Chapter 74 – Things Left to Learn
After the spar, they all got together to discuss how things went.
“With all due respect, goddess, your domain is absolute nonsense. How does it even make sense for me to slip on my own aura platform?”
Eirene smiled at Maxim’s complaint to Eleuthera. She had to admit—it had been pretty funny, seeing it happen.
At first, during the free-for-all, Maxim had gone after Eleuthera on the ground. That had ended with him tripping on a rock that, by all accounts, should not have been in his path. To prevent such a thing from happening again, he’d taken to the air, constructing aura platforms to step on while running at the goddess.
And he still slipped. On a surface he had created and controlled entirely with his own power.
Eleuthera hadn’t even done anything. She’d just stood there smiling.
In hindsight, it did make a certain kind of sense. Since Eirene had only been using magic, it was her spells that had failed around the goddess. But Maxim had been using his body to attack; to stop a physical approach, Eleuthera’s domain would obviously use a physical accident.
“Freedom works in mysterious ways,” Eleuthera replied, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
And yet, despite how powerful it was, her domain was not invincible. As Orestis—and even Maxim—had demonstrated, things that targeted the environment did not always trigger her domain. The trick to damaging the goddess seemed to be making sure Eleuthera was in the area when the environment was affected. Or attacking her while she was unaware.
Of course, arranging things to get such an opportunity was never easy. And it did not always work. There seemed to be aspects of Eleuthera's domain that depended on conscious awareness. Others seemed to trigger even without the goddess being aware of it. But not always.
It was a confusing domain where the rules weren’t that clear. But understanding it would help Eirene increase her understanding of her own Blessing. Eleuthera didn’t want to explain it, either. It seemed the goddess was a strong proponent of learning through personal experience.
There had been other benefits to the sparring as well. Especially the free-for-all. Coordinating with Nuri in a larger fight had proven surprisingly satisfying.
Individually, they already understood each other well enough. But managing positioning, timing, and target selection in a chaotic battle against multiple opponents required a different level of cooperation. Several times she had found herself casting a spell at the exact moment Nuri committed to an attack, each instinctively taking advantage of opportunities created by the other.
It had felt natural. And fun.
Eirene scratched behind Nuri’s ears. The mauthet was back on her shoulder, purring contentedly after the sparring session. While they did have fun, Eirene hadn’t failed to notice how Nuri seemed to attack Maxim more often than anyone else.
She wondered if Nuri had been influenced by Orestis. He had pushed Maxim’s hand away when the hero had tried to pet Nuri earlier. And when it had come to the spars, Orestis had also fought against Maxim the hardest. It was possible that Nuri had simply picked up on Orestis’s general attitude.
Or Nuri just didn’t like Maxim. Both explanations were plausible. But Eirene was leaning more towards the former. Nuri had grown attached to Orestis surprisingly quickly.
The conversation soon turned to the group sparring sessions becoming a permanent fixture. Orestis clearly had not been expecting that. He should have, though. Competence had a way of attracting people.
Eirene had watched with quiet amusement as Orestis got cornered into accepting. He could have refused, of course. Nothing prevented him from doing so. And yet he hadn’t.
For all his complaints, he had argued about rotation. He had even offered suggestions on possible venues. Those were not the actions of someone opposed to the idea.
Orestis often seemed unaware of his own preferences. Left alone, he would insist that he neither needed nor wanted company. Then spend an entire afternoon arguing with people he supposedly had no interest in spending time with.
He could be blind to the most obvious things sometimes.
Like the love he had for his parents—particularly his mother. He would flip the world on its head for them. Yet he regarded his own wellbeing with near-total indifference. It was a strange juxtaposition. One she intended to ask him about.
But later. She had noticed the way Orestis avoided discussing certain matters around Maxim. If she wanted anything more than silence or evasions, it was better to wait until they were home.
***
Once they gated home, Eirene waited until they were comfortably settled before asking about what had been on her mind. Especially regarding Orestis’s spar against Maxim.
That had been leagues apart from what he’d shown against either of the goddesses. Everything from their movements to their attacks had carried a lethality and purpose that had been missing from the earlier spars.
Orestis acting that way hadn’t mattered since Maxim could not die—seeing the curse at work had been an eye-opening experience. But that aside, Maxim directing that kind of hostility against Orestis—who could die now—had been unreasonable.
She had quite a lot to say. But she started with the thing that had troubled her most. “Don’t you think Maxim had been a bit excessive during your spar with him?”
Eirene understood the hero being upset that Orestis had harmed Lyse, but every single attack Maxim launched after entering melee range would have killed Orestis if he had been even slightly careless. Even then, despite trying his best, Orestis had still ended up with several deep lacerations all over his body.
And that last attack… Eirene had almost gone into a panic the moment Maxim sent an arc of aura through his own back to attack Orestis. What kind of madman even thought of doing something like that?
“Is that what it looked like?” Orestis asked. “He was being remarkably lenient, actually.”
“Nearly cutting you in half was him holding back?” Eirene asked, her voice heavy with scepticism.
Orestis shrugged dismissively. “Even if it had connected, the arc would have merely severed me at the waist. That is not an injury that is immediately fatal; I would have had ample time to regenerate or receive healing.”
There it was again. Just because it wouldn’t have instantly killed him, he didn’t think it was significant enough to worry about.
“Besides,” he added, “while he did use his Blessings against me, you notice he fought purely as an aura user. Apart from a teleport, he did not use any spells. And, most importantly, he never used the most powerful weapon in his arsenal.”
“Which is?” she asked, curious. From his words, Eirene guessed Maxim was likely a Sovereign too—something she should have expected in hindsight.
“Combining aura and mana. The interaction between them increases power exponentially.”
Eirene blinked. That was not the answer she’d expected. She’d never even thought of doing something like that, let alone that it was possible.
And probably because Orestis assumed that she would want to see a demonstration, he added, “I’d show you, but I have no aura. You can ask Maxim to show you next time we see him.”
She would do that. But his words had got her thinking. If mana and aura—two sources of energy that were seemingly incompatible—could be combined, then what else could be combined?
“What about mixing divine power?” she asked.
Orestis smiled again, in the way he always did whenever she said or did something he found genuinely impressive. He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he opened two gates.
The first exited in the air, high above the sparring field, angled downward to provide a bird’s-eye view. The second opened at ground level on the field itself. Next, he drew two wisps of divine power; one sacred and one profane, keeping them separate.
“Isn’t Lyse saying anything about you drawing power from other gods?” Eirene asked, watching as he sent them through the ground-level gate.
“She did. But as this is for teaching purposes, she has graciously allowed it,” he replied wryly. Then made a face. “And I apparently just lost a point for sarcasm.”
Eirene snorted. She didn’t blame the goddess; he did sound slightly snarky just then.
He shook his head dismissively and said, “Watch through the other gate.”
Eirene saw the two wisps gently moving towards each other as Orestis closed the ground-level gate. Eirene turned her attention to the aerial gate. For a moment, there was nothing.
Then, she saw the ground erupt.
The explosion was fairly large; the destructive force equivalent to what a high-rank spell of the Third Circle could produce.
Eirene frowned. That was from mixing a portion of divine power so small she could barely sense them?
“It is generally a bad idea to mix opposing alignments,” Orestis said, closing the aerial gate. “Unless you get the ratios exactly right, you’re more likely to kill yourself along with your opponent. Most likely without—which would be even more embarrassing.”
“But you know the right ratios.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that simple. If I teach you this, you will become a target. Some, like the Demon God, consider the technique an abomination. They will do everything in their power to eliminate anyone who possesses the knowledge. So not yet.” He made a vague gesture. “I’ll teach you when you reach the Sixth Circle.”
Eirene gave him an odd look. Was he really serious? His words implied that he believed she would be able to contend against gods by the time she was at that level. Or that he would ensure that it was so.
That was both exciting and terrifying in equal measure.
However, the Sixth Circle was still a long way off. For now, she shifted the topic back to the spar. There was much she had yet to cover.
***
After the post-spar debrief with Eirene was over—she had gained quite a few insights, including understanding that she should not emulate Eleuthera’s reckless fighting style—Orestis decided to go check in on how the collection had gone.
Hopefully we have enough.
If they hadn’t collected enough, he would have to arrange to have the spar back in the same location again. Not ideal, since he wanted Eirene to get some experience fighting in ocean environments.
Orestis had barely materialised inside Varra’s lab—they’d keyed him into the wards—when a flustered-looking Varra instantly appeared, grabbed him by the collar with both hands, and cried while shaking him, “WHAT. DID. YOU. DO?!”
Part of Orestis was immediately concerned, as Varra was rarely this agitated. “Did something go wrong?”
And then, as if he had flipped a switch, Varra calmly replied, “What? No. Why do you ask?”
Orestis took a moment to curb his urge to smack this fool on the back of his head.
“If nothing went wrong,” Orestis said gently—slowly—while pointing at the lich’s hands still gripping his clothes, “what’s with the theatrics?”
“Hm? Oh. That. I always wanted to try that,” he said cheerfully, letting go. “I was just waiting for a reason. Which you gave me. Having friends is really great!”
I don’t remember him being this annoying. Is it because he’s still young?
Orestis was about to give the lich a piece of his mind when Varra said, “But seriously. What did you do? You nearly blew up my lab! I had to improvise a containment array on the spot—from scratch! In four seconds!”
“What are you talking about?” he asked with a frown. He only blew up Maxim a few times. That should not have generated anything even close to the quantity needed to overload the systems.
“You should see this.” Varra gestured for him to follow and skipped to the adjoining cavern where they had set up the storage array.
What Orestis should have found inside was a collection of neatly arranged life crystals. They had designed the system to use harvested energy to grow additional life crystals whenever the existing ones approached capacity. It served both as additional storage, as well as a means of producing spare crystals.
What he saw instead resembled a forest of crystallised roots or tree branches, stretching from floor to ceiling of the cavern.
“That undying curse is really something. There was so much energy coming in that all the life crystal slots filled up in seconds,” Varra explained. “Then they started to become unstable. If I hadn’t thought of altering their base life matrices into a seed, giving them the capacity to grow, I really think they would have all exploded.”
Orestis stared silently at the glowing crystals, trying to work out what had happened. Just based on volume alone, those crystal trees contained the equivalent of hundreds of regular life crystals.
He knew exactly what that curse could do. He and Varra had used his immortal body to harvest life force many times before, after all. There was no way the amount of damage inflicted on Maxim alone could have generated this much energy. Which meant something else must have contributed.
“That is not life force harvested from Maxim,” Orestis said slowly.
“Really? Then what is it?” the lich asked.
Just to confirm his theory, Orestis cast a diagnostic spell on one of those glowing crystal trees. And, as expected, he felt the presence of divinity within them.
Well, how about that?
The idea that damaging an avatar would produce something like life force hadn’t even crossed his mind. Or that the formation could harvest that energy, for that matter.
It seems even after eleven hundred years, there’s still things left to learn, Orestis thought with a smile.
It was encouraging. Extremely so. Because it meant that there were things he still had not uncovered. That there were still discoveries to be made. And one of them could possibly be how to remove these curses; all he had to do was keep searching.
I’ll eventually find the answer. Or stumble into it like this one.
Orestis glanced at Varra and said, “Looks like the formation took in whatever was released when I damaged the two divine avatars.”
“Wait. You fought against gods? I’m so jealous!” Varra exclaimed. Then paused. “No, wait. You fought against gods?! Are you crazy?!”
“Nice to know that you have at least some modicum of common sense,” Orestis said dryly. Though, to be fair, picking a fight with two gods did sound like a pretty stupid idea.
But only without proper context.
“Eleuthera and Lyse are the patron goddesses of our trio. They were helping out during the spar.”
“Oh yeah. You are a Chosen,” the lich remarked. “How’s that feel? I don’t know since I’ve never been Chosen before. Do I become Chosen in the future? I feel like I’d make a good candidate.”
Orestis had a flashback to a particularly annoying conversation between him and the lich about why it was a terrible idea to be Chosen. He had no desire to repeat that again. And agreeing would also backfire on him. Better to change the subject.
“Did you check whether this variant energy can actually be used?”
“Oh! That’s right! I was in the middle of testing when you came.” Varra turned to him, quickly waving his hands back and forth. “Not that I don’t trust you, of course. But since it was supposed to have come from a cursed body, I had to make sure there were no compatibility issues.”
That was obvious. Verifying assumptions personally was the hallmark of any competent researcher. But that brought up an important question. This was no longer purely human life force they were dealing with.
“And? Is it compatible?” he asked, mildly concerned.
It will be annoying if I have to fight Maxim all over again—while also trying to avoid any divine contamination.
“Yes,” Varra replied, much to Orestis’s relief. “It is perfectly suited for use as a soul vessel. Kind of unexpected now, knowing that it’s actually divine… er, stuff. You know, we should come up with a name for this.”
“Just call it divine life force and be done with it,” Orestis replied. After all, why make it so complicated?
But then, Varra exclaimed, “Absolutely not! I’d be embarrassed to call it something like that.”
Orestis briefly wondered if self-awareness was among the many things the lich had discarded in the pursuit of immortality. That, or their standards for embarrassment were located on entirely different continents.
He shouldn’t ask. He knew he shouldn’t. He asked anyway. “What do you want to call it?”
“I’m glad you asked!” Varra said excitedly. “I’m really good at naming things. Since it has divine origins, what do you think of…” He paused for effect, then said, “God’s Blood!”
Orestis gave the lich a flat look. “No.”
“Why!” he whined. “It’s such a cool name!”
“For one thing, avatars don’t bleed, so this has nothing to do with blood.” Not that Orestis would put it past some god to design their avatars with blood purely for dramatic effect. But that was a different conversation altogether.
“And for another,” he continued, “their true bodies do have blood in them, so using that name would be both inaccurate and misleading.”
“Huh. Good point.” Varra rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “What about Essence of Apotheosis?”
Why did the names have to sound so dramatic?
“You do realise, people will just invent a shorter name when they have to use it on a regular basis—right?”
“Oh. I never thought of it like that.” Varra smacked a fist into his open palm, apparently struck by revelation. “Right. Let’s stick to single-word names. How about Godspark?”
“No.”
“Heavenflame?”
“No.”
“… Ambrosia?”
“Already exists.”
Varra clicked his tongue. “You’re taking all the fun out of this.”
If I don’t distract him, we won’t get anything else done for the rest of the day.
Fortunately, he had the perfect ammunition to get him back on track.
“You know,” Orestis said casually, “I just realised something. Since the majority of this energy is divine in nature, your new body made using this would effectively be a divine construct.”
Varra froze. Then, with a cry, pointed a finger in Orestis’s face.
“Ah! That’s right! This stuff is mostly Divine Ichor—no, that doesn’t sound right. Avatar Extract? Too plain. Whatever. That stuff—mixed with cursed life force!”
Then, the lich started rubbing his hands together with an unhinged giggle. “Do you realise what this means? I won’t have just a divine body. I’ll have a cursed divine body!”
The lich suddenly erupted into cackling laughter, causing the haze emanating from his shoulders to blaze higher in response.
The accompanying visuals were new. The laughter, unfortunately, was not. It had three phases, if he recalled.
Orestis sighed, then waited for Varra to be done with his performance. Experience had taught him that if he interrupted the lich at times like these, it would only make him pout for the next hour or so.
The only thing worse than a melodramatic lich was a sulking one.
Although, I’m also curious about the properties of the materials we can create with this.
If you’d like to read more, I’m 6 chapters ahead on Patreon, along with side chapters, author notes, and extra lore.