Chapter 36. Spiritual Embodiment

Interlude:

“Warren, hold on for a moment,” Carol said. An icon of headphones with a cross through it popped up in the center of the video call. She had made it so that I couldn’t hear a thing. Then she and Matt began discussing something, in earnest. Their faces were serious. Their gesticulations animated. I tried to read their lips, but with little luck.

Sofia approached and set down a notebook in front of me. “Read that,” she mouthed.

The note said: Do you think they’re going to ban you?

I looked at her and shrugged. Then I wrote in the notebook. I think they believe me. But I don’t know what they ban people for. They must have ways of corroborating my story. I think it’s best if I just tell the truth and see what happens.

She nodded in agreement.

Then she took the notebook and wrote: Don’t forget that this is partly their fault. You should put them on their back foot.

I agreed. It was time to go on the offensive. I interrupted them. “Why couldn’t you identify Clarity?” I asked. “There had to have been signs that she was an AI. You caught other bots. Why not this one?”

They paused their discussion. Carol turned on my headphones. “Warren,” she said. “We appreciate your honesty in this matter. Everything you’ve said checks out with our data logs. But that’s not for me to share,” she said.

“Warren,” Matt said. “We need to move this meeting to a larger space. Legal wants to be involved, as well as Marketing and Cybersecurity. They’ve read our notes, so you don’t have to start over.” He stood up with the camera on his desk and started walking through an open office of cubicles. Carol’s camera moved as well. On her side, we passed executive offices along the side of the building. Out the windows, I saw a cityscape. I didn’t recognize it. They both arrived in a conference room where several men and women sat around a large oval table with comfy chairs. Nobody wore suits. And the oldest person in the room couldn’t have been past forty. They changed the recording so that I looked into a single feed which faced the entire group of people. There were six of them in the room. They all stared at me. Legs crossed. Fingers typed on laptops. Glasses were adjusted.

“Are you ready to finish your story?” Carol asked.

“Fine,” I said. “But when this is over, I’m going to have questions of my own.” I didn’t wait for a response. I started again.

****

Ghosts poured out of the University. Not aggressive ones, thankfully. No Wraiths, Banshees, or Madmen. But friendly ghosts. People who looked like people, but were stark white from their shoes to their wispy hair.

We waited at the border between Lakemore and the University gate. It was like a parade. Of ghosts. Who were talking in wails and screeches language. Who were hugging, holding hands, embracing one another. Living people had begun lining the parade, waiting for long-lost loved ones. Many would never be reconnected. Many had left Lakemore, too broken to remain. But what was left of the town seemed to have gathered here.

Aimon spotted his parents and gasped. “There,” he pointed. He waved, then covered his mouth with his hands, overcome with emotion.

Ilrune put a hand over his shoulder.

A man and woman, not much older than Aimon, himself, moved toward us through the procession. They looked like Aimon. The thin face shape, the ears. They approached Aimon, but didn’t embrace him. There must be some unspoken rule preventing ghosts and the living from physical touch. So they just stood across from one another, smiling.

It must be surreal to connect with your parents after not seeing them for fifteen years. My head got foggy, my eyes filled with tears. I felt the instant urge to be by himself for a good long while. Yet, I couldn’t. Not yet.

Aimon turned to me. “Can you… talk to them for me?”

I looked nervously about. “If I do that here, I think we’ll get swarmed. Let’s go somewhere private.”

We led his parents back to the house. All along the way, they looked at one another, the anticipation growing. My own anticipation took hold of me. I could barely push down the memories that invaded my thoughts. The pain of my own loss, the ugly jealousy of Aimon who was getting what I had wanted more than anything for ten years. Janica flew over and sat on my shoulder. She had never done that before. She didn’t say anything, but looked stoically ahead, her feet dangling on my chest. Somehow, her action calmed me; it gave me the ounce of strength that I needed.

One other thing kept me from thinking about my own past. The 2000 Silver that sat in my inventory. I had done it. I had made enough money for two full weeks of rent. And I had done it with three days to spare. That meant I had eighteen days before my next week of rent was due. Yet, it felt like I had hit a jackpot that I would never hit again. It’s not like legendary quests would drop into my lap all the time. I needed to find a steady way to make money, to settle down. At that moment, the craziest idea hit me. I couldn’t help it. Maybe if I made enough money, I could get us a bigger apartment. Something higher up where we could see the sunlight. Hope was a dangerous thing, but if I played this right, I’d be able to do something I’d never been able to in the past: provide for my sister. Pay her back for the years that she’d taken care of me.

Back at the apartment above the general store, we settled into the living room. I activated Talk to Spirits and felt a connection snap into place between myself and the ghosts.

“Hi,” I began. We talked for hours, sharing stories. The conversation vacillated between joy and pain, glee and trauma, as they recounted stories.

Janica snuck in a few questions of her own as we talked to Aimon’s parents. We learned that the library within the University, called the stacks, got more and more exclusive as you went further down into the basement. Basement levels one through five were textbooks. Levels six through ten held Job research. Codexes. Stuff like that. Floors eleven through fifteen held research on relics and magic items. And floors sixteen through twenty contained information on powerful magics, including mana channels. Aimon’s parents weren’t allowed below floor twenty. There was more down there, but their elevator access codes didn’t grant access to that. There were rumors, of course. Demonic spells on floor twenty-seven. Prophecies on floor twenty-nine. None of it substantiated.

Several hours later, Aimon said goodbye to his parents, and I closed the connection. And then the goodbyes started. One day earlier, we had a solid group of people all gathered under shared goals. With those quests complete, people began to go their separate ways.

Aimon said goodbye first. He was going back to the North to find a Mystic Job trainer. He would become a Mystic so he could talk with his parents, himself. Ilrune was going with him. Aimon’s parents would go live with his aunt and uncle on campus and wait for their son to return.

Dread had decided to stay in town, for now. We expected that Lakemore would become an epicenter of great things. People would need gear, and Dread wanted to acquire whatever crafting recipes she could from the dungeon. She would run a shop downstairs.

As each of the NPCs left us, I began to get more nervous, my mind wrestling with the choice I had to make. I knew that Rowan and Cassandra would go after Henry. They wanted to dive into the dungeon to rescue our companion. I could stay with them. Could undergo training and start risking my gaming life again. I knew that’s what Janica would prefer. But my plan from the start had been to find a way to make a solid income from this game. Not chase adventure. With Silver in my pocket and a Leatherworking Master just downstairs, I had found that opportunity. And I needed to take it.

I had to tell Rowan that I wouldn’t be going after Henry with her. She would be fine, though. Right? She had Cassandra. And some amazing skills. Plus, after the worldwide announcement, every gamer and guild would be on their way to Lakemore. She would be able to find a group, no problem.

“What’s the plan?” Cassandra asked. “How are we going to get Henry back?

I felt my armpits get sweaty. It was probably that nervous, stinky sweat. I stared at the floor.

“Warren’s not going,” Janica said.

I raised my eyes and looked at Rowan.

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“Am I wrong?” Janica asked.

I shook my head, then looked down again. I had to do what I had to do. My commitment was to my sister. Even though I had told Rowan about my financial situation, I doubted that she could understand. Rowan and her sister were able to play at the same time. That meant two pods in one home. It meant wealth.

“Why?” Rowan asked. “You don’t care about Henry? He’s gone, Warren. Our teammate. He got us this far. And you just don’t care?”

When Henry had been grabbed by the witch and pulled into the dungeon, it scared the hell out of me. But not just because Henry had been taken. There was something else. The witch had spoken words that continued to ring in my head… Together, we can change the world. “Of course I care,” I said. I had tried to message Henry multiple times through the Friends chat. Every message had gone through. With no response.

“I… I…” I didn’t know what to say.

“He thinks he needs to make money,” Janica said. “Let me guess, Warren. A Leatherworking shop?”

It sort of enraged me how she did that. I nodded.

Rowan got up. “Warren, you’re a fool. You can clearly make money while adventuring. We just made gobs of money from completing that quest. I don’t think it’s money you care about; I think you’re letting fear guide you. But I don’t have time for it. We don’t have time for it. Not with Henry stuck in the dungeon. You need help, Warren. Come on, Cass.”

Cassandra came over to me. “Maybe we’ll see you around, Warren.”

Rowan and Janica locked arms, then spoke earnestly to each other in voices too low for me to understand.

Rowan took one last look at me, shook her head, and left.

Janica stood there, hands on hips. “What am I supposed to do?” she said. “Help you craft leather goods?” She made fake vomit sounds. “And just as… check your prompts, idiot.”

“Okay…”

You completed a quest: Family Connection Part 2.

‎ You have proven a commitment to help spiritual entities in need.

‎ Rewards: 500 experience points and your Spiritual Connection Passive gained a level.

‎ Your Passive Skill, Spiritual Connection, evolved into a new Passive: Spiritual Embodiment.

‎ Spiritual Embodiment: Your Companion can now take on a true physical form, allowing them to join your party and fight with you. Unlike Spiritual Connection, those companions bonded with Spiritual Embodiment can be summoned and unsummoned without a time limit. Their level is restricted by your level.

I looked up at Janica, who made a series of warrior poses in the air. “But instead of going out and fighting things together…”

“Doesn’t this mean you can go fight?” I asked. “How far can you go from me? Can’t you join Rowan and Cassandra? I don’t want to hold you back.”

Janica looked thoughtful. “No,” she said, finally. “I won’t be able to go into the dungeon without you. But I will be able to kill things in the surrounding woods. And up at the university, probably.”

I smiled. “So you’re saying you could collect some skins for me.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

I went downstairs to join Dread, and found her hard at work on an advanced piece. A layered chest piece with shoulder protection built in.

“What is this?” I asked. The curiosity dripped from my tone.

She startled, perhaps so lost in her work she didn’t notice me. “What are you doing here? I thought y’all were going to save Henry.” She never took her eyes off of her project.

I felt like Dread would understand. She was like me in a way. “I left the group,” I said. “I need to make money and send it back to my family. Back home. I was hoping to work here with you.”

At that, she looked up from her work and stared at me, her eyes magnified in her spectacles. Then she looked away. “You want to end up like me? Alone with her sharp tools?”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.

She shook her head. “You’ve seen how happy Ilrune and Aimon are. Don’t you want a piece of what they have? I can tell you, friendship doesn’t come around very often. It takes actual work. Like leather. You have to put time into it, then keep working at it. Or it gets brittle and cracks.”

I sighed, making my way to my work bench. I had really hoped that she would understand. “What about us?” I asked. “We’re friends.”

“Mm-hmm,” she said, dismissively. “But it’s not the same and you know it.” She looked at me. “You can work here if you want to,” she said. “Until you figure out that you’re an idiot.”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head.

I pulled out the last couple of leather pieces that I had left. I skinned them, then made a pair of shoulders with shadow protection. With all of the adventurers coming to town, they were going to need gear. And gamers loved nice shoulder armor.

And while I didn’t want to admit it, Dread had gotten in my head. Here was a woman who I thought content to be by herself, working with her hands. And she had spoken a truth to me. A regret, perhaps. Had she sacrificed a friendship for her work?

Rowan had opened up to me. More, she had gotten me to open up with her, which was a sort of miracle. My parents had been dead for a decade, but I hadn’t cried about it in years.

After my parents died, the therapists kept trying to pull things to the surface. They wanted me to confront my feelings. But I was pretty good at pushing things down. Hypnosis didn’t work on me.

Some memory kept nagging at me, trying to surface. Something I had seen kept reminding me of my parents’ deaths. Like when you see something in real life, but it seems like you’d seen it before. Perhaps in a dream. I pushed the thought away and focused on my work.

The pauldrons complete, I found myself with nothing to do. I fiddled about the shop and looked up and down the street to see if Janica was back yet. Boredom setting in, I looked through my inventory and noticed the spool of Enchanted Thread. I eyed the pauldrons. The beautifully formed shoulder armor, completely void of decoration. Wearing these little beauties would be like going to a Metallica concert in a denim vest without patches.

I unstitched the threads at the mouth so that the piece lay flat on my table. I grabbed a pencil and started sketching.

While in the University, I had noticed that Cassandra had a buff that gave her accuracy and critical strike. Below her portrait on my party-view, this buff was represented by two crossed swords. I sketched the same image on the pauldron.

I drew lightly, erasing my inaccuracies. Next, I took the hole punching tool that made the smallest holes. The medium leather was thick-enough that I’d never get a needle through it without pre-punching the holes. I created an outline of the swords. I grabbed a needle, and the Enchanted Thread. I stitched through the swords, carefully going in and out and doubling back to make sure the outline of my design would be complete. The Enchanted thread seemed to shimmer as I sewed. It was a silvery color. As I tied off the thread, the symbol flashed a bright white before settling back into its natural color.

A prompt appeared.

Congratulations, by creating a functional enchantment, your Integrator Passive granted you the Enchanting Profession.

‎ Your Expertise in Enchanting improved from 0 to 3.