chapter 89

accompanied by the sounds of roaring spectators Johanna and I take our leave, making sure to pick up my severed arm on the way out. leaning on johanna for support as my tendons heal we make our way to the medical facilities to get patched up. due to our extensive injuries we are there for the better part of an hour, during which we have time to talk.

"what do you want?" Jack

"what do you mean?" Johanna

"I mean long term, what do you want out of life? or this life at least" Jack

"I don't know, I guess I have always really followed you. maybe i'll travel, get strong enough that I can survive off the planet indefinitely and explore other planets" Johanna

"is that even possible?" Jack

"yeah, with cultivation it is, and I believe with soul magic as well, but it's harder. no idea why though. What do you want?" Johanna

"I want to make a lasting impact to the world, one that will be remembered for countless generations, I figure creating a country would be the best way for me to do that. I want to create something as great as I can before I inevitably die." Jack

"your ambition will be your downfall." Johanna

"and your lack of ambition will be yours." Jack

"probably, but who's really to say?" Johanna

"I know one person that could give a definite answer, but I doubt they'd say" Jack

"I heard about him, oracle right? isn't he a librarian?" Johanna

"yeah, he has told me quite a bit, some of it I think will be useful to me, most not so much" Jack

"isn't that the same with most things?" Johanna

“Yeah, it is” Jack

At the end of the hour a soldier bursts in, the sweat on his elven face makes it obvious he ran all the way hear. Between ragged panting he manages to tell us that something happened in the keep, he doesn’t know exactly what but it is important and our presence is required immediately.

We get there quickly, having all but fully recovered, and are greeted by Cath who quickly ushers us inside before taking us to the dungeon under the keep, staying silent until we reach there.

When we reach there I feel a vaguely familiar soul and I hear the cries of a child for their parent, seeing Cath’s stone cold face tells me it is not a child.

He leads us to a cell where we find a human child, the one I killed just the day before. Observing his soul I am left convinced, he is a damned, the same type of damned that I fought while getting ahold of mary’s birthday present. One thing that strikes me as odd about him however is that he is significantly older than the others, and I know they were among the first wave to come

“What is your name,boy?” Johanna

“Where am I?! My father will have all of you executed!” Boy

“Stop screaming or I will kill you again. Now answer her question” Jack

This seems to silence him for a moment, during which Johanna uses telepathy with me.

‘What do you mean again? Why is this child so important?’ Johanna

‘He is a damned, like the ones I lost an arm too, only he is different somehow, older.’ Jack

Before she can respond to that he speaks up.

“Is my father dead?” boy

“Yes, I killed him, quickly and painlessly” Jack

“That's, good I guess. He was dying anyway, slowly and painfully, at least this way he suffered less. I’ll miss him though.” boy

“You still haven’t told us your name” Johanna

“I‘m Leflan” Leflan

“If you promise to answer some questions of mine I will let you out of here, free to go where ever you want as long you do not antagonize me or my people. I am even willing to make a binding contract if you want, though it won’t mean much.” Jack

Leflan takes a moment to think, obviously conflicted. I nudge his thoughts in a subtle way for a positive answer.

“That would be acceptable, though I don’t believe the contract would be necessary, too easily broken without proper preparations.” Leflan

In several minutes the two of us are sitting in a spare room, the others having lost interest once things were resolved.

“So what do you want to know?” Leflan

“First and foremost, why are you so old?” Jack

“Excuse me?” Leflan

“The others of your kind are all apparently a couple months old at most, you are at least seven years, well at least this body is.” Jack

“Now I am confused, what are you talking about.” Leflan

“I know when you’re lying boy, I can literally read your mind. You know exactly what i’m talking about” Jack

“Fine, I underestimated you, I will admit that. This is not my first life” Leflan

“And this isn’t mine, that's not exactly a surprise, most people in this world have some memories of previous lives. But you aren’t an old soul, you are a damned, claiming to be an ancient will only work when the person you're talking to knows little of the soul, or of dungeons” Jack

“Fine, what do you know, i’ll work from there” Leflan

“I know that you come from another world, using some device that allows your soul to travel between this world and your original world using the void as an intermediary. And I know that in the world your people are very adept at using the laws of the world to create great things, despite or possibly because of the lack of magic. I also know that the first wave of your people coming to this world came here approximately three months ago, or at least I thought they did.” Jack

Leflan is stunned silent again for a moment before responding.

“I am assuming you are an adept soul mage then, much stronger than the one my father hired” Leflan

“For our purposes yes, but it seems I am answering more of your questions than you of mine” Jack

“Sorry, sorry. I am so old for one main reason, I was part of the group that helped create the device used to transport souls here from my world, and so I was part of the group to test it first. Though I will admit that I had no idea what I was building when I was building it, the concept of a soul is foreign to my people, something we dropped with religion centuries ago.” Leflan

“What did you think you were building?” Jack

“A gaming console, I originally thought this world was just a game, but now I realise that it is so much more than that, it is truly a world of it’s own, not just lines of code” Leflan

“Do you know why it was built? What are the gods trying to achieve bringing you all here?” Jack

“I have no idea, at first I thought it was about money, but now i’m not so sure.” Leflan

“I can tell you spend a lot of time here, why?” Jack

Leflan answers almost immediately, this is obviously something he has considered before.

“Because I love it here, in this world. I have very little of my own in my original world, no family, no friends, nothing to tie me there. I received enough money from building the machine we talked about earlier to sustain me comfortably for the rest of my life when added with what I had before. The longest I had spent there since entering this world for the first time was just a couple minutes to eat and clean myself, at least till you killed me.” Leflan

“Interesting, so you’re a loner in your home world, you wouldn’t care much for any power you manage to obtain there would you?” Jack

“No, I wouldn’t.” Leflan

“What do you want from this life?” Jack

“I want to learn everything I can, that has always been a desire of mine” Leflan

“Have you ever been to The Library?” Jack

“I have been to many libraries, but i’m assuming you’re referring to a special library” Leflan

“It is the first and easily the best library in the world.” Jack

“Oh, is it close?” Leflan

“I could probably get there within a day if I sprint, if you go there you could gain more than you could possibly imagine, especially if you become a librarian.” Jack

“And what does that take?” Leflan

“Is your desire for knowledge your greatest desire, nothing above it?” Jack

“Yes, I believe so.” Leflan

“Then you just have to ask. If your desire truly is honest you should have no problems” Jack

“And if it isn’t?” Leflan

“Then nothing, I asked, I was rejected because I desire to rule more than to learn.” Jack

“I guess that will be a good first step as any.” Leflan

“Tell me more about your world, do you know anything that might be of use to me?” Jack

“I’m sure i do, have you ever heard of the printing press?” Leflan

“Of course i have, it’s useless, a novelty at best. It cuts out the most crucial part of writing, leaving most written works incredibly difficult to learn from.” Jack

“Excuse me?” Leflan

“It takes the writer out of the equation, a skilled writer can produce a book significantly better than an unskilled one, even when they are copying the same book word for word. It has to do with mana and how it is used in the process of writing, the intent behind it i believe. A non sentient machine like a printing press can’t manipulate mana like that. Plus a skilled mage could mass produce books much faster than a printing press could.” Jack

Leflan looks at me with shock for a moment before steeling himself.

“Ok, what about a gun?” Leflan

I pull out one of my own, a revolver, almost never used.

“Useless to those more powerful than the gun maker, it can be a significant boon to a weak soldier, or adventurer, but are an incredible hindrance for long term growth unless you are the gun maker. I only use them when i am in a significantly weakened state.” Jack

With some sign of desperation on his face he tries again.

“What about nukes, surely you don’t have them” Leflan

“Nope, for a good reason, why destroy land you want to claim, that is stupid, and frankly pretty risky as a skilled mage could just teleport it back to you before it exploded, it would devolve into a dangerous game of hot potato. And an even more powerful mage could just contain the blast keeping the damage to next to nothing.” Jack

Exasperated, leflan hangs his head in defeat.

“This world is a melting pot of ideas from other worlds, if you recall, people come here with memories from other worlds, occasionally some new tech is introduced, this has been going on for millenia, i figured it was a slim chance that you would know of something unknown or at least rare in this world, giving me some kind of edge. But in order to find something like that i would need to delve deep into your memories, but more than a cursory glance is almost impossible because of something that i am assuming the gods did to your soul, making it much more resistant to soul magic.” Jack

“So the knowledge i have gained in the past will prove mostly useless in this world huh.” Leflan

“Not necessarily, you just have to find a use for it. But for now i must be going, you are free to leave. Here is a letter that you can give to any soldier, they will take you to the library upon reading it, should you chose to go that way. But for now i have things to do, and i have no time to waste” Jack

Leaving him with the letter i return to my duties, i’ve got things to attend to, sieges to plan, a country to rule.

End chapter 89