Sophia’s POV
While Leo was making a new friend and gushing about his work in a rather adorable manner, I had my consciousness split between talking to him and Ash and doing work of my own. Now that I had a starting point for my world, all I needed was a way to claim it. To pluck the moon out of the sky. As powerful as I am, I am still not nearly strong enough to do something like that on my own, as I would need at least three times the maximum mana pool that I already possessed. Would I get there in another few millennia? Sure, but I didn’t want to wait that long. I will already have to spend several thousands of years after stealing the moon going over it inch by inch, giving it a layer of dirt suitable for growing plant life, and that’s the phase I wanted to get to.
So how do I expand my mana pool by three times instantly? It’s quite easy actually, I don’t. I just have to convince a few people to help me. Starting with Veronica, who was currently rushing into the house and setting up security measures. What perfect timing, turns out this’ll be easy. I walked over to where she was crouched, next to a window peeking out the corner.
“Hi Vern, piss someone off?”
From her reaction you’d think I shot a spell at her. She flew through the air to the other side of the house before realizing it was just me, which prompted her to shout, “DAMMIT SOPHIA DON’T SNEAK UP ON PEOPLE LIKE THAT!!!”. I glanced out of the window to see if I could spot whomever she happened to be running from. I also took a look at Veronica and noticed that her influence on the mana around her was noticeably more pronounced than it had been the last time I saw her. Perfect.
When Leo had asked about the lines on his body, I had told him that it was a sneak peak into his true form that he’d take when he learned his true name, or title. While this is true, it kinda glosses over the nitty gritty of it all, as we hadn’t yet had the conversation about gods and divinity. The full truth is that magic as it exists, both when it comes to mana and imprinting concepts, is a diluted version of true magic. Mana is a watered down version of Divinity, and you upgrade from using concepts to embodying an Aspect of Reality, and unlocking your true name reveals what Aspect of Reality you seize control over. Now, without divinity to back it up, the amount of control you have is very limited, but still incomparably more powerful than simply utilizing a concept.
The reason Leo’s body now bears markings is that when my flames canceled each other out, what was left was simply the pure concept of manipulating an Aspect of Reality. This will have two side effects on Leo, in that a) whenever he uses a spell that touches upon his own aspect or aspects as determined by his true name, the markings will react and empower that spell, which will b) cause him to most likely learn his true name much sooner than he would otherwise. Possibly even before he becomes a demon in a century or so. The reason I bring this up now is that Leo is far from the only person to have ever experienced this phenomenon. The biggest reason I know about it to begin with is in fact the demon scrambling around the house, Veronica.
I once described Veronica’s path to Leo as ‘gambling power’, but where this is important is the process by which she claims another’s power to be her own. Whenever she plays a game, she always starts by setting up the arrangement and shaking hands, creating a powerful magical binding on both of their souls. At the result of the game, assuming Veronica wins, this binding then constricts, and directly severs a part of her opponent’s soul, which then travels through the binding into Veronica. And as Veronica has won games against titled before, this means that her soul has been infused with the concept of Aspect Manipulation, which reacts every time she manifests binding magic, making it infinitely more powerful. This means that she is the perfect person to help me steal a moon and bind it into my subspace. And the way she obtains her power means she’s also extremely easy to extort into helping me.
I glance back out the window, and see the reasons behind Veronica’s fear. A group of 30 demons were visible in the distance, making their way towards the house. Most likely she had cheated in a game to steal her opponent’s power, not knowing his friends were nearby. It was far from the first time this had happened. I turn to her and offer, “There’s a massive rock that I need your help to steal and bind into my subspace. If you agree to help me, I will take care of this for you. Do we have a deal?” I reached out my hand to her, indicating that I wouldn’t budge until she used her binding magic on this agreement.
“What rock, and who are you stealing it from?” She asked. Apparently her desperation hadn’t made her naive yet. No matter.
“It’s a moon, and no one actually owns it as far as I’m aware, so stealing is probably the wrong word. More like claiming.” I answered, confident in knowing that she didn’t actually know what a moon was, seeing as how she had never left Hell like I had, and knew of no sky other than an oppressing dome of smoke. I glanced back out the window. “Looks like you only have 20 seconds to decide. Am I taking care of this, or am I leaving you to deal with this on your own?”
It seemed like the new time constraint combined with her misunderstanding of the difficulty finally did the trick. She took my hand, and I felt the faint pressure on my soul. Not enough to hurt me, but enough to know it was there. “Pleasure to be working with you.” I grinned.
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Leo’s POV
I met up with Ash rather later than intended. Sophia had been in a strangely good mood last night, and seemingly felt the need to celebrate for hours. When I asked her about her behavior in between rounds, she brushed it off and said she’d ‘let me know once everything is fully set up’. I was confused, but glad to see she was so happy. I’d been worried that she might end up getting jealous with how much time I was spending with Ash, which apparently she was, as she decided to demonstrate it by leaving very visible markings on my neck and collarbones, claiming me as Property of Sophia. Which, while very much a turn on, was also rather annoying as I had no way to accomplish the same feat. Maybe I’d make her wear a shirt that had “Leo’s Woman, Do Not Touch” written across it.
Ash definitely noticed the markings, judging by the way she immediately went red when she saw me, and started nudging me with her elbow as I sat down. “Hey Mr Bear, y’know, you may not know this, but you’ve got a little something on your neck.”
“Really?” I fired back, “Cuz I looked in the mirror this morning and didn’t see anything.” She started to comment, then stopped, looked at my blindfold, and made an awkward expression. “It’s okay to laugh dude, that’s why I made the joke.” She broke down and chuckled.
“See, that’s what I was thinking, but then my brain was like ‘nah he’s gonna turn that around and accuse me of laughing at the plight of a blind man’”. To which I shrugged in response and said, “I mean yeah, I probably would’ve, if only just to mess with you.”
Ash glared at me playfully then broke down and giggled. “Alright enough, let’s get started on updating your diaries.”
We failed to update my diaries. Apparently, a mutt and a human walking around trying to get beastkin to tell us about their family recipes and local plants don’t really make them feel very inviting. I did get to update my map diary, but that was more due to the fact that the maps were at the adventurers guild, so they were used to travelers than anything else.
Getting thread and selling my equipment on the other hand was actually rather simple. I traded my bow and all of my arrows to a tailor in exchange for several spools of enchanting thread. While they were still very much in working condition, I couldn’t aim my bow properly anymore with how my vision now worked. The blindfold would occasionally move around, changing my perspective, and I couldn’t really use my drone knife to shoot from a third person perspective. I kept my war scythe though, as even if I ended up fully blind I could still cut someone in half. I also nabbed myself one extra item. Something that has absolutely nothing to do with tailoring, and something that absolutely confused the tailor when I asked if it could be a part of our trade. An old broom he had lying around.
“Okay, why the hell did you want that anyway?” Ash inquired the second we stepped out of the shop.
I held the broom up to my blindfold and looked it up and down, examining. Planning. Figuring out the exact placement for the enchantments that would fulfill one of the most childish desires I had ever had. I turned my attention to Ash standing there curiously, and answered, “I’m gonna make it fly. I wanted a long distance means of transportation, and this works just as well as anything.”
“Wait, but if it works just as well as anything, then why a broom? Does the shape help it at all?”
“Oh God no, in fact the shape is going to make this so much harder and less efficient. I’ll need to add enchantments to make it go up, and then also enchantments to make it go forward, and I’ll have to find a way to make those adjustable, and then because it’s a broom of all things, I’ll have to find a way to stabilize it in flight, since balancing on it is gonna be pretty much impossible. And then there’s the fact that I’ll basically be sitting with a wooden stick crushing my balls for hours on end, so I also have to try to make it comfortable to use. All in all, horrible design, no one with the slightest hint of intelligence in their body would do this.”
Ash looked at me skeptically, “So what you’re saying is….you’re an idiot.”
I gave a solemn nod. “Indubitably my dear. For I am the indomitable emperor of all stupidity. Genuflect before me as I sit upon my throne of Fool’s Gold.” She played along and got down on one knee, like a noble knight. “My liege.” All in all we walked around aimlessly for a few hours just messing around, but at least I had pleasant company.
Given how pointless it would be to stay in this town much longer, I went to see if there were any jobs that would end up taking me to a new one. As Ash wasn’t particularly welcome here either, she offered to look for one that I could do with her and her party. While I didn’t really think anything of Mike and Liz, Ash was definitely nice to be around, so I agreed and we rounded those two up and all went to the guild to check things out.
Something I had forgotten: Mike and Liz had also seen me just a week ago, complete with eyes, and my new look threw both of them for a loop. Unlike Ash, I didn’t really want to get into all the gory details with them, so I promptly ignored their questioning stares and went to go find a receptionist to get us a job.
Job selections fall into three main categories: Extermination, Collection, and Escort. Extermination jobs don’t have to be about killing monsters though, it’s more just figuring out and/or resolving issues that a certain area is having. For example, if for some reason beasts change their normal patterns, that’s a sign that something is going on in the woods, and a party will be sent out to see what happened, whether there was a natural phenomenon that changed the topography, or a new big predator came to the area. In the first circumstance, the party would just gather as much information as they could about the change in the landscape and what effects that has on the local wildlife. In the second they would gather information on and potentially hunt down the new predator.
Similarly, collection missions can also have a certain amount of variation. Normally the job will specify what plants, materials, or kind of meat to gather, but at the end of the day, if you can’t find the specific kind requested, something is still better than nothing. The party in question would receive a smaller reward for the job done if they have to provide alternate options, but they would still receive a decent amount of compensation.
And finally we have the escort missions. These are generally all going to be somewhat the same. Take a person or object from point A to point B. If we were going to try to go to a new place, this would be the kind of job for us. However, the only people who really travel a lot are Adventurers and wandering merchants. Adventurers clearly don’t need to hire anyone else to escort them, so 90% of all escort jobs are helping merchants get from one specific town to another. Also, given the town we are currently in, that merchant will most likely be a beastkin, which means that most likely we will be escorting them not to the nearest town, but the nearest beastkin town, in a journey that will last for potentially years, given the scale of this world. The only reasons a wood ranked adventurer like myself even has the ability to take a job like this are A) I’m accompanied by 2 iron ranked adventurers and 1 steel, and B) I’ve already demonstrated my ability to survive and travel completely alone over extremely vast stretches of monster infested forest. Could I do the same thing while also protecting someone else though? I guess I’ll find out.