I finished grinding Scorchbranch in a mortar with an Argent Bastion pestle into a deflamed powder, replicating what I did with Ashenflare Leaf to turn it into Ashen Leaf. This turned the Scorchbranch into… just Branch, according to my Core. I think the naming system just gave up with that one.

With the powdered Branch, I poured it into a bowl of Energy Dew at a three-to-one weight ratio in favour of the dew. This made it start clumping up like dough, which was what I was looking for.

I waved Novi over with her blend of Moonlight Whisperash and Glacivein Muscle reduced into a Vital essence. One that took her twelve hours to get right. It was now a bright cyan with a dim glow as if it were lit under the light of the moon.

She poured that blend into the bowl of Energy Dough, causing it to glow a soft cyan.

"This is it then?" Novi asked. "If you mess this up and I have to make another batch of that vital essence, I'm going to kill you and then myself. In that order."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I muttered to myself. Now for the Void Crucible.

I converted a tiny amount of the Space Mana I had into Void Mana and directed it to flow into a confinement space. We were inside my shed, so there wasn't much room for a forge setup, but Novi and I were tiny, so we could get away with squeezing in here.

Inside the confinement chamber, I watched as space itself seemingly vanished and light started to bend in odd ways as it filled with Void.

With a pair of Scorchbranch pliers, I picked up the brick of dough and held it inside the chamber. This should theoretically reduce the space between the particles in the brick of dough, causing it to compact.

After half a minute of dousing the dough in Void, I pulled it out and began hammering it on a tiny anvil with a miniaturized version of my hammer. As I hammered it flat, I folded it over itself and started the process over again.

With every repetition, the material would shrink slightly and become slightly harder to manipulate.

As I started to get into the rhythm of dousing the dough in Void, hammering it flat, then folding it over itself. My mind wandered, and I opened up a simulation to start piecing together my new set of Mana Veins.

Eventually, Novi got bored and left through the airlock to go do something useful. She mentioned something about a defensive array, I don't know, I wasn't really listening.

My focus was entirely devoted to the two tasks, never wavering for even a moment. I felt myself slipping into a flow state that I had so badly missed. The hammering turned into background noise, as I repeated twelve blows, douse, thirteen blows, douse, fourteen blows.

Stimming has always helped calm my mind and focus my thoughts.

Eventually, I finished my redesigned Mana Veins, and Novi hadn't returned yet, so I started growing the new set inside me to prepare.

Once in place, I had to figure out how to shave bits of my soul off, which was apparently done entirely through intuition. Or at least that's how I could use Argent Bastion's control over self to do it.

My actual Mana Veins seemed to run cleaner and faster than the parts I added, so I could tell how much I had altered.

The problem was that it hurt like a motherfucker to make even slight alterations. It was like the system update I had been subjected to, but instead of just altering one location, I had to undergo a whole-soul transformation.

Also, the moment I started making changes, I lost the [Repaired Mana Veins] Catalyst. But I knew that when I was done, it would come back, better than ever.

I just had to focus on my task to bear the pain, one hundred and thirty-six blows, douse, one hundred and thirty-seven blows. Time slipped by as I altered my spirit one step at a time.

"Hey, I think it's done," Novi said, breaking me out of my flow state. I hadn't even noticed her entering the shed.

I looked down at what used to be a doughy cyan lump. It was now a midnight coloured chip with silver veins running through it that seemed to give off a gentle light.

The Scorchbranch anvil I was using was covered in frost.

I shrugged and bit down on the chip, only for my teeth to shatter. Frowning at it, I opted instead to swallow the chip whole. It tore my throat the whole way down. Not in the way that chips just sometimes do, it literally shredded my throat open.

[Rimeshrouded Cambium] Description: A dense, metallo-organic matrix that resembles frozen tree-flesh threaded with veins of argent frost. It combines the resilience of bark with a cambium-like inner layer that brings natural Mana into the user's grasp, giving it both extreme durability and the ability to tame natural Mana. When infused with Authority, it exudes Hoarfrost Aura, a crystalline rime that lowers the temperature of the affected area.

Structure - Sylvan Cambium Alloy Origin - Silver Whisperash Bark + Night Whisperash Bark + Scorchbranch Husk + Glacivein Muscle + Energy Absorbent Blood Dew Mana Structure - Cold, Aura, Conversion, Durability Tier - II - Wrought AMSS Profile (Rathe-Scaled) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Blunt Resistance: R11 Pierce Resistance: R10 Shear Resistance: R9 Elasticity: R5 Mana Conductivity: R2 Mana Capacity R4 Mana Resistance: R12 Mana Compliance: R3 Mana Taming: R4 Non-Mana Conductivity: R3 Heat Tolerance: R3 Cold Tolerance: R∞ Kinetic Sheen: R3 Contact Serenity: R4 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Soul Reactivity: +8% Might +53% Fortitude -10% Grace

That was damn good. No wonder it tore up my throat. I'd have to rebuild my body using it as soon as I finished with the Mana Vein remodelling. I didn't want to stop mid-alteration and potentially screw something up.

But I didn't have anything to distract my mind from the pain now that I was done hammering… ugh.

"Play with the material and let me know how well the Mana absorption trick works. I need a moment to finish something," I told her as I went to leave the shed.

"You're not even going to check your notifications? Also, wait, I don't want to be the one to test absorbing natural Mana either!" Novi whined, hopping on my shoulder as I opened the door.

"In a bit. I just need like ten minutes, and I'll open all of the notifications. I'm about to add one more." I replied.

Heading over to the house, I found the loveseat and sank into it. Closing my eyes, I focused on my veins, checking which parts were still having flow issues before getting started.

It ended up taking far longer than ten minutes as I kept having to take breaks so I could pointlessly dry heave over the side of the couch. The pain was way worse without something to hold my focus. But eventually I finished. If I had sweat glands, I would have been soaked, thank fuck I wasn't a filthy organic… Wait, did I just make that compulsion worse?

I hadn't had thoughts like those in days. I hoped these new veins didn't compromise me mo—

I felt the tingle of Winter washing over me, and I lost my train of thought. Must not have been very important.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

[First Catalyst Altered] Name: [Mana Veins] Strand: [Shielding Veins of the Citadel] Tier: [I.5] Description: [Your species originally possessed Mana Veins that carefully regulated the flow of Mana within your body. You have altered these Veins through Soul Weaving, following the footsteps of your Creator Deity. These altered Veins carry the silver light of the Argent Bastion through your body and soul. Be warned, overspecialization in a single concept may leave you open to concepts that counter your specialty.] Effect: [Body is protected by an automagical shield that responds to danger, scales in strength with Arcana and threat detection with Wit. Applying force to an object can result in the object receiving more force than you feel in return. Base Fortitude increased by 25%. +50% Effectiveness of Mana.]

As I got to the end of the description, I was disappointed that my Mana effectiveness had dropped by fifty percent. I mean, I should have expected it, given all the other alterations had to be taking up some of the… juice?

Whatever ephemeral increase I had before was weakened, but in return, I gained a far more robust system to defend myself. I wondered if this would also work for Novi. I might have to get her to go on that psychedelic trip that I did, so that she could discover her Aspect of White Silence in full.

Where would she carve her Mana Veins, though? We share a single body, so it wasn't like she could carve a second set into me. Could she?

No, that would likely just dilute the Mana effectiveness bonus even further.

We'd have to build her a body, but I couldn't route her processing power into a new body without breaking the rule given by my Capstone Skill.

Profession Level (Greenweaver) Increased +6 (25) +48 Wit, +24 Spirit, +6 Arcana, +24 Eidetic Drops

Milestone Achieved: II - [Wrought] Tier plant material created through a complex multivaried process. Species Level (Runaspriggan) Increased +10 (67) +10 Might, +30 Wit, +40 Spirit, +20 Fortitude, +30 Arcana, +20 Grace

Milestone Achieved: Followed the footsteps of your Creator by learning basic Soul Weaving. Species Level (Runaspriggan) Increased +5 (72) +5 Might, +15 Wit, +20 Spirit, +10 Fortitude, +15 Arcana, +10 Grace

I could feel my mind speed up as I opened the level-up notifications, and the Stats came into effect. My Wit was reaching a point where I thought I had compensated for the fact that Novi was running three bodies.

Now, this is what I was looking for: power levelling. It only took a whole day of work, and Novi contemplating murder suicide, in order to attain.

There were so many Skills that I had to go through. But I didn't feel like doing that right now. I needed to figure out my new capabilities before I made a decision anyway.

Or at least that's what I told myself.

Dumping my Core out of my body, I went through the painstaking process of regrowing while replacing my Scorchbranch flesh with Rimeshrouded Cambium.

It took almost an hour because growing the material was like dumping Fire Mana into an ocean and waiting for it to boil away.

It took way too much fucking Mana, and my increase in Arcana didn't mean that my current Mana increased alongside the size of my Mana pool. Meaning I had to wait for my regeneration to kick in.

The result was gorgeous, though.

My skin was now midnight blue with little glowing silver cracks all along it. I really wished I had a mirror because I bet I looked adorable. My new skin colour paired really well with my Silver Whisperash clothes and cloak. I considered for a moment whether I should try out Moonlight Whisperash instead, but after looking at its properties, I couldn't help but laugh.

It was just Night Whisperash that glowed slightly. The glowing ruined the stealth properties of Night Whisperash.

I took a moment to extract the Space Mana battery from my old body, then left the house in search of someone to show off to.

Peeking my head into Autumn's shack, I saw they were lying on a slab of wood. It wasn't even smoothed out, and still had bark on it. They were lying facing the wall.

"Hey, bud, how you holdin' up?" I asked.

Autumn did the equivalent of grunting.

"You already knew your god was dead. Why…" I started trying to rationalize the problem, only remembering mid-sentence that some people didn't like it when I did that. I never understood that, if you had a problem, wouldn't you want it solved? And what better way to solve a problem than to get an outside perspective? "Would you like to vent about it?" I tried instead.

"No… You're right, she was already gone. It's just that nothing is happening as it should be. Her plans were ruined, and you were ruined. Nothing was supposed to happen like it did," Autumn replied, which didn't sound good. Wasn't she watching what I was doing initially? Where did things go wrong? It wasn't something I did, was it?

"How did they go wrong?" I asked, coming to sit over on the uncomfy wood. How the hell do they live like this?

"Do you know anything about the purpose of your existence?" Autumn asked, turning over to face me. Blood was running from their eyes like tears.

"Literally nothing, Eryx said that he couldn't explain it to me because he'd locked his memories off. Likely to prevent divination from revealing that purpose," I replied.

Autumn shuddered when I mentioned divination, "My Lady may not have… made the same precautions as The Weaver of Souls."

"So someone who shouldn't know about me learned of my existence," I intuited. I had no idea where this was leading, but I knew it couldn't be good.

"It wasn't the worst possible outcome. She was careful enough to prevent that," Autumn said hurriedly. "If she hadn't, you would have already been erased from existence."

Oh come on, why couldn't she have fucked up in that regard? I don't want to have to live just to suffer. The only reason I was putting all this effort in is to avoid hell; I would have killed myself a long time ago if that weren't the outcome.

"What do you mean by the worst possible outcome?" I asked, curious as to how I could erase myself from existence if need be.

Autumn signed in Root, indicating I be patient, "I can't tell you right now. It isn't safe. I don't think… Maybe you should kill me just in case, this knowledge isn't—"

"I'm not getting rid of you, just explain what you can. If something bad were to happen because of something you knew, it already would have happened, wouldn't it?" I tried. Apparently, rationalizing was what I needed here; that was unusual. Maybe it was because Autumn wasn't a human with all those mushy, stupid emotions that came with being one.

Autumn gave that a moment of thought before signing in agreement, "You're right, I'm sorry. I'm not thinking clearly. How familiar are you with divination?"

"Never performed it, I have no idea how it could possibly work," I replied.

Autumn did the equivalent of nodding, "That's fine, you'll never be able to perform divination. Basically, the way diviners read potential futures is by reading the Tapestry. The Tapestry is the woven sum of all Threads, a metaphysical fabric that spans the multiverse. Every soul leaves ripples on it. Every action, every intention, every thought, presses into the Threads. By following how those ripples collide, diviners can trace what will most likely happen. Not perfectly, but close enough that for a skilled diviner, the future might as well be written down ahead of time.

"Hence why I can't explain what I know, speaking aloud would be manifesting a thought through intent into an action. It would be incredibly easy to read a voiced intent on the Tapestry. Or at least… no, sorry, I can't even say that. The only reason my thoughts probably haven't been dissected and made obvious to anyone watching is that your impact on the Tapestry scales with your significance. As your Eidetic weight increases, you become easier to read. Now obviously there are ways to reduce your impact, but this is often limited to thoughts and intentions; once an action happens, it carries too much weight to be obscured."

"And how does this relate to me?" I asked.

"Your body is designed to… not register in the same way on the Tapestry. Regarding the Tapestry, it's as if your Eidetic weight is reversed. As you gain significance, your actions become harder to read. It has something to do with the fact that as you gain significance, you grow closer to becoming an object. Sorry, I'm not well-versed enough in divination theory to explain the intricacies of how that works. All I know is that My Lady and The Weaver had to work closely together to make it happen."

"So, I was made to counteract divinations. What happens if my Eidetic weight is way in the negatives? Like, just as a hypothetical, if I had negative one hundred thousand Eidetic coins?" I asked.

"Then it would be like you were a god that had forsaken any divination protections, every one of your thoughts being so loud that anyone on the same Plane as you with even the slightest inclination would be able to hear them like you were screaming in their ear. Why do you ask?" Autumn replied.

"No reason," I said quickly, and let out a nervous chuckle. Grasping for a change in subject, I continued. "So right now I'm fine, other than my body being kind of fucked up. What went wrong?"

"Well… that's probably part of it. Someone, likely another god in Kaelzar's Sphere, since we're both still alive, found out about your creation and decided to ruin my Lady's plans. I don't know who it was, but because of them, your creation was made obvious to the entire multiverse, which means whoever was left to pick up the task of guiding your growth had to do it in a way where their actions on the tapestry could only be perceived as trying to destroy you. Which means anything that can happen on this Plane has to be aimed at killing you permanently in some fashion so as not to… I'm sorry I can't say that part," Autumn said.

That actually explained a lot. Actually, not just a lot, that explained everything. Every time it felt like the whole world was designed specifically to make my life miserable, that's because it was. The whole system was designed to put me up against impossible odds just so that I could circumvent them.

The Quest to kill me, despite it not making sense, being spawned in the middle of nowhere in a death trap, the time loop being a way for me to find a way to escape, but also giving my eventual assassin time to prepare. Everything was finally making sense.

And I hated it.

"I'm going to go check on what Novi's doing," I said, getting up to leave.

"She's sorry," Autumn said as I was closing the door.

I flinched at the mention of her message. The one she had left on the description of Runaspriggan Flesh. This was all her fucking fault; she was the one who had fucked up. Gods damn it.

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