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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 was 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, book, is 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-”