CH765 Thera's Perspective

Thera didn’t know what to say, she was struggling to put any real thought together in the face of the two before her, ultimately ending with only a question escaping her lips.

“What did you do?”

“Really child, at least invite us in instead of leaving us standing out here.”

“Vividus, tell me what you’ve done here.”

“Hmph, I’d think that would be obvious enough.”

It was. After all of that time, her aunt had succeeded. From the conversation Thera had overheard back when she was only a child, it had taken well over a decade but it was clear her aunt had finally succeeded in utilizing the feature of the system that allowed racial hybridization to be possible. Not like herself or the other mortal half-spirit Seren and not like the union of two different sorts of mana-based life that led to Insia, what her aunt had somehow created was a new type of spirit.

“Is… Are they a soul spirit?” She asked, remembering her aunt’s stated goal back when she’d begun her attempts even then, with the great life spirit confirming.

“They are.”

A part of Thera was able to notice that her aunt didn’t sound anywhere near as pleased with herself as she would have expected but that was a small part. All at once, the world had changed. While there had been three examples to that point of hybrids of spirits and other races, that was the first to exist between different groups of spirits themselves.

Something that, in principle, seemed like it should have been far easier to achieve. Each group may have belonged to different affinities but they all viewed themselves as part of the same species who hailed from the same planet, but when one considered the fact that until then, they’d never been able to interbreed, it became clear how significant what happened really was.

And now, after just getting uncle Ogilt, we have another new great spirit on the world, and… This kid is obviously a great spirit but there’s no regular soul spirits. What does that mean then? Infinite hells, what does it mean for a great spirit to be born in general?

Thera knew how new great spirits came to be, no matter how incredibly rare it was for one to die and be replaced. On a species-wide level, if any great spirit were to die then a seemingly random group of regular spirits that matched the lost affinity would merge into one being, becoming the new one and having no say in the matter as to whether they even wanted it, but she knew that wasn’t what happened there. As uncomfortable as it was to think, she knew Vividus and her uncle Nox, the great death spirit, had been experimenting with replicating the way mortal races would reproduce to try and get the system to facilitate their goal which meant the one she was seeing lacked the normal history any typical spirit could expect.

It was all too much to process and it seemed her aunt wasn’t interested in waiting. No longer content to be allowed in, Vividus gave up on trying to be polite and instead took advantage of her existence as a form of mana-based life and simply passed through Thera to make her way to the living room, pulling the smaller spirit by the arm as she did.

Thera didn’t say anything to that though, she had too much on her mind and instead just followed along, watching them take a seat on the couch before finally asking a question.

“How?”

“Hmm? I doubt I need to explain the details of sex to you child, it seems you and your partner enjoy it plenty enough.”

Holy fucking shit.

She took a deep breath to keep from swearing then and there when what she wanted was answers and instead focused on what mattered despite her aunt's lack of tact.

“You gave birth to a soul spirit. I’m asking how that's possible.”

“The system really is the most handy tool your gods created, even if it didn’t mold perfectly to my desires. To be honest, I spent the longest time trying to make it work by creating an egg of sorts instead of having to grow and carry anything to term but after Lux’s unexpected success and finding out about Insedis forced me to admit there really was only one way that was obviously succeeding and I gave in, replicating the biological structures I’d need to make in my own form. After that, it wasn’t long at all.”

“But… But I’ve seen you! Recently too! I saw you when Ben got back and I saw you for your stupid quest and you weren’t pregnant either time! I may not like you but I’d at least notice that!”

“Ah, that reminds me, give my regards to your little pet. He really did make such an excellent report on the results of your quest, I believe you're one of the people I’m still waiting on getting observations from but his alone managed to make it worth it. It gave me plenty to consider.”

“So incredibly not the point!”

“Don’t be so testy, it’s just something I thought I should mention. As to when though? I’ll admit you’d seen me recently but by then it had already been born. You did however see me soon after I’d been impregnated, when you came along with your little lover along with Lux and Funa. I’m personally more surprised that any of this is a shock to you. I’d been keeping it from the lesser spirits to avoid confusing them but by now all of the greats surely know.”

Her mind flashed to when she’d gone with her aunts and Ben to get him some homunculi made and how tense the encounter between the great spirits had been, getting no answer then but having it now. Vividus had been limited in her mana at the time, just like Lux had been when she’d been pregnant with Seren and had to have been at the beginning of her own pregnancy, too soon to show it if she had at all. Considering the child born had to be made of mana, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think it might not take up too much space but that only brought another question to her head.

That meant the soul spirit was a few months old, tops, but if she were to judge them based on the appearance they took, they had to be roughly ten years old. Obviously, the appearance didn’t actually matter, any great spirit could alter their form in whatever way they chose but it raised the question of just how old it was going to be mentally.

Since great spirits were normally the culmination of multiple regular spirits, they held the knowledge and memories of the ones they’d come from before merging and growing into something more and as for when a regular spirit was born, it would be birthed from the combined mana of the multiple spirits that worked together to create them, inheriting enough of their parental memories to already be considered full-fledged spirits. There was no juvenile stage in their lives.

But none of that really matters.

Whatever curiosity or complication she might have felt, none of that was really the point or what needed to be asked. There was only one question that mattered, finally being spoken.

“Okay, whatever then, I don’t care. Why are you here?”

“Ah, we can finally get to the crux of it, lovely. I’m here to leave it with you.”

“...Viv, what the hell are you talking about?”

It was only then her aunt seemed to deflate a bit, sighing in her disappointment. “As interesting as the result might have been, it hurts to admit but it turned out to be a failure. All of the power of a great spirit but no willingness to use it no matter what I do, and worse, it seems to have taken on the biology I’ve been forced to mimic to some extent, with its mind matching its image. Still, seeing as how you’d turned yourself into something of a success despite your lowly beginnings I thought I’d leave it with you to see if you could make anything of it.”

“...What?”

“Is it so shocking? You went from being able to do nothing with your mana other than annoy the people around you into one of the more powerful mortals on the planet. The issue obviously isn’t exactly the same, it can use its power, it just won’t, but I don’t have the time to try and turn it into something better when it’s going to resist at every turn.”

“Vividus, you’re talking about your child!”

A child that hadn’t said a single word the entire time they were there, sitting quietly like it had been made to do and not moving beyond that while it was forced to listen to the back and forth as Thera questioned its existence while what was by all accounts its mother sought to get rid of it. The great life spirit had said its mind matched its form and Thera could only take that to mean it was mentally young in a way spirits normally just weren’t, its nature affected by the unexpected aspects of the system itself.

“I don’t know what you expect that to mean to me, I’m not so sentimental like your own father or Lux and I’m not the fool Incedis is. I have no use for something that doesn’t work, if you can’t turn it into something useful then by all means send it off to figure things out itself, that might at least force a bit of the growth I haven’t been able to manage myself.”

Closing her eyes and pinching her brow, Thera took a deep breath before speaking again.

“Vividus, get the fuck out of my home.”

“I’ll take that as agreement then. Do let me know if you make any progress.”

Before Thera could curse her anymore, the great life spirit was gone, leaving only herself and the child with the question of what she was supposed to do from there.