[Dr. Kerenski / Kopusha / Leemy]

I nudged Obsy with one of my threads turning her on. She ignited, activating.

I sang the song of Identification and aimed it at one of my Astral branches.

Astral Phantom LV 2

"Um? Why am I not hidden? Wait... would an [Obscurer] even hide me from my own Identification song?"

I sang [Identify] at Obsy.

[Obsy] - [Obscurer LV 0] [ON]

"Uhhh? What now?"

[Obsy is not tethered to you properly. The Obscurer cannot hide what it cannot perceive,] my inner voice whispered.

"How do I tether her to myself?"

[A tether skill.]

As I observed Obsy, the little Obfuscation shard started to shimmer and fade in my astral-eyes.

"What's going on?" I asked.

[The Obscurer cannot power itself and requires an external source of energy. It is LV 0 and cannot sustain itself. For example, the pins of the Academics were tethered to their own souls and the Astral Engines of their Academies,] the answer came from the memories of Kopusha.

"Damn it. I need some sort of a tether skill for this..." I pondered. "I need a lot more spell slots. I'm getting annoyed with my skills getting reset to zero."

[This is exactly why we relied on Song-Spells,] my inner voice commented on the problem I faced. [They don't need channels to host them.]

"Is there a song of tethering?"

[There is... but I cannot recall it. Also you cannot reach nearest Astral Engine. The tether will not connect on its own.]

I sighed and tapped Obsy, turning her off. She dimmed and stilled between my Astral branches. So much for being invisible to scanners.

. . .

The other big part of my plan involved identifying the soul of Miss Alana Skyisle so that I could properly separate her from myself. I unfolded my fractal for the Omnicode word [Identify] and started to slowly add the Sky-god word for [Soul] to it.

It took me ages to compute the damn thing and I regretting not investing more points in Intelligence as whatever my soul was using for computations ached quite badly any time I did overly complex trigonometry.

. . .

After three weeks of slow and incredibly painful mental labor involving fractal mathematics I managed to form a new spell called [Identify-Soul], which was focused specifically on identifying souls.

I pulled out [Sectus-thread] and slotted [Identify-Soul] in. The Soul-Song assigned it Level 5.

Phew!

As I poured mana into the [Identify-Soul] channel from my soul, the spell ignited and came to life, revealing itself as a silver-blue, glowing fractal sphere with several brilliant, flower-like structures stretching outwards from itself.

-.3 mana

Not bad in terms of expense.

The new spell definitely looked akin to a coronavirus now, but with longer and more uneven threads, that were able to unfold outward.

It worked in the following manner - the threads could extend outward and identify stuff by touching it and when they came back to the core, the Identify spell processed information about whatever it was scanning and sent it back to me via the channel that tied it to my soul.

Congratulations on continuous successful spell modification!

The Soul-Song resonated.

"Thanks," I tiredly replied.

You have unlocked the [Modify] skill!

The Soul-Song added.

What the...? I hummed the [Identify] song, focusing on the new unlocked skill.

[Modify] - [A passive skill that improves your ability to modify anything.]

"Wow, that sounds... pretty damn handy," I whistled to myself. I didn't slot the awesome new skill in yet since I had no slots available for it.

I pointed [Identify-Soul LV 5] at myself.

My [Soul] stat suddenly unfolded into the following chart of interest:

Base name:

Definition:

Identification:

Soul-shards added to/subtracted from primary soul:

Vladislav Alexandrovich Kerenski

Primary soul

Astral Tree

[indeterminate] Invested points New shards formed 0 Kopusha Megara Tricameron Absorbed shards Astral Imprint + 1 [approximation] Leemy the Dryad Absorbed shards Astral Imprint + 1 [approximation] __________ Alana Skyisle Absorbed shard Puerile soul + 1 Battie [Carved shard]

[Battery]

[OFF]

[ 10/10 m]

[Untethered]

- 1 Obsy [Carved shard]

[Obscurer]

[OFF]

[Untethered]

- 1 Soul decay: - 3 [Approximation] Total: [Indeterminate]

I sighed again. I guessed that I needed to bring up the level of [Identify-Soul] and [Soul] for the information to be more precise. Still... I had usefully defined some of the things in my soul!

I thought about the bothersome problem of insufficient skill slots/soul channels.

Wait. Alanians used soul-shards to make self-aware artifacts of all sorts. Artifacts required no slots - they did jobs on their own!

[Correct. We had artifacts, golems, etc.]

My brain clicked.

Was it possible to make a self-aware Identify spell using Alanian Song-Spells?!

Obsy and Battie were just the beginning! I could theoretically create self-aware spells by using a soul shard.

Every shard I carved from myself could become a spell that I could improve upon!

I didn't need to create new channels... I could carve pieces of my soul out of myself and assign spells to them!

[By the Rings of Lunaria! Sentient spells? Spells without artifacts?!] a voice formed from memories gasped in my head. [...but what would power them? How could they be sustained? Such a construct would be incredibly fragile, easy to extinguish, victim to soul-decay.]

"I already made a battery," I smiled. "I could attach it to a spell-soul-shard... merge the two together into a bigger structure and then use another soul shard to form some sort of a barrier around the two."

[That's creative... it might work or it might explode catastrophically,] the voice mulled the idea. [I cannot recommend it. If it fails, you might kill yourself and the child you're in.]

I ignored my inner voice. I knew plenty about structure of human cells.

What I needed to create my sentient spells was essentially design a multi-soul structure akin to a single cell organism with a [1] battery [mitochondria], [2] spell core [that computed the spell], [3] a permanent tether construct [with which I could direct the whole thing] and [4] a shield that would hold all of the shards and protect them. Other things too... if I ran into problems.

This was going to require a lot of soul-shards.

[Do you even have enough soul to make one?] the inner voice asked.

"I have no idea... probably? I'm already pretty deep in minuses," I noted.

I had my breakthrough, my original idea... now I just needed to design the thing.

[Battie is a mana storage... but what about producing power?] The persistent voice asked.

"My soul is obviously somehow gathering power from the environment with its abysmal refresh rate," I commented. "I just need to figure out which part of the soul is doing that and magnify that."

[It might not be enough.]

"Hrm," I mulled. "If it's not enough... I know how a thin film of viruses can generate an electrical charge when subjected to mechanical stress — a form of energy conversion known as the piezoelectric effect. If I can figure out how to convert electricity into mana, I could theoretically generate electricity through mere motion of the body. If I can find just a single M13 bacteriophage, a virus that attacks bacteria, I could replicate it and make a film of them to generate electricity."

My inner voice didn't comment on that. Leemy and Kopusha had no idea about electricity or viruses. That was knowledge from Earth, things which the Alanians had not discovered as their civilization was based on mana, golems, artifacts, souls and most of all... Song-Spells.

I had a lot of work ahead of myself.

As much as I wanted to separate Miss Alana Skyisle from myself, I also feared that I would damage her. I couldn't yet pinpoint where she was inside of me, as she was a soul-shard without any memories to her. I really needed to increase the power of the [Identify-Soul] spell before she dissolved into me further!

There were two ways to go about things.

I could increase the level of my [Identify-Soul] spell by continuously improving it with the Modify skill... or I could try to design a self-aware spell construct out of several soul shards.

The first option seemed safe. The second, was gambling since I had no idea how much soul I had left in me and also the whole thing could blow up according to Kopusha's memories.

[Continue to modify the Identify spell]

[Forge a multi-soul-shard spell construct]

[ > Insert another action < ]