World Seed

by Justin Miller

  I considered that, but ultimately it was more important for me to get Plasma and Magnet Affinities. Yin could level up even if I left her alone in the grove by training her Wind Affinity, so she might even be done by the time I finish. Just to be sure, I went into my grove and refined five medium quality Seeds of Wind and put them near her, leaving the instruction with Yang on what to do with them.

  As a fun side fact, all of my 10% affinities finally increased to 11%, and water even increased to 12% thanks to all of the seeds I broke down in the hospital. That boosted my mana recovery a bit more, which helped me out. Anyways, in order to gain the Plasma Affinity, I planned on borrowing from my beam saber, until Celeste spoke out. “Actually, before you do that, there’s something else you need to take care of first. Didn’t want to bother you about it unless it turned into an issue… and well.. I think it’s going to turn into an issue now.”

  I paused, just as I was about to grab the beam saber from my grove. “What is it?”

  “The soul fragments you absorbed from Legion. They’re starting to fight against the filters I made. You’ll need to purge them before they can break out and try to take over.” This little tidbit of news made my eye twitch slightly. “Sorry, I know I should have told you sooner, but I figured that you wouldn’t want to use the new skill, and didn’t think they’d be able to put up a fight this soon.”

  Deep, calming breaths… “Okay… do you have any idea how to do it?” Thanks to the initial sliver that had given me the skill, I had a faint idea about how to use Soul Arts, but since I hadn’t practiced it yet I couldn’t confirm. Celeste, on the other hand, has had the equivalent of weeks(at her processing speed, at least) to study the hints on how to use the skill.

  “I might. It should work kind of like your shapeshifting, but several levels deeper. This isn’t the form or appearance of an aura that you are messing with now, but the actual composition of it. And right now, there’s not a buffer zone for you to get rid of the soul fragments without sacrificing skills, so you’ll need to pick something to give up, and gather it all together. If you were more skilled with this, maybe you could purify the soul fragments, but for now purging them is the only safe option.”

  “I got two levels from them, so I need to give up two levels worth of skills, right?”

  Celeste confirmed my thought, but added on something else, which did not help at all. “Yes, and no. The amount of experience you got would be the same as levels one through eight, rather than just one and two. It’ll still only set you back a couple levels, but that is an important bit of information.”

  “Alright…” I took a quick glance at my skill list. “I can give up Dagger Mastery, Archery, and Wind Magic since I have the affinity to imitate that one. How much is that all worth?”

  “At your current levels of mastery… Almost there. You won’t need to sacrifice a full skill to finish it off, just a little bit of one. I’d suggest some of the runes I taught you, because they won’t be very helpful for the near future. About nine hundred or so should do it.”

  I nodded, and could easily think of a few such runes that I wouldn’t need. I mean, I’m unlikely to need to use the rune apple, headache, lime, or sunflower any time soon. “Okay, so how do I do this?”

  “First, focus on the skills you want to eject while scanning your own aura as deeply as possible. You should feel certain areas light up. Think of this as defragmenting a computer, you’re rearranging your aura to put the skills together.” Following her instructions, I closed my eyes and scanned my own aura with Mana Sense, going as detailed as possible while thinking of Wind Magic. A dozen tiny areas lit up in my aura, and I tugged at each one to gradually move them along the streams of energy, like playing a complex maze from a dozen different positions.

  Once the little sections joined together, I did another sweep to make sure nothing else was lighting up. When I felt that bundle of energy, my mind was filled with everything I knew about Wind Magic, and all the practice I had done with it. Next, I did the same thing for Archery and Dagger Mastery, moving them all to the same position I had put my Wind Magic. To my dismay, and Celeste’s amusement, there were only two or three lights for Archery that I had to move. It was like even my aura was teasing me about how bad I was with my bow.

  Finally, I thought of nine hundred different runes, and found that this was for the most part the easiest. Although it was nine hundred runes, they were almost all clustered in one area, so I just had to move them along to join the man bundle I had been establishing. “Wouldn’t this mean, that if I lost an arm or a leg, I’d lose any of the skills that were in that part of my aura?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe the skills flow around when you’re active, so if you lose a limb they just retreat back to your main body? Anyways, now that you’ve got the skills together, I’m going to slowly lift the filters I placed on the memories and personalities. I’m going to do it just one at a time, so this will take a while. However, if I did more than that, you might lose yourself before we finished. Keep a close eye on your aura, and whenever a new section lights up that doesn’t feel familiar, push it into that same cluster you just made, then pull it out of you with the skills. It should feel a little like having blood drawn, I think.”

  “Not liking the ‘I think’.”

  “Cut me some slack, I’ve only been able to study a small amount of information for this skill and make theories for the rest. Consider this first one a test run, it’s one of the weakest personalities you absorbed.”

  Right as she finished saying that, I felt something off in my aura. Oddly, it was down near my foot, but it was like a different presence entirely. When I focused on it to draw it towards the skill cluster, I got a flash of memories from a little alien boy. They were too fragmented for me to catch any thoughts, and the only emotion he felt was fear. I quickly pulled that soul fragment up through my aura, until it reached the skill cluster, before matching it up with a few of the runes. It seemed confused by that, and just waited before I mentally grabbed it and pulled it from my aura.

  There was a not inconsiderable amount of pain, quite a bit more than I would get from having blood drawn! “Sorry!” Celeste called out in a worried tone as my aura slowly closed the gap from where I had pulled the soul fragment out.

  New Ability Unlocked!

  Exorcise Spirit - Soul Arts - ★★

  This ability allows you to identify foreign spirits within an aura and exorcise them from the host body.

  Next, she released the mental blocks on another fragment, causing another section of my soul to light up. This one was an elderly woman, and I had a theory as I drew her towards the cluster. She was only releasing the mental blocks on the personalities, not the souls themselves. Since she had no control over my magic, she naturally couldn’t seal the souls. So, the souls should already be inside my aura roaming freely, but when she releases the mental blocks, the personalities find their way back to the fragments, lighting them up for me to find.

  This process continued for a while, and I lost track of how many times I exorcised a soul fragment from inside myself. Every now and then, I would catch a memory from the souls as I was gathering them, but it was usually only the moment of their death. Some people say that there are only two things that nobody remembers, their birth and their death. However, each and every soul fragment I exorcised clearly felt the fear and memory of their death. I didn’t know where the souls would go after they were exorcised, but the mere fact of their existence led me to believe that there was somewhere for them in whatever afterlife there was.

  By the time I was done with the last soul, which I had to reassemble from two dozen different pieces before I could send it off, the sun had already set outside. Though, I still wasn’t tired thanks to the differences in time from the real world to the game. So instead, I confirmed with Celeste that the souls had all gone, and my aura was my own again. I still had the Soul Arts skill, but thankfully I had lost the knowledge on how to do the original ability
that had come with it. In the same way, I had lost all of my memories regarding training with the bow and Wind Magic, or how to properly wield a dagger. I still knew what memories I had lost, just not their contents. Like how you can remember the name of a movie, but not who was in it.

  Celeste still has all of the memories from her perspective, but they wouldn’t help me in getting the skills back. Though, she assured me that I did not lose anything important, and that if it became relevant she would let me know. To my surprise, I actually only lost one level, but my affinities increasing probably helped with that.

  Now, with that out of the way, I finally went to what I actually wanted to do in the first place, and pulled out my beam saber to begin cultivating Magnet Affinity.

  Chapter 23: What is a Soul?

  Last night, I spent a few hours cultivating, before finally deciding to get some rest. Before I did so, I gave Celeste permission to do some more studying, and asked that she researched my new skill as her first topic. Sure enough, I had another ‘dream’ of sitting on my bed and watching as countless images passed by in front of me.

  When I woke up, I found that I wasn’t as tired as I had expected to be after letting her research. Then again, I had already gotten a lot of sleep before logging in. “So, what did you find out?”

  “Quite a bit, actually!” Celeste was suddenly sitting on the bed next to me as I sat up, a cheery smile on her face. “The Soul Arts skill is actually pretty well known, although it is a rare skill. There isn’t any listed way to learn it, aside from getting a Skill Shard with it. However, it has three main uses. The first, as you discovered yesterday, is to fight souls and soul-type creatures. The second, is to bring back the dead. And most importantly, depending on your viewpoint, the third use is to create Skill Shards.”

  That made me blink for a moment, confused. “You mean that I could have sold those skills I ejected yesterday and made money?”

  “Yup! Though, I would advise against it, because those skills also contained impure soul fragments with them. When you make a Skill Shard, you take a small gem to use as the storage device. Then, you gather the skill you want and copy it over into the ‘buffer zone’ of your soul to ensure that you retain the skill afterwards. Then you push that copied skill into the crystal, and lock it in. With that done, you have your very own Skill Shard! However, it is highly illegal to put foreign soul fragments into Skill Shards, because they have the chance to possess the host.

  “There have been a few reported events in history similar to the Gamer case, where someone used Soul Arts to absorb other people. Most of the time, they have some countermeasures against becoming a Legion, but otherwise they will eventually turn into a monster after absorbing around five hundred souls. The reports vary, but they almost always turn into some kind of greater devil.”

  “Ahh… but wait, this means that I could just go kill a few monsters, and then have enough of a buffer to give Yang a Skill Shard for cultivating affinities, doesn’t it?” I glanced over towards the illusionary AI, who nodded her head.

  “You could! And Yang just recently earned the Natural Craftsman class, after making a few staffs with Nature Magic in your grove, so it is about time to teach her that as well. By the way, I’d suggest looking at the shops around town and see if you could get a couple of Gem Affinity element seeds. They are considerably more expensive than most, but if you get the affinity then you will be able to grow your own gems to use for Skill Shards.”

  I thought about it, but ultimately sighed, shaking my head. “I’ll look, but right now I want to train Magnet Affinity and Plasma Affinity. Those two will be my ultimate combat abilities.” I smiled, imagining someone trying to pull a beam saber on me, only for it to lash at them like a whip.

  “Fine, fine, fair enough. You should consider registering as a Skill Master, though. It’s the name for people who make Skill Shards, and anyone that tries to sell them without being registered can only get a fraction of the price. Due to the risks inherent in tampering with the soul, the people formed an organization that monitors Skill Shards, so that if a problem occurs it can be traced back to the one that caused it. Not being registered would be like… being a vigilante instead of a detective. Even if you do the right thing, people won’t easily trust you.”

  “Maybe later… I don’t plan on making any Skill Shards yet. Maybe when I’m needing some money and have enough of a buffer. After all, if I copied and sold my Technomancy, that’d be easy money.”

  Celeste gave a nod at that. “If you chose to sell your skill to the Skill Master guild, you could get half the price that they would charge to sell it to someone else. Once you register, and are able to make your own Skill Shards, you can sell them for full price. But either way, you need a buffer zone. For intermediate Technomancy, I’d say you would need nearly as much experience as you used to eject the skills last night.”

  “Okay, any other information you’d deem immediately useful?” I smirked towards her as I said that.

  “Hmm…. Oh! I looked up why you weren’t able to take the rush of information without collapsing. If it was just a matter of not being able to process the information, you would have just had a migraine that made you wish you could collapse. That what happened to you at the enchanter’s store. But what made you collapse before was actually your soul being unable to adapt fast enough to the sudden growth that I forced into it.”

  I raised a curious eyebrow at that. “What do you mean sudden growth?”

  “The runes and the trivia I gave you. It didn’t affect you like that when Legion forced itself into you, because Legion was supplying the soul essence to hold the skills. However, I don’t have a soul to give…” She seemed a bit sad about that point. “So when I sent you all of that information, it was like putting too much air into a balloon, and you couldn’t handle the pressure.”

  “Celeste…?”

  She glanced up at me shyly as I called to her. “Yes?”

  “Do you want a soul..?”

  The AI blushed slightly, looking away. “Maybe eventually? I’d need my own body for it, and you would have to harvest and purify spirit creatures to get a pure soul to inject. The lack of a soul is why machines can’t control magic the way you do. Machines can only use magic if they have prebuilt mana channels and spell software that directs the magic to form an aura. Far more difficult than how you cast spells…”

  I grinned, mentally patting her head. Although I couldn’t physically touch her, she seemed to get the meaning. “A machine with a soul has their own special race, the Deus Ex. Obviously, they still can’t do things like breeding, but with a soul they can use magic, or level up. Normally, a machine can only grow stronger by upgrading their parts and software, but a Deus Ex has this done automatically as part of their leveling process. On the other hand, if a new soul is put into an advanced machine, the machine will be downgraded to match the soul’s ability until it is able to fully handle it.”

  I was a bit surprised by how much she put into researching this, but I figured having a soul would be a pretty big thing for her. “Would you still be able to link up with the companion bracelets if you got a new body and soul?”

  She looked up at me, and nodded quickly. “I’d just need to get the same upgrade on the new body that your bracelet has. The bracelets, and your magical implant, wouldn’t have traces of the soul in them, but I would still be able to connect my mind to them.”

  I chuckled, teasing her a bit. “So you still wouldn’t be able to use my magic, huh? Well, there goes that shortcut.”

  Celeste smiled happily, sensing that I was giving this serious consideration. “No.. but I’d be able to get my own class and skills, even cultivate mana if I wanted to. Just like with evolved companions and innately high level races, there are some unique possibilities for Deus Ex classes. After all, we can replicate most physical movements after a single glance, so we are quite special.”

  “Alright, alright. I take it you’ve picked a planet that has spirits to �
�train’ on eventually?”

  Her cheeks reddened a bit as she glanced down, nodding her head. “Yeah… but you need to be level thirty five first. With your Soul Arts, you could probably survive more easily than others, but that is still the recommended. In that time, you also need to learn how to purify soul essence…” She mumbled the next part under her breath, so that I could barely hear it. “And save up to get me a body…”

  I pretended that I didn’t hear that last bit, which made her puff her cheeks out and pout. “How should I practice purifying souls?”

  She began fidgeting a bit at that point. “Well… this is the part that you might not like. Whenever you kill a creature, a small portion of its soul essence, roughly five percent or so, is transferred to you. That’s why you can level up that way. However, if you have the Soul Arts, you can pull the full soul essence out of the dead creature and purify it. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to absorb it. In fact, if you purify it and then put it back in its own body after healing it, you can bring it back to life. It won’t have any memories of its former life, and essentially be a newborn baby. Apparently this is how Skill Masters get their pets, by taming those ‘newborn’ creatures.”