470 A Plague in One's Mind

Emeralga put a hand on one of the glass boxes.

"You can have them along with my time nucleus. However, you must get me off this desolate rock. Deal?"

Emeralga stuck out a hand. I smiled.

"I have a better idea."

I pulled a panel of my dimensional fabric out of my pocket dimension.

"I'd like to offer you a contract."

Chapter Begin

Emeralga's eyes went distant.

"Ah, one written in Schema's tongue or the cipher?"

I furrowed my brow.

"Obviously, the cipher. There's very little enforcing Schema's contract."

Emeralga let out a long sigh.

"It's not something I'm absolutely against, but cipheric contracts are genuinely cosmic. They carry a weight and consequence that few are willing to bear. Though I trust your intentions, I doubt that either of us carries the skill for any longevity or stability in the documentation."

I waved the concern off.

"Are you kidding me? I've signed several of them, and I've been able to live for years without any issues."

"Your casual dismissal of future consequences isn't a trait or characteristic I willingly share in. I'd rather have my freedom."

I tapped the side of my head.

"I haven't given any freedoms I wanted away. After all, I know who I am and what I want to do. The contracts I've signed prevent me from acting in ways I don't want to or living with a level of inaction I don't want to have. That's the kind of contract you'll have."

Emeralga gestured a hand to me.

"Who will write it?"

I pointed a thumb at myself.

"Me. My runic style is perfect for one. I'm very precise with my runes, but I leave the actual intent of the runes as simple, easily understood messages. That means in a contract, as long as you don't break the spirit of it, then you'll be fine."

Emeralga interlocked his hands behind himself.

"Are you saying my contract would be worse?"

I nodded.

"Absolutely. Your runes aren't written as well, but they're layered in meaning to create a kind of synergistic depth. It's as if the pieces don't add up to as much as the whole. Well, in a contract, that essentially equates to a bunch of fine print. That's dangerous, and it means you could nest different meanings within interlocking sections of the contract."

Emeralga took a breath.

"Does that mean you wouldn't sign a contract I wrote?"

I shrugged.

"Probably not. I hate to admit it, but I get lost in the meaning of your runes."

Emeralga frowned.

"I extend the same hesitancy. I don't wish to set an unfair boundary, but this is difficult for me to accept. I hope you can understand."

I waved him off.

"You're fine. There are other ways we can handle this. That being said, you don't even want to see what the contract looks like?"

Emerlaga shook his head.

"Not particularly. Even if fair and established well, I'd rather not tie myself down to the actions it prohibits."

I put my hands on my hips.

"Even if all it states is that you can't mindlessly murder, steal, or act with ill will towards me and my guild?"

Emeralga flashed his teeth.

"What if I accidentally harm someone or hurt the prospects of your guild by failing a mission? Or by an honest accident?"

I turned back to the simulacrums.

"That's not ill intent. I'm not even talking about skimming funds off the top of financial spreadsheets either. My contract would only punish you if you purposefully colluded with traitors and the like. An example would be informing Elysium about our movements or something."

"They could easily worm that out, given their informants. I find that unnerving."

"Once again, the contract's punishments would only act out if you intended for that to happen. That means interrogations or taken knowledge wouldn't count. Come on, you know the cipher's good with stuff like that."

Emeralga sighed.

"I'm not going to sign a contract."                                                                                                                                                                              

I lifted one of the crystals from its lockbox and inspected the fractals. Something was familiar about them, but I couldn't quite place it.

"Like I said, that's fine. I'll see whenever I can get Helios over here to teach you the warping lessons. In the meantime, would you mind if I took some more of the time leylines? I want to manifest these mana types, and they kind of go against the agreed-upon magical theory where I come from."

Emeralga walked up to a series of runes.

"Why ask if you may take them?"

"Because they're yours, right?"

Emeralga shook his head.

"The leylines formed naturally. I have yet to find a process that can recreate them, though I believe I'm onto a few strange solutions."

I tsked.

"That sucks. Recreating those runes is going to be insanely difficult then."

Emeralga raised a hand.

"It can be done. The remnant empire used to do it well, though I've lost my knowledge of how it happened. It is an odd thing, as if something wiped the knowledge before I could write it down or begin using it."

I remembered Marcella flashing out of existence. Maybe her old one caused this. Those thoughts floated in my mind as I peered into the depths of the crystal shard.

"It can be done then. That's enough for me."

As it hovered above my hand, I condensed time with my old method. I wanted to hold the time mana within my body as long as I could, and the old way barely used mana. They could technically coexist, though it required some serious mental stretching. Either way, I dove into the depths of the simulacrum.

I put over fifty minds to the task, and they searched the archives of my memories for commonalities. A few seconds later, a revelation came into my mind. These crystals were kind of like Schema's runes, though they carried a purity the altered sigils lacked. In that regard, the fractals had a similar efficacy and sincerity as the cipher.

Though similar in their commitment, the fractals and cipher opposed each other's forces innately. The cipher was a spatial, law-based language that reconstructed reality. The fractals operated on mana and knowledge, including their abilities to influence the world via perception. In theory, fusing the two should give greater gains, but even a cursory glance sniped that theory.

The concepts of both weren't aligned. Pairing the two would be the same as mixing an acid and a base. You'd end up with fizzling bubbles and heat, but both parts would lose their potency. That's why I was skeptical that these runes were put into Schema's glyphs, since they would make them weaker for seemingly no purpose.

Continuing my internal investigation, I came up with a working theory - these fractals were a part of Schema's runic language. The more I perused the intricacies within these lattices, the more certain of that theory I became. If anything, these markings unveiled a lot of information on how Schema constructed his runes in the first place.

Emeralga had spoken aloud, and I returned to a normal temporal pace to listen to him.

"I'll leave you to inspect these artifacts to your liking. One of the more rambunctious eldritch is destroying a portion of the towers to the North, and I must go handle it. I don't want the peaceful eldritch to be faced with devastation."

I gave him a nod.

"Before you go, why were you so scared of Shalahora? just curious."

Emeralga paused. After a moment, the eldritch stared down.

"If I am honest, he is an entity that would kill me via proximity, let alone assault. He carries an immense history, likely much longer than I or even the system. He even wields the legacy of his forgotten people, and the pain within his mind is something I struggle to comprehend."

Emeralga winced.

"That is why I am not someone who can even meet him. I experience the memories of those that I am proximal to. Of course, they must be intense memories embedded with emotion, but even under that limitation, I think my mind would be washed away by even a portion of Shalahora's memories."

He turned to me on the stairway.

"That is why I fear him."

I met his eye.

"That...That makes a lot of sense. Anyways, I hope your enforcement is swift and painless."

Emeralga bowed to me.

"You as well, Harbinger. May our future dealings be prosperous."

He left me with the fractals for study, and they fascinated me. The more I stared at them, the more certain I was of their value. I actually wanted to absorb them, but a part of my mind shouted out for some semblance of caution. I listened to those wise thoughts, a skill I'd obtained after balancing so many minds for so long.

I had to let the quieter voices be heard, after all.

Slowing time to the utmost extent possible, I peered at another crystal. After inspecting several of them, I verified a theory. These patterns were nested within Schema's runes, and if anything, they were purified versions of them. Even more so, Schema's runes combined these fractals and the cipher to purposefully weaken both.

It was something I'd thought about since learning the cipher. Schema's runes were an abomination of good runework and smart applications. They had always acted as a watered-down version of the cipher. Gazing at these fractals, I finally found what had been watering down the runes for so long.

It had always been these fractals. In fact, the cipher watered down these fractals in Schema's runes, too. At least it felt like it. To verify, I performed a test. I formed several strings of my dimensional fabric, mirroring one of the fractals. Gravitation worked far better for this than telekinesis, as a gravity well's force bent and changed based on the angle I presented matter to it. That allowed me to create patterns.

The continuity manipulated the molten strands until they reached a finite end, which was very difficult to do with panels of telekinesis. Otherwise, the fractal's patterns wouldn't actually repeat. Fully realized, I charged mana through one of the molten strands. To my surprise, the thread hummed in a psionic resonance.

It grazed my mind but little else, making it a way of linking to someone's mind. Still, maintaining it required far less mana than Schema's runes would've. Fascinated by the inner workings, I took a few hours of perceived time to inspect the internal properties of several crystals.

They all held an enormous amount of latent potential, some holding a darkness I feared. That made sense, given Emeralga talked about his memories nested within them. Some of the simulacrums had to hold the loss of an entire people, and given Emeralga's terror of Shalahora, I could imagine Emeralga offloading his bad memories to retain sanity.

During all of my observations, I never overcame an innate hunger to absorb the simulacrums. It could've been an innate desire for something valuable, but that didn't seem to be the case. In fact, I was certain it wasn't. My armor actually pulsed away from it, and I sure as hell trusted its instincts.

It sent a chill up my spine to see my armor afraid of an energy source. Despite that eerie sensation, I couldn't help but inspect them. Something felt intangible about them as if they could fade at a moment's notice. I also gathered a growing lexicon of phrases and patterns that the fractals evoked. The more I learned, the more questions popped into my mind.

The biggest involved Schema's motives with how he handled both of these languages. If Schema wanted to prevent people from using the cipher, then he should've just given people these fractals. They worked just fine for the mana-based purposes that Schema wanted his runes for. This was also true for hiding the fractals. By embedding both into his dispersed language, Schema created hints leading to either of these primordial codes.

Why would Schema do that? I couldn't understand any motivation to proliferate the knowledge when he also exiled people who gained knowledge of the cipher. Then again, it also didn't make sense that Schema put reliable pathways to getting back into the system if one gained knowledge of the forbidden runes.

It all led to a single answer - changed objectives. It was as if Schema wanted the cipher hidden at one point in time, and then, at some point in its history, Schema's priorities changed. The AI then backpedaled, creating methods for the cipher's use and getting back into the system.

Why would it do that? Well, I had a few ideas, but I had nothing concrete to verify my assumptions. Either way, I spent as much time as I needed picking apart the language. It took an enormous amount of effort to understand, and without all of my prior experience, I would never have been able to do so.

But I had a hundred minds dedicated to this task, and it was also one of the few skills I felt pride in. Ever since my systemization, runes had always come to me easily. So, it took my many minds about nine months total to do so, but we got it done. We learned the new fractal language.

Skill unlocked! Antediluvian Fractal Fluency | Level: 11 - These are the markings of a society from a time before Schema's rise. These fractals carry power, secrets, and precision. They are made into many different languages, yet their original form has never been found lacking. You've seen the potential in them, and using your mental might, you dissected their inner workings.

Now, you begin your road to mastery.

+11% to Antediluvian Fractal Fluency Potency

+11% to Antediluvian Fractal Fluency Comprehension

The skill description had changed from what I normally received. The explanations usually spent more time talking about what kind of person could push through to learn the ability. While motivating, the skills never explained much about the skill itself. This was the opposite. In many ways, this verified a lot of my assumptions, giving me a solid grounding to build on.

As I held the crystal to my eye, I smiled as Emeralga reached the top of his stairs. I had spent nine months total on this project, but that much time hadn't passed in real life. I layered my excruciating time magic and the purple mist's temporal acceleration, achieving a flow of time that was about twenty times the normal amount I wielded. Emeralga's mist was that powerful.

That was on top of my usual temporal acceleration. Standing still made the effect even more pronounced. Even then, I experienced nowhere near that kind of temporal acceleration. I was being a little cheeky by counting each of my two hundred minds perceived time. That's how I turned twenty minutes into nine months.

Given all my previous experience with runes, it wasn't that fast a decoding time, but alas, such were my limits. I already knew my genuine intelligence was limited. It was a part of who I was, unfortunately. I wrestled with that frustration on more than one occasion, but you know what I could do? I could at least throw a lot of my limited intelligence at a problem, as was the Daniel way.

Compensatory mental thought processes aside, bending time to such an extent hadn't been free. I expended nearly all of the time mana from Emeralga's vortex alongside any mana lingering in me from crossing this temporal wasteland. Though a bit of a shame to use it here, I hadn't regretted how I spent it.

Something about this situation seemed off. For a recording method, these crystals sure were vulnerable to just about anything. The fact that they begged for consumption was another odd happening, and that odd, surging desire manifesting from the stones never faded. Despite that, I also understood that these were tickets to a time before Schema.

In that era, I could find answers, and I was willing to take some risks to get them. Continuing the effort, I got a bit of an understanding of the fractals and how they worked. In general, these simulacrums contained highly specialized memory fragments from a bygone era. Technically, Emeralga hadn't lied about that.

However, these didn't seem like organic memories. They were artificial, more like a video than someone's genuine thoughts. Like a recording composed for consumption, these crystals had a temptation built into their framework. It was a psionic impulse, and it made me laugh a bit. Emeralga had hoped that a poor, hapless Harbinger would absorb the energy in the crystal and deal with the consequences therein.

It also made me aware of Emeralga's intent. I opened my status screen, and I was about to message Chrona, but the runes flared bright around me. The simulacrum crystals detonated in an instant. As they did, a stasis overcame me and my surroundings. Despite freezing even time itself, the stasis left the simulacrum's hidden energies unaffected.

I stood there, unable to move and staring at an ephemeral, ever-changing sight. It bore into my very soul, something that took hold the moment I gazed upon the strange visions. It settled into my very being, tearing apart my thoughts. Before it left me as a bumbling fool, I sent my warning to Chrona.

She had never relaxed her magic for even a second, and the moment my message went out, she sent one back.

Chrona Carsiary, the Harbinger Chronographer | Level 21,000 | Class: Temporalist | Guild: The Harbinger's Legion - Open your portal.

I listened, prying my pocket dimension open as wide as I could. Without hesitation, Chrona dove through the stone walls above. She shattered the apex of this tower before flinging herself into the warp. The entrance of my pocket dimension wasn't wide enough for her entire body. Chrona cleaved her wings, arms, and legs off as she escaped.

The wet thud of flopping flesh and the splash of warm blood sounded out around me. Emeralga popped into my vision. His movements were instantaneous, and he bent time within his domain. His eyes held enormous reserves of the time mana, and he seethed.

"It's a shame she's so decisive. That saved her."

I bore down on him with all of my psyches as the visions ravaged my soul. Emeralga's eyes widened with glee.

"You know, it was easy tricking you. I found your history of accepting eldritch into your fold. Combining that with your innate trust in your survivability, and it was easy to-"

I still had some of the time magic from the vortex writhing through my body. Taking the last of it, I shot forward and charged at Emeralga. I passed through him, my body accelerating to twenty times its normal speed. Unable to comprehend what happened, Emeralga disintegrated into mush, blood and guts erupting in every direction as he exploded.

I stood behind where he was, meat chunks falling from me. His body was softer than a thin wall of water, and it reminded me of running through a sprinkler's spouts in summer. Despite the physical superiority, Emeralga's mind lingered. In an instant, I wailed into it with all my will. The eldritch screamed, wielding the principles of time.

However, I was twenty times my normal potency. In seconds, I washed him away in a torrent of errant thoughts. Once psionically drowned, his body reconstituted in front of me by reversing the temporal flow around us. Emeralga's eyes gazed forward like a mindless vegetable, and drool dripped down his maw.

He moaned in agony before I destroyed everything around me in a wave of singularities. The kill notification sounded along with the quest's completion. However, the visions from the simulacrums still raged within my mind. They stormed. They grew, expanding by the second. In those crystals, a potent set of thoughts erupted.

They felt like the pathway to perfection, a righteous means to achieving utopia. I could follow them. No, dedicate myself to their purpose. The intricate series of steps would likely take the rest of my existence, yet the outcome was so cert-

I pulled myself out of the insanity. Around me, dust flittered down from the destroyed tower. Floating in the air, I lost control of my gravitational magic. I fell, falling through the air. I crashed through several floors of Emeralga's tower below. Embedded in debris, I trembled as my psyche was converted into something else.

By fighting Emeralga, I allowed this to take hold. It was like being told a horrible truth, and no matter how much I tried to hide it in the back of my mind, it kept brimming to the surface. I squashed it down, but it rippled out of my psionic grasp. At one point, I tried shredding the minds that nested the thought patterns, but that made the infestation many times worse.

Unlike most psionic magic, this wasn't made to kill a single mind. This was made to kill many, and every bit of psionic damage the vision inflicted on me made the thoughts larger and stronger. My psionic flooding would only make the plague of thought processes stronger by giving it raw material to convert into itself.

Which, if dwelt on, wasn't the worst outcome. No matter my reservations, I had to admit, this was a set of ideas that carried a lot of potential. It was kind of wild that I fought so hard to stop it. After all, it carried the secrets of the universe. It held the end and beginning of truth, something I always yearned for yet never found. I began diving into the incredible secrets as-

A primal fear erupted in my head. It pulled me out of my delusion, a delusion that seemed all the more real with every passing second. I gasped for air as pieces of my mind kept turning on me. I wished Shalahora were here. Whenever he killed one of my minds, nothing was left. My own method wasn't killing the mind but destabilizing it into a sort of soup, and this monster fed on it.

It left me vulnerable and afraid. I shivered as I lost memories, beliefs, and ideas. Parts of myself eroded, and I watched them fade like a dementia patient forgetting who they were while they gazed in a mirror. I kept hoping for a release. I redoubled my efforts, throwing more will at the enemy. It fed on will, and it churned out an ever-growing cancer.

I wandered in and out of psychosis. This would eventually consume my mind entirely. Whenever it did, I would have nothing left but my dimensional wake sustaining me. I would never die but instead become an ever-expanding mental plague. A kind of psionic virus that spread across Rebirth and this section of the galaxy. After several millennia, this would be a patch of lost space, and I would be its source.

I would become an ever-regenerating well of thought for this terror to feed on.

I crushed that fear, trying to regain some semblance of rational thought. This wasn't a problem I could throw more effort at and overcome. It was expressly designed to stop that. I needed to use my damn head and think. Diving into my options, I tried thinking up different ways to survive.

If I emptied out my mana pool, this virus wouldn't have anything else to feed on. However, that wouldn't get rid of it. It had infested the space of my mind on a conceptual level, kind of like how the principles had tried to manipulate my dimensional wake. The difference was that I knew how to fight those principles on a physical level.

What about a psionic one? I had no damn idea how this even operated on a conceptual level. I was a clueless, floundering puppy desperate to not drown. Taking a second, I wondered if pulling out of my body would help. Doing so, I found the virus rampaging all the same, but I had far less mental energy for it to infest before I perished. I shrank into a kernel of myself, only a tiny sliver remaining. In that pit, an insane idea popped into my head.

If I couldn't win by surviving, then I would need to win by dying.