Chương 547: BECMI Chapter 546 – An Eternal Conversation Continues

"Nothing is 'even' once you pass the mortal limit," I informed Aelryinth serenely.

"Some of the nodes and formulae are super-enhanced, some are inverted, some go negative, others go off on tangents, plus there's a really, really strong personal component that individualizes every spell. Even if you have the master Formulae and know exactly what needs to be done… you still have to go out there and DO it. The Xth Valence starts adding additional higher and lower dimensions, as well as Time, to every spell, and how you interact with magic determines how you have to customize the spell to you."

"That sounds remarkably like Legendary Spellcasting, messing with the Source Code, but I burned that Ring," he told me, which I just nodded to, the reverberations of that deed evident in Mortus Dius' mnecromonics. While supremely flexible, Legendary Spellcasting just wasn't worth the time and effort in most cases. Convert the same spells to Valences and just go with the limitations and benefits thereof!

If you were some Chaotic chucklehead who chafed being under ANY limitations but your own, it was pure heaven to do whatever you wished, of course!

"I also have thousands of I through IX spells and iterations thereof that I can introduce you to. The magic here is not the same as in the Power of Ten, but it is very close. However, I admit to not doing any of the conversions, simply because I would be unable to test if they were effective."

"I will naturally include my notes on conversions." That I would share the whole of the Twilight Libraries with him was a given, I wasn't worried about how he'd use the knowledge.

"Thank you. Eternal-class spells?" he inquired professionally.

"Meta'd lesser spells are more common for most people, but collectively we've over a thousand we've made of higher Valences. My contributions go all the way up to Valence Twenty."

"Twenty," he repeated dubiously.

"Can you even Cast them?" he asked confidently.

"No, not outside of Ritual. The Caster Level requirement on a Twenty is base 400, with contributions of at least fifty Eternal Casters and hundreds of Valences X and higher. The potential effects are insanely powerful, but so are the results if we get it wrong, and we won't dare do that sort of thing when Leng and Hierarch Immortals might interfere."

"Understandable."

"Will you even be able to comprehend them?" I had to ask him curiously.

"My Master Archtheurge Title's bonus, with a bit of logical finagling, also applies to Spellcraft Ranks eligibility. I still had to pay Karma for and take them, but I've got a functioning 26 Ranks in Spellcraft and a modifier over +140." He lifted up my book and shook it for me.

"This was some beautifully elegant and smooth work here on a parallel Casting System tree. It wasn't that difficult." I had to smile ever-so-slightly.

"Don't say that around my students, meaning the other Eternal Casters, or they will thump your gourd soundly," I warned him, glancing at the book in front of me as I flipped through the pages before my Reading Eye, the gods unable to receive the fast knowledge available from a Scholar's Grasp via Mark.

"This Lost Light and Item Magic system is… very interesting," I managed to say, different thoughtstreams dancing around the processes here.

"A Mana Pool system isn't all that different from Immortal Power, and we're pretty clear on many applications of that here. The Lost Light… is an impressive stacking Buff!" I had to admit.

"I know, right?" he smiled.

"And this came from Zeks? How are she and Zeben doing?" I asked directly. He caught it and just sighed with a smile.

"Yes, they both ended up women, too. So, four of you so far. And… that's pretty much all I know. I have the impression Zeben ended up as the equivalent of an Eternal Titan at Lesser Goddess Level, I had absolutely no chance to talk to her as I slammed into her world during a very critical moment, and had to do a Faith Lance to Aru to bring in the Pantheon to save that world against what felt like some awesomely powerful Cultivators, or something very similar," he admitted.

"Zeks basically left me a care package, part of which you are reading, and had me do something similar. There was an Eternal-class Artifact Warding the area she was living in, and she couldn't do the job I could, while I had to do it and get out of there before the Wards I was helping her get around could gather the energy to track me down and wipe me.

"I have the means to get back to them, but understandably I've been focused on getting home first." I gestured at Mortus Dius, back in his hand." Dius is telling me you've been to far more than just three worlds, if we include that where Korbald was from your Sending?" His lips thinned, and he sighed again.

"Um, it looked to me like at least forty stops along the way, just to get to here…" I added politely.

"Forty-two. Some quick. Some not. Some very focused, and some so vague I wasn't sure exactly what to do, and still am not. I've cut through at least four multiverses major and a number of either minor or independent ones. In personal time, I've been at this for in excess of five years now. Time itself has been a bit wonky..." That matched up pretty closely to the amount of activity I'd seen on Mortus. Just based on how the magic 'around' the magic he was using was affected, I could track different worlds.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"I guess the lesson is not to underestimate Death Titan Demi-lich Death Curses Cast at Twelve or higher or whatever that was," I could only say.

"I've also been given time to work on other things I simply could not back on Terra-Luna, not much different from your time leveraging here. I'm assuming I'm going to arrive back from my exile after only missing for a few months." The essence of bittersweet hopefulness right there.

"I've had five thousand years of time leveraging, and one Eternal War for most of that. It's not all it's cracked up to be, is it?" I had to sigh in agreement with him.

"Not if you do it right, no," he agreed with his own release of breath.

"So, that Cryptomancy stuff that allows you to control stone like a superhero?"

"You either have to go to my Ringlands or stay within the Domain of Castle Doomrose behind you to absorb the energies that make it possible, but yes, you can probably learn them, too!" I confirmed for him.

"Only one path, or multiples?" he asked automatically. I paused my response a moment to think about that, although I kept turning pages.

"That is a very interesting question… for you. For me and everyone else here, it's just one path allowed. But you actually have three completely separate arcane pathways you can exploit, and are a Master Archtheurge. The Bardic Tradition here is tied to Halcyon magic, which has Druidic links, and there is no Pact Magic."

"Interesting?" He considered the problem.

"It involves absorbing some additional power into your Arcane Matrix to empower a new type of magic?" he inquired.

"Yes. That power stems from an arcanotech fusion Core of TL 14 that was the secondary power supply of an FTL starship named the FS Barhund. It was modified by idiot Immortals into the most powerful Artifact on the planet, although they don't even know it's actually still in existence. It emits bands of radiation in the alpha, beta, and gammathaumic spectrums, which can be tapped to empower what are called the Seven Schools of the Radiance."

He actually turned to look fully around and back at the Castle rising high between the mouth of the canyon behind us, the Walls already connecting it to each side.

"That's what that stuff coming out of there is?" he remarked, clearly able to see it.

"Convenient that you can receive instruction while sitting out here and absorbing the radiation as you learn about the magic of the Radiance, too. It's like Immortal Power, the prequel!" I extolled to him dramatically.

"Immortal Power is that seething mass of Don't Touch inside Dread there, right?" he pointed unerringly at my Staff, who glittered in proud acknowledgment. Dread had a cool thousand IP inside itself now, effectively a Greater Artifact in its own right!

"This universe's native version of Divine Power and a mana pool, created out of pure Karma, and the key to taking one of the Paths to becoming a higher being," I confirmed with a slow nod.

"Divine Power being refined Faith?" he inquired, and I nodded again.

"How do they compare?" He could tap Divine power to enhance some of his magic, and via Turning vs Channeling, among other things, and, well, Divine Magic was a whole Tradition of magic!

"Immortal Power can emulate any mortal magic at a cost of 2 IP per Valence, as well as a broad slew of other magical, quasi-magical, and extraordinary effects. It can be employed to attack Statistics directly, the normal mode of combat between Immortals, make Death Rays, overawe mortals, turn incorporeal to a massive degree, and to permanently boost Ability Scores in ourselves and the bodies Immortals empower.

For mortals, the primary use is to empower magic so it is no longer 'mortal magic', and to break the mortal restrictions on spell damage 'dice'," I explained quickly.

"Ah, that's what I was fighting against?" He flicked up an assembly of Shards with little discernible effort, but there was a barely noticeable hesitation in the multi-hued series of them starting at the twentieth Shard.

"It was fighting me to let the twenty-first manifest, and then my Theurgy rang through it and the limit seemed to rise by eight, plus the two for my Arcane Thesis." I was not jealous at all, I was not, because Eternals didn't have to worry about that limit, either, we didn't.

"If you advance to true Eternal, the cap of twenty dice goes away. You would notice the same thing if you Energized a Fireball you Delimited."

"Okay, that would absolutely stink as far as offensive hitting power to someone used to stacking Metas," he agreed promptly, sending the thirty javelin-sized Greater Shards neo-swallows of radiant Force swirling up his arm to the Manticore Tail he still had out, the stinger on the end of it over his head pointing at something in the distance… ah, some tertiathics scuttling closer on their seven legs.

The Shards collapsed together into a single sphere seething with all their colors and the Flames upon them, and then a single Ray too bright for normal eyes to look at stabbed out into the distance in a needle of murderous fury, surrounded by whorls and coronas of multiple energies. Multiple explosions in the distance assured everyone watching that the crab/centipedal Aberrants hadn't survived the attack.

"I noticed the unusual efficacy of your spells against some of the Aberrants you fought, particularly the, ah, yellowish ones?" I asked him further.

"Ah, those?" He half-smiled.

"I finally discovered the supplemental effects of being a Champion of Creation actually do mean something!" he smiled cheerfully.

"Other than Aberrants taking one look at you and often trying to kill you?" I asked archly, because that had seemed to be the main effect for so long, and no other noticeable. Even Sole didn't attract as much attention from such creatures, as I recalled of his past, but while it made him a Karmic Sponge for Aberrant attention, it hadn't seemed to do anything else.

"Correct. It seems to be as follows: Aberrants are treated as the worse of Undead or Outsiders for purposes of many effects which are designed to defy them." I digested that with a raised eyebrow.

"So… a Holy Word sends them back to Leng or the Far Realms?" I asked with great interest.

"Yes, if they come from off-plane. Disruption does double-damage and can potentially insta-kill them. I can Turn them like undead. Protection from Evil can Ward them off like Outsiders. Thaumaturgic Circles can Bind them." That was incredibly cool and extremely powerful in all the Fuck-You-Up sense! Wow, the Title didn't just have teeth, it had a mouthful of adamantine fangs! The ground trembled ever-so-slightly. Both of us looked down, and then ahead at the ground in the distance.

"The Castle radiates Impermeable Foundation and nothing can Burrow within a mile of it," I informed him as we both rose to our feet. Feature uncoiled, shrinking and sliding up around Ael's shoulders as Duum flitted back to mine.

"This is a big one?" he asked me, focusing on the ground. In the distance, cracks were appearing in the stony ground and approaching with amazing speed.