"Are you ready?" Vedanava asked me.
"As I'll ever be, I suppose," I replied.
"You know I won't hurt you, right?" He asked.
"I know I know, but you are literally about to perform open soul surgery on my here. /1\ Forgive me if I'm a bit nervous." I replied a bit sassy back to him.
I felt a hand placed over mine and looked to the side to see a slightly worried Velzard. "It'll be alright, honey. Big Brother is the best at what he does. He won't make a mistake."
I smiled nervously back at her. "I know that, but one wrong move, and I'm gone. Not even he can bring back a completely erased soul, you know." I replied.
"I know, but he won't make that mistake. If he did, then I'd kill him and then myself." Velzard commented.
My worry for myself instantly vanished and I moved my hand to her cheek. "Please don't say that, darling! If I were to die, I hope that you'd move on!" I said, tears in my eyes.
"Oh, honey!" Velzard replied back before pulling me into a hug. "I'd never be able to move on! I've already found my happily ever after once I found you! There is no way I'd ever love again if you died!" She cried while holding me close.
Veldanava looked on at our little skit for a moment with a large sweatdrop on his forehead. "Can we get started now? This is gonna take a while and I want to do something else today other than watch... whatever that is."
Velzard and I looked each other in the eyes before laughing softly. I gave her a kiss before breaking off and returning to my place in front of Veldanava. Velzard still held my hand as I seated myself. Veldanava shook his head lightly with a smile seeing this and glancing at the ever-so-slight worry on Velzard's face, though that didn't stop him from continuing his mission. He placed his hands softly on my back and closed his eyes to concentrate. Velzard and I looked at each other one last time before we nodded and simultaneously closed our eyes.
There was a flash of golden light and I suddenly found myself in an empty expanse. It was a void of nothing but white with a 'floor' made up of a transparent material similar to glass. Beneath which lay a prismatic multicolored orb of light that radiated strongly. Despite being very bright, it was not harsh to the eyes and I could stare at it without issue.
"Where am I?" I asked.
"This is the surface of your soul," Veldanava said, appearing to my right.
I jumped a bit as he appeared. I was kinda expecting it, but since I was so used to looking at the world through either [Magic Sense] or [Universal Detect], not having either and having to rely on just sight and sound.
"So this is your soul huh? Its kinda.. whats the word-?" Velzard trailed off.
"Trippy?" I commented.
"Yeah, let's go with that." She said with a forced smile.
"Everyone's soul is different, but I can see yours is extremely healthy." Veldanava explained, " We should continue."
He knelt down and placed his palm on the floor, releasing a golden light as he did so. I felt a strange tingling sensation from deep within my chest, though when I focused on it, it actually felt like it was coming from every cell in my body, not just from my chest. Seeing this, Velzard walked a bit closer to see what her brother was doing, stopping once she noticed a large hole opening up in the ground. beneath them.
Veldanava smiled. "There they are." He said.
As soon as he finished talking, the light began to bubble and distort before two pieces of the vibrant light detached themselves from the mass. I felt a brief prickling sensation but nothing more. The two orbs slowly began to float upward towards us, approaching the hole closer and closer. They came to a complete stop once they passed the boundary and floated about chest height to Veldanava.
"Is that my skills?" I asked.
"Yes, well, it's more like their cores. Skill Cores, on their own, don't represent the entire Skill, though they are the most important part. Theoretically, I could remove the entire skill and shave off all but the cores and you could still have access to the skill, though you may lose some subskills and proficiency with using them. /2\ It's even possible to do some wacky stuff with the 'remnants' of a skill inside your soul, but that's an explanation for another time." He said.
Veldanava smiled and then telekinetically began to interact with the light, pulling it apart into several pieces. He reached his hand into his chest and seemingly pulled out light from inside of it that was equal to the cores from my soul.
"This is the data from my own soul which I will use as a reference." He said as he studied the light while combining fragments of the two lights together.
This process went on for quite some time, or at least it felt that way, since the entire time I was feeling a slightly uncomfortable tingle, but eventually, Veldanava finished putting the ripped-apart orbs back together. Somehow, both were bigger and than their previous selves despite Veldanava not adding anything to them. Velzard and I looked at them in awe for a while before Veldanava suddenly looked like he had an epiphany. He looked towards Velzard and motioned towards her.
Velzard and I looked at each other for a second before we both shrugged our shoulders and Velzard walked closer to him. It was pretty clear that he wouldn't do anything bad to me, as we were friends and there was no reason for him too, so we kept our guard down.
Velzard approached Veldanava and I motioned to her to come closer. Velzard sighed and hesitantly leaned in to hear what he had to say. It was a whisper and without my enhanced senses, I couldn't hear what they were talking about. They continued to talk silently for about thirty seconds, occasionally glancing at me, before continuing their little conspiracy by themselves. I let them talk, as in the worst-case scenario, they pull a minor prank on me but they wouldn't intentionally sabotage my ability to defend myself by tampering with my skills. Just when my patience was at its limit and I was about to ask them what they were talking about, Velzard began to nod her head furiously with a slight blush on her face.
I raised my eyebrow at this and noticed Veldanava touch Velzard, pulling out two tiny soul bubbles from her chest and flicking one of each into mine. the additions melded together in an instant. Veldanava gave it a quick once-over before turning to her and nodding in confirmation. Velzard then smiled widely and happily made her way back to me, almost skipping for joy.
"What was that about?" I asked her.
"You're my soulmate right?" Velzard asked.
"Of course," I replied without hesitation.
"Well let's just say we're about to be closer than any couple before us in history." She said before wrapping her arms around mine and snuggling up close. "Take that elf."
"Did you say something?" I asked, pretending that I didn't hear it.
"Nothing~" She replied with a big smile on her face.
"It's done!" Veldanava said as I turned back to him, seeing the Skill Cores descending back into my soul and fusing with it.
The tingling sensation stopped and I felt full of power again as I did when I first awakened my Ultimate Skills. I looked up into the sky and waited for the announcement to begin.
<
<
Before I could register how shocked I was at everything I heard, a blinding golden light shone over everything and when it receded I was back in the real world. I looked around, noticing that nothing seemed to have changed at all in the world around us. I had secretly been keeping an eye on a cloud in the sky and was using it to gauge how much time had passed, but it didn't seem to move at all.
<
"What the..." I jumped up at the sudden noise coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time before glaring at Velzard, who was giggling.
"What's with you pretending to be the Voice of the World with telepathy?" I asked, trying not to sound irritated at the sudden scare.
Velzard refused to meet my eyes and looked away with a big smile on her face.
Veldanava put his hand on my shoulder with a sly grin. "Why don't you ask your skills?"
I raised an eyebrow and looked at him. I highly doubted that looking at them would solve why she was playing a prank on me here and now. However, just when I thought that, the voice returned.
<
I froze in place. 'For real?'
<
I felt a smile creeping up on my face even though I tried to stop it. 'I have my own Conceptual Intelligence like Rimuru had with [Great Sage]?' I asked again for confirmation.
<
I almost wanted to shout for joy. [Great sage] and later [Raphael] was easily the most busted ability in Rimuru's arsenal and it seemed now that I had something similar. I was ecstatic. It was actually one of my biggest regrets of not meeting a ROB when I found out what world I was in when I was a kid. I really wanted at least [Great Sage], but got nothing instead. It was like my dreams had finally come true.
<>
I felt like [Solomon] was slightly embarrassed but happy with my happiness to have it.
"You seem happy," Velzard said with satisfied eyes.
I bent down and scooped her up into a big hug and twirled around multiple times, making sure to plant kisses on her every so often. Veldanava stepped back so as to not get in our way and watched our happy moment, but after a few minutes of celebrating, I calmed down.
'Alright then. Now is the time!' I thought dramatically, weebing out a bit. '[Solomon]! Show me my stats!'
<
I instantly deflated at the rejection.
<
(Datasheet) /3\
My eyes instantly became two small dots before I turned to Veldanava who was suddenly unable to meet my eyes. "Veldanava. What the hell did you do to my skills?"
Veldanava began mumbling something about 'if you're going to do something, then do it right' but I decided that he couldn't have said that. That was a stupid thing to say in this situation. Only a child who couldn't help himself would do something like that.
'[Solomon] are you sure my stats are correct?' I asked in my mind.
<
"Veldanava... you..." I said to him with half-closed eyes.
"Hehe... run for it!" He said, dashing away from me like he was some kind of Jojo's character.
.~.~.~.
/1\:
Ultimate Skills are engraved in a person's soul, so changing them is like performing open heart surgery except on the soul itself.
/2\:
It's possible, in universe, to divide up an Ultimate Skill into multiple parts and uses. For example, when [raphael] became [Manas: Ciel], the Ultimate Skill [raphael] still existed as a high-speed calculator, but Ciel, which was its core, became a different entity, which is why it could get rid of it without delay.
[Uriel] was also divided up numerous times. Its core fused with [Raguel] and even received some fragments from the skill when Rudra's soul was shattered in the LN. The 'remains' of it became [Shub-Niggurath].
/3\:
This took me forever to make. I tried to add the black boxes that normal datasheets use in photoshop, but for some reason, photoshop doesn't let you highlight text like that, and I couldn't be bothered to put a dozen banners behind every single piece of text, so sorry about that.
Furthermore, [Solomon] is a Skill that uses Velzard's voice as it combines her memories and mannerisms by using [True Dragon Release [Frost]] as a base. It's not a completely different entity like Rimuru's version of [Great Sage] or [Raphael] but is actually closer to [Manas: Chronoa], as it operates like a collection of Velzard's memories that happen to be operating [Solomon]. Because of this, it can't become a Manas but it also won't get jealous of Velzard either since it kinda 'IS' her.
PLEASE READ MY Abilities and Equipment PAGE AGAIN!!! It's not infinite magicules, it's infinitely regenerating magicules. In other words, the number of magicules can never go down, but it doesn't infinitely grow either.
A/N: I almost didn't give [Solomon] a voice in this chapter. When I originally created [Solomon] as a concept for voting, I was actually going to wait until Nolla died a natural death and then come up with an excuse to put her consciousness into it to give it a snarky and seductive personality but came to the conclusion that I didn't want to be adding ANOTHER heroine since it was so unpopular to even add Evelyn.