The Wrong Kind of Immortality

Maxim sat across from Galen, a competent—if somewhat stiff—negotiator. Not that Maxim blamed the guy; the Temple had sent him to negotiate the return of their people and equipment. That was obviously a tall order. And likely a dangerous one for Galen if he failed to come back with something his superiors could accept.

But really, did he have to be so long-winded? Galen had spent the last several minutes dancing around the question while trying to figure out what Maxim wanted in exchange.

Normally, this would be the point where Maxim had to stifle a yawn. Not that his body felt the need to do any such thing anymore. He had half a mind to yawn just to see what would happen. But that would be rude—and Galen had done nothing to deserve that kind of disrespect.

Still, he missed playing around like that. Being trapped in inviolability was such a pain. Ah, if only he still had his blessing…

And that was why he ought to wrap this up and go back to working on his curse problem with Varra.

“Let’s not drag this out, shall we?” Maxim said, leaning forward. “There’s really nothing the Temple can offer me that I need. However, there is one thing I’m interested in.”

“Which is?” Galen asked, finally dropping the indirect questions. About time.

“The healers here need to examine soldiers who are already in the berserk state. Arrange that, and I’ll return both the people and the equipment.”

Galen frowned, just slightly, before fixing his expression and shaking his head. “That isn’t something the Temple can grant. The soldiers are under the Crown’s jurisdiction.”

Maxim smiled wryly. “Come now. We both know the Temple can make it happen.”

There was a moment of silence. Then, Galen said, “The most that we can do is make the request to the Crown.”

This time, Maxim chose to play the silent game, while adding a raised eyebrow for emphasis.

Galen studied him for a moment before slowly saying, “Holding nearly two hundred people cannot be easy for you either. Feeding and guarding them will become a problem eventually.”

To Galen’s credit, he hadn’t tried to make it sound like a threat. He was merely stating an observation. Sadly, that observation was not accurate.

However, that aside, based on everything he’d observed about the guy, Maxim could tell that Galen was simply a competent man doing an ugly job for people who did not deserve him. An unfortunately common occurrence, in Maxim’s experience.

Maxim abruptly stood up, to Galen’s surprise.

“You know what, Galen? I like you. So I’m going to make this easy for you.” Maxim walked towards the door, gesturing for the guy to follow. “Come on. I’ll show you something.”

He waited at the door while the confused and wary guy took a moment to make up his mind. Maxim flashed his most disarming and trustworthy smile to help with the decision-making process. It worked every time.

When Galen joined him, Maxim resumed his trek towards their destination. “You’re probably thinking that, while I may be able to keep the disruptors indefinitely—or sell them off if storage becomes a hassle—I won’t be able to do the same for my captives. And that’s a fair assumption, I’ll admit. But only if I had to feed and watch over them.”

Galen whipped his head towards Maxim, aghast. “You intend to execute all of them!?”

“No doubt the Temple would prefer that,” Maxim said dryly.

Galen’s expression made it clear that, while he was hardly pleased by the prospect, he understood why it would be convenient for the Temple. Dead captives would be much easier to explain away. It would also leave the Temple with the moral high ground.

“Relax, I have no intention of killing anyone,” Maxim said, waving his hand. “What I meant was that I have put measures in place that make such considerations irrelevant.”

They soon reached the room assigned to Maxim by the Divinarium. He had never needed to use it, of course—but as an official Chosen, he was always provided with one. And now, he had finally put it to use.

Maxim opened the door to reveal the room beyond, the interior expanded through spatial magic to make far better use of the available space. And what he was using it for was to store all one hundred and ninety-one captives.

He had cast a stasis spell on them—another ridiculous spell he’d learned from a certain undying demon—which effectively froze time for them, turning them into the equivalent of invulnerable statues.

Maxim had then stacked them on top of one another like bolts of cloth in the room. Quite the efficient use of space, even if he did say so himself.

Galen stared at the rows of frozen captives, jaw hanging. “What… is this?”

“A very convenient spell,” Maxim explained. “They don’t need food, water, or even air to breathe. Even their minds are frozen, making them unaware of the passing of time. And, I can keep them like that indefinitely, making them no different from the disruptors.”

Said disruptors were also stacked on the other side of the room.

Maxim leaned towards the negotiator and said with a friendly smile, “Obviously, you don’t need me to tell you that the longer your people remain captives of a foreign power, the worse it will look for the Temple.”

Galen looked around for a few seconds, his face going through several different expressions. Finally, he sighed, then turned to Maxim. “You’re not making this easy for me at all. You realise that, right?”

“Now, now—you’re looking at this all wrong. What if you took a visual record of all this to show your superiors that they have absolutely no leverage against me in this situation? And then, what if we make it look like you argued, negotiated, and generally made my life miserable until I finally surrendered the best concessions you could get?”

“And why would you be willing to do that?” Galen asked suspiciously.

Maxim raised an eyebrow. “I know you’re just another helpless grunt sent to carry out the unreasonable demands of your superiors. I can also tell that you’re a chill guy.”

Now Galen crossed his arms and gave Maxim a pointed stare, his expression making his thoughts perfectly clear.

“Don’t be like that,” Maxim said, turning on the charm once more. He hooked an arm around Galen’s shoulder and steered him away. “Come on. Let’s go find a proper tavern and hammer out the details.”

“Hey! What are you doing!?” Galen exclaimed while struggling futilely. “Let go!”

Maxim ignored the guy and continued dragging him along, completely unfazed by the protests. This was for Galen’s own good; he would thank Maxim by the end of the day.

***

Maxim waved as a slightly inebriated but exceptionally happy Galen made his way out of the tavern. They had managed to hash out a deal that they were both satisfied with.

It was an extremely one-sided proposal, heavily favouring the Temple side. But Maxim didn’t really care; as long as the healers gained access to the berserk soldiers, he didn’t mind returning everything, swearing to keep everything that happened a secret, and all the rest.

Well, Orestis probably wouldn’t be happy with some of the concessions—Maxim had a fairly good idea what that madman was trying to do. It was actually quite elegant in a way. Quite the deviation from how he normally did things—which usually involved personally reducing everything to dust.

At that moment, he heard a chime from one of his call-nodes. Maxim retrieved the device from his storage space to see who was calling.

Speak of the demon. Maxim paused. Or was it ex-demon now?

He thought back to their most recent tussle. Of all the spells at his disposal—with so many options available to him in that situation—Orestis had still chosen to use a blood curse. And one that was particularly nasty.

Yeah, still a demon inside. But one that cared deeply for his mother. Maxim smiled at that thought and answered the call. “Sup?”

“I have an opportunity for you,” Orestis said without preamble.

Maxim scoffed. He’d heard those words often enough to know where this was going. “Yeah, no. Every time I’ve heard that line from you, I always end up nearly dying. Or actually dying, and doing it all over again.”

He had grown accustomed to the repetition, but some things never stopped being tedious. That one time he had to convince a sentient sword that he wasn’t its rightful owner had been particularly annoying. It always took the rejection personally, and would always get violent.

After a few seconds of silence, Orestis said, “I am fairly certain you would have benefited in the end each time.”

“Well, I suppose that’s true,” Maxim replied wryly. That sentient sword had helped him improve his swordsmanship.

But having that thing follow him around for months, acting like a jilted lover, had been a pain. Especially when he’d been trying to attract the ladies.

In any case, Maxim was curious what this guy was planning this time. “What do you have in mind?”

“I need you to do a survey of the shrine in Valdren.”

Wait, that was all?

“Why? There’s nothing there anymore,” Maxim pointed out.

“You’ve already been there?” Orestis asked, sounding slightly surprised.

“Of course. One of the first things I did.”

And why wouldn’t he go there? He wanted it back. It was such a convenient blessing after all.

Of course, Maxim knew from his own experiences that once the blessing attached to someone, it would not be present in the shrine regardless of the time period. But he had been hoping to find it there, just in case. Alas, it was not meant to be.

Orestis asked, “So the curse is gone?”

“It’s gone,” Maxim confirmed.

“Right. Good to know,” Orestis said, then abruptly cut the call.

So. It would seem that Orestis had finally gotten around to investigating the shrines. About time, too.

Curious to see how Orestis planned to go about it, Maxim also teleported to the Valdren shrine.

Orestis spared a glance at Maxim when he materialised, but then went right back to what he had been doing—which was casting spells to take visual snapshots of the shrine and the script covering the walls.

Maxim shook his head in pity. Such were the toils of those without a perfect memory.

He watched as Orestis finished with the snapshots and then went on to cast spells throughout the shrine, examining the place from every angle.

“No point,” Maxim commented. “The whole place is inert. It’s nothing more than a fancy structure now.”

“So it would seem,” Orestis replied, scowling slightly. Then he added, “Well, at least I might be able to find something by comparing the differences in the scripts.”

Wait, they were different? When Orestis first showed him that mana construct back when they first met in Nomyra, Maxim had assumed the discrepancies were simply the result of imperfections in Orestis’s memory. But if that wasn’t the case—

“I want to see that other shrine,” Maxim stated. “Can you open a gate?”

Rather than searching for it on his own, it would be much more efficient to have Orestis give him the exact location. Orestis obliged, opening a gate. Although, the exit point was somewhat questionable.

“Really? In the sky?” Maxim asked.

Orestis gave him a look so dry it might have started a fire. “Unlike you, I don’t want to risk accidentally stacking these curses.”

Oh. Right. That was a thing. Maxim hadn’t even thought about that before. But now that he had…

He glanced between Orestis and the gate, then raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess: you want me to go and check first?”

“Obviously,” Orestis replied shamelessly.

Maxim tsked. “See, this is why people call you a demon.”

“You’re the only one who calls me that these days.”

“And for good reason,” Maxim remarked before hopping through the gate.

Honestly, he thought Orestis was being too cautious. Sometimes, one needed to take a few risks to achieve something worthwhile. Besides, Maxim was pretty sure the undying shrine would be empty, just like the regression one.

After casting a spell for aerial movement, he guided himself down to land softly in front of the shrine. And found the place inert, just as he’d guessed. When he sent a message through the gate to inform Orestis, the guy finally teleported next to Maxim.

Orestis spent a few seconds looking around, scoffed, then said, “Same as always.”

“You’re not taking any snapshots of this place?” Maxim asked.

“No need,” Orestis replied, shaking his head. “I have long since memorised every nook and cranny of this shrine.”

That statement seemed to be true, more or less. That mana construct Orestis had created back then had been imperfect in some of its dimensions—off by a few millimetres here and there—yet the scripts themselves had been reproduced without a single error.

To have achieved that without a perfect memory, Orestis must have spent an inordinate amount of time in this place studying those carvings.

Orestis made one full round of the shrine and then, without another word, teleported away. Which was fair; once he had confirmed that everything was the same, there was little reason to remain.

Maxim, though, decided to stay a while longer. He had yet to explore the whole area, after all.

It only took him a couple of minutes to complete that task. Then, he made his way around the shrine and stopped just outside the outer wall, right where it turned the corner. Because this was where he had noticed something very interesting.

Most of the script carved into the walls would stop before reaching the corner, never continuing onto the adjacent wall. But there were a few instances where half of a ‘letter’ was carved along the edge of one wall, with the rest continuing around the corner onto the other. This wall had five such letters going around the corner.

That number itself was not significant. But what was significant was that these letters—the locations where they crossed the corners, and even the thickness of their lines—seemed to match exactly with corresponding letters carved onto the walls of Valdren’s shrine.

Maxim could picture it well enough in his mind, but there was something to be said for having an actual visual. So, he channelled some of his mana to create a perfect replica of the Valdren shrine, then positioned it so that its walls aligned with those of the actual shrine.

Well, would you look at that. The inscriptions that previously crossed corners now joined up seamlessly across the boundary, with the halves carved on each wall coming together to form complete letters. But that was not all.

Maxim pushed himself off the ground and cast a flight spell, rising until he was high enough to take in the shape formed by the two shrines below. The shape, of course, was incomplete.

Each shrine was built to form the outline of a broad triangular chevron, with a wide concave arc cut into its lower end where the entrance was. Each one, by itself, seemed like nothing more than an oddly shaped shrine. Even two of them together were unremarkable as a geometric arrangement.

Once again, Maxim drew on his mana to create another replica of the shrine—minus the scripts, since he had no idea what they looked like on the third one. Still, it served its visual purpose. Because now, the shape made sense. And it was satisfying to look at.

The three shrines, together, formed a perfect equilateral triangle with a circle in the middle.

Now wasn’t that interesting?

And with how perfectly the scripts on the walls aligned, it was also obvious that these shrines were always meant to be connected together this way. However, given that each one was half a world away from the other, there were only a few viable ways they could be brought together—with the easiest one involving the use of gateways.

To do it properly, though, he would first have to change the gateway’s aperture into a square. But that shouldn’t be too difficult. In fact, based on the historical records, the first gateway spell had formed square apertures; it was optimisation over the years that had eventually led to the gateways taking their circular form.

Orestis would need to know about this, too, obviously. But later. Maxim wanted to see if he would be able to figure it out on his own. Not that Maxim expected him to—which was also the preferred outcome.

That way, when it became relevant to solving their curse situation, Maxim could tell Orestis about this and then make fun of the guy for not realising it sooner. That would certainly be enjoyable.

As for opening the gate now, Maxim discarded the idea. There was always a chance that simply opening it might trigger something—something that could be a one-time occurrence. Like what had happened when he gained the regression ability. The blessing had been present only the first time he walked into the shrine; it had been absent after that, regardless of when he’d returned.

That being the case, it would be better to do it when everyone was present and prepared. Taking risks was acceptable, but losing opportunities wasn’t.

Which was why Maxim wanted his blessing back. He’d lost count of the number of opportunities he’d missed since he got saddled with this undying body.

… Okay, so he hadn’t lost count. But he preferred not to think of that number; it was simply too painful to dwell upon.

… Okay, so it wasn’t painful. But that was only because he couldn’t feel pain with his current body.

Regardless! Once he got his blessing back, Maxim planned to go back to every single woman and make things right!

He sighed, expelling his disappointment along with his breath. Right then. It was time to head back to Varra. He was pretty sure they were making headway in their research. Probably.

With a wave of his hand, he dispersed the mana constructs below. Then, he teleported away.