BlaiseCorvin
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Past Life Hero 2, ch 40
🕑 Added 2024-01-19 21:35:23 +0000 UTCWhen Max realized where Lavinia was leading him, he ruefully shook his head. Figures, he thought. Presently he stood in front of the door to the common area that he used to shower in. Max tried the door. It was open. Once inside, he checked the door to his old room out of curiosity. It was open as well. But what he saw inside made him raise his eyebrows. At some point, somebody had ransacked the place. Everything was in disarray: the closet was opened, and drawers were pulled out. It looked like a scene back on Earth after crime scene detectives had turned a house upside down.
"I wonder who did this?" muttered Max.
"Who knows?" said Lavinia. "With your history, it could have been several people or groups by now."
"Yeah." The number of individual groups that hated him made him even more dedicated to getting stronger, faster.
Max went back out to the common area and pointed at the other where he'd heard strange noises after first coming to the Summoner Academy.
"Is this where we're going?" he asked.
"Yes. It is not the only truly dark, uninhabited place on campus, but this one is a favorite of one of my friends," Lavinia explained.
"How is it that people went in my room, my old room, and tore it apart, but this door is still closed and locked?"
"It has a glamour on it," answered Lavinia. "The fact that you even noticed it before as a new Summoner is still something curious that I've not yet been able to understand. It could have something to do with you being a Blade Sorcerer, or maybe the strength of your soul. I would imagine a few of the Summoner Academy professors might be able to notice it, but not many. Maybe only the oldest, or most powerful staff.”
“It’s probably my Blade Sorcerer roots. The magic involved is specialized for breaking other magic, after all.”
"Probably. Anyway, right this way," said Lavinia. As she finished speaking, the previously unlocked door eerily swung open on its own. She walked into the room and beckoned for Max to follow. Once inside, he sneezed from all the dust in the air. The moment he was inside, the door closed behind him on its own. Lavinia's glowing form helped Max see in the darkness.
At some point in the past, someone had bricked up where the window had been. He could feel a hint of magic coming from that area and assumed it was an illusion. Just another security measure that had kept the locked door from being unmolested all this time. Max probably wouldn't have considered doing so anyway; he'd never even considered picking the lock or opening the strange door on his own before, even just to look inside.
It occurred to him that this place was probably created by a Summoner as a place for their spirits to rest in, same as the dark room in Max’s dorm.
In the dusty room, there was a bed against one wall without any sheets on it, just a mattress covered in plastic. On a small table against the opposite wall was a collection of ragged stuffed animals. There was random junk on the floor, mostly toys. None of it really made sense to Max, at least not from the perspective of this room being a popular spirit hangout spot, until he remembered that none of the spirits actually needed furniture to sit on or be comfortable. The space itself was good enough.
Curiously enough, although the room was extremely dusty, the area around the toys was either dust-free or the dust had been disturbed, maybe like someone or something had been playing with them. It was very possible that was the origin of the odd noises he'd heard before when he'd been living next door.
"How many of these types of rooms are in the dorms?" asked Max.
"More than you'd think," came an unfamiliar voice. “After all, this is the Summoner Academy.”
Max was able to locate the source of the voice with some difficulty. A spirit was sitting on the bed, human-shaped like Lavinia, but also different in appearance to Max’s eyes and Summoner senses. He appeared to be a young man in his twenties, with a friendly, honest face, tired eyes, and an amused smile. He wasn't glowing, and in the dimness, even with Lavinia's light and Max's mana-enhanced vision, he was barely visible.
When he realized that Max had seen him, he smiled wider and introduced himself. "Hello, I'm Tom."
"I'm Max. So, do you…live in here?" Max asked.
"Most of the time, I tend to stay in the safest places, and this is one of them. But us remnant spirits don't have a lot of energy, and it takes energy for spirits to move around, at least in the physical world."
"How do you all get energy, actually?" asked Max, the question slipping out of his lips before he could even think about it properly.
Lavinia answered, "It depends on the type of spirit. For instance, Saliron needs bones.”
“Bones are life," King Slytherin's voice echoed around the small room.
Max had half expected Tom to look nervous or scared like some other spirits when Slytherin manifested in any way, but the remnant spirit seemed completely unfazed.
"Oh my," he said, "a new Summoner who has already made a contract with the warlord-level spirit." He turned to Lavinia, "You were not joking that this one is probably special."
Without any other place to sit other than the dusty bed next to the spirit he was talking to, Max went to lean against the opposite wall instead. "So, I just learned about remnant spirits literally tonight," he said.
"Yes, not many know of us anymore," said Tom. "You may be wondering why I have this human appearance, and if you aren't, I will still explain why." His quick smile made Max grin in return.
Max’s first impression was that Tom definitely seemed to have a great personality, especially in the face of all the terrible things he could intuit the spirit had seen. He was reading between the lines with this entire situation. For spirits to hide, they have to be hiding from something. The shadowy hunters Lavinia had told him before might not even be the only things looking or remnant spirits.
It had already occurred to him that his current path might make him just as big of a target as Lavinia in the past, if not more so. His new benefactors, the Quartet headmasters, would likely not shield him from it. In fact, some or all of them might be in on the entire thing. He had no way of knowing, and he was damn sure not going to ask.
Tom explained, "I was contracted with a powerful Summoner. When he…died, I elected not to form a contract again. My experiences and my friendships had eventually made me more human, I’d developed more sentience, but it was a double-edged sword. As my personality grew, so did my pickiness towards who I would ever contract with. I am old, young Max, old enough to have seen many changes in this Summoner Academy, this Quartet, and even this universe. There are secrets I know that I do not dare tell you out loud. If we contract today, some of those secrets you may only learn in the future, and even then, only in dreams."
"It's really that dangerous, huh?" asked Max.
"Oh yes, indeed. I am not embellishing, but I am also not clarifying. No agreement, no contract has even been made yet." The spirit held out a hand. "Would you allow me to taste your soul?"
Lavinia quickly exclaimed, "Why would you describe it like that, Tom? That's like the worst possible way to phrase it. You made it sound as creepy as possible. I have told you about this before!"
The remnant spirit shrugged. "But it is accurate, and I think reasonable given the situation and what we are discussing."
"What exactly does tasting my soul mean?" asked Max.
Lavinia answered for Tom, "It's basically what I did when I first contracted with you, except less involved and less invasive. Instead of taking in and processing your memories, the ‘taste’ gets a feel for who you are, the quality of your soul, and maybe only a few of the most powerful memories of your life. You will not lose anything, and you can keep your wards up the entire time. A spirit can actually take a taste without permission. Tom is being courteous."
Tom didn't say anything more and Max thought about it. He trusted Lavinia, and he could half-remember something he’d read in a book about spirit tasting, too. Lavninia’s explanation seemed like a good one.
He really didn't like the idea of giving consent to other entities for any access to his soul or memories at all. And he especially didn't like the idea of granting access with nothing in return. But in this case, since Tom was basically doing due-diligence on whether he should give up his entire existence, Max decided it was reasonable to play along. Besides, Tom was asking permission. Saliron had tried to destroy Max out of nothing but curiosity.
"Okay, fine," he said, and held out his hand.
Tom's spectral hand touched Max's, and he felt a spark, nothing more. The remnant spirit withdrew his hand and got a faraway look until his eyes widened in surprise.
"Oh my! Such an interesting life, so much potential power, and you even have a touch of the divine on you!"
He turned to Lavinia and beamed. "Not only have you described your Summoner accurately, if anything, you undersold his accomplishments and who he is. This makes me feel so much better about just everything."
"So, speaking of which," said Max, "I understand the gist of you being a remnant spirit and us talking like this, but although helping you would probably be a good deed in itself, what do I get out of this?"
Lavinia squawked, but Tom held up a hand. "I appreciate directness, and it was an appropriate thing to ask." He fixed Lavinia with a skeptical glance. "After you have spent more than a hundred years trying to wrest my secrets from me, I think you, of all spirits, have very little moral ground to stand on for being offended by Max's question."
“It wasn’t like that after I got to know you.” Lavinia frowned and sulked. Max was a little amused by the exchange, since it felt like Lavinia usually managed to get the upper hand in any other argument or conversation she'd ever had with him.
Tom turned back to Max. "I will not mince words. If we form a contract, who I am, what I am, will cease to exist, as well as all the spirits that are subordinate to me. Over time, those that remain have…become part of who I am. Remnant spirits do not follow the same classifications as other spirits, from soldier to king. Instead, we are something else entirely.
"A contract would definitely benefit you. The direct advantages I will confer upon you will be a much stronger soul, mind, and spirit. I can sense that you have been tested multiple times in your life, attacks that threatened to unravel you. With me bolstering your soul, it will be like turning a tree, albeit a strong tree in your situation, into steel. You will probably notice things and remember things with more ease. Illusions will be much less effective on you, which, again, you seem to already have advantages against, so the idea that you'll become even stronger in this aspect pleases me. And lastly, you will be able to see the spiritual easier and be guarded against the spiritual automatically. This still does not mean you will be able to use your third sight recklessly, but you will have better protection against backlash."
The spirit turned to Lavinia again, giving a wistful smile. "Goodbye, my friend. I may be leaving this plane of existence, but I believe that old spirits never truly vanish. Do I truly have a soul? I don’t know. But if anything, old spirits live on in those closest to them. One day, perhaps you will understand, and even search for oblivion or change through sacrifice for yourself."
Tom turned back to Max. "I have existed for a very long time. Now I have told you what benefits you will reap if you help me, but I must be honest about the burdens. Occasionally, you may dream my memories. And as I've said before, you may dream my secrets. I cannot overemphasize how much danger knowing my secrets will place you in, but at the same time, I am confident that they will give you knowledge and power as well. I will not require you to take action about anything you might learn, but based on the measure I have taken of you, I believe it is likely. For now, that is enough. What do you think?"
“I think I’d be a fool to turn this down.”
“Just so.” He held out his hand again and said, "Let's shake on it then." He smiled sadly but triumphantly as Max reached forward and tried to take the hand of the wispy, insubstantial remnant spirit. The moment he did, it felt like he got hit by lightning.
When he came to, he was sitting against the wall, seated on the floor with his legs splayed out in front of him, making multiple tracks in the dust. He wasn't sure how long he had been out, and with Lavinia’s disappearance, there was no more light in the room, but he could hear her audibly sobbing in the corner. There were other crying voices too, just on the edge of his hearing. His ears were not how he was hearing them. He was definitely more sensitive now and wondered what other changes Tom's presence would bring over time.
Max stood up unsteadily, a tear forming in his own eye, and he muttered, "Excuse me," to the room in general. Then he went to the door and left. Lavinia did not go with him, and he could feel her absence until he got back to his dorm. Once she returned, she didn't say anything, and Max's other spirits were silent as well.
He was curious about the changes that his new remnant contract had brought about for him, but he was also gripped by a strong and deepening melancholy. It had truly been a long day, and the emotions he was feeling might not even be entirely his own. Ultimately, he decided that anything else he might have to do that night could wait. He crawled into bed and went to sleep.
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