“So you went ahead and basically promised him a successor.”

Dealer pursed her lips a bit. “Uh, it could be read that way?” she winced.

She hadn’t told me what was going on, as she had it all handled, but there was no way I couldn’t notice the absolute torrent of Dormammu’s power going into the Pocketspace and all the Flames of the Faltine agglomerating there, waiting to be fed back into her.

“Great, now I do have to make a Clone again. You’ve got all your Dupes maxed out, and none of them were a Wizard.” I scowled at her, and she just smiled and shrugged.

“Hey, it isn’t like the universe is a worse place with more of us around,” she reminded me cheerfully.

“I don’t even know how to answer that, or what you were playing at with having Strange inside you that whole time.” I rolled my eyes, and she just laughed.

“The twat gave us such a delightful meal, I thought Strange should be able to enjoy the process of it all.”

“There’s enough power there to get two Cores to full Nine. You’re going to share it with my Clone.”

She pursed her lips and tapped her fingers together in consideration. “That is horrible. A full Nine Core is much too weak! However will I survive without more?” she complained very unconvincingly.

It took ten times the power to fill a Ten Core as it did to fill a Nine... after it was further purified and refined. It basically made no difference to her at all, save for the time it would take to fill her Ten Core would be a bit longer, once I made it there.

That would be fairly soon. Then I’d go around getting all my Dupes and stuff updated. Dealer didn’t have a true Clone link with me anymore, but we could still synch up in some ways by spending a IX Valence, even if we didn’t share Karma perfectly. She could definitely replicate my Ten Core, however, as that was an actual physical effect. If she couldn’t replicate my Golden Child Exemplar, well, that wasn’t my fault, it was the universe’s.

I could wait until then. Strange shouldn’t kick off before then and spoil all Dealer’s fun.

Well, it wouldn’t be long now.

---------

Crunching, crackling, burning, breaking...

I didn’t stop absorbing an atomic bomb every second, energy passing in as my Ultra Nine Core broke, and sucked in the energy there to heal itself, expanding inch by inch as it did so. Break, pop, seal. Break, pop, seal.

It was like glass breaking along my nerves and thoughts. No wonder Nova Tens were so damn rare. If this was what the process was normally like, it would take them halfway to forever to do the upgrade.

Buuuut, they’d probably keep their Nine Core full as they did so. I just shrugged, and continued on with it all at one go, recording it for posterity for the masochists who wanted to follow in my footsteps, and didn’t mind depowering their Core for a while as they went.

Each cracking reforged it harder and stronger, the patterns crisscrossing and reinforcing one another in ways that were probably meant to be random, and instead I was turning into Runes and Seals all around my Core, using the opportunity to etch some magic and attune it more solidly to my Matrix.

All my Dupes were watching this very closely, and given I had a swirling mix of energies, they were all contributing Seal designs to add in. When they inherited the Core, they could simply replicate the specialized Seals across their own Cores, instead of every single design.

Break, pop, Seal anew. Break, pop, Seal anew...

Gawdamn this hurt! All my Dupes cheered me on that they didn’t have to go through the process, while my Nine Core was drained dry, and the shell of my Ten Core grew and solidified inch by inch.

------

Blargh...

Twenty hours of nerve-shattering pain and one hundred shatter-pop-seals later, my Ten Core crystallized. Every single Seal I’d guided into existence gleamed on half a million facets.

When I shared the view with the Xandaran Worldmind, it gaped at the result. Seemed a Nova Core Ten looked like a perfect sphere, the scars of all the cracks melting away into a flawless unbroken sphere and shell. A Jeweled Core like I had was completely outside their experience, and me being able to guide the fracturing shell to DO that was something the Worldmind hadn’t even thought possible.

The typical procedure was to do a crack-pop-seal, expending one percent of your Nine Core, then refill the Core to max and do it again, thus keeping yourself at a constant level of power.

I sighed and shoved it all to the back of my head as I started filling the Core again. I had ten times the absorption rate of a Nine, but I had to triple the density of the energy and purify it further once again before assimilating it, so it basically only amounted to filling at twice the speed of a Nine. The full power of a Ten Core took ten times the energy of a Nine, so I was looking at five times as long to fill it.

It also meant every one of the Dupes with a Nine Core was going to lose two-thirds of their progress and basically go down to Eights. For some reason, they just didn’t care, probably because I could Sunbathe and acquire the raw energy for most of them all by myself, letting them go on about their lives while they slacked by just using the constant default draw from the Pocket.

Now, we just had to arrange a time to get us all together, so nobody was lacking in the memories and Karma department. Not all that hard for a bunch of teleporters...

----------

Dumping full Valences was required. We were all gathered on an asteroid marked as a waypoint between Mars and Terra, singing the Sublime Chord together in Ritual for a nice combined Caster Level bonus, bringing in a level and purity of magical power the whole galaxy probably had never seen. But since we were pulling it along the Underweb, nobody was noticing we were doing something that could probably rewrite the Solar System.

It was a lot of energy, dumping all those Valences at full Caster Level from Ritual into the Pocket. Then everyone’s Core contents followed, as they were all uniformly dumped into the Pocket so they wouldn’t be agglomerated into mine and force them to restart from nothing. That was pretty important to those with more specialized Cores, like Shadow, Psionic, and Force/Arcane, which I couldn’t accumulate for them nearly as fast as Fire, Light, Lightning, or even just the M’Kraan energy.

Then Gear and clothes were set aside, and the recalls and updates began.

The lives of my Duplicates flowed back into me, took up their thoughtstreams, and Karma accumulated as everything was shared and consolidated. The same took place with Dealer on her side, although hers hadn’t been around as long.

Then a Godmerge from both of us joined us back together for a moment, and for a moment, we were all fully sharing everything back as one person.

It was wonderfully therapeutic, as all the time I’d spent working like a dog became just a fraction of the time I’d spent enjoying life and doing all these different, wonderful things. Each fraction of my personality found something to do that they loved, and had pursued it faithfully. If some of them were shallow and a bit pointless, eh, I truly didn’t care. I loved doing all of them.

There was another crinkle and crack on my soul as the barrier to Legendary fell away before a wave of multi-sourced Karma, and the Road to the Eternal extended out before me.

This wasn’t some Celestial-gifted empowerment and extended lifespan. This was my own Road, completely independent of all the stuff that had been dumped upon me, leading to who knew where.

I could take a Legendary Class Level, Arcane Theurge/11, but I didn’t need to. I exhaled softly and instead said, “Name Theurge One, Sorcery and Warlock. Class Advance, Sorcerer Caster Level +1. Class Mastery Advance for Warlock, Legendary Warlock Blast/+1.”

There was a rumbling of the Pact upon my soul. The eight red eyes clasped about my soul popped open in alarm as they were abruptly pushed back and away, and their restrictions on my soul and absolute power over me was broken as my effective Warlock Level hit base 21, the same as my Sorcery.

I was a Sorceror-Warlock Eternal.

My Pact remained, tied to the Underweb, but it no longer ran through the Widow of the Web. I was free of her control, even if we were still linked!

Ignoring the surprise and consternation radiating from the Widow, I continued. “Level advance Feat to Twenty-One, Open Valence Ten.” There was a swirl and condensing of radiant magic as the first Legendary Valence, far greater and grander than my others, condensed around and through my Matrix, gleaming like a hundred-point star scattered across the facets of my Core.

It was only one Slot and one Engram... until the five bonus Slots in each for a high Intellect opened right along after them in hisses of power.

“Paid Feat for new Class Level, Legendary Infusing.” Yay, me, able to input 10,000 gold-equivalent a day into magic items, a huge time saving!

“Paid Mastery Advance, Legendary Crafting/1, Forge Legendary Ring.” Vier and Prime gleamed and trembled on my finger in eagerness for the uberness that awaited them, and the Rings of all my Dupes and other Selves all chimed in a score of different notes as a de facto Ringlord Title rose about me. I was sure something out there in the universe had made a Legendary Ring before, but if they were no longer alive, the Title was for grabs.

Mine all mine!

“Golden Child Racial Class to /14.” I didn’t have to worry about maxing out Soak or Health, because Exemplar did it for me. “Assign Favored Class: Skill Point, Soak, Spell Known (Name Invocation IX).” Which put me right at the top end of the native sorcerous Tradition, able to Invoke fast and powerfully for strong effects.

My Clone would need it.

“Skill points.” I received 2 from Name Theurgy, 8 from Golden Child, one bonus from being base Human, and one for Favored Class, in addition to +29 from Intellect. 41 Skill Points was a bunch, but oddly enough, I had no problems going through them quickly. “One each to Concentration, Meditation, Spellcraft, Alchemy, Psicraft, Martial Lore, Gemcutting, Finesmithing, Woodcarving, Tattoo Artist, Athletics, Perception, Stealth, Disable Device, Lockpicking, Diplomacy, Sense Motive, and Calligraphy; Lore: Math and Physics, Engineering, History, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Electrical Engineering, Astrophysics/Navigation, Arcane, Divine, Natural, Extraplanar, Mythos, Subterranean, Musical, Geology, Architecture, Computer Use, and Computer Coding; Perform: Dance, Song, Violin, Piano, Whistling.”

Yeah, that didn’t take any time at all.

Twenty-one Ranks in each. Legendary capability!

I was already bonkers intelligent. Because they wanted to share knowledge with everyone, all of my Dupes and Clones who acquired knowledge outside my own paradigm actually learned it the hard way so it would pass on to all of us. Thus, they’d learned acting, the guitar, the flute, blacksmithing, glassmaking, law, and a whole slew of Professions, Crafts, and Trades I didn’t really have time for myself the hard way, so that all of us could take advantage of them.

With enough time leverage, even the highest Ranks could be trained, after all. However, promptly raising all of them to 21 Ranks was still impossible, even for me. I could only do what I could do.

I was already blindingly fast and good at my Skills, but with 21 Ranks now, it was like my brain was opening up to a whole new realm of possibilities and knowledge. Understandings of the universe and how things worked that just didn’t make sense before I could look at and understand now, making things possible that were not there before.

I could see some of the crazy stuff those bloody Savants like Stark and Reed could pull off, only I actually understood what they were doing.

I could see things that were beyond sight. I could make magic sing and dance in ways mortals simply could not. My sensitivity to Cosmic Forces had taken a leap forward, to the point where I didn’t even need to focus to sense any of their attention on me, and if I wanted to see them working, I just had to glance that way...

And my Cosmic Awareness said that this was far, far from the end of understanding.

I sighed, and the Godmerge ended, splitting me back into Dealer and myself once more. Fingers snapped, and Duplicates began to re-emerge: fair-skinned and a base of dark auburn hair on my side (which was quickly Cantrip’d into their base colors) and dark-skinned with white hair on Dealer’s, which was also sometimes Cantrip’d to other shades.