[Dr. Kerenski / Klint / Keps ]

Eating and training my Lymphagons for days on end was beginning to tire me out mentally.

I decided that twelve Lymphagons was enough to form a sphere of safety around me. I switched the Tether from one of my little soldiers to the other, organizing them into a dodecahedron-like shape. It wasn't perfect and I had to fold my little soldiers so that their pyramidal claws and bodies formed pentagons instead of hexagons, but eventually I succeeded at it, since they were pretty thin and malleable. All twelve of my soldiers produced an almost-perfect dodecahedron around me, made from interconnected 5-sided Lymphagons.

I kept a little porthole open for my thread, with which I aimed Sectus-Anima, sliced and sealed the membrane wall in front of me to test things. Three Lymphagons fell out of the cut. They floated about aimlessly, not noticing me inside of the dodecahedron.

Mwa ha ha. The dodecahedron armor worked perfectly.

I invested the five unspent points into luck. I felt that I needed some extra luck to survive the next step.

I made the cut wider and dove into the vein. The current inside rapidly pushed me forward.

The vein went on and on, in some sort of looping circulatory system, until I had arrived at the heart of the beast. I made a tiny porthole in my dodecahedron and fired at the core of the heart. It shuddered ever so slightly, healing itself rapidly.

My Sectus-Anima was far too weak to hurt this enormous Phantom. I sighed as I was flung forward as the phantom's heart pumped the ghostly blood forward.

I opened up one of the pentagonal sides, letting in a single enemy Lymphagon.

"I need to level up. Need to grow a lot stronger a lot faster... but how?" I thought as I killed and ate the captured Lymphagon.

[One cannot go around the limits, lad. Be patient and in time you will grow strong,] Keps commented. [Increase the number of your soldiers and you will someday prevail.]

If I levelled up my body by investing everything in soul, I could get more soldiers, sure... but then I'd be acting akin to Soviet leaders who kept ramping up the Red army and building more tanks and nukes instead of doing intelligent things such as investing in computational research.

My professor at the computational Institute in Moscow, the inventor of BESM series computers Sergey Alexeyevich Lebedev had taught me that computers were the future of humanity. In his belief, a sufficiently fast computer could improve upon any system and a network of computers could change all of USSR and bring about true communism based on free sharing of information.

Dr. Lebedev died on 3 July 1974. He wasn't there for fall of USSR, had not bore witness to the Soviet bureaucracy's transformation into an undynamic gerontocracy. He didn't have to endure the descent of First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev into senility. He didn't see the madness of our leaders that had driven our Empire into an endless, economically draining war in Afghan, stagnation and eventual collapse.

If I persisted in cutting apart my soul and producing drones, as Keps wanted me to... eventually I too would succumb to utter senility, make a mistake at the wheel. Keps was a legionairre, not an Academic. He, like Brezhnev believed that strength lied in superiority of numbers.

Making more drones was foolish. Real strength lied in Intelligence. My intelligence. My knowledge of USSR sciences, mathematics and virology.

I was no longer a human. I was an Astral construct and I possessed over a hundred shards. If I could use Leggie as a chronometer, I could use her as a computational device too.

Calculation of fractals without computer assistance was undertaken by German mathematician Georg Cantor in 1883 to create the Cantor set. The development of the first fractal generating software originated in Benoit Mandelbrot's pursuit of a generalized function for a class of shapes known as Julia sets. In 1979, Mandelbrot discovered that one image of the complex plane could be created by iteration. He and other programmers working at IBM generated the first rudimentary fractal printouts.

I had rabidly followed the work of Benoit Mandelbrot, making the KGB agents acquire Dr. Mandelbrot's books, scientific papers and calculations. Fractal tech seemed completely harmless, so nobody had bothered to safeguard it. I had replicated Mandelbrot's formulae myself in my Virology laboratory in Aralsk-7, finding his fractal mathematics discoveries truly incredible. Fractals had explained everything in the universe. Fractals could compute any shape possible and create infinite iterations of it. My theory was that fractals were a master key to breaking or predicting any system such as the stock market.

Unfortunately, I had died in 1992, ran out of time before I could truly follow through with my fractal research. I had killed myself and destroyed Aralsk-7 not just because I was alone and angry at the failures of our leaders, but because... I was dying. At sixty doctors told me that I had lymphoma, likely acquired from spending too much time in Semipalatinsk, Chernobyl and other irradiated sites.

I wasn't going to live past 1992, wasn't going to make the world a better place and so I blew it all up, ended whatever horrific viral research I had contributed to.

[That's a sad story, my lad,] Keps said. [But if you truly think that Intelligence will help you figure things out, go for it. You need not listen to an old warrior like myself. I lived to follow the orders of my Alanian commanders and died fighting the Basque in the desert of Yomacham.]

"We're both old ghosts," I muttered, looking over my menu. "The Soul-Song says it's... translating things. What is it translating into what?"

[Ancient Alanian into modern Alanian, I presume,] Keps replied.

"Have you ever tried to pull the Soul-Song out?" I inquired.

[No... and I wouldn't recommend it,] he mulled. [From what I recall... the original language of the Soul-Song is old and archaic, over one hundred thousand years old. I would not be able to help you understand it.]

"That's fine," I said. "I'll figure it out."

I decided to turn the [Soul-Song] [OFF] to see what would happen.

[Deactivate Soul-Song!] I ordered.

[Are you sure you want to halt the [Soul-Song]? Warning: Deactivation of this skill will make you unable to comprehend the Soul-Song. Do you want to proceed?]

"Do it," I commanded.

The word [Soul Song] that I was staring at, suddenly shifted around, rearranged itself to:

The rest of the menu flickered too, words warping into incomprehensible gibberish.

[Activate Soul-Song!] I sent, as I memorized the words. [Deactivate the Soul-Song].

The base word had remained, but the extra bits above and below each letter had changed, rearranged themselves. Holy shit. This was Matryoshka language - shifting information within information.

Identify song looked like in the menu.

I hummed the Song of Identification and aimed my mind at the > floating bit within the word.

It expanded itself into:

≯̺̬͉̀̈́͗́

Next, I attempted to identify the ○ bit.

It expanded into:

`̸̧̛̩̦͓́̚͝͝○

Bit by bit I memorized a new, expanded version of [Identify]:

The more symbols I identified, the longer the information chain became, seemingly stretching out into depths of itself with increasing, looping detail.

Eventually, after memorizing a hundred different iterations of Identify, I used my knowledge of mathematical formulae to combine all of them into a dandelion-like information superstructure.

Since I worked with viruses my entire life, I imagined it looking akin to a RNA virus from the Coronaviridae family, with its numerous envelope proteins extending outwards from a central core, where each data-strand of [Identify] was a different protein envelope.

A month flew by as I tumbled inside the whale's bloodstream, feasted on Lymphagons and slowly memorized and assembled the full version of [Identify] with all of its long, complex variety of info-strands. I had made my subjugated Lymphagons memorize each of the various long strands to keep my mind free to assemble the entire thing.

[That's... impressive. You'd make one fine Alanian Academic, lad. Never seen anyone do this sort of mental math,] Keps commented. [It doesn't even look like anything that the Mages of Tricameron use. It looks... alive, organic, not angular like the Soul-Song hexagrams!]

"Thanks," I smiled mentally. "Glad you approve."

[But will it work?] The old Archmage sent.

"Lets find out," I replied and slotted the Soul-Song back into place. I pulled the Soul-Devourer skill out and inserted my Identify into the channel as a skill.

[Identify LV 3]

Appeared in my menu. I smiled. It worked! The Soul-Song system saw my construct as a spell. I pushed mana into the construct I was visualizing and it manifested in front of my eyes.

Keps gasped as I fired the spell. It instantaneously flashed through the little porthole and returned back.

[Astral phantom whale's vein] [Location: 152nd thread muscle]

Keps whistled. [You did something that I thought was completely impossible. Count this old Archmage impressed - I've never seen or heard of anyone with a skill beyond their level!]

"What is an Archmage anyway?" I asked.

[A mage with all of their skills above level one hundred,] he replied. [Respect that comes with age.]

"Did you actually research things?"

[I killed our Empire's enemies with greater and greater efficiency, if that counts. My Rewind made me nearly invincible,] Keps boasted.

"Rewind?"

[A top tier skill granted from a big investment in Vitality.]

"Then how did you... um, die?"

[Ran out of mana,] Keps laughed heartily. [As powerful as Rewind Archmages are, they can still be permanently ended by a very persistent enemy. Took down around three hundred of the bastards with me before they killed me for the 90th time.]

Rewind sounded pretty awesome. It would be nice to become invincible.

I focused on firing Identify at everything through the porthole. My experience started to skyrocket. It was a lot more effective and faster than killing and eating Lymphagons!

[454/450 Experience optimum reached! Initiate level up?]

Sasonny resonated.

"Yes," I said, expecting pleasant dreams and darkness.

The vein looked the same, still filled with hexagonal things... but it was now very blurry, indistinct.

It was a dream... okay, this is new. I didn't know that souls could dream.

The world suddenly shook. Brilliant, silver ripples went across the entire vein.

The vein's containing wall bent inward and tore apart. Something... a new phantom had entered into the vein! It turned and went straight towards me, as if it was here for me, as if it had been stalking, searching for me.

The thing had a hollow shell on its back, but it was otherwise shaped like a more monstrous version of Legonnie. Its shape was more defined, had sharper edges to it akin to a Star-Polygon fractal. It was a hundred times bigger than Legonnie, a hundred times faster and stronger than anything I had.

Its pyramidal teeth closed over my protective shell and it shattered, exploded.

I screamed in horror and pain and pyramidal teeth closed over my threads. The star-shaped phantom dragged me out of the vein, punching through the phantom whale's organs and membranes with incredible ease.

My Song-Spells did nothing to free me, the thing holding me was simply too monstrous, too high-level. Identify defined it as:

[Astral Hunter LV 295] [Congratulations on reaching : Level 3] [1 new skill slot gained!]

Sasonny resonated, awakening me from the horrid dream.

"What the devil was that?!" I yelled, freaking out.

[That was a prophetic dream,] Keps commented. [Luck reached into the Astral and pulled out your death. I've had quite a few of those over the years.]

"M-my death?! Reached into the Astral?!"

[Yep. Something's got your scent. A real nasty hunter from the looks of it. Way stronger than this whale,] Keps noted.

"H-how do I stop it?"

[You're a smart kid. You'll think of something, lad,] Keps replied.

"B-but, can't you help me?" I stammered.

[I'm mostly your imagination, akin to a person in a lucid dream. I'm woven together from very degraded Astral imprints. You're mostly talking to yourself. I can't actually make decisions for you, only give you advice based on what my shards still remember,] he replied.

"Wait... if you're not real then how am I talking to you?"

[I'm just a static memory, a projection, a person you're daydreaming about, as your soul's energy vibrates the 12 shards that once sat in my grandson's locket,] Keps answered. [Without your will and energy I am just an immobile, dead, empty sky-ship. I have no will, no motivation, no goals. Twelve very decayed soul-shards do not, cannot make a full person.]

"No ideas for how to escape the Astral hunter?" I sighed.

[This is not a situation that I've encountered before,] Keps said and fell silent.

I really had no idea how to get myself out of this future. My panic grew with every passing second. Legonnie tried to pet me with one of her triangular pincers. It made me feel marginally better.

[Escalate the attack on the bloodstream]