Chương 71: Chapter 68: Cognition and Oblivion

"First we had music spells and now we have optical spells?" Nolotl crossed his arms in amusement at Beta's proposal.

"I know magic can get esoteric, but it's amusing how your proposals are always so out of the norm."

"I'd say that anything remotely related to Void will seem out of the norm for most people," Beta calmly explained.

"Void seems paradoxical to mortals by nature as it operates very differently from the three planes of existence where we usually operate."

"Yes, I've seen as much with all the vacuous hijinks," he sighed. The Empyrean of Information currently knew only four akyromancies—five if taking into account both versions of Vacuous Filtration —and they all were unique in their own manner.

One filtrated information that didn't exist, another destroyed auditive information, the next summoned an entity that barely existed yet could interact with the world, and the last one used a loophole in existence itself to decompress information that was more tightly knit than it theoretically could. It was truly a bizarre element.

It worked on the seams of reality, exploiting things that shouldn't even exist, and Nolotl always had difficulties picturing that when most of the time there wasn't even something to picture. He might have managed to cast Invisible Gesticulation the previous loop, but he doubted he could manage to do so again without the total celestial alignment. So wide was the disconnect between his abilities and his knowledge. It was difficult to work with an entity that he could barely detect, let alone process.

"But before we get into any of it," Nolotl looked at the mighty akyromancer who was already eyeing all of the books he had summoned. His true terian self retreated as he spoke, not wanting to use more of the limited time he had with it.

"What did you do at the previous total alignment, Beta?" It was impossible to forget that sight, that distortion of all the planes of existence. A student, a young adult, shouldn't have that kind of power. And he was saying that as a virtual 20-year-old. It was just... unsettling. Not a black hole, but something else.

"Hmm, I must admit I'm at a loss," she responded without any malice. Without anything, really.

"That information didn't form part of the akyrodata storage."

"I guess it didn't considering it was a last second thing, but I'd hoped you would at least store inside whatever you were going to do," Nolotl sighed and looked at his arms. He had used his Argent Bindings of the Twiceborn twice already today and he was getting rather exhausted. His body screamed at him not to do it a third time. He didn't think that the issue was liberating the enchantment several times in a day, but rather doing so in such quick succession.

After all, using them shapeshifted his body, and that was bound to tax it.

"Could I use Thought Projection to show you how it looked?" He knew it was a wasted shot, but it was moronic not to ask first when the alternative was severe physical strain.

"Sure," Beta affirmed taciturnly.

"Well, I knew that you wouldn't... What?" Nolotl blinked several times in quick succession.

"You agree?"

"I've seen too much to deny that offer, and besides, the akyrodata storage is similar enough. Considering you've given so much of your mind to me, it's only balanced that I return that trust." The diviner chuckled at the claire-obscure woman's words. They were veritably Beta's words. She hadn't said that it would be fair to return the trust, but that it was balanced. Equilibrated.

While Nolotl couldn't barge into her mind, something told her that what she saw wasn't the usual relationship and acquaintance of two people here, but a mercantile exchange. She didn't want to get ripped off, but she also had some kernel of empathy that whispered her against ripping someone off. The fact that she had pragmatically stated that was also very in line with her character.

"Here I come," Nolotl approached her but still hesitated. Only when Beta gave him a nod of non-verbal confirmation did he pressed his forehead against hers. Because he wouldn't be using his true self, that meant he needed to transmit the memories directly. Something he had yet to do. He was walking in the blind, but many of the components of his status helped him. He was a gnosiamancer connected to the cognition with the skill to project thoughts so of course he had some instinct on how to perform the task.

He visualized the memory from a couple of days ago that would have happened in eight weeks. The sidereal aspect of the observation room as the lingered on one of the libration points of Lon. The preternatural light of the supermassive blackhole at the center of the galaxy that somehow traversed across hundreds of stars and two local satellites of solid stone beyond all of those foreign ones that were also aligned, its light visible for everyone on Lon.

And then there was Beta, ethereal as always, a woman who seemed like she would vanish at any moment as the extremes of her long robe fleeted from memory. What mattered more, however, was the singularity next to him. A distortion of space and time that casually floated next to her.

"Hmm," Beta mouthed, pressing her closed eyes to assimilate the foreign memory better.

"Yes, I know what that was." Calmly, she pushed herself away from the chocolate-skin man.

"... and?" Nolotl added as a silence lingered.

"Well, I'm reticent to tell you," the akyromancer stated plainly.

"It brought a lot of assimilation and even experience for my level progression, so I would like to know about it."

"Even experience? How queer," she mused.

"Though I doubt it will grant you more experience. Well, not quite. You can probably can dig up a bit more level progression, but it's not a source of free nor limitless experience."

"You're only interesting me more and more with whatever that singularity was, Beta."

"You got some part right, it's indeed a singularity." That was her way of saying she wouldn't be telling him anything.

"Perhaps I'll elaborate once you've proven more useful. If you think about it, your utility is negative as I will have to throw away my plans and work on perfecting the akyrodata storage instead of progressing with my ritual."

"Your previous iterations didn't have issues with that," Nolotl called her out as he doubted she minded.

"We can blame this on the imperfection of the memories. There's been some assimilation, but it's crude and now I feel more like a third-person, an observer, more than ever before. It's a strange feeling to deal with."

"Right..." the gnosiamancer didn't know how to respond to that.

"So what are the spells you had in mind?"

"Let's first start with the simplest one that you can obtain easily..." Beta tried sending him to the Archives as her current iteration hadn't seen the Simulacrum and her previous ones only had second-hand experience too, so she was surprised when Nolotl told her that he was already at the Archives. But the conversation didn't end there as she wanted tangible proof, and what ended up happening was that he offered to share his senses. Now, sharing senses wasn't as difficult as sharing information.

His teachers at the first years of the Information Tower made the explicit distinction between processed and streamed information, which was just to say that what the senses were currently registering weren't memories and therefore it was unencrypted and uncompressed data, making transferals far easier. This iteration of Beta seemed to care less about consequences, so she accepted receiving Nolotl's senses.

The gnosiamancer didn't have a spell for this, but only barebones cantrips were needed thanks to Thought Projection and his previous experiences from early-years classes.

"Huh..." Beta mused as she suddenly could see the Simulacrum's sight with her own gaze. The superposed gaze seemingly annoyed her—a weakness of not having a dedicated spell—so she closed her eyes and focused only on what the divination transmitted to her.

"You truly are at the Archives."

"I told you so," the real Nolotl chuckled at the workshop and the projection kept strolling around. Beta obviously had no control over the divination as it was a one-way connection.

"So, what's the spell you wanted for me to search?"

"Right, the spell," the akyromancer blinked a bit in confusion, surprised at how her sight was working at the moment. For a mage as powerful as Beta, I hadn't expected that she would have this many issues with such a trivial illusion. Nolotl had failed to have issues with the doubled points of view of the Simulacrum when he had first cast it and most of the problems had been controlling to bodies simultaneously, the presence of two new sets of eyes was negligible up to a certain degree.

"Is this difficult for you?" he inquired.

"I can stop the sight-sharing if you want."

"No," she immediately turned the offer down.

"It's a strange experience, but I cannot deny that I'm enjoying it. People are looking at me... well, you. And I don't feel anything from those gazes. No expectation, no nothing. It doesn't matter that they are looking at your spell with confused or outright disgusted faces, I feel nothing. How... marvelous."

"Right," Nolotl smacked his lips in annoyance. It didn't feel great to hear that no one had expectations on him, even if that was only implicitly stated on her words.

"Don't get used to it as I won't be acting as some sort of remote guide for you to explore the academy, but I'm glad you're enjoying the novel experience." Because what he was doing was a gnosiamancy divination cantrip, basically all of his Titles and Boons were contributing to the effort, even the Empyrean Title. With so much practice without dual proficiencies and high affinities, Nolotl had forgotten what it was to use his Gnosiamancer's sacred combination of gnosiamancy divination.

It was literally his best field without any possibility of comparison. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Now that he had lost the virtual proficiency with Simulacrum he had expected the casting and management of the divination to get significantly more difficult like it had happened with the hylomorphism's creation, but what happened was the complete opposite. It got easier.

Somehow, he had gained a newfound appreciation of his Alignment and proficiencies, making his previous works retroactively easier as he had been performing magic so outside of his domain. Huh, how weird it's not to have an assimilation notification. I guess I have long assimilated Information, but it definitely felt like a good place to— Information Alignment increased by 0. 0001%. Level progressed by 1%. I'm not going to say no to that, Nolotl smiled at his progression.

It was easy to forget that insights on the field were as important as the information one might learn. After all, memorizing and assimilating were two very different things.

"The spell name, Beta," Nolotl prodded the woman yet again as she was more than satisfied enough to remain watching at the extensive Archive through the eyes of a projection." Disembodied Sight," she informed absentmindedly. Though a moment later her body snapped with more alert.

"How are you going to find it? Some divination to point you to the spell?"

"I have a strong one that technically can guide me anywhere, but it hijacks the Cognition of others, so unless it's a common landmark that several people have in mind or has been static for a long time, then it won't work." As much as he loved Dijkstra's Routing, it was far from omniscient.

"And yes, I might be walking the path of divination with more attention than most gnosiamancers, but learning spells to search for books would be a waste of time."

"Then what will you do?" Nolotl couldn't help but snicker at that question, finding it hard to believe that had come out of the mouth of a woman that would graduate in a couple of years perhaps.

"It's a powerful spell called talking," he smiled at Beta with sass and approached a librarian with his Simulacrum.

"Excuse me, do you know where the spell Disembodied Sight is located?"

"Erm... yes, I can, Empyrean," the bibliomancer looked at him with a hint of bewilderment as this was the first time his projection was prowling the Archives in this loop. The man's osmium eyes lit up for a second as his Cognition extended towards the local Cognition. Even through the Simulacrum, Nolotl could see how his mind projected out of his body. This sight wasn't shared with Beta as it wasn't something intrinsic of the Simulacrum but rather Nolotl who constantly saw the Cognition.

In that sense, it could be said that he currently three sets of eyes.

"27th floor, 621st bookshelf, on the 'Aid' section," the man responded.

"Aid?" Nolotl frowned startled at the section's name.

"This spell is useful for people with vision impediments or outright blindness as it's only a second-tier one yet it grants full vision," he recited not out of memory but as if he was reading a book. Which he most likely was. That certainly fell within the purview of bibliomancy.

"Sometimes it's far easier for people to learn a second-tier spell in the hopes of regaining their sight than affording to get treatment as complex as healing their eyes." That latter comment seemed to come out of the librarian himself rather than whatever the trivia he was reading, and the thing was that Nolotl couldn't understand that. Well, he could, but it was extremely weird for him as hospitals in Tezlan were free yet in Origin one had to pay to access them.

The Empyrean Academy did provide unlimited access for students, though that was mostly because most of the hospitals were manned by students in need of experience. It also helped that in Tezlan's case 90% of the population were biomancers so hospitals were always manned and also lacking patients as Resistance to Biological Harm practically nullified most common maladies.

"I appreciate the guidance and the lesson," the Simulacrum nodded.

"Thanks for the lesson, librarian Cilina." The bibliomancer was taken aback upon hearing his own name. Nolotl expected that he would simply be surprised by someone knowing his surname, yet what happened was something the diviner couldn't have predicted.

"Glad to be of service, Empyrean," and the man bowed. This astonished the gnosiamancer in return who had only be expecting to be cheeky and instead got a treatment of deference. Not knowing how to deal with this, Nolotl nodded with his projection and walked away.

"How did you know his name?" Beta asked him at the workshop.

"Did you forget I come from the future?" Nolotl chuckle with a kernel of awkwardness.

"I've interacted with him before, even if he doesn't remember. And either way, it wasn't like his surname was uncommon. I'd say that Cilina is the most common mage surname."

"There's a world of difference between guessing and outright knowing."

"Yes, there is," his smile gained some confidence back. He really wasn't used to be treated with respect, which was rather ironic considering he was both a prince and a head of faith. But he wasn't lying about Cilina being the most common mage surname around here. He at least knew one Cilina in the form of the young Peni, certainly a candidate for Empyrean of Information.

And talking about candidates, Cillin's name shared the same root, only that in her case it was a name even if her full name was written Amoxi Cillin due to Tamorean name structure. It was more than possible to find someone called Cillin Cilina because of it. And knowing statistics, probably there was one currently at the academy. That founds like a nice side quest. Find the Cillin Cilina, Nolotl snickered in the compromised sanctity of his mind. And I'm digressing. I should focus on finding that book.

The quarters of the Empyrean of Information were 'fortunately' near the top of the Information Tower, so Nolotl's Simulacrum only needed to descend the Archives to find the bookshelf in question. Beta let out an amused "Oh," as she experienced a person quickly descending many floors with terian agility. The lack of weight of the projection helped on the sense of awe.

With the minimal yet completely necessary acrobatics, Nolotl reached the section that hosted the book and with a swift pulse of Dijkstra's Routing he found it without needing to search for it. As tangibility wasn't a skill in the divination's repertoire, the gnosiamancer used basic telekinesis to pick up the book and lay it on the table for him to read.

"So this is how you handled all the information gathering," Beta commented next to him at the workshop.

"If you think about it, there isn't much difference from an information-gathering divination. My usage of Simulacrum is, ever-so-slightly, more hands-on." The akyromancer didn't react to his jest and she simply waited for him to read the abstract of the spell. Name: Disembodied Sight Schools: Akyromancy, Divination Requirement: Hylomorphism Effect: Upon consuming a dried grape, project an nonexistent eye out of the body with omnidirectional vision that operates on the Physicality but is otherwise unaffected by it.

The disembodied sight cannot move far away from the caster and vanishes after 90 minutes.

"That's a curious requirement," he mentioned.

"All my spells that require a material component are usually an enchanted item, not a consumable." Mage Armor required a band to be used, but that was a restriction so trivial that it could barely be classified as one. And perhaps it wasn't an enchanted item, but neither it was a consumable.

"Most spells thought for a more... common use tend to have such hylomorphism requirements," Beta explained.

"As the librarian said, non-mages tend to use this spell and that is due to the simple yet somewhat restrictive hylomorphism."

"The time limit is more annoying than anything," Nolotl groaned a bit as he didn't enjoy spells with a time limit. All of his spells were either sustained or perennial, not something caducous.

"How many grapes is that on a single day?"

"Around six," the claire-obscure woman did the math without noticing that the terian was being superlative with his annoyance.

"Not that many, and certainly a valid sacrifice to gain the gift of sight."

"Yeah, I get that," he shrugged.

"But where will I get a bunch of dried grapes?" Without losing a second, Beta produced a raceme out of her Inner Abyss. It was so big that someone had had to prune the whole shrub instead of just picking a single branch.

"Okay... But those aren't dried."

"You say that as if drying things with magic is hard," Beta modestly rolled her eyes. Modestly in the sense that it was nearly imperceptible, but the gesture was undoubtably there for the diviner. As the celestial had stated, drying things with magic was easy. Just like lifting them was trivial with the correct usage of telekinesis. Cantrips could theoretically do anything, but they required more effort and they were less efficient than a dedicated spell.

"Well, could you start drying them while I read the book?" Nolotl asked her for some help and the moment he had focused back on the Simulacrum Beta had already dried them.

"Why didn't you dry them instantly?"

"You didn't let me," she taciturnly explained.

"... fair enough," he sighed and read the contents of the whole spellware for Disembodied Sight. Just like librarian Cilina had said, the akyromancy was a second-tier spell. The time limit, the distance limit, and the hylomorphism seemed to reduce the difficulty drastically, truly a spell thought out for the masses even if it was complex enough to reach the second tier.

Perhaps most people didn't reach a level beyond 3, but it was normally considered that for infinite-scaling Alignments every two levels meant a tier of casting difficulty, so level 3 was within the margin of second-tier for everyone. After all, Nolotl Xocoyotzin was one of the few people trying to cast a sixth-tier spell at level 4. Yet what surprised the diviner wasn't the simplicity of the spell, but its familiarity.

When learning Beta's spell, he had yet to easily comprehend a spellware, not even with Intellect Fortress which had been a gnosiamancy. But Disembodied Sight... he knew many of the spellcircles of the akyromancy. His knowledge on divinations truly shone unlike with the learning of Ode to Silence or the new Vacuous Filtration because sight spellcircles were of the ones he knew the most. After all, he had drawn them ad nauseum when building the Simulacrum's hylomorphism time and time again.

He even had experience with sight manipulation with his quetzal blood and the tricks he had performed just know with Beta using Thought Projection. Everything... just clicked. Perhaps it had only been an hour since he had started reading the spell and his Simulacrum was still flipping page back in the Archives to check some last minute details, but his real body just lunged forward and instinctively grabbed one of the dried grape. The moment he placed it in his mouth, he could tell it hadn't been dried naturally.

It was as if all of the water inside the grape had simply vanished, which left the resulting fruit a puffy mess of mostly air. And more puffy it became as mana coursed through his mouth as he completed the spell in his mind. The barely-existing grape turned into diluted dark smoke that poured out of his mouth. The matter that composed the fruit hadn't vanished completely even if it would have been adequate for an akyromancy and instead transformed into a nihilistic energy.

The smoke that came out of the corners of his lips swirled and grouped on top of his head, turning far thicker than it physically could. A moment later, however, it vanished from existence, yet his Cognition Connection told him that something had spawned in the local Cognition, but more pressingly, he was connected to it. A new ocular organ manifested in the Cognition, yet it only allowed him to look through the Physicality.

It was an eye that wasn't limited by the restrictions of the eyes of mortals and it could see from every possible degree with an inescapable gaze. The whole workshop now lay visible for Nolotl. And yet... it wasn't this new skill that captivated the diviner's mind. Instead his gaze was guided somewhere else. The Disembodied Sight lingered in one plane yet it watched another, but its usage didn't seem to be limited by what the abstract said. Something had gone wrong, or perhaps, too well.

The new akyromancy interacted perfectly with his previous one, Vacuous Filtration discriminated the input of the Void and somehow granted the new organ a sight that no one could have expected. It wasn't the Cognition that he was seeing, but something far more... hollow. Nolotl's disembodied gaze winnowed into something that didn't quite exist, or perhaps, didn't allow anything to exist. It was a dark vista yet one that lingering with a latent power.

He couldn't ascertain what he was seeing, but if he had to give it one name, it would be...

"Oblivion," the word poured out of his mouth as notifications assaulted him. You feel the guidance of the stars. Void Alignment increased by 0. 0001%. Information Alignment increased by 0. 0001%. Void assimilation progressed by 10%. Level progressed by 1%.