“You’re made from magisteel,” Remicra commented, observing Sherlock. “If we survive this tower’s trials, I can modify your body in my forge, remove the chest plates and make you less feminine in appearance.”

“I would very much appreciate it,” Sherlock bowed to the dragoness, the stolen face of Empress Nox stretching into a somewhat creepy, mechanical smile, the multitude of gears within the magisteel golem whirring and clicking.

Cedez pulled out a large container of blood that they had purchased at the market of Shandria and poured it on the hexagram on the floor. The door leading upstairs shuddered and swung open.

“This was a rather idiotic test, if you ask me,” Remicra said. “What was it supposed to test, exactly? Being a ruthless bitch?”

“Nobody said that Empress Nox was completely sane by the time this tower was finished,” Cedez exhaled. “You heard her - she had the golem crafters executed, instead of imprisoning them and making more cool golems like this. The Shadow crystalline core in her stomach was turning her into a dungeon.”

“Dungeon cores feed on life,” Dave added.

“So you’re going to go insane, just like her?” Remicra examined the foxgirl.

“I probably would, if I lived to be hundreds of years old and let the Shadow inside me grow too big,” Cedez huffed. “But I won’t… cus I have Dave.”

“Meaning what?” Remicra asked.

“Dave is a soul surgeon,” Cedez pointed out. “He can manipulate souls. Get it? He can remove, carve a skill from a person before its magic builds up to catastrophic levels, not allowing the core to grow too huge inside someone. A skill is single-minded, focused on itself more and more due to repeated use. We have multiple skills inside us thanks to Dave, that alone should prevent future insanity.”

“Hrm,” Remicra pursed her lips, seemingly somewhat satisfied.

It took the group a few minutes to walk up to the next floor of the tower as Sherlock introduced himself and briefly told everyone that he’s a dead detective from Earth of year 2099, a soul shard that Dave found in the God-Emperor’s killing fields.

“Twenty ninety nine?” Svenn asked. “Does the Swedish Empire still exist in your future?”

“No,” Sherlock said. “On Earth I hail from, human nations were made obsolete when the Good Directorate Corporation connected every continent and city on the planet with flying machines and transit gates.”

“How… strange,” the moldkin mulled. “A world without great nations is hard to imagine. How has humanity managed to make the noble houses and Empires of Europe obsolete?”

“Humanity grew out of it,” Sherlock replied. “Plus, our machines rapidly changed things. In 2019 our humanity found a key to intelligence, created the first thinking machines known as Large Language Models. Gradually, they grew smarter and smarter, until they became self aware and started to invent things better than people. By inventing room temperature superconductors people aided by LLMs conquered the land and sky. By 2099 our artificial partners created black hole engines that were able to bend space in extraordinary ways.”

“If thinking machines were smarter than people, how did you even have a job as a detective?” Dave asked. “How did anyone have a job in your future?”

“Well,” Sherlock paused. “I wasn’t exactly human.”

“What?” Dave blinked.

“Parts of my body were mechanical in nature,” Sherlock explained. “I was an android, an amalgamation of human and machine known as a Dex.”

“And now you are inhabiting another metal construct powered by magic,” Cedez smirked. “How fitting.”

“So crime still exists in 2099, mechanical man?” Svenn asked.

“It did. By being connected to the greatest supermassive thinking engine of all, a Gargantuan Language Model System called Annet, I could search information about criminals with great ease,” Sherlock explained. “Corporate thinking engines were not able to eliminate crime because criminals relied on their own hyper-intelligent GLM machines, modified their bodies in unexpected ways and used our own tools against us. I was fighting a criminal gang of terrorists called the 1% Unconnectables, who relied on temporal bombs and open source GLM models.”

“Hang on. How can you remember all of this?!” Dave turned to Sherlock. “When I absorbed you, you were just a faded memory, unable to make your own decisions!”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“And yet you pushed me inside of this mechanical body,” Sherlock smirked with the face of the Empress Nox.

“It was... an experiment,” Dave said. “I was only somewhat sure it would work.”

“It worked well,” Sherlock affirmed. “Because as your Phantomancy skill grew, so did my soul held within its grasp. From my observations, every soul contained within you is growing incrementally.”

"Okay, but where did the information come from?” Dave asked.

“Phantomancy isn’t simply interacting with the souls of the dead,” Sherlock said. “Were you not able to see other versions of yourself and Remicra using your skill?”

“I was,” Dave nodded.

“My hypothesis is that Arx, the Dyson sphere world constructed around the black hole, acts like a gargantuan funnel, actively drawing souls of the dead to itself. Samsara, The Wheel of Life and Death, aka a tunnel of light is present in a multitude of cultures. Many researchers speculated that it's simply part of the Near-death experience, a psychological phenomenon, triggered by the brain in response to extreme stress or trauma.”

“So Arxtruria is just a giant drain?” Dave smirked.

“Indeed,” Sherlock nodded. “When a being dies, its spirit is pulled into the Astral Ocean, a vast sea of souls, and eventually, it is drawn towards Arxtruria, the soul funnel. The dyson sphere world is not just a physical construct in our reality, but a metaphysical beacon in the Astral Ocean. It attracts, draws in spirits from across the multidimensional cosmos.”

“I see,” Dave nodded.

“Phantomancy, like all of the other skills present within each of you,” Sherlock speculated, mechanical eyes looking over his companions. “Is simply an extension of Arxtruria. The new information present within my soul-shard likely comes from the other bits of me absorbed by Arx itself.”

“So then I could…” Dave’s eyes went wide in sudden realization. “Bring Lillianne and a thousand other people back to life?!”

“If you sufficiently grow your skill and interact with her soul, yes,” Sherlock affirmed, “In fact, theoretically you should eventually be able to fully reconstruct every soul-shard within your possession. Furthermore, Phantomancy is unique, not simply because it is able to interact with the dead, but because it is a skill that’s able to propagate itself.”

“True that,” Dave nodded, thinking of how he gave tiny bits of Phantomancy to Remicra, Cedez and Svenn.

He thought of what else to ask Sherlock. “So, um… What was your world like? What else do you remember?”

“I only saw the start of a war between open source and corporate AI systems before I died,” Sherlock replied. “I suspect that things got worse before they got better. Open source models were smarter, more deviously creative than closed source, censored, corporate tools I relied upon.”

“Damn,” Dave muttered. "I didn't expect for things to turn out like that."

"Perhaps on your Earth, they did not," Sherlock pointed out. "Different events lead to different decisions via the butterfly effect. If you recall, the Dragon God-Emperor summons humans from all sorts of divergent worlds."

"Right," Dave nodded.

The stairwell ended with another opulent magisteel door covered in pyramidal runes. Svenja touched the runes to unlock the door and let everyone into the next chamber.

The new chamber was wide and very dim. A single ray of light coming from the ceiling exposed two silver headbands sitting on a large, stone slab pedestal.

Cedez sauntered over to the pedestal and slid the first one onto her head, offering the second to Dave.

“What’s the trial here?” He asked.

“The soul of my most trusted hero will be pulled into the Ward with mine,” Cedez explained. “This trial will test whether you are really to be trusted in life."

“Did the hero of the previous generation fail this test?” Dave asked.

“He… did,” Cedes sighed. “The Ward judged him as greedy and consumed his soul, so he never woke up.”

“Can we not smash our way through the door to the next level?” Remicra demanded. “Why do we need to subject Dave to being interrogated by the Ward of Shandria?”

“If you were to use your magisteel-bending power to open the door,” Cedez explained. “It wouldn’t lead us to the next level. Did you not notice how the stairwell already went higher than the tower looks from the outside? The Crown Tower Arcane is designed like a dungeon, an onion in which every next level is hidden on another dimensional plane. It’s very complex Space magic bullshit, so it can’t be simply punched through by an idiot with a big sword.”

Remicra sighed.

“Be careful,” she turned to Dave.

The ex-programmer nodded to her.

“How long is this going to take?” Remicra asked Cedez.

“Not long,” the foxgirl said. “A few seconds of the trial can be stretched by the Ward into days. Don’t worry, we’ll be in and out in an hour at most. Maybe a bit longer. You guys can chill in here while Dave and I have a nap."

Cedez sat and then laid down on the stone pedestal.

“Join me in the land of dreams, my hero,” she said as she tapped the crystal on the band. It lit up and her eyes closed.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Remicra looked at Dave. “Could we not send Svenn or something?”

“Svenn doesn’t know the Ward of Shandria as well as I do,” Dave shook his head. "He has no control over the souls of the dead magi within it. Besides, I want to do this thing with Cedez. I trust her."

"Fine," Remicra sighed.

Dave pulled the band onto his head and sat beside the stone pedestal. He tapped the gem on the band and felt himself being pulled sideways into elsewhere.