Ch 78. Level Seven (Patreon)

I tried to stay awake, but my body was failing me and my eyes were closing. My eyelids and hands felt like they were made from lead. Too much magical power had gone through me and far too much experience had been absorbed by my soul due to the explosive obliteration of the arch-cendai’s soul garden.

I momentarily considered relocating into Grogs, but then I remembered that it wasn’t my body that was magically exhausted - it was my soul. Changing bodies would not alleviate my unbearable spiritual fatigue.

I spotted Alessi talking to Isachs about flying us to second level and decided that things were going to be just fine without me. Agatha and Emerald had joined in on the conversation, introducing themselves to my sister and cousin. I was glad that Baroness Amadea taught them enough Tokimorimïtul to get by.

I thought about it and decided that it was time to level up as simply napping would not resolve the issue of vast, unprocessed power held within my soul. Instead of simply commanding the System to level me up, I closed my eyes, paused my heart and stilled my body, feeling the currents of magical power dancing around me, trying to define each one of them, trying to understand where they came from.

I wanted to know exactly what I had killed that gave me power.

Surprisingly enough, some of the things spinning around my soul weren’t random monsters of the chasm demolished by the detonation of the Eurekan gate.

I recognized the odd things after some meticulous examination. Their memories weren't those of creatures. Their thoughts were odd, fragmented slow and brief, lacking what I would call consciousness. They had only one desire - to kill Astral Phantoms. They felt akin to puppets, little pieces of something far greater than themselves. Of course! These things were parts of Barrie that I had murdered in the doomed timeline!

Holy crap… the Infinite Mirror had somehow allowed me to keep the experience for things I had managed to kill in a life that didn’t actually happen to me! Or maybe it did? I had no idea how exactly the mirrors functioned.

Having sufficiently understood Barrie, I moved onto defining other absorbed information. Another thing the degraded memories of which I had acquired was the Eurekan gate itself. I saw flickers of people walking back and forth through the gate, a flash of some disaster and then… millennia of silence. Ages of snow and dust, then mossy hills and then mountains engulfing, burying the gate deep in solid rock. Then there was a flash of light. It was Eunice. She had freed the gate from its rocky prison. Eunice spoke to the Gate and attempted to activate it again and again for hundreds of years, failing to do so, becoming more annoyed with each attempt. Over the passing centuries the arch-cendai built her domain around the gate and forged a network of magical power around it that allowed her to access the Astral by stepping through the gate... even though this was not the gate's function at all! Eunice had no idea what the gate was for or why it failed to respond to her. The answer was quite simple - the gate didn't recognize Eunice as a legitimate user or even as a human.

Whispers, segments, diluted, faded dreams of other things I had destroyed today flashed through me. Eunice’s library and storage of artefacts from Illatius had left tiniest imprints of themselves deep in my soul, carried by the Astral currents upon their destruction.

If I didn’t have a damned Astral Phantom to worry about… I could probably find their remnants, pull information from the Still Forest with a Searching arrow and eventually rebuild everything that I had destroyed. The potential of eventually recreating Eunice’s garden and library was interesting, but also very dangerous since none of it belonged to me. I definitely couldn't attempt such, until I was certain that the goddess of the Basquenate was gone for good.

I noted that there was nothing of Eunice in my gathered experience. Not even a fragmented memory, not a single blip. It was as if something had scooped all of it away before I could get any of the tasty bits from her soul-garden. This only confirmed that the Astral manifestation of Eunice as a divinity was still quite alive and functional. That eventually, she would manifest a physical presence and come for me either as herself or through her angels or followers. 

I felt that I had learned as much as I could about the experience I had procured. I compressed the energy within me into a singularity and let it ignite within me, let it detonate, its fires washing over me, forging me anew.

My soul became engulfed in the screams of dying stars burning me up from within.

. . .

As I found myself standing in Chernobyl's control room, my eyes quickly danced around the chart. Thirty five points. Nearly enough experience to get to level 8. I should try destroying more archmagi domains!

Ha ha.

No... I shouldn't. I got incredibly lucky with Eunice. The arch-cendai had made a mistake, built her domain around the Eurekan gate which was immovable, indestructible, invincible... to everything but Endy.

As I thought about the knife, she manifested in my hand - a little, two-dimensional, vantablack piece of infinity.

"Why are you the way that you are?" I asked the sharp void in my ghostly hand. "Why are you a knife and not a gun or a clever avatar? You seem to be pretty limited for something that's supposedly infinite."

The concept of infinity didn't reply.

"You don't seem exactly like... uh... Infi," I mulled. "She was pretty chatty in comparison. Did the Eurekan gate animate her or something? Does my brain lack the processing power necessary to give you consciousness?"

The knife remained solemnly silent.

I wasn't sure if I even wanted Endy to have consciousness... Infi seemed dangerous. The inhuman, monstrous part of her that managed the Dead Zone wasn’t friendly, and had no qualms about turning me and the rest of Installation Rozaline into dust.

My eyes stopped on the line listing my Infinite mirrors. There were two dead connections there and one… live one. Holy crap! I was still somehow connected to myself back on Earth. Could I perhaps use it to… leap backwards in time into myself again?!

The desire to pull up the Earth-mirror was there, but I was too scared to try it. Would it cost me another mirror to leap into the past or simply a lot of mana? I wasn’t sure.

I looked back at my 35 points and then at the piece of infinity in my hand.

Could I fuse infinity with my other powers? What would happen if I combined infinity with my Mitchell shield or compressor? Would they become infinitely powerful? No… that would be ridiculous. The power had to have a source, had to be taken from somewhere. Infinite mirrors weren’t exactly infinite - they reached other worlds, but they in fact… very finite and single use.

I decided to add a single point to each of my skills, while combining it with Infinity. As the new roots bloomed from the infinite void-dot within my soul I tried to understand what they were. It wasn’t easy, but eventually I figured things out.

Combining Michell Shield with Infinity seemed to produce a magical shield that was infinitely versatile. Basically, it was a perfect anti-magic shield that adapted to whatever was fired at it. It was still very weak, relied on my mana and could shatter easily, but it was far, far better than my normal Mitchell Shield which blocked physical blows and didn't do much against magical attacks.

Combining my compressor with Infinity, produced some sort of an Infinite Compressor. It relied on my own magic to temporarily fold anything. Anything... even magic. I renamed it to the [Limitless Compressor] as it wasn't for infinitely compressing things, but was instead good for compressing an infinite variety of things.

I wasn't sure how useful compressing magic would be. Perhaps if another thunderbird attacked me I could poke it in the head and have it keel over? No, if I compressed a thunderbird's magic away, it would still be very much a physical monstrosity. I thought about what sorts of creatures were made from pure magic.

The answer came to me after a minute - Astral Phantoms! They were creatures made from magical currents. The [Infinite Compressor] could compress a small section of an Astral Phantom. Yes! I potentially had a perfect, quick-strike weapon against an Astral Phantom. It probably wouldn't take down a big bastard that nearly killed me three years ago, but it would hopefully demolish smaller ghost-squids far better than just slapping them with my threads or conceptualizing and striking them down with Endy.

By combining Infinity with Dominion I managed to make a [Limitless Dominion sapling]. I had no idea what exactly it would do, but I had a vague understanding that it would allow me to dominate magical constructs. Just as regular Dominion saplings could be planted in physical things, the infinity-birthed ones could be planted in anything - even magical constructs! Basically, such a sapling could be planted in an Astral Phantom, an Astral Tree like Dawn or a Vow and actually survive there!

I could ask Voltara would be my first… test subject to attempt planting an Infinite Dominion Root.

Her angel was brain dead and this sapling could theoretically allow me to control Voltara’s Vow. If it worked as intended, then I could place Dominion saplings into Arouetta’s Vow and pretend that her angel was awake, operate it, and maybe talk to her via it. I was concerned that Arouetta's belief in Eunissi would be impossible to break and that eventually the maid would become a big problem for us. If I could control her Vow, then through it I could control her as well and make sure that the maid would never go against us.

Dominating the brain-dead Vows felt like a solid move to make. It would allow me to understand my enemies better and oppose Eunissi and her cendai far better in the future. I invested nine more points into Limitless Dominion Saplings. 

Combining infinity with Anima created an [Limitless Anima sapling]. Like Dominion, it was a sapling that could be planted into anything - to animate anything which was not alive with my own personality. Potentially… I could use this as necromancy for things that were not intended to be animated into being. I couldn't think of anything more clever or useful than animating a pet rock to test this Anima sapling. Theoretically, I could make myself a golem assistant with it, but such a thing would probably require a ton of Anima saplings and a very complex body that could be powered by magical crystals which I would most likely have to pester Antoine to make.

Using this [Limitless Anima] I could give Endy a piece of my soul, animate her. But, would a talking knife be that useful? Would she be able to answer my questions about the universe or would she only know as much as I do and thus simply be a conversation companion?

Just as I tried to fuse infinity with a Resonance branch, something shook me, disrupting my concentration. Someone was trying to wake me up. Since it was probably important, I decided to finish my soul-work later.

The dream of Chernobyl folded away as I opened my eyes.

“Juni, please wake up already,” Agatha was shaking me.

“Yeah?” I yawned.

“You’ve been sleeping all day and all night,” Agatha said. “It’s morning.”

“Oh,” I blinked. “Baroness Amadea?”

"Most likely," Dawn commented from under Agatha's dress. "Eight hours until a pivotal branch in all of our fortunes."

“Baroness Amadea will find you,” Agatha nodded. “Eunice gave her an artifact that tracks you. Do you have a plan for facing Mother?”

“Maybe?” I yawned, stretching.

“Maybe isn’t good enough, damn it Juni!” Agatha growled. “You do realize that she can wield my body to strike you down? All Mother needs to do is order me or Emmy to kill you and we won't be able to do anything but follow through with it!”

“Oh,” I looked at the elaborate formation of Dominion saplings shimmering inside Agatha. “That would be bad.”

“Yes,” Agatha said with a shudder. “It’s very bad and I don’t know how you can just sleep the time away!”

“I didn’t just sleep,” I shook my head. “I’ll have you know I leveled up! I’m level seven now!”

“Good for you,” the eldest Amadea Princess sighed. “But that doesn’t solve our problems. We don’t have another dragonheart to blast my Mother's estate or warship to smithereens! Antoine said that the one we got is barely functional!”

She looked like she was about to have a nervous breakdown, her right eye twitching.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

“No,” she growled. “I am not. I am terrified out of my mind! Dawn has been counting down the hours to a moment that potentially leads to all of our deaths.”

“I won’t let Amadea hurt you,” I said.

“I… chose to be with you,” Agatha whispered.

“I didn’t present you with much of a choice,” I commented. “If we didn’t stop Eunice, she would have unleashed the Dead Zone and killed all of us. You believe me, right?”

“I… I…” She choked.

I stare at her trembling body.

“It doesn’t matter,” she finally said. “I’ve made my choice to be your knight and to assist you. This choice puts me against Mother, against an army of ten thousand Vow-bound maids of the house of Amadea, all of its resources and warship Bliss!”

“Walk with me,” I offered.

I opened the door and stepped out of Galissi onto the mossy cliff side lit by sunrise. 

An encampment of nearly two thousand chimera greeted me on the broken cliff that remained from the meeting grove and arch-cendai's skull. I saw that my father was already up and about, walking through the throngs of gathered chimera and barking out orders. There was a simple drawing on his chest that marked him as the alpha. I smirked at him. Acadius was quick on the uptake - being the father of the new arch-cendai made him the top dog of the village.

Emerald, Isahcs and Alessi were walking next to Acadius and helping coordinate the relocation efforts. Flying hunters were taking off and landing on the gold sand, bringing in supplies and new chimera to join the camp.

Agatha sighed dramatically, following me out of the glider.

I sat down on a mossy cliff side, facing the lovely view of cliffs and waterfalls. Agatha sat next to me.

“What happens if I take down Amadea?” I asked her.

“The arch-maid will take over management of the estate and the chain of Barony rulership will be redistributed between various Amadea house administrators,” she replied.

“You won’t inherit the estate?” I raised an eyebrow.

“No,” Agatha shook her head.

“Wasn’t Amadea planning to take over your body if she gets hurt or dies of old age?” I inquired.

“She is,” Agatha nodded. “I saw the copies of the inheritance papers. The problem is - I do not know the passwords necessary to change the current standing orders. In Mother’s absence, the Administrators take over… and Emerald and I get nothing.”

“That’s… inconvenient,” I frowned.

“Do you seriously have a way to take Amadea down? Why are we discussing this? You do get that if you simply kill Mother's body, her soul will just move into me or Emmy?” She snapped.

“I think I have a way to take Amadea down,” I nodded. “I just thought of it now that my head is clear. It will be reckless and dangerous… but I think it can be done.”

“How?!” Agatha stared at me, her eyes wide.

I opened my sketchbook and flipped it to the last page.

“With this one trick,” I turned the sketchbook her way, revealing a drawing to her.

"What?!" She stared at my face like I was insane.