Chương 187: Chapter 208: Being Difficult

I was deep in my thoughts as I walked along. The weather here was still warm, not summery but still comfortable. The day was pleasant, the bats were squeaking merrily, the Academy campus is a beautifully-arranged sequence of grand and elegant buildings. The grass was still vibrant green, the breeze smelled of that distinctly autumn scent, and the ceiling was a shifting and mixing coruscation of bright light to dim light, always moving back and forth, blending and breaking and casting a twilight down over us all.

Weird how it's never dismal when I'm feeling moody. I was walking to the student center, taking my time, having my thoughts. I had just experimented with allowing my soul-stuff to infiltrate Belisa Roadaway's body, and to my sharp disgust and dismay it had worked. That's not something that normal necromancers are supposed to be able to do. That's an advanced skill. That is something that liches do to prepare a corpse for their eventual inhabitation. Because Belisa was, in every way that mattered, actually dead.

Medically she was alive. Her heart was beating, her hair still grows. Presumably she has all the regular functions of life. But there is no soul there at all. The only silver lining I see is that her soul is entirely absent, no scraps left behind. So, it was intact when it left her. So it might still be intact, somewhere. Potentially. But, I don't have any reason to believe that whoever took her soul away from her did so because they intend to take care of it and treat it nicely. Without her soul, she's not alive.

Just a very convincing form of undead. If undeath is a spectrum, with frankensteins on one side and animated skeletons on the other, with zombies in the middle, then she's somewhat this side of frankensteins. Physically she's no different than anyone who's been resuscitated with CPR. But there's a reason she shambles when she walks. It's the same reason that I shamble when I sleepwalk, when my soul is not anchored inside my body. I can't do anything about my circumstance.

I am, in fact, the soul of a person who has died, occupying a body as if it was my own.... most of the time. The word for that rhymes with 'itch'. But I want Belisa to be better off. I want her to get better, not just to be something useful to me. This game gives me a lot of room to be a villainess. When I opened the door to the student center the noise and vibrations and life all hit me like a wall, and wrapped around me without touching me.

I entered the crowd without immersing in it, and I walked with my own raincloud of funk hanging over my head. C'mon, Natalie, pull your shit together. Of all the luxuries I am allowed, self-pity is definitely not one of them. I considered channeling, using magic to fix my feelings, but I've been getting concerned about that. Like maybe I'm stunting my ability to regulate my own emotions if I keep leaning on strong essences.

So, since I'm not currently overwhelmed with tragedies or challenges, I want to deal with this using good ol' self-control and discipline. Breathe out the morbid, breathe in the normal. Morbid out, normal in. It wasn't working until I got close enough to the serving lanes for the normal-in to get a lot more aromatic. Mm. Grilled onions and peppers. And a meaty, bassy note. Now there've been enough occasions where I had to wonder if someone's fucking with me. The game devs? The goddess? Dunno.

But some of this shit just feels targeted. There were two lanes serving today. One was a plain salted chicken breast with a dollop of sour cream and a bed of white rice with a cabbage salad. A perfectly nutritious meal, but a bit on the bland side and visually unappealing. On the other side, a serving of sizzling pan-grilled onion and peppers were the side dish for a serving of chopped seared steak topped with a provolone cheese, with a split-top roll served on the side.

So obviously I picked up the deconstructed Philly cheesesteak and brought it back to the table. Time to horrify Elica again! I sat down next to her on one side, Rinnie was on her other. Yheta was across, with Larianne and Vancy flanking him. Vancy was in the middle of breathlessly explaining her proposal that, in addition to the bell system we already use to mark the hours, there also be a 'jingle' to signal every fifteen minutes. Or ten minutes. She kept changing her mind or forgetting that she had changed it.

None of us were ready to get on board with this, but it was Rinnie that drove it home.

"Vancy, I listen to that bell tolling one hundred and thirty six times every day. I promise I don't want forty-eight jingles added to the mix." By general acclaim, the matter was tabled. Vancy sulked, with her arms crossed and her cheeks puffed in a huff. I had just finished cutting my roll when Elica caught sight. She scrunkled her nose and I grinned merrily as I assembled my sandwich. Elica is probably my best friend. She's also a deeply unpleasant person and it is a lot of fun to troll her.

I caught Larianne's eye, and raised an eyebrow. She shook her head. Well, that means that the Ebonder family will not be available to use their magics to question the distribution officer for the royal reserve warehouses who had died in such a mysterious carriage accident just when Petunia progressed her investigation into the Cerulean Circus. I nodded back. Well, I had hoped to have good news to share with Cousin Petty. I hope her side of the investigation is going better.

And I am not a hypocrite for asking the Ebonder family for a little necro-help, after having killed other necromancers out of hand, chasing liches, and refusing to learn necromancy because it's icky. It's because I trust them, in this at least. The obvious danger of necromancy is, obviously, the highly lethal death magic and undead monsters. The less obvious danger is that it's easy. So there's always a temptation for someone to reach a little past their abilities, sure that they understand.

And eventually, they don't. The Ebonder household has a tradition going back centuries, and they appear to have mastered the process. You never hear about runaway monsters in Tumnassed, or about Ebonder members turning up dead at suspicious ages. With their stable environment, they've got this whole thing down to a science, and I respect that. I don't really respect their ties to organized crime but I'm not in a position to talk shit about that.

For example: Yheta glanced my way, and so-casually mentioned "By the way, Lady Harigold, I have spoken to those associates of mine, and they are prepared for that meeting at your designated time and place."

"Thank you, Yheta," I said.

"Ooh-h-h, meeting associates?" Vancy asked as if that was salacious somehow. I don't know what that's about and frankly I am not going to ask.

"It's a boring business meeting," I said to Vancy, to get her off whatever scandalous nonsense she was giggling about. That was the wrong move on my part. Because I just said it was boring. And I know it won't be a normal boring business meeting. And so now everyone in this cluster knows it too. Larianne riffled her nails with a sinuous clacking sound, peering hard at me. Figures she'd be the first to piece it together.

Elica is willfully blind to Yheta's unseemly dealings, but Larianne is basically a Mafia princess already and she knows the signs.

"What is so ordinary about this meeting, hmm?" she asked. I looked at Yheta for help. I need a liar! He picked up.

"What she's not telling you about is the scale of the project," he said.

"It's not just starting a new business, it will be more like starting several interlocking enterprises at the same time. The timing is going to be hellish, there's a million details to take care of, and it's going to be extravagantly expensive." I let out a have-to-laugh-or-I'm-gonna- sigh.

"Hah. No fooling. I've been working on designs for a new kind of vehicle. It requires its own special kind of road. I've got plans for how to bring down the up-front costs, but since these roads are fixed in place, the train can only stop in certain areas. So it stands to reason that setting up supply and resupply depots at those spots would be necessary. But putting guards on supply depots will bleed profits out.

So, instead we're turning those depots into stores that focus on providing a small selection of a great many common necessities, all in one place. These 'convenience stores', as I'm calling them, would allow us to keep inventory space and resupply staff where we need it, while also generating a large amount of steady profit." Not to mention, I'm not installing weigh stations so there's no controls against smuggling. If we control the shipping lines, we control the smuggling routes.

"What's so special about these roads and these vehicles?" Elica asked, archly.

"Well, I don't have a working model yet, but I'm confident we will be able to achieve sustained speeds of fifty miles per hour-""Bullshit." Of all of us, Rinnie seemed the most surprised that she had spoken, as if the word had lunged out of her mouth without asking permission. But while she might not have intended to speak, she had been speaking her feelings.

"I'm sorry, but it is bullshit," she said.

"That's not possible! Safely sustained speeds that high? Even enchanted carriages can't hold a pace like that for extended time. Nothing can move that fast reliably!" Most of the faces at the table agreed with her, but at least made an effort to look polite about it when they looked at me. Yeah, that expression, 'I don't think that's true but I wasn't going to call you out to your face BUT...' Not my favorite. But I did not let them slow me down this time.

"I was not clear. Fifty was my very conservative estimate that I'm sharing before we've got proof-of-concept up and running. The number I'm trying for but may have trouble with is about eighty." Their faces lost the 'but I wasn't going to call you out to your face' portion of the expression. I thought I'd earned more faith than that!

"Well, opening several stores at once sure is a big deal," Elica said.

"Even if your magic bullshit carriage can or cannot go so fast as that." I sighed.

"It's not just the stores. It's the trainyards, the tracks, building the engine itself. The construction, the surveyors, the inventory, licensing, zoning, pricing, banking, management, hiring, oversight, policy, crossroads, parcel delivery, switching operators-" Elica patted my arm.

"It sure is difficult being you. Please learn to eat with utensils like everyone else."

"It is difficult to be a sorcerer," Coppor Cseyz declared, pacing back and forth at the front of the room.

"Every other branch of magic has books and literature, ways to bring knowledge from others to oneself, from the past to the present. Every other branch of magic can compound its successes and record its failures, the wisdom of the magisters' college is equal to the wisest of them to ever pass on their knowledge." I sighed heavily.

"Gods I wish that some of the wiser ones had passed that on," I muttered just loud enough for one person to hear me. Kimothy smirked and snrrrked a muffled laugh and nudged me with his elbow.

"This limitation is not just unique to sorcery, it is endemic to it," the instructor continued.

"Sorcery has no runes or mathematics. It is nebulous and ill-defined. Wizardry gets graphed and plotted. Scrivening runs on a dictionary of definitions, that's basically all it is. Healers need a degree in anatomy before their powers can do anything but give you cancer. The forbidden arts.... well, if they couldn't fit in a book they'd be much easier to stamp out."

"Great, now I don't want to be a sorcerer any more," Kimothy complained in a quiet aside to me. I nudged him with my elbow. The class was not particularly rapt, but then Coppor was not a gifted and gripping public speaker. Mostly he was a very passionate man who would rant about certain subjects. Not with skill or technique, just by being too mad to not rant for a while.

"I for one don't think of this as any evidence that sorcery is less than any other art. If anything, I consider this an indictment against the nature of structured language and arithmetics. There is something crucially wrong if a magic technique of complex calculation can fit in a book but the magical art of knowing what things really are is relegated to a handful of fumbling teacher just doing their best with the training they were fumblingly offered.

If language cannot contain truth, then it is language that is wrong, not the truth!"

"I'm glad he didn't go into politics. Half the nation would be on fire," I commented under my breath. Kimothy laughed quietly, but I still got the elbow.

"How lucky, then, that sorcery's traditions are stamped into the world itself, that the truth of the essences has provided an avenue more indelible than ink! Where those nerds have their books and studies and dissertations, sorcery gets tapped straight into the nature of reality where it concentrates and spills over straight into the world where we can grab it and learn from it ourselves. The wizards, scriveners, magisterium; they all have their towers and chantries and strongholds. Good places to keep a book.

The sorcerer finds their power out in the world. We are made for travel in a way that no other wizard is. So perhaps that is why nearly every sorcerer finds a method to fly. A feat nearly impossible to any other mage, but nearly ubiquitous among our kind."

"Wait, is he hating on books?" I demanded, my voice barely hushed at all this time. Kimothy grabbed my arm, and I realized that I was halfway through the motion of lunging to my feet. I would not have reacted as strongly if Coppor had been talking shit about my own family or the horse I rode in on. Abashed at my own impulse, I slowly relaxed my posture, pushing my chair back in. Coppor winked at me and moved on with his rant. Somedays it seems like literally everyone around me knows how to push my buttons.

Some of my earliest happiest times as Natalie was with my father, the duke, in the library of the manor house or just talking about books. They were how we displaced the Meadwhites, after all. Big source of family pride. Kimothy nudged my arm, whispering to me, probably to distract me from Coppor's well-aimed barbs.

"Hey. do you have plans for another temple run?" I smacked my forehead, and whispered back.

"Shit! I meant to tell you but I've been distracted. Yes, over year-end break, I've got a lineup of them, a dozen so far. I think we could hit them all in a single day."

"A dozen?! In a day?!" he had a hard time keeping his voice down, it got a little strained. A little squeaky. It's not like it's really uncommon for a sorcerer to have over a dozen affinities. Most of the very active ones have that many by the time they finish their careers. Hitting that number before graduation is basically unprecedented though. If he does it, he would be the second sorcerer of this generation to have that many affinities at such a young age. I nodded to the second-in-line.

"I'll get back to you on the specific date, but I'm pretty sure we can pull it off. That is, if you're interested." I watched the XP counter tick upwards, which was just as indicative as the glowing expression on Kimothy's face. He's been insecure about his powers as long as I've known him, even though he is, if anything, stronger than most sorcerers our age. But then, he was in a different place when all this started for him. He had a different life and a different plan and he had to give them up.

"Kimothy," I said, behind my hand.

"When you woke up to sorcery, you were training as a scrivener?"

"Mm-hm."

"So... why couldn't you keep doing that?" He sighed.

"I can kind of use that knowledge, if I run it through my sorcery. But I can't just use a pen and page any more."

"Why?"

"Scrivening teaches you to apply your own mana just as you apply the ink, together. Dip into the pool and the inkwell, and then craft the shapes."

"So?" He made a conflicted face, and ducked when the instructor glared our way.

"Natalie, where is your mana?" Whether it's in my soul itself or through my body, the answer is the same.

"In my mana channels."

"And what does it do there?" I shrugged.

"Circulates."

"Can you dip a quill into a river?" he asked me. My mouth dropped open. In three questions he explained a mystery that has bugged me literally since before I was born. More than anything, this was why the magisters did not respect sorcery. Our magic could not be blended with theirs, for a reason as simple as that. Our mana doesn't hold still. You can't dip a pen into it, you can't make it hold still long enough for calculations. Except... Kimothy could, couldn't he?.... Not reliably, and not permanently.

But to a degree, he could, and that had ramifications. I needed to do some research before the semester break. No matter what Coppor said, I was going to need the campus library and all the books I could carry.