Carlos chuckled at Trinlen's dumbfounded stare. Impulsively, he mentally triggered Purple's automation to make another miniature Lorvan caricature. Lorvan calmly speared it the instant it fully formed, before it could even get its bearings, much less yell another mockery of his habitual seriousness.

[Hey! I may get most of the cost back when they die, but that doesn't mean they're free.] Purple's admonishment came with a feeling of disgruntled annoyance.

Carlos winced, chagrined. [Sorry. I'll try to avoid spending your resources that frivolously again.]

Trinlen, oblivious to the telepathic exchange, recovered his wits and laughed. "Lorvan, did you just make a joke?"

Lorvan kept his face neutral and replied matter-of-factly. "I believe you already know the answer to that."

Trinlen hesitated. "I… think that's a confirmation?

Amber stepped in, smiling brightly but holding back any laughter. "Joke or not, I think we achieved our goals for that, er, 'monster', and we have a lot of other important work to do."

"Right. Developing our second stage as nobles." Carlos nodded and took a deep breath. "Good work, Trinlen, but I'm afraid it will be a while before we'll have any attention available for you again."

Trinlen shrugged. "I can find things to occupy myself with, don't worry. Just let me know." He gave a jaunty salute and sauntered off.

Carlos stared after him for a moment, refraining from verbalizing his thought. You finding things to occupy yourself is exactly what I worry about the most regarding you. He refocused on the royal guard standing next to them, who was still keeping a perfectly straight face. "Lorvan, you know how making second-stage soul structures goes. No need to attend us so… Wait. You know so much about how noble-rank soul plans work; why haven't you used that knowledge to boost your own soul rank?"

Lorvan's expression finally changed, as he raised an eyebrow at Carlos. "That question could apply just as well to any royal guard officer, and if one royal guard were to do such a thing, many others would also do it. I've already told you about how unhappy all the existing noble houses will be about the founding of one new house. Can you even imagine how they would react if dozens or even hundreds of royal guards started becoming nobles? It would provoke a rebellion powerful enough to devastate the kingdom, even in defeat." He shook his head. "My loyalty to the Crown forbids it."

"I see." Carlos slowly nodded, thinking. So the Crown isn't confident of beating all of the other nobles united against them. They can browbeat any single house, maybe even any group of several houses, but they still have to keep the nobles divided against each other to maintain their undisputed supremacy over the entire aristocracy. Also, it's interesting that Lorvan's loyalty is stronger than any aspiration for nobility he might have, and that this is consistent for all royal guards. I wonder how the Crown achieves that. Mind-reading magic on potential recruits to accept only the most loyal, maybe? That's a mystery to consider later, though. He refocused on the issue at hand. "That was my only question. No need to attend us so closely now." He waved in dismissal, then sat down and closed his eyes to better focus his attention inward.

Alright, making a new soul structure. The most important one in our plan is the soul disguiser, to prevent Lorvan and Ordens, and I suppose Felton, or anyone else, from detecting when we start trying tricks that might bypass the normal limits and rival the Crown's power. But it's not the most useful one to make first. It will only be needed when we actually start doing those shenanigans. The first one I make should be in the same group, because we have to make the whole group in one batch, but can be anything in that group, the group themed around doing things with my own soul.

Heh, using a focused theme for each group makes it so much easier to achieve the required total synergy. Carlos shook his head and dismissed the thought. Anyway, the best soul-oriented one to start with is the soul editor. It's redundant with the debugger I already have, but it's more specialized, and that makes it more potent. And I'll eventually be dismantling the debugger anyway, along with the entire rest of that initial superstructure, to make room for a tenth tightly-themed superstructure. That's still a long way off, though, so for now just pull in aether and focus on the concept of a soul editor.

He suited his actions to his thoughts, pulling in the Level 12 aether around him and infusing his intent as it decompressed to Level 0. The process worked smoothly, but after less than a minute he realized an issue. That is… slow. Painfully slow. Even with Purple quadrupling the rate by preprocessing the aether for me, it will still take… Wow, more than half a day to absorb enough. Yeah, I'm not doing that when there's a better option. Decompression factor from my Level 15 superstructure's essence to the Level 0 essence that I'm building with is 2^15, or 32 thousand plus a bit, so… He carefully took a tiny speck of essence from the superstructure, like trying to pick up a single grain of sand from a beach, and moved it into the empty region where he'd started building the new structure. Hmm. That ballooned up to about half of what I need. One more tiny speck should do it.

Carlos blocked out awareness of his surroundings, clearing his mind of other thoughts to meditate on infusing his intent into the new soul structure as purely as he could manage. He focused especially strongly on the concept of creating other new soul structures, since he would be doing a great deal of that in the coming days, but still as just an application of a more general ability to modify his soul. After just under 3 hours, he realized it was done. He shook himself and stretched. Ugh. I can't wait to get to a point where my advancement involves intellectual problem-solving instead of this tedium.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

His stomach grumbled, and Amber's almost echoed it. They shared a look and wordlessly stood in unison to walk over to the full-size stove that Sconter had produced from somewhere. The large man was quietly humming to himself as he cooked. He flipped several large sizzling steaks on a frying pan with one hand while sprinkling various seasonings into a simmering pot with his other hand. He looked up as his hungry lord and lady approached. "The food will be ready in 10 more minutes, my lords. Please have patience."

Carlos took a sniff of the air and cocked his head. "Why can't I smell any of it? Obviously the stove is enchanted to block the smell, but why include that in its features?"

Sconter just stared at him like he'd grown an extra head, but Amber spoke up to answer. "To prevent it from attracting hungry monsters, of course. I swear, you have the strangest gaps in your knowledge, sometimes."

Carlos blinked and looked around, reminding himself that he was in a wild forest filled with dangerous beasts. "Oh. Right." He chuckled and rubbed the back of his head ruefully. "I keep forgetting that the only reason I'm safe here is all the powerful people protecting me."

Sconter idly stirred the pot in front of him and kept his eyes on the steaks while he commented. "Hmm. That's a dangerous thing to forget, especially since you are on this journey to reverse those roles, becoming a more powerful person who will protect us when needed. Perhaps you should hunt some monsters nearby to get yourself a better reminder of it."

Carlos nodded slowly. "We absolutely should… But we need a better array of spells to be prepared for that."

Sconter shrugged. "Can't help you with that. But when you think you might be ready, I can assess a demonstration for whether you're actually ready."

Amber responded first, firmly. "We'll take you up on that later." Carlos nodded in agreement, and they both took seats at the portable table Sconter had set up, waiting to eat.

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Late that night, Ressara quietly celebrated her own achievement of the day. I'm Level 6 now! Already! This business with absorbing aether is so fast it feels like cheating! She took a deep breath and sighed. It sort of is cheating, really. If I were out here alone to try it, I'd be monster chow already. Only people who can fight and beat monsters above their own level can reliably pull it off without overpowered escorts, and that's not me. I'm not a fighter. She snorted. Five soul structures all devoted to various special senses, plus now 2 for internally doing things to myself, and not a one for even affecting anything else, much less fighting.

I owe Lord Carlos and Lady Amber a lot for helping me gain so much so easily. She yawned. I need to do everything I can to pay them back. She turned over in her sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep, her thoughts focused on ways she could contribute to House Carlos's success.

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The next morning, Purple reached Level 12 shortly after dawn, the highest that the aether of the area could raise him to. Carlos unceremoniously picked up the dungeon core once again as their entourage broke camp to move on. "I might have to stop using my pocket to carry you soon, with how much bigger you're getting." He held the crystal up to his eye, finger and thumb on its tips, to assess its new size. It was about 2 and 1/3 inches tall now.

[I don't see how that is an issue.] Purple sent an impression of confused questioning along with his statement.

[It's not an issue. I was just remarking on an observation.] Carlos shrugged and pocketed the crystal, then walked over to Esmorana's passenger carrier for the flight to their next camp. They flew a very short time, touching down in an area with aether only 3 levels higher than before, at Level 15. Just barely low enough to be safe for Ressara, and just barely high enough for Purple to reach the second stage. It's nice how that worked out.

Carlos quickly settled down to get back to making more new soul structures, ignoring the activity around him. The soul editor made it a little faster and easier, but not by much more than the debugger was already doing. Judging by yesterday, filling out the remaining 4 slots will take a solid 10 hours. Better get to it.

Let's see, I already did the soul editor and the adaptive soul optimizer, for automatically tweaking the details of everything to suit what we end up actually using things for as well as possible. Already did the more narrowly specialized replacements of the old introspector, one for inspecting current status and one for monitoring activity and changes. Also did the soul disguiser, just to get it out of the way. Next up is the pair of the synergy finder and the synergy applier. Let's siphon off another not-quite-so-tiny speck of Level 15 essence from the superstructure… and the boring tedious part begins.

Hours later, approaching lunch time, Carlos's progress on the second of the synergy-focused soul structures was interrupted by an unexpected telepathic hail. Mayor Stelras's voice suddenly called out in his head, breaking his meditative focus. [Lord Carlos and Lady Amber, my apology if I am interrupting something, but I have important news.]

Carlos took a moment to recover from the surprise and to make sure his incomplete soul structure was being held stable. What could have happened that Stelras would need to urgently contact us about? Oh yeah. He focused on talking back through the mental connection. [Ah, yes? Is this about the deal with Darmelkon?]

[Precisely. Darmelkon arrived by teleport with Kindar and a few escorts this morning to negotiate directly and in person. He was disappointed that you were not here, but quickly got down to business when I informed him that you authorized me to negotiate.]

Carlos nodded, not considering that Stelras couldn't see him. [You have terms for us to approve or deny?]

[Yes. He is eager to seal the deal quickly, in hopes of having Kindar join your current expedition. To begin with, his offer of course includes a great deal of money. 10 mythril, paid up front. On completion of the deal, he also promises an enchanted item officially valued by a crown assessor at 100 mythril, or 1 adamantium. He does not know the full details of its capabilities, but it is crafted from a dungeon core.]

Carlos frowned. [Hmm. We already have Purple. We don't know how the Enchanters Guild makes things with dungeon cores, though. That's… tempting, certainly, but I'm not sure if it's enough. Amber?]

Stelras interrupted before Amber could express her opinion. [I'm not done yet. He offered two other things, to be given up front with the 10 mythril, that are difficult to assign monetary value to. One is simply that he offers to conduct business with the Enchanters Guild on your behalf, secretly, to bypass any personal issues they may have with you. The other… He says he regards it himself as merely a curiosity, a collector's item he happened across some time ago, but he firmly believes it is genuine, and that it holds far greater interest for the two of you.]

Carlos continued listening, but Stelras stayed silent for several seconds. [Well, spit it out already. What is it?]

Stelras hesitated a moment longer before finally answering.

[A copy of the personal spellbook of Archmage Sandaras.]