Biracial Edgelord Can't Make Immortal : Power of Ten, Book Seven

BECMI Chapter 468 – Aiming for the Core

My Immortal ally Tek frowned as he studied the readouts and the simulations going by on the holofield in front of us. “It’s a bit deeper into the planar resonances than the manafield, but it seems doable. It does seem like you’d have to target a source or sources of the negative energy that is serving as the fuel?”I extended my off hand over another console and danced my fingers over it. A picture of Zanzyr above, done in the thaumic spectrums, materialized on a side display, rapidly narrowing down to where Castle Bludevich had once stood, and now only shattered remnants at the bottom of a ravine remained, unlamented.

Earth Elementals had already gone through the rubble, liberating anything of value, destroying anything not of value, and compressing the rubble into a packed mass that had rapidly grown into a rather picturesque hill. That wasn’t what we were seeing here, however.

“Is that a hole?” Tek asked, gazing at the hard point of mana there, oozing slowly and being Burned around the edges.

“It is. That is the remains of a magical Artifact which created a hole to an Entropic plane. It is mostly blocked on the far side, and that is the residual energy leaking through.

“What’s more fun is there is a lot of closely resonant stone packed about it, and I happen to have the means to break open the cork that’s been put in its way. We could stick a hose right into the place and drain off all the energy we want in surge situations.”

“I imagine whatever or whoever is on the other side would not be too happy about that,” Tek judged shrewdly.

“If we time it right, terminally unhappy, yes,” I said, already spinning a lot of gleeful plans.

“What about the effect, as opposed to the source?” He pointed at Thaum’s plans for use, which would be catastrophic regardless of what was used to power the effect.

“Well, now, let’s start making some mild adjustments to what is displayed, and what is actually going to happen,” I murmured, flexing my fingers and opening up an administrator’s window to the code.

“You have security access?” Tek was surprised I could go right into the code without worries or hesitation.

“Yes. I told you about the other timeline. I’ve known about the buried for many years, and I used my coding skills from the Other Shore to enter myself into the database here and give myself the highest tier of security access, equal to Captain Emeril, Gaebrel, and Chief Technician Undalwei, who was one of my coding instructors. My system access actually exceeds yours, Jorg.”

Tek blinked at that unexpected revelation, then realized he should have kind of expected it, given how familiar I had proven with Federation technology. “So, you’ve a combined magical and technological edge that probably nobody else in the world has?” he asked, impressed at what I’d managed to do.

“It’s something you can certainly gain, but you’ve got a lot of upgrading to your Stats to do first. I’ve had centuries more time to develop myself than you have had, of course. Some of the Artificers in Eismark are fairly close at combined programming skills, and really want to see if they can make truly viable artificial life, Constructs with souls, using advanced AI programming and Artifice magic. We’re kind of leery about letting them do so, given the dangers of rampant technology, but it is an area we are looking at.”

“I trust you’ve read the Federation’s history on corruption of machine intelligences,” Tek said warily. “There’s a reason the restrictions on AI exist.”

I nodded agreement, even as I was spinning out code at eye-blurring speeds, fingers and TK alike manipulating three different consoles to speed the job along. “Those were machines with no souls, however, just code and logic that went falteringly wrong, along with sabotage from interested parties trying to prove competing points. The droid haters and tech obsessionists chasing profit and glory, combined with the nihilists and militarists wanting them weaponized, was quite the heady brew of faction politics to bring such things about in. As soon as renegades and opposed states started countermeasures, and the anarchists wanted to bring everyone down, it was only a matter of time before enough viruses, scrapcode, chaos logic, and chop-faults combined to start something truly horrible.

“We aren’t talking about sapient Constructs with actual souls, which are a mite different breed of being. The research will happen, has to happen, if only to be proven it cannot be successful. Going in eyes wide open, hope for the best, be ready for the worst.”

“Mmm. Some would say that is absolutely the stupidest thing to do in such a scenario,” Tek mused aloud.

“People say a lot of things out of fear and clinging to the skirts of the past. Those people are not explorers, adventurers, and dreamers. Also, not true Wizards or Artificers, either. Don’t have to be born Evil to BE Evil, you know. Free Will is the ultimate rule, and when you break that, well, that’s when things go really bad.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He considered my words, glancing away. “You think some Immortal might use the option to fill the androids with Evil souls, possibly with memories of their past lives, and use them in some horrible manner to prove the destruction of technology is the only proper solution?”

“And the only way to truly kill knowledge is to murder everyone who knows it before burning anything written down or constructed from it.” I paused significantly, while my fingers and TK kept spinning out 3D code at eye-blurring speed. “They did it before. There was an advanced colony on this world, arriving three to four thousand years before the crashed here. When magic arose, the Immortals came and arranged for the obliteration of it.

“When the arrived much later, you threatened their plans the same way. The crew’s alliance with Darkmoor quickly proved to the Immortals just how infectious and powerful science can be, especially to those people with no magical ability. Darkmoor was wiped, the and its crew either removed entirely or were converted to a special purpose.

“The humans and other races of this world are the remnants of those unknown colonists and their genetic servants or creations, as well as servant races created by the Immortals. Its why the Greens like you can interbreed with them, and your races are so similar in biology. There’s been some changes from evolution in a magical world, of course.

“Did you know Moorian dwarves can have children with humans, but modern dwarves cannot? The latter were forcibly changed by their thief of an Immortal Patron enough for it not to happen. The Moorians were likely modified from a servant race or specific branch of the colonists instead of created outright, and kept the human connection because of it.”

“I see. And the hyn?” Tek asked.

“They cannot interbreed for safety reasons, I am assuming. Yet they are clearly reflections of humanity and look like a genetic servant race, and if you look at their genome, the markers are clearly artificially placed to make sure there’s no interbreeding. I presume that was so that wealthy and uninhibited masters could abuse their little sex dolls without having to worry about children.”

Tek’s lips thinned, and he sighed in silent agreement. “That is often the case on worlds without more direct Federation oversight…”

“Color me surprised that larger races would abuse their size and strength advantage over smaller ones. I think the big surprise is that the hyn managed to survive at all, but someone must have been watching out for them… and they tend to get along very well with elves, which helps,” I remarked.

He nodded slowly. “And now they’ve had Immortals of their own sponsored, even though they are overall by far the weakest of the civilized races. Definite favoritism from someone.”

“Yes. On the Other Shore, I’ve found hynfolk in only two locations, and they are basically primitives hiding away from bigger things that probably want to eat them, or at least enslave them. Local humans treat them like demons taking the faces of children and kill them for it, so not very good relations there.”

“But you killed off the beast-folk there, so there’s none of the orcs, goblins, and other races which plague the civilized races here. What are the Immortals using?” he asked me.

“Right now? It looks like they’re going to be using morlocks and force-evolving them in different directions. The garls still exist, they can be used, and the giants do, too. They can also steal from the Fey with boggarts and redcaps and the like and mix them into new bloodlines. Nifl hasn’t quite given up on her beast-man ambitions, either, but She’s also aware I’m looking for them and likely will have to raise them off-world to invade us and establish themselves, which other Immortals won’t look on kindly.

“Unless a mortal does it for her instead,” Tek nodded at the easy work-around. “What are your ambitions with this?”

“Punishment, and opening up the world,” I responded calmly, a rather nasty ruby gleam in my eyes as I considered what I was going to be doing, really upsetting Thaum’s plans as I did so. “If I’m going to be taking responsibility for the world and bringing in gods and all the crazy stuff, there are some steps that need to be taken first.

“This is going to give us some of the tools for those steps.”

Tek was pretty understanding about using proper tools for the job, and this big Artifact was a Tool that even its own makers didn’t understand properly. They should have learned more about technology…

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They rose up out of the wasted, lifeless soil, drained of all life and energy. It was not even negatively-charged with the essences of Death, it was completely inert, all the energy Burned out of it and stolen away in the past, sucked down through the opening below and into the mortal world hungrily before Immortal Power Sealed the breach.

Sealed it, except for a lump of stone hurled away and buried by sands and waste, sitting there in the desert with nothing special about it… save for Runes carved into it which gave it an absolute presence. If one knew those Runes, that rock could be located anywhere within time and space without fail, even if the plane itself was otherwise completely sealed against access… which it was very close to now, only connected to another nearby plane of its master, and otherwise severed from the rest of existence.

The opening Sealed by Immortal Power peeled slowly away and back, forced away by the power of its Master’s Truename. Indeed, even but one Name could have allowed the wielder to temporarily re-open the hole that had existed there, long feeding the Artifact called the Writhing Well, and now a remnant weakness in the Veil of this world.

Immortal Power had sealed it, wiped away the traces, but the Land and the world remembered it, and as that authority had opened the hole for the Well in the past and then closed it, so the power wielded in that Name opened it once again.

Opened it, into the realm of an Immortal Hierarch of Entropy, Thanatos.

Nobody who saw them would consider them anything other than Banshees. All of them were wraith-like in shape and body, translucent and ethereal, with fluttering phantasmal dresses and long hair.

Unlike most of the cursed elven dead, however, these particular ones had eyes like flaming blood, and burning crimson tears streaking down over ageless faces. The mere sight of them was enough to make undead retreat in respect for the auras of power about them, and the wandering hordlings had not the slightest desire to attack undead so powerful that even being looked upon seemed to shrivel their Damned souls...

was a very useful spell for infiltrating the Sphere of Death…