Aetherios System: Whirlwind

Chapter 45: Hand Me Down

“No,” Obby said adamantly. “Well, yes… maybe…” he added, much softer, after a few seconds.

“No, yes, maybe?” Alex frowned.

He stared at the small tentacled body Obby was projecting in his head. Just as he typically did, Obby was showing a vaguely humanoid shape, with one large eye and sharp teeth in a wide mouth. Where the rest of his body would usually be a light bluish-purple, there was a harsh red tint to the body now.

For the last couple of hours, Alex had felt the slow-building anger coming from his connection with the sentient item. In fact, it was building up from the very moment the Church of Beldia was even mentioned.

Something was going on, and Alex wasn’t going to let Obby just skirt by on this topic yet again. He needed full answers.

“You are just, maybe, a follower of some long-ago evil deity cultivator?” Alex crosses his arms, still throwing eye-daggers at the projection. “I’m going to need more than that, Obby. I told you from the very beginning, all the way back in Doudra’s cave, that I didn’t trust you. You’ve had some weird moments, and I let them go, but not anymore, not now. Start talking.”

Obby looked at him for a few long seconds, the tentacles that were his arms twitching back and forth, the pupil of his large eye growing and dilating over and over again.

“I…. don’t know,” he finally said.

“Not good enough.” Alex shook his head. “Tell me everything, or I sever this connection for good and toss you away. It's as simple as that. No more games, Obby.”

“I’m telling the truth, Alex. I don’t know.” The little body seemed to quiver for a moment. “Its like I said before, I don’t have access to all of my memories. Things are locked away, hidden from me. I can’t give you full answers even if I wanted to. I don’t even know what I am, or how I came to be, let alone anything else.”

Alex didn’t flinch at all, watching Obby the entire time he talked. He saw no hint that he was lying, but that didn’t mean a whole lot.

Obby created and projected his illusory body himself. Thus, it was easy to think that anything it did, he controlled. So it might not give any tells that he’s lying.

But…

After so many weeks interacting with the rock, Alex had noticed a few things. One being that Obby didn’t fully control every single aspect of his appearance as he first assumed. There were times he had seemingly real reactions to things, even when he was trying to hide it from Alex. Reactions that almost seemed too human to be fake.

If Obby was indeed lying, Alex was pretty damn confident he’d be able to notice it.

“You’ve been pissed ever since the church was mentioned. So you absolutely do know something. What is it? What’s going on?”

“Something in me is reacting that way, yes. But I don’t know why. It’s frustrating as all hell. I know something about the Church of Beldia makes me angry, but not what.” Obby tapped at his bulbous head a few times. “Oh, and I know that little story that Brielle told you; it's a fantasy. Those events didn’t go down the way she said they did.”

“The entry into the ascendant realms? The plan to betray the divine six? The defeat by their hands? What part is fantasy?” Alex asked.

“I don’t know!” Obby nearly yelled back at him, his body flashing a deep red for a moment.

Alex stepped back a little. He’d seen Obby angry, pissed even, but he’d never seen anything like that. He seemed more than just angry. Something else was going on, Alex had to push a little deeper.

“Okay, what do you think is going on here, Obby? Give me a theory, anything.” If being antagonistic wasn’t the route that would get him answers, Alex could try being empathetic.

“I… I… think that…” Obby spun, looping upside down then back again. “I think I was created by a follower of this God of Magic, designed to pass on his knowledge. Might be a cult follower? Something like that.”

That was certainly a theory, but not one Alex was willing to bet on. It had to be more than something that simple.

“A follower of this guy, capable of creating a sentient item like you? I really doubt that, Obby. You’re special, different than anything I’ve seen or heard about. We both know it.”

That part was true.

Alex had never even heard of another item in Aetherios that was like Obby. Nothing that had thoughts, or even mimicked emotions like a human. There were ‘programs’, scripts created through enchantments, runes, and glyphs that worked like any other basic computer program he knew of back on Earth, but nothing even scratching the surface of the complexity of Obby. Not even close.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Anyone capable of making the rock, with its complex intelligence, and the locked knowledge connected to a bonded mage, they would need to be a genius.

Nothing short of a Supreme Aegis would be capable of it, and maybe not even then.

“I agree, I am a bit different,”Obby said smugly.

Alex rolled his eyes.

“And mages have better ways of passing down their knowledge than creating a single sentient item,” Alex pointed out. “We are doing this whole tournament just for the chance to enter an inheritance dungeon, after all. That’s an Inheritance for an Aegis, let alone something connected to the first ever Celestial Cultivator in millennia.”

“Fair points, yes.” Obby continued to spin in the air. “I would be careful to assume that Arnan made me himself. I feel like he would have made something far better than just little old me. As amazing as I am—and, I am—I’d be a liar to say this God of Magic wouldn’t be able to theoretically do better.”

“He’d make a proper Inheritance, for sure,” Alex agreed. “Probably something inside the ascendant realm, if he wanted to conquer it.”

“Unless… he didn’t have much time to do it.” Obby suddenly stopped spinning.

“What do you mean?”

Obby floated closer to him, his large eye now looming in Alex’s vision. “If this God of magic only had a drastically short amount of time, just before fighting against the divine six, for example, to create something to pass on his legacy? That would explain things, no?”

“You think that you, a little rock, were created by this Despicable One as a last-ditch effort to pass on his entire legacy?” Alex asked incredulously.

“He instilled his knowledge and his last thoughts and emotions, thus why I hate the Church, and I’m guessing the rest of the divine six, so much.”

Now that… did make some sense.

“But, I still can’t imagine that he didn’t have an Inheritance Dungeon created already. He was breaking into some new realm, anything could have gone wrong, so surely he would have left behind something just in case,” Alex said.

“Maybe. Yes, more than likely. But if he did, it sounds like it was never found, not even after all this time since. I’m pretty sure that would have been a huge historical moment for Aetherios, no? You flesh sacks love stories, it would have been a part of Brielle’s little lecture, surely.”

Alex hated when Obby was right, and he was starting to sound more and more right as their conversation went on.

“So, he made an Inheritance, but it was never found. He fought the divine six, and was defeated. Killed, or banished outside the System somehow, yet he made you just before?” Alex summarized.

“Yes, must be.”

“I’m still not getting much in the way of warm and fuzzies about you not being completely evil and one day trying to kill me and all my friends.” Alex added. “If you were made by the Despicable One to pass on his legacy, that means all his warped and twisted thoughts and plans are inside you as well. Does that go along with your obsession with that golden energy?”

“Oh, no, I doubt that. The origin energy is simply a very potent power. One I am certain will help you, and me, both. Such as by releasing some of the restrictions I have on my knowledge, which are still there because you refuse to increase your wisdom stat.” Obby wiggled his arms at Alex angrily.

“See, that. Things like that are what make me pretty certain you’re evil. Why did you need to be restricted? Maybe you were found, and people sealed you up for a reason? Think about it Obby.”

“Nah. If someone antagonistic to my creator found me and realized what I was, surely they would have just destroyed me, no? I wouldn’t have been sealed and then just tossed into a forest and forgotten about.”

That's... also true.

Alex found himself rubbing at his temples as a headache started to form even inside his soulspace. This was getting complicated, too complicated. He was pretty sure that Obby was one of a kind, something he’d never find or make on his own without becoming a sixth tier mage himself.

Which meant he was immensely valuable.

But, it sounded like he was the creation of some big bad evil guy?

Or… if Obby was to be believed, there was something else going on, more to the story. Always more, more layers to peel back, more to uncover. Alex felt like he was trapped in an onion. Just too many layers.

Maybe both could be true?

There really always were two sides to every story, weren’t there?

Alex heard the Church’s version of events. And Obby said there was more to the story than just that. He was, admittedly, inclined to believe him. Based on what he knew of churches, history, and humans, what really went down and what ends up being taught to later generations aren’t always the same thing. Not exactly, anyway.

So the questions that mattered were as follows:

Was Obby evil, and planning to eventually take over his body and serve some ancient god?

How long would it be until Obby was capable of doing that, if that was his plan?

Could Alex even become powerful enough to get to such a point, without Obby?

Can he stop him if it came to that?

And of course, should he just avoid that potentiality by discarding the rock right then and now?

What’s the play here? He thought in his mind, sans Obby.

In the end, Alex made his decision.

He’d keep Obby.

Maybe it the rock was connected to this God of magic, the Despicable One. Maybe Arnan wasn’t even evil, and the divine six and the church were spinning a yarn.

He’d already learned a few things about this world and its history. It always seems like the go-to way to handle things after a confrontation with an opposing force, was to slander and talk shit about them.

It seems that’s what happened to the Dragons. What happened to the Asura. Hell, it happened to him when Terraxum blamed him for their own actions. Why would it be different now?

Of course, there was also a very selfish reason that Alex decided to continue trusting Obby for the time being. He was powerful, useful, and apparently, he might be the sole ticket into the Inheritance to what might have been the most powerful mage in Aetherios.

“Okay, Obby. I’m not stupid. You might be lying through your stone teeth, but… the Church might be lying too. And you’re far more useful to me than the Church is right now,” Alex said.

“You mean… you actually like me, don’t you, flesh-sack?” Obby smiled at him.

“You’re pushing it, no.”

“Suuuure, okay.”

“Next, let’s say you are actually made by this God of Magic, and are the key to his Inheritance Dungeon. The next question would be: where is it?”

Obby’s reddish color had long faded by then, returning to a bluish-purple. His body pulsed softly, emitting a flash.

“To that I can say, I have no idea.”