Chương 41: Chapter 38: Obscuramancy

Tower Master?" Beta Methasome, Empyrean of Void, asked as she came out of nowhere—her face mostly occluded by the hood of her robe—and met Nolotl on the doorframe of her room, looking out into the infinity of the Void Tower but finding no one beyond the gnosiamancer's Simulacrum.

"Did he bring you here?" she asked his projection.

"…yes," Nolotl affirmed hesitantly.

"Are you stronger than the Tower Master?" That statement was breaking all of his internal metrics. He knew that some of the current empyreans were peerless powerhouses even at the level of archmagi, but he couldn't process anyone beyond the likes of Enantyum being at that level.

"Depends on what you classify as power," the akyromancer responded with the same nonchalance of her Tower Master.

"So, what brings you here, Nolotl?"

"I've obtained a new Boon that requires a greater understanding of Void, so I came here seeking tutelage," the gnosiamancer explained the brunt of the situation, of course avoiding mentioning the chronomancer who had a yoke on the flow of time.

"I see…" the pale woman blinked slowly.

"And why should I waste my precious and limited time on this earth for you?"

"Compassion for your fellow Empyrean?" He blurted out.

"I see, good day," Beta proceeded to grabbed the knob on the door and close it.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Nolotl extended his arms to make her stop, but that only resulted in their obliteration as the door's movement was enough to turn them into fine mist. The volatilization of her peer's arms made the akyromancer stop, if only out of curiosity to look at the reconstructing arms.

"…I'm waiting," she added tiredly.

"I know that you value both your solitude and time, but you must have some objective to complete, don't you? At least surely one related to the total celestial alignment?" The terian asked and he got some tentative faint noise coming from her which motivated him to keep talking.

"Luckily for you, I don't have anything to do for the total celestial alignment and my current Boon takes absolute priority. This means you can have an assistant for the next eight weeks—and an Empyrean gnosiamancer at that—for the low, low price of some tutelage. What do you say?"

"That you really should focus on the coming alignment," and she proceeded to close the door. Time slowed down for Nolotl as he pressed his mind to accelerate his thoughts. There were spells dedicated for that on the augmentation school but basic cantrips were enough for this occasion. He only had a fraction of a second, so his mind came with the solution to rush headfirst into her.

As a Simulacrum, there was no collision, but most of his body dissipated as he collided both with the door and Beta, letting his cyan projection to collapse on the floor of the bedroom as it was left with half a leg. Not even one leg, half of one.

"Ugh…" He groaned on the ground as his body started reforming. His divination couldn't feel pain, but being nearly turned into mist felt odd at best.

"You really barged into my room," Beta said impassively as she looked down on him.

"Never heard of a no means no? That is absolute degenerate behavior."

"I'd rather not be called a pervert when I'm lacking half a body," the Simulacrum groaned again as it sat on its bottom, the legs taking too much time to regenerate due to his lack of mastery with the spell. No amount of proficiencies could fix that, only time and practice.

"Curiously enough, that should be the punishment inflicted to all rapists. Bisecting them sounds adequate." It sent chills down his real spine as she talked with no emotion at all and looked at him like utter garbage. The worst part of that emotionless tone wasn't the seriousness, but the lack of feedback. As far as Nolotl knew, she could be joking as he didn't know her sense of humor.

Perhaps she just had the worst sense of humor in existence, and given what was known of akyromancers, it was possible she had sacrificed it.

"…please don't refer to me as a rapist," Nolotl said softly and ashamedly. The harsh treatment was superlative, but he was aware that it didn't come from nowhere. He was trespassing, after all.

"That will be my decision," Beta walked away from the door and picked the chair in front of her desk to sit on whilst she looked at the legless Simulacrum. Finally, she took out her hood.

"Now that you are here, I guess I could at least hear you out."

"Ahem," Nolotl cleared his throat and wiggled around on the ground.

"As I've stated before, I'm disposed to help you these following weeks with whatever you plan to do for the celestial alignment with my only payment being classes to deepen my understanding of Void."

"And that would be all?" She questioned inquisitively.

"Yes?" The terian titled his head in confusion.

"Huh…" The akyromancer let out a weak grunt and tapped her cheeks repeatedly deep in thought.

"You're hopeless."

"Excuse me?" The gnosiamancer frowned.

"Not in that sense," Beta clarified.

"I can feel the hope in people, their expectations, and that makes me sick. But when I look at you… there's no hope. You're coming here to ask for my tutelage yet I cannot feel any placed expectations in you, as if you have no hope that my lessons might bring any fruit."

"That…" is quite right, Nolotl left that part unspoken. I don't know how she can feel it, but it's true I don't have any hopes for these classes. Both because Enantyum is forcing me and because I know for a fact that this loop won't be enough no matter how much I try. Being suspicious of Enantyum was on the top of his list of imperatives. Trusting the Regressor blindly sounded like the perfect way to get killed. Unfortunately, blind obedience was his only choice for the time being.

"How exquisite," she added a moment later.

"…excuse me?" The diviner reiterated, though now more unsettled.

"Everyone has hopes on me," Beta started.

"As minimal as they are, they have it. I'm an Empyrean, after all. Especially Tramma Dol, he makes me nauseous with all of his hopes. But you… you don't expect anything from me, not even from the Empyrean point of view."

"Uh…" Nolotl was truly lost and he didn't know how to address this situation. It also didn't help that he couldn't read Beta's mind from a surface level, even if it were only the mind's silhouette. He had managed to do that much with Enantyum, but Beta's nature as an akyromancer made her a total black box.

"Well, I cannot have high hopes on you—or any for that matter—when you stand so above me." So he decided to answer how Nolotl Xocoyotzin, the one before the time loop, would've answered. Pretense and a mask, yet also honesty. That opinion was only strengthened after having heard from the Void Tower Master that the Empyrean stood taller than him.

"Interesting…" The akyromancer stood up with a sigh.

"For better or worse, I can tolerate you, so these classes are a… possibility. Are you going to become an obscuramancer?"

"Why is everyone asking me that?" The Empyrean of Information frowned in suspicion.

"You're the third person in this week to ask me that." Stolen story; please report.

"It is a useful type of mage to have around," the Empyrean of Void responded casually without thinking much about it.

"The last one at the Void Tower got eaten by an eldritch being so we're lacking in that department. And for us at least, obscuramancers are more useful than neuromancers." Nolotl had no idea what to make of that claim. He did have an eldritch entity of his own inside his mind, but there was a big difference between being parasitized and being gobbled by one. A really big difference. And how do you even bring an eldritch creature to the Physicality, aren't they incompatible with reality?

The more he thought about it, the more questions he had. And also a looming headache.

"Can your projection remain here for an indefinite amount of time?" The robed akyromancer asked after he had remained lost in his thoughts.

"Yes," the projected gnosiamancer stood up in kind—partially ashamed of leaving her standing for that long—as his body finally regenerated and nodded at her.

"My Simulacrum will only go away whenever I dispel it or gets destroyed. Though I must warn you that I can only interact with it when I'm concentrating. I believe I can maintain it summoned whilst asleep, but I'm not totally sure about that."

"That's… workable," Beta's every sentence exuded doubt.

"For the time being, I will recommend you some books that I'm aware that are at the Archives for you to learn and also cross-reference when I need assistance on some subjects. Once I've verified that you can be a useful assistant, the private classes will begin. Is that alright?" It will get very dull very fast if I have to do it for every of these ten loops, but there shouldn't be a problem with this first one and maybe an additional one.

"Sure," he responded with little hesitation from Methasome's point of view. Advantages of thinking faster than the average person.

"You can recommend me those books and I will get working on them at this very moment."

"Sure," she responded in kind, her dead eyes inspecting his projection.

"But what about this spell? I said I want it here, but I don't want it here."

"Right, right," Nolotl nodded repeatedly after remembering this was a lady's boudoir.

"Tell me any spot, even if its inside a closet or a box, and I will leave the Simulacrum there. It won't be able to leave its place without disintegrating if you're uncomfortable with espionage or… stalking." He really didn't want to use that word, but Beta had some strong opinions and ignoring their existence could work against him. Better to acknowledge them.

"We will see. I guess there's empty cupboards on the laboratory…" Beta sighed yet again.

"And how will I be able to communicate with you in case I need an assistant?"

"If you disintegrate any extremity of the Simulacrum, I will be able to sense it. I think," he answered unsurely, which caused the akyromancer to squint.

"Though I ask you that you do it with you hand or a stick, if you use any mana, it will just completely vanish."

"I will take note of that," the pale woman rolled her eyes.

"Let us get going with those references…" Whilst he had been partially joking, Beta did end up locking him in a cupboard. At least it one of those big ones that covered the whole lower part of a workbench instead of a drawer, but it didn't matter much. If anything, Nolotl appreciated it as now his Simulacrum had little to no stimuli, meaning that it couldn't distract him as he read.

What the akyromancer had recommended him for his classes were basic materials on the Void, both the Alignment and the liminality that shared its name. The information was basic, but he didn't think much of it as he worked through the several books he had been instructed to read. Some were thick and others thinner, but he doubted they could entertain him for long especially now that he had his Second Mind.

Perhaps he couldn't use that second stream of thoughts thanks to the interloper, but the computation gained from the boost remained. He had doubled his computation resource but it was still too minor to use it in lieu of mana. The days passed by and the Ehecatl remained silent. Of course, Nolotl didn't lower his guard around the cosmic entity as it continued coiling on its prison-cradle, but he was happy enough that the creature wouldn't be whispering all the time in his mind. That seems counterproductive, though.

Nolotl pondered after closing a book and focusing on another one. The Ehecatl seems like a timeless creature, so whispering ad nauseum to drive me crazy should be a valid strategy. Why wouldn't it even attempt it? The diviner personally doubted such a tactic would work on him, but there was virtue on at least trying it. The days quickly passed by as he read all the material with the understanding that was expected from gnosiamancers.

None of that knowledge was surprising in the slightest, mostly curiosities and trivia. The thing that mattered to Nolotl more was how he indeed could keep the Simulacrum active whilst asleep. He was aware that the concentration requirement didn't quite correlate with active concentration, but it was nice to see it in practice. Though that wasn't to say that Simulacrum didn't have an active concentration component as he indeed had to focus to control it.

Whenever he got tired of reading, he would rest by practicing a bit in the Simulacrum as it was locked in the cupboard by opening and closing his hand whilst moving his real body. He had the feeling that there would be a point where he could control both instances of self at the same time, but he was nowhere near there. Though I would already be there if I had a secondary mind for me to handle that stuff… the diviner grumbled during his reading session.

A massive positive he had found out was that the Ehecatl couldn't steal the Simulacrum's control from him even when he was asleep. Or at least he wants me to think that way. Nolotl was already good at the game of paranoia, and the time loop had only polished his skills in that sense. As for the contents of his readings, they could be summarized in lore and spells. The lore section was quite straightforward and any decently-read mage would know as much.

The contents varied, but it was mostly about how the Void Alignment wasn't as straightforward as it seemed. Void didn't just make reference to nothingness, but also the liminality of dimensions, the vastness of the cosmos, the sacrifices of people, the darkness of everything, the madness and corrupting aspects of knowledge, and a myriad more things.

One of the first things that mages were taught at the Empyrean Academy—in general, the Information Tower was more specific—was that the name of the Alignments were only scratching the surface. In few words, the terms used to called each Alignment were just man-made abstractions that couldn't be fully encapsulated. Perhaps the manipulations of the mind made sense for the Information Alignment, but not many expect that it also had dealings in the soul.

All Alignments were interconnected in one way or another, just like how the combination of Life and Chaos took the form of blood or the combination of Information and Void took the form of the obfuscation of knowledge and safekeeping of the mind. That latter part was most of what Nolotl actually read about. More than a handful of the books Beta had recommended him were on obscuramancy, the combined discipline of Information and Void.

Obscuramancy was a school of magic that had twofold tasks: protect against divinations and protect against psychic and mental attacks. There were mage types that consisted of soaking damage, and whilst this wasn't the most common type of damage, obscuramancers certainly fell on this category. This kind of mage could spread their Resistance to Cognitive Harm and Resistance to Oblivion to other people and their repertoire consisted of antidivination abjurations too.

Whilst Nolotl could certainly benefit from such a type of magic, there was no chance for him to become any hybrid mage type if he wanted to conserve his state as a second looper. That 75% Information Alignment was truly the only thing that made him unique as he was already born with the Touched by Information Blessing that people received when they got to 50% Alignment.

"All of these cantrips have been interesting, but that's all that they are: a curiosity," Nolotl whispered to himself as he continued to examine spellcircles.

"This is getting me no progress whatsoever in my assimilation, though I guess it's good to learn the basics adequately." His early years as a normal student in the Information Tower had taught him to perform cantrips in every communal school of magic, but that was the whole extent. And cantrips had a lot of leeway on their power and complexity as a zeroth tier of magic as they were basically anything that didn't reach the first tier.

The only real abjuration cantrips Nolotl knew were basically sound-proofing enchantments, and those were really weak. Far from enough to induce the Silenced status effect, to set a goal. And they were only in his memory because he had 'recently' used them to ignore Enala's petition to share the Second Mind ritual with her all the way back on the zeroth loop.

"Abjuration is certainly the most interesting school, because out of all the books Beta has recommended me… I've yet to understand the akyromancy school," Nolotl sighed in defeat and closed the book, scrubbing his face with his open hands in exhaustion.

"It really hurts to have an Alignment lower than 11% and no proficiencies with the school." It wasn't a hard rule and more of a rule of thumb, but it was usually considered that it wasn't possible to cast magics related to an Alignment when it was under 11%. That was why Nolotl could only use a handful of Light-based illusions beyond his gnosiamancy. Light was his only Alignment that sat above the 11% and not by much at a measly 13%.

"Ugh…" This time around he only rubbed his eyes.

"It's been a week already, maybe I should go and ask her about the classes… No, Beta already treated me poorly after trespassing. That's my fault and she did accept to instruct me, so I should at least wait a bit longer in case she goes back on her offer. Though if she does I can just try again…" He slapped himself.

"No, that will mean losing a loop of progress. I will give her a bit of a breather as there are still seven weeks remaining. That's a lot of time. And it's not like I don't have stuff to do." After all, he had an enchantress to save.