger and wider where an even more monstrous foot still floated.

  “What was that necromancer doing here?” Kizu asked the limb. “Why Shinzou? There are so many other entrances to the World Dungeon that are easier to access. What’s special about this island? Did he just want the rural location to keep himself from being disturbed? The mines are gnomish as well though. Is that why he chose this spot? Was it just a coincidence he ended up here?”

  Kizu didn’t want to face the fact of what truly made this island unique. The bloodspawn below. But whatever deal the necromancer might have made, it was hundreds of years ago at this point.

  The gnome necromancer was long gone. Likely having descended into the World Dungeon never to return, but his legacy remained. More than just his ship and undead crew, his body floated in the largest of the vats.

  A cloned body. And not a perfect one. Right now it was little more than an infant. Aoi was actively hard at work trying to accelerate the growth of the clone, but it was far from complete. Even if Kizu managed to recover Sojan this very day, he doubted the dagger would be joyful about being stuck in the body of a toddler. A gnome toddler at that.

  He eyed the small floating body. Now that he thought on it, Sojan might actually be bigger than the child. Probably not the ideal host right now.

  “You’re not going to be ready for a long time.”

  Next to that vat was a second, slightly smaller one. At first glance, Kizu thought it empty. But as he looked closer he noticed something floating in it. He blinked at it. It looked like a curled up hairless baby rat. Weird. Must be some new experiment Aoi was attempting.

  He went to Aoi’s small selection of books piled on a shelf and found what he’d initially been looking for. It was an anatomy book, detailing the different tendons and bones in the human body.

  His class Divination B class had inspired him to try combining his lessons a bit more. While he didn’t know nearly enough about Rejuvenation and Restoration to separate his body parts like Wakino, he still had an idea of how to combine the knowledge. That phase spell he’d discovered would only be useful if he fully understood his own body enough to manipulate the space around it. That meant diving into anatomical studies.

  Leaving Aoi’s lab behind, he descended down into the ship’s crew quarters. The skeleton guards lounged there, cheating at cards. They looked a bit more battered than last semester, but they still kept at their task, same as ever.

  He settled into a hammock and opened to the first page of the anatomical book. It was a detailed image of a human skull with an excessive amount of notations about every tiny piece of it. Sighing, he skimmed it and found the simplest passages. It was about the jaw and teeth. Still complicated, especially when it went into detail about the tongue, but a lot more manageable to read about than the earlier passages about brains and eyes.

  When his scrying orb alerted him to his free period ending, he tucked the anatomy book away and strolled over to the portal bookshelf over at the other side of the room. A moment later, he stood in Taroe’s home. A quick walk up the mountain path to campus and he was back to class.

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