Polymath Redux

Chapter 13//Planning Moves Ahead

“How does your body feel?” Mordred asked of the amnesiac woman as he continued to check up on her. “Any irregularities? Does anything feel off or painful?”

“Umm, not quite,” the woman responded with a hint of discomfort in her voice. Indeed, how could she not feel a little intruded upon when a man she didn’t even know was touching around her body? For medical reasons of course, but it must’ve still been a tad embarrassing. “I, um, nothing feels wrong with me. You told me I was in a bad shape, but everything seems okay now.”

“Hmm,” Mordred let out an inquisitive hum. “Could be that recovering from the dead multiple times has affected your memory,” he mumbled under his breath just quietly enough that the woman could not catch what he had said. After having checked everything multiple times through the knowledge he had inherited from various medical related mastery skills, he concluded that this woman was perfectly fine. Aside from the initial amnesia there were no other problems regarding her health or with the ‘spare organs’ he had implanted onto her. “It appears you have some early symptoms of a cold, but nothing major. Still, I’d like for you to stay here for a while, so I can continue to monitor your condition.”

“That… may be for the best. I’m not sure where else I could go…”

“Yes, of course, how remiss of me. You’re free to stay as long as you like,” Mordred told her with a warm smile. “I’d like to give you your own room, but for now please use the beds at the clinic until everything is sorted.”

Feeling relieved, she returned a meek nod, “I’m grateful, Doctor. For everything.”

“It’s not a problem. Let’s see…” Mordred then turned to his ‘sister’ and ordered, “Morialia, please bring her something to eat. Preferably just something light, like soup and bread, until her system is properly functional.”

“Sure, sure,” Morialia replied with a yawn and left the room.

“That’s right, do you remember your name?”

“My… Name?” the woman thought to herself for a moment but shook her head. “No, I remember nothing… sorry.”

“How about the name, ‘Prince Bradley’?”

When she was asked that, she had a reaction. She froze for a moment but then her expression soured. “Prince… Bradley? I feel like I should know… but when I try to think about it, nothing comes out. Could… could it be something is wrong with me?” she seemed a little spooked.

“No, it’s perfectly normal,” he reassured. “It was a name you called out while you were unconscious. I thought it might jog your memory, but if it doesn’t, don’t worry too much about it for the moment. What we should focus on is getting you back to health. We can figure out what to do once we do that.”

“Okay,” she nodded.

“Still, it’s quite cumbersome to go without a name. Do you have anything you wish to be called temporarily?”

“Umm, I’m not sure…”

“How about ‘Ann’? It’s a short and simple name, though fairly generic.”

“Yes, I see no problem with it.”

“Wonderful. Take a rest now; I’ll be around if you need me,” he told her as he guided her to one of the clinic’s beds and left.

*

*

*

“Mnn… Thirsty…” upon being woken from her peaceful slumber in the middle of the night due to a sudden rush of cold wind leaking through the window, Morialia felt a little parched and came downstairs for a drink. On her way she spotted her master laboriously slaving away with a frustrated look of contemplation as he sat quietly at his desk. He still wore his lab coat-like coat, meaning he hadn’t taken a break since morning yesterday. A small makeshift lamp constructed out of magical stones illuminated several curious objects resting before him.

Turning her attention towards a nearby wall where the clock was set, it read half-past-two in the morning. A godforsaken hour where only the sounds of small nocturnal insects could be heard from the blackness that was the world outside the window. “What’s this, master, you’re still working this late?” she asked.

“Morialia,” he acknowledged her presence. Though neither of their bodies required any sleep or sustenance to maintain health, there was a wearily exhausted look upon her master’s usually stern face. It hadn’t been from physical fatigue, but likely seemed to have stemmed from the accumulated stress of thinking about something. “That should be my question; what are you doing still up?” he reflected. “You’re the one who demanded a comfortable bed to sleep, so why aren’t you?”

“I came down to get a quick drink,” she shrugged. “So, what’cha looking at?” she peered over his shoulders and saw a couple of interesting objects. The first was a small earring-like object with a glimmering red crystal attached to it, and the other was a pair of daggers- one white, one black. “Oohh, pretty,” she commented about the earring and picked it up. She excitedly placed it over her left ear and showed it to her master, “how do I look?”

“It looks fine,” he replied without emotion.

“Can I have it?”

“No.”

“Cheapskate!”

Mordred let out a tired sigh. “That’s an important piece of… well, I suppose you could call it ‘technology’ from this world.”

“Huh? Really? What does it do?”

“In simple terms, it’s a ‘transceiver’. If you have a pair of these set to parallel magical frequencies, it’s possible communicate over a long distance. The distance and clarity of the transmission seems to be dependent on the amount of mana a person pours into it. In addition, the required mana also increases exponentially as the distance widens. Between us, we should be able to use this with relative ease of a few kilometres- ten if we put in some effort. Though, I’m still unsure how much distance an ordinary person of this world could cover before it becomes too mana-heavy.”

“Heeh… That’s impressive,” Morialia nodded. “If I had something like this back in our previous world, maybe my invasion of you Humans would’ve gone a lot more smoothly. I might even have succeeded,” she muttered a small, mischievous chuckle. “It’s a real shame.”

“Even if you had it, I doubt it would’ve made any difference.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I exist.”

“… Really? You’re going to be like that?” she let out a sigh. “Fine, whatever.”

“Still, as impressive as that is, the real problem is this,” Mordred commented as he tapped on the table before the two resting daggers. He then asked her, “do you know what these are?”

“Huh?” obviously they were old-looking daggers- about a few decades? She picked up the black one and inspected in closer detail, then a cold chill suddenly crawled over her body. She never actively carried one of these herself, but she knew of them. In their previous world, these things were known to be dangerous when in the right hands. In fact, her predecessor- the previous Demon Lord- had been felled by these. “Wait… is this?!”

“Yeah,” her master nodded with a look of seriousness. “This is an ‘Ego Weapon’.”

‘Ego Weapons’ were very special weapons infused with a personality; in their own right they could be classified as sentient, living beings. Their creation process wasn’t too difficult, though it required master levels in both ‘blacksmith’ and ‘artificer’, along with a truckload of rare materials. The weapon that would serve as the crucible to the ‘Weapon Ego’ also needed to be a high quality, otherwise the creation process with ‘fail’, resulting in the loss of both the weapon, all the materials and the Weapon Ego.

The Weapon Ego came in the form of rare stones- ‘Ego Stones’- that could only be procured as rare drops from high-level dungeons. They were infamous as obtaining even one of them could take several hours of pure grinding. However, once a player did manage to get one, what made these ‘Ego Weapons’ frightening was that they could grow more powerful as they were continuously used and maintained- though there was a limit. Once these weapons reached their peak strength, they were monstrous end-game weapons that could kill even Morialia in a few swings- provided the wielder was strong enough as well.

Feeling a sense of foreboding from these daggers, Morialia gently placed it back down onto the table and retreated a step or two.

“But wait, aren’t Ego Weapons supposed to have that blue glow around them?” As she knew them, a glimmering blue tint would always accompany the Ego Weapons and let out a magnificent and deadly aura. Yet, these looked just like ordinary- perhaps a bit fancy- old daggers. She certainly wasn’t mistaken about the sensation they let off when she touched them but looking at it from a distance, they didn’t appear all that special.

“That’s because they haven’t been awakened.” Mordred explained as he picked one up and asked, “want me to activate it?”

“Wuh, no! Are you crazy?!”

A silent, mocking scoff left her master’s spiteful mouth as he revealed a sadistic grin. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t be able to awaken someone else’s Ego Weapon in the first place. Are you really that afraid of these?”

“My dad was killed by one! Of course I’d be scared, you sadist!”

“Ah, my condolences.”

“When the guy who killed me several hundred times says something like that… forgive me if I don’t buy it. Whatever, where’d you even find this any way? It’s not yours, right? You said you couldn’t activate someone else’s.”

“It belonged to the woman I resurrected, but…” he trailed off as his eyes grew cold and distant.

“But what?”

“…” he ignored her for a moment as he paused to think. “No, it couldn’t be…” he then turned to pose a seemingly unrelated question, “exactly how much do you remember about the game… about our previous world?”

“What do you mean ‘how much do I remember’?”

“Specifically, do you remember a woman named ‘Eris’?”

“Eris?” she searched her brain for that name, but nothing concrete came up. “Hmm, not particularly. Is she someone I should know?”

However, her master did not answer and mumbled incoherently to himself. “Interesting. Even though every player is technically a hero in their own playthrough, she only recognizes me… could it be because she was summoned through me?”

“What are you talking about? Does that ‘Eris’ woman have something to do with these daggers?”

Her master glanced over the daggers and clicked his tongue. “The problem is the Ego itself, or rather how the Ego is set up. I’m sure you’ve noticed already, but the Ego in these daggers are a bit special, in that they are ‘twins’. The creation of a ‘Twin Ego’ is extremely difficult that you could count the number of people who owned these on one hand- even I don’t own one. Not only is the success rate for cutting an Ego Stone perfectly in half absurdly low, the two crucible weapons needed to have exactly the same random stat bonus rolls.” When creating a weapon, ‘random stats’ were given on top of the base stats as a bonus for taking the time to ‘craft’ them, but there was no control over how much or how little the bonuses were. Thus, having two weapons with the same bonus stats was an incredibly rare phenomenon. That said, it wasn’t particularly that bad since the ‘failed’ ones could be sold off to other players to recoup some losses.

“Yeah, but so what? Are you saying these daggers belonged to that Eris person?”

“… I don’t know,” her master answered. “Eris’ playstyle always revolved around dual weaponry; dual swords, dual axes, dual maces, dual war-hammers, even dual crossbows… which I don’t understand how she made work. And of course,” he tapped across the table once more, “dual daggers.” He sighed as he continued, “in the past she told me she liked the concept of ‘duality’, so she kept one weapon painted white and the other black.”

“Isn’t that a perfect match?”

“… No,” he shook his head. “Because Eris’ Twin Ego Weapon weren’t daggers. She used Twin Ego Swords. On top of that, it’s impossible for a person to have more than one Ego Weapon- twin weaponry excepted. If she wanted to make these dual daggers into Twin Egos for herself, she’d first have to destroy the ones she already owned, which I don’t believe is something she’d do.”

“But, it’s not impossible right? Maybe she did break her previous ego weapons.”

“It’s… unlikely. The last time I saw Eris was a year back, but the ruggedness and used state of these daggers easily give off the impression they’ve existed for decades. I vividly remember her with her Twin Ego Swords back then…”

“Well, then it’s a coincidence.”

“It’s a little premature to conclude one way or the other. There are too many ‘coincidences’ for it to just be a mere happenstance of chance. It’s too similar to Eris’ style, but at the same time a black/white theme on weapons isn’t exactly all that rare. And who’s to say that Ego weapons can’t exist in this world?” He commented in annoyance, “tch, if only I could see its status, I’d be able to determine the owner.”

“Hmm,” Morialia carefully studied her master’s face which had been conflicted. She wasn’t sure if he was happy or sad that these weapons could belong to a former friend of his. “Who is this ‘Eris’ woman supposed to be anyway? Was she your lover?”

“Are you one of those? The kind that doesn’t believe men and women can be just friends?”

“Well, it isn’t easy.”

“We were in the same guild. I thought she quit… but now I’m not so sure.” Mordred started tapping on the table in frustration, “if only that woman didn’t suffer from amnesia, I would’ve gotten a straight answer.” He leaned back on his chair exhausted and massaged his eyes. “And speaking of that woman, I did see something interesting.”

“Like what? Her boobs? They were certainly ‘ample’,” Morialia joked but was swiftly ignored.

“I’m not entirely certain, but I think she used ‘Assassinate’ in her fight against the Hundred Eyed Devourer. It appeared rather incomplete though, or perhaps I’m mistaking an entirely different skill with a similar function. Maybe I should set her up with another fight…”

“If you did that, I think she might die for real this time. How could she fight without her memories?”

“She’d still have her muscle memories. Though, I suppose that isn’t guaranteed either since I used ‘spare parts’ to fix her. Or maybe it’s smarter to find this ‘Prince Bradley’ person and ask them directly.”

“Who’s that?”

“Going by the title, most likely one of the people in charge of this country,” but her master ultimately decided against it. “No, moving forward hastily would only get me unnecessarily exposed and put me in a weaker negotiation position. There’s still a lot of time and focusing on the woman would yield greater results in the long term. For now, I’ll have to observe for any changes or recovery of her memory. I also want to see if Graham can learn magic from the game… previous world. If so, then that would answer some questions, and open a whole lot more.”

“I guess this means that means we’ll be staying int this village for a little longer?”

“For the time being.”