Chương 512: AF Chapter 511 – Suborning the System

"Moving selected Isparian and Empyrean souls into the Mana Hunters on Freeholder Island from out of the System repository, the filters and categorizing are quite robust in how to pick and choose them. Doing likewise by reprogramming the spawns on the Vissidals to start generating Auns around their camps there, and non-Gotrok lugian souls into the Summons around the ruins of Linvak Tukal." Both of them whistled low.

"Making a lot of busywork for us. Good job." She gave me a thumbs-up.

"Thanks. It's a slow and horrible way to come back into the world, but at least they CAN come back. I won't bring back everyone, but this should bring back a huge number of those who died in the Fall over time, especially the civilians, since they are beyond Resurrection magic."

"I have a tether to Master Harlune's wife." I stopped typing entirely to join Kris in looking over at Briggs, impressed at his discovery. The screen he had up indicated prominent souls that the System had hooks into and might want to bring back for purposes of manipulation in the future, potentially as recreated NPC's. We looked at some of the names on there, and Asheron's name was prominent on the list. Happily, Aerefalle's name was not.

The Queen Mother's long-dead husband, father of King Borelean, Thorsten Cragstone's name was.

"Freeholder Island is going to be very busy," Kris predicted, as I resumed typing, and abruptly that name vanished from Briggs' list, along with several others.

"And now I know how to bring back Harlune's wife." I hummed happily as Runecoding zipped across multiple screens, reorganizing how souls were being allocated and what Summons would be spawned where. Master Harlune had never given up on Alia Dunolmad, and this was going to be the best reward we could give him.

"How much longer?" Kris asked calmly.

"Estimating thirty-seven minutes. Slowed by the inputs." The two of them lifted eyebrows incredulously at the speed of Runecode flashing across multiple screens.

"Maybe a million symbols of Code to add in and work around the existing Code structure, then remove any notifications of them as the System reworks itself and makes accommodations slowly so as not to trip any alarms or down periods. No, scratch that, I'll include an unplanned maintenance period in reaction to the Void Mana intrusion we set up, that should cover the rebooting."

I hummed happily as more Code spun up in my head and one of the screens hopped, skipped, and jumped to a different command screen inside the magitech command structure.

"Instant programming possible? If so, draw on me and just wash in whole sections of Code at once," Kris said. I only flinched a moment.

"Got about a hundred Valences-worth of programs to input." Or a thousand mana, at least.

"It's fine," she said without hesitation.

"Then here I go." I pulled at her vast sink of a Mana Pool, all of it infused with the essence of being born from her own vitality and lifeforce, absolutely bare of anything elemental or in the manafield, effectively untraceable to the Wards here. Screens flashed up, and the section of my Visual File I'd been devising code in faster than I could type with four limbs and Zeks' Telekinesis began to empty out at one Level of direct copy-paste through the console into the command structure per six seconds.

Briggs crossed his arms, grinning at the display as so much damn Runecode flashed up and past and on to the next before he could actually register it.

"Now that is some right nasty brain-flexing. Can't even follow the writing, let alone what it means." He rubbed his pale green eyes and looked down at Kris, who was likewise rubbing her eyes and averting them.

"Eternal Magic. Just beyond my comprehension, I think." She shared a look with him. This whole System was basically Eternal-grade Artificing. It could be done by Primos and Forsaken, with enough resources. With the correct tools, they could even use this command console without too much effort.

"Fifteen minutes," Kris said, standing up stoically as mana was pulled out of her in quantities that she'd never felt before, making her feel like a big sucking hole was opening up inside of her. It was going to take her days to fill it back up, without a doubt, and involve a lot of pain in doing so. All for a Good Cause, in the end.

The wall in front of us was blank, but invisible lines of magic were extending out into the distance. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Scryviews will come up and the System forget anything 'ported out of here as soon as it closes. Our drooling friend will receive a Delayed Modify Memory and a Lesser Restoration after that, waking him up and he won't even know he's been out." A Phantom Servant was keeping him carefully in an upright position, set to dissipate as soon as the Techie in his navy robe was back and awake.

"Let's go kill a prince who died over thirty thousand years ago," Kris smiled, all eight canines eagerly on display. I wove the Portal into existence with a Valence VIII, hooking into the threads of magic prepared for us. Briggs and Kris hopped in ahead of me, and I followed on their heels. Thirty seconds later, the Portal swirled out of existence. The Scryviews returned to a slightly different set than the Techie had been looking at, but the memories being introduced to him would explain those, too…

There were alarm spells that should have activated when the escape Portal structure at the bottom of Geraine's most hidden lair in Dereth, located well under a random mountain in the Espers, lit up and disgorged two forms through it almost instantly. A Source and Null Aura swallowed the spells and suppressed them cleanly. The third figure who came through registered nothing, despite holding clear magical power, swallowed inside those Auras. The foot of her Staff tapped once, twice, thrice.

The Portal winked out, the alarm spells dissipated quietly under a Caster Level completely beyond their ability to resist, and the local Wards were unwoven and reassembled to ignore her presence, inserted into the magic with the same permissions as their master. The two towering Empyrean crystal guardians at the far end of the room hadn't moved as yet, and her magic swirled out and bade them ignore the trio.

She pointed ahead with the Lost Lights around her Staff, and the taller man and woman next to her strode forward without hesitation.

Prince Geraine was brooding in his private study. The collection of tomes there was not nearly as extensive as those lost not so long ago in his private library, but some of them were still even older than he was, tomes gathering the collected wisdom and lore of multiple Empyrean kingdoms and the greatest of their sages, the whispers of madmen, and the derived knowledge passed on from unmentionable Entities no mere mortal, Empyrean or otherwise, could command.

Still, his senses were keen, his wariness of assassins was constant, and if this chamber was deep into stone, with no way in except with Portal Magic from a specific location to a specific room only he knew, that certainly didn't mean the inventive couldn't find him somehow. He'd had a great amount of experience with tireless trackers given the nature of who he was… Thus, the familiar skritching sound didn't escape him as he was reading. For a moment, he couldn't believe it, that it was impossible.

Still, his glowing red eyes rose from the Conrastaerum Folio of Mendegas the Vespered Vaunt, a legendary Summoner of ancient Dericost. He had read the tome numberless times, and yet each time something seemed different about it, the way a word was arranged, the placement of a period, the turn of a serif seemed to have a different profound meaning than the last time, leading his thoughts down new and wary roads to trod.

He knew such things were signs of cognition traps by both Entities and other master mages, and welcomed the challenge of resisting them, even as he learned more each time… Still, his musings were cut short by the appearance of a pale pink muzzle around a corner, followed by a narrow head with beady black eyes, whiskers twitching as the pale mouse sniffed the air incessantly, following the odor of decaying books and ancient leather and hides to somewhere there might be food. A filthy, dirty, white mouse. Here!

Geraine cast his thoughts out, looking for signs of forced entry, or some cracks in his Wards or defenses, but found nothing. That didn't mean a crack wasn't there, as rocks could shift, passages in the stone open, and vermin would find their way in. The mouse froze as it met his gaze, instantly paralyzed with fear. Geraine raised a finger, and expended barely any power at all to reach out and snuff the rat's life force.

It would have exploded, except it was blasted to black ash much too quickly, and it was more like a puff of dust that just collapsed and fell to a smear of blackness on the floor. He could see the last tiny little turd it had shat upon his home on the carpet. Which droppings would lead inevitably back to whatever crack or hole it had come through on its way here.

Dust-management utility spells were tedious, but he had been Casting them for thirty millennia, and cleaning up after the little thing would be a non-issue, except the cleaning spells would also eliminate the trail. He had to mentally turn them off for a moment if he was going to track the little monstrosity. Sighing with lungs that had withered long ago for lack of need to draw breath, he closed the Conrastaerum quietly and set it aside, getting up from behind his desk to devote his time to… finding a mousehole.

Perhaps he really should invest in a servant, although such things were always exposures to one in his position, a weakness that could be used against him. He stepped out into the hallway, gentle magic wafting along the floor and finding a trail of mouse pellets to follow, not incidentally scooping them up as they went. He took a step forward. He had been attacked by assassins many times, but even he had to admit the mastery displayed this time was sublime.

The Dagger went into his right ear as he rounded the corner, and as it did so it sliced through each and every single defensive spell and Contingency he had active, penetrating through right into his brain and nearly snuffing the spark of his unlife on the instant. Bloody black Health Qi bloomed violently, forcing the Dagger back even as the energies in it, hungering for his existence with single-minded purpose, tried to reach the remnants of his soul… and failed, of course.

The Hammer came around and hit the side of his head with a pick-like point, driving his skull right into the wall, not incidentally punching the Dagger's point back in as it did so. The same kind of flaring energies drove into his brain as more Health Qi erupted, and then two sets of incredibly strong hands were on his arms and hands, the manasphere was both burning and as solid as steel, the dimensions were locked down, and a third person materialized right in front of him.

She lifted her jetsilver Staff, a glaive-like Blade of jetsilver filled with stars and girt in gold and the lethal illumination of the Lost Light rose high. A Sound, a Chord of magic purer than he had ever felt rose in the air, and So Much Damn Magic gathered on that Glaive. Then the Lady Magos of Freehold struck.