BECMI Chapter 311 – Names Are Important
Gaebrel, Patron Immortal of the Shaden, Ascended Green, former Head of Engineering on the FS Barhund, specialist in mindlink technology, was staring at me and fuming. He was very powerful, He knew it… and I had already Bound Him once, which meant I could Bind Him again.
He had no idea a mortal could do that to an Immortal. It raised the hackles on His neck and made me a direct threat to Him.
However, if He escalated matters, did that mean I could do even more to Him? Prudence dictated being careful…
I could almost see the steps clicking in His mind. A more aggressive or stupider Immortal might have gone on the attack, trying to overwhelm and either kill or capture me for the threat I posed, the humiliation I’d dealt Him, or any of a number of different reasons at this point.
Just not bowing and scraping would be enough for some to dispatch me, or at the very least crush my resistance.
It just wasn’t happening at the moment. He was calculating, and did not like the answers He was deducing.
“I will politely ask how you managed to Bind me. I was not aware that it was possible for a mortal to do that without Immortal aid, perhaps an Artifact,” He finally opted to ask… and was even polite about it.
“I am a High Cryptomancer, Master Engineer,” I replied to him, continuing with my work, making it obvious he was not affecting my concentration or attention to detail. “Cryptomancy on the surface is about Runes that represent the truth of the world and existence. But that is merely the visible and tactile expression of the concept. The other side of Runelore is the audible side, which magi touch on oh-so-faintly with our spellcasting and tweaking of magic’s many Rules.
“The other side of Runes is Truenames, Master Engineer.”
The stricken look on His face was hard to miss. He wasn’t much for social skills, still, and that was after at least three thousand years as a de facto god. “You, you know my Truename?” He managed to ask.
“Yes, Senior Master Engineer Gabriel Encheliff of Vuldura III, born Fahneso 17 22940 to Rumael and Eldessra Encheliff, with three older sisters and one younger brother. Graduated top of his class from the Federation Information and Technology Institute on Collomor IV on merit scholarship, Scholar’s Degrees in Math, Physics with a specialty in Power Generation Engineering, and a minor in Cerebral Physics. Played a Drunken Monk build on Exudar IV with Dragon Tattoos, but had a secret love of collecting Gyre Helix Ores, convinced they were a key to a great secret of the game, and spent a lot of time trying them out in different formulas searching for that secret. Head of the Engineering department for the FS Barhund, moving into head of Cerebral Physics research with a focus in brain profiling and recording once transitioned to civilian life in Darkmoor.
“Died violently in the explosion colloquially referred to as the Doom of Darkmoor. Somehow elevated to Immortality at the same time, obviously by non-standard means. Has no known long-term interactions with any other Immortals, and thus little to no knowledge of Immortal society, customs, mores, and limitations save the most obvious standard of little interference in the mortal realm beyond the mandates of one’s clerics.
“Your preferred pet is a Jorglian Crack-back, you have a secret love of cultivation novels and campy martial art movies, and you gained an addiction to cashews during your time in Darkmoor. Your social skills are rather pitiful, you have the habit of thinking everyone around you is dumber than you are, and if they prove to be equally intelligent, your pure proficiency in higher math means you are still doubtless the smartest being in the room. You tend to be mystified by why people don’t always undertake the most pragmatic approach to problems, prefer to teach by dictation instead of by example or challenge, and have a habit of getting into useless projects for the sheer novelty and wonder of discovery with little thought as to their uses or consequences.”
I let all that trail off as I continued to work, while he stared at me in mounting anxiety. “Yes, Master Engineer, I know your Truename. You are an idiot and lucky fool who managed to Ascend to Immortality by a unique and improper path, which means you don’t know all the ways and means typically used by Immortals to protect themselves. Specifically, changing their Truenames once they reach Immortal stature and can do so, locking in their new status.
“You Ascended to power, simply retained your mortal Truename, and can no longer alter it to something unique, special, and very, very secret, as a newborn Initiate is instructed to do by their Immortal Sponsor, and which is added to at every new Immortal Tier of power.
“I know your Truename, and as a result, you are not an Immortal to me. You are ScholarusGabriel Xavos Encheliff, no more and no less.”
The way I said His Name, in the accent and pronunciation of His homeworld, made Him gasp and stagger back as His Immortal Power was immediately subdued and beat down with every single syllable!
Without His Immortal Power, Gaebrel didn’t have much power at all. He’d been an intellectual and scientist, not a combatant. Oh, sure, give Him some equipment and He’d likely be able to acquit Himself. But without His IP, He was just a nerd with some granted power-ups, not someone who’d fought an epic journey to power.
Stupidest kind of isekai protagonist, really.
==============
NovelFire is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
Another kind of stupid people are story thieves. Novel Bind and other sites are scraping stories again, and even making Audiobooks out of them.
If you're not reading (or hearing) this on NovelFire, you're helping pay a thief. Please read it in its original home, it's still free! You get the foreword and afterword, author comments, and answers to people with questions! I have not given permission for this story to be copied by a bot and posted ANYWHERE ELSE.
=============
“What do you want with me, then?” He asked, swallowing His real fear. Even if I couldn’t truly kill Him with the powers I’d shown, He was absolutely vulnerable here to fatal blows that could send His spirit winging to His home plane for banishment for at least a year, maybe longer.
Actually, having vivus, I could kill Him completely, but He didn’t need to know that.
I’d done the Truename research on his Other Shore counterpart, of course, but it carried through into this timeline. He wasn’t going to become an Immortal by accident in that timeline, I was fairly certain given all the changes there, but he was proving to be an important example.
I could acquire the Truenames of Immortals while they were mortal, and likely would still had a whole lot of power over them if I compensated for their Immortal Truenames.
In short, as long as I identified who they were as mortals, I could have my Sims do the Truename research on them in the past, and I didn’t have to be afraid of any Immortal who ascended after Darkmoor, if I did not wish to be!
That was going to be very, very useful. My next trip into the past was going to be issuing some very interesting new orders, and I was quite certain the Twilight Library had a very small, very secretive little nook in it I was going to be informed of when I came back from that trip.
In there was going to be the coded forms of some Names that could turn Immortal society upside down. If the Sphere of Entropy got its hands on them, it could gut the numbers of their rivals, and likely even arrange for their perma-deaths.
From my standpoint, it was definitely a weapon to use against younger Immortals, effectively being able to remove them from the board as viable threats and cripple their efforts among mortals.
Of course, that just left the powerful ones behind, and getting the Truenames on those involved, well, killing their Avatars and extracting a single Truename each time they did so. One Truename per Tier meant up to six kills required for the oldest and most powerful of them.
It was definitely not the way to go about this I would have preferred, but Immortals were exceedingly hard to kill, so, I used the hand I had been dealt.
The oldest Immortals tended to be the most distant, too. Except when they weren’t, like Thanatos, and were unrelentingly industrious about pushing their own version of what life should be like and what mortals should be trying to accomplish.
Before arranging for antimatter explosions to ruin the world in snitfits, that is.
“Want? I want nothing of you, Master Engineer. What could I possibly want of you?” I sniffed back to him. “That would be pretentious, petty, and ultimately very dangerous of me. If you pretended I did not exist, I would be quite happy. Do you think I am going to extort you or something? Have delusions of making an Immortal my slave or pet or something?”
Well, of course he did, because that would be the pragmatic, if dangerous, thing to do. Giving Him time to learn all my secrets and take me down from within, exacting the appropriate vengeance for such a lowly being daring to overstep my place!
“You are splitting the very faith and following of my chosen people!” he instantly rebutted indignantly.
“I want them, not you. You can stay with those of my kin who also want you and not me, Master Engineer,” I replied coldly, catching him off-balance again. “Fine. You wish me to want something of you? Then I want an explanation.” I turned around slowly to face him as the block I was working on finished off and drifted off to complete a twenty-seven block line, which shimmered and pulsed with light as the long segment was completed. That segment promptly shifted three feet and fused to the previous long segment there, one more line closer to completing a square of twenty-seven blocks, and a step of the Pyramid I was working on.
“I want an explanation for why you completely disregarded all safety protocols, all educational requirements, all training standards, and were planning to build a Class D fusion reactor, WITH unstable magical alterations and enhancements to it!, inside the single most heavily-occupied population center that you could, despite having a clear example of and knowing the probably ultimate fate of what you were making via the Crimson Cataclysm?!?!
“You irresponsible and selfish hack of a technician!”
He looked like I’d sucker-punched him, especially calling Him a mere technician now.
“I wanted, I wanted to make it on the home plane I found and took shelter in while I gathered myself!” he blurted out anxiously. “But it was impossible! Only the Prime Plane has enough laws in balance to permit fusion technology to function! All other planes have some level of imbalance related to the Immortal Spheres!
“Every reactor I tried to build exploded, it was impossible to contain! If the world I built it on was tied to Matter, it couldn’t even ignite! If it was dominated by Time, the reaction never became self-staining! If it was bent to Thought, it was impossible to keep the reaction steady and it would mutate into various forms of fire and radiation, and have wildly uncontrollable levels of output, ranging from the miniscule to reality-shredding! It had to be built on the Prime!”
“And you did not build it yourself in some out of the way location because, why?!” I stated bluntly, staring at the taller Immortal, giving up nothing to him. “Because you could survive an eruption, the hapless mortals playing with matters beyond their learning were just tools to be sacrificed?!”
“I, no, that was not my intent!” he started to refute.
“I do not care about the utter lack of ethics in your intent,” I spat back at him. “I can picture the why of the pragmatics. All you needed to do was ignore any hint of empathy or kindness for those who trusted you, and your own idiocy and callousness did the rest.”
“You cannot possibly understand-” He began haughtily.
“Still the inferior intellect, even when faced with evidence otherwise, holding onto the scraps of his superiority simply because of a blinkered view of reality through monomania,” I sneered back at Him. “Shall I go through your lack of a thought process? The sheer dismissal of emotional and empathic considerations make it simple and obvious, oh Master Engineer.” The title was very much a mockery, given what He’d done!