4.08

“Sixty-seven, addendum. Getting a new name after selling it to the Fey seems to piss them off.” - Excerpt from Eyama Phule’s Enchiridion of Encounters.

To describe what happened next as simply pain would’ve been an understatement.

What the Historian just did, was transplant both eyes onto me, with the unfortunate side effect of transferring the powers of both of them to me.

In a single instant, I stared through a million different perspectives.

I saw places I’ve never seen, stood where others stood.

I eyed the strange magical forests cautiously. A crude stone blade held in skinny green arms.

I watched the encroaching darkness. A lantern at my side and a blade of flame on the other.

I inspected racks of alchemical potions. A pointed instrument in my hands.

I witnessed a crowned child pull a sword from a stone and applause erupted around us.

I glimpsed a land where light never touches, no life ever- no, this land was seething with life, till the point of corruption- no, I was underwater, frolicking with other merfolk-

No. That was not me. I am not them.

I concentrated, my dispersed mind getting drawn back to me. But the less scattered I was, the more clearly I saw. The information was… too much. There was simply far too much. Human brains were made to comprehend a single perspective at best.

You have died.

I laid on the sand. The information was all gone. My eyes felt so strangely empty.

There was nothing in this realm to Observe, nothing to Seek, so I saw nothing.

Pulling myself up, I stared at the dark black seas.

“Well this saves me a trip to a Wayshard at least,” I muttered as I logged out.

To say that Declan wasn’t prepared for what was coming would’ve been an understatement.

He collapsed onto a chair with a grunt. His eyes were distant. The moment Observe entered the real world, it brought with it all the information that Dustin had been seeing, acting as a link to the rest of the Historian.

And through this link, the Historian extended a hand through the opened gateway. The path tried to close, but the Historian forced it to remain. In the process, the Historian widened the gateway.

Following the connection set up by Declan and his home server. The Historian moved through the real world. Escaping before Dustin and Declan merged.

Throughout all this, Eve simply watched. After all, there wasn’t a single point where she needed to help.

Back in the dark library, the Historian breathed a sigh of relief. “Success.”

I rose from a splitting headache, “Did it work?”

“Check for yourself,” Eve said as a thousand different windows opened around me.

My eyes widened. This was… the code that made of Seek and Observe, downloaded into my house. I recognised some terms, but this coding language was something I’ve never seen before.

I’ll need to take a harder look at this later, for now, I logged back into Gaia.

Standing on my island, I quickly glanced around. Few things have changed save for the giant glowing portal hovering a few centimetres from the sea.

“A strange place,” the Historian said next to me.

I glanced at him, noting the- ‘Unknown becoming known. The burning desire to-’ -body he carried. “What next?”

“I bring him in, and return,” the Historian answered, as he spoke, he neared the portal, the body held tenderly within his arms. “With any luck, my theory will prove true. A realm not directly associated with the World will mean Zeze will cease apotheosis, or at the very least slow down till I can find a permanent solution to retaining their humanity.”

The Historian hesitated for a brief moment, before raising the body to the portal.

Slowly, the body faded into light.

The Historian’s eyes blinked, and I could catch the sides of his mouth curling up.

“It worked,” the Historian said, his voice light, “it worked.”

For a moment, he simply stood there. Just basking in joy.

He eventually turned around to me, “I cannot be here for long, for I must attend to the Historia, so I shall make my offer quick.” He extended his hand, and energy began to coalesce within it, until it formed an eye. “A portion of my power to use as you wish-”

It was strange, suddenly seeing all of his eyes widen, “Impossible,” he breathlessly muttered as he stared at something that lay between us. I couldn’t get a good look at it, as it was partially covered by sand from my angle, skeeting around the side I saw- ‘Lost becoming found. The filling of a map. The light of the Guiding Star-’

“A part of them fell,” the Historian muttered, “he was further in than I thought, a godly domain scatters itself to propagate.”

“And that means?”

He stared at me, then quickly glanced around as if searching for something, “No… the Crossroads are not here. It cannot be…”

Crossroads? Something to do with how people gained Paths?

“Quick primer on what you mean would be nice, I’ve only been around for a few days after all.”

“The Crossroads are what a person experiences when they are in the midst of gaining a Path, how they gained it does not matter, so long as they have more than one choices to choose from. But I thought it impossible for a Traveller to experience it,” he answered as he glanced back and forth between the thing in the sand and me.

“Why?”

“Because then you will become an unpredictable variable, Eve should not allow that. You are given Path’s which are reigned in copies but not the true ones.”

I raised an eyebrow, it made sense. Given the extreme unpredictability of the Seed, if I were Eve, I would’ve set measures in place so that anything I’m placing wouldn’t get out of hand. “So what this then?”

He stopped glancing around to stare directly at me, “Something adjacent to it, following similar rules perhaps? I am not sure, but if this is like the Crossroads, then you have a choice to make.”

“Elaborate?”

His brows furrowed, “My eye and the piece of the Discovery Domain, you may make a choice, but whatever you do, you’ll leave with only one. That is how it works for Crossroads.”

“So I can only take one or the other?”

“Not necessarily,” he answered immediately, “you could attempt to take both, but in doing so you would either destroy one or both or merge them together. Whatever you do, the end result cannot be greater than one.”

“Then what are my options?”

“My eye and the piece of Discovery,” he answered. “My eye will grant you usage of the Path Observe, but the piece is… more difficult to pin down. You may only know when you choose it.”

“So it’s between a safe, certain choice and a gamble?” No… not necessarily, the piece was one of Discovery, just going by name I could tell that it would be odd for Discovery to give me pyromancy.

“Somewhat, the piece will be aligned somehow with Discovery, but it will not be exact and you will influence it to a great degree.”

“Again, that means?”

“The piece of the Domain will seek to be different than what spawned it and in taking it, it will be influenced by you, becoming a power you are most suited to cultivate and use. But it will still be adjacent to Discovery somehow.”

He said the next words with certainty, “It will be weaker than mine initially, but it has the potential to become greater than Observe, as it is a Path already hard set. The piece is an idea to begin one anew.”

“So, basically, I’m choosing between a known but static option, and an unknown but potentially stronger option?” I summarised.

“Not stronger in the traditional sense, no. Freer and more variable, that is a certainty, however.”

“And what will happen to the leftover if I take the other?”

“Reabsorbed by their progenitor.”

I stared at him, “Can’t I just take one and get the other later?”

“You could,” he agreed, “but not in the near future. You saw what Eve did, in this world limits matter more than strengths. Attempting to cheat will make them both weaker, or worse,” he paused staring at me head-on, “the World will attempt to remove it.”

My brows furrowed, to which the Historian took as an indicator to continue, “Attempting to take a power without the proper limits or capability may result in calamities visiting you. Each trying to remove the unearned power somehow. If you can survive these calamities with the power still in your grasp, then the power will be considered yours and earned, if you do not, then you will not only lose it but something more as well.”

“So it is best, that I only leave with one, even if there is a way I can think of to cheat it?”

“Yes,” he answered, sounding somewhat resigned. “Unless you’ve recently done some great deed that makes you someone worthy of taking both?”

I shook my head. “Eh, worth a shot,” he replied.

Observation, a Path that allows me to see through other’s eyes, or a piece of Discovery, which is not defined but has greater potential.

One is a certainty, and the ability was nothing to scoff at. Information gathering skills are always absurdly underrated. But could Discovery yield something like information gathering as well? I felt it was likely, if we were just going by the name, but I am not a hundred per cent sure.

A safe, certain option and a gamble.

“I’ll take the gamble then,” I said.

Travellers had a soft limit to the power level they can achieve. Just the exponential scaling of the level up requirements will eventually outstrip anything that you can reasonably gain. Levelling from nine to twelve will take three-hundred-thousand experience, twelve to fifteen will be three million, fifteen to eighteen will be thirty million.

No, I could not rely purely on levels. Going by what the Historian said, this thing was not made from the Traveller’s system, so it may not be affected by level, or even consume experience points. A thing that can grow, was more useful to me.

If I wanted to go anywhere above average, I needed stuff like that.

I knelt and moved my hands toward the piece. The Historian saw this and began absorbing the eye back to himself.

I touched the Domain.

In an instant, hundreds of millions of possibilities leapt through my mind, but they passed by quickly, each getting discarded until all that was left was a single one.

Analyse.

In that brief moment, I understood what it could do. Everything that it could be capable of, and everything that it was already capable of. And my mind flashed with information, forged from what I already knew, a way to cheat the system.

I rapidly turned to the Historian.

“WAIT!” surprise slowed the rate of which he reabsorbed the eye by a tiny bit, but not enough, it will be gone before I got to it, and my hand was still firmly attached to the piece.

Not only that, I can’t take it. Me taking two would make it so that the very world will be against me until I fulfil some requirement to be worthy of it.

No, there had to be another way. Think! Observe was practically made for this Path!

What happened next did not even take a few seconds.

For perhaps the first time I was in this world, I fully racked my brains. Going through every single thing I have experienced until I reached a theory. A theory on how I can have Analyse and use Observe.

One. I cannot take both.

Two. Taking both will be calamitous in the future

Three. I have already taken one.

So instead, I raised my staff, mimicking javelin throwers I’ve seen in the Olympics, and threw it at the Historian’s hand. The hit knocked the eye out of his hand and into the portal behind him.

One. I cannot take both.

Four. The brief moment I held onto Seek and Observe in the real world, allowed me to see what was currently happening in Indiri.

Five. The Historian created that portal to help someone avoid the laws of this world. Even if this world’s laws were changeable, they were a certainty to many and that certainty made it so they can’t be changed or broken by me.

Six. I was goddamn immortal in this world, time to take advantage of it. Even if calamities still visited me after this loophole, I could survive. So I will take this gamble and hope that either the World considers Declan a separate entity from me, or can’t affect me either way if he takes it.

There was a moment of silence before the portal began shimmering.

I scrolled through the pages of code that made the Discovery thing. Impossible, I read the first section, again and again. I could read the words, but it does not click. It was like I was trying to add two with two and get seven.

‘I can’t understand it.’

Just then, right when I thought that. My vision split as I was suddenly in two places at the same time.

One, where I knelt on the ground and stared at the confused Historian, the other, where I was in my room, Eve’s flying drone hovering just next to me.

My mind linked with Dustin’s and our thoughts echoed to each other.

“Ok, this is weird.”

“What the hell did I do?” I muttered angrily to him. My head throbbed like someone was repeatedly taking a club to it.

“I threw a Path at you to try to make use of a loophole, see if you can claim it.”

“The fuck does claiming even mean!” I yelled as I slammed the wall next to me.

Anger, pain. Neither was useful right now. Focus, focus! Forget anger and pain and focus on what I needed to do!

Eve moved, not the drone, but I somehow sensed that she was trying to remove the foreign program from my head.

“Stop,” I grunted, holding a hand up to the drone. “Don’t take it away, that goddamn crazy bastard is trying to make me integrate with it.”

“You know you’re insulting yourself right?”

“Not helping!” I mentally yelled back at him.

The headache was intensifying. My Somatic Implant was trying to translate the code into stuff my squishy grey matter can read. “How do I know this?”

“Because I know it.”

Briefly, I skimmed over Dustin’s mind, seeing the cause and reason he had for doing this, “Was this really worth the risk?” A great improvement to the breadth of Analyse, but at the cost of this goddamn headache! Not only that, he did it because he thought he would be safe from the worst of it. Essentially throwing me under the boat.

“You’re not screaming at least?”

“I can help,” Eve said. I rapidly turned to her, “I didn’t help before, and it looks like you really need it now.” Suspicion must’ve marred my face for a moment, because she hesitated for a moment before speaking.

“At the very least, I can help get rid of the pain.”

“Done,” I instantly replied, the headache increasing to the point where it felt like it was getting used as a bowling bowl.

“Tell her to make sure you still have it, otherwise, all that pain will be for nothing.”

“What he said,” I muttered. Eve nodded and extended her hand.