Akir heard loud voices of surprise, finding that startling. He clutched his hand and felt the overwhelmingly soft sensation of his pillow. Shifting his position, he tried to chase the voices out of his head, but they grew louder and louder. Could they not let him sleep in peace? Work, work only work all the time! Goodness!
Wait, something was wrong. These were not voices of his wife, children or any of his relatives. He stopped feigning being deaf and focused on the voice of an irritated man that was speaking to him urgently.
"Akir, what are you doing at our emergency meeting?"
"Am I late boss?" He shot up, sitting up on his bed when he recognized the voice of his superior.
"No, but did you really have to teleport here while sleeping in your bed? What is it with your sleeping beauty grand entrance?"
Akir looked around and found out he was in a meeting room where apparently some sort of an emergency meeting was taking place. Of course his bed with his favorite set of pillows was here as well.
He had no words for the situation.
"In fact, you can participate even though you have not been invited, but before that . ." His superior grilled him with his gaze for a while. "Change into your uniform, I will not have you participate while wearing pyjamas!"
* * * *
A demonic head popped up from behind a corner
"Is that crazy woman gone?" He whispered and gazed up, noticing there was no light coming down the sewer, not even a single ray. "It has to be night, time for some investigation."
He crawled up to the edge of the sewer and waited for anyone passing by. It was strange this place even had a sewer, it was something quite advanced considering this world looked similar to the middle ages on Earth.
It took a while before he saw a person walking close by, there was not much traffic at night, but Krogar himself was not afraid of anything. This time around, he presumed his origin was simply fire and he had plentiful memories of using it, by the standarts of this location, he should be quite strong.
"Wait for it, wait for it." After his victim was only one meter away, he sprang into action, grabbing the person by its hand and pulling it down into the sewer.
There was a muffled shriek, but who cares? Not like someone will be risking their necks in the middle of the night.
"Damn, I have completely forgotten about Five, but she should have given up ages ago." Krogar grumbled and looked at his catch. Being a demon had its perks like seeing well in the dark.
It was a beautiful female dressed in half-torn clothes, the spitting image of a beauty in distress with long bunny ears quivering on the back of her head with fear. She looked at him fearfully with her big eyes, begging for her life with the look.
THAT was how it was supposed to be, . . but sadly it was just an old drunkard.
"Oh crap man, you stink more than the sewer and what is with that face?"
"Whaa? Da pavement rose and hit me, Bitch, I couldn't dodge in time!"
"I meant the pox marks on your face, never mind. You are useless, too drunk."
"Whaa? No way, I drank no much, I swear."
"Get out, I have no use for you!" He kicked him lightly, urging his ass out of his kingdom of stinky little tunnels.
"Wait borther, chat with me awhile, no rush to go back to old hag. . ."
"Get out!!" Krogar increased the force and kicked the man out of the sewer. He was afraid, he had used too much force, but gods and drunkards were apparently immortal in every universe and the man just staggered away.
Shortly after, he could hear panting behind his back and realized his unforgiving pursuer was still at it.
"Is she for real? She is seriously overmotivated."He frovned thinking about the best course of action.
"I have been too easy on her, let's give her hell" His eyes lingered on the surface of the stinky liquid and he found in his mind a fire spell suitable for evaporation of larger volume of water.
"Before I leave, I will leave a little stinky exclusively for you lady." Krogar drew the words he remembered drawing countless of times, although he naturaly was not the real Krogar and performed it without a hitch. Seeing the large clouds of hot, evaporated feces behind him, he quickly left the sewer and stalked into the night.
There was no one on the streets, and the few he saw from a distance quickly made a turn to avoid him. The place was bigger then he had expected, walking randomly in the sewers, he did not know where the original place with the tower was, looking around ,it seemed like an ordinary residential area of the middle-class. Not overly shabby, but it was certainly not expensive housing.
He compared his surroundings to his image of Earth's middle-ages and looked for differences, which could provide more clues to the character of this realm.
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"Normal, normal, no surprise here, disgusting, falling apart, sturdy . .. " Krogar went down the street assessing the buildings he walked past.
"Academy?" He stopped in front of a building, which was bigger than the others and surprisingly well-kept, it looked like an important building.
"Let's peek instide." Krogar jumped and extended his claws in the air, using them to pierce the wall next to an opened window in the second floor, using them as a hold.
"No one inside." Jumping through, he ended up being inside of what looked like a staff room for teachers. "Aaaah, what texts do we have here?"
He started shamelessly going through all personal belongings, mostly the materials that had been apparently prepared for upcoming classes.
What, when he had become so intrusive and shameless? He guessed the subconsciously integrated memories of his original were at fault, given what he was, he still ended up as a relatively nice guy.
"Hm, books on Elder Tongue, no surprise here, that means this insitution is not for everyone and probably has high prestige." He picked up another book, this one was rather thin.
"Metodology of Teaching The Elder Tongue." He put it down on the desk. "That means the same stuff as before. What about this one?"
"Agh .. " He skimmed through a rather thick book. "Looks like political propaganda, or a history book? Hard to tell thsoe two apart. This is interesting, I would like to know what the ruling class wants masses to think."
"A war with those, a war with these, blah blah, uninteresting. . wait . ." Krogar stopped at one point. " This might be enlightening. . .. , soldiers of Hugo Liefgran had no chance without the support of their native mana well and the attack failed again . .. What does it mean?"
"I see." Krogar tugged on his beard and . . .beard? He panicked and tugged harder and . .
"Ouch! It is not a beard, it is more like a, , like a .. the things a cat-fish has around its mouth, but. . No, I do not want to think about it!" He realized he had only a vague idea how he looked, but chased the distracting thoughts out of his mind, focusing on his wonderous findings.
Based on the happenings in the history book, the level of mana was given a grade from one to two if it was an ambient level of mana, that levels should be everywhere and one should be able to use spells even without wells on that level. To use stronger spells, more mana was needed, supplied by a mana well of the appropriate kind. Level three wells were the weakest and were usually owned and fought over by local lords or famous people as a luxurious resource, those wells could naturaly support level three spells. Level four and five wells were often owned by countries and level six and above were the cornerstones of large empires.
Logically, it was a huge advantage for defending forces, levels three or four might still be overpowered by brute force at great costs by many attackers using level two magic, but to conquer a nation in possession of level five well and above, one needed to first amass a force of spell wielders of an appropriate origin and teach them the corresponding system to fight the defenders on equal ground. This resulted in a huge secrecy, possessing exclusive knowledge meant solid defense, because enemy spell wielders could not use that magic even if they matched the right origin.
Similarly, it resulted in many massacres, purges and witch hunts using the mindset "If there are no other people of the given origin, who cares if the knowledge is known to everyone?"
This in turn led to a situation where large empires based on strong mana wells of common origin organized massive purges in order to secure their borders, because it was not possible to limit the knowledge.
Smaller countries walked the other path more often, spreading nets of spies and assassins, desperately eradicating all knowledge corresponding to mana wells of their type.
"Huh, and I have the fire type origin. Not that it matter, everyone will try to decapitate me, just because I am a demon."
Along the lines, Krogar noticed that the country he was in now was named Lancaria and was in possession of level five mana well with the attribute of life magic. He did not want to tarry too long, so he took the book and left the details for later.
"Fine, I am finally not totally dumb, now I would like to find out something about demons." He started to search again, but then heard a loud bang as someone shattered the main door. He stepped closer to the window quickly, only to see Five entering the building.
"So irritating." Not waiting for her next move, he jumped out of the window, landing on the pavement with a crunching sound.
Immediately, a volley of thorns and wines shot out of the shattered door. Five was clearly expecting his move.
"Oh my . ." Krogar froze, it was clear she had the attribute of Life, he could only pray the well was too far away from here.
He quickly conjured a roaring wall of fire to cover him.
"Away with the pesky wooden stuff." He knew it was getting dangerous, they would not hesitate to kill him and he was not sure his time rewinding gimmick was still active. He hurriedly summond several fire spells of level two and threw them at the door withotu much thought, covering his escape.
Unfortunately, he could not make even one step before a green coagulation of plants looking like a nest of vipers appeared not only in front of him, but at the both of his sides and from the direction of the academy, a female figure wrapped in green light stepped out of his flames, completely unharmed.
Apparently the well was not far enough.
He cursed as the plants grabbed him and slammed him against the pavement. He wanted to burn the plants, but found out that its thorns were smeared in poison interferring with his magic. Restrained, he could only struggle in his futile attempts to free himself, pressed against the pavement.
His eye pressed against a piece of cobblestone, he wished very much he could become one, shrugging off his trouble causing demon body.
. .. and surprisingly in a flash, his senses underwent a strange transformation and he could somehow feel a demon's skin, pressed against his face . . .meaning against the pavement's face.
"You .. must . . be . . .kidding . . ." A piece of a cobblestone thought.
* * * *
"Ehm, auntie?" Latif called in a small voice. "May I come in?"
"Auntie? What have you messed up this time? Come in and do not speak another word before closing that door!" A high pitched voice responded from beyond the door. The whole place looked strange, the colors were mostly bright and everything was designed using sharp geometrical shapec. Visiting his aunt, Latif had always goosebumps.
"What is it? Do not tell me, you have another of those purely theoretical questions of yours." A relatively petite lady wearing a dress matching the style of the room said.
"Actually . .. yes." Latif stepped forth and sat on one of the spacious chairs in the room.
"Ah, I see that we should better sit before speaking, that will be a juicy one." She grimaced in a strange way and followed her relative, sitting onto one of her fashionable pieces of furniture.
"Ehm . ." Latif chuckled, gathering his courage. "What would happen if I theoretically had a creature with, let;s say ten thousand souls in it which could change bodies?"
"What? Why would someone . ." The beautiful lady who did not appear to be an auntie at all shook her head. "No, be honest first. How many?"
"I might have down-scaled it a bit, it is more like a one hundred thousand. . ."
Latif received a stern look.
"Two and a half trillion."
"Hey young man, if you want even a sliver of compassion from me, tell me the whole story first." The expression of the woman was telling Latif that there was no room for more jokes.
"All right .. " Latif;s shoulders drooped. " I have a friend who messed up some repairs and only after I have corrected her work, I noticed there had been a soul duplicating loop. She connected future of the person to his past and every cycle his soul was duplicated."
"That person must go insane, containing billions of selves, each of them a bit older than the previous one. . .. "
"I corrected that!" Latif beamed happily. "I paused the time for them in a loop, so now there is just a single entity with two and a half trillion souls of the same person of the same age. They are all identical stacked on top of one another."
"That was smart my boy . . " She smiled ironically.
"Thanks auntie." He smiled honestly.
"You imbecile!" She suddenly started chewing some food which appeared out of nowhere. "How are we going to solve this now? If the souls are exactly the same now, we cannot target them separately."
"We can do it in one move, no?" Latif's eyes bulged.
"We can, but that is no longer a minor correction, everyone will notice! It will have to be run through regular procedures, dated, archived."
"Than what are we . ."
"Nothing, simply nothing." She said, wiping off her mouth with a thin white towel. "The target will experience some effects, but considering the big picture it should not be an important event. The only problem might arise if someone tries to do something funny with this entity again. Just keep an eye on that matter. It will be apparent by the time of the target's death, but I do not believe the soul processing people will notice, they have better things to do." The aunt stood up, readying to show her relative the door.
"I am just curious, why he can change bodies now?"
"That is simple, with so many souls, he became a mana well for soul magic, and by stacking so many together with such a perfect compatibility, the souls will start to fuse together, slowly changing his origin to soul magicwell."
"Interesting .. " Latif's expression slowly changed from that of a scared boy, moving towards the expression of a curious researcher.
"Just do not cause any more trouble." She gave him a piercing glare. "You should choose your friends more carefully!"
She slammed the door behind him and Latif let out a deep breath.
"That damned Sabra, I have been scolded just because she is such an airhead."
* * * *
"I have a sense of touch and I . ." Krogar was at loss of words, he could not make sense of the situation. " . .. just . .. just what have happened to me!!!"