That night, Robert didn't go to the Gurglock Ocean to harvest kills to grow his second star. He left the realm alone so the monsters could reproduce and repopulate, even though he suspected he would need years to put a dent in the population. But that wasn't the single reason. He wanted to let his body, mind, and soul rest for a while. No. What he really wanted was to scour the Imperial Academy library for any reference to Gwen, a former cartoon animator who awakened as the Pale Priestess.
He expected that some record of a powerful four-star Void Archhuman would remain somewhere but after a whole night of browsing books he still didn't have in his intellect fortress and searching those for any hints, he found zero mentions. Not only referring to the woman but also to the cult. As far as the public records were concerned, their first appearance was when they attacked the Academy. It couldn't be. Zaifyr remembered Gwen. That made the old man more than a hundred years old. And it also meant that Gwen lived for more than a hundred years before she crossed the Gates.
The library had books on the first hundred years after the cataclysm. It even had books from before the cataclysm, preserved with runic sigils. Robert found comic books about Mickey's adventures. The powerful Archhumans that appeared during the cataclysm had their names immortalized. Some were even alive to that day.
The only explanation was that someone, most likely an Arch with adequate talent, erased Gwen and the cult she founded from history. Since the cataclysm two centuries ago, more than one hundred billion humans absorbed a Prime Vestige. And most of them had different talents. Even when you find two Prime Vestiges with the same kind of talent, some parameters change. They were never the same but if someone could imagine a talent, it probably already existed.
But that wasn't everything. The rate of Prime Vestige manifestation per individual was at five Prime Vestiges for every four individuals. Extrapolating from the official numbers, about twenty billion prime Vestiges were never used by anyone. Where were all of them? In the vaults of the powerful. Just like Amanda, the rich loved to keep power away from the rabble. Everyone could be an Archhuman if these Prime Vestiges weren't locked away in vaults. Or destroyed and/or lost.
The book Robert retrieved from the Dungeon was the most accurate record of Gwen's life but he couldn't trust anything in there. It could be real, it could be fabricated. But his instincts told him it was the former.
*
*
Before the sun rose, Robert went to the gathering facility. He had a few shells he needed to upgrade.
The first one was the void heart. He upgraded it to the second stage with the concept of "bottomlessness". Its essence storage capacity jumped from 160% to 240%.
His blink spell. He used "instantaneity". Blink's casting time became a single thought. And Robert could have a single thought faster than most, to say the least.
For Spatial Sense, he was split between "precision or accuracy" and "overreach". The former would refine the sense but keep the range as it was. Not too big, not too small. The latter would allow him to sense further away, eliminating a blind spot against long-ranged enemies. Checking the prices, accuracy was the most expensive of the three but it was because it could apply to attack magic. He went with overreach. It would also help him aim his void lance spell at far targets.
Mage armor's concept was obvious. "Inviolability". He thought about using "Indestructibility" but the concept he went with granted better environmental and magical protection. The latter concept, the most expensive on the list with only one available vestige went to Wall of Force,
Temporal awareness, his lifeline, received "vaticination". It greatly improved how far he could passively predict the future and how precise these predictions were. It had an aspect of prophecy associated with that concept. Funny enough, "prophecy" was also available as a concept, indicating that the higher one he used was better suited for his purposes. He might get glimpses of the far future but that was okay.
He upgraded distorted space with "redirection". For his spatial storage, the pocket space he had that didn't depend on rings, he used the concept of "vastness". It improved his capacity by a factor of eight because it doubled every dimension of the degenerated space.
Sap stamina with "consumption" to speed up the drain effect. For void veins, he used "resilient". He thought about using "purifying" to help with dross essence but he had it under control. Since he needed to go to the liminal void and meditate for a few hours to refill the void heart, he made it a habit to also purge his body of foreign essence during these visits. Resilient void veins would improve their resistance to damage.
After that massive wind blade hidden amidst the barrage foiled his Time senses and severed his head in one go, Robert was wary of dismemberment. Void veins were the best bet at keeping his body in a state he could fix with Life essence.
The magic missile spell finally gained the ability to home in their intended target. He used "infallibility" for that. The final concept of the session went to jade mind. He used "unwavering".
Between his artificial core and the Void Gates, he paid his debt before the cafeteria closed the breakfast service. He dropped by and grabbed a bite. Being a Life Arch, that bite contained over twenty thousand calories. But it cost him a piece of his soul as he was forced to sign several promotional shirts.
*
*
He checked the time. Eleven thirty. He went to the cafeteria restaurant and used his talent. He returned to Amanda's front porch. Before he could ring the buzzer, Veronica opened the door. Her eyes told him everything he needed to know. Robert looked down and frowned. Veronica looked at him with an apology on her pouting lips.
"I'm sorry, Robert. She left before the sun rose."
He looked up. The artificial sky of the arcology greeted him, always sunny and happy despite the weather outside. But now that he could see the Ethertech apparatus generating the illusion and the fake sunlight, it felt fake and oppressive.
"It's fine, I guess," He took a good look at her. "Nice progress on your star."
Veronica seemed surprised. "You can tell?"
He tapped his temple. "Eye upgrade. Tell Amanda I got some souvenirs from my trips."
"I most certainly will. And Robert..."
Veronica seemed to waver and ponder as she tried to resolve some sort of internal conflict.
"Yes?"
"Amanda misses you dearly," she confessed in a whisper. "I hope you—" She opened her mouth, then clamped it shut and bit her lower lip. "Forget what I said."
"It's okay. Thanks for being there to keep us in touch. I'll be going, then. I think I'll do two quests today. I'll be busy."
"Enjoy your vacation!" Veronica said without an ounce of enthusiasm behind her words.
"Thank you," Robert gave his best smile possible, which was close to a sad scowl. Then he vanished from where he stood.
*
*
Savonlinna, Finland.
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Somewhere between nine and eight hundred years ago, a fortress rested on an island between some lakes. When the rift cataclysm struck, one of the top ten biggest passages in size appeared in the middle of Castle Olofsburg. From the other side, frost giants poured out, destroying the puny human-sized construction and replacing it with their own. These conquerors from another world didn't fare well when the Fire Nation struck. The belligerent Archhumans literally melted the giants' faces and pushed them back, returning the lake water to a liquid state and evaporating everything because they were such assholes.
Two centuries after the initial invasion, the passage remains. The giants on the other side were still unconquered. Incursions on both sides happened frequently but while the giants had size and might and a natural Ice affinity, the humans had thousands of years of ingeniousness and studies in the art of war.
Building a facility around the passage would be foolish. Instead, humanity built a kill box around the massive rift, with dozens of siege weapons ready to thaw the Cold War should the giants insist on doing that.
Fairy-Robert just zipped into the passage, invisible. The other side was a network of tunnels and chambers carved out of solid ice, with temperatures well below freezing. The ice reflected the light in beautiful but disorienting patterns. With his mage armor, symbiote, and elemental attunement combined to keep the cold away, he felt quite comfortable.
He flew down the tunnels, mapping them in his mind palace as he went. The first mile of tunnels was abandoned, a DMZ the giants kept clean to give them some advance warning humans were coming their way. But not a fairy. Robert saw the stars in the distance before he sensed the masses in his spatial senses. Always in close pairs, these were the frost giants keeping guard over a defensive outpost. Light blue essence swirled inside these stars.
He didn't engage. These giants were nothing if not resilient and fighting each giant would be a big waste of time. He passed the guard station when he stopped. Since when was he worried about time? With a bit of soul-searching, he found that his problem was that he wished he was visiting these places with Amanda. He looked at the giants and remembered one thing his Prime Vestige said. "When the Emperor eats, the void feasts." Robert had a hunch about what this meant but he didn't test it yet. Perhaps these giants could volunteer for a little experiment.
Tapping one of them, he dragged the giant to the true void. There, he let go of the big guy and watched impassively as the void consumed the giant, soul, body, and everything. A mote of light blue light, resembling a will o' wisp remained where Robert saw the stars vanish. Just like the other two times, that mote flew toward him and entered his soul.
Robert felt a chill spread through his being. Checking his Ethercosm, he saw nothing different. But he knew that was what the Prime Vestige meant. The Emperor (him) brought food (the giant). The void feasted. And he kept something from the giant. What this "food" would give him? He had no idea.
He tried the same with the other confused giants. The same thing happened. As he absorbed each mote of blue light, what he thought to be the remnants of the giants' souls, the cold sensation intensified to the point he was shivering for a while after the last guard.
*
*
Robert kept abducting all the giants he found. It was quick, easy, and basically free. He had no idea what the orbs he got from every kill did except make him feel extremely cold mounted up, even going to the point of giving him a headache as if he'd eaten too much ice cream. At that point, his irrational mind was screaming at him to stop taking more frost giants to the true void.
He decided to take a break and ignore the giants. Soon after, he found his target. A frost giant shaman. He hovered near the giant, focusing on his sight to determine where the shaman's heart was.
He created a spatial distortion in the shape of a torus with another working as a divergent lens right before. Then he fired a void lance as wide as the torus. The part of the beam of Void essence that entered the divergent lens scattered away from the center and the torus focused the rest and then corrected the beam back to the horizontal, resulting in a ring beam with a hollow middle. The beam struck the shaman right in the chest, disintegrating a donut of his frozen chest, stomach, and part of the left arm and neck. It left the heart intact.
Telekinesis seized the cylinder of frozen flesh and dragged it to him while the rest of the dead shaman fell to the sides. Robert used Life essence to make the unneeded pieces like rib sections, skin, muscle, and so on a slough off the heart, storing the beating organ.
*
*
Bosstown, East Coast, Empire of America
* *
The city where revolutionaries fought for freedom had suffered greatly during the rift cataclysm. All great population centers did, because of the attrition between people and the fight for dwindling resources. That was why the preppers of yore recommended bugging out when Shit Hits The Fan™. Some underground crime lord gained the power to control people's minds and became the boss of the town, renaming good old Boston, the jewel of the defunct state of Massachusetts.
Robert was sure he had a cautionary tale he could use right there because this underground crime boss was hunted by a coalition of Archs. After two decades of intense skirmishes, the boss was finally killed but the city retained its name.
Somewhere in the city sewers, a passage opened to an echo of the revolution. There, the dead revolutionaries rose from the clutches of defeat to fight a never-ending battle against the redcoats. The ghost of Sir Henry Clinton, a British General, led the enemy army. This historical re-enactment Dungeon reset every day. Every day, two undead hordes fought each other, with the winner changing depending on unknown factors. But if the living dared desecrate this Unholy ground, both armies would come at them. It was a war of attrition and a test of one's resources.
Should the delvers survive the onslaught of gun-toting zombified redcoats and ghoulish colonists, they would have the honor of fighting the ghosts of one among four British generals and one among four revolutionary leaders. The rewards from the Dungeon were only some revolution memento like a blood-stained medal, a musket that didn't work outside of it, or the skull of some soldier.
It wasn't a popular raiding spot by any means and only idiotic people entered it, as the invaders could not leave until the boss was defeated. The passage vanished after the first person crossed. Groups needed to hold hands while crossing. And since nothing came out of it to attack the city, the passage wasn't worth the effort to guard.
It was used as an execution ground by the underworld organizations. People they wanted to vanish were tied to one another and tossed inside.
Fairy-Robert entered with one such group by riding a guy's head. Just before he crossed, he dropped five two-star shield voidlings around the passage to lash out at the gangsters. It was free latent aura.
*
*
On the other side, he could still hear the death screams of the gangsters as the Void constructs lashed out the shit out of them. The convicts attempted to escape and run but there was nowhere to go on the other side. And yet, they exchanged the certain death inside the Dungeon for the uncertain doom on the other side. Robert marked them as friends for his upgraded shield voidlings.
Once the last prisoner went back, the passage closed. the armies of yore, or at least the undead re-enactors this Dungeon created rushed to attack Robert.
The fairy was already high up in the air, invisible and behind a divergent spatial distortion that would send bullets veering off away from him.
The undead horde started to pile up around the entrance, confused. They wouldn't fight against each other because they had a common enemy. Robert waited until they were all gathered and started to fire void lances through the divergent distortion. The beams became cones and struck from above, disintegrating layers off the top of the undead horde's heads. He kept shooting and eventually, the heads were damaged enough to kill the zombies and ghouls. He repositioned his lens and fired at another group. They shot back but the bullets would either disintegrate under the black beams, get their trajectories dispersed away from the lens focal point by the distortion, or ping harmlessly against Robert's mage armor for those that struck close enough to the distortion center.
Once the hordes were thinned enough, he flew closer and fired barrages of magic missiles at the remaining undead. The glowing darts of Force magic went into arcing trajectories, striking the undead and causing... not much damage. Living things suffered not only the damage of a blow but also the aftereffects, like shock, blood loss, and pain. The undead only ceased to function when either their central nervous systems were too compromised or when their bodies were damaged enough to keep them from functioning.
With a sigh, he continued his attack pattern. Zipping at random, he avoided the shots the undead on the surface fired at him. The crack of the black powder weapons was deafening but it too was dampened by his upgraded mage armor. It was good training for his spells' proficiency.
Once the last undead fell, the two ghosts appeared. Two stars shone in the center of each of them. He conjured a resilient sphere around each of them, trapping the generals. They pounded and shot at the sphere but the spells could endure a lot of punishment.
While they were entertained, he set the capture devices. Rectangular boxes that resembled an elevator lying down on its back with double doors and diagonal stripes along the doors. It had a frying pan handle and a cable connecting it to a power source that looked like an artifice backpack. He placed one such capture device underneath each ghost. When they were ready, he activated the power source at the same time he dismissed the resilient spheres.
The double doors of the devices opened, casting an ascending cone of bright light that caught the ghosts. As if drawn by an ethereal gravitational force, they were dragged inside the boxes. Once inside, the doors closed. Red and yellow lights blinked at the tip of the capture devices.
A British medal dropped on Robert's hands as the passage opened. He walked out, seeing that three of his upgraded shield voidlings remained to guard the place. After looting the bodies, Robert dismissed them. He used his main talent and fled the scene.
The gains in both spell proficiency and latent aura were so good that he might leave the Gurglocks alone for a while, to farm this Dungeon.