Chapter 136: Results
About fifteen minutes later, Tess returned home with Silky and Isabella. “Wow, everything’s so small!” Silky said excitedly, scuttling about the bedroom as she looked at the various pieces of furniture and other assorted belongings that were in the room.
“They are the same size.” Isabella said calmly, floating after Silky. “You are just bigger.”
“I know, but it doesn’t feel that way.” Silky replied. “It feels like everything shrunk.”
The door opened, and Ellie stepped inside. “Welcome ba – whoa.” She said, stopping as she caught sight of Silky. "Silky, is that you?"
"Yup, it’s me!” Silky said cheerfully, making a swift turn so she could rush over to hug Ellie. “I’ve always wanted to hug you and Maven!”
Ellie, looking a little overwhelmed, hugged her back. “I’m…assuming you already hugged Tess, then?”
“Yup! First thing I did!” Silky replied, letting go of Ellie and giving her a smile. “So, what do you – ooh, Maven, hi!”
Ellie gently placed a hand on Silky and guided her out of the doorway so Maven could walk into the room. Once Maven was all the way inside, Silky walked over and gave her a hug as well, beaming all the while.
“So, what do you think?” Silky asked eagerly, twisting about as if she was showing herself off. “Pretty good, right?”
“You look very nice, Silky.” Maven agreed.
“I have to admit, it’s gonna take some getting used to, what with you looking so much like Tess.” Ellie said. “It’s like I’m looking at her younger sister or something.”
“You really think so?” Silky asked bashfully, wriggling in delight. “Thank you!”
“We should probably look into getting a bed for her.” Maven mused. “I had neglected to think of it, but seeing her like this is reminding me.”
“What? No!” Silky said quickly. “I’m not giving up my web! I’ll just go small and keep using it still!” Silky suddenly vanished, two spiders appearing on the floor where she had been standing. They each raised a leg and touched the other, and Silky reappeared. “See?”
“Well, I won’t argue with that.” Maven said, shrugging.
Isabella floated shyly into the middle of the room, now sporting fox ears and a tail similar to the ones Tess had been using recently. “Well?”
“Very cute.” Ellie said, using the same sort of tone that one would use when talking to children or small animals. “And you can switch between them like Tess, right?”
Isabella nodded, switching between a few different types of animals before returning to human. “I’m just going to match.” She said quietly.
“It’s your body.” Ellie said, smiling at her. “Now, wasn’t there some sort of fusion thing going on? What does that look like?”
“I haven’t checked yet.” Tess said. “Want to find out?”
“Yes!” Silky said excitedly. “I’ve really, really wanted to!”
“Alright, let’s start with you, then.” Tess said. “Obviously doing the hybrid appearance thing, since there’s not much of a point if we’ll just look the same.”
“Um…” Isabella said. “Can we go at the same time?”
“I don’t see why not.” Tess said, walking over to Silky. “I imagine I’m going to take an arachne form, so best to do this where there’s a bit of space. Alright, on three. One…two…three!”
Tess activated Hearts as One, and there was a brief sensation of being filled as Silky and Isabella sort of…dissolved into her. Then, much as she had expected, everything became ever so slightly smaller as she became an arachne. She twisted to take a look at her spider half, and the first thing she noticed was that she was now slightly transparent. There was also a red hourglass on top of her spider half, but other than that, she looked basically the same as when she used the Arachne Attribute.
“I don’t know what I expected.” Ellie said. “It’s just like when you used the Arachne Attribute, but you’re transparent and your hair has streaks of black now.”
“How are you feeling?” Maven asked. “Any different?”
“Stronger.” Tess said. “A lot stronger. Makes sense, though, based on their stats, right now my stats should be almost twenty times what they normally are.”
“And how’s the resource consumption?” Ellie asked. “How long can you keep this up?”
“Well, the cost is linear, so it’s forty Mana and Stamina per second.” Tess said. “And, looking at my reserves right now, if I don’t use any Skills or magic…huh. It looks like I’m net positive on Mana, after the expanded pool and all the regen abilities I put on Isabella, and I’m only losing about twenty Stamina a second. I think…again, assuming no Skills are used…oh, I’ve got over an hour like this. I’m really not used to my resource pools being this large. I’ve got over one hundred thousand Stamina, that’s insane.”
“So, what I’m hearing is that, as long as I’m here, you have an effective infinite time limit.” Ellie said, a note of smugness in her tone. “Breath of Life’s Stamina restoration hasn’t really been important, but it’s only got a cooldown of five minutes, and now that I can use both Blessings at once we don’t even have to pick and choose which is better for the situation.”
| Death: Three, actually. It’s gone down since you became a Higher Being. The Blades of Death are a bit more effective, too. Dungeons: And the numbers are a bit better for Maven’s Blessing as well. Not a big surprise, your souls are significantly more suited to Worship now. Fortune: Your Blessing isn’t any better, sorry, Tess. There’s, uh, not much that can be done to improve it. At this point I feel confident saying it’s far and away the strongest of any Blessing, so…take that as you will, I guess. Tess: Well, it’s not like I haven’t improved leaps and bounds in other areas. I’ve probably grown more than any Appointed has, if this whole Domain thing is any indicator Life: Correct. Amy has been making notes of the observed changes, and even though growth is often hard to truly quantify, it is clear you have grown an order of magnitude more than anyone else. Ellie: Come to think of it, what do Silky and Isabella think of this? Have they been saying anything? Fortune: No. They’re not conscious during this. Tess will get some pointers on how to use their abilities by virtue of system aid and her connection with them, but they won’t be able to give active input. They’ll remember everything afterwards, though. Even this window, which they normally can’t see. Death: Hi Silky, Isabella! Ellie: Oh yeah, since we’re on the topic, I have a question regarding them but it’s probably best done when they can’t see this. Tess: I’ll undo the Skill now
|
Tess stopped using Hearts as One, and soon Silky and Isabella were standing next to a humanoid Tess.
“Aw, I want to know what it is!” Silky said, pouting. “Why can’t we know?”
“It’s a real long-shot and I don’t want to get your hopes up.” Ellie replied.
“It’s okay.” Isabella said quietly. “We really don’t need to know. Silky, let’s go look at the rest of the house together now that you’re big.”
“Good idea.” Maven said. “Be careful not to break anything, though; you’re a lot stronger than you used to be.”
“We’ll be careful!” Silky promised, already leading Isabella over to the door. “Promise!”
| Fortune: I think I know what it is. You want to ask if we can give them proper souls, right? Ellie: I did, actually. How did you know? Fortune: Tess asked me the same thing quite some time ago. I checked with Amy on it, and the answer is yes with a big asterisk. Tess: Oh yeah, I forgot about that, what with everything. What do you mean big asterisk? Fortune: For one, ethical implications. Right now, they’re technically little more than elaborate artificial intelligences using Tess’s soul and built in system behavior to act more like people. Were it not for the arrangement they’re in, they’d be completely mindless. However, if we grant them souls, then we’d effectively be having people in a position of absolute subservience to Tess. Which, granted, is something that can be worked around if we find willing volunteers, but those will be probably next to nonexistent. Ellie: And they’d keep their memories of their lives as people, right? That would be weird, yeah Fortune: Actually, no. Putting souls into a body is not an easy task if you want to keep their memories intact. The only reason resurrection magic works is because of some systems we’ve made to anchor souls to their bodies for some time after death instead of them instantly returning to the cycle of life. If we wipe the souls clean, though, they’d end up in those bodies and Silky and Isabella would keep their memories and personalities mostly intact. Tess: We could do something similar to what we did with you, right? Make me see them as family and vice versa? Fortune: You’d have to convince Amy, or learn to do it yourself. Which, actually, shouldn’t be too difficult for you anymore, it would take a year or two. But, even assuming a situation in which we have two willing souls and the nature of the bond changed, there are still other downsides. Maven: The system, right? It’s doing the heavy lifting with stuff like Silky’s split ability, and they’d lose that. Fortune: Yes, but there are even more issues. For example, altering them with Monster Breeder. That becomes a lot trickier once it’s modifying actual souls and not system data. Then, there comes the matter of Attributes normally not working on people, Rewards Crystals…it’s a huge complication. I’d recommend just leaving them as is, it’s way simpler and you’d hardly be able to tell the difference. Ellie: Fair enough, I was just wondering.
|
“Well, what now?” Tess asked.
“We blocked out the rest of the day in case there were any complications, so I think we can just relax here at home.” Ellie said.
“Sounds like a plan.”
Later that day, the three were invited to dinner by The Rumors. And, eager to catch up with their mentors and seeing no reason to refuse, they accepted. So, they met up in a small café not too far from the guild.
The moment they entered, Tess was ambushed with a hug from Alice. “How have you all been?” She asked, lingering for a moment before going to give Ellie and Maven slightly briefer hugs.
“We’ve been good.” Tess said. “Work’s been going well, we’ll tell you more about it when we’re at the table.”
“Right, we’ve already got it all set up, privacy enchantment and all.” Alice said. “Follow me.”
They followed her to the table, where Ker and Jin were already seated. “Ah, there you are, come, take a seat!” Ker said jovially. “We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”
Tess took a seat, her wives sitting on either side of her while Alice sat down near Ker. “So…what do we want to talk about first?”
“Well, let’s start with the main reason we called you here; we have results in, both for our party’s promotion and for your party’s provisional period.” Jin said. “And we’re happy to say that not only were you given rank five, as expected, but we’ve finally reached rank ten!”
“Congratulations!” Ellie said brightly. “How does it feel?”
“A little surreal, to tell you the truth.” Ker admitted. “We've been aiming for this for years, and we finally have it.”
“Though, I have to admit, it does feel a little cheap.” Jin admitted. “Like we only got in because requirements were lowered.”
“I think you should think of it less like the requirements were lowered, and more that they were too high in the first place.” Tess suggested. “Remember back when you had your spar with The Titans? They said that if this was in that ‘golden age’ or whatever, that you’d already be rank ten. That’s part of the whole reason this rank shift happened in the first place; rank ten was far too nonstandard a rank.”
“They did?” Maven said curiously. “I would have assumed the golden age of freelancing would have been stricter than today.”
“They said it’s been romanticized, and that everyone only remembers the really strong people, and a lot of those are Appointed anyway.” Ellie explained. “But I agree, and, for what it’s worth, I think you would have made rank ten anyway. Grandpa’s party and the gods speak highly of you, and even if I don’t know what those ranks are like personally, I think their words are pretty authoritative on the matter.”
“Actually, do we know what rank The Titans and other strong parties were given yet?” Maven asked.
“Fifteen.” Ker replied. “The next highest was thirteen, and only a couple of parties got that. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, though. After that performance, even civilians realized what everyone at the top already knew; The Titans are simply a step above everyone else.”
“Then there you have it. Rank ten was already effectively stratified into multiple sub-ranks, and they simply made that stratification official. I highly doubt the bar for rank ten has been made any lower, so the achievement is still the same.” Maven said.
“I know, it’s just hard to shake that little voice in the back of your head that says otherwise.” Jin said sheepishly.
They were interrupted by the waiter approaching the table to ask what drinks they would like. After they ordered, they took a few minutes to decide what they wanted to eat before getting back to the conversation. “So, how are things on your end?” Ker asked. “How do you feel about the rank up being successful, and how’s your other work been?”
“Well, I don’t have any strong feelings about the rank.” Tess said. “It just sort of feels transitory, since the next couple of ranks are probably going to be relatively quick. As for our other work, it’s been going okay, I guess. I told Alice a little bit about this already, but the ambassadors’ kids are having a harder time of it than I think people had anticipated. I don’t think people truly understood the culture gap and how big a deal it would be for them to find out they aren’t human.”
“Ah, I can see how that’d be disorienting.” Ker said.
“Disorienting is an understatement.” Ellie said. “Existential crisis is a better fit for some of them.”
“Anyone give you any trouble?” Jin asked.
Ellie made a face. “A beastkin girl was making fun of Tess…or, well, she was talking about Tess when she was a guy, Tess hadn’t properly introduced herself yet, and things almost got dicey. We had received permission to scare her a bit beforehand, though, so Tess just intimidated her a bit and she fell in line for the rest of that meeting.”
“So, what are you doing now?” Alice asked. “I think you mentioned regular meetings with that group?”
“Yeah, we’re doing one once a week, to check in on everyone.” Maven confirmed. “We’re only one session in, though, so we haven’t had too much time to see changes.”
The waiter came back with their drinks, took their orders, then left. “And that’s really about it.” Maven continued. “Not much interesting going on on the freelancing side of things, or…actually, Tess got Monster Breeder’s last Skill, so that’s been exciting.”
“Oh?” Jin prompted.
“Yeah. I was updating and future-proofing Silky and Isabella, and got the Class to a high enough level that I learned it.” Tess said. “It works like this…”