“Come on, that can’t be everything!” Arianna slapped the table with her hand. “There's no way that your power is friendship, observation and trying new things!”

“You’re right, rational thinking is a lot more than that,” I replied.

“Rational…?” The noble girl sampled the foreign noun. There was no "rational" word in her language.

"Clever-pattern-thinking." I tried to clarify the word. “Celes already understands a bit of what I do. The power of the ancients wasn’t Qi, it was our intelligence. Specifically, the ability to understand patterns, figure out natural laws and to solve problems using answers derived from these laws. High intelligence involves analytical, creative, and practical aspects. On top of rationality, I know a variety of ancient sciences. Using my knowledge, I observe the problem from as many angles as possible, analyse it, take a creative approach and try to arrive at the most optimal, most effective solution. The more I know about something, the better I can optimise it.”

“Eh?” Arianna tried to process the plethora of alien words pouring out of my mouth.

“Ancient mental-magics,” Celes whispered reverently.

“To a mundane observer, what I do might seem like magic, sure. However, analytical thinking isn’t magic. Thanks to the Pharmacist, that’s the name of the ancient memory living in my head by the way - I have an entire extra lifetime of analytical experience.”

“So… you’re good at solving problems,” Arianna mulled. “The ancients were good at solving problems, then?”

“Not all of them. Little Ash was a bit stubborn, so in a way you were right… Arianna. I’ve gone down to the cursed city so many times that I practically fell in love with the things I found down there.” I pointed at the pikachu on my shirt. “Their architecture, art and culture was nothing like the stuff in the Gold city. I wanted to know what sort of power could build that strange, enormous city down there.”

“A bit? You’re the most damn stubborn girl in my gang!” The highborn declared. “I told you to be careful, you clueless idiot!”

Celes glared at Arianna. I raised my hand to diffuse the situation.

“I was desperate and so I gambled on a skull. I bet with my life and won. The truth is that... not all of the people from the dead city were clever, not all of them dedicated their lives to science. Only select few aspired to the art of refining rationality, also known as less wrong. The Pharmacist wasn’t amazing at it either - it was a field of knowledge plowed by the brightest stars of humanity, experts in Artificial Intelligence research, space engineering and psychiatry.”

“Artificial intelligence?” Arianna blinked.

“We were trying to create servitors, from scratch. Machines, intelligent tools built from a thousand minute, inert components. We didn’t have Qi,” I said. “What we had was intelligent tools built by intelligent tools, each generation more complex and more clever, smarter and able to store more information. A stairway to utopia, to heaven for all humanity made real. It was the most incredible thing. Had we succeeded… things would be different.”

“Servitors… from scratch.. from inert matter? Tools that build smarter tools?! But that’s...” The ginger paled. She finally understood. She must have seen the brilliant sparks dancing behind my eyes, a firestorm of arcane knowledge reaching from a thousand years in the past.

“We had automation - steel servitors creating better, stronger, smarter servitors ad infinitum,” I hammered at her. “There were seven billion people living on the planet - cooperating together and competing with each other to build better tools for everyone to use.”

“What in the hells?” Arianna gripped the table. The young noble knew her numbers. “Seven billion?! Seven freaking billion people?!”

“When the stars fell from the sky and the god-beasts landed, seven billion were turned to ashes. Now do you understand,” I said solemnly. “I am the last rational human and the last Pharmacist in the universe. I doubt that there will be any others like me.”

“You… you’re a living memory from a thousand years ago. One of the people that built the dead city!” Arianna whispered.

“Yes, Arianna Manning. Ash and I aligned on the deepest level. Our souls entangled, entwined with barely any distinction. When she woke me up from my thousand-year slumber, united me with herself... we did not fight, didn’t try to kill or dominate. We understood each other. Had either of us fought for control of this body, neither of us would survive. It is easier to break something than to build it,” I revealed.

Arianna flapped her mouth like a fish, her lips trembling.

“We had NO physical god-beasts lording over us, no archangels watching us. We were FREE and we tried to uplift all of humanity! Our steel servitors crossed the ocean, dominated the air and allowed us to instantly talk to each other no matter how far away we were! You’ll never grasp the full width and breadth of the amount of knowledge lost when our civilization was extinguished! The amount of wealth wielded by your family cannot even compare to what the average citizen of the earth had. The land I inhabited long ago was rich in artifacts of great mechanical knowledge and power!”

“No, no, no,” the noble whispered. My truth was beginning to bend her worldview. She knew that I wasn’t lying and was struggling to accept what I was saying. “This cannot be…”

She was starting to break. The cracks were forming in her perfectly gilded world where the strong ruled the weak in a cycle of violence over rationality. I kept rattling her, and Celes added a few choice whispers to Arianna’s ear.

“Has anyone ever explored the dead city to our knowledge?” Celes asked. “Anyone other than Ash?”

"There are a lot of ropes going down to the city, so I would presume so. There must have been a period, maybe a generation ago, when more people went there before the cult declared the city as cursed," Arianna muttered, shaking ever so slightly. She squinted her eyes and rubbed her head as if she was trying to remember something important but couldn't.

"Arianna here trained a few select orphans like Ash to steal stuff from the dead." I fully switched to the Pharmacist, referring to myself in 3rd person as I tried to separate myself from particularly painful memories.

"Ash was the least fearful of the glowing, yellow tentacles, figured out the pattern of their motions, so she stayed down there longest. After one of the teens - Arcadia Lumens dropped dead from being touched by Lord Boundless, it was only Ash down there trying to solve the mysteries of the ancients," I spoke solemnly.

[ Arcadia could have become my friend, but he died right in front of me! He died because he liked me and its all my... ]

[ Ash, focus. We can make new friends... right here, right now. ]

[ . . . ]

I turned to Arianna, as the Ash-me coiled up internally.

“Ash was indeed very clueless, but she yearned to know everything and so she has awakened me,” I spoke, looming over Arianna even though I was shorter and ten times weaker than her. “I am not. I know the natural laws of the universe and I can weaponise information itself. I had trained my mind to recognize patterns in systems to take advantage of them. Do you know how I learned your name and the name of your bodyguard, girl?”

Arianna shook her head.

“I figured out how to steal minute crumbs of knowledge from your gods,” I declared. “It wasn’t easy. I almost fried my mind doing it. I only succeeded at it because in my free time outside pharmaceuticals that would put your alchemists to shame... I studied fractal, infinite mathematics - one of the most obscure fields of knowledge, a science that the average person didn’t care for. I found passion and beauty in creating art with math, in designing, modifying and breaking apart infinite patterns using mathematical formulae.”

“Art with… math?” The highborn girl tried to understand. “How can art manifest from mere mercantile accounting?”

“The universe is made of math. Everything you know can be accounted for, defined with rules, numbers and statistics. Mountains, rivers, trees, clouds - everything that exists from the biggest to the microscopic can be defined, simulated, replicated, understood and visualised with infinite, self-replicating math. Everything relates to everything. River deltas observed from the sky look exactly like the tiny patterns of receptors that exist within the human body."

"How can math be visualised in any other way than boring-ass numbers on a page?" She demanded.

"I’ve had a computer… uhm, a steel servitor... with a special program, umm a phantom servitor inside it... that helped me visualise math, turning it into four-dimensional art and back.”

“Four-dimensional art?!” Arianna gasped.

“Infinite sculptures.” I nodded. “One of our… uh… wise-men, was a mathematician named Benoit Mandelbrot. He was a pioneer of fractal geometry. These infinite sculptures, art created by the ‘Mandelbrot set’ mathematics exhibited an elaborate and absurdly complicated boundary that revealed progressively ever-finer recursive, repeating detail at eternally increasing magnification."

I made a pause waiting for the girls to process what I was saying.

"I extensively studied the work of Mandelbrot and of other artists and mathematicians who had contributed to optimizing this field. There were tens of thousands of like-minded individuals like myself all across the planet. We shared the knowledge of fractal mathematics with each other for free, using a visualization tool called ‘Mandelbulb’.”

“Esoteric, valuable knowledge… for nothing?!” Arianna gulped. She was born in a world where everything cost lives or gold. She couldn't understand the concept of doing something as a fun after-work hobby.

“Ninety-nine hells!” Celes exhaled, losing her geisha-composure. “You can see the songs of the gods! That’s how you saw her real name!”

I nodded. “Another lucky coincidence, that proves that even the most obscure field of intelligence can be applied in a multitude of unexpected ways by a rationalist. Had I never studied infinite-fractal mathematics so extensively for fun and human anatomy for my work, I would not be able to do what I did yesterday. Knowledge is power.”

“Then why in the hells would anyone give out knowledge for free?” Arianna barked. “Power isn’t free! It must be earned!”

“The society I lived in had reached an incredible level of prosperity that made such a thing possible. It wasn’t instant - it took humanity millennia to learn how to derive knowledge from knowledge. Our archeologists traced human history about 200'000 years back into the past. Civilization as I knew it was only about 6'000 years old, and industrialization - the key component in improving human life - started only two hundred years before I was born.”

The two girls looked at me in bewilderment.

“Not all information in my world was free. In fact, certain mathematical formulae that could encrypt, err… lock and unlock... incredibly long number patterns became absurdly valuable. A few clever humans invented and popularised cryptocurrency - money made from mathematics. A single crypto-coin became more expensive than an ounce of gold. Cryptocurrency couldn't even be held by human hands - it wasn’t a physical thing. Such coins existed purely as information held within the minds of our servitors.” I continued to boggle the minds of my companions. “Just a few thousand of these math-coins could buy a leviathan machine that could dig up entire mountains.”

I continued to observe Arianna as I spoke. Fireflies of possibilities started to dance in her eyes. “Can you awaken these ancient, steel leviathan… servitors? Use them to take over the city? Bring down the gods? Stop the coming Convergence?!”

“I wish that I could - then things would be far easier for me.” I shook my head. “But alas. Our steel servitors were extremely specialized and didn’t live that long. We didn’t teach them how to defend themselves, how to survive without us. It’s possible that I might dig out a few more basic tools from the dead city, but it will take time. We’ll have to defend the city from Deathstorm Convergence using what we have.”

“It’s true then… the Deathstorm Convergence is in six days,” Arianna groaned.

“Yes, Arianna - the Stormweavers are coming,” I said. “I’m going to need your help to do something that hasn’t been done before - to unite the Guilds.”

“It can’t be done!” Arianna shook her head. “They hate each other. My family tried for centuries to get them to cooperate. They’re stubborn, greedy dimwits! The whole point of me taking over the Hand gang was to try to slowly take control of the Thieves and Concubines Guild from within, to replace Lady Lillian with myself. Thanks a lot for screwing that up for me, by the way.” She made an irritated face at me.

“Such is life - no plan goes perfect, sometimes things get derailed.” I shrugged. “Would you rather hold control of one Guild by yourself or ALL of them, together with me?”

“All of them,” Arianna muttered. “How are you going to do that, by the way?”

“I’ll improvise,” I yawned. “Half of the things I did with you and the Reaper was live improvisation based on hidden information that you two presumed secret. True names and job titles have power.”

“That’s dangerously stupid, Ash,” the redhead commented. “Or should I call you… the Pharmacist?”

“Ash is fine.” I confirmed, courageously getting back to the wheel. “And I have three companions now - you, Ludj and Celes. That’s three times the support. Your job will be to back my authority up from the power of the Magistrate’s office.”

“I… I can’t just claim that my grandfather approves of this insanity!” Arianna shook her head.

“When did you turn into a paragon of truth, Anathema?” I raised an eyebrow. “It’s not like you to pansy out of a dirty job that promises great rewards just because it requires a lot of dangerous deception.”

“Yeah. You threw your grandfather’s name at me when you were trying to push me over this morning,” Celes commented.

“Freaking perverse geisha,” Arianna muttered. “Freaking-overly smart-ass Ash.”

“I’d prefer it if you stopped it with the insults and geisha-naming, that’s rude,” I said. “Her name is Celes Rada. You made a pact to be our friend. I told you a lot about my power - all you have to do is be nice to us. Is that so hard?”

Arianna winced, rubbing her chest. “I don’t like going into a fight without assurance of overwhelming victory. I want to know more! How have you freed that servitor… Ludj? Why does Rada’s small servitor smell like it’s ten times as strong? Why does Rada smell weird... uhh... like she's... really freaking old and also young at the same time?”

“I didn’t use just one divine-level beast core to make myself smarter,” I said, ignoring her insult about how Celes smelled. “I used five of them yesterday to solve a variety of problems.”

“WHAT?!” Arianna’s eyes became wide. She stood up, glaring at me. “What the hells, Sparks?! FIVE? Do you know what could have been done with that much Qi?! Do you even know how much those are worth?!”

“I was offered one hundred gold for one of them,” Celes muttered.

“One hundred gold? You got hoodwinked, you im…” Arianna swallowed the unsaid insult. “...impossibly lovely Celes.” She corrected herself, somehow making the word “lovely” sounding like “moronic.”

“There’s more cores in your pocket. I can smell them. Show them to me!” Arianna commanded.

I looked at her.

“Please?” She sighed. "I'll be able to tell their exact worth."

I pulled the two cores out of my gun holster pocket, presenting them to her.

“Gods-almighty!” The noble-nose inhaled. “These are the highest grade cores I’ve ever seen! Each one is worth fifty mansions at the very least!”

“Hrm,” I muttered, glancing at the two shimmering spheres of incredible power in my hand.

[Beast core - LV 709] [Beast core - LV 712]

These were indeed very potent artifacts. It was no wonder that I had succeeded at everything I’ve tried with them!

She looked at me. “I want to hit you... like… so bad right now. Did you… seriously have five more of these? These smell like they came from a few thousand levels of catacombs down into the depths of Lord Boundless! Administrator Han must have slain these beasts personally, aided by the top hunter group!”

“Probably.” I shrugged.

“Oh gods. This is bad. This is very bad. You’ve stolen these from the cult, haven't you?” She shuddered looking at me and Celes.

I nodded with a grim smirk.

“Where’s the High-Enforcer? Why isn’t he here trying to break your fingers?” She declared, looking around.

“I took him out of the game.” I confessed. “He’d get in my way.”

“You took out the High-Administrator?” Arianna’s eye started to twitch. “Are you kidding me right now?!” She inhaled. “No, of course you are not… you aren’t lying.”

“Oh gods, oh no.” She suddenly paled even further. “Why did I make a pact to protect you two id…. idealistic, lovely girls?!”

I waited for her to finish her rant.

“You do not steal from people like that, Ash! Administrator Han is an Immortal, surely you don’t think you’ve killed him permanently?!! He’ll come back! You do not piss off people like that and live to tell about it!!!” In that moment whatever bravery Arianna possessed, left her body. “I want out! I want to be free of this pact! Please! I’ll do anything!!!” She begged.

“There is no out of this for you, Arianna,” I said coldly. “Reap what you sow.”

“I… please… I don’t want to die,” she whispered, shivering. “I know what the High-Enforcers do to those who rob them.”

“You practically raised me, Arianna,” I said. “When I was nine, you found me begging on the street and offered me a place in your gang, replacing whatever family I lost in the Deathstorm convergence. At times I thought of you as my stern sister. You taught me nearly everything I know. You taught me how to wield Qi, how to defend myself, how to rob people, how to go down into the dead city.”

I looked back at the terrified highborn. Her lips were trembling. She was likely thinking of a hundred ways out from this mess.

“You are responsible for giving knowledge of cultivation to a lowborn homeless urchin, Arianna. Without it, I wouldn't be able to pull the ancient memory out of the skull, and wouldn't have survived till today. You’ve taught me, unleashed me upon the world… and driven me away with more of your violent ‘education’. You’ve beaten loneliness, snarkiness, mistrust, fear and pain into me.” I punctuated every word, looking at her eyes. “You created this little, villainous monster and you are not getting away from me that easily.”

Celes stood up and placed a hand on my shoulder. “You’re not a villain Ash - she is.”

Arianna looked at both of us, her eyes drowning in pleading desperation.

“I need your knowledge and your help Arianna, I need your friendship... although you do not deserve it.” I affirmed, clicking the two shimmering spheres together with my fingers. “See these precious, overpriced shiny balls? Just this morning I understood that these artifacts are filled to the brim with echoes of hatred, pain and death. They have been whispering to me, asking me to kill you.”

“What?! What? You can hear the beast cores? They’re alive?! They want me dead?!” Arianna gasped.

“They do indeed. They’re not fully alive thankfully - they are mere dark shadows in the back of my mind. Be glad I’m not so easily pushed over. The power I’ve gained came with a price, it seems, but I’ll manage. I will not do what these cores are asking. I’m not letting you go,” I said with absolute determination.