Chapter 27: Chapter 26

Eryl stood in her small room, watching the sun slowly setting though the window as a terminal floated neat by. A constant string of text scrolling across it as it reported anything of note in the world, though she would not be able intervene if anything caught her eye given that she locked the system before descending to the moral realm. It had been a few hours since the wave of aether had passed through the cathedral city and people finally seemed to be calming down, yet she could still feel an increased mana pressure around the city as they put up more and more protection wards. 

Then without preamble the door to her room opened as a young man in priestly robes entered.

“It is rude to enter a woman’s chamber unannounced.” Her monotone voice did not seem to give the man pause as he walked to the center of the room, openly looking at the terminal beside her. 

One of the first things she had noticed when she was finally given a room was the lack of a lock on the door. She supposed she should be grateful they did not try and make her sleep in the stables, but the lack of privacy was alarming. She could tell that her room was ransacked daily while she was out training the heroes, once she even returned to find a golden candle holder hidden beneath her bed. This had of course been followed by a group of armed guards bursting into her room and demanding to search it, seeming quite alarmed to find nothing. 

The church seems to forget the “world sage” in all the stories was also a “master of all magics”. And the candle holder in question, given the uncontrollable nature of unassisted teleportation there was no way of knowing where it ended up, will likely never be found. She herself was curious so she tracked it with her terminal after casting the spell to dispose of it. The candle holder had found itself in the middle of the dead sea, reappearing just above the water line before sinking into the depths.

As for his blatant interest in the terminal, he would not be the first to attempt to read one in hopes to glimpse into the secrets of the world or gain a skill. This was also quite foolish; the entire nature of the terminal was to control who could and could not access it. Without the “voice of the world” skill no one would be able to read what was written on it. Unlike a Babylon terminal, her terminal was a system terminal which had many extra layers of protection to protect the balance of the world, no one would be able to access any function of the terminal but her without her express permission. Well and X47 if it gets its claws on one. A shiver ran down her spine as she thought of the creature ripping her terminals apart.

“The holy father would like a word, elf.” The man’s spat as he raised one arm towards the door. 

Eryl signed, “can it wait till the morning?” she knew the answer before she asked, as she even faked a yawn. She had a guess as to what the head priest wanted, despite her protest in the past. 

“You dare!” The man’s voice nearly yelled as his face turned red with anger. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, attempting to remind himself that this was the world sage, and needed for the heroes. “I have been sent to collect you. now.” he again raised his hand to the door; it was clear he was not asking.

“Fine.” She said curtly, though her expression never changed it was clear she was annoyed as she briskly walked past the man into the hall.

She had gained quite a reputation inside the church itself, though she doubted anyone outside the walls knew she even existed yet. Apparently, many of the priests and nuns found her unchanging expression and monotone voice to be unnerving. That on top of being a “demi-human” most gave her a wide berth much like one would a wild animal, any brave enough to approach her had always done so with either hostilities or with the insulting pity one can only have from a position higher than another person.

She knew the path to the central hall well at this point, the obnoxious priest had summoned her every night since her arrival to inquire on how the training was proceeding and demand she “speeds things up”.

She entered the opulent hall, an enormous red carpet leading to a raised platform that stood above the rest of the hall, a hideous golden throne sat atop it with a unsightly gold sun carving sitting behind it. On either side of the red carpet sat rows of dark wooden pews, each emblazoned with gold decorations as they connected to the enormous gold pillars that led up to the only actually impressive part of the whole display. An enormous domed ceiling that was painted with a truly stunning depiction of the “god-kings” trials to ascension, accented with master crafted stained-glass windows of each of his 6 companions, each of which now revered as a saint in his religion. Eryls human form was also depicted here, the tiny human girl with green eyes and light brown hair. 

Her eyes lingered on the ceiling for a long moment as she remembered traveling with the 6 of them in the past. He wasn’t so bad as a human; I wonder what happened after I “died”. She let her eyes wander to each of them recalling each one of them, only one other of them managed to ascend and now resided as the human god of magic. The other 4 however had long since passed on, being reborn, she believed one was even sent off to a harvester world not too long ago.

Back in Eryls room, a nun was looking through the sage’s belongings under the guise of “changing her bedding”, disappointed to find nothing as she checked the barren dresser. She was confused on how the elven woman always seemed clean, yet she had only one set of clothes. She sighed as she went to leave, her eyes landing on the world terminal Eryl had left floating in her room. The nun’s eyes widened in amazement as the unreadable text scrolled across at blinding speed. She stood for a moment watching the glowing blue screen before suddenly it flashed an ominous red color and fell from the air. The woman nearly wet herself as the terminal slammed into the ground before simply floating back up and resuming as if nothing had happened. She ran from the room swearing to never speak of the strange instance.

“You finally arrived.” An annoyed, cold voice filled the room causing her to look back to the throne. An older man sat atop the throne in a “pure” white ceremonial robe, lacking the usual golden trim or gold sun embroidery along the hem. His robe was the only one in the whole church, if not the world, that had the mark of Valor across the chest. A golden enchanted sun, the tentacle-like rays moving as if they were actually on fire, with a long sword in the center pointing down, a crown resting on the cross guard. 

The man himself, though clearly older, was not yet elderly. In fact, from what Eryl knew of the world, he was considered quite handsome, or so she was told from the heroes who described him as “a silver fox”. He had short dark brown hair that was graying on either side, with intense clear blue eyes. A full gray trimmed beard that he kept well groomed. He had a strong build, with wide shoulders and impeccable posture that showed off his muscular frame beneath his robes. He smiled showing perfect bleach white teeth as he looked down at her.

The whole display however was lost on Eryl, where others saw a beautiful man, she simply saw; Soul A578692347.975, Isaac Anderson, High priest of Valor. His soul had been warped by his faith, the tentacle like sun rays sprouting from its back as radiant magic seemed to seep off him.

That man probably only has a handful more reincarnations before that soul needs to be sent off for mana cleansing. He’s probably just as powerful as that family given his mana density. How is it he has not condensed into a seedling yet? She couldn’t help but let out a sigh.

His followers are just like him, look at all this wasted wealth. The cathedral was reminiscent of Valor’s realm, the only difference was his oversized chair had a burning sun as its backdrop. “I am sorry priest. I was preoccupied attempting to find a cause of that power surge.”

“You will address him as….” The priest behind her snapped only to be stopped as the “holy father” raised a hand.

The church was quite stringent on their titles, “holy father” used to notate the one closest to their god acting as the “voice of the true holy father”. It amazed Eryl that they would use the same title for the head priest as they would for Valor himself, yet it was clear that was simply a coincidence given they “named” all their priests as father and simply tacked “holy” on to it.

“And have you found anything?” his tone was odd; it was even and calm. not hostile yet not friendly. Most figured it was a sign of benevolence. However, that was also a trick of the priest.

Eryl watched as mana worked its way out of the man’s mouth, filling the air with what looked like a golden haze as his voice carried the power to influence wills. Not unlike Soters ability to imbue his voice with magic to reinforce lies, Valor had the ability to use magic to reinforce trust. This was how they manipulated the masses to believe their word, yet it was originally used to build faith in the heroes to calm the population.

Eryl did not move as the magic simply bounced off her, repelled by her own mana density and force of will. “Unfortunately, I did not. The voice of the world will not divulge the source of the power, leading me to believe it was caused by a single person or a group of persons; the voice will not share the location, powers, or any information on a person or persons in the world. As I am sure you are aware.” She could not tell him more than that, the limitations on the system keep her from sharing information about a singular soul to any other soul that did not already know the information she would provide. That was the balancing act she had to keep up herself, as the administrator of the system she could access any soul page in her system, its exact location, even what it had to eat. If it happens within the system she could see it, normally the only exception would be a soul space or personal realm of a god unless a terminal was present. This deep investigation however was very time consuming and tedious so she rarely did it, simply setting parameters for the system to notify her if anything was out of the ordinary. 

Of course, if she went to share this, her own preprogrammed jamming procedure would simply lock the vocal cords of anyone attempting to share forbidden knowledge. A program she developed herself given the annoyance of having to go in and manually remove knowledge that should not be shared, it was easier to just stop it from spreading. Though Mother claimed it to be cruel, given if someone attempted to force it, the system would eventually “lock” the person in question causing them to faint for a moment while the system contacted her to deal with the problem. What Eryl did not know is if she herself were not present when the system attempted to contact her, the system would induce head pains to the person in an attempt to dissuade them from sharing knowledge. This could eventually lead to damage to the person if they continued to attempt to force through the jamming procedure.

“Yes of course.” Isaac’s glare did not break as he leaned back in his chair. “It is as I feared. If the voice of the world will not share about the wave, then it must be the birth of something truly powerful in the world.” He slowly ran a hand through his beard. Isaac had never been hostile towards her, but she could see the disdain in his eyes whenever they spoke. She would not be surprised to find he was in fact the one behind all the discrimination she faced. Yet he tolerated her, she was the “World Sage” the voice given to the world to guide the heroes. Not to mention the only person on the planet with the “voice of the world” skill, meaning he needed her. He needed her alive, and cohesive, she felt if there were any other way, they would attempt to collar her and strip her of her own free will. But if they were to do that, she would lose the power of the “voice”; a very convenient protective measure that she was forced to use once in the past when a… overzealous king had attempted to steal the sage from a hero’s party. “I will need you to begin training the heroes to defend themselves.”

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Eryl sat on the edge of a large dirt arena, a world terminal floating beside her as the summoned heroes all stood in rows before her. It had been two days since the “wave” as people were calling it, and the night the head priest had rudely demanded Eryl begin training the heroes for combat. Stating they need to at least be able to defend themselves in these “uncertain” times.

She sat rubbing her temples, her long ears seeming to droop as she let out a haggard sigh. She had originally refused to alter her training methods, insisting the awakened heroes needed more time to grow accustomed to their new bodies and world they were now in, as was tradition with summoned heroes. A tradition that she started with the first soul that was summoned to this world, giving him half a year to grow on his own before teaching him any form of combat magic. However, the church was persistent, even threatening to hire top ranked adventurers and recalling paladins to train the heroes on their own if she continued to refuse. Leaving her no choice but to agree to train them by the “will of the world”.

That was the sage's true power in all the legends of old, her access to the system. A power that allowed her to interact with the will of the world itself, giving her insight that no other person could gain. Even going as far as having apparent “precognition” as the sage always seemed to know exactly what was needed and where. No one questioned “the voice of the world” when it appeared, and a “world sage” was one that was able to call it at will, allowing the world itself to guide the people for the betterment of the world. This however was all just a show she put on time and time again. Acting the part as she called a terminal and stared blankly at it for a few moments before acting in the way she was trained to do from the time she was created. Protect souls, maintain balance in the world, and watch over it. It was a simple approach of “just go down there and hold their hands” but it was one that had worked so well it became the standard operation whenever a powerful soul was summoned. She needed to keep up appearances; however, she was not allowed to divulge this to anyone in case it caused their faith in the gods to waver; simply because gods were essentially just more powerful souls. And if they were to lose faith, they would lose their source of power.

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She let out another sigh as she looked over at the terminal next to her, a few of the hero’s soul pages were displayed. She didn’t even bother to read them as she casually flipped through the terminal. She had spent the last night pouring over all 23 of their pages and deciding on the best way to train each of them.

She had methodically read all their pages; each one had a list of affinities and traits that would normally cause a person’s soul to destabilize. Normally affinities, skills, and traits were all carefully balanced to keep one’s mana from becoming too volatile. For instance, someone with a high water affinity could not have a true fire affinity since the two separate mana sources would be in direct conflict. That is not to say a water mage could not force cast a flame spell, just they would need a source outside of their body to do so, like a match or campfire to start the reaction of turning their mana into fire mana. whereas someone with a high flame affinity could use the fire mana from their own soul core to start a flame yet could not call water out of thin air. 

Someone could train to use an affinity outside of their natural born soul affinity, but they will always need an outside source to cast any spell of that affinity, like X47s physical father Alastair. That man had the highest fire affinity Eryl had ever seen, and on top of that he learned how to use a complementing magic such as air. However, if he were to find himself in an airless environment such as under water or in space, he would still be able to call flames, yet he could not produce wind on his own… well he could blow from his lungs but if he were underwater that may be foolish to do.

But the hero’s souls were different. Since their souls were significantly more powerful than ones born of this world, given they had yet to be cleansed on the harvester world. The point of a harvester world is to cleanse a soul of all mana and allow it to reform its affinities while purging itself of any previous imperfections in its mana pool. This is done by taking a soul that had failed to ascend into a god or devil or was on the verge of destabilizing and sending it to a world that does not support magic, thus forcing the soul to slowly burn off all the stored mana it had within itself. With no way to reform the exhausted mana given the manaless environment the soul will essentially become a blank slate with no affinities before it is sent to a cultivator world to redevelop in hopes it will ascend. A hero however is a soul that had just recently been introduced to a harvester world, these are souls that were on the brink of ascension but for some reason or another could not take the final step into the godly realm and were stuck at mortals on the verge of collapsing. Some had been damaged with leaking mana pools that keep them from condensing their souls for ascension, others failed to form a realm once they shed their mortal body, one in particular had committed the atrocious crime of shattering another soul before her ascension and had been barred from entering the godly realms and was sent to a harvester world for cleansing.

Looking over their soul pages, Eryl could guess why many of them were sent to the harvester world, their mana pools had overgrown to the point of nearly breaking. Some even with true dual affinities, others with so many traits that it would overload a normal mortal body. If she looked at them with soul sight, she could see that most of their souls had warped beyond recognition, some vibrating with constant power as they nearly burst. Many of them would be capable of fighting against gods if it came down to sheer power, but that’s where the summoning limiters came in. 

Each summoned hero’s soul is altered by the summoning, if any of them had the ability to enter their soul space they would find it caged, locking it from outside influence essentially keeping the soul from ascension by not allowing aether to be absorbed into it. So though they are all powerful in their own right, however they have no more room to grow, being locked from taking the next step before they complete their cleansing. This cage will also keep them from gaining any new traits however they can still gain skills and titles. This left even more questions about X47 however, it was an aether based soul, meaning it had succeeded in ascension becoming a god or devil of a world, yet it was locked in a harvester world.

The difference in an aether based soul and a mana-based soul is night and day. Mana can only be found on worlds that support life, trapped in the atmosphere, and generated by the souls on it forming a defensive bubble around it that will repel aether. Aether however can be found everywhere, but it's mostly found in the void of space. A mana-based soul can generate mana on its own, eventually its mana pool will outgrow its soul however at this point normally it will naturally begin to condense it down into aether. This however is where most souls end up getting sent to a harvester world, if the soul in question fails to form its own realm where it can safely store itself, due to the dangers of aether. An aether based soul cannot generate aether, instead it pulls in massive quantities of mana and condenses it down into aether to fuel itself. This is dangerous however, a aether soul will continually absorb mana eventually sucking all the mana of a world away. The only way around this is to have “followers”, people who offer mana to the soul in the form of prayers, while the soul stays off the mortal plane. Many chose to store their realms off world, choosing to orbit the planet as to absorb ambient aether from space and to avoid accidental exposure to the mana of the world they rule over.

So why is it that X47 still has not sucked up any mana? If it had committed any grievous crimes as a god or devil it would have been shattered by the primordial court not sealed away in a harvester world. Eryl pondered as she read the soul pages displayed, she had no concerns about displaying the pages in the open knowing the only people alive who had the skill to read one would likely never be within eyesight of the cathedral city.

She sat silently as the heroes began to fidget, they knew something was happening when they were suddenly summoned to the training court in the center of the cathedral, but they had no idea as to why. Given the sage had not called them since the “wave” had happen they were all starting to wonder if maybe she had abandoned them since she had locked herself away in her room.

Finally, someone moved, the soul shatterer raised her hand catching Eryls attention. “Yes, Himari?” 

The young woman gave a slight bow before speaking. “Great sage, why are we in the training court?” 

“Eryl will do fine.” She said as she cancelled her spell allowing her terminal to dissipate, strangely it did so by vanishing. Normally they would dissolve into mist yet for the past few days they simply popped like a bubble when dismissed. Without my administrator commands I can’t even figure out why the terminals are suddenly acting up. Maybe it was a bad idea to lock “everyone” out of the system… Maybe I should contact X47 and ask it to release Babylon to me. Her eyes scanned the seemingly empty field, she could feel the ever-present pressure of mana around her as her eyes landed on an empty spot easily spotting the scrying spell that was being used to watch her. Or not, I guess. She would not be able to contact X47 without talking out loud to her terminal, which posed several problems. If she was being watched by the church, they would notice she was “speaking” to someone and report it to Valor through prayer, that is if the system doesn’t freeze her vocal cords for speaking about a souls’ skills in front of someone else. I really should add one of those things the Himari was talking about, what was it called? A keyboard? “As for why we are in the training court, it is time we began your magic training.” She stood and slowly approached the group as she adjusted her robes again. 

She could see them all become visibly excited as a wave of eagerness washed over them. “Really? You said it would be months before we were ready?” a voice called; she could not pinpoint who had said it.

“Yes, well as I am sure you are all aware, things change.” She said as she rubbed her stiff neck, she herself was not accustomed to a physical body having not been in one for over a millennium. “However,” their eagerness drained as she spoke, “after conferring with the “voice of the world” and viewing each of your soul pages, I have been told to offer you all a proposition. Some of you are not suited for combat, nor was it your purpose in being brought here. But neither the “world” or I will stop you if you wish to become a combat mage. So, the offer is simple: if you decide that you do not wish to fight, no one will judge you, and I will personally assist in your training in any field that you choose. One does not need to fight to help the world.”

She struggled to word it in such a way that her own emotion did not bleed through. She had to let them decide, if they chose to fight then that was their choice to make by the will of the system, but a lingering fear in the back of her mind kept her from not saying anything. 

If this church goes looking for the source of the wave, they will definitely send every single one of them to X47. A few of the heroes noticed Eryl's shoulders dropped as she thought. 

“What kind of hero can’t fight?” a boy’s voice called out, snapping her attention to him.

She eyed the young man, Adam. He was one of the heroes with a true dual affinity, both earth and water if she remembered correctly. That alone would make him a fierce combat mage if he wished to go down that path, but there were always other options as well. “I am sure you have all realized this world is very different from your old one. Some of you may even say it is underdeveloped. With that in mind, given your power and knowledge of a world unlike our own, there is a lot you could do to aid this world outside of combat.” She recalled he was one of the younger heroes, in his mid-teens before he was summoned. He had said he was learning to become a “civil engineer” gaining him the skills of a “engineer” when summoned, he could easily help build towns, or develop lands, though he did not have the trait for it meaning he would have to rely on his skills to utilize it. Skills were abilities one gained through learning and training in a field whereas traits were “natural” abilities; while, one could turn on and off skills, one’s traits simply were. They were always active, always adding a “passive” magical buff to whatever it was they supported. One could inspect a skill and see exactly what it did, but if one were to inspect a trait they would just get a description of why the person had it unable to see the boon it provided.

Just as she was about to continue, she knew she was skirting her ability to advise not influence, a strange popping sound filled the air followed by pained screams as a burst of mana flooded the cathedral. 

Was that spatial magic? She thought as she whirled around to see 3 young men laying in the grass, one clutching his face as blood poured through his hands as he thrashed on the ground.

Himari leapt into action, rushing to the young man casting pain nullification on him as she skidded to his side and attempted to pull his hand away to inspect his wounds.

The other heroes froze as Eryl made her way towards the new group. 

The two had clearly been in combat as well, one’s clothes seemed to be torn away revealing blistering burns along the right side of his body, his left arm had bloody holes drilled into it as if it had been stabbed repeatedly. The other seemed to be shivering, his skin was pale, his teeth chattering through blue lips. He clutched his legs to his chest, his clothes soaked as if he had been coated in water. His arm seemed to bend unnaturally yet there were no cut marks, it was as if it had simply been bashed until it broke leaving his hand limp at his side.

Eryl also noticed the golden weapons that had fallen to the ground with them, a golden long sword, a golden shield, and two gold daggers lay around them.

Valor. She thought as she recognized the mana pouring off the weapons.

“Eryl… I can’t… heal his eye?” Himari’s voice was shaking, she had stopped the bleeding and managed to mend the wounds, strangely leaving clear scars no matter how much healing magic she used. The boy’s eye simply did not heal, instead reforming as a milky white orb. It was clear that even though she had healed him that his eye would never see again.  

Himari looked up at the elven woman who stood above the fallen boy. She watched as the normally calm face of the sage twisted in first fear then disgust, her hands balled tightly into fist as she spoke. “You won’t be able to… His soul was damaged.”

Along the right side of the boy’s face were clear scars, deep claw marks that ran from his hairline to his shoulder. Much to her amazement when Eryl looked at the boy’s soul using the soul sight spell, his soul had been torn along the scar lines as well, now pouring mana out of the deep rents that were carved into it, his left eye was a deep black orb, however his right, was simply gone, leaving a void in his soul where it should have been. 

Her stomach turned as she looked at the damage, the claw marks were clear on the boy's smoky black soul. “Just what the hells are you thinking X47. '' Her voice hissed through clenched teeth. She would never mistake those marks having seen them a dozen times. Seeing them on a soul however was a shock to her. So much so that she did not even notice the system did not stop her from speaking of X47.