Tree of Aeons

331. Relic II

331

Year 304

“Is it ready?” I asked Hawa, hoping, perhaps, that he would have got it done earlier. Initially he expected it to be done by Year 307.

“Not yet. But come to Satrya. I have something else for you.” 

Ah well, I suppose we would have to explore the rest of the Sun-Rings while we wait.

Lumoof teleported to Satrya, the Hawan world with the various divine relics, and we landed in the Hawa priesthood’s quiet hideout faraway from the rest of the known world. 

When Lumoof arrived, the high priests and priestesses were all in prayer. There were hundreds of men and women, all wearing golden robes, they sang and chanted, and at this very moment, they channeled fairly strong divine energies in the air. 

Lumoof felt Hawa’s aura brush against our’s presence was like the gentle lappings of water on the shore.

“You have come.” A knight covered in golden armor from head to toe with glowing blue eyes stood in front of Lumoof. He wasn’t there just a second before, but the moment he appeared, all the priests and priestesses’ heads were on the floor, kneeling and praying. The chants somehow got louder.

This appearance of Hawa was surprisingly real, for a summoning manifestation. “I have a tool for you. Something that should help you seek out my followers. Even now, across the stars, there are followers of my faith in worlds far, far away from where I can reach. These will allow you to commandeer those who believe and act as if you too, work with my voice.”

In the golden knight’s hand, was a golden circlet. A relic. [Hawa’s Circlet of Divinity].

“Why?” Lumoof asked. 

“Because even now, I sense the presence of my followers trapped behind the barrier. There are survivors even within there, though, I do not know what form they take.”

Lumoof frowned, but he could feel that I was hesitant to accept an object I didn’t fully understand, especially a divine relic. 

I wondered, however little, if this is a trap.

“If you’re concerned that this is a trap, trust my word that it is not.” Hawa answered. “I understand that it is normal to be skeptical, and yes, I have a few means to act through my relics, but I intend to help my people on the other side. Even if just to get them here.”

“Give us some time to think about it.”

***

The gigantic Sun-Rings hovered over their sun, drawing its energies out and turning it into a deep, black geyser. Even after all this while, witnessing how that constant jet of void mana blotted out half the sky was an amazing sight. 

“Do you think there’s really something underneath all of that stuff?” Stella mused, the presence of so much void mana made her feel a little drunk. She was slightly flushed and had to consciously shut out the ambient void mana. There was so much of it that the void mana seemed to swirl around her like a thick mist of darkness, and gave her a mythical, otherworldly appearance.

“You alright?” Lumoof checked.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine. Just- I normally try to draw in void mana from the surroundings. This place has so much of it that I have to remember to shut it out.” Stella said, as she waved the mist of darkness away. “Well, let’s go?”

Stella’s powers were much stronger here. She could easily call on the ambient void mana to do things not possible elsewhere. 

The domain holders landed on the Sun-Rings and began to search. This time, their focus was something hidden underneath all that strange metallic steel. Something that represented an older past. 

***

The domain holders moved quietly and did our best to mask our presence. This was evidently successful, because we kept walking and the demon kings still did not appear. 

“I wonder how they'd pick up on our presence the first time.”

“We had the rest of the Order.” Lumoof remembered. “Maybe that’s why. This time it’s just us.”

Hoyia sat out the dungeon exploration. She decided her presence on Twinspace to guide the development of Twintrees was far more important than whatever the dungeon divers had to do. 

Lausanne looked around, and she had to shield herself the most. The void mana in the air could easily ignite when in contact with her star mana and even if the density in the ambient air wasn’t thick enough to cause a huge explosion, it would still cause small burns. A minor, unnecessary inconvenience. “I missed it the first time around. The [Dream Academy] is impressive, but somehow, being here in person...”

There was a scale to the entire structure. 

“This is something called a Dyson-ring.” Stella said. “A magical equivalent, I suppose. Something that drains the energy of a sun. Conceptually though, we still don’t understand why they need to drain it from the sun. The planetary core is the key to the realm’s power.”

“Unless the suns are on the other side of the magical equation. They form a balance with the realm’s power in some way.”

Alka speculated. “In ancient myths there is a common type of origin story, where each world has both a mother, and a father. The mother is the womb, and the father is the seed. We see this is void and star mana being on sort of opposite ends-”

“So are we leaving half of the powers out there on the table because we’ve been concentrating on the creation side of powers?” Stella wondered.

“I found something.” Roon interrupted and hopped over to what appeared to be a small hatch. Lumoof touched it, and a root extended out of his hand and began to explore where that hatch led them. 

“Why would they build a hatch into this thing?” 

“Is it even the only one?”

“It’ll take a while.” Lumoof said as his magical roots ventured into the hatch. It was fairly deep.. “The rest of you can keep searching. Once we map out the entire Sun-Rings we can come back and decide what to do.”

“This is a lot of divine energy to spend on a random finding from a book.” Edna poked Alka a little, and the dwarf merely ignored the knight. 

“Eh.” Roon countered. “This feels like adventurer work, and I honestly like it. It reminds me of a much, much easier time of my life. Many adventurers found their big break by hyper-fixating on one particular item on some obscure tome somewhere.”

“I’m with Roon.” Johann said through their shared connection. Each of the domain holders spread out, and interestingly, we found more hatches and holes. Each led into the Sun-Rings. Some appeared to be impact craters that left deep gashes, but were not repaired.

A lot of these hatches and holes led into some old tunnels, and through the use of magic, they discovered that there really was a series of tunnels deep within these gigantic Sun-Rings.

It wasn’t a solid block of metal around the sun, instead, it was a really thick shell that was wider than Freshka’s sprawling city. Then, underneath that extremely thick shell of metal and crystals, were a series of tunnels filled with numerous pillars and beams. 

This design wasn’t uniform throughout the Sun-Rings. Some parts had more solid metal parts, some parts less. There was also a constant flow of magic running through the Sun-Rings, conducted by the unique types of metal within the solid parts. 

“If I was a mage I’d stay here and study all day.” Stella said.

“But you are a mage.” Roon teased. 

“But this is not my type of magic. Okay, fine, if I were some kind of ley line mage, I’d be interested in whatever these Sun-Rings are doing. There was some kind of pattern woven throughout the Sun-Rings... maybe we should map them out first?”

“That sounds like a lot of work.” Roon emphasized. Mapping the magical flows of something as gigantic as the Sun-Rings, in hopes of learning how they work was a monumental affair. 

“It is a lot of work. But we’ll learn something.” The void mage said. “There’s probably a better way to do it.”

“Do you think we can do it without attracting the attention of the demon kings?” The ranger asked.

“What, you’re afraid of them?” Stella decided to counter Roon’s question. “We can deal with the demon kings. Besides, we’ll move fairly discreetly. Once we build something that can scan these Sun-Rings, then we deploy it everywhere and work with that.”

It was a technological endeavour, as Stella’s request now had to be dealt with by the mages, crafters, and engineers of the Order. A large-scale magical monitoring tool to detect and understand the Sun-Rings’ inner magical movements. 

“I’ll head back and get the researchers started on the tools we need.” Stella said. 

***

While the domainholders prepared for the second visit to the Sun-Rings, I also had studies of my own. The two new heroes of Caval and their growing weapons were of great interest, and as we studied the weapon in greater detail, I realized they were not too complicated.

They leeched off their main hero’s souls and used a fragment of their main hero’s souls. 

This was then carved into something that resembled an artificial soul. Only, it was made using star mana parts.

In short, these were just star mana variants of artificial souls. They took shapes and forms differently, in order to manage the eccentricities of working with star mana and the unique qualities of that such a material provided. 

Of all the parts of the hero swords, there was a part that was truly worth studying. A way to create star mana.

Within each of these living swords, there was a large, wheel-like structure that somehow spun existing star mana into more star mana, inexplicably turning ten into eleven. It was a very, very slow process, which explained why the various hero swords throughout Caval needed to recharge, but still could restore themselves  given a long enough timeframe.

Naturally, I began to experiment on my own and attempted to replicate these structures in regular artificial souls. 

They failed almost immediately, as these structures themselves, made from regular, non-star mana and non-hero soul materials, collapsed on their own weight.

But I didn’t stop and made more refinements to these structures. I tweaked the thickness of their spiritual frames and the latticework of how the tiny soul particles were stitched together. Bit by bit the structure began to hold together.

All to pursue the hope of achieving star mana generation. 

Working with normal soul fragments, I still failed. The regular materials were not strong enough. So, I thought that it might need something more resilient as the base. Either a hero’s soul fragment or a domain holder.

Naturally, I looked to my domain holders.

And Lausanne volunteered to help me.

Lausanne’s [domain] ability allowed her to copy hero abilities, but the creation of a living hero sword was a bit of hero ability and also that of the spirit. She could copy the abilities of the hero sword, but not its growth effects, which was a result of the soul-structure of the sword. 

I suspected that I needed a bit of her soul to attempt to reverse engineer the hero’s ability, and without hesitation, the elven lady gave me a bit of her soul. 

I had to cut it out of her, but it was surprisingly easy when she did not resist. A domain holder’s soul fragment was heavier. It had a mass to it that normal soul fragments didn’t. 

If normal souls felt like holding on to blocks of regular sand, then a domain holder’s soul felt like a heavy stone. It had a spiritual weight and moving it around actually took time and effort.

But as I predicted, it was infinitely easier to get it to create a living weapon. That weight and mass bent and changed as I applied the weight of my [Soul Forge].

“It feels strange.” Lausanne said as she watched the process through my [dream academy]. “I can still feel a connection to whatever you’re doing. It’s like I’m also there and here.”

Lausanne’s own soul was quick to heal the scar left by the removed fragment, and I wondered, to some extent, could I do a whole ‘ship-of-theseus’ thing where I created a full extension of herself. 

A clone of a domain holder. 

That was just so insane, but someday, why not. If I could clone myself as a result of my domain abilities, surely other domain holders could do the same. 

But for now, what I tried to do was simpler. 

I tended to the tiny bit of domainholder’s soul fragment and noticed that if I fed it enough of my spiritual energy, I could grow it. Just a little bit, and yet, I realized there was tremendous potential for this ability.

All because a domain holder’s soul fragment was, in some ways, similar to Titan Frames. They could be molded. 

And so, copying the structures found within the still growing living [hero swords], I was finally able to create a copy.

The first Star Mana Generator, carved from Lausanne’s soul fragment. But the success was short lived, as the fragment, now shaped into its own little independent artificial soul, lacked the peripheral structures to maintain its form as the star mana began to erode the rest of the things.

It collapsed.

I copied the [Hero Sword]’s star mana generation ability, but the supporting structures were not robust enough to withstand the presence of star mana. 

My spiritual tendrils quickly intervened to prevent it from total loss, and even Lausanne could feel it. She winced as the structure almost collapsed. “It felt like a part of me was getting crushed.”

“Oh. Sorry about that.” I apologized. “Let me try again.”

I tried to build a smaller structure, but alas, it wasn’t small enough. The soul fragment I took from Lausanne was still too small to both be a frame and also a component.

So, instead, I thought of mixing and matching and used one of my multiple ‘spare’ Titan Frames. These things were large soul fragments empowered by my ability, and so, I inserted Lausanne’s soul fragment into the Titan Frame.

At that moment, the soul fragment suddenly flashed, and the Titan Frame itself warped. 

“Spear.” Lausanne said, as if she had a strong feeling in her heart. “Get a spear!”

I immediately obtained a spear from my treasury, and then, the Titan Frame immediately bonded with the spear. The spear itself, turned and transformed as something that contained a bit of the both of us. 

I could feel my link to the spear, and it seemed, Lausanne could as well. 

[Aeon-Lausannian Living Star Spear. Level 100.] 

“Eh?”  Lausanne reacted, surprised by the spear’s presence. It was as if two trees were twisted together to form a spear, but one of those trees took the appearance of a sea of shimmering stars. 

“Eh.”

“Hello.” The spear spoke back to us through that same spiritual connection.

“EH!” Lausanne jerked in surprise. 

“Ah. It seems I forgot that Titan Frames are able to maintain a mind of their own. Hello, what should we call you?”

“It is for my parents to name me.” The living spear answered. 

“Parents.” Lausanne wanted to faint. I found it hilarious that this thing considered itself my child. In a way, it wasn’t wrong. The living spear was something created from both of us, her fragment and my titan frame.

“I better not give names.” I answered. “It would be a terrible thing for me to do anything, especially a living spear.” 

The heroic domainholder stared at the spear in great amusement once she recovered herself. She approached the [Living Spear] and wondered for herself, just what exactly it should be.

“Lightwood.” Lausanne declared, as if the word came to her by heart. “You, my dearest spear-son, will be Lightwood, and you will be the spear that sets the world of demons aflame.”

“Yes, mother-” 

I didn’t quite realize the power of names, then, because the spear transformed once more, as this time, it pulled energies from the world around us. The spear immediately gained a relic-like aura and radiated the power of divinity. 

A spear made by two domain holders. A weapon that was even stronger than the hero items of the [hero’s forge]. 

A relic unique to Lausanne.

“I think the other domain holders will want something of the sort too.” Lausanne smiled.

“A sentient, talking weapon for each domainholder sounds quite horrific.”

“What? I believe it is very much expected for us. Edna’s Quest Swords are already very powerful, but if we mix that with your [Titan Frames], imagine what could be made? Or if Johann’s dragon was fused with one.”

“I had not known that it was possible.” I countered, but I wondered whether I should abuse the [soul forge] and blend it with my domainholders to create something even more. 

“Certainly not so easy. I believe there may be a spiritual structure or form that you need to discover before you could do so. A secret pattern that is hidden within each type of fusion. But I look forward to using this against the demon kings.”

I briefly remembered the words of the wisp when I first unlocked the [Soul Forge]. The soul truly is one of the most incredible powers in the world.