It was their most prized possession. Having escaped the Realm of the Undead with little more than the suggestive clothes on their proverbial backs, the book was all they had.
If they had a hope of understanding how they had been changed, let alone finding a way back to human—though Ranma did seem to enjoy it more than she would have suspected—it was in that book.
And from what she understood of it so far, she had better get used to being furry.
From what she had been able to translate—thanks to several spells and magical decoder keys—it was actually a lab notebook from Iceron, the maker of the were creatures. He had been experimenting in ways to create were creatures without the weakness in silver.
According to the book, he had turned to using life force—ki according to Ranma when she described it to him—as a way to correct the error that was generated from using lunar energies to bind the magic to the soul and aura of the subject. It was this binding through the energy that allowed silver to burn the soul, and slow the healing process; if not outright negate it.
He had hoped life force would prove either a viable alternative, or a possible additive to lessen the effects.
From what she read, early results had not been pretty. Those that managed to survive the process wished they were dead, being too weak to be of any use. They barely had the strength to move around, let alone do the normal duties that Iceron required of them.
It was then that he discovered a formula: it takes the life force of ten strong humans to create a life-based lycanthrope. Any less, and the damage was irreparable, even with a full meal and several healing spells.
The only reason he hadn’t outright changed to it was the fact his pool of subjects to experiment on was very low at the time. She guessed he had fallen out of power before that pool of victims could grow.
“We were damn lucky,” she muttered. She was relatively certain the siblings hadn’t found some way to store life force—something that Iceron had considered but been unable to control.
Which meant the only reason she was even alive was because Ranma had the life force of at least twenty people.
Now that she could believe. After all, he and Ryoga did tend to fire off those ki blasts like punches. So there was no doubt they had massive reserves of ki.
But to pull that off...
Nabiki shook her head as she began to put the book away in a subspace pocket, using Hidden Weapons, as Ranma had showed her. In the Undead Realm, they didn’t have TV, school, or much else to do aside from sex, talk, and sleep.
Then again, the operation hadn’t taken into account their comfort.
But so far they were doing well. True, they could have booked passage back to Earth Realm.
But what for? It wasn’t like they could just walk home and show up like they were. Well, they could, but there’d be hell to pay, when the fiancées learned what had happened while they were imprisoned, followed by an immediate wedding and explosions, attempts to kill; the usual.
No, she’d rather not have everyone after her, thank you very much.
So for the moment, they’d stay here at Seer’s Hamlet. She was doing quite well as an accountant, and Nali said Ranma was a natural Healing Mage.
Too bad he also wanted to study and be a War Mage as well. Nabiki herself did kind of like the idea of being a Mage, but some had problems she wasn’t quite ready to address.
Though she did look damn good in those mage suits, and it was the only thing that fit any of Ranma’s forms well.
But right now she had to hurry. Ranma was having a match against the Weaponmaster—whatever the hell that was—named Karia. Ranma wanted to see what exactly a War Mage could do.
He didn’t know, but it sounded like something he wanted.
“At least she’s better than Lily,” muttered the were-cheetah.
Leave it to Ranma to land on a world where there are Amazons trying to bed him. They claimed it was to revive the species.
Of course, the fact they had shown up at their doorstep with ... volunteers ... didn’t help their case.
“Ms. Tendo!”
Turning around, she spotted the two were-jaguars, Gar and Sheila, as well as... Are they being followed by a ghost?
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(Posted Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:22)
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