Healing Titania only worsened Amanda's mood. It was her request but she couldn't know that her grandmother was so... active during her twenties, right before the cataclysm, and the zeitgeist at the time was to enjoy life to its fullest. College tuition was heinously high, and everybody believed it was okay to waste a decade partying instead of securing a future. When the cataclysm hit, it hit hard. Fortunately, they were nothing if not adaptable. The pioneers took their Prime Vestige and carved their place in the world.
"Hey, babe, at least tell me how do you mastu—"
BONK!
Amanda's shepherd crook put Damien's porkjection to sleep. She didn't need to hit him to use the construct's power but boy wasn't that satisfying. Too bad he didn't feel any pain.
Right after, she fell into a deep depressive state.
If no cure for this condition was found, she'd go insane.
*
*
"We are ready for this next test," Noah said.
"Are you sure you want to go ahead, Amanda?" Andronicus asked the girl. She nodded. "Robert, if you please?"
They were in the gym, with two specialists. One had a talent that allowed her to see souls, the other was an exorcist from the Unified Korea Republic.
Robert brought one of his throwaway tame monsters. It was a frog that could spit venom and chomp down limbs. Robert had used his Life essence to weaken the jaw muscles and extract the venom glands, so this was just a harmless one-star giant slimy frog.
"Amanda, use the seed," Noah said. Amanda did.
"I can see a soul fragment move along with the seed," the spiritualist woman said.
The frog had most of its vitality and essence sucked by the seed. The seed then fed the stolen energies back to Amanda. They waited as the Seed of Unholy Rebirth fully germinated inside the monster.
"The tamer link broke!" Robert reported.
The frog started to jump to and fro, agitated. It ran away from Robert, hopping along the enclosure. It was the same behavior as the previous five frogs they used in single-monster tests. It ran down a corridor and triggered a trap. A cage snapped in place and caught the luckless reincarnated smuggler.
Robert used Blink and moved the cage next to another nine. All of the cages had the same type of frog monster, and all of the frogs were Damien.
He teleported back. "Any news?" He asked the two specialists he hired.
"None, sir," the spiritualist woman said. "I saw the soul fragment move from Ms. Samson to the monster and mix with the monster's soul, but nothing else."
"I found no disincarnate spirits in the room," the Korean exorcist reported.
"Amanda?" Andronicus called. "Do you feel any changes?"
"No. The projection remains the same. It doesn't seem to have any awareness that it now has ten clones."
"All of the frogs acquired the Unholy affinity," Noah said after examining the monsters with his mask.
Robert sighed in relief. The situation was stable, at least. Damien wasn't growing stronger and Amanda had a full grasp of the new talent. It kept trying to revive Damien but didn't remove the projection inside Amanda's soul. If he had to guess, it found itself in an abnormal state. The talent believed that Damien was dead. It then tried to revive Damien. But the caster (Amanda) was still alive, so it didn't make any changes to her soul.
It was his theory, at least.
Robert then took imprints from all ten frogs. Aside from the memories they had from before the possession and those the frogs made after they were possessed, the middle part, what belonged to Damien, was the same. The possessed frogs had no memories from the projection inside Amanda's soul.
He took Amanda to the Arcology and came back to the gym. Andronicus, Noah, Robert, and the two specialists sat down to discuss their findings. Their conclusion was that Amanda was not in any danger, save from the distress and harassment. Damien couldn't take over her soul. But the projection was part of her now. Removing Damien was as easy as removing Amanda from her own soul.
"My opinion regarding her ascension to the third star remains the same. It's unadvised. Damien's talent might evolve along with Amanda's own talent, and that might give the parasite the tools it needs to finish the possession," Andronicus said.
"We should adjourn this meeting and reconvene next week. In the meantime, everyone, please try to find some solution," Noah said.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Robert took the specialists back home.
*
*
Robert went to the District Twenty-three Mall. There, he visited Zaifyr and then Madam Diana. Stella led him to the mystic after a short wait. He explained his conundrum and asked if she knew of a cure.
"I'm sorry, Robert. Amanda's case is a unique one. I checked and we have records of two soul-merging talents a long while ago. These merges are often permanent. If Damien's talent works the way you described, then I'm afraid only death would sever them. I'm not recommending it, though."
Robert winded but then nodded. "I understand and I took no offense. Don't worry. I would like to commission some alchemical baths for both Amanda and I, to harmonize this new affinity."
Robert ordered four years' worth of Unholy alchemical baths, half of it with Nature to counterbalance what was essentially a deadly grave dust mud bath. The 100% Unholy bath was meant to ease the transition to an undead body. For his half, it was laced with Life reagents, again to stave off the mummifying effects and keep him among the living.
Even though undeath had many benefits, neither Robert nor Amanda wished for that condition.
He left the shop and went to visit Yolania.
Robert became one of Yolania's favorite clients. He completed dozens of quests, commissioned a lot of artifacts, and always paid upfront. When the artificer came to greet him minutes after he arrived, nobody thought it strange.
"I have all the cubes you commissioned ready," she said with a grin. "It was quite the challenge, designing a fully self-sufficient modular space station."
Robert placed this order right after their disastrous space station adventure. The whole realm became a vacuum-filled emptiness that reminded him of the true void, were it not for the stars.
The place had only one passage. He made sure to scout it for thousands of miles in every direction. Besides the portal, the only other feature was the black hole.
Despite that, the realm had normal Ether density. Which meant it could support a small habitat
Robert intended to set up these cubes and recreate the leisure station, far, far away from the portal. Where nobody could ever bother him. A comfortable getaway.
He collected the cubes and asked Yolania to keep an eye open for any treasures or hints of a solution to Amanda's problem. Then, he went to the black hole realm.
*
*
In his Vacuum-sealed Minotaur armor, Robert floated near the portal. A torrent of matter, air, water, dust, and small rocks poured out of it and fell down into the black hole a few miles below.
He could feel the pull of the black hole as the cosmic object tried to pull him in. He counteracted them with a telekinesis spell, allowing him to move around unimpeded.
He used his main talent to check the adjacent realm. He didn't even need to leave the liminal void to see the destruction. The surface of the world was devastated with the portal to the black hole realm sucking in everything. Tornadoes and storms ravaged the surface as the air was pulled into the portal. These storms broke down the realm and lifted debris to feed the hungering space maw.
When it would stop, Robert wondered. He moved to the next realm over and found a light breeze blowing into the broken realm. The catastrophe might span dozens of realms.
He went back to the black hole realm and spent an hour watching the black hole suck in debris. The stream of matter fell down and entered orbit, stretching as it came closer, stretching and spinning around the black orb, creating a luminous ring that highlighted it. Robert read that the pre-cataclysm people believed this luminous ring was matter becoming energy.
The cosmic phenomenon kept emitting a deluge of Time and Space wisps. That made Robert suspicious. The phenomenon was very similar to… people dying in the liminal void.
Following his intuition, he used his main talent. His timepiece informed him he had almost five days before his return. Robert felt no force pulling him around. He let go of the telekinesis spell to confirm that the black hole's gravitational pull didn't extend to the liminal void.
He recast the telekinesis spell. Slowly, Robert approached. His Danger Sense didn't trigger. He touched down on the accretion disk. The black hole was the size of an orange. It seemed bigger in the real world. Universe.
He felt a familiar energy inside. His fairy eyes confirmed what it was. Void Ether, crystallized. It was mind-boggling energy-dense. Even more than the Tzekenite crystals he became so used to manipulating.
Robert couldn't let it be. It was right there, in front of him. Crystallized power. He reached and grabbed the orb. When he did, he felt a powerful tug attempting to keep the orb in place. It felt as if it was affixed to that point in space.
That wasn't abnormal. Ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of ten thousand, real objects in the real world couldn't be affected, couldn't affect, nor be moved from the liminal void. This wasn't it. The orb had some give. The pull was elastic. Robert used all his strength, empowered by Unholy Vigor, and yanked his prize from its rightful place. Once he moved it away, the pull vanished as if some cosmic rubber band had snapped.
Using the lights embedded in the sides of his faceplate, Robert examined the sphere in his hands. It was perfect, unblemished, and uniformly dense. But his silver eyes reiterated the truth. It was pure Void Ether. He'd seen something like that before. The fruit Amanda ate during the gifting ceremony, and, to a certain extent, the brooch he wore to obtain the Force affinity.
The disk underneath him cracked. He stored the orb in his ring, then looked down. The whole disk was quickly breaking apart, quickly for the liminal void. He jumped off and pulled himself up with his spell.
The black hole was gone.
Robert flew away, diving into the true void and emerging home in the Puffbloom Islands.
On second thought, he went to a realm he wouldn't mind destroying.
There, he removed the orb from his ring. It was inert. He felt no pressure or pull, and saw no energy flows. It had stabilized. He studied the orb for hours and days, finding nothing aside from what he already knew.
As one last experiment, he held the orb as he returned to reality. It created no suction, nothing. It just existed as an impossible singularity. Void was the absence of everything. Yet this orb of Void essence had mass. He tossed it up and caught it back on the way down. It wasn't heavy by any measure but it had mass.
If this was a Void affinity treasure, then it was also the solution to Amanda's problems.
*
*
Amanda was in her bedroom, reading a soppy bodice ripper. Her melancholy was a constant companion. Better this than the pervert squatting in her soul. Veronica knocked on the door. Amanda easily recognized the pattern. She stopped reading and slid a page marker in before closing the book.
"Enter!" Amanda shouted. She pushed down the annoyance in her voice. Robert entered. His face seemed distressed and hopeful. "What is it?"
He smiled. "I don't want to make any promises or raise false hopes, but I think I found a solution."
The book slid off her hand and fell on the floor.