I was laying down, right next to the pillar slash stone statue of the Astrologer. “I am about to start, ready?”

Not really, but I needed this thing in my gut removed. “Ready,” I replied. The Astrologer and I had agreed to narrate what we were doing to each other. That way there was no confusion or panic.

“Disabling your spine.” I lost all feeling and couldn’t move from below my neck. “Good?”

“Yeeesss,” it was hard to speak. The Astrologer used a technique similar to the Ritualist, by extending a thread of energy. I had to focus to lower my defenses and allow the intrusion. But trying this without nerves disabled would have been impossible.

“I will begin moving quickly.” I couldn’t see what was happening exactly, but I could feel my body shifting slightly as the Astrologer made several cuts while I suppressed my energy. He was using direct energy manipulation to form force blades that could cut through me. They were very weak, but he explained he was creating them without a skill.

I saw a pulsating floating mass of flesh rise up out of my stomach. “Imbue Life. Imbue Life.” The Astrologer chanted the skill over and over on me and on the mass of flesh. My stomach sealed up and I could feel again below my neck. I was laying in a large pool of blood. There was a ill feeling, inside of me, like I had lost something, but I wasn’t about to complain.

The Astrologer had warned me that I shouldn’t get a regeneration for at least a hundred days from now, preferably over a thousand. If I did so, the tumor had a chance of reappearing inside of me. I didn’t like that, but it was something I could figure out later. I was just glad to have it out of me and be healed.

The mass of flesh began to distort as the Astrologer used his skill over and over again. The mass of flesh began to change into the shape of a head and body, floating there in the air. A child or baby size body. The Astrologer finished using his skill as it hung there, a macabre piece of flesh, bone, and brain, floating there.

“Astral Projection!” A male child’s body quickly took shape. Energy forming all the pieces that the flesh did not, creating a structure for the rest of the body. The body slowly floated back down and lay on the ground next to where I had been laying.

“Give me a moment, that took a lot out of me.” I nodded at this and waited. After a couple of minutes the Astrologer spoke up again. “Alright. Everything is tied off and should hold. Let’s do this. You got this Michael.”

“Yes,” I replied. I had considered betraying the Astrologer here and now in the process, but defeating the Divine Empress was more important. I laid my hand on the base of the Astrologer’s statue. I began to draw out the energy and push it into the floor next to me.

I had practiced this a couple of times, only the first part, with the Astrologer making sure I had the technique down correctly. Taking in the energy would curse me like it did him. I just needed to channel the energy, creating a shunt. That way the Astrologer was cut off from the tower’s energy.

He couldn’t do this part himself, which was a big reason why he was trapped here and unable to escape. I pulled more and more energy, moving through the base of the pillar and taking control of it. Soon, it was completely cut off. “All cut,” I said aloud.

I made sure to keep the connection cut so no new energy was flowing in. The Astrologer’s statue began to turn to dust slowly. This was expected. He was now moving himself into the body. By pushing his energy into the body. With no conflicting energy and as a blank template, it should be able to take him in, without compromising his life or continuity of consciousness.

As the Astrologer’s statue turned to dust, the pillar was revealed underneath. There had been some concern that the pillar might be damaged, but there was nothing we could do and the Astrologer said it was a low risk that it would be destroyed with how he merged with it initially.

I had been inclined to trust him with how knowledgeable he had been about everything else. The last of the Astrologer’s statue crumbled away.

The child’s body took a deep breath and gasped. “This is Michael? Are you there?” I asked.

“Imbue Life. Imbue Life.” The child’s mouth didn’t move to make those words, but I could hear them. Sonic casting, another trick of the Astrologers.

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“Yes, free at least,” the child Astrologer said quietly using sonic manipulation as he lay there. “Thank you. You performed your role perfectly.”

“You’re welcome,” I replied. It was nice to see that we could trust each other and not screw the other person over. “Need time to recover?” I asked.

“Just a bit. Imbue Life. Imbue Life. This body isn’t fully materialized. I am slowly fleshing it out, but will need a bit of time. Any issues?”

“No. Not even a scar, or a slab of flesh left behind,” I replied.

“Well just be mindful to hold off on a restoration. I can’t alter your energy.” I nodded at this. That was fine. I could go a while without a restoration. Better than getting a tumor like that inside of me again.

“Have your skills and stats?” I asked. The Astrologer had been a bit worried about that but hadn’t explained in depth.

“Yes. Those are tied to one’s energy signature. The trick is updating that signature so there aren’t issues.” The child’s body floated up into the air and then lay on top of the pillar for a moment, before lifting back off and setting on a clean patch of ground without blood on it. “I can still access the pillars. Everything worked just like I predicted.”

That was good. I got up and looked at my blood stained shorts. I was hungry and thirsty, but that could wait. I looked upwards. The real question was the meta-point. Who would be the one to claim it. “How much time do you need?” I asked.

“Half a day should do. Imbue Life. Imbue Life. I want to make sure I am stable. As for the meta-point at the top, you can take it.”

“What?” I was surprised at that. I wouldn’t have given something like that up so easily.

“If there is one, you can have it. Consider it a thankyou for not screwing me over when you could have,” the Astrologer said to me. That was surprisingly honorable. Was he trying to trick me?

“That seems a bit too nice?” I asked.

“It is. But I won’t be able to fight you with this body. I need time to make it fully corporeal, so I don’t have to constantly maintain Astral Projection to fill in the blanks. I might win, I might lose, but fighting would be too risky.” I could accept that.

“No hidden bit left inside of me?” I asked. Since that was something, I would do.

“Perhaps. But with your stats, leaving anything behind that isn’t connected to your brain will have limited impact.”

“Unless the tumor starts growing again?” I asked more insistently.

“That is always a risk. To combat something like that, you need to focus on the flow of energy inside of you, and alter it. It takes a lot of time and skill, but you can mediate any residual effects away. It isn’t simple and takes time. But more stats will help, it is what empowered the tumor so quickly.”

“My increase in stats.”

“Indeed.” We were silent as I mulled over this. How annoying, but at least the immediate issue was dealt with. My gut wasn’t about to explode. Now the Astrologer just needed to get better, we could leave, I would get a meta-point, and then we could kill the Divine Empress.

We sat there in silence except for when the Astrologer used his skill to slowly make his body more real. I took the time to meditate and check the energy in my body. It was hard to sense. Like trying to see the shapes and colors when your eyelids are closed, it is possible, but difficult to make anything out.

Still, I needed to be able to purge my body of foreign bits. I had done this kind of self-inspection before, but the Astrologer had pointed out that the best way to start was to use small bursts of the Body and Channel stat inside of myself to move my energy. Compare the movement to other parts. Like using sonar or an echogram to understand my energy.

It was a clever way to slowly work out the energy inside of me. After that it was just practice and taking my time to observe every little bit of energy inside of me. The clearest way to find a problem he had mentioned was to look for where the energy was draining into something.

Searching through my gut, I thought I might have spotted one or two areas like that, but I wasn’t quite sure. Once I had found them, I needed to smooth out my energy flow, that represented me. The biggest problem was that the various physical parts of my body caused the energy flow to be slightly different.

This was the worst in the mind, since thought impacted energy. Like trying to observe something, that changed with the observation itself. It explained why it took so long for the Divine Empress to find something planted in her head. If a tumor wasn’t designed to grow, then it would be nearly impossible to find.

How these things hid was by absorbing energy to mask their presence. The Astrologer had explained this to me. The trick with the Body and Channel stat was meant to overload their ability to stay hidden and force them to reveal themselves.

It was like taking a hammer to things. That was why the brain was tricky. One couldn’t use a hammer to find stealth tumors. The control of the Divine Empress had to be amazing to search for hidden threats inside of herself and remove them.

As for removing them, that was about altering the energy flow to either starve them, which would take a long time. Or to alter one’s energy to slowly degrade the physical tumors. But altering one’s energy to change one’s body was a complex and risky procedure.

The main thing was to go slow and be as detailed as possible. It was not a simple procedure unfortunately. At least I knew what to do now. The Astrologer had been holding up his side of things.

“Imbue Life. Imbue Life. That should do it. Well, time to get this show on the road,” the Astrologer said, interrupting my meditation.

“Gooooood,” I trailed off as my body went limp. “Whaaa?” I tried to ask, but I couldn’t move. My head was angled to look at the Astrologer. Why?!