[||||=LEVEL 49= ||||]
"I don't know if I want infinite power, honestly," I said to the old guy. He nodded along with me, just listening. Something I somewhat needed right now. I heard an explosion a ways away but I ignored it. I had the fifth volume of RWBY playing on a TV but it was just background noise at the moment. It didn't really coincide with my version of Remnant after the third season, although the relic of knowledge was vaguely useful.
"It seems like… I don't know, a burden. A responsibility. And it seems like it would detach me from my family. Ruby already tries so hard just be as powerful as me. Jaune trumps me in melee combat pretty easily because of his insane aura. Pyrrha is the weakest of us in a way, not that that means anything, but I have some odd feeling that there's nowhere she'd rather be than with our team. Jaune doesn't like me at all, I'd rather have a calm life playing with magical power, and Ruby… I don't know about her. Since Beacon it's seemed like for the first time that I don't know her perfectly. I don't spend as much time with her as I used to. Things have been moving so fast the last few months."
"Since you got the mantle?" he asked. I shook my head.
"Ever since I got void. By accident, at that. It's insanely powerful. It's anti-magic, but at the same time it's anti-life. And I'm practically a novice at it. I know that there's a million and one other things I could do with it if I just knew what it was I was supposed to do with it."
"Power always comes at a cost," the old man said wisely.
"Every damn time," I muttered. "It always takes me putting my life in danger or another burden on my shoulders."
"You have examples?" the man asked curiously.
"Just living was the first cost," I said bitterly. "Vacuo was, and is, a shithole. I left the place in flames and in the worst gang war they had seen in decades. I guess I wanted to lash out. To take something from the place that killed my parents. I don't blame gangsters or myself for my parent's deaths. I just blame Vacuo. Then there was Summer. I got her silver eyes, but for what? She was the first person I could call a friend in a long time and she died bleeding out on the floor in front of her children. Icmant nearly killed me when I finally mustered up the spine to sacrifice some arbitrary points for power. And Nature's Bounty needs constant upkeep. It's taken the least amount from me, but I know that it's vulnerable. If Salem wanted it gone it would be a trifle, really. Ozpin, on the other hand, has his hands tied after he pledged himself and his efforts to the huntsmen, who wouldn't ever attack me.I have too much power and public support. It's powerful but equally easy for anybody competent to remove. I don't doubt that a fair few people wouldnn't mind me being weaker, or even dead."
"It be like that," the older man said with a nod. I looked at him weirdly for a moment before I remembered how eccentric he could be.
"Right. I suppose I'm just wondering what the price this time would be. I could easily search through the void for a universe of nothing but horrible men and women but would that come back to bite me? I can only imagine how powerful I'd get from killing a whole universe. But there would be costs. Ruby would be so far behind me in strength that she'd be useless and nothing good can come from that. Cesium and the others would be affected too. I wouldn't need them. Anything they could do I could do twice as fast and ten times as well. They would be gophers at best and that's not something I want."
"There's actually an answer for that," the old man pointed out. "Laziness. I've gotten pretty good at being lazy myself. It can lead to pretty terrible things happening but you know how I feel about that."
"There's a whole multiverse of bad things happening." I sighed. "Believe me, I know. One universe saved is an infinite amount of others remaining as they are."
"It'll all happen." The old man shrugged.
"I guess so. I'm glad I'm no hero though. Sitting in Remnant and waltzing around the multiverse seems like a great retirement, but I don't know if I've hit that point yet."
"The show must go on is for performers. Are you a performer?" The old man looked quizzically at me, as though he was actually asking me rather than giving me advice.
"I'm a wizard," I said flatly.
"That has a lot of meanings." The old man smirked. "You don't seem like the kind to sit in a tower and play with magic. Maybe go into terrible places and play with magic while leaving a trail of destruction."
"That does sound fun," I mused.
"Look," the old man began, "whatever you're thinking you're going to do, it doesn't matter. You're thinking it does but it doesn't. Either you do it or you don't but it really doesn't matter."
I frowned at the old man's words. "In the wide scheme of things we're just some souls being souls. Destroy a city and there's an infinite amount of other cities exactly the same. Destroy quadrillions of realities if you want. There's vigintillions of other realities ready to take their place. Of course, we don't even know how much a vigintillion is. At some point it just escapes comprehension. That's what the multiverse is like. It's too big to matter. It's too big to fail. At some point you have to wonder if there's even a failure to be had. If life isn't around then so what? Life is just life."
I nodded along with what the old guy was saying. I'd looked around the multiverse. It was as infinite as the night sky. Universes always came with an infinite amount of others just like them. I just didn't have the affinity to see them all.
"If you even could exterminate it all, which you can't because of how big infinity is, nothing would really happen other than things not being alive. You're immortal already. Enjoy yourself. But eventually you're going to be just about all-powerful. That's just the way it is for people with talents like yours. You're going to get more powerful somehow so long as you don't die off, which doesn't sound like it's going to happen. So just get powerful or don't. But I can assure you that it's better to just get it over with than to dither about."
"Maybe," I said thoughtfully. "Goodbye, Zelretch. It was nice talking to you."
"Sure, sure." The older version of me stood up and stretched a little. His ears twitched a little and I snickered a tthe sight before realizing that I was snickering at myself. "Make sure to remember to avoid the evil alternates of us. They're assholes. The goody two-shoes ones are almost as bad. They're all about honor and justice and stuff. It's like talking to a potato half the time."
The older me paused. "Actually, scratch that. There was a talking potato that one time…" He glanced towards me. "Stay away from the really weird universes." He warned.
'Why?" I raised an eyebrow.
"They're really weird." He said with a small knowing smile. I was suddenly reminded of why I didn't visit other versions of myself often. I always give that look as though I know more than myself… like other me knows more than I do. It still sounds weird.
Then again, it sounds equally strange to say that I visit myself on occasion to chat.
[|||| =+= ||||]
"Who was that?"
"A younger version of me. Remember that manga thing? The gamer one?"
"Oh yeah!"
"He has a system like that based on fate affinity."
"How does that work?"
"It uses the best possible outcome of his skills based on data collected from a few billion alternates. Then it rewrites his fate as he uses the skills. It's pretty smart, actually. I think it's Althea's work."
"Huh. Cool."
"It's not as good as your chip."
"Yeah but it's a tool of the gods based on a manga! That's pretty cool in my opinion. And he didn't go through the loads of crap you had to to get as powerful as a god."
"Good for him. Oh, and you're dead in his world."
"… Oh. How'd that happen?"
"Cinder took you out on the road for your maidenhood. Qrow started dating a teacher at Signal and had a wedding coming up. Well, I think that's what caused the change. Cinder might have also been more determined than before."
"That bitch."
"Oh it gets better. She's trying to seduce me."
"Pffft! Really?! Bwahahahaha!"
"I know. Pyrrha's trying to do the same thing. I'm as dense as usual."
"That's just a boy thing! Ah, you guys never get when a girl tries to hit on you. Isn't it weird seeing Pyrrha try to hit on you though? You've never mentioned that happening before."
"I've never met an alternate that Pyrrha had a crush on. Friend, sure, but a potential girlfriend is new. I never thought to check. Well, never wanted to check after she hated my guts all those years ago."
"She was a bitch, yeah, but you were an ass to her."
"Yeah. I was. This new other me seems like less of an asshole than I was. I blame his less crappy upbringing."
[|||| =+= ||||]
Cinder was blown back, a weak (for my standards) gale of wind throwing her back. A moment later she caught herself by transforming her blade into a glaive and stabbing into the ice-covered ground. She pulled herself back down to a fighting stance and readied herself for another attack.
"Dead," I said blandly. "You're low on aura already. That moment being airborne would get a bullet in your hide. Also, you-"
"Forgot my footing. Believe me, I know," she grumbled, well used to being beaten by me by now. She set the butt of her glaive on the ice and ran a hand through her hair, which was tied into a loose ponytail over what she called her workout clothes. A dark grey tank top and dark red leggings.
"Not well enough apparently," I retorted. I flicked my finger at her and ice surged upwards sharply before an instant stop. Cinder's feet stuck to the ice, making her jerk into place with the sudden stop. I pulled a pistol from my inventory and shot a bullet straight between her eyes.
"Gah!" she yelped. She nearly stumbled backward but caught herself on the edge of my icicle. I transmuted the icicle part she was standing on to light and she fell down onto the ice. This time she didn't stick her feet and ended up halfway into a split before she used her ice affinity to keep solid footing on the ground. LIKE SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO DO IN THE FIRST PLACE.
"You're shit at using ice," I growled, tossing the gun into my soul space. Cinder seethed but she knew perfectly well that it was true. "And you know perfectly well that becoming disoriented like that was your fault. You should be easily capable of reading the flow of the ice's affinity befo-"
Cinder threw her own hand out and a much larger ice spike than mine jutted out from under me. I went with it and leaped upwards with the motion of the icicle, doing a frontflip to bleed off circular momentum and look flashy. A pillar of ice rose from the ground to let me land on it at the apex of my flight.
Cinder glowered at me but I looked at her mercilessly. "Again, then?" I asked.
"Will training. Please." she nearly spat. I scowled lightly. Cinder was good at this type of training. Great, even. I didn't like doing it, but training wasn't supposed to be fun. It was supposed to be productive, and will training with Cinder was nothing if not productive.
"Fine then." I leapt forwards and fell down right in front of Cinder gracefully. Will training was based on willpower. We both use the same amount of aura and dump emotion into it before trying to see who can bring the other contender's emotions into chaos first while maintaining their own emotions.
Typically I won our exchanges, if barely, but I dominated her with will of steel. Having a completely clear mind and utterly focused effort makes my will as sharp as a dagger to Cinder. But without me consciously using will of steel it's only clear background thoughts. Completely logical, clear, and emotionless background thoughts. I don't know if the skill can activate if I'm mentally compromised. I don't want to find out either.
If I had my way I wouldn't be susceptible to mind manipulation at all… oh well. I have will of steel, which is enough for me. I've begun developing a mind affinity as well to resist the effects of using the mantle of void and enemy mind effects. I'd finally cracked and decided that I needed a mind affinity after poking around the multiverse a bit.
Mind magics like legilimency, any number of telepaths, and plenty of other miscellaneous effects like aura could all manipulate my feelings and thoughts. I had the mental resistance skill, sure, but it wasn't foolproof. It was only level twenty-four after extensive training. The effects of aura techniques on the mind are too weak to properly level the skill.
I still felt extremely averse to manipulating the minds of others, seeing a mind as a private place that's a person's one sanctuary, but I sure as hell didn't want to be defenseless when some idiot with an affinity for mind stuff comes along. Will of steel makes me immune to mental magics, sure, but what about physically changing my brain chemistry? What about the barest surface level thought reading?
Will of steel is described as making me immune to mind magics but I don't trust that. I can be manipulated in any number of ways. Using magic to warp me is just one way out of hundreds.
Psionics are a big one for me, provided that they exist and they're not just magic by a different name, which I'm nearly certain is not the case. They're not magical but clearly mental influencers. And I can think of about ten different scientists off the top of my head that used radio or whatever to mind control people.
For the love of dust, Plankton from Spongebob of all people mind controlled people by putting a damn bucket and antennae on their head from that kiddie movie the show made. Given that the multiverse is infinite, I'm sure that that actually happened somewhere somehow.
So the mind affinity is necessary. I plan to use the affinity only to augment my willpower in magical exchanges and defend my mind against foreign mind magics if I ever need it to do that, act as a far more intelligent parallel capable of directing the other parallels, and to make magical AIs. Penny doesn't quite count. She's mechanical and magical.
"Ready?" I asked Cinder. She sat down, a chair of ice forming under her, and I did the same, as well as a squarish table for good measure.
"Let's try lust," Cinder said, a gleam in her eye. I nodded resignedly and we began.
Immediately I was assailed with lusty feelings from Cinder's aura. Whether the feelings were fake or not she was good at using her aura to manipulate others. Almost as good as Blake.
She seemed to have prepared herself before attacking my emotions. I grabbed the emotions and tried to center myself in them. I was only partially successful. Thoughts ran unbidden through my head. Cinder's legs under mine. Soft lips on mine. Cloth falling in a rustle. Curvy breasts in my-
I banished the thoughts, feeling a little angry. I hated using pleasurable feelings. Instinctively we all internally wanted pleasure. Sex, good food, and anything else the limbic system deals with were desired on a primitive level. It made the thoughts harder to get rid of since you couldn't give your all against the feelings.
I fought harder against Cinder's manipulations. That trace of anger I had was used to sharpen my efforts and I felt a break in the emotions. Cinder was cracking, losing concentration. So, of course, she tried another tactic.
Thoughts rushed into me. Hundreds of them as fast as Cinder could transmit them into me. She must have been stockpiling thoughts and associated feelings for the past few seconds, collecting them for one big attack on my emotions. Not thoughts fabricated by me but by her.
I imagined Abyss' hands on my breasts. My sister - black/red-tipped hair, silver/gold eyes - playfully hugging me with a - soft smile/joyous smirk - at something I said, Abyss' lips on mine. Blood getting under my nails as I stabbed into the fat man's throat. Abyss' member thrusting-
I viciously drove away the flood of thoughts. THAT was just one reason why I hated will training with Cinder. She had more devious tricks but losing myself in her memories was just plain terrible. Not only did she intentionally use very personal female experiences, but she also occasionally overlapped memories, such as leaving it ambiguous whether the 'sister' she imagined was her own or Ruby by leaving no thoughts on the idea of a sister, leaving me to fill in the blanks of the thought, which made it seem more like mine than just Cinder's. It made it harder to identify as a foreign thought.
As it was that trick had been a grievous hit against me. My aura was half consumed with lust and my mind was rife with lusty thoughts, primarily about Cinder, since her memories ensured she was on my mind. This wasn't good. I was doing badly, with Cinder's initial advantage swinging the battle in her favor.
I finally managed to get a foothold to strike back in our battle of wills when I transmitted a memory of my own. A giant spider screeched, landing spittle on my face, as I felt poison rush into my veins, feeling fear for the first time in a long time deep in the tunnels filled with earth affinity.
Spiders, snakes, and all things venemous attracted attention from a person. Cinder's thoughts slowed for just a moment under the memory, both the feeling of terror, a foreign feeling to both of us as we are now, and I pushed hard at having turned the tide of our clash for a moment.
I kicked her under the table.
Cinder's concentration broke fully and I bolstered her aura's scattering of pain and lust and receding terror. She scrambled to regain herself but she lost herself in the three emotions as I rekindled the anger I had at the invasion of my manly pride earlier.
The anger was icing on the cake. I took it and forced it into her emotions. Rather than three emotions warring in her she had four. Feeling particularly malicious I slowed my assault on her emotions and reached my aura to the emotions inside her.
The storm of emotions was scattered. I changed that. Terror, pain, anger, and lust became pain and terror, lust and anger merged together. If I had to guess what Cinder was feeling it was in the mood for angry sex while simultaneously afraid and in pain without knowing why.
"I give," Cinder said through gritted teeth. I separated my aura from hers and cleaned up my own emotions. I still had images of Cinder's in my mind, which I shoved far from my consciousness. I wasn't averse to being a girl - according to Cinder's memories it was a fair bit more comfortable than being a guy, actually - but I didn't want to feel that stuff right now. Being genderbent was fairly disconcerting.
Meanwhile, Cinder's hand came to her head and massaged her temple as she tried to bring herself to order. I just sat and gave her a moment.
"Giant spiders?" she said exasperatedly a minute later.
"It worked," I said with a shrug.
"It came out of the blue. Whatever you were going to do I didn't expect that."
"I know. I considered a flood of pain but it seemed too blunt. The fear had to be your own. Just one foreign emotion is easier to single out." Cinder nodded at this and closed her eyes as she finished cleaning up her emotional state. It only took a second before she opened her eyes again, burning an intense gold as normal. If her aura didn't reflect her reclaimed clarity of emotions, her eyes did.
"Before we start again," I said before Cinder attacked again. She looked at me curiously. "Do you have any plans to complete before this winter break?" She shook her head.
"Everything I need to do is done directly before the break or after it. The CCT is being hacked during the dance in January and Roman should acquire all the dust needed by himself," she replied.
"Oh good," I said, pleased. "Then would you mind coming with me on a trip? I need two people who are decently amoral and I'd prefer you and perhaps Raven. I would be alright on my own I suppose but I'd get lonely."
"Why me?" Cinder asked curiously.
I shrugged. "Somebody needs to watch Roman. Raven is the best for that particular job. If you don't want to come with me I'd bring along an agent of mine or a friend of mine, though none of my agents are as skilled as you in combat or as unknown as you and my friend is rather detached from most of humanity, even more so than Salem. You're the best choice to bring along for the moment."
Cinder nodded, a curious look in her eyes. "And what would I be doing?" I smiled a little.
"Infiltration, assassination, possibly abduction, and responding to exotic opponents. As for what you'll get out of it? You'll gain intelligence on the Arc heir, my sister, Pyrrha Nikos, who I know is as much an unknown factor for you as the Arc heir," Cinder scowled at me. "You'd see how I operate and get a small read on my abilities beyond what you know so far, and I can assure that all of the assassinations and such you might perform will not interfere in your mistress' plans whatsoever. Most importantly, it would be fun."
Cinder gave me an appraising look. "That's a lot of benefits."
"I know, that's why I know you'll say yes. Other than that I'll be too busy to train you if you stay behind. If you come I won't have that much time for you but sharpening your skills before a large operation like the CCT wouldn't be unwelcome." I made sure my smile didn't grow as Cinder considered my proposition.
"And where exactly would this 'trip' take place?" Cinder asked carefully.
"I'm not telling you until we go," I said a little more seriously. "If you want to know then you can come with me. Otherwise, you'll be having barrels of fun sitting around with your henchmen." Cinder scowled again and I knew I had her.
"Fine. I will inform my mistress tonight," she said begrudgingly. I could tell that she was satisfied, though. I had given her enough details as it was. Besides, I was an ally of sorts to her and Salem.
"Again, then?" I offered. A wave of wrath swept over me and it was well determined that yes, we were doing it again.
[|||| =+= ||||]
"Mister Mavros and… Oh dear."
"Yeah! We're going to shake things up!"
"Sit down, Miss Valkyrie. I believe the system malfunctioned."
"Huh? But our names-"
"Sit. Down."
"I promise to not cause mass destruction, Miss Crimson."
"… Fine. To the ring."
"Hey. Here."
"Huh- *GASP* IS-"
"Quietly, please."
"… Is this white sap?!"
"Yes. Yes it is. Now, I can't destroy the arena - I gave my word after all - but you can. Oh, and I swapped the grenades you had with better ones. I used special dust to make them. I made it myself. They'll do much more damage than usual."
"… Wait, why are you doing this?"
"I want to sleep in class but I know Crimson will pick me for fights sometimes. I'd like her to avoid me as much as possible. Mass destruction solves most of my problems. This won't be much different."
[|||| =+= ||||]
The image of a lightning strike filled my mind. I saw it landing directly five feet in front of me-Jaune. In front of Jaune. Not myself. Well, there's the orders.
I focused on my storm and compressed the energy again. For a moment the lightning ceased and I held it back for a moment. Then I pointed the energy down, found Jaune, and released five feet in front of him.
A laser-like beam of lightning slammed to the earth and I paused. A moment later another pulse of aura drifted into me with a congratulations. An image of Ruby running away and Pyrrha backing up quickly appeared to me. There. Jaune's safe.
The new ideas Jaune had were really something. Or at least his inspiration was something. Aura sharing was a technique he had leapt on as soon as he heard about it from us. He and Pyrrha quickly learned to send emotions and pictures through their aura and were caught up fairly fast. Jaune then took it a step further.
To say he wanted instant battle telepathy was the basics of it. He wanted us to be able to send and receive data instantly like some sort of hivemind and fight as a unit better than anybody else could. Not that we really needed that sort of advantage, but it was interesting at least, and it got rid of our only weakness, that being our lack of team unity, though that was much more between Jaune and I than Pyrrha or Ruby. It was a stopgap solution at the least.
At this point even YLRB was better than us in unity. Yang had those boys whipped to the bone. If she asked one of them to fan her with leaves while she suntanned they'd do it without question, I'm pretty sure.
That led us to this training. Jaune fights off Ruby and Pyrrha with a sword and no armour, though he could use me to call in magical artillery strikes. Pyrrha and Ruby attacked and retreated as needed to beat up Jaune, though one of them had to be blindfolded while fighting. If (more like when) they beat him I had to save him while wearing a blindfold using his vision to fight Ruby and Pyrrha. All of us had runes linking our auras with our chosen partner's.
Ruby and Pyrrha usually won our matches…
Jaune and I tried sharing senses, but as usual it was a little off. My eyes were much better than Jaune's. Where I could make out a blade of grass from a hundred others at twenty feet, Jaune couldn't even see in the dark. Consequently, it was dark.
I sent a feeling through my aura of making light for him. He paused and sent a pulse asking about whether that would give his position away.
A sudden flash of a crimson blade answered him.
I barely gave Jaune a moment of warning before I set off a flashbang in front of him, stunning Ruby. He had his eyes only halfway closed before it was set off. Now we couldn't see. Shit.
Jaune's aura alerted me of him moving and I did my best to swear at him through my aura. When he was in one position I could land an artillery strike on his position and leave him smelling like roses! Now he was blind and moving to avoid sword strikes, having no way of showing me where he was. I couldn't just locate him with my magical senses. He had to tell me, which he couldn't do.
Jaune slowly came back to some form of sight as he fended off sword blows from my sister and I slowly channeled light attuned mana into him. He lit up slowly and revealed the clearing around him.
Oh, and a blindfolded Pyrrha stood in front of him, looking entirely smug, with a replica of Ruby's short sword made of iron dust in hand.
"Shit," Jaune said. A crack of lightning and my vision through him was cut off. He was unconscious. Great. I leaked life attuned mana into him to heal the idiot's nerves - he was tased by Ruby's lightning bolt damnit - and came back to myself.
Sounds and scents revealed themselves to me slowly and I breathed in deeply, just enjoying that I was in my own body again. Jaune was stronger than me and I wasn't sure he could ever even get tired, but his body wasn't mine. It was stiffer, more muscled, and he had a larger frame than me. I liked my flexibility much more than his muscles. Not to mention that sharing was most certainly not caring when it came to your own body.
Jaune was slowly awakened and I put on my blindfold from my pocket grudgingly and teleported five feet above him, though I kept myself in flight. Looking through his eyes I could see Ruby's eyes looking into his concernedly. "Are you okay, Jaune?" she said. "That bolt was pretty strong. I thought you had more aura."
"I'm okay," he said, and I sent a question of when to begin the sneak attack. He pulsed to wait for now. "Abyss isn't here yet?"
"Umm… I dunno." Ruby glanced around the forest we often used for training and frowned. She then turned to Jaune and narrowed her eyes. The moment she opened her mouth Jaune sent an urgent pulse.
I immediately covered the entire area in ice. I felt no people trapped inside the ice though, so I looked through Jaune's senses. I smelled blackberries and felt the soft velvety cloth of Ruby's cloak on his face.
I scoured the area with nature affinity and immediately found the blackberry bush. Life and nature mana flooded it and I heard a squeak as the thorns caught on Ruby's clothes. I transmuted the plant to metal and squeezed it down to hold Ruby tightly. A grin came to my face as I had finally gotten Ruby trapped. Jaune was still trapped with her in the bush of thorns unfortunately but he could still see and I could bend light for him.
I told him to open his eyes and he did so, immediately seeing the rusty red of Pyrrha standing behind me, a gun aimed at my head. I ducked down and saw the motion mirrored by my body through Jaune's eyes, a sensation I had grown sadly used to, and the bullet went over me.
At this point I rolled my eyes under the blindfold and dumped heat attuned mana into the environment. Fires sprung up and I flung a blast of heat at Pyrrha. She blocked it and I made a laser as small as I could make it. It melted through her shield and hit her shoulder. Too easy.
I stiffened at the realization and felt a blade on my neck. "Got you!" Pyrrha said cheerily. I sighed and took off my blindfold. Pyrrha was right in front of me, mirthful green eyes looking into mine while she had a thin dagger at my throat.
"Illusions?" I groaned.
"Yup!" Ruby chirped from inside the thorn bush. Pyrrha took the dagger away as I facepalmed. A wave of my hand transmuted the metal thorn bush into air and Ruby stretched before getting up. Jaune rubbed his eyes with a scowl on his face.
"I couldn't see through Ruby's cloak," he muttered. "I was going to tell you when she distracted me."
"We had to get Abyss off guard," she said unrepentantly.
"Trapping you was a trick?" I asked.
"We planned it before we got Jaune. We didn't plan on you blinding him with light. We thought you'd use a lightning bolt like you normally do," Pyrrha explained. I wanted to scowl myself at the reminder. I do blind Jaune pretty often, don't I? He knows I don't mean it but he's always getting blinded by me.
"It was better than last time!" Ruby offered. Jaune and I both winced at the reminder. Ruby used an explosive to blow up Jaune and Pyrrha shot me in the back with a railgun from a kilometer away when I was engaged with Ruby. Jaune had a butterfly land on his face and couldn't see for the whole exchange. That damned butterfly would NOT get off his face either. It was a mess for us all around.
"Let's try me and Pyrrha now," I suggested. Hopefully I can avoid working with Jaune for the rest of this training time. Jaune subtly sent me a pulse of thankfulness for the suggestion.
"That sounds like a good idea," he said as he stood up. "But we really do need to work together. I guess we can work together on dinner instead. It's more fun anyways," he offered.
I glared at him. That utterly two-faced bastard. Get beat up again with him or cook with him 'sampling' all my food before Ruby and Pyrrha get it. I glanced at the two girls to see an eager look in their eyes. I was, to my detriment, the best cook on the team.
Beat up in humiliating fashion… or cook dinner with a kitchen pest. A tough decision, truly.
"Come on, Pyrrha," I muttered. I almost missed Ruby high-five Jaune behind my back with a victorious smirk on both of their faces.
I'd been played by my own sister and partner.
Pyrrha snickered beside me. I looked at her beside me, where she looked at me with wide, innocent eyes.
"I'm going to poison you all..." I muttered.
[|||| =+= ||||]
"Oh no…"
"Abyss! How's my favorite little brother doing."
"And she's brought her team too…"
"Hi."
"Shut up, Russel."
"They really let you treat them like that?"
"It's the only way to reign them in. I had to beat them all up but Cardin's always trying something."
"No I'm-!"
"Do you want me to put you in the corner again?!"
"No, ma'am."
"Put your hair out, Yang, before I get a fire extinguisher again."
"Again?"
"Russel I sw-"
"Yang burned down a Signal classroom in our sophomore year. Abyss flooded the room with saltwater from a portal to get rid of it, but I was already spraying her with a fire extinguisher."
"Ruby!"
"Ahahahaha!"
"So you came for free food?"
"Well, obviously. And there's eight weirdos outside the door."
"Just ignore them and they'll go away. Eventually. Hopefully."
[|||| =+= ||||]
I didn't spend all my time during Beacon's classes playing around in alternate dimensions. Sometimes something interesting occured.
"We're not going to be using traditional dust today," Doctor Peach said somewhat excitedly. Curious eyes turned to her. Not my own eyes, although I paid a little more attention to the words that my parallel on Remnant heard. I was busy collecting flora and fauna from a safer parallel of Skyrim for Polendina. I owed him a favor after he made a runic structure that collected all types of affinity from an environment using a catalyst of nature affinity. It was useful for me.
"You see," Doctor Peach continued, "recently several colleagues of mine realized that fire root, light bulbs, water fruit, and so on display similar effects to dust if treated correctly, though it takes a fair bit of coaxing and is a little weaker."
That got my attention if nothing else. I stopped running around caves and travelled through the void in an instant, replacing my avatar in Remnant, to look at Doctor Peach with the same curiosity as the other students.
"You see, with the addition of an affiliated dust type with the crop, like water dust for the water fruit, fire for the fire root, and so on, the crop will act in the same way as the dust." Doctor Peach sprinkled some blue dust on top of what looked like a blue cantaloupe cut in half, though there was a natural basin inside.
I recognized it as a water fruit, which I made with Poledina. They stored water and a little air inside the currently empty basin, if I recall. It let them stay suspended in the ocean waters below the waves. The water had already been removed in this case, leaving bluish purple flesh between an empty pit of an interior and the somewhat tough outside.
"The minimum amount of dust required is a ratio of three to five in comparison to the grams of the crop in question," Peach continued. All the students watched her raptly. This was new and interesting. Dust was amazing but at the end of the day it was just dust; an everyday commodity. This was completely new.
Peach continued babbling on the varying results of dust on the crops and how she wished there was a dust to affiliate with white sap while she did the experiment. After sprinkling the dust on the fruit's inside the flesh seemed to get bluer and I barely saw some moisture fill the interior.
"So there's barely any water now but if you measure it you'd see that the effect of the dust was nearly twice as much as normal! This can be measured by the amount of water expelled from the cells inside the fruit. Now, normally the cells use a system similar to the gills of saltwater fish to expel salts and maintain an isotonic gradient but in this case the output of water to the water-holding organ is simply appearing spontaneously! We don't understand why in the slightest, obviously, but it's been deemed safe! And now we'll be getting to test this for ourselves! We'll be using the wattage of the light bulbs, which are produced around the equator since they do SO MUCH photosynthesis that they developed electrical defenses to parasites!"
I got out my scroll from under the table and discreetly texted Polendina. 'Scientists figured out that the crops amplify the effects of dust. I believed we planned for this. Affinities working in tandem, that is. Details?'
I barely waited a minute before receiving a response. 'I know. On the cover of Dust Science Weekly last month. It's big news. Lab's in a bustle. Should I release the new wave of crops or the amp? When?'
'The amp in a few months. Preferably January. Add in the semblance amp too but remember to jack the prices. I don't want it getting into the hands of every two bit gangster with a semblance, which applies to an unfortunate number of huntsmen. Call it safe but make sure people understand that it's experimental. Remnant's still adapting to the new sources of energy and sustenance. Atlas hasn't publicly weaponized the crops yet, for example, though we both know that Ironwood has made LB fuelled exo suits. Give them a month. In fact… that gives me an idea.'
'K. An idea for me?'
'No. You're doing great. Help Penny a little with her golems.'
'Ah. They're magical VI; virtual intelligence. P made a pseudo OS for the golems to make commands and such. Connecting the prototypes to a computer is in progress. Doesn't look good. Magical computers don't work. Too much work, too little reward. We've considered using a golem for the computer like a hive-mind but signals are trouble. There's no magical wifi to connect the golems on.'
That jogged something in my memories. Hivemind… interesting.
'I have a potential solution. I'll contact you later with a material to research that has the potential to act as a 'cell tower' for the golems.'
'Rly?!'
I rolled my eyes and glanced back up at Professor Peach. She was long gone in a lecture on theories about alternative renewable energy sources to dust, using my company's work as examples, though she put it all on a pedestal a bit.
'Yes really. I'll see you soon. Oh, and I got some interesting magical plants for you. They've got no aura but display odd affinities and attributes.'
'I think we've worn that field of research down except for making new plants from your affinities and potentially more animals other than the kataigida but sure. It's worth a look at.'
I put away the scroll, the conversation done, and wondered if I would ever stop rocking the foundations of Remnant's science community. I don't even have a tenth of the research Polendina does released since he focuses on magical stuff now. Biological stuff like cloning and genetic modification as well as advanced robotics like Penny were his focuses. Penny was apparently coming into her own as a golemancer now, though I've left her and Poledina to their own methods with that particular field. I'm too inexperienced to be of any help.
"Actually, how DOES that work? Perhaps you can enlighten us, Mister Mavros?" I looked around to see people staring at me curiously. It only took me a moment to recall what Peach was talking about. Oh, how the fire root generates so much heat. Right.
"Corporate secret," I said with a shrug. Peach looked interested and a little mischievous.
"So you do know!" she crowed. I looked flatly at her.
"Of course I know. Anything else?" Peach paused with a frown.
"Well… no. Not really. I could get sued if I actually figured it out. Damn patents…"
"Politics is the antithesis of progress," I said wistfully. "That's why uncle Mystic controls most of Vale one way or another. It's too troublesome to not do so."
I got some weird and somewhat jealous looks for that but I just stared vacantly at the dust on professor Peach's table until people got distracted. I was gone, back to poking around the multiverse a minute later. It was way more interesting than sitting in class listening to things I already knew.
[|||| =+= ||||]
"Roman. I have another job for you. One that will prove VERY useful to you."
"I'm all ears. Or, well, Cesium is."
"What are you going to make me do now?!"
"Shut up, Cesium! I'm talking to the boss. So what's this new job?"
"I have reason to believe that Atlas has developed new weapons from the products of Nature's Bounty. Get information on them and their cutting edge tech. Just a checkup to make sure they're not making doomsday devices."
"That's not too hard. Atlas isn't exactly easy but I've got some friends there. Anything else?"
"Mmm… yes, actually. While you're at getting information on Atlas tech I sold a particular gun to them a while back. The railgun crammed into a revolver I used during that one round of the Mistral regional tournament about four years ago. Find out what happened to it. Where the revolver is now and what Atlas has gleaned from it if anything."
"I remember that round of the tournament. I'll check it out but I'm pretty busy with Cindy's and my joint project. I'm already working later than usual."
"I know. The joint job with Cinder is your priority right now, though she could stand to work a little more on her own plans. She's leaning more on you than I'd like right now. That said, your other responsibilities right now don't mean I don't want this other job done. If Atlas has its toys lying around it may also be an opportunity to defame them like we are doing to Vale or repurpose their tech for our own use. Considering that this would be classified tech we may be able to get a patent on it and claim it as our own before Atlas even gets to use it."
"Dust below they'd hate us for that. I wanna do it just for the death threats."
"I'm almost certain that General Ironwood hates me already. I haven't gotten any death threats, sadly. They would be amusing to read. Anyways, don't worry about how much Atlas hates me. Or, well, me and Mahogany. Just don't antagonize them needlessly. Get something good out of them before they hate you. Otherwise they're just a missed opportunity."
[|||| =+= ||||]
"Well this is somewhat awkward," I said. The girl in front of me blinked in confusion. She had short aquamarine hair, half lidded sea blue eyes, and skin paler than even Ruby's. She wore a lavender colored hoodie and ripped jeans on her, though I thought I saw a glint of something silver on her wrists.
The room I was in was clearly personal. A black and purple bed sat in a corner and a shelf of magical books on rituals, general magics, and a copy of twilight and some other bad teenage romance. Little knick knacks adorned the room in various places from what looked like a kit to make friendship beads to a lego Indiana Jones set. So why was I here?
"I thought I was summoning a dark god?" she said in some confusion. She blinked sleepily at me.
"What words did you use, exactly?" I asked for clarification.
"Oh, um, 'hail to the dark one, it who will destroy all, one of many forms, sibling to beasts, and master of the infinite void. Heed my call and come to my side so I may lavish thee in my worship.'"
I considered the words for a moment before latching onto the important bit. "I don't feel very worshipped."
The girl frowned. "I don't feel like I'm in the presence of a god, although summoning a nekomata is a little interesting. I mean, this isn't my first time summoning things but it's mostly been a specific sheep or a toothbrush or something. It's always worked fine. I even summoned the goddess Iris once in exchange for some cupcakes I made but… I thought I had this down. I've been practicing for weeks too."
"I fill out most of those specifications actually," I said offendedly. "Although I never tried to destroy a universe before. And I think it's more accurate to say I am of the void than it's master but I could be called a master of myself so perhaps that's loosely accurate." She looked at me skeptically. I sighed and released my aura. I didn't even bother to press it onto her. She was only level ninety seven.
The girl's eyes widened and she let out a sort of squeak as she stared at me. "That'll do!" she said, her voice having raised an octave or two. I pulled back my aura into me again and the girl relaxed.
"So where am I?" I asked. "I was about to meet a friend of mine again and I got dragged here while I was hopping dimensions." I paused a moment as I got my bearing around dimensions. I looked over mine briefly from the greater void for a moment and found myself in one of the sub-dimensions linked to my destination, which was the DxD-verse I visited over the summer because of Salem. I was probably in the underworld or heaven or some other world that exists alongside this Earth. "I'm in the right dimension. Well, a sub-dimension of it. So why am I here?"
"Ahh…" The girl stopped and flipped a few pages in her book. I glanced around the room in the spare few seconds. She held her hand out and began what sounded like another chant. "Dark being from the nether reaches of our realm, I bind myself to you and thus sip from the well of power in you. I invest in you myself that you might do the same. May our-"
"Hold on," I interrupted her. She ignored me.
"-lives forever be linked and our fates bound as this servant-"
I had enough. I stepped out of the ritual circle to be right in front of the girl, who was significantly shorter than me. She froze and looked up.
"I thought a god would be okay with another follower," she said hoarsely from fear.
"Tough luck, I'm not going to sit in that circle and let you finish whatever that was." I deadpanned. "Now why, exactly, were you trying to bind me to you?"
"It was mutually beneficial!" the girl claimed immediately. "It was a mutual binding! I get some nifty powers of yours and you get a follower you can task with mighty stuff and a little boost in power!"
I looked at the girl with skeptical eyes. She bit her lip nervously. I wrapped my aura around her and she froze, petrified. I skimmed the surface of her thoughts with my mind affinity and kept watch.
"You weren't trying to enslave me?" I asked.
"No!" Truth.
"And I would have gotten power from it?"
"Well, um, yeah. A bit. I guess if I was your - your first then it would actually be a lot." Truth "It's kinda like a devil contract. What magicians use!" Truth.
I was feeling a little less angry at the girl now. "There are no downsides to this… ritual?"
"No." Lie/truth.
I narrowed my eyes and pressed my aura onto the girl. "Wait! I'm sorry! There's a little downside! An obligation!" I sighed.
"What is it?" I asked irritatedly. I just wanted to visit Ophis, damnit.
"Gods have a moral obligation to protect their followers," the girl rushed out quickly, "and their souls and magical reserves are vulnerable through their followers." I let a moment of silence pass.
"That's it?"
"Uh-huh!" Truth.
I sighed lightly and pulled my aura back. I filled it with void and the girl seemed ready to faint when I flared it.
"You're back," a voice said to my right. I glanced over and saw Ophis looking somewhat pleased as she stared at me.
"Hello, Ophis." The magician's faint look changed to one of horror and faint reverence. "Do you have any experience with followers?" I waved at the girl. Ophis glanced at her and she flinched.
"Yes," she answered. I waited for a moment before I remembered how Ophis liked to talk with people.
"She seems honest about making me her… patron god? Is that the right term?"
"Yes."
"Well besides not being a god-"
"Yes you are. Your soul is above that of mortals."
"-Do you think I should accept it?" Ophis paused.
"Having followers is amusing," she stated. "But some of them are clingy. And when you get too powerful the other gods get afraid. I have no use for them since my powers are already infinite. They would benefit you." I considered her advice before shrugging and turning to the girl.
"I'll give it a try. I don't think I want too many followers though. Having a church devoted to me seems extremely annoying. I'm basically immune to attacks on my soul due to my affiliation with void but I don't like the idea of my soul becoming some sort of public space. My soul is mine and I'm not very interested in power at the moment. Having a presence in this dimension might make it easier to travel here, though, and I could use somebody around here to tell me when something interesting happens. An agent of sorts. So sure. I'll be your patron god. Just don't advertise that I'm sponsoring you or be annoying in general. Thank you for showing me this. Knowing about this patron thing is fairly interesting."
Having somebody in this dimension would be good for keeping tabs on my business here. If this dimension was about to be destroyed for one reason or another I'd prefer to know. Sure ,there are a million other dimensions just like this one, but this one is mine. Besides that, it would be good for understanding how this interesting little system worked. It could prove useful in the future. I'm also curious about these benefits.
The girl seemed shell-shocked. "Apostle," she whispered. I quirked an eyebrow.
"Are you referring to me?" She blinked a few times before looking at me and Ophis in awe.
"You're the Apostle!" She seemed to be getting excited. "Ophis' right hand! The one who suppressed the heads of the three factions themselves and the conqueror of the vanishing dragon's host!" She looked at me in awe and I blinked at her owlishly.
"Right…" I was a little caught off guard at how she, and likely others, apparently knew about me. "So do you want to do the ritual thing?" The girl whipped out her book and quickly found the right page.
"So what's been going on with you?" I asked Ophis as the girl began chanting.
"Nothing," Ophis said bluntly.
"Nothing?" I was a little doubtful of that.
"Nothing," she affirmed. "I stayed in the Pendragon manor and slept. I also stole Mab's sugar cookies. That is all I did." I blinked at the second part but knowing Ophis she just teleported the cookies to her and ate them. Nothing is probably exactly what she did.
"-and lay my soul in your hands for eternity." The girl finished. I felt a strange feeling in my soul, like a ripple going through it. Suddenly I felt a connection. A soul nearly touching mine but not quite. The girl's soul was a pale silver, almost white. She had no affinity for purity or anything, however. Metal and nature were the two I recognized of the four. To get the other two I had to observe her.
Elseria Vertagris
Titles: First follower of Abyss
Level – 97
HP – 360
AP – 5760/5760
MP - 212/7160
STR - 20 (+5%)=
VIT - 36 (+5%)=
DEX - 64 (+5%)=
INT - 179 (+0%)=
WIS - 144 (+0%)=
LUK - 52 (+0%)=
Semblance: [Locked]
Affinities:
Storm: 5595
Nature: 1092
Void: 798
Metal: 715
Divine: 171
Communion: 102
Space: 276
Perks:
Devotee of Abyss - Due to being under the patronage of Abyss Mavros, who has deemed to patron you, you are granted one percent of his strongest three affinities, though the amount of affinity available to you may be variable upon his will. Additionally, you may focus and communicate with said patron, though he may choose to ignore you, and he may transfer power to you as he sees fit. In exchange for these boons your pools of energy are completely under his control and your energy regenerations will fuel his pools of energy when not in use for your own reserves of energy.
Bio: Elseria is the third daughter of a prominent exorcist, Jameson Vertagris. She holds no hold on family inheritance or important connections within the church, which her family has served within for generations. With no unique affinity or outstanding talent, Elsiria had no support from her family or the church in learning magical means of success, nor did she have any talent in exorcism as her sister did and thus turned to divine methods of success years ago.
Unfortunately, Elsiria found no divine visits from angels either. Her father cut off support for her due to her lack of talent and poor relations with him that persisted for years. She was excommunicated at her father's request and turned to more pagan methods of magical success, which she stubbornly persisted at.
Her attempts in the conventional magical world were very slightly successful. She succeeded in binding an undine to her as a familiar early on and achieved a brief apprenticeship with a magician by the name of Dave Klippin. The apprenticeship ended quickly after Klippin learned of Elseria's former ties to the Catholic church's exorcism sect.
Elseria, in desperate need of personal success, sought to contract with a god. Specifically Ahriman, the Iranic god of darkness and evil, due to his inactivity and placement in a comatose state centuries ago. In her practices she came to meet several notable supernatural figures including Iris, greek god of rainbows, a reaper in the service of Hades named Ulk, and the deputy shaman of the pagan beliefs of Europe, who is only known as Alan.
Upon attempting to summon a fragment of Ahriman to attempt a binding Elseria contacted you, who fit the specifications of her summoning chant better.
I had to admit, Elseria (and finally I have a name) led an interesting life. Not an exceptional one, but an interesting one nonetheless. More interesting was this new perk of hers, though. It didn't register as a perk to me on my status screen, though.
The connection was like I had a path between my soul and hers that I could send things through. Experimentally, I sent a little mana through. I felt it seem to enter the girl's soul and refuel her, though her reserves of mana were already full. I felt a little sheepish when I realized that I just sent three times her mana capacity through our link.
That said, there were MUCH more interesting benefits that she had than that little energy medium. Like Elseria's newfound ability to use void and ability to use aura, or senjutsu and touki as it's known here.
With a pulse of life affinity, Elseria gasped and woke up. I blinked lazily at her. "Congratulations, you're now incredibly powerful. You also have touki and the potential to use senjutsu if you practice, not to mention the ability to use the same element Ophis and I use, void. While we're on that topic, could you try out using said element?"
"It's a storm in my soul…" she whispered in awe. A massive smile split her face. "I'm so powerful!" She sounded giddy.
"Elseria," I said loudly. She blinked and nodded, still a bit drunk on power. I felt a faint pull on my soul. It wasn't using my affinities, but more along the line of imitating my affinities. I also saw her aura go faintly red as she drew on our connection.
Ah, I see what happened. She doesn't use my actual soul. She gains my affinity. An 'Abyss' affinity so she and I are connected. She can contact me, use our connection, and so on, but it's a two way street. Just as she has a little aspect of myself affinity-wise I can influence her through that affinity. I'm gaining a little extra regeneration in my aura and mana due to her connection with me too. It wasn't like I was gaining a lot, but I was gaining a little. I suppose that's why gods have millions of worshippers. I can see how even a quarter of Elsiria's benefits times a million or so would make a god incredibly powerful. I can likely use her affinities if I felt like it as well.
"Well," I stood up. "This has been interesting to say the least. As your patron I'd ask that you just keep an eye on current magical events and train your aur- your touki and senjutsu. If something really important happens, inform me." An amusing thought occured to me that made me question whether I was a kind god or not.
"Oh, and move to Japan. Kuoh. Apply to the academy they have as a student or teacher if possible. There's some people I want you to keep an eye on there. Rias Gremory, her pawn Issei, and the residents of that town. Do so with haste. This should help you with the move."
I worked my affinities and made the air over my hand denser than usual. My metal affinity worked to transmute the air into gold and in an instant I had a gold bar in my hand. I repeated the process five times, setting the bars on the floor. ElsEria watched with surprised but resigned eyes, like she had just come to terms with the fact that I was a bit absurd magically.
"There," I said, pleased. "If you don't know Japanese I suggest you find some magical means of translation. It should be easy. Goodbye, now. Remember, when something interesting happens I want to know. I have other dimensions to pay attention to." I flicked my wrist and opened a portal to the Pendragon residence, leaving my budding acolyte in shock behind me.
Yeah, this place is about as I remember it. As sudden as always. It's less absurd to find a new way to utilize my soul than to suddenly meet an infinitely powerful goddess that likes my cooking and follows me around at least.
----------------------------------------------------------
If you like it please drop some POWER STONES