Chapter 130
I am beneath the surface again. A dreadful stillness, with nothing at all to do.
Even so, this time I need not fold my hands entirely and do nothing but wait on a chance. There is a great heap of memory I have to set in order before then.
First, I have obtained two methods of summoning.
The Yasle method.
The Daegon method.
Yasle's way is to raise an altar, slaughter a great many Sacrifices upon it, and summon a god into a vessel. Its virtue is that the caster needs no special ability. To meet the sort of cost called grade, one simply kills enough — which means there is never a case in which the memory has been planted with such care, only for the summoning to fail for want of qualification.
The flaw is that a vessel must be chosen. One needs an eye that knows how to choose, and a vessel must exist in that age. When Yasle's memory is set in place, the method of choosing goes in with it, so the choosing itself is no trouble. The trouble is how exacting the standard is: exacting enough that Yasle had to wait more than ten years for a vessel to be born and grow. Compromise on that vessel, and the working fails.
No — within Yasle's memory, calling a god requires only a Sacrifice of the upper grade. The problem is that a merely upper-grade Sacrifice cannot contain me. That was why it misfired. And that finding a vessel should be pure luck makes the whole thing far too finicky.
Second, the Daegon method. Its virtue is that one need not fret over a vessel.
At first I thought I could enter because they were a Harvester's children, but Daegon's memories say otherwise. Raising one takes ten years at the least and twenty on average, yet if the rearing is done properly, a vessel fit to receive a god can be forced into being. Another property of a Sacrifice made by Daegon's method is that one may obtain the special ability that individual possessed.
Nor need one worry over the person who recites the incantation — the chanter, for short. Alone, they would have to stand at the level of Daegon's foremost subordinate, but just as was done when I was summoned at Wolje Hall, the incantation may be divided among many. The flaw is that it demands a staggering measure of time, money, and hands. To make a vessel, the child must be shut in a special room from infancy and fed a special drug without cease, the body remade again and again. Chanters, too, are likely to die of the strain midway through the recitation, so it is advised that one prepare five times as many as will actually chant. And there remains the question of how the incantation is to be put into them at all. There is not enough time to cram the whole of it into a single person.
I have weighed the two. On the whole, Daegon's is the more complete — though it feels a little unfair to set him beside one who once conquered humanity and an entire world outright. By Daegon's measure, besides, the flaws are not flaws. They are things one can obtain, if one only seeks them. The spirit of solving with money whatever money can solve.
Only, for a pool of Harvester candidates driven into a dead end, with nothing left to them but despair, it is far too difficult. Anyone fallen that far is, as a rule, a person whose character has been worn to rags. Hand them power, and anything like the steady rule Tisaha managed is all but impossible. In the end, the easier method to use is Yasle's.
No. Strictly speaking, there are three.
The third is to ascend directly, taking a Harvester's descendant as a Sacrifice. The whole body does not rise; only a part connects with what lies above. The trouble — a minor one — is that unless the Harvester is with that descendant in that very moment, I cannot perceive the place, and so I cannot climb.
Honestly.
Getting up from the bottom is hard. It truly is.
Even so, the second world gave me a great deal besides.
First, the Single Stroke Heavenly Demon Divine Art. Any Harvester can use it. The Heavenly Demon compressed the Heavenly Demon Divine Art to its utter limit and set the whole of it into a single stroke, and in practice Sama Baek wielded the Heavenly Demon Divine Art to perfection with nothing but that one stroke.
Which means...
Huh?
Why has it remained as memory? By then the Heavenly Demon had already become a Harvester, and a Harvester's memories do not remain. What remains is only what I watched through his eyes. So I cannot understand what he understood. There is no reason a technique like the Single Stroke Heavenly Demon Divine Art should linger as memory merely because it was used...
It is shorter than Eunjae's Heavenly Demon Divine Art, so let us call that a good thing! I was lucky!
Next is Soosim Gong Choseol. This one I do not really understand. I gave it to Sama Baek along with the Single Stroke, yet there is no trace of its use. Not once did snow fall after a cut. I do not know why this, too, remains inside me as memory. I seem to have no function for forgetting, so someday there will be a use for it.
And after that, I set my abilities in order. Functions, if one prefers.
First, I can push myself into a person who has touched me. If the push is too powerful, the place where that Harvester stands physically explodes. Light falls toward where I am.
The physical address does not seem to change. Let me put it simply. In a faded memory, a person enters a dream, and within that dream may enter a deeper dream, and descend too far and the floor appears. The body remains where it was; the mind has gone down into the depths. Just so, the body stays in its place while the light comes down — all the way to where I am.
The world is a glass bottle, and when it breaks, the whole of it seems to fall to where I am. In truth it may be that only the light falls, and not the flesh. Yet when the first world broke, every living thing fell to me... I still do not understand this part well. Even Daegon and Yuanshi Tianzun did not know that light falls.
And the second ability. Recite the contract, and if the other agrees, I can make a Harvester. Once they agree, I push myself into their light, and that is the end of it. Then I can take the warmth of those the Harvester kills, directly or indirectly. This is the core piece of my harvest of warmth.
Kill someone while alive, and I gain warmth. One person, or two, and it would come in only now and then. But what if it accumulates as time passes? What if the numbers grow great? Every moment, a tremendous quantity would pour in.
Only, I must not push too many into a single world. When the number grew too large, the world broke all at once, and every living thing of the first world fell to me. There was heat rather than warmth, and even that lasted only a brief instant. In the end it was nothing but a moment's revelry. Better to gain it steadily than to receive it all at once.
Let me return to the point. The mechanism of obtaining warmth seems, in any case, bound to the act of killing. If a Harvester rules a host and orders that host to battle, the warmth of those the host kills comes to me. In that sense Tisaha was not a good Harvester. In total warmth, though, none but Daegon gathered more. So I will choose only those of high station, and contract with them.
And since reciting the contract lets me bind a person wherever they are, I mean to recite it only to the next generation, and make Harvesters of them. That is the system I intend to build. Then humans will live as they please, trampling the weak underfoot, and warmth will come in without cease.
Hehe.
I am looking forward to the next world.
Now, the third ability. Whoever attacks me in order to kill me becomes connected to me. I first learned this in the first world, but in the second I found a way to apply it. I will think on that later. First, the foundation.
If I am struck, I can steal warmth. But the art is closer to a counter, and so it has this flaw: if the other does not attack, I cannot steal their warmth either. One thing more. If they have no will to kill, even an attack forms no connection. Yuanshi Tianzun's first strike was like that. I wondered whether a gravity attack simply would not take, but the second was fine. Attack with the intent to kill me, and whatever the form of the attack, they connect to me, and I can plunder their warmth.
Then their light shrivels black, and the flesh loses its shape and twists. They change like a human in some work of science fiction, taken by a monster that mutates people. Feeling the cold as I do, they lose their reason and, by instinct alone, attack the light before their eyes — because there is warmth in light, and they want it. But they will never obtain warmth. They are connected to me, and so all of it is mine.
Only, the mutation is wholly random, and the thing that mocked me and took its own life was very clever. At the least, its wits had grown past the wild cat it had been before it twisted. So I had meant never to use this on the living at all.
I found another way. I use it together with the fourth ability.
Reality manipulation.
It does look like an enormous cheat, and a cheat it is. But the limits are large as well. Make a thing that does not exist in that world, and the world cannot bear it, and breaks. Make a thing too far removed from reality, and the world cannot bear it, and breaks. Changing what already exists here into something else that exists here — a torn garment into a clean one, stone into gold — leaves the world uncracked. But create what is not there, the way one pours water into an empty jar, and it cracks. Try to pour in enough to fill an empty swimming pool, and the world will break. I seem to be something very heavy; push me in, and the world shatters. A technique quite usable, and yet one that feels as if the world would break if I leaned on it too hard.
Called reality manipulation, it is not so strange a thing. But when this art meets the third ability, it shows a peculiar power.
Monsters. Or aberrations. Specifically, an aberration that was not flesh first, but rumor first — made along the lines of that rumor. Attack me, and if I steal the warmth, it becomes the same indiscriminately mutating lump of meat. But if I forcibly push myself into the place where the blackened, shriveled light remains, and twist reality until the thing is a tool, the light turns to dust and blows away, and what is left is a tool bearing a function drawn from the rumor. The lamp that shed a blue light was like that.
Do the same to a person, and they would probably become nothing but an object. But if there is something fit to stand in the rumor's place, I can make a tool that holds it. Because Choseol contains me, I expected it would be possible with a person, and when I tried, it went just as I thought. I ought to be able to make good use of it in the next world. In the language of games, I have gained a crafting function.
And the fifth. Or a derivative of the third. When one who attacked me and became connected has a light sufficiently great — vast enough — I can forcibly push myself in and move them. With every motion, light and flesh disappear. Daegon vanished that way too.
The moment his warmth was taken, his light shriveled black and his flesh mutated. Then, through the connection made when I touched him, I pushed myself in and moved him as I willed. Through that same connection, the blackened light and the flesh vanished together.
Perhaps, with a great deal of practice, I might manage it even with creatures whose light is small. Then I will not have to be toyed with, as I was last time.
Having confirmed my abilities, I look through the countless memories gained in the second world. Daegon and Yuanshi Tianzun above all. They hold so many arts I had never even imagined!
Tracing those memories, I look up at a calm sea where not a single wave stirs. Now and then I contract with a light that falls to the bottom, breathing power and knowledge into it — until, someday, someone draws me upward.