Ch188-Simple Solutions (Patreon)

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Ch188-Simple Solutions

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Sylver moved the page he was writing on out of the way and consulted Bruno’s copper sheet one last time. He turned around and Faust and Bruno’s mildly festive mood disappeared as they saw the look on Sylver’s face.

“That bad huh?” Faust asked as he put down his celebratory mug.

After Sylver had converted the stored up information in the spell embedded in their chests onto a copper sheet, they had little else to do but sit around and talk about Bruno’s soon-to-be-born sons. Sylver interlocked his fingers together and placed them over his stomach as he leaned back on his [Deadly Darkness] made chair.

“It’s a matter of perspective. I would say that the fact that we know, makes it good news,” Sylver said, and the two reincarnators mutely stared at him. “There is more than one god involved in whatever is going on with you two. How many exactly, I can’t tell, but it isn’t alone,” Sylver explained.

Faust and Bruno both reacted similarly, except, Bruno wasn’t anywhere near as upset about it as Faust was.

“So now what?” Bruno asked, and with that simple phrase forced Faust out of his minor shock. Frankly speaking, Bruno seemed a little too relaxed about it.

“Is there something you want to tell me, Bruno?” Sylver asked with a raised eyebrow.

There was a 5-second pause, that under normal conditions would have resulted in Sylver reacting very rashly. Instead, he waited for the man to gather his thoughts, and come to a decision.

“I think I was contacted by a god when the [Hero] was here…” Bruno said slowly as if he was uncertain in his words.

Sylver waited for him to continue, but spoke up when Bruno remained quiet.

“I’m going to assume there’s a very good reason you’re only telling me this now?” Sylver asked, and felt relieved that Bruno didn’t look the least bit afraid at his question.

“I forgot. When you mentioned there being more than one god, I… I’ll say this again, I think, I was contacted by a god. I’m not certain, but I don’t normally dream when I sleep,” Bruno explained.

“That’s how they usually do it… In your dream were you in a familiar environment, or somewhere you hadn’t been before?” Sylver asked.

Bruno sat up in his seat and concentrated on the memory.

“It was like a small library. There were books everywhere, but it was like they were the walls and ceiling? There weren’t any shelves, they were stacked on top of each other like bricks… It didn’t feel familiar; I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a place… Why does this matter?” Bruno asked.

“A local deity would have known you well enough to make you comfortable in your favorite bar, your house, somewhere where you would be relaxed. So something foreign… Was there a source of light? Could you see any shadows anywhere?” Sylver asked and a strange look appeared on Bruno’s face.

“No. It was bright enough to see clearly, but there wasn’t a direction the light was coming from… No shadows either,” Bruno said, and Sylver clicked his tongue.

“Is that bad?” Faust asked.

“It means the god isn’t young. The recently born ones normally retain enough memories that they know that light comes from somewhere. Whereas the older gods forget that fact since they don’t really “see” anything… When it spoke, where was the voice coming from? Did you just know what it what saying, did it sound like it was behind you, inside your head, was the volume consistent?” Sylver asked as Bruno closed his eyes, all 8 of them.

“It didn’t talk, but… I don’t know what it wanted. I just feel like it had something to do with the [Hero],” Bruno said, and Sylver had to ask a question he already knew the answer to and hoped Bruno wouldn’t take it the wrong way.

“You didn’t interact with him, right?” Sylver asked.

“No.”

“Tera?”

“No.”

“One of your chimeras?”

“No.”

“…” Sylver sat up in his seat and waited for a solid minute for Bruno to really think about it.

“Lola hid everyone away once she realized he was here. She even had your priest leave the city for a few days,” Bruno said, and Sylver nodded along.

There was an uncomfortable silence that Sylver turned into a confused silence due to a grin forming on his face.

“Anyway, that’s the bad news. Multiple gods, maybe, probably, most likely,” Sylver summarized and savored the moment.

The only sound inside the workshop was the soft bubbling sound coming from one of Sylver’s backup bodies, floating in the large glass vats. Ria was somewhere upstairs, either with Chrys or practicing forming herself a body out of the SAM worms.

“You’ll need 2 things,” Sylver said.

“To do what?” Faust asked.

“To turn your curse into a blessing. No memory loss, no being forced to kill each other, and no rebirth, just immortality,” Sylver said and a small amount of pride managed to leak into his voice.

Faust looked skeptical, but Bruno looked like he was about to call Sylver a liar.

“You figured something out? How?” Bruno asked.

Sylver made the two copper sheets float over to him, and made them float side by side so Bruno and Faust could see them. The sheets looked like they were scratched up, but a discerning eye would be able to spot the pattern amidst the scratches. Sylver pointed with his finger to the top right corner, on both of the plates.

“See this line? They’re… There’s no point explaining it, the gist of it is, I’m almost certain that the two of you are cannibalizing each other’s soul. I had an inkling when I was moving you into your bodies, but this pretty much confirms it,” Sylver explained, as he made the two floating plates float back down onto his table.

“How sure of this are you?” Bruno asked.

“Very sure... But, I would need to inspect your actual souls to be 100% certain. Which are both at the bottom of the dungeon. But we have plenty of time to figure that out because the first thing you need will take a while,” Sylver explained.

“What’s the first thing?” Faust asked.

Sylver smiled despite himself.

“You need to find someone who can manipulate souls. You’re looking for someone who at the very least mastered it. They would also need to be able to perceive and manipulate primal energy. And it would be a huge help if they’re familiar with the kind of dark magic required to bind souls together,” Sylver explained.

Bruno and Faust just stared at him blankly, while Sylver had an ever so slight smile on his face.

“Just in case it wasn’t clear, I’m more than qualified. If anything, I’m overqualified. You don’t need to know how to craft a phylactery to do this, but I would be lying if I said that it wouldn’t help. There is a slight catch,” Sylver said, and his smile wavered.

“You’re not strong enough to do it,” Bruno guessed.

Sylver nodded and rechecked his mental math.

“I would need to have… about 70 times the mana capacity I currently do? Temporarily boosting it won’t work in this case, the spell I’m thinking of needs the mana all at once, instantly. And while I’m more than excellent at manipulating mana, there’s a limitation due to the Gellman constant,” Sylver explained, and Faust gestured at Bruno.

“What if he helps you?” Faust asked, and Sylver shook his head.

“No offense, but you’re nowhere near good enough to do it. Also, this spell will need to be used on the two of you, at the same time. So even if you somehow managed to train yourself to use soul magic at my level, it wouldn’t work. But we have plenty of time because the second thing is where things get difficult,” Sylver said.

“So, wait, you increasing your mana 70 fold is the easy part?” Faust asked.

“Yes. Because you also need to find a soul so huge that it’s immovable. Meaning something so ancient that even a god wouldn’t be able to affect it. To put it crudely, the reason you’re being manipulated the way you are is that your souls are strong, but they’re not fixed. You’re like boulders someone could hypothetically roll. Sure, you’re big and heavy, but you can still be rolled,” Sylver explained, and could almost feel the life leave Bruno’s eyes.

“A true immortal,” Bruno whispered as if the words were a death sentence.

Sylver let him sit with the thought for a couple of seconds before he pulled him out of the deep end.

“Sure, that’s one option. But that would require convincing a true immortal to allow the one thing they’re afraid of to fiddle around with their soul. Which is why I have a slightly easier alternative,” Sylver offered.

You could almost see the sparks in Bruno’s and Faust’s eyes.

“Are either of you aware of what makes a high-elf a high-elf,” Sylver asked, and Bruno and Faust exchanged a look.

“If you’re asking about the Eldar rite, we were both high-elves at one point or another,” Bruno said, and Faust nodded along.

“Great, because I was kind of forbidden from speaking about it with non-high-elves. I’m not certain if the people that forbid it are still around, but it’s a matter of principle. Anyway, were you elves that became high-elves, or were you born, as high-elves?” Sylver asked, and Faust and Bruno shared an identical look of confusion.

“I don’t remember,” Bruno said.

“Me neither. I know I was an elf at some point, but I’m fairly certain I was born a high-elf,” Faust added.

“Have you ever noticed that the amount of high-elves is always decreasing?” Sylver asked.

“No,” Bruno said.

“Well, it is. And never repeat what I am about to say to anyone, especially, Lola. Because a colony of high elves literally started a war with me when I said what I’m about to say,” Sylver explained, as he leaned forward so his voice would have less distance to travel.

“They’re basically liches,” Sylver whispered.

Neither Faust nor Bruno reacted.

“Alright,” Faust said.

“Sure,” Bruno said.

“Fair enough… I guess I’ll start by explaining how a lich functions. Or actually… Alright, so imagine your soul to be a book. And it has a limited number of pages. The width of the book is what determines if you’re able to become immoral or not. I’m going to say that it’s locked in at birth and that there isn’t a way to increase it,” Sylver said.

“You told me you didn’t have the capacity to become immortal though?” Bruno asked.

“I didn’t but found a workaround. Having said that, I am an anomaly. The conditions required for me to do what I did were attained partially due to luck. I’ve searched high and low, as far as I’m aware I am the only person in existence that has been able to make his book bigger, Sylver explained, as Bruno nodded along, but Faust looked more and more confused.

“I’m lost,” Faust said.

Sylver closed his eyes for a couple of seconds to gather his thoughts.

“I know, but bear with me. So, when you’re born, your soul, and book, are empty. As you experience things, you write on the pages. It’s more like a diary than a book. Once you run out of pages, you end up having to erase old pages and write in them, but every time you do that, the paper becomes more and more brittle, until it tears.

“Some people are born with paper that can be erased infinitely, but a normal immortal, a proper one, has a book with an unlimited number of pages. Or such a high number of pages that it might as well be unlimited,” Sylver explained.

“I’ve heard this before. It’s why undead almost always end up going feral,” Bruno added.

“This is one of the reasons, yes. A non-feral undead is almost always someone with the capacity to be immortal. But sometimes they simply have leftover pages that they didn’t write in, and they turn feral very slowly, but I’m getting off track,” Sylver said.

“How does this relate to turning our curse into a blessing?” Faust asked.

“I’m getting there… So diaries, empty pages, are souls, right? Now, what a lich does, normally, is tear the empty pages it needs out of other people’s books. It’s why they always go after children or women that they can be made to produce children. Infants are worth 100 adult men, because of how many empty pages their books have,” Sylver explained.

“That explains quite a bit…” Faust mumbled to himself, while Bruno just shrugged his shoulders.

“So that’s what a lich is and does. Now, I’ll say this one last time, never repeat this to anyone, ever… High-elves do the exact same thing, except there’s consent involved. They take empty pages from each other. They sort of share them, if that makes more sense,” Sylver said but could see that it didn’t.

“Like the thing you don’t want to talk about in the Garden,” Bruno said, and Sylver physically recoiled as the buried memory was yanked to the surface.

“No,” He said calmly. “Comparing this to that is comparing lovemaking between spouses to vicious rape where blood is used as a lubricant! It couldn’t be more different, what those VILE PIECES OF FUCKING SHIT DID TO THOSE-”

***

Sylver took another sip from his cup and then finished it. He waited for alcohol to spread out through his body, and leaned back in his [Deadly Darkness] seat. Bruno had a serene look on his face, while Faust looked like he wasn’t that far away from crying.

“I apologize for my choice of words… And for raising my voice… And for using those particular slurs. But in my defense, I did ask you never to bring that up. What was I saying?” Sylver asked calmly, as he put his cup down and kicked his feet up and was now floating on top of his own solidified shadow.

“That real high-elves consensually exchange empty pages,” Bruno said gently.

Sylver leaned so far back that he was almost lying down at this point. And while it was slightly disrespectful to Bruno and Faust, he got the feeling they preferred it that he fully calmed down and didn’t have a rage-induced aneurism.

“I should have fucking left a plague to kill them all… Anyway… With high-elves, there are two kinds. Those that are born, and those that are made. Lola was born as a high-elf. Because her mother was a high-elf, and her father was a high-elf.

“But if she has a child with, let’s say a normal elf, the child will be born an elf… Although, since she doesn’t have an Eldar tree, she’s also just an elf…” Sylver confused himself as he tried to figure out where the line was drawn.

“How does this relate to us?” Faust asked, and Bruno knocked his knee against Faust’s to not interrupt.

“Right, yes. Think of an Eldar tree as something that can store empty pages. And here is the really really clever part. When a high-elf dies, their soul is pulled into the tree. Their pages are then erased, and the fresh clean pages are handed out to the high-elves that are still alive. But,” Sylver said, and slightly sat up in his lounge chair made out of solid shadow.

“But if they’re just using the pages of their dead, there’s a finite amount. So what they do, and I can’t express just how amazingly intricate the magic they use for this is, they “make” regular elves, into high-elves. They share their power, their knowledge, their magical affinity, abilities, the elf in question even undergoes a metamorphosis,” Sylver explained.

“They make a new high-elf, and use the pages the high-elf had as an elf to increase the number of pages they share between themselves… I see what you mean, they really are liches…” Bruno said, and Sylver nodded along.

“But even though they can do that, usually enough of them die of natural causes that there isn’t one high-elf that’s significantly older than the others. It keeps their numbers relatively low. They either have 10 old high-elves, or 100 young high-elves, usually somewhere in between that. It balances out is what I’m saying,” Sylver explained.

“So we need to become high-elves and outlive the others?” Bruno asked.

“Assuming I’m right, all we need is an Eldar tree to bind your souls to. You don’t need to be part of their shared soul, you’ll just be attached to it,” Sylver clarified.

“After everything… is it really that simple?” Faust asked.

Sylver shrugged his shoulders.

“The spell isn’t simple. Finding an Eldar tree isn’t simple. Although, Lola is taking care of things on that front. And if that doesn’t work out, the dark elves have more than enough saplings for me to force-feed powerful souls, and grow each of you your own Eldar tree to attach to.

“You also can’t imagine just how unique the combination of skills that are required to do this are. Maybe Aether would be able to do this, but even for him this would be tough,” Sylver said.

Everyone turned towards the sound of someone knocking on one of the secret entrance doors.

“Is it dinner time already?” Sylver asked.

“You spent an hour making ever increasingly disturbing comparisons,” Bruno said.

Sylver felt the anger he had just barely managed to bottle up make a squeak as the cork moved half a centimeter. Thankfully he had released enough pressure that it stayed where it was.

“I did yes… Anyway, you two go upstairs, and call Ria down here if you don’t mind,” Sylver said, as he stood up from his shadow, and pulled up his status.

***

[Skill: Undead Mastery (VI) [S]]
Skill level can be increased by raising undead. (Repeat raising of the same undead will not increase skill level)
I - Turn a corpse into an undead.
II - All undead under your control have +35% to all stats.
III - Upon death all undead will return 40% of mana through [Dying Breath].
IV – Duplicated shades will have 45% of the original’s stats.
V – Cost of raising humanoid undead decreased by 50%.
VI- At the cost of reducing HP to 0, the creature that delivered the most recent attack will receive a defeat notification.
*Quality dependent on the corpse.
*Quality dependent on the soul.

For [Undead Mastery] the choice was obvious and was almost a little strange that Sylver didn’t get it much much earlier. The best thing about it wasn’t just that it applied to his shades, zombies, and any kind of undead he created, but that it applied to Sylver.

Now he wouldn’t need to worry about tricking people of a lower level than him when he wanted to play dead.

To test it Sylver had Bruno attack him with a dagger and then activated the effect. Sylver feared that [Calamitous Abomination] would render this ability, not just useless, but dangerous to use, was thankfully unwarranted.

All Bruno got was a [Defeated!] notification, with a bunch of question marks for Sylver’s race, and classes. All Bruno knew was that Sylver was level 139.

Sylver waited for the nod from Ria before he moved on to the next skill.

[Skill: Mutating Override (II) [F]]
Skill level can be raised by overriding primal energy field.
I – Mutate biological matter by overriding its primal energy field.
II – Decrease the MP cost by 5%.
III – Increase range by 10%.
*Quantity of MP required dependent on rate, volume, and complexity of primal energy field being overridden.

The “like a limb coming back to life” analogy had outstayed its welcome a long time ago, but Sylver couldn’t think of a better way of describing it. The effect was exactly as written, a 10% increase, and not a 0.01% more.

Still, it was a great boon, and comforting in a way that was hard to describe. Even if something managed to nullify Sylver’s [Lesser Perception], they would then need to nullify his primal energy sensing ability. He could still feel an invisible limitation holding him back, but Sylver chose to focus on the positives.

“Before we go upstairs, can we talk?” Ria said as Sylver gave his neatly tucked away vials and powder satchels one final look over before he enchanted the backpack closed.

“Always,” Sylver said towards Ria.

She had figured out how to make her staff float and had developed the habit of sitting on it as if it were a floating ledge, with her feet dangling towards the ground.

“I would like to apologize for… assuming the worst. It was unwarranted, and I’m sorry,” Ria explained, as Sylver tightened the strap on his bag, and used his fingernail to etch a simple framework onto the leather hood.

“I accept your apology… But while we are on the subject, from your point of view, it was very much warranted. You found your friend’s corpse being stored away in a necromancer’s workshop. It would have been stranger if you didn’t assume the worst,” Sylver said, as Ria kept her head down and seemed to be very interested in how her feet swung back and forth.

“Why did I get a soul and she didn’t…” Ria mumbled, just quietly enough that Sylver wasn’t certain if she directed the question at him, or to herself.

Sylver silently carried on enchanting his bag, and then started working on the package he needed Faust to carry.

“Could you bring her back to life? Give her a soul too?” Ria asked, and this time was loud enough that Sylver could tell she was asking him.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Sylver answered.

Ria floated closer to him.

“How does it work? What do I need to give her a soul? Can I do it with the sigils I have inside the staff?” Ria asked, and Sylver continued enchanting the package.

“I promise I’m not being vague for the fun of it, but yes, and no. You have a soul, you can do it, you don’t have a mana core, you can’t do it. You are “alive” by my definition because you possess a soul, but by the definition the majority of people in Eira use, you’re a golem. In their eyes, you’re not a person or a creature, you’re an item, an object. Like a clock, or a windmill,” Sylver explained, as he tightened the wrapping around the bundle.

“Can you do it? Give her life, a soul?” Ria asked, and Sylver felt a chill form within his chest.

“You wouldn’t like the result. Binding a soul to a soulless creature is a very difficult and time-consuming task. And because I don’t want to lie to you, I don’t possess the right skill set for it. My focus is on the biological, for her you would need someone with golem-related skills.

“Even then, people capable of imbuing an item with genuine life are extremely rare. Lola’s mother could do it, but even if Lola knows how to, she would need another couple thousand years’ worth of training,” Sylver explained, as he moved the box closer to him, and started shoving the wrapped up bundle inside of it.

“What would I need to do if I wanted to give her a soul. You said I have a soul; I can do it. I have mana, I can-”

“It’s not your mana. You’re like a wizard that uses a wand, the wood, and the mana crystal inside is what is interacting with mana to cast a spell. To breathe life into something, you need to want it so much that the world itself will get sucked into your desire and will help you. I’m not saying no, I’m saying that as far as I’m aware, you can’t,” Sylver interrupted, as he shoved the closed box into Faust’s bag, and placed his bag next to it.

“If I could do it, what would I need to do?” Ria repeated.

Sylver double-checked everything one last time while he thought the question over.

“Stay near her. Try to saturate her with as much mana as possible. Focus on who she is to you. It’s a long shot, and as far as I’m concerned, impossible, but… hundreds of impossible things happen every single day. What’s one more?” Sylver asked, as Ria wrapped herself back around the staff, and floated out of the way to allow Sylver to pass.

Sylver brushed his hair backward and pressed it down with some steam to make it presentable. He burned away the stubble growing on his chin, and checked that he wasn’t missing any teeth. Lastly, he reached into his pocket and looked at the two hollow half-spheres floating around in a mixture of acid and Sylver’s blood.

Since he didn’t need his eyes to see, there wasn’t anything stopping him from wearing colored contact lenses. He would have to experiment with how much he would be allowed to attach them to his eyeballs before they started to turn black, but that was for later.

Right now, he had a dinner party to host, and then he and Faust would be on their way to rescue Edmund.

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