The lanky, overdressed wizard departed to our attic to “set up a teleportation rune” as was explained in another note to my parents.

“How?” I inquired, watching the fake human ascend the wooden stairwell via one of the Mindspace screens.

“Bees!” Delta cheerfully boasted.

“Bees?” I gawked.

“Did you know that a Skyisle bumble bee can pull 300 times its weight or more depending on its level? This is exactly 85’204 bees wearing a wizard’s suit that I stole from a clothing line.” Delta grinned back at me.

“Bees… wearing stolen clothes?” I massaged my forehead. “This is definitely unexpected. How are you even controlling them?”

“I ate the Queen bee’s soul. I’m currently controlling the Queen bee, who is in turn delegating all 85’204 bees wearing the suit. It was the most optimal solution for getting inside our parents’ house.”

“Queen bees don’t actually control the bee colony, do they?” I thought out loud. “Bees are known to swarm after the queen, sure, but…”

“Have you forgotten that nearly everything in this world has a level?” She huffed. “The Queen is level 20 in [Bee-control]. She had a very small soul stat though and was thus completely defenseless to my Soul-devouring attack!”

“Right. They’re magical bees, far more advanced than what I am used to.” I laughed.

"Yep." Delta nodded.

“How are you writing those notes, anyway?” I asked as I watched the fake wizard hand dad another note. The note described more of my parents house in exact details, as further fake evidence that Delta had lived in this house hundreds of years ago.

“The bees in this colony have the [Ignite] skill. I’ve been selectively igniting bits of stolen paper to burn letters into them.”

“You’ve made a thermal-pulse printer... using bees?” I started to laugh at her creativity.

Delta grinned.

“You’re amazing!” I declared.

“Why, thank you… V.. D… uhh…” Dela glitched into an inquisitive expression looking at me.

“Just call me Dante. Might as well get used to it.” I sighed.

“Okay, Dante!” She saluted me.

“We should tell them the truth someday,” I spoke, looking at the happy faces of my parents on the screen. The deep worry they had worn on their expressions had now subsided. They wholeheartedly believed that Delta was an Elder that had come to their aid in their hour of need, one who would explain to the village that I wasn’t an Aberration.

Unfortunately for us, this wasn’t the case. We had work to do - we needed to figure out who our enemies were and why the local Overseer was out to get people born with a high level. Did Omniscience put other souls into this world before me? Had a religion of sorts grown around resisting such incursions into local normality?

“Phew.” Delta exhaled.

“Hm?” I turned my attention back to her away from my hypothesizing.

“Bees are deposited into the attic. They’ll be fine on their own now - they’ll deal with the wasp nest there and set up a new Queen.”

“What’s happening with the old Queen?”

“She’s old and I’m transitioning my Infoscope body back into you. I’ve got a lot of experience for eating the souls of bees. I require a level-up nap in a place where I can be safe.”

“...here? A nap? A homomagicus Infoscope requires sleep?”

“Yeppers. Everyone shuts down when they level up… even spell-humans!” Delta stretched out on the couch in the lab. “Demolish anyone who tries to get at us with [Modify]! Keep a tight [Tether] on me, so I don’t float away.”

The Infoscope floated into my Mindspace in all of its full beauty, merging with the avatar of Delta.

“No problem,” I nodded, tethering her to Bessie.

“Initiate level up,” she said and closed her eyes.

I watched her for a bit as she flickered somewhere between an illusion of a sleeping girl and the shimmering Infoscope fractal and then turned my attention back to modifying my Mindscape - there were still a lot of things to be repaired here after Delta’s attack.

Eventually, I too fell asleep.

The thing about [Vows] aka limits placed upon me by the System in exchange for a bit of power was that like anything limiting they could simply be walked around, bypassed. When I had made my first [Vow] to the System - I had quickly scanned it in me via the use of the Infoscope and found it to be a complex, static Omnicode fractal structure. That is to say, there didn't seem to be anything in it in terms of external intelligence enforcing the rule 100% on my person.

To be more specific, the nature of the [Vows] didn’t destroy or turn off the total effects of a spell near me, it simply blocked me from being able to manifest a specific spell. For example, someone could still attack me with [Destruction] or use [Identify] on me and if I had a way to redirect the aforementioned spells, then technically I could still use both of these spells via secondhand magic.

The trick here was that as long as Delta was connected to me, I didn’t need to actually manifest the Infoscope - she already was a perpetual, self-enforcing manifestation of the most complex Identify possible. All I had to do was tell her what to Identify and she would do the job of Identifying it and deposit the necessary information into my Mindspace via the Tether.

While Delta slept, I mostly listened to and studied the language of my parents, so that I could eventually talk with it without the use of the translator.

With every passing day, I grew a bit more worried about the Overseer showing at our door, but nobody came. I guessed that the midwife's ploy to fudge my numbers in the book of Skyisle records worked.

Delta returned to awareness in six days. It was nothing like an ordinary person waking up. One moment she was laying down and another second she glitched back up into a sitting position, sparks of silver light dancing in her eyes.

I recalled that I was out for 23 days. I guessed that being a spell allowed her to level up a lot faster compared to a human.

“Delta, can you Identify everything about [Modify-Create] for me and deposit the information into Bessie?” I asked.

“With pleasure.” She grinned, her body flickering to resemble the Infoscope. Several of her fractal appendages connected into Bessie, uploading vast deposits of information into my mind.

“Show me your Stats?” I asked.

Delta waved a single tendril at me in the air and a screen projected from Bessie with her stats.

Name: Delta Alana Skyisle Age: 13 days Species: Homomagicus [+ 4 in base Agility & Dexterity] Affinity: Infoscope [Affiliated skill bonus] Specialization: Soul hunter [+ Soul Devourer skill] Level: 1 Experience: 2258/200 Health: 1/1 Stamina: 1/1 Mana: 1/1 Mana regen: 1 m/hr Strength: 0 Agility: 0 [+4] Dexterity: 0 [+4] Vitality: 1 Charisma: 0 Magic: 1 Luck: 0 Intelligence: 169 Wisdom: 0 Soul: 73 Skills: [Infoscope LV 126] [Soul Devourer LV 1] Vows: Sacrifice of: [Destruction]

"A nice Agility and Dexterity bonus. That’s a lot of experience," I commented.

“Well yeah, I ate the soul of a worker bee and then a Queen Bee… and then some more bees. Luckily for me these bees were completely defenseless to my Soul-Devouring skill. I think they've been living inside our ward for generations so they have evolved no defense against Phantoms. Also, I identified a lot… of things.”

“Are you planning to eat more bee souls?”

“Are you feeling bad... for bees, Dante?” She must have identified my emotions.

“A little,” I confessed. “I mean… your bee looked very cute and fuzzy.”

“Your empathy for Apiformes Colletidae is notable.” Delta shook a tendril at me with a giggle.

“I see that you’ve already put your Investiture points from Level 1 into Intelligence?” I inquired.

“Yeppers. I want to be the cleverest spell like no-one ever was!” She laughed. "But seriously, any extra [Intelligence] helps me process whatever I'm identifying faster."

Then her face suddenly flickered into a grim expression. "I got so excited to finally level up that I forgot to tell you - we have a problem."

"Yes?"

“Like I said, the nest of bees I now control was living in a huge tree standing inside the ward line of our parents house. I saw her on the 2nd day. She's stalking the perimeter of the ward."

"Who?"

"The phantasm-squid." Delta waved a hand and a screen came up displaying the semi-transparent, ghostly monster. "I'm her little snack that got away."

"She's out there?!" I yelped.

"Yep," Delta nodded. "Coming and going. The phantom-repelling wards around gardens and hex-lanterns along the paths between houses keep her away. I had to move quickly between the houses along the paths early in the mornings to gather up the clothes with the swarm to avoid her. Thankfully, I'm a spell not a phantom. The property-line garden wards don't see me as a threat."

"Shit. How does she even..." I muttered.

"The Phantasm-Squid knows where you and I are. She marked us with the [Soul-Devouring] skill."

"Hrmm." I rubbed my left hand.

"From what I understand the phantasm-squid uses it to tag her prey. Mine's fully merged, integrated with the Infoscope tendrils, so it doesn't bother me or direct my actions anymore."

"Yeah, I see that it's part of your [Specialization]."

"Uh-huh," Delta affirmed. "As for you - the System marks it as an affliction, but from what I can see it's more like an infection/tag that's masquerading as a skill that can't be removed."

I nodded.

"I was quite terrified of moving between houses. I know that the bees can't hurt her. I think if the phantom catches me, she will try to finish the job - to bind me fully to herself. I really don’t want to become one of her mindless children.” There was visible worry in her eyes.

“I understand,” I replied. “I’ll protect you.”

“Thank you.” Delta beamed.

She looked at my left hand covered in silver-white cracks. "You're marked. I can see that the infection is hurting you."

"We'll have to stay in the house until we find a way to defend ourselves." I said. "Is... mom marked too?"

"Yes," Delta replied. "That brings me to another important point of note. The phantom isn't a stupid beast. She's clever enough to hide from strong prey, or she's just playing around with us like a cat is playing with mice. I don't know exactly how smart the Phantom is... but when mom briefly stepped out into the garden, the ghostly monstrosity instantly dove into the deep."

"Damn it! We've got us a bloody stalker! We need to heal me and mom and remove this... tag," I said. "Do you think it can be converted into an actual skill and then sacrificed with a Vow?"

Delta's face grew even darker. "Do not EVER make any more Vows, Dante! They are very dangerous! They provide a bit of extra mana to a desperate wizard, but they also doom them to obedience."

"What?" I blinked.

"Skills are channels, they allow you to channel magic. I've scanned your three Vows and also looked at one that I got. The Vow is basically a very special type of a skill, a mushroom cap fractal sitting on top of a channel heading from your soul. Just like a skill with every level up it grows in all aspects, drawing MORE power from the soul to reinforce itself. Hanging too many Vows onto a wizard can tear apart their soul if they begin to compete. An example of this would be a [Vow to kill people] and a [Vow to heal people]."

"Shit," I muttered, looking at the fractals that represented Vows on screen. "Are they a problem?"

"Not yet, but from what I can see... they might become a catastrophic problem if they level up too much."

"Damn it. Can they be modified?" I asked. "Would I be able to cut the channels off?"

"If you want to tear your soul apart, go ahead," she said. "The soul is a very fragile thing. Do not mess with the channels or Vows until my Infoscope is better, your soul is stronger or you have a [Soul-Repair] skill of some sort!"

I sighed. "Can you tell me more about the infection?"

Delta projected an image of an incredibly complex fractal onto Bessie's screen. My brain couldn't even begin to make heads or tails of it.

"It's akin to a magical virus that's built this freaking formation on top of and inside of your soul and even your body! All of its tiny bits compose something very big and complex with a multitude of skills and defenses against destruction, modification, etc. It will take me a while to identify all of its roots. The infection threaded itself very deep into your soul. It's really good at hiding parts of itself too. I can barely tell where your soul begins and where it ends. The good thing is that it's barely growing. The bad thing is that it's VERY high level. Somewhere around level 300+. Unless I can get the Infoscope to Level 400 I won't be able to Identify all of its parts. You see these bits? They're reactive. It can detect your attempt to modify it and attack your skills back. I believe that it will spread further if it's bothered."

I sighed.

"Think of it as a benign virus you'll just have to live with for now... like Herpes simplex 1. Don't play with it, until I've identified it fully."

I sighed even deeper.

"Look, I have it too, you don't see me complaining. Thanks to you making me into a homomagicus it can't grow further, afflict me or influence my decisions."

I looked at her with a frown.

“I'll look at it again after I level up some more! Also, I’ve uploaded the latest Infoscope data into Bessie. Look at it and see if you can modify my threads so that I can spot the infection better."

"I can definitely do that," I said. "Where did the Phantom-Squid come from anyway? It looked like it dove right out of nothing. What is this 'deep' you keep mentioning?"

"The Astral Ocean," Delta said, her face suddenly glitching into an expression of pure fear. "I've Identified it. Take a look at it on Bessie... I believe you'll be unpleasantly surprised how common Soul-Hunter Phantoms are in this world..."