37 Chapter Thirty-Seven - Evolutions (1/2)
Time passed, and nothing really that eventful happened. Which was fine with me.
The Wards of the Hags failed one by one. The choking, stinking fog and mist evaporated, cool mountain winds began to blow through the valley. The waterfall illusion over the entry vanished. The residual protective Wards on the Shrine began to fade, and I made a point of rupturing all of them with prejudice, and cleaning out that Bone Golem while I was at it.
After being cleansed by vivic fire, it was actually the most suitable of the places for me to set up, having multiple rooms for storage and a decent atmosphere. There were some valuables tucked away in the place which I dug out with my tremblesense and Tremble's eager sniffing for valuables, and so I set up shop there.
It took me quite a while to transfer all the useful stuff from the Hags' hovels to the Shrine, but I had nothing better to do with my downtime. This was all getting ready for the future.
I worked on my Girdle in my downtime, refined Tremble more, adjusted my tools, and began the work on my Floating Forge.
To make an adamant weapon, naturally I had to be able to melt it. Energized tungsten is not something that melts easily, and I didn't have a supply of acetylene gas or a massive supply of electricity to get that temperature. Lava was a laugh. Trying to melt adamant with lava was like trying to melt an ice cube with liquid oxygen. Lava was maybe 2000C at best, adamant needed to be at least twice that hot.
Magic, dragonflame were my choices to work with, and without an ancient fire dragon handy…
I was missing the hell puppies right now. Could have used some pyric power comps for my work.
Tremble was sleeping stuck in the outlet from the stream coming off the mountain, in vivic mode. Unwhite energies sparkled through the waters, washed into the swamp, and began to slowly and continuously burn it away, until I could transform the skull of the rusalka into another vivic fountain to relieve him of the duty.
The power he represented flowed out from me as long as I had Essence invested in him, which I did all the time. Day by day, he was getting stronger, even without me feeding him Naming Karma… which he still got as I wandered around the swamp and the walls searching for buried loot with him, and destroying the necrotic loci that had formed the Ward foundation for the Hags.
Just like me, a little bit stronger every day.
I made Potions from the stuff I got off the Hags, and the last batch of nasty stuff that would ever be harvested off this swamp.
Their Henge was a bit of a tougher nut to crack, and I didn't have the wherewithal to disassemble it quite yet. I did inform the elementals about it, and they were simply patient and waiting to be dismissed, rather unconcerned about it all.
So, yeah, there was plenty of work to keep us occupied. It was kinda startling all the nooks and crannies stuff was hidden in, especially when I went up to the nests of the blood ravens after disposing of the damn birds. Bloody thieves, they were…
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Renewal passed. Unlike in Dream, it was much more tangible to me then before.
Sylune was high in the night sky, the Silver Queen, Patron of Silver Magic, of navigation, and mysteries yet to be found… and the searing-starfire holy wrath from above opponent of everything Hags represented.
Most Hagchildren came about via the Ritual of the Silver Hag, where a night-long ceremony of gentle moonlight and falling stars became a howling, burning bitchfest of Curse and Goddess going at one another over the body and soul of the Hagchild. It ended when the sun rose, and Aru's golden light swept the last of the Curse away… or the Hagchild gave in to the Curse and became a Hag, and had to be put down.
My way of doing things was rather against the grain. Certainly a true infant child would not have been able to overcome Nightmare, and simply been erased and subsumed by the Curse.
I felt the cresting wave of silver magic moving through the world, and my soul cycling over with it, buoyed by the wave of power it brought with it. Invested Essence relaxed and drained away, save for those I held tight and kept in place, like with Tremble.
It nudged free some of the Karma I'd ripped off the Curse, and flowed through my body. Remembered ability refined into actual physical ability and muscle memory, and paraevolutionary changes rippled through a body that was learning to exist on a Diamond Vajra, guided along by yours truly.
My Second Heart was coming along well. The Alchemical changes I'd been driving along were slowly taking effect, although not just biologically.
Having a Diamond Vajra gave me access to a copious amount of energy at all times. A soul didn't build up lactic acids, after all. Not making use of that energy seemed like a complete waste of time and space. It was basically already supplying all of my caloric needs, regardless of how much work I did. I only needed to eat to grow up and replace lost cells. I just added onto the load, and my soul and ki went along with it without trouble.
Diamond Vajra. Hard, hard soul. Lots of power there.
Biological processes were doing less of the grunt work, and more of the refinement work now. My soul was infusing my entire body, which basically bypassed my nervous system, for example. This allowed me to modify my nerves to finer and finer levels, giving ever-increasing levels of control. It also meant you could shatter my back and I could still move normally, since nerves weren't necessary to transmit movement information, they only helped coordinate it.
My blood was also being circulated continuously by my Vajra, instead of by heartbeats. Oh, it was still there as a backup and juicer, but my heart was more of a confluence of major veins and arteries, like a highway intersection, rather then something absolutely essential, now. More oxygen exchange was taking place around the lungs then in the aorta, and the beat of my heart was very slow and relaxed.
My second heart was basically forming between the blood vessels going to my lower body, increasing circulation there, becoming the place where building block materials were whisked into and out of the bloodstream to and from the rest of the body. It didn't beat, purely there for exchange of oxygen and stuff, although my Vajra centered on it as a point of energy.
In short, if a doctor were to go looking for my heartbeat, they'd think I was almost dead and wonder how I was even walking around.
Most of my autonomic functions had moved out of my brain and were dispersed in redundant nodes throughout my body. I had key memory backups inside my bones, and stretching out into the akasha, with cross-linked cells and alternate pathing.
While I had human genetics, someone looking at my insides would have thought I was an alien.
I exhaled long and low as I completed my meditation-cum-period of evolutionary advancement.
Tremble was up on a pole, standing guard with a broader field of view. That view was very depressing, but the fact was there wasn't a lot of cover without the mist, and with a decent amount of height, my Sword could see the whole valley.
”Sama?” Tremble asked, slowly pulling out of the pole and floating down to me.
I blinked, smiled, and then frowned.
”Tremble?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow, as the Sword floated down next to me.