Chapter 70 – Cosmetic Geometry
The rest of the physical training routine was much more peaceful after the idiot left.
Conveniently, the idiot had also inadvertently provided him with an excuse to not be around.
Funny how these things work out.
After returning home and cleaning up, Orestis once again cloaked himself from divine perception. He did send Lyse a message before doing so, which prevented her from coming to check in on him again.
He purposely avoided saying anything to inform Eleuthera because, in her case, she would have actually shown up the moment he told her.
Very contrary, that one.
As it was, he teleported himself away the same moment he cloaked himself so she wouldn’t catch him. And just in case, he also made sure to scramble the space around his teleportation point so that Eleuthera wouldn’t be able to track him.
It was only after he teleported that he realised his mistake.
I should have left a recording device running. Her expression when she failed to catch me would have been extremely satisfying.
Oh well. There’s always next time.
Orestis made a mental note to create a proper device that could capture the images of divine beings, and inspected the entrance of Varra’s hideout. As expected, the warding scheme had been changed.
He had a feeling the lich would update it.
Varra had been too caught up in the moment to think about his unauthorised entry during their first meeting, but it had eventually risen to the forefront of the lich’s mind.
The new configuration was more layered than the previous one—additional detection arrays, a revised alarm trigger, and a secondary barrier nested inside the primary.
Sadly for the lich, this particular arrangement was also one Orestis was familiar with. Varra’s mind was moving in the same directions it had in the future—the same instincts producing the same solutions. Varra’s security would be predictable for as long as his thought process remained consistent.
Orestis chose not to bypass the wards. Not because he couldn’t, but because it would only serve to distract Varra if he were to bypass them again. The lich needed to be focused on research, not on security concerns.
Besides, looking at the new configuration, Orestis could see what amounted to a doorbell set into the wards. It was clearly intended for him.
So, he rang the magical bell.
A moment later, Varra materialised in front of the entrance, cloaked and hooded as before. The dark red haze emanating from his shoulders seemed even more pronounced than the last time.
… Why?
“Aha!” Varra announced, gesturing triumphantly at the warded entrance. “It seems my new defences have successfully prevented you from barging into my domain uninvited!”
“So they have,” Orestis said, playing along.
“I spent hours on this configuration. Completely redesigned from the ground up. You’ll find no weaknesses this time.”
“It is very impressive.”
Which, it objectively was. It was just something he’d seen the lich use before.
Varra guided him inside with visible pride, deactivating and reactivating wards as they passed through. Orestis followed without comment.
Once they reached the lab, he asked, “Have you come up with any theories based on the soul data?”
“Regarding the curse, no.”
Orestis nodded; he expected that.
“But I did get some ideas about other things,” Varra continued. Then, he turned to face Orestis. “But before that—you should keep your side of the bargain, right?”
That was fair.
Orestis began constructing a spell—slowly, so that Varra could observe the sigils. It was a spell to create a basic soul link: a simple conduit between two souls, functioning like a road along which information could be transferred.
Varra leaned in, studying the construction. “Interesting. That looks like a soul tether, but different. What is it for?”
“It is similar, yes. But it is used only to share memories. It emulates the technique demons use to transfer information among themselves.”
“Ooh, I didn’t know demons could do that. That’s so convenient!” He sounded genuinely impressed. Then he added, “It’s actually very similar to how I communicate with my other half.”
Orestis rolled his eyes. His ‘other half’. Riiight.
Everything always has to be so melodramatic with this fool.
He ignored the comment and cast the spell, establishing the link between them. Then, he sent the relevant information: everything he had promised regarding the lich body construction, as well as a memory of the completed lich form as he had seen and interacted with it in the future.
The next moment, Varra stood up straight.
“Oh. Ohh! That’s me?!” he exclaimed, his voice carrying a reverence usually reserved for religious experiences. “I look so cool! I knew the floating sigil would be awesome! And the floating skulls! And the eye—is that a soul flame in the third eye? Amazing! I’m a genius! A genius!”
He began pacing around the lab, waving his hands excitedly as he extolled the magnificence of his future appearance.
Orestis watched with a deadpan expression and waited for him to finish.
It took a while.
Maybe sending him that memory was a mistake.
Eventually, Varra composed himself and turned back to him. “You know, your memories do make the whole going-back-in-time thing seem more credible. But I’m still not completely sold on the idea.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, while your story seems reasonable on the surface, it started to look less realistic the more I thought about it. Because I doubt time travel is possible.”
Orestis raised an eyebrow. “You believe in alternate realities but not time travel?”
“They’re fundamentally different!” Varra said, with the animated energy of someone who had been waiting to explain this. “Going from one reality to another would be like a person jumping from one moving carriage to the next—with the carriages each representing a reality, obviously. Dangerous, but the principle is sound.”
He held up a finger. “But time travel? You’d have to jump out of the carriage, and then somehow have the carriage recreate itself at a point further back along the road, and you’d have to jump there… actually using the carriage is a bad example here. Even the analogy breaks down because it is so conceptually absurd.”
Varra tilted his head and asked, “How much do you know about astronomy?”
Orestis raised an eyebrow. That was a rather abrupt shift in topics. Still, he answered, “A fair amount. Why?”
“We know our world orbits the sun, which means it is constantly moving through space. If you simply travelled to the past, you would appear in empty space—unless the world itself were to move backward to the position it previously occupied in space at that point in time. The amount of power required for that alone would be staggering.
“But for the sake of argument, let’s say someone generated that kind of power, and the world moves back… Except, space is not empty. Meteors, debris, other celestial bodies; they all exist. What if the world is moved into the path of something that wasn’t there before? So you wouldn’t just need to reposition this world. You’d need to adjust the position of everything else in the vicinity in relation to the sun.”
Orestis frowned. He hadn’t considered the problem from this angle before.
“And that’s assuming the sun is also stationary,” Varra continued, “which it almost certainly isn’t. Current theory suggests that the sun itself is in motion—pulled along by forces we haven’t fully mapped. If that’s true, then travelling to the past doesn’t just mean moving the world back along its orbit. It means reversing the motion of the sun, and everything it carries with it. The scale involved would be...” He trailed off, searching for a word sufficient to the concept. “Beyond comprehension.”
Orestis contemplated that. The theory made sense. Too much sense.
“I can see why you have a problem with it,” he said after a moment. “However, it is the mind and soul that travel in time. Those two operate on different laws than the material.”
But even as he said it, he paused. If mind and soul were the only variables, the physical world would not need to move. However, the other curse had sent Maxim’s physical body back as well. That changed the equation completely.
No, the problem is that I don’t even know which equations to use in the first place.
In the end, the conclusion was that these curses were much more powerful and complex than he’d given thought to. In fairness, he hadn’t even known about the regression curse until a few years ago.
“Looks like you’ve thought of a complication all on your own.” Varra sounded oddly cheerful for someone outlining a potentially catastrophic conclusion.
“Unfortunately,” Orestis agreed. “But it is what we need to unravel.” He sighed. “I know the location of two shrines responsible for the curses. But I’ve been hesitant to approach one of them since I don’t want to be saddled with a second curse on top of what I already have.”
“Good point,” Varra said, nodding vigorously. “Extra variables only add complications. Better to understand what you have before introducing new unknowns.”
Which brought them to the practical problem. The curse couldn’t be studied properly yet—Varra needed more sophisticated tools than his current apparatus, and building those tools required time and resources he didn’t have.
Well, we do, technically. But one of the necessary resources just so happens to be his attention. And that will keep wandering until we complete his body.
“How much more life force do you need to complete the body?” Orestis asked.
Varra jerked a thumb towards the vats and said, “Seeing as the only stable prototypes I have are an arm and a skull, I’m going to say, a lot.” He made a vague gesture that somehow conveyed enormous. “But collection is going well. At the current rate, I’m estimating around 3 months.”
Orestis thought about that.
Three months is not bad, considering. However—
“I have a way to shorten that timeline.”
Varra perked up. “Really? How?”
“The other guy I’m working with has an immortality curse. His body can generate an infinite supply of life force.”
“Nice! Are you going to ask him?”
Orestis gave him a wry look. “He is actively hunting you and trying to stop your work. What exactly do you think his answer would be?”
“Right. Good point,” Varra said, sounding disappointed. “So what do you plan to do?”
“We have a sparring session coming up in two days. That will provide the opportunity. Obviously, it will need to happen without anyone realising that his life force is being harvested. Which means setting up an appropriate siphoning formation in the area beforehand. Something concealed well enough to avoid detection, durable enough to survive the fight, and extensive enough to cover the entire battlefield.”
“So, kind of like my own formation,” Varra said brightly.
Orestis was immediately ticked off by the reminder of that ridiculous pentacle.
“Yes, actually, let’s talk about that, shall we?” he said, his voice carefully restrained. Impracticality aside, the thing had also caused him to lose a wager to Maxim.
“That formation”—Orestis made sure to emphasise the word—“is little more than decorative geometry. It does not increase efficiency, stability, output, or provide any meaningful benefit whatsoever. It is entirely cosmetic! What were you even thinking when you set it up?”
“It looks evil?”
Apparently, that was reason enough for this fool to arrange magical infrastructure like a melodramatic cult leader. One from a children’s story, at that.
“It is a concealed network! No one was ever going to notice it, let alone appreciate the aesthetic.”
“Um…” Varra slowly spread his hands and gestured towards Orestis as though the counterargument should have been painfully self-evident.
Unfortunately, he could not even argue the point since he had, indeed, noticed it. So had Maxim. And Eirene.
Why am I the one regretting even bringing this up?
“Whatever,” he said. “Let’s just focus on this actual formation. Do you have extra life crystals we can use?”
“No,” he replied.
“Right. In that case, we’ll just have to take them from the useless nodes.”
Varra’s reaction was instant and visceral. “No! You can’t take those—that will ruin the pentacle!”
Orestis fixed the idiot lich with a withering stare.
“I mean, it would compromise the overall visual…” Varra’s voice began losing volume midway through his indignation.
His posture wilted, and his hands, which had been raised in objection, slowly lowered.
Orestis continued to stare.
“… balance?”
The protest trailed off like a music box winding down. Then stopped entirely.
After a moment, Varra asked, in a very small voice, “... We can put them back later, right?”
This fool is a brilliant researcher, Orestis reminded himself.
“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “We can put them back later.”
Varra brightened immediately. “Okay! Let’s get started.”
An extremely brilliant researcher.
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