Magic is Programming

Carlos paid very little attention to his surroundings, or even his actions, during the move. He mechanically packed up his tent, which was a rather abbreviated job with the auto-packing enchantment on it, took his seat on Esmorana's flying transport, and set up in the new Level 17 campsite, and almost didn't even remember any of it. He was too absorbed in thinking about his new discovery and what to do with it.

We brainstormed, discussed, and agreed on a list of 12 soul structures for each theme, with the last one being a bit tentative. We didn't consider that 13 might be possible. So, what do we add? For the soul theme, since that's what we're finishing up right now… He chewed his lip. We got the analyzer enchantment to stop detecting our current soul disguise, but I don't know if that's actually the top end of what we might have to fool. Who knows how good Crown Mage Felton's personal senses are? The one potential giveaway that we know of is how hard and inflexible the really big superstructures are, so maybe something to make our souls and their contents more flexible? Can I make the synergies on that work?

Carlos reviewed the list. A lot of these automatically have synergy with everything. For the rest… Soul disguiser and soul scan falsifier are trivially obvious; the reason I came up with the idea for a soul flexibilizer in the first place is to improve the disguises and falsifications. Soul hardener synergy… Hmm. That one's meant to make our souls more resilient, and in particular resistant to erosion, such as from too-powerful aether. A saying about bending rather than breaking comes to mind, though. Hardness and flexibility are both improvements to resilience, and I think I can make that work for synergy.

That leaves the soul decoy defense; essentially the same kind of thing we made to neutralize the Black Blades' sleep spell, but more capable and properly prepared instead of jury-rigged on the spot. It will protect against hostile attempts to attack or influence our souls by presenting a fake for the attack to hit without affecting anything that actually matters. Carlos considered briefly, then nodded. Yes, the ability to make things more flexible should be applicable for improving the decoy. And that's the last synergy in the group, so it'll work for the 13th structure.

Now for the final step before actually making it: Discussing this with Amber.

Amber enthusiastically embraced the idea of making their soul disguises even more impenetrable, of course, almost to the point of ignoring the discovery of being able to add a 13th structure. Carlos insisted on rechecking the analyzer's report after each addition beyond 10. With the soul flexibilizer finished, the magnitude of the difference turned out to finally be enough to convince the analyzer that the superstructure wasn't tier 9 anymore, but its report seemed confused by the readings. "One 'unified structure' at tier 10, and the other at tier 10 with a question mark?" Carlos laughed. "I can just imagine the designer of this thing, trying to think of how best to handle results he thought were impossible."

At 12 component structures, making a tier 12 superstructure, the analysis changed to something more interesting, warning about an anomaly and that the reading of a "tier 11+?" structure could be spurious or artificial. When they finished the final one to max out the soul-themed superstructure at tier 13, they got a surprise.

Adult royal soul, in development.

Level: 17.