Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 848
🕑 Added 2025-03-21 23:28:33 +0000 UTCI got seventy five years of service out of Argaunt, as well as several clauses and addenda promising his action in very specific circumstances outside of the succession war and his capacity as a direct employee of the WCP assuming I didn’t win. He’d been insistent on that second part, because the odds were pretty stacked against me, which I couldn’t blame him for.
One of the biggest concessions though was that I got him to agree to approach some of the other C-rankers on my behalf. Especially the ones from Verdyn’s faction. There were still two more of them (the one we killed was one of Raxus’s apparently, which wasn’t much of a loss) and they were more likely to listen to him than me. It also freed me up to begin some real work on my research for Callie’s new racial trait.
Which brought me to our current activity. Namely, a deep dive into Serah and Holly’s racial traits. “Alright,” I told the two angels as we all sat in the side room of Veldran’s complex. “In order to work on Callie’s trait, I need to learn more about yours. You good with that?” Veldran had offered us a room while we were in Bonehook, and since this was probably the safest place in town according to Carmichael, it seemed like an ideal spot to begin work.
“I mean, sure,” said Holly casually. “But didn’t you already DO that?”
I shook my head. “Not even close. I got a brief look at them with Eye of Revelation, and then I basically copied part of the architecture directly and plugged in a new power source. I didn’t learn the material on the test, I brought a cheat sheet.”
“And this time you need to understand what you’re looking at,” she finished as understanding dawned. “Because you’re going to be doing much more detailed work.”
“Exactly,” I agreed excitedly. “In order to create a racial trait that can adapt and balance out Callie’s void corruption, I need to understand every bit of what I’m doing. That means a deep dive into how your powers work. Luckily, I had an advantage here, because unlike last time, I have access to Dantalion. With you two opening up your souls for me, I can study and deconstruct them, gathering as much data as I need. The longer I work, the more data I get.”
Beyond that, the data that I didn’t actually consciously pick up would still stockpile in the back of my brain. The more of it I could accrue, the more Wisdom of Solomon would have to work with when I finally started iterating the racial trait with it.
The only reason I was even remotely confident in doing this at all was that Callie could now come into the library with me at any time and interact with the tomes. Our bond would let me directly adjust the trait as I went, mapping out her reactions and how it worked with her current Solid Path.
Essentially, this was similar to my creation of Sammael, in that I was sure that I had no chance of actually mastering the complexities of a racial trait enough to make one from scratch. With all the unique advantages I had in the process though, the impossible became possible, and I was excited to see what I could make. Even if this wouldn’t let me just create racial traits willy nilly, it should elevate my understanding of the construction of Skills to a much higher level, enough to allow me to thoroughly improve my forms with the Ten Demons Tree at a much faster rate.
“And what about us?” Chelsea asked. My sister, Bethy, Archie, and Dayna were all here with us, watching with fascination as I arranged everyone in specific but probably meaningless formations try to get the best spread of Dantalion without compromising physical comfort.
“Well, Bethy and Dayna are racial trait holders from birth.” I informed her solemnly. “Bethy in particular has two of them merged together, which is priceless research value for what I’m trying to do here. It would be even better if I had Lark or another pure Vampire for reference, but even my luck has limits. Dayna’s combat abilities might be helpful to integrate too, if I can narrow them down.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, brother dear, I understand how LOGIC works. I’m asking why I’M here,”
“Purification,” I said simply. “Archie has it integrated into his being. I’m not sure if I even CAN study how a beast integrates energy like that, but if I can, having yours to compare it to will be helpful. I won’t be able to use Zagan here, because Dantalion will be taking up all my energy. So on top of providing reference material, you can help me purify and Abyssal influences I can’t get myself, or rather, help Archie.”
My companion trilled in irritation, and I grimaced. “I know you’ve been stuck in Bethy’s Domain. I’m sorry, but this place is a shithole, and I’m worried you’ll exhaust yourself to death by accident trying to passively purify all this void taint. The complex is a different story, because Veldran’s defenses filter out the nasty stuff.”
Formations were about energy, and Veldran’s were even more sensitive. The flow of power down here was modified infinitesimally by literally every molecule and its placement, so the abyssal power had been thoroughly ground down as it entered, refined into a much purer and friendlier form of energy before being fed into the formations. Much like Dantalion, Veldran focused on deepening his understanding of this one location to an absurd degree, maximizing how well he could exploit the area.
Moravian, the Grandmaster back on Callus, had done the same, but his formation covered the whole planet. Veldran had focused even more deeply, and he’d been a Grandmaster much longer, as well as being a C-ranker. It was a different direction of study, but no less impressive.
Because of that, Archie could safely be out and about in here, and I’d wasted no time letting him out, even if his constant whining was starting to grate. I couldn’t blame him after being cooped up for so long, especially stuck in there with the cats and my sister’s psychopathic rabbit.
Having distracted myself more than enough, I sat down, closing my eyes as I focused on Dantalion. It didn’t take much, my form unfolded without any real effort, and the field of deduction overlaid the area around me instantly, covering everyone without any trouble. Of course, knowing how these things worked, covering them all initially wasn’t enough. To maximize my deduction ability, I needed Dantalion as dense as possible.
That was where the placements came in. They were as close as possible so I could condense Dantalion down to the smallest possible area, at least without everyone here being mashed against my side invading my personal space.
As Dantalion unfolded, I had Holly and Serah ignite their flames, gold and bronze respectively, as I allowed myself to sink into the deduction.
FIrst was the physical. Racial traits were a transformation at a base level, altering the physical properties of a being. While that wasn’t exactly the AIM of the ability, it was a big part of the process, and so it needed to be managed carefully. With the two girls there, I had three angelic forms for reference, including my own (which I was obviously using to boost Dantalion).
While the forms were mainly standardized (I based mine on theirs) I did note a few small alterations I assumed to be caused by the energy types. It took me a while to find those, actually, because they were only evident on a cellular level. My Perception at this point was higher than Callie’s so that kind of examination was doable for me, but it took time for Dantalion to slowly acclimate to the environment.
Which was another problem. The environment. Namely, Dantalion was trying to deduce the formations surrounding us, and it was slowing down my information gathering efforts in other areas.
Still, I maintained my efforts, I just triggered Piece of Mind, splitting off a bunch of parallels to support me in my deductions. Callie lent me her own soul for the task too, and between the two of us, I was able to split off SIX other versions of my mind to help catalogue and sort data. The more of it I understood, the less I’d need to rely on accumulation from my subconscious and the more I could guide the process when it came time to form the trait.
One of my minds studied the angelic forms, while two of them were applied to Bethy, studying both of her heritages and how they affected her, even as two more studied Archie, looking for similarities between him and the angels, studying possible ways to synergize energy with the physical form.
The more I studied, the more sure I was of something very interesting. Racial traits weren’t natural, and more than that, they were BASED on beasts. Not specifically, like Jessie’s was, but in the abstract. Someone had studied bestial integration of Paths and tried to recreate it in a human form. Presumably they had studied human form beasts themselves, hoping to create some sort of method to combine Paths with people.
I almost went down a rabbit hole there, but I forced myself to get back to the matter at hand. That was fascinating info and could be explored later, but I needed more specific information. My last two parallels, one of them studied Dayna and one of them processed extra data. I had briefly considered asking Daysia to sit in too, but I was concerned that Dryads were too removed from human after the tree bond, and I didn’t want to go down a blind alley.
After about three hours, I finally managed to get past the physical examination stage. With souls open to my inspection, and my own experience interacting with the souls of people like Bella and Callie, I was able to catch sight of the internal workings of their powers.
My original glances at their racial traits had been…woefully inadequate. If this was trying to free hand trace a design so I could alter some details, the last attempt had been more like sketching it from memory. Ten years after the fact. While drunk. It was a genuine miracle that Sammael actually functioned, and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have if my soul hadn’t been strong enough to bully it into behaving how I wanted it to.
The deeper I got into techniques and Skill creation, the more I realized how little I knew. I’d see the results of my training, become certain I was slowly perfecting my craft, then I’d trip into some new way of looking at things and realize my previous efforts only looked good while squinting at them in low light.
I spent eight hours down there, internalizing the power and the details as best I could, and letting Dantalion soak up anything I couldn’t for later use. Even MY soul was becoming strained by the constant effort, and my brain was mush after hours of seven times maximum input from a form designed to essentially BE information overload. Finally, I let the field drop, thumping backwards into a sprawl as I groaned and gripped my head.
A pair of soft hands reached down, slim fingers pressing against my temples as they did their best to gently massage the tension out. My wife pulled my head into her lap as she massaged it, humming gently to soothe my pain as best she could.
In the end, I just let myself drift off to sleep. My parallels faded away as I fell into blissful unconsciousness. My brain could process the excess data in dreams and I would hopefully wake up feeling refreshed. Tomorrow, I could begin work on Callie’s new racial trait, assuming the Wisdom of Solomon was ready, if not I would wait. Either way, this wasn’t going to be a one day endeavor. I was planning to work on this one for a while.
Comments
Malcolm Tent
I avoid questions like that tbh. I feel that explaining the origin of the system allows it to be too easily quantified. I prefer power sets like that to be complete fiat. Just a law of the universe that nobody questions lol.
Gunnar Crider
Ya'know. There is something I've been wonder, since nearly the beginning. What's up with the system. The skill have been explained, powers/abilities have been explained. but no one has explained how the interface came to be or why every cultivator has access to it. I'm thinking its from an uber god in the higher realms.
Anime Problem
He definitely needs to develop a focus technique specific to Dantalion so that he can filter for the specific information he needs/wants during semi crunch times like this. And then a lighter load technique which takes in and processes the overload of information in the background so that he can eventually circle back to the side tangents with essentially passive information gathering.
