14 The Law of Everything!

Throughout the night I slaved away at the structure of my security system, sometimes throwing things on the wall, sometimes the floor. Many poisons were thrown together at a moment's notice, my alchemy factory turned into a poisoner's fantasy.

Knives, spikes, forks, needles, pills, all poisoned with the strongest poisons I could make. They weren't lethal, instead they were some of the few that I could make that would be either impossible to trace, or impossible to cure. At least at my level they would be impossible to do, a greater alchemist than me could cure and detect these. I was banking on the fact that they weren't alchemists themselves.

If any alchemist saw me, they'd think me a mad man with a filter mask on my face I was handling highly poisonous plants, fungi, and venomous liquids like they were child's toys. Golems running around, not only to bring things to me but to organize what was there.

"God, Nikolai, your book smarts are terrifying. Now I understand the true power of a nerd." I shivered at the concoctions around me knowing their true power. Soon, my room looked almost the same as it did before, some areas there were pebbles on the floor, a few extra lightstones on the wall, a few new pairs of shoes. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

With a smile I did the final touch, drilling a hole through the door I added a red lightstone turning it into a simple golem. "Now some well deserved rest!"

Laying down in the bed I activated one of the countdown clocks, and fell asleep.

——————-

I woke with a start as a banjo like sound filled the room with terrible melody that would haunt any musician's ears for eternity. Sadly I was never taught anything about music, nor had I thought to put in a way for it to stop before the thirty seconds of 'music' was up.

"Disperse!" An explosion happened as I reversed the properties of the spell, the alarm clock turning into rubble once again.

Getting up and getting dressed, I looked around my room, positive that the renovations would be positive ones I hurried to go to Solomon's room which was printed on the token. As I stepped out of the room I turned towards it, saying "Activate Security" before closing the door. The crystal on the door pulsed red showing everything was working now.

With another book in my hand I lightly jogged into the distance keeping mana flowing through my legs. After finishing the first advanced book took me some time, though if anyone heard how little they'd probably beat me black and blue for being unsatisfied with my progress.

A few twists and turns around the dusty hallway and I was there, the place was organized in such a way that there as a grid system. So to get from my room, 49c to Solomon's 56g was just 8 down and 4 across. I was surprised how close he was to me. With my father's influence I actually had a larger room than I should at my stage so being near a teacher wasn't a that strange.

Knocking twice, I waited patiently as I flipped through the pages, intrigued by the ingenuity of the writer's methods. An hour passed and I finished the book, looking at the door a bit confused so I knocked twice more. "Maybe he isn't in?"

I sat down after another ten minutes then I heard a crash behind the door and a small explosion. The ground shook with the explosion with enough force I was glad I was sitting down. Deciding to wait, knowing that Solomon would have to open his door soon I took my time going over the technique of the book in my head.

*Cough Cough*

The door flew open and a man stood there, dusting off his robes as smoke poured out of his room into the vents of the hallway. Looking up at him I put the book back into my bag, standing up. "Hello Sir Solomon, I was placed in your care two days ago."

"Ah yes, yes, Nikolai right? What are you doing here in the middle of the night?" He looked confused as he tried to straighten his long burnt beard. His giant eyebrows were raised in a perpetual look of surprise with their bottoms burned away. With all of his hair, and the fact that he only stood to about hip height made one word pop into my head, Muppet.

"Sir, it's actually ten in the morning."

"Oh?" He looked at me and made an annoyed sound, "Then why are you so late?"

"I knocked but no one answered, if I was to pound harder that would be a disrespect." I made a slight bow to my new teacher.

"Don't be such a kiss ass! You're here to learn the law of creation, so get your ass in here!" With a surprising amount of strength he dragged me inside, "Stop calling me sir this and sir that, makes me feel like an old man. I'll have you know I'm only two hundred! Still in the prime of my youth."

I didn't know what youth this old man was talking about as he waddled to his desk with his cane, his back like a half moon. Following behind him closely I nearly lost him twice behind the piles of books that were all over the place stacked at least six feet high that left me in a miniature labyrinth. His room was at least twice the size of mine and I could see why, one of the walls to another room had been destroyed only leaving a slight divide on the ceiling where a wall had once been.

"Also if you use flowery words with me, or act nice because of some bullshit reason like I'm your teacher, that means you hold no value in your own thoughts. Don't put on a show and I won't hit you like a show horse."

Breathing in, I smiled, it smelled of an old library with filled with dust and old books. If he kept things neatly stacked on bookshelves this place would be a booklover's paradise. His squacky voice yelled back at me from a desk filled with alchemical equipment, "Pick a pile, start reading. You have four hours to read, one to ask questions, then leave me alone."

This worked for me, as I picked a book at random from the piles of books around me. None of them seemed to be books on spells, all of them seemed to be theories and formula, ways to create various tools and apparati. The one that I chose talked about steam power, and how it was superior to electrical energy. Being from the modern world I didn't agree with it at all but I sat down and read anyway.

Within the poorly lit room both of us read, my hands going through the motions of golem creation as I sat there. A handful of stones rolled around with each motion swirling around one another changing into different shapes before falling apart and turning into different shapes.

I was almost at the stage where they were detailed enough to paint, a random thought came into my mind and I started making tiny Orcs. "Tch, this author doesn't know the earth from the heavens."

Setting the book to the side after I was done with it, I delved into another book but before I could start reading a mild cough got my attention. "Why do you think that book is trash?"

"Weight to energy, there are plenty of fuels out there that have a much better ratio. Heck even pure mana has a better energy to weight ratio, it's just that the containers for it are expensive. It's better to invest into lowering the cost of mana batteries rather than invest into steam power. This book might have been useful a few hundred years ago, but now it's just a relic."

"You're forgetting about fire mages!" He spoke up with a smile on his face, seeming to be reminiscing about something.

"No, I am not." Growing a bit annoyed I enunciated every word. "You are comparing a universal power, to a limited one. It's like saying that sunstones are better than natural light because you can take them underground."

"Watch how you're talking to your elders!"

"I thought you didn't want to hear flowery words or bullshit."

"Fine then, see if I teach you anything!" He grumbled, crossing his arms.

Since Solomon didn't press anymore as I started reading the next book, this one taught the fundamentals of perpetual energy. It ended up immediately in the pile, a surprised look went over my teacher's face as I did so.

After thirty minutes I collected only six books that were worth my time in the large pile, the pile of discarded books making Solomon look at me rather confused. "Many of those books are rather good reads for an inspiring creation mage."

Letting out a sigh I closed the book I was reading, this was going to be a conversation, "They follow the wrong path."

"And what path should they follow?"

"Science! This magic is the most scientifically driven of the other forms of magic. Just because you have an idea doesn't mean you should put it to paper as if it is fact."

"You talk about science like it has a place in magic, you create golems from mear energy inside your body!"

"A power that can blow up towns if you gather enough in one place, it's a very efficient fuel that passes through matter with set instructions. It's mysterious but it has its own rules."

"Many people believe in the science in those books, there are formations that have lasted thousands of years what do you call that if not perpetual energy?" Solomon didn't seem displeased by my rebuttals so I continued.

"Any closed area would eventually find a state of entropy, that is fact. So there must be an outside force fueling them, or it just has a fuel that can last thousands of years. No form of energy lasts forever."

"The stars.."

"Millions of years, not forever. Believe me, energy conservation is all well and good but we can never make something that will continue forever without an outside force acting on it." Flipped open my book, going back to where I was, "Even the law of creation states that if a effect is granted, an equal price is paid."

"Bwahahaha.. Kid, I like you more and more. Using the laws of my own magic in an argument against me." He wiped a tear from his eye, and tossed me a rather heavy tome. "The books in here, I used them all to weed out truth from fiction. This is what I consider to be the pearls floating in the shit."

Catching the tome, I placed the other book to the side, reading the cover of the book, "The Law of Everything: A Precursor to Creation."

"Ha, you have ambitions if you want to call this the law of everything." Chuckling, I dived into the book, Solomon giving me a prideful look.

"Try to find another book that describes the world better than I, that is my soul, and I would never bet against my soul." The old man laughed heartily, before going back to his experiments.

The first page was opened to me, the text laying before me made me pause, "Trust nothing, everything is a lie. Question the world, or everything is true."