The Wrong Kind of Immortality

The following couple of weeks passed fairly uneventfully.

Fairly, because Maxim and Varra spent most of it making fools of themselves at every available opportunity. Orestis had long since stopped trying to put a stop to it.

He did not even know why the idiot kept showing up in the first place. It wasn’t as if Maxim had anything useful to contribute to the experiments. Maybe it was that eternal rival nonsense.

But if that was the case, what kind of self-respecting evil mastermind would let their nemesis observe their secret projects? When Orestis asked the two of them that, Varra looked genuinely scandalised—clearly, she had not thought that far ahead.

Maxim, on the other hand, casually said, “We’re still in the prologue phase of our stories. Right now, we have no idea that our futures will be filled with rivalry and fateful battles.”

And then, suddenly, Varra was also getting into it. She crossed her arms and began looking down her nose at Orestis. “That’s right! You’re still too inexperienced! Every good epic needs this kind of backstory for the main characters!”

Maxim clicked his tongue and shook his head derisively. “Amateur.”

Varra pointed a finger at Orestis. “Side character!”

And so it went.

They did not even answer his question. Instead, they started working on their origin stories. Something about growing up together in neighbouring, rival orphanages.

Forget the rivalry. Orestis wanted to know why there were two orphanages next to each other in the first place.

The lich was just being herself, coming up with increasingly questionable backstory details. Maxim, however, Orestis was certain, was being deliberately annoying. But he could not even complain since Varra’s productivity actually seemed to go up when the idiot was around.

So Orestis simply tolerated everything.

After all, I pride myself on maintaining peak performance regardless of the circumstances.

Aelia, on the other hand, took a different approach. Whenever Varra went overboard with her antics, Aelia would suddenly appear, red in the face, and pull Varra aside for a talking-to. Not that it ever did any good; Varra seemed to just let the words go in one ear and out the other.

And, as if the situation was not already ridiculous enough, Eirene would occasionally be found sitting beside Eleuthera, both of them watching everything with popcorn in hand.

Thankfully, Eleuthera promised not to interact with Varra. One idiot encouraging her is enough.

Varra also ignored ‘Eirene’s friend, Thera’, who was just there to watch them work.

As for Lyse, unlike her jobless friend, she had better things to do than waste time inside a cave. Of course, that did not mean she wasn’t watching.

Orestis was no longer trying to hide anything, as per his agreement. Thus, it did not take long for the goddesses to learn about the divine essence crystals and how they came to be. Surprisingly, both goddesses had proven remarkably relaxed about the entire affair.

Eleuthera, he understood. She had always had a happy-go-lucky attitude about most things, and this was no exception.

With Lyse, though, Orestis had honestly expected at least a comment or two. Maxim had certainly been vocal enough when he found out—right up until Eleuthera told him that the materials for the creation of avatars were sourced from the world itself rather than from a god’s own resources. Therefore, neither she nor Lyse had really lost anything.

That was an interesting bit of trivia. Orestis had never thought about the exact process of an avatar’s creation before. Maybe sometime, when he was really free, he would do some research on it.

Regardless, he did send a question to Lyse through their link, asking if she really had nothing to say about the whole situation.

‘Why would I?’ she sent back. ‘I only keep tally of what’s mine. That energy has no relation to me. The most I can claim is that it carries traces of my influence.’

And that had been the end of it.

How convenient.

Although, thinking about it, Varra had narrowly avoided acquiring a goddess-shaped problem. Had they truly harvested something that belonged to Lyse, the lich would have found herself on the receiving end of a very irate goddess’s attention.

Or maybe not. Lyse’s actions were surprisingly difficult to predict.

***

Of course, not everything during those two weeks had been frivolous or inconsequential.

For one thing, he and Varra had finally managed to reach a configuration for the new material that maximised the performance on all fronts. And—by some miracle—it had happened when Maxim had not been around.

Thanks to that, Orestis had managed to escape the single most tedious part of the whole undertaking—naming the wretched stuff. If the idiot had been around, he would have somehow dragged Orestis into that mess.

As it was, he simply told Varra how he had a terrible naming sense, and how Maxim was much more qualified when it came to naming things.

In hindsight, that may not have been his finest decision. Maxim would almost certainly indulge Varra, and between the two of them they would come up with increasingly ridiculous names.

Oh well. Not my problem. Took me over five hundred years to learn the name of the previous material. If I’m lucky, I won’t hear the name of this one for another five hundred.

Regardless, with the ratio decided, they could finally begin the construction of her lich body. Of course, that was a project in its own right.

The base enchantments were already woven into the material, but that was merely the starting point. They still had to construct the material in such a way as to ensure that both mana and divine power could flow through the finished frame without disrupting the original enchantments.

The second part—the divine power—had been his suggestion. The idea had originated from his own experiments: the ones on combining sacred and profane divine power, then running it through a mortal body.

His body, specifically.

For those experiments, Orestis had travelled to one of the deserted islands he had once kept a research base on, back before he regressed. He planned on converting the place into a containment site. A proper one, matching—no, exceeding—his standards.

Orestis had learned his lessons about collateral damage the hard way, a very long time ago—and right now, he was a good deal more fragile than he had been back then. Which meant ensuring that there were no unexpected explosions.

However, experience had also taught him that intention counted for very little in the middle of blind experimentation. Things tended to go wrong whether one meant them to or not.

Obviously, he could teleport away if the worst happened; his surroundings, however, could not. And since he would prefer his house to remain in one piece, the island it was.

He converted the whole of it, just like he’d done the first time. He started with a containment field—obviously, since it was in the name. After that, he added another twelve layers of wards around that. Once reinforcement was done, he began working on the lab itself.

The work was old and familiar, and he had done it several times before. Even so, he did it carefully enough that it took him three days to complete the whole thing to his satisfaction.

Finally, he could begin.

***

Combining the two powers gave him no trouble at all. He knew the method, and he knew the resonances. The combining had never been the difficult part. Using the result in a fight was the part he needed to figure out.

In the past, he had simply drawn both sacred and profane power into himself and merged them inside his body. Back then, his body had been absurd enough to contain the resulting power.

Now, though…

After the preparations were complete, Orestis moved to the far end of the island where he had built the observation room. He opened a small gate in the air in front of him, leading to the containment chamber.

He pushed his hand through and drew the opening tight around his forearm. He had angled this gate’s opening to face sideways rather than back towards him, so that if anything came through it, the discharge would vent off to one side instead of towards his body.

Losing an arm is always preferable to losing my life. Especially with the loss being temporary.

Orestis paused. In both cases—whether he lost his hand, or his life—it would be temporary.

How ironic.

Pushing such depressing thoughts from his mind, Orestis turned to the screen on the wall which showed the inside of the containment chamber. On the screen, he watched his own disembodied hand emerge from empty air, hovering before a small sphere of combined sacred and profane power.

Let’s just call it neutral divine power. Who needs flashy names? If anything, it’s still two words too long.

Orestis stopped himself before he fell down that naming rabbit hole. He focused on the task at hand.

With divine power, the amount of both alignments had to always be exact. A one-to-one ratio, without exception. The trick to producing variations with divine power was in the weave used during the combination, as well as the frequencies at which the two powers were made to resonate.

This particular sphere was not one that would yield the highest destructive force, but it was by far the most stable—the least volatile. As such, it won the dubious honour of being chosen for this experiment.

Well, not much of an experiment. I just need to see how far my body can tolerate it.

Orestis extended his hand and carefully drew the sphere—which was about three millimetres in diameter—towards the tip of his index finger.

The instant it met his skin, his hand exploded—the blast ripping up its length and out past the wrist.

As always, pain is such an unpleasant feeling, Orestis thought with a grimace. At least the damage did not move past the gate.

He withdrew what remained of his arm from the gate, letting the regeneration spells woven into the wards see to the rest.

The result was about what he had expected. If he wanted to use neutral divine power—

Okay, that sounds terribly awkward, even in my head. I suppose I’ll have to think of something else. Regardless—

If he wanted to use that in battle, he would need to solve this problem. Drawing the power outside his body was not an option; without his body to serve as a buffer—to buy that sliver of a second before a god could reassert control over their own divine power—he would never be able to combine them.

At best, the god’s interference would prevent the combination. At worst, he would end up embarrassing himself by dying from his own spell.

Oh well. It was an interesting problem. He would work on it. Slowly.

Not like I have anyone I need to vaporise in a hurry.

For the moment, he would prioritise the spell to let Eirene speak with Nuri.

Orestis waited for his hand to finish knitting itself back together, then teleported home.