Chapter 7, A new me

“I might have an idea for a name but I’m not sure if it’s too presumptuous.”

“Spit it out! You’re going to become my other half. I can’t believe I’ll object to whatever you’re thinking.”

“Alright, I was thinking Arius, Ari for short. I got it from your name since you’re Zel.”

“Arius? Wouldn’t it be Aria if you’re going to take the other half of the letters?”

“What, no? Wait... Don’t you know what your name Zelaria means?”

“Um, no? I was just thinking it was a name like any other.”

“But all elven names have meaning. How can you not know that?”

“Well of course I know that but how did you come to the conclusion that it’s elvish?”

A slightly awkward silence ensues.

“I know what Zelaria means because I speak elvish and I was guessing your parents would have given you an elven name according to tradition since, well, you’re part elf? I wouldn’t have bothered to bring with me the knowledge of elvish if you were just human.”

“I’m part what?”

“Elf?”

Another slightly more awkward silence.

“I’M PART ELF?!?”

“yes”

Comes as a tiny response.

“But how do you know that I’m part elf? I don’t even have pointed ears like all half elves do. Even children from half elf and human unions have visibly different ears from humans. I don’t.”

“Well I processed your body for energy didn’t I?”

“So?”

“Sooo, what do dungeons get from processing a deceased body?”

I need to think about that one for an embarrassingly long time.

“I know! I know! Patterns.”

“Correct. Patterns. Dungeons revolve around patterns of all types. I’m a master of patterns since my existence was practically based on patterns for millennia before you came around. And what do you think your pattern showed me?”

“That I’m part elf… How much?”

“About three fourths. Elf and half elf parents if I was a betting woman.”

“My parents are elves??? Wait, woman. I’ve been thinking of you as a ‘he’ all this time.”

“Well, are you a man?”

“Um. No?”

“Then I’m not either. And it’s not like I had a gender before anyway. Being a gem and all that.”

That made sense. But this revelation was almost one too many in a single day. I was part elf! But wait a minute. I’m sure my status has always shown me as a human. And still, I didn’t have pointy ears. Neither did my parents for that matter. I remember that much.

“Why did my status show me as human and not, three-quarter elf or something? And my ears still weren’t pointy. Explain that for me, Ari.”

“Ooh I do like that name. Okay sure, I’ll explain. Magic.”

“Magic?”

“Magic.”

I send a mental stink eye towards Ari who sends a raised eyebrow right back at me.

This brat is getting cheeky! Wait, did I just call myself a brat?

“Seriously Ari. Explain, please.”

“Alright, alright. I don’t have any proof obviously and I haven’t started catching up on the memories of your parents you collected before I came around but I have a solid theory on how they did it.”

“Come on, spill!”

“My guess is that your parents were both adept at soul magic and mind magic. As I’ve told you, you need a willing participant to meddle with the soul of another being to any large extent. My guess is that they used mind magic on you as an infant, built on the trust between child and parent, to make you accept whatever changes they made to your soul.

"A sort of bypass, since neither the mind or the soul would be strong enough to resist the magic at that age. Couple that with blind trust and you’ll probably succeed in fooling the soul into thinking it was a willing act. They would have to be highly skilled in both mind and soul magic though. Both to fool the soul’s defenses into standing down and to make changes small enough to not affect anything other than a single line in the status sheet.

"As to the physical difference in ear shape? If you can manage what I just described then that would be easy. Just cutting the baby's ear into the correct shape using a knife and then altering the soul imprint of the physical form to match using soul magic. Next just use healing magic on the ears and you have human ears on an elven baby.”

“That’s horrific! Did my parents really do that to me?”

“No idea. Our soul might hold the answers but I won’t be able to check before fully acclimatizing to it. That means bridging the gap between me and you and making the only quantifiable difference between us our names.”

“I’ll look forward to it. I need to know if I was mutilated as a baby.”

An eerily monotone chuckle floats my way.

“I’ll look into it. Now back on the topic of names. You’ll learn elvish as we naturally progress to a unified whole but in the meantime let me translate. Zelaria as your parents named you is elvish for Celestial.”

“That’s so pretty! What a good name they gave us.”

“I agree. It’s a mashup of the elvish words for sun and moon. Zelios and Arius. Zelaria. Zel and Ari. What do you think?”

“It’s perfect! It symbolizes our newly established symbiosis perfectly. I think I’m in love.”

Another chuckle.

“Slow down a little will you? We can talk about self love and narcissism when we’ve unified.”

“Killjoy.”

This time both of us revel in the shared amusement and the ridiculousness of our newfound existence.

After a long slow beat of companionable silence that might have lasted a whole day, not that I could tell the difference, Ari gets to explaining more in depth about the pattern of my old body. There had apparently been a lot more going on in there than I had previously known.

Ari didn’t yet have my drive to get out and get things done but we both agree that a new body is in order. What better template than my old one? To create a new body for ourselves in as close resemblance to the old as possible we have to first learn how it worked down to the tiniest detail.

I learn a lot during this time as listening to Ari explain all the biological processes of my previous body gets me a preview of the ‘humanoid biological knowledge package’ as Ari calls it. It takes us approximately 1 year, with breaks to chat about other various topics, to go over everything twice and check that we haven't missed anything.

I’m amazed by the complexity of the thing I’d used so casually in the past. But as I learn, it is only thanks to the brain that it was that easy. It did the hard part of handling almost every biological process of the body for me.

A new problem presents itself when it becomes time for us to actually build our new body. We have no anima and we can’t get our hands on more. I can’t believe we didn’t realize this limitation sooner but in the end we both agree it isn’t that much of a hindrance in the long run and might even become an advantage.

“Since anima is a necessary component to all biological life we just have to build a body that isn’t strictly biological in nature.”

“I agree with you Ari. We only have access to mana so a mana construct, or mana body as we could call it, is the only reasonable vessel we could create without outside help.”

“Yeah, counting on outside help that will never arrive seems like a massive waste of time. I’m starting to get behind your idea of ‘getting a move on’.”

“We’ll have to redesign the whole thing from scratch though. I don’t know which parts we’ll need but without the biological processes we might be able to do a lot with that much space.”

“Yeah and don’t forget about the upkeep. Holding a mana body of that complexity together and keeping it stable will burn up a massive amount of mana regeneration. Not to mention all the internal machinations we’ll need to devise and power just for it to work at the same capacity as its biological counterpart.”

“This will be a lot more difficult than we initially thought but I’m up for the challenge! Since we have a practical eternity until the deadline we can figure this out. And we’ll create a masterpiece to house our soul.”

“That we will, Zel.”

Bouncing ideas back and forth while troubleshooting potential problems we take to designing a new body of mana from scratch. Using what we learn from my old body we take bits and pieces and redesign them to be made of and work on mana.

Skeleton, muscles, tendons, nerves, circulatory system, brain, and vocal cords. All of it was converted to work on mana alone. A lot was removed entirely. No biological processes? No stinking entrails, or entrails at all for that matter.

The designing phase takes 11 years. A long time for sure but as we are designing a whole new concept of vessel that neither of us have even heard of before it is reasonable.

It isn’t like we are on a one track mind the entire time either. I quickly grow bored of the sensory deprivation that is life without a body so Ari teaches me how to sense mana instead of seeing it.

Ding! You have learned the general skill [Mana Sense].

[Mana Sense]

Use mana to sense the mana in the world around you. The greater the range the greater the mana consumption. Sensing radius is calculated using [Skill Level * 1 meter]. Mana consumption is calculated using [Radius * Radius] per second.

DIng! General skill [Mana Sense] has leveled from [1] to [56].

This is apparently how all dungeon cores see the world. [Mana Sense] isn’t as accurate as [Mana Sight] when compared to each other at the same level but sensing mana can be done without sensory organs and in all directions. I’m guessing my [Mana Sense] became better for working with mana when I passed the 20 level threshold.

There’s also the problem of range and power consumption. Mana sense at level 56 only has a viewing radius of 56 meters and I can’t pan it around as Ari apparently could when she was connected to the core. It also consumes over 3000 mana per second at its full range which is way above what I can support.

Using and training my mana sensing abilities alleviate a lot of the monotony of troubleshooting and design. I can finally see again and I’m fascinated with each new centimeter I gain in my sensing radius as I always have new things to study in the core room.

The core casing protecting the dodecahedron shaped dungeon core is an octahedron with a sharp point on each end. My mother taught me that. Why am I getting déjà vu?

The core casing is covered with runic symbols and archaic letters that Ari tells me is called Dungeon Script. It’s supposedly unique to each dungeon and the core uses ‘centralized obfuscation’ whatever that means. Ari tried explaining but all I understood was that it's unintelligible without being connected to the core.

Around the floating and slowly spinning core casing stands four white pillars, covered in inscriptions, with crystal balls on top. Four thick cables made of what looks like some sort of threaded, black, magic alloy snakes up around each pillar and connects to the crystal balls. This is supposedly where the mana, anima and whatever else is supposed to come out from before being harnessed and refined by the core casing.

There’s no power there now. Ari says the architect made a gamble that only played out in the short term. Removing the core gem’s mana gathering ability for a direct infusion mana channel. It was supposedly a very good gamble if one wasn’t looking for longevity.

It was twice as effective as the core at gathering mana but didn’t last more than half a century. When his grand design failed him he dispersed. Not having his soul housed in the core apparently leads to death without a stable supply of mana.

His failure is a lesson both Ari and I take to heart while designing our own vessel. An empty mana pool shouldn’t result in instant death if we wish to remain alive.

In the edges of the core room a few luminous plants grow and they barely light up the chamber. There’s also a curtain of them covering the entrance to the rest of the dungeon floor.

When I reach level 50 in my mana sensing skill. Ari tries teaching me a new one that would allow me to increase my mana regeneration. The skill is called [Mana Absorption] and is very tricky to get a hold on.

It doesn’t directly increase my own mana regeneration as this isn’t possible without raising one’s [Wisdom] attribute. It’s instead used to actively absorb environmental mana and refine it for one's own use. It is terribly inefficient and I’m almost ready to drop it before Ari tells me how her core had the ability once.

She was able to support the whole dungeon on the mana gathered this way before the architect stripped it away to use his own gathering contraption when the dungeon gained its 100th floor.

Ignoring the nagging voice telling me how ludicrously high leveled the skill would have to be to gather such huge amounts of mana, I take her boasting as a challenge. Just you wait, Ari. The day will come when our vessel has the same throughput as you did back in the day. The difference freedom will make with such power shall be glorious.

Ding! You have learned the general skill [Mana Absorption].

[Mana Absorption]

Gather and refine mana from the world around you. Mana gathered per second is calculated using [Skill Level * Skill Level * 2].

Ding! General skill [Mana Absorption] has leveled from [1] to [34].

During my time of skill training Ari is immersing herself in our memories. She has a lot of catching up to do and it is always enjoyable to listen to her gush about a silly memory I had long thought I’d forgotten about.

My own assimilation of Ari’s memories is taking a lot longer but this is all going according to Ari’s plan. We don’t want to start a fusion and the only method to prevent it is the slow and methodical approach of letting my soul metabolize each speck of foreign soul-matter one piece at a time.

We aren’t near reaching the inevitable unification but it’s also nice having someone who feels like a childhood friend you’ve grown so close with as to be counted as family. Even Ari’s voice has begun to change. Getting closer and closer to delivering sentences in the same pitch and cadence as myself. Long gone is the mechanical, monotone drone which barely qualified being called a voice.

After those eleven long years we are finally ready to start on our next phase in the ‘make a body plan’ as Ari calls it. We have gained and leveled skills, designed our mana body and gone through old memories. It has been a journey of good times and we are only getting started.

“Ready Zel? We’re only doing the core first since we decided to house the soul in a centralized location.”

“Yes, I remember Ari. I must have spent days studying the dungeon core before this. I won’t forget it now.”

“Good. Without getting our [Mana Manipulation] up to snuff we won’t be able to create anything. I think level 200 should be enough but we’ll see when we get there. We can work on each part individually until we can create every component perfectly.”

“It’s going to be so frustrating keeping both [Mana Sense] and [Mana Absorption] active while doing this. Can’t we start with only two skills at a time?”

“Zel. We’ve talked about this. If this is going to work we’ll both need to be able to multitask several skills. The [Mana Absorption] skill will be crucial until we can get our [Wisdom] attribute high enough to at least support the whole mana body on its own.”

“And the status sheet will remain corrupted until we’ve finished unifying our two selves. Until that happens we can’t get a class, level, and gain attribute points to spend. I get it. I just feel like this is going to take a really long time Ari.”

“You said it yourself, remember? We have all of eternity until we hit the deadline. Better do things right and not go the way my foolish architect did.”

“Yes, dear.”

Chuckling to ourselves we begin the next phase. Starting with the core. We take turns using [Mana Sense], [Mana Absorption] and [Mana Manipulation] all at once while the other half is watching over our progress. Pointing out faults and making suggestions.

Working together we spend our time creating each individual part of our new body in turn. Making adjustments and fixing faulty preconceptions about how things would fit together. We then move on two making two parts at the same time, then three, then four and so on. Steadily increasing the simultaneous workload while switching places with each other at an ever shortening interval to give our minds the needed rest.

The highly useful passive [Multitasking] general skill we got early on in skill training [Mana Sense] and [Mana Absorption] together was having a field day leveling with everything going on at once. We decided to keep the notifications of [Multitasking] off since its increase in levels only made our minds more flexible, something we could tell without the notification.

[Multitasking]

Passively aids with performing more than one task at the same time.

And so it goes. Day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. We take breaks now and again but we both feel the urge to complete our work. We only need the skill to make it into a reality and we’re on a steady path towards our goal.

It takes us 47 years of strife before both of us can faultlessly create our masterpiece from the ground up. Every mana particle placed to perfection on every try a hundred times in a row. We can begin the manifestation on all starting points we can think of. Building a body from the starting point of a single knee, a lone arm, a limbless torso, a body split in half, a body torn to shreds or as we both think most important, building from the starting point of a lone core.

We made thousands of alterations to various aspects over the years. Stress testing various designs and mana structures for every part. Getting the most strength, flexibility and durability we can out of every muscle, tendon and bone.

The most important component is the harshest tested and the most reworked part. The core and its housing. We decided to put the core where the brain normally is. It’s the place where the most protection can be provided, not needing to make compromises for mana flesh and other soft tissues placed all over the rest of the body.

A bone encased space literally evolved in biological lifeforms to offer the most protection to the most sensitive organ, the brain. It isn’t such a stretch to place our soul there. Though we have made sure it isn’t encased in a mere bone sphere.

The core itself is made into a perfect sphere down to the mana particle like the rest of the body. It’s made in a size to perfectly house our soul with a little wiggle room and no more. It has a diameter of 4 centimeters or the size of a small tomato.

I’m overjoyed when Ari shows me where the lost golden nugget of a memory had been hiding. I finally know two edible ingredients! Yay us!

The skull itself is designed to look exactly like my old one from my previous body from the outside while the inside uses the most of the available space for protecting the core. It’s important to keep the outside bone structure the same to not warp my perfect features. I may have become self-obsessed after all.

The inside of the skull has spokes crisscrossing from almost every point of the surface to its counterpart position on the other side. Interlocking in a both organic and alien looking design. This creates the most structurally stable design for resisting crushing and blunt trauma while balancing the weight to scale with the rest of the body.

A piercing strike managing to get through the extremely tough structurally enhanced cranium could still get stopped on the interlocking spokes before reaching the core. And if it doesn’t, we’ve done all we can to prevent it.

The core is housed at the very center of the skull, tightly fitted in a thick rubbery casing which is suspended by the interlocking spokes. The mana structure for the highly kinetically absorbing rubbery substance is an accidental find while experimenting with alternative mana structures for enhancing tendons and sinew.

We do work like this on the rest of the body but to a much smaller degree. We get the mana structures to behave and look as much as their biological counterparts as possible before trying to make improvements on them.

The most noticeable improvements are in the mana flesh with its increased resistance to tearing during stress, the mana nerve with its decreased signal and mana losses, the mana bone with its increased structural integrity and anti splinter coating as well as general improvements to sensory organs.

Testing of the sensory organs will have to be made during the first test run but the information packets brought by Ari from her dungeon core days contain good stuff on biological structures of superior senses in various humanoids and a lot of inspiration is drawn from that.

That’s right! We finally unlocked every memory hidden in our soul. I’ve learned so much from Ari. It took our soul nearly 60 years to assimilate the foreign soul-matter but we did it! We managed to unify!

Ding! General skill [Mana Sense] has leveled from [56] to [233].

Ding! General skill [Mana Absorption] has leveled from [34] to [189].

Ding! General skill [Mana Manipulation] has leveled from [11] to [312].