I thought about what she was saying, and really it made sense. One of the first things I learned about cultivating affinities was that before 5%, you would spend more mana trying to pull the element into you than you would be able to take in. But that made me confused about something else. “But.. after you reach a certain point, your body begins naturally drawing in the elements you train. Wouldn’t that cause the grove to shrink instead?”
At that, Priscilla nodded her head. “That’s right. However, we choose not to allow our bodies to take in the elements like that. Otherwise, our home might collapse. Those of us that possess groves of our own are very careful in how we choose to create them. Typically, we would only make a home large enough for our personal families, so that they do not take part in the ritual hunts.”
“That makes sense… Sorry to take up so much of your time. Is there a way to get Sharon’s attention to let her know that I’m ready to leave?”
“There is. Mistress has chosen to leave a portion of her awareness focused on the communication tablet at all times, so that whenever we need something we may call her.” Priscilla led me back towards the stone monolith that I had appeared next to. “Simply inscribe a message there with your magic, and she will receive it.”
I nodded, reaching out and connecting to the structure with my Earth Manipulation, before inscribing the words ‘All done’. Within moments, I felt a familiar energy wrapping around me, pulling me out of this world and into my own. Back on the ship, in the cargo bay with the girls, Sharon smiled at me. “So, what did you think?”
I pulled her in for a quick hug, kissing her on the forehead. “Your animals are totally cheating with the grove. But before I left, I taught Priscilla Enchanting. I’m curious to see what they will be able to do with that.”
“Oh, did you now?” Sharon asked with a raised brow. Closing her eyes for a second, I imagined that she was likely leaving another message for the creatures in her grove. “I’ll have to make sure that she doesn’t try to keep it for just the rabbits. I don’t like power struggles…”
“How’s the progress coming out here?” I asked, smiling to Sharon before I looked over to see Yang. Surprisingly, she was sitting on the bench, leaning against Yin who was happily petting her wing.
“She finished up about fifteen minutes ago. I wanted to wait for you to come out before we tried them on.” With that, Sharon walked over to the two outfits laying side by side on the floor. “Do you want to start enchanting now, or wait until later?”
“Well…” I told her about my plan to make my armor an intelligent set item, and she seemed surprised by the possibility. She even offered to let me use her buffer, as she had done a lot more farming than I had on Hydra. After thinking it over, I decided to accept her offer, but only for her own set. I didn’t want to take too much of her experience, and I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen.
Although I had her permission, we still had to wait a couple of days for Celeste to finish the AI program that we would be ‘uploading’ into the armor sets. Sharon also volunteered to be the first test subject for this armor set, because she would be able to use her psychic power to communicate with her own armor. Using that, she would have an easier time discovering its limits.
After the two days were over, we gathered in my workroom, with Sharon’s armor neatly assorted on the floor inside a large circle. Naturally, this circle was created by me with the purpose of restraining leaking mana. For the first part of this process, I started setting the initial enchantments. Like with my own planned armor, I put in extra defense, and form adaptability. Although Sharon was not a shapeshifter, I believed that this was something that any armor should have, just in case.
Unlike my own armor, Sharon had asked for her entire set to receive a strength boost. After each enchantment, I had to wait about three minutes to allow my mana to fully recover, because a single usage took my full 1500 mana. That was likely the cost of enchanting so many items as a set.
Next, when I asked what special options Sharon wanted for her armor, she asked me if I could give it the ability to harden into metal on command. With that, she would have a better defense against attacks, and it opens up a path for her armor to potentially evolve the ability to create weapons. Naturally, this was possible, but I had to refine a medium grade Seed of Metal to help me with it. Otherwise, the mana cost would have been more than I had to supply.
With that taken care of, I had Sharon move over and sit inside the circle with her armor. When I asked how much of her buffer she wanted me to use for this set, I was greatly surprised by her answer.
“All of it.” She said with a confident smile. “I need to train my skills up, and it would be good to see what level I am actually at with them.”
Although I didn’t quite agree to using the entire buffer for this when we weren’t sure what the results would be, I went along with her wishes. Once I began examining her soul with my Soul Arts, I was again surprised to discover just how much of a buffer there was. Maybe it was because she wasn’t like me, and didn’t send her excess buffer out for random things like teaching people languages or skills, but she had about fifteen levels worth. At least, that was my rough estimate.
The process of spreading the soul out between the armor pieces was longer than any ‘soul surgery’ I had done to date, due to the size of what I was working with, as well as the complexity. Even after I spread the soul out to all of the pieces of the set, they still felt… disconnected. It felt like I was looking at six different items, rather than one full suit of armor. However, I found a way to remedy that.
By taking the soul of two different items, and gently pulling them away from the item in question, I was able to tie the soul auras together. Once the link was established, the rest began flowing more smoothly. Before I considered myself done, I linked all of the pieces to the chest armor.
This was the first set enchantment that I could remember doing, but somehow I had a feeling of knowing its effects. Each item separately had roughly the same power as an item that had normally received its enchantments. However, with each additional piece of the set brought together, the effects increased by 10%. Thus, a six piece set would have each item with a 50% increase in its set enchantments.
Naturally, this would not apply to enchantments placed on the individual items, such as if I gave the boots a speed enchantment. I also did not get such a feeling with regards to the linked souls of the items. But that brings me to the next step. With the soul transfer taken care of, Sharon moved out of the circle while Celeste handed me a soft stick, embedded with the template AI we were going to be putting into the armor.
This was the part I worried about the most, because if I did this wrong, the entire set could be torn to shreds with the backlash. Not to mention Celeste probably wouldn’t take too kindly to me destroying an AI like that, even a newborn one accidentally. So, I took a deep breath, and began my work.
With the soft stick between my hands, I very carefully removed the AI, holding it in the air above the set. Very gently, I pressed it down into the aura of the chest-piece, which I had designed to be the central part of the armor set. However, that is where things started to get weird.
Shortly after the AI’s aura touched the edge of the armor’s, it began leaking out of my bubble of control. This wasn’t like when I enchanted the other intelligent items, where they obediently waited for me to finish. This time, the aura of consciousness actively struggled to break out of my grasp, and I had to use more and more effort to hold it in place. But the more energy I used, the more solid I made my control, the harder it fought.
I barely even noticed when Celeste put her hand on my shoulder. “Let it go.” She said in a low voice, as if she was seeing something I wasn’t. Surprised by the contact, my control over the AI’s aura slipped, and it spilled entirely out of my grasp.
What happen next surprised everyone, except perhaps the Deus Ex who was now smiling like a proud mother. The aura of the AI wove itself through
the set, borrowing the linked soul connections to transmit itself throughout the various pieces. Meanwhile, in the chest armor, the aura began shifting, until a small consciousness arose within it. This consciousness appeared faintly similar to the ones that I had been working with until now, albeit more simple. The primary difference was that it had connections spread out like a web leading through the aura of the entire set of armor.
“What just happened…” I asked, looking back to the only person in the room that seemed to understand. However, before Celeste had the chance to answer the armor began changing again. This time, the changes appearing were physical, allowing everyone in the room to fully see what was going on, even without the use of Aura Sight or Mana Sense.
First, the bracers of the armor shrank down into thin bracelets. Next, metal studs began appearing at even intervals along the chest and leg armors. From what I could see of the interior, metal chain links were beginning to form beneath the leather exterior, adding a double layer of protection. On both the gloves and boots, a line of metal appeared, either on the back of the hand or the top of the foot.
Finally, as the changes settled down, Celeste spoke. “I noticed while you were holding the AI. The parts of it that slipped away didn’t vanish, but instead soaked into the armor. It might be a special quality of set items, or the method that you combined their soul auras, but it was like a magnet to pull the consciousness in.”
Next, she turned to look at Sharon. “You should identify it now, see what new abilities it gained.”
Sharon snapped out of her confusion, and hastily nodded her head before performing the spell. From her report, aside from the increase in defense that could be explained both by the enchantments and the modifications the AI made, it had also added new abilities. Like Sharon had hoped, one of them was the ability to create blades from the hands and feet. Another was that items could be reshaped at will to look like other armors or pieces of clothing.
This is what happened with the bracers, as they had been shrunken down to a less obstructive size. Along with this ability, it was able to alter the material of the armor, between either steel or leather. After putting on the armor, Sharon demonstrated by having the set turn into a full suit of steel plate armor. Surprisingly, even a helmet was made, with the chest armor rising up to compensate the lack of a headpiece.
Naturally, the abilities were not for free, and she had to pay mana for any of them to stay active, with one exception. If she chose to alter the item’s appearance, she only had to pay a cost to activate the ability, and then it remained in its new form until it was changed again. Still, these all added up to be pretty powerful, considering that we were without almost any kind of armor before.
Next, and this was potentially the most important part of the entire process. Binding it to her. Although her armor was already powerful as it was, it meant nothing if she lost it when she died, and we weren’t able to retrieve it. Thankfully, Celeste had a solution to this. It was a costly method, but one that was possible for us.
“In essence, this will make the armor a part of her soul, just like her grove is. She’ll need to practice calling it out, but as a druid it should be a bit easier for her. Since I know the method, it will be faster for me to show you, rather than trying to explain it and let John do it.”
Celeste had Sharon take the armor off, and then lay it out on the ground. Next, she was instructed to lie down next to it. “This technique is known as a soul graft. However, from the information I received, it is very rarely used. That’s because once it is done, it takes a very powerful Soul Artist to remove it. Anyone less than the Master rank is likely completely incapable of reversing a soul graft. There are other methods to bind items… but this is the easiest one with our current abilities.”
After explaining, Celeste held her arms out while sitting next to Sharon’s head. One arm was placed above Sharon, while the other was placed above her armor. I wanted to go in and inspect what was happening with my Mana Sense, but doing so might interfere with the process. Considering that this was Sharon’s soul being messed with, I was not willing to risk it. The only reason I was letting Celeste do it at all is because she would not have suggested it without complete confidence. I actually suspected that she had already done this with her own intelligent items.
As I thought that, I noticed that the metal bracelet, her intelligent cannon, was actually not on her arm in its usual place. Knowing that gave me some measure of assurance, since it meant she had already performed this procedure before. Or at least, I had never seen her without the cannon on her arm before now.
While I watched the process, the armor began to emit a faint red light, which gradually seemed to consume the armor itself. Then, that red light moved at a slow pace towards Sharon, whose brows were furrowed as if uncomfortable. She wasn’t able to relax until Celeste’s voice came in. “Don’t resist. I need to form a connection between yourself and the armor. If you resist, the armor will be destroyed, and you will lose a large portion of your memories.”
Sharon’s body froze at that, but she forced herself to relax and accept the red light into her body. After three minutes of her body being bathed in the red light, that glow started fading away. All that was left on the floor now was Sharon, the armor nowhere to be seen.
“Did.. did it work?” I asked, worried that the process might have failed like Celeste said. Slowly, Sharon sat up and looked around. Then, she turned to look at me and asked something in a curious voice that nearly made my heart stop.
“Where am I?” However, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, Celeste smacked her on the back of the head. “Oww… sorry… What did you do that for?” She turned and pouted at Celeste, who nodded in satisfaction.
“That was a terrible joke, and you deserved it.” She then began to smile. “And I totally approve. But still, you don’t know how much he was starting to panic if I hadn’t done that.” As she said that, she pointed to me, and I realized that what Sharon had done was merely a joke.
I released my clenched fists, and wiped at my eyes, which I hadn’t even noticed had begun to water. “Gah, sorry John.” Sharon stood up with a quick jump, giving me a tight hug. “Was just a little prank.”
“It’s… it’s okay.” I squeezed out a small smile. She truly did mean the world to me, so having her lose large chunks of her memory could potentially make her forget who she was, who I was. I wasn’t quite sure I’d have been able to take that so easily.
Sharon looked up to me, and gave me a sweet smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you. Still plenty of time before we reach the elf worlds.” And with that completely indecent smile, I was convinced that my Sharon was still entirely here.
Chapter 55 - The Journey Home
After Sharon thoroughly earned my forgiveness for her earlier prank, I began the process of grinding up my own levels in order to make my armor set. Over the course of the next few weeks, I spent at least four hours a day in the cargo hold. Every five minutes, I would gather mana to create an ettin, and then immediately kill it. Then, I wait for my mana to recharge and repeat the cycle.
This was an incredibly repetitive process, but ettins were the strongest monster whose summon conditions I were familiar with. After the first few days, I actually set up a rune circle to automate the process. I would just pour in the mana, and then it creates the ettin. Then, the second feature of the circle activates and it kills the ettin with blades of wind. Thankfully, I found that I was still getting experience for doing it this way, since I was technically the one operating the spell circles, and not doing so from a distance.
Also… I found out that Malthan is a lazy bastard! After a few days of this ‘training’, I finally leveled up to 60, and got this message.
You have reached Level 60!
Normally, this happens at level 50, but you keep giving away your levels so I got bored and lost track.
Inventory space increased to 5x10
I know, it's not like it means much t
o you, since you cheat with your grove all the time. But it's the principal of things! Also, this is a one time increase, and it is not farmable by just dropping your level and raising it back up. Don't even bother!
He has all the time he wants to mess with me, but forgets to give me my level upgrades? Well, he is right, I use my grove as my inventory most of the time, because the limit does not apply there. I asked Sharon about it, and she said that she got the upgrade at level 50 as well, but just didn’t say anything to me about it because I was ahead of her in levels, so she assumed I would have already gotten it.
We made a few brief stops on our way back to meet up with the people waiting for us in the elven worlds. The first stop was Hydra, where we picked up a large shipment of elemental seeds that had been piling up. I also took the time to add in more spell formations, so that the ‘seed factory’ would begin producing Seeds of Time and Seeds of Gravity.
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