Chapter 188: 186

Having essentially finished all that I desired to do in Phoenicia, I was working on a manifest of supplies that I wanted to bring to the city in the Forest of Darkness. While the city wasn't in bad shape, there was a lack of proper infrastructure and any form of technology due to the fact that save for a few spots, the Forest was simply too dangerous, even for many of the more powerful beings that lived there.
To that end I was working not only with my elder step brother who had officially taken over as the latest Duke Eldur, but also the third prince Taylor to see about creating a permanent trade and supply route. The idea was that we would convert the underground cavern into the trade zone, carving a tunnel that would reach into the heart of the Forest that would allow goods to come and go in safety. I didn't mention that I would also be flooding it with Yang type energies to prevent any possible monster spawns, but it wasn't something that concerned either of the two.
I had actually been surprised how easily the two had agreed to the plan once they discovered that Ashara was actually an Arachne, dealing with sentient monsters seemed to actually be a common thing for the royalty, and if Taylor was on board, then my step-brother didn't have any complaints. The biggest issue was actually the funding and the approval of the King. The majority of spare wealth had already been used to help with the recovery efforts after the attack of the Radiant Dawn, and even with Taylor advocating for us, we couldn't be sure how the king would react to the news that a city of sentient monsters had been lurking at the center of the Forest of Darkness since long before he ever came to rule.
There was also the matter of renovating the cavern since as it was now it couldn't be used as a depot. The silver liquid metal that was down there was also something of an issue since the only thing I knew about it was that it was lethal if touched and that it suppressed the strength of monsters. For now it was planned to just divert it and seal it away from the area, but having an underground lake of whatever it was, was only a temporary solution. It would have been nice if Gabriel or Alcrem had actually known what the stuff was, but it had apparently been there far longer than either of them, a secret passed down from each duke to the next. According to Kaliel, Gabriel had only known of existence from Alcrem and even with all the knowledge granted from her ancient Archangel self hadn't known or recognized what it was.
Had I been able to use Seshat's Library I might have been able to identify it, but since my Aspect Skills seemed to be inoperative I could only wait until I had figured out what was wrong with my ability to view my Status until I could do anything about it. That was the project that took up the majority of my free time while I had to wait for things that were outside of my control.
I was spending this time with both Ellie and Kaliel as we ran all sorts of tests trying to make sense of what was happening. We still had yet to figure out how Kaliel or I could use Status Plates again, but we did figure out why I was unable to view my Status in my mind as I once had. At some point, the system had stopped recognizing me as a sentient monster, and was now treating me like a proper member of the Races, a strange distinction that was apparently important. The reason members of the Races needed to have a Status Plate in the first place was due to the fact that they were unable to view their Status internally.

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Why the system did that was something beyond the scope of what I wanted to know at the moment, so I simply accepted it as fact for now and continued into working on why mine and Kaliel's souls were unable to properly hook up to a Status Plate. We had at least determined why Status Plates weren't working, but we were still no closer to a solution. For whatever reason, Kaliel and I had souls that didn't properly fit the connection needed for the Status Plate, it was as if we had somehow become formatted differently. It was as if someone was trying to move the data from a CD to a Thumb Drive by just touching the two together, there were more steps that needed to be done to make work together, I just didn't know what it was for our souls.
I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the problem until Arya heard me ranting about it under my breath. She had been hesitant to bring it up since I had been so busy, but she had apparently received a note from Reine before she had been killed, and she thought that the information on it might be of help in solving the problem.
I felt somewhat offended that she hadn't brought it up earlier, but when she gave me the note I understood why she hadn't. The note itself was rather long and detailed the location of Reine's supposed birthplace, however, rather than calling her a person, she stated that she was a homunculus. Everything she had done was nothing more than an act, a set of instructions she'd been told to do by her master, a blind seeress that had been feeding information to Alcrem. Since she wasn't actually a person it seemed she was unaffected by Arya's now broken curse and she'd been spying on us, relaying information and secrets that should have only been between me and Arya, or me and Marian.
However, it seemed that spending time in proximity to me was causing her to essentially go haywire, her directives being corrupted, or occasionally a burst of an emotion that should have been impossible. Her master had forcibly reset her many times, and had even created several replicas of people I knew to use against me. What I didn't understand was where the seeress had gone, if she had been planning this why had she suddenly ceased.
Arya had thought it strange as well and was part of the reason she'd simply held onto the information, but since the note mentioned Reine's ability to be placed in different bodies, fused into other others, and had been able to use a Status Plate there might be some information or a lead that could help with mine and Kaliel's issue at the location described. It seemed I would be pushing off leaving for the Forest of Darkness even longer, I couldn't just not go investigate, even if it was quite the distance to travel.

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