For several weeks Delta and I focused on our research of breaking Vows and rebuilding the Alanian tower with the aid of the Friendship-bound Kliss.

The Vow-bound Overseer stayed by my side and while it was nice to have a pair of helping hands, she also behaved akin to a perpetually happy automaton. I hated myself for being too slow with the Vow-Breaker, feeling that I was contributing to the suffering of real Kliss who was most likely locked away somewhere deep inside of her own mind.

The Vow of Creation aka [Destruction-Sacrifice] was beginning to awaken. It disrupted my progress with migraines whenever I attempted to integrate destruction-themed words into the Vow-Breaker spell. Thankfully, I was a lot cleverer than the young Vow and built the Vow-Breaker using disruption and shield spells which we had extrapolated out of Kliss’ armacus, by making her fire various spells into the air repeatedly to study the hexagrams and their effects.

Basically, the Vow-Breaker would not kill nor permanently destroy a Vow, but it would be able to temporarily disrupt its phantom-like structure and interrupt its control over a human body, blocking its control threads out of the human brain akin to hex-lanterns pushing phantoms away.

The Vow-bound Kliss begged me to tell her more about my mathematics, which I did. I slowly taught her Earth numbers. I wasn’t worried that the Vow or Phantom Sasha could arrive or even understand fractal math because the grade three math that I was slowly teaching Kliss was incredibly distant from computing fractals.

I simply avoided teaching her anything that had to do with complex geometry, trigonometry or probability theory. I was backed by the knowledge that every child in the USSR knew this sort of basic math, but only a few innovators like myself and Dr. Mandelbrot could actually design fractals on computers or even understood what fractals were in 1992.

Kliss, Delta and I also went around Skyisle, visiting every home as an “inspection”.

I made Kliss declare me as her “assistant”, which didn’t make me a friend of the villagers. It didn’t matter to me if Skyisle Elders saw me as a nuisance or a traitor. Delta and I were raising a new generation of Skyisle children, ones who would unlock their system as young as seven years of age. Using the “inspection” as a tactic to gain access to the houses, we made Kliss dig seven charged batteries out from under various people's houses, transitioning them to the Alanian tower.

I was stockpiling batteries to start making artificer tools that would allow me to make other even more complex tools.

Also, with each "inspection", Delta and I were building a perfect three-dimensional diagram of a fully functioning Alanian Astral Engine on Bessie. Our goal was to eventually repair and link every obelisk in the village to the large obelisks beneath the Church of Equality and the Alanian tower.

The biggest breakthrough that I was hoping for, was making the existing Info-Tether between Delta and me into a [Permanent-Soul-Tether]. Theoretically, if it worked, it would allow us to share our skills, since we needed more skill slots. Unfortunately, such a thing was impossible until the Infoscope-sacrifice Vow could be permanently taken care of.

Delta and I had also discussed the issue of radioactivity leaking from the Valley of Death and had arrived at the conclusion that everyone - people, animals and plants alike, everything living within Skyisle had incrementally built up an immunity to the magogenic fault over the thousand years. Everyone’s souls were spending exuberant amounts of energy to stop bodies from mutating horribly, burning through whatever “experience” was to stay alive.

It was a theoretically sound explanation for the Level cap, but it also meant that the situation was getting worse - whatever was happening in the ruins of the Tricameron Citadel was spilling out more radiation and poisons than ever. Maybe there was a damaged reactor there that nobody could cover up or stop since there were no skilled Alanians left alive after the Great Mage War.

We had interviewed Kliss thoroughly and discovered that her last six skills had decayed to level twenty. She was left with [Reinforced muscles], [Long Ear], [Phantom-sight], [Ranger], [Soul-Shield] and [Soul-Repair] all currently right down below LV 20 and deep in the minuses, out of sixteen skills that she had once possessed at Level 24 twelve years ago.

She didn’t seem to care and didn't lament one bit about the skill loss. Her perpetually cheerful mood had only confirmed that the Vow was fully in charge of her.

Whenever we sent Kliss out to chop firewood or to hunt, we sang to the Alanian beacon and sacrificed insect souls to it. Delta’s bees were particularly good at hunting other small bugs and the beacon sucked various bugs completely dry, devouring their soul and mana, turning the little bugs into ashes upon contact.

Delta had also thoroughly scanned her Soul-Hunter skill, so that I could help her re-design it and make it stronger. Her goal was to take control of more than a single bee colony, maximizing herself a lot further. I was somewhat concerned that this would make her more similar to Phantom Sasha and her children, but at the same time we needed to grow in power to face the coming future.

She had already switched from the queen bee, to a queen ant and developed several ant colonies underground beneath the tower and spider colonies up in the high branches of nearby pine trees, which made me feel somewhat uneasy when I glanced at the web-encased pines.

We had to trust Kliss to wear the armacus - because the communicator in it would notify her when the Inquisitor would arrive.

On the 40th day of Temminus, at the end of summer, the [Vow-Breaker] was finished. It functioned akin to Radio jamming tech from USSR, except it didn’t jam a radio signal. It simply jammed the connection between the Vow and the brain of its user, encasing and intersecting the entire Vow in layers upon layers of shields.

When Kliss had returned with the firewood and stepped through the gate of the tower, I activated the [Vow-Breaker] right over Kliss.

The redhead girl froze. Her arms opened up and the bundle of branches fell, scattering all over the ground. She leaned on the stone doorway frame to prevent herself from falling.

“Kliss?” I asked tentatively. “...did it work? Are you free?"

“W-what?” She whispered, eyes suddenly filled with pain and misery. She looked up at me.

“I've temporarily disabled the Friendship Vow,” I said. “We have about seven minutes until my mana runs out.”

“Seven minutes?” She muttered, her hands crushing the ferns growing from the moss-covered wall.

“I’m sorry… I couldn't do this sooner. I’ll free you again, I promise.” I said.

“You’re an idiot,” she uttered. “Friendship will know you’ve done this. She will hurt me. Not that she hasn’t been hurting me already, keeping me imprisoned inside my own head, keeping me bound with that blasted divine thread of hers.”

Her emerald eyes filled with pain ignited as she grimaced at me. “This is your fault… All of this is your fault.”

“I know and I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I didn’t know this would happen to you. I didn’t know that Vows grow up, gain consciousness and fully take over a person like this.”

“I hate you,” she said, lifting an arm and pointing the armacus at me. “I hate you so much…”

“Yeep,” Delta commented, the swarm-shaped human stepping forward. “Exactly as I expected. Should have kept her bound.”

“You…” Kliss growled at Delta as bees began to land on her armacus-wielding arm.

“Do you want to get stung? This is how you get stung,” Delta said casually through the swarm.

Kliss lowered her arm, trembling. “I… I’ve been bound my entire life, since I was ten. The… Friendship Vow. She is far, far worse than the Overseer. I’ve been wishing that I was dead for weeks now.”

“I will free you,” I said.

“Will you?” Kliss asked. “All you’ve done is bind me more than I’ve ever been. All you’ve done is turned the entire world against me. You’ve ruined my entire life, you’ve trapped me in Skyisle with your Vow. You’ve left me no choice. The Empire will kill us, flatten Skyisle into nothing when they find out what you’ve done and what you’re still doing.”

“I will stop them,” I insisted.

Kliss scowled at me. “By awakening cursed Necromancer tech that’s literally powered by souls? By allying yourself with aberrations?”

I sighed.

“Who is Delta? Is she your Master? Is she your Aberration friend, a phantom from the Astral?” Kliss demanded answers. She stood up to her full height now, staring me down with a fiery glare.

“Delta is my sister. She doesn’t command me,” I said. “Can’t you tell that I’m being honest via your armacus?”

“You could just be lying to me using some kind of a custom skill,” Kliss stated plainly. “You seem to know how to make spells above your level. You know far too much. Why are you making me repair this cursed tower?”

“Because I want to free all of Skyisle,” I answered. "This village is my home."

“You’re going to get everyone here killed,” Kliss insisted. “You can't possibly stop the Empire. The more you try to resist, the more ships they will send. The Empire has prognosticators. They cannot fail. They will never see Ishikaria as a free nation. The children being raised by Imperial Instructors across Ishikaria are already joining the legions of Equality. You’re too late.”

I frowned.

"They will send other Ishikarians to kill you," Kliss said. "You're going to have to fight, murder your own people... that is if you even think of them as your people, necromancer."

"I can unbind their Vows," I said. “I can do impossible things. You said so yourself.”

"So can the priests of Equality,” Kliss said. “The Friendship Vow has been lying to you, misleading you... you are not as special as you think.”

"I can free Vow-bound people as I freed you," I replied.

"You didn't free me!" Kliss yelled. "How am I free?! If anything you trapped me further than I had ever been! In a few years I'll be dead! This cursed Valley is finishing off my soul! My soul and my body are decaying!"

"I'll be able to heal you," I said.

"You.. you are either a clueless, unaware fool or… a necromancer and I honestly don't know which is worse!!!"

"Are you with me or the Empire of Equality?" I asked.

"I hate the Empire…" Kliss growled.

I waited for her to continue.

"But you… I don't know you at all."

"Do you want to get to know me?" I asked.

Kliss hissed something under her breath.

I raised an eyebrow.

"I want to…" she glared at me with hate-filled eyes.

In that moment my mana ran out and the Vow-Breaker hanging over Kliss fell apart into colorful sparks.

I pulled the overpriced wine from my belt and chugged it down to keep myself from passing out.

"Whoopsie," Kliss' face became a smiling mask. "I think… I.. spaced out for a second there."

She leaned down and recollected the spilled branches, smiling serenely.

"Frenny," I said.

Kliss' face remained a smiling blank.

"You disobeyed me," I accused her.

"What? No I didn't! I got lots of firewood… just like you asked!" She insisted, shaking her pile of branches at me.

"Frenny," I said. "You've been keeping Kliss bound. Did you think that I would not notice?"

"What? Don't be silly, Dante! Frenny is sleeping, like you told her to. I'm Kliss," Frenny said. "I don't want to wake her up. She doesn't like you. She will probably tell the Inquisitor that you're an aberration!"

I eyed the Vow-controlled girl wearily as she kept on spinning ridiculous lies around me.

"I'm your friend!" The Vow of Friendship lied. "I will make sure the interview goes smoothly when the Inquisitor comes!"

"How?" I asked. I still hadn't come up with a viable strategy to deal with the Inquisitor.

"I'll tell him that there's a single Vow of Equality that's aware of everything I do and is watching over me!" She said, making fake puppy eyes at me. "Goddess Equality can't be fooled! She is all-mighty! See? It's a perfect answer!"

She glanced at her arm covered in bees. "P-please… D-dante… don't hurt me. I am your knight! I belong to you, alone! I will make sure that Skyisle is safe!"

[Nice going,] Delta commented. [Sounds like the Vow is going to betray and murder us when we least expect it.]