Author’s Corner: Times like this, I can laugh and pretend that I had epic foresight and knew what I was doing ever since the first chapters… But that would be a lie… Don’t hurt the author-sama! We need more cookies for the penguin hordes! :dadragon3:

Last night, I spent a few hours cultivating, before finally deciding to get some rest. Before I did so, I gave Celeste permission to do some more studying, and asked that she researched my new skill as her first topic. Sure enough, I had another ‘dream’ of sitting on my bed and watching as countless images passed by in front of me.

When I woke up, I found that I wasn’t as tired as I had expected to be after letting her research. Then again, I had already gotten a lot of sleep before logging in. “So, what did you find out?”

“Quite a bit, actually!” Celeste was suddenly sitting on the bed next to me as I sat up, a cheery smile on her face. “The Soul Arts skill is actually pretty well known, although it is a rare skill. There isn’t any listed way to learn it, aside from getting a Skill Shard with it. However, it has three main uses. The first, as you discovered yesterday, is to fight souls and soul-type creatures. The second, is to bring back the dead. And most importantly, depending on your viewpoint, the third use is to create Skill Shards.”

That made me blink for a moment, confused. “You mean that I could have sold those skills I ejected yesterday and made money?”

“Yup! Though, I would advise against it, because those skills also contained impure soul fragments with them. When you make a Skill Shard, you take a small gem to use as the storage device. Then, you gather the skill you want and copy it over into the ‘buffer zone’ of your soul to ensure that you retain the skill afterwards. Then you push that copied skill into the crystal, and lock it in. With that done, you have your very own Skill Shard! However, it is highly illegal to put foreign soul fragments into Skill Shards, because they have the chance to possess the host.

“There have been a few reported events in history similar to the Gamer case, where someone used Soul Arts to absorb other people. Most of the time, they have some countermeasures against becoming a Legion, but otherwise they will eventually turn into a monster after absorbing around five hundred souls. The reports vary, but they almost always turn into some kind of greater devil.”

“Ahh… but wait, this means that I could just go kill a few monsters, and then have enough of a buffer to give Yang a Skill Shard for cultivating affinities, doesn’t it?” I glanced over towards the illusionary AI, who nodded her head.

“You could! And Yang just recently earned the Natural Craftsman class, after making a few staffs with Nature Magic in your grove, so it is about time to teach her that as well. By the way, I’d suggest looking at the shops around town and see if you could get a couple of Gem Affinity element seeds. They are considerably more expensive than most, but if you get the affinity then you will be able to grow your own gems to use for Skill Shards.”

I thought about it, but ultimately sighed, shaking my head. “I’ll look, but right now I want to train Magnet Affinity and Plasma Affinity. Those two will be my ultimate combat abilities.” I smiled, imagining someone trying to pull a beam saber on me, only for it to lash at them like a whip.

“Fine, fine, fair enough. You should consider registering as a Skill Master, though. It’s the name for people who make Skill Shards, and anyone that tries to sell them without being registered can only get a fraction of the price. Due to the risks inherent in tampering with the soul, the people formed an organization that monitors Skill Shards, so that if a problem occurs it can be traced back to the one that caused it. Not being registered would be like… being a vigilante instead of a detective. Even if you do the right thing, people won’t easily trust you.”

“Maybe later… I don’t plan on making any Skill Shards yet. Maybe when I’m needing some money and have enough of a buffer. After all, if I copied and sold my Technomancy, that’d be easy money.”

Celeste gave a nod at that. “If you chose to sell your skill to the Skill Master guild, you could get half the price that they would charge to sell it to someone else. Once you register, and are able to make your own Skill Shards, you can sell them for full price. But either way, you need a buffer zone. For intermediate Technomancy, I’d say you would need nearly as much experience as you used to eject the skills last night.”

“Okay, any other information you’d deem immediately useful?” I smirked towards her as I said that.

“Hmm…. Oh! I looked up why you weren’t able to take the rush of information without collapsing. If it was just a matter of not being able to process the information, you would have just had a migraine that made you wish you could collapse. That what happened to you at the enchanter’s store. But what made you collapse before was actually your soul being unable to adapt fast enough to the sudden growth that I forced into it.”

I raised a curious eyebrow at that. “What do you mean sudden growth?”

“The runes and the trivia I gave you. It didn’t affect you like that when Legion forced itself into you, because Legion was supplying the soul essence to hold the skills. However, I don’t have a soul to give…” She seemed a bit sad about that point. “So when I sent you all of that information, it was like putting too much air into a balloon, and you couldn’t handle the pressure.”

“Celeste…?”

She glanced up at me shyly as I called to her. “Yes?”

“Do you want a soul..?”

The AI blushed slightly, looking away. “Maybe eventually? I’d need my own body for it, and you would have to harvest and purify spirit creatures to get a pure soul to inject. The lack of a soul is why machines can’t control magic the way you do. Machines can only use magic if they have prebuilt mana channels and spell software that directs the magic to form an aura. Far more difficult than how you cast spells…”

I grinned, mentally patting her head. Although I couldn’t physically touch her, she seemed to get the meaning. “A machine with a soul has their own special race, the Deus Ex. Obviously, they still can’t do things like breeding, but with a soul they can use magic, or level up. Normally, a machine can only grow stronger by upgrading their parts and software, but a Deus Ex has this done automatically as part of their leveling process. On the other hand, if a new soul is put into an advanced machine, the machine will be downgraded to match the soul’s ability until it is able to fully handle it.”

I was a bit surprised by how much she put into researching this, but I figured having a soul would be a pretty big thing for her. “Would you still be able to link up with the companion bracelets if you got a new body and soul?”

She looked up at me, and nodded quickly. “I’d just need to get the same upgrade on the new body that your bracelet has. The bracelets, and your magical implant, wouldn’t have traces of the soul in them, but I would still be able to connect my mind to them.”

I chuckled, teasing her a bit. “So you still wouldn’t be able to use my magic, huh? Well, there goes that shortcut.”

Celeste smiled happily, sensing that I was giving this serious consideration. “No.. but I’d be able to get my own class and skills, even cultivate mana if I wanted to. Just like with evolved companions and innately high level races, there are some unique possibilities for Deus Ex classes. After all, we can replicate most physical movements after a single glance, so we are quite special.”

“Alright, alright. I take it you’ve picked a planet that has spirits to ‘train’ on eventually?”

Her cheeks reddened a bit as she glanced down, nodding her head. “Yeah… but you need to be level thirty five first. With your Soul Arts, you could probably survive more easily than others, but that is still the recommended. In that time, you also need to learn how to purify soul essence…” She mumbled the next part under her breath, so that I could barely hear it. “And save up to get me a body…”

I pretended that I didn’t hear that last bit, which made her puff her cheeks out and pout. “How should I practice purifying souls?”

She began fidgeting a bit at that point. “Well… this is the part that you might not like. Whenever you kill a creature, a small portion of its soul essence, roughly five percent or so, is transferred to you. That’s why you can level up that way. However, if you have the Soul Arts, you can pull the full soul essence out of the dead creature and purify it. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to absorb it. In fact, if you purify it and then put it back in its own body after healing it, you can bring it back to life. It won’t have any memories of its former life, and essentially be a newborn baby. Apparently this is how Skill Masters get their pets, by taming those ‘newborn’ creatures.”

I thought about that and frowned. Call me old fashioned, but this still sounded wrong. “Would I be able to just do that with a small portion of the soul? I don’t want to mess with the whole thing, and maybe with this I can just gradually collect it to start making the pure soul for you?”

Celeste furrowed her brows in thought. “Hmm, it’d take a lot longer to do it that way than to use spirit creatures. And you’d need a crystal to store the souls into. If you used the souls of spirit creatures, you’d need only five to get a full pure soul. With others, it’d be twenty. And if you’re only using a portion, than you’ll need five times that amount.”

“So… a hundred creatures in order to get a pure soul for you? And, how much does a basic body cost?”

Celeste smiled when she realized where this was going. “Two gold, fifteen silver for the basic Deus Ex body. Comparing the prices of items between your world and this one, that should be the equivalent of two thousand, one hundred and fifty dollars.”

The actual conversion of money, compared to what the shrines charged for rebirth, was astonishing. But wait… that meant that my Technomancy skill was currently worth five thousand dollars. New job, get! Celeste, obviously hearing my thoughts, couldn’t keep herself from laughing. “You can stock up on gems and take them back with you, once you have the buffer. Keep in mind, you can also use the purified soul portions of the slain creatures as a replacement for the buffer zone.”

I nodded my head, only half paying attention. Unfortunately, there is no market for Skill Shards in the real world yet. I would never be able to go around selling a gem for the price of a car, saying that it would give you a powerful skill. People would look at me like I was a con man.

“Okay, first plan, breakfast. Then, finish cultivating. When I’m done, we can go hunting a bit to give me the buffer needed to sell my Technomancy and get you the body. Deal?”

“Deal!” Celeste called out happily, her eyes starting to water a bit as she smiled from ear to ear.

With that settled, I went downstairs to get myself a quick breakfast, before resuming my cultivation of magnetism and plasma. The process was actually fairly simple. I would turn my beam saber on for brief moments at a time, and do my best to cultivate the two types of mana as they were released. Whenever my saber ran out of charge, I filled it back up and started over. This process continued until I had 5% in both Magnet and Plasma Affinities later in the next day, at which pointed I gained the abilities associated with them.

First of which, the Magnetism Manipulation ability, this allows me to cause items to become magnetic, and change their polarity or intensity with my mana. It also allows me to create magnetic fields, but not to levitate large metal objects with my mind. I can do that with Metal Manipulation anyways, eventually.

Next, Plasma Generation, this ability caught me by surprise because it was not a manipulation ability, but rather a creation one. According to Celeste, without the Magnetism Manipulation the plasma would simply explode outward in a small burst of superheated air and lightning where I used Plasma Generation. But with it, I was able to create a magnetic field, and then fill it with a little bit of plasma to contain it, making a tiny ball of red energy.

As a final note, I did refine seeds for magnetism and plasma. The former’s effect was not immediately noticeable, but Celeste said that it will give my ore veins some changes. The effects of Plasma Affinity on my grove, however, was immediately clear. In the center of the ‘day’ sky, a small sun formed. Seeing this as a chance to be clever, I moved my second grove into the center of the ‘night’ sky. The planets themselves rotate, but do not revolve around each other or the new sun. According to Celeste, that will only happen when I obtain the Gravity Affinity.