World Seed

Author’s Corner: This chapter is brought to you by insomnia. Enjoy!“What happened to me, Celeste?” I looked over to the AI, and did my best to slowly sit up. I found that I was now wearing a white hospital gown, and had an IV hooked into my arm. Oh great, another hospital. Not even a super futuristic one, either.Celeste sighed, looking at me from a chair next to the bed. “From what I have gathered, when you killed Legion, he sent a sliver of his soul into you, which granted you that new skill. Then with that, he tried to force you to absorb the rest of his soul after he was dead. That was the rush of memories you were feeling. If I didn’t stop it, you probably would have ended up in the same condition that he was.”I raised an eyebrow at that. And how ‘did’ you stop it? At that thought, she turned away, somewhat bashfully.“The only way I could. I made you pass out, by forcing a massive surge of information into your head. Sixteen thousand runes in ten seconds was your limit on Hascion, so I gave you a hundred thousand in one second, as well as some random trivia I learned while studying. Once you were unconscious, I was able to control the flow of memories and personalities as they tried to take hold. I tried to delete them altogether, but found that my control did not extend that far. “The best I could do was filter them. You can try to view the memories, but it should look more like watching a video than experiencing it yourself. The thoughts are faded to the point where you shouldn’t be able to remember them, so you only gained the skill benefits that you acquired before I finished. Also, your Madness Affinity went up by a percentage thanks to this. For your own sake, do not use that absorbing ability again. I might not always be able to filter it out like that.”I nodded, understanding the situation. Closing my eyes, I tried to call up the information that she had used to stop the process. Really, Celeste? The runes, I can understand, but did you have to include things like the mating habits of equestrian wolves?There was a slight giggle from that. “Sorry, but I wanted something that would knock you out quick. I’m not sure how long you’ve been out for. They confiscated the bracelet when you were put in here, saying that the signal from it was interfering with equipment. But going by their conversations, I think it’s been a day and a half.”Oh great… All of this, and nearly a dozen people still died. And all I got was a terrible skill and ability.“Actually, about that. I’ve been doing some theorizing about this skill. Not a whole lot else to do while I waited for you to wake up, you know?” Celeste gave me a tired smile. “If I’m right, then it is usable for a lot more than just absorbing souls. You should also be able to bring back the recently dead, or empower others by giving them a bit of your own strength.”I raised a curious eyebrow, waiting for her to continue as a nurse walked by and noticed I was awake, going off to get a doctor. “Well, the strength of the soul is based on experience and levels. My theory is that this skill allows you to give others your experience, maybe even your skills. If you did that to someone who had died, but still had their soul in their body, you could probably empower their soul and bring them back to life.”And the cost?“Your own experience and levels. As you remember, there are two main ways to level up. The first is to kill other people or creatures. The second is to train your skills and abilities. Now, if you take away your own levels, you can reduce yourself to the point where your skills would be top of the line, and the only thing you lose should be stat points. However, if you go further, you will probably lose skill levels as well.”So, if I kill enemies, I can create a buffer zone for emergency transfer? I still did not like the idea of this new skill, but the fact that it could bring back the dead made me at least accept it as something useful.“Basically, yeah. But enough of that, you should take a look at what you managed to get from Legion. I could only control the memories and personality as they flooded into you, but from your mana I also felt a sudden rush of the elements as well.”Blinking with surprise, I looked at my status briefly, followed by skills.