Chương 488: (481) 7.19. Let’s Make a Deal

Silence stretched across the void as everything froze all at once. The rolling, ever-moving darkness halted in place, as though someone had flipped a switch and cut the power keeping everything in motion. The shadow hand actively gripping him paused, seeming to relax ever so slightly and freeing him from its cold embrace. Even the darkness creeping up to cover his entire body had stopped, just a few inches shy of his mouth.

As Vin stood there, breathing heavily at the close call, he was surprised to hear the stranger's booming voice somehow radiating from the void around them and from within his head at the same time.

"What did you do?! I was so close to freedom!"

"I made myself invulnerable and immovable," Vin said, smiling as he glanced at the glowing staff locked in his grip.

"Based on how your shadows froze, it seems with you trying to take over me, you got caught up in the ride."

"You absolute bastard! I will strip your skin from its flesh and fashion it into a grimoire dedicated to new spells to torture you and your kin! I will grind your bones into powder and use it to summon a demon to torment you for the rest of eternity! Release me this instant!"

"Wow, those are some incredibly creative threats," Vin said, pretending to think for a moment before shaking his head.

"But if you've been trapped in here for a few centuries, I suppose you had to spend your time doing something. And nah, I don't think I'm going to do that. See, I like not being tortured for all eternity. And I like knowing that you're not going to use my own body to slaughter my friends in front of me."

"You cannot keep this up forever," the voice rang out, and Vin could practically hear the scowl accompanied by it.

"I have been stuck in here for eons. I am used to the passage of time. You will crack long before I do."

"See, you say that, but I have a pretty cool trick that I'm betting you don't have," Vin said, grinning as he focused on one of his favorite skills.

"Did you know the Dormancy skill lets you go to sleep whenever you want?"

"Now hold on—" Vin awoke sometime later, yawning as he came to to the angry shrieks of the stranger calling him some incredibly colorful insults he'd never even heard before.

"Well, that was refreshing," Vin said, smiling down at his shadow-clad body.

"I'll admit, I wasn't entirely certain if I even could sleep like this, seeing as I'm already in my subconscious. I didn't dream, but that's fine. Better than being stuck without even a body, am I right?"

"I will turn you into a plague and force you to bear witness to the end times as your body rots around you! I will liquify your loved ones and bathe in their entrails! I will—Don't you dare!" Vin's head dropped forward once more as he passed out, the last sounds he caught were the being screeching at the top of its lungs. This mildly entertaining cycle was repeated a few more times with the mysterious stranger threatening to kill Vin, Vin's loved ones, Vin's pets, even Vin's children, hilariously enough.

For Vin, who didn't even dream during his uses of Dormancy within his own subconscious, almost no time was passing at all as he skipped from one bout of threats to another. But for the stranger, who no longer even had a body to pace around in or snap his fingers, he was spending hours if not days frozen in place like this. It took roughly a dozen cycles before Vin woke up to anything other than screaming threats.

Silence stretched across the frozen void, and Vin blinked as he realized the stranger had either run dry on threats, or had finally given up. Clearing his throat, he tentatively called out.

"Ready to actually have that talk?"

"What is there to possibly talk about?" the stranger responded, his voice sullen and despondent.

"I thought there was no fate worse than being trapped in here with no chance of escape, only to discover my captors had done me a mercy in making it clear I would never see the light of day again. The taste of potential freedom after all this time… to nearly grab hold of it only to now find myself trapped worse than ever before without even a physical body to walk around in… A fate truly worse than death."

"Out of curiosity… If you really are some sort of super evil wizard, why didn't your captors just kill you in the first place?"

"They certainly tried," the man said, a slight hint of pride flaring up from the darkness.

"While I dabbled in various schools of magic myself, there was one in particular in which I excelled. I was known as Ovord the Undying. Arch Mage of the Soul."

"You're a soul mage?" Vin asked, suddenly finding himself far more nervous than he'd been a few moments ago. Which seemed silly, seeing as he was already in the most precarious situation of his life.

"I was a soul mage," Ovord said, that hint of pride vanishing just as quickly as it had appeared.

"While my captors were unable to truly kill me, they could certainly hurt me. Their attacks were crude and about as skillful as a butcher stabbing into a flank of meat with a knife, but even so, they did enough damage. My soul was shredded to almost nothing before they gave up and decided to seal what remained of me away."

"You say that, but you seemed pretty competent fighting with all those shadows," Vin pointed out.

"You yourself are clearly an expert at fighting with low-tier magic," Ovord countered.

"Just because a spell is weak, that does not mean it is not useful. Magical combat is all about skill, speed, and creativity. I cannot tell you the number of duels I won by firing a tier-2 Fire Arrow through an opponent's heart while they built up the mana to unleash a tier-4 Volcanic Blast or the like. Half of them were foolish enough to not even bother maintaining defensive wards!"

"Not that I'm complaining, but why are you suddenly so willing to talk? I tried pretty hard to get you to stop attacking and talk with me, but you refused to listen." Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"It is the nature of our current situation," Ovord explained.

"From the moment you appeared within my prison, I knew there was only one way things could possibly go. I no longer have a physical form. In order to be free, I need a vessel. Only one of us was going to be getting out of this prison, and after my long sentence I intended it to be me. However, now that we find ourselves in this current predicament, one of which I will admit you happen to have the upper hand… I figured I might as well attempt to grow accustomed to my new eternal prison."

"Did you ever stop to consider that maybe this doesn't have to be our eternal prison?" Vin asked, surprised by how calm and oddly understanding of the situation Ovord was.

"I admire your optimism, but you clearly have not thought this through," Ovord sighed.

"I refuse to allow you to leave without giving me your body, and you refuse to allow me to take control. I am far more skilled than you, but in my weakened state your bonded artifact, which is quite impressive, I have to say, is more powerful than me. Thus, we are at an impasse. If your artifact is as powerful as it feels and does as you claim, I am doubtful your body is even aging right now. Hence, eternal prison."

"I guess that is a pretty cut and dry way of looking at things," Vin said, choosing his next words carefully as he began his pitch.

"But what if it didn't have to be that way?" Silence stretched across the still void, and Vin held his breath as he waited for Ovord's response. Eventually, one word came back to him, echoing throughout the void and from within his head at the same time.

"Explain."

"You're right in that I refuse to let you take over my body," Vin said.

"I can't allow such a thing. However, what I can do is offer you a compromise. I'm sure after the last who knows how many hundreds or thousands of years you've been trapped in here, you've got to be beyond desperate to get out. I might not be willing to give you my body. But I'm willing to let you tag along."

"And how precisely are you intending to do that?" Ovord asked, and Vin grinned when the mysterious mage didn't shoot down his suggestion out of the gate. He was afraid he was going to have to spend a few more cycles of Dormancy to get him to agree to some sort of compromise, but it seemed his hunch was correct. Right now, Ovord was essentially a man who'd been dying of hunger for generations, only to have a big, all-you-can-eat buffet dangled in front of him.

But right before he could reach it and dig in, he'd been nailed down, his prize tantalizingly close, but just out of reach. Vin was fairly confident he could get him to agree to a nice, consolation meal rather than go back to that eternal hunger he'd been suffering from all this time.

"I happen to have the Human Vessel title," Vin said, silently thanking his past self for not giving up the rare growth title back when he had the option. He'd kept it in case Alka ever needed his help again, but he'd never once thought it would be himself who needed it.

"I once let a friend of mine who's a ghost inhabit my body for the better part of a month, and even turned control over to her every now and again so she could stretch her legs and eat real food. Rather than me and you being trapped in here like this, unable to do so much as twitch a muscle for the rest of eternity, I'd be happy to offer you the same deal."

"…I can tell you are speaking the truth," Ovord said, surprising him with his honesty.

"I may have lost nearly all of my power, but I am still skilled at reading the soul. I will admit, I was already prepared to reject whatever foolish offer you were planning to make, but this… this is tempting. However, how do I know you will not simply find a so-called expert in soul magic the moment you are freed and have me exorcised in truth? Even if their skills are inferior, I have barely a shred of the power I once had."

"Trust me, there aren't really a lot of soul mages running around," Vin said, realizing he was going to have to have the 'Edregon talk' with Ovord once he was out of here. At the very least, he had pamphlets to make that much easier than it used to be.

"You said it yourself, you can tell when I'm speaking the truth, right? Then I'll make this easy for you. So long as I don't discover you're messing with my soul or the souls of anyone around me without permission, I promise you I won't do as you fear. Though I will warn you, if I do find you are attempting to subtly alter anyone, myself included, I will do whatever it takes to find a way to kill you.

And before you get any big ideas, I not only have the Total Resistance skill, the Survivor title, and a divine boon defending me, I also know a little bit of soul magic. At least enough to peer inward and see if my soul is the same as it's always been. You're going to have a pretty rough time trying to play around with my soul." Even with all of his overlapping defenses, Vin was still incredibly hesitant about letting Ovord benefit from his human vessel title. That said, there really wasn't any other alternative.

With the time dilation they were currently under, he had no idea exactly how long had passed out in the real world, but the fact that his friends hadn't tried anything to save him in all that time certainly wasn't a good sign. If Vin didn't do anything, he might very well remain trapped as he currently was for all eternity.

"You are quite the paranoid one, aren't you," Ovord muttered in response to his warnings.

"Yet again, you speak the truth. And again, I admit I see how this deal benefits us both. Very well, wandering Arch Mage in training. I will accept the terms of your deal. Even if it would be as little more than an echo, I long for the stimulation of the world once more. Even if it is nothing like I remember after all this time."

"Trust me, it's not going to be at all like you remember," Vin chuckled. He still had plenty of misgivings about trusting Ovord at his word, but a strange sense of certainty swept through him that seemed to come from almost nowhere. It almost felt like the knowledge he knew to be true that he received from his Common Ally title, but he'd never felt it so powerfully before.

"I guess we can't really shake on it. How does this work? I've never had to back down from a Mexican standoff before."

"I don't know what that is, but worry not. If you focus on your title, I can shift the force of my efforts to merge with you. You should inherently understand what I am doing."

"Alright," Vin said, waiting for Ovord to get started. Just as he promised, Vin felt a new sensation of something trying to gently push against his chest, which was a welcome change from the shadows trying to take over his entire body. Unlike before, his Human Vessel title was designed to allow him to take passengers along for the ride like this. But even as Ovord tried to merge with him, he was stuck. He couldn't do a damn thing until Vin canceled the effects of his artifact.

Praying he wasn't making some huge mistake, Vin tightened his grip on his staff and lifted it off the ground. Instantly, the dark, rolling shadows of the void whipped into action again. Yet rather than shoot tentacles out to grab him or try to rip the staff from his hands, they quickly quieted down.

"Are you ready?" Ovord asked, the shadow covering his body having condensed to a single point near the center of his chest.

"Ready when you are," Vin said, grinning down at the pool of shadows as it sunk into his chest and nestled within his title. The sensation was cold, but not unpleasant.

"Just try not to freak out too much when you see the state of our current world, alright? Or whatever the hell my friends ended up doing to secure my body while we were hashing things out. They can be a little too creative given enough time."