Divine Apostasy Book 11 - Chapter 55

Chapter 55

Uruziel appeared again in Ruin’s peripheral vision. “I spoke with Deryssa, but she said the process of using one’s core happened naturally like breathing. She doesn’t understand why your core doesn’t just work.”

“That’s not helpful,” Ruin responded as the surrounding Sandpedes ripped apart his living cocoon.

“One thing she was positive about was that her core didn’t spin, but something else did.”

“That’s confusing.”

“I know. I’ve been trying to figure it out, and I think I just did. We think of Core Velocity as a rotational force which works great for the fluid nature of Spirit. I’m convinced now Destruction Cores require an inward Velocity. Pressure. Core Pressure.”

“How does that work?”

The shaking around Ruin grew violent and he prepared to enter a new Sandpede cocoon.

“Try this,” Uruziel said. “Use your Will to compact your core. Don’t use all your Willpower because I don’t think your Willpower is on the same scale as normal people. So don’t squeeze so hard you shatter it.”

Ruin did as Uruziel instructed, slowly ramping up how much he mentally squeezed his core, until it warmed.

“Good, now relax that pressure on a tiny area directly across from one of your Fire Meridian pathways, but only for a moment.”

A stream of packets burst outward from his core, entered one of the Fire Meridian pathways, and promptly exploded into a mass of Destruction Grains when they struck the Fire Meridian.

“That doesn’t seem any better than before,” Ruin said.

“There are three steps. The first is controlling the delivery of Packets, which you just did. Now is where I think Deryssa felt rotation. This might take a while but try and find Fire essence in all those Destruction Grains you just created inside your Fire Meridian. Clump the Fire Grains together into something like a Merdian Core.”

“Meridian Core? Is that a thing?”

“I think so. I got the idea from Fractal. Remember how he used crystal seeds to grow bigger crystals? That’s what we’re going to do, but with essence.”

Ruin didn’t argue and five waves of Sandpedes later he’d smashed and collected enough Fire grains to make a barely detectable lump.

“Okay,” Uruziel said, “now spin that Fire Core. Think of it like a gear. The Destruction Packets enter one pathway and strike the Fire Meridian where they explode into Destruction Grains. The spinning Fire Core rotates these grains out the other pathway but captures any Fire Grains in the process because they’ll stick to the Fire Core. As your Fire Core grows it becomes more and more efficient. This also creates a clear entrance and exit to your Meridian.”

“That’s similar to Spirit Refinement,” Ruin said. “What happens to the other eleven grain types that my Fire Core ejects back into my center?”

 “The Core Pressure you exert pushes them back into the core until they’re expelled with a future Destruction Packet. The same is true of anything you Harvest. As soon as it enters your center the Core Pressure compresses it into your core.”

Ruin considered that process. “If I constantly refine Fire Essence for some reason, the other eleven types keep getting returned and compressed into my core. That makes those eleven types more common and further Fire Refining less efficient. Over time what you described rewards a balanced approach.”

Ruin attempted the method. It had similarities to Spirit Refinement, but the process was more violent and less fluid. Bursts of energy replaced streaming threads, and explosions replaced filtering. The return path consisted of hurling the excess grains at the core instead of guiding them smoothly to a new location.

“The Spirit method seems far more efficient,” Ruin offered as he tried to rotate the tiny Fire Core.

“Yes, but I think once we figure this out, and make it more efficient, all those violent interactions can be utilized as well. Everything in your Spiritual Network is either under extreme pressure, rotating dangerously fast, or hurtling toward an explosion.”

“Wow that sounds terribly unsafe.”

“We’re in the Destruction Realm where chaos is harnessed instead of controlled.”

Ruin knew the truth of Uruziel’s words, and the two of them started the painstaking process of building up the twelve Meridian cores he needed.

Ruin thought the Sandpede Liquifiers would wise up to his fighting approach, but they didn’t.

Sivart continued to funnel wave after wave to Ruin as he created Meridian Cores and worked on managing all the moving pieces.

There were so many more variables. The energy density of the packets Ruin launched from his main core depended on the pressure he exerted and the size of the opening he created. The strength of his compression was partly determined by how much Harvesting he did and the rate at which the Meridian Cores returned Destruction Grains. Managing the Meridian Cores depended on their Core Pressure, their size, the amount of essence in the incoming packets, and the width and durability of his pathways. It was insanely intricate.

It took hours for Ruin to reach a point where he felt satisfied enough to pause.

“I love this,” Ruin confided to Uruziel.

“I find it overwhelming but understand why you don’t.”

“It’s relaxing. It reminds me of my bandball game with Bliz. The sheer number of variations and calculations is like a lullaby for my brain. There’s a beauty to this complexity.” Ruin realized that for the first time, he felt happy in this Saraph body.

“I need to stop for now as I have other things to do,” Ruin told Uruziel, “but my next step is to condense those Meridian Cores like I do my main Core. Then I can release bursts of pure essence at will. That will allow me to cast my essence recipes again and increase my spell efficiency.”

“Okay, should we ramp up the Harvesting now? I’ll help Sivart pull.”

“Yes, and thank you, Uruziel. There’s no telling how long this would’ve taken me to figure out on my own.”

Uruziel created a Minion for herself and disappeared.

Ruin, no longer needing to pace his grinding, relaxed his Core Pressure in another location which created a second stream of Destruction Packets that exploded upward like a geyser. Instead of allowing the energy to enter a Pathway he yanked it from his center, shaped it into a spell, and released it.

A bright explosion vaporized everything within fifty feet and scorched another fifty feet past that. Ruin used his Divine Domain to rise slowly out of the sand. He looted the piles of Sandpede Liquefiers that littered the surrounding dunes.

Halfway to the horizon a thousand Sword Minions fought, each an island in a sea of Sandpede Liquifiers. Overlord’s Fallen Lord Minion now had black metal wings that kept him airborne. Whenever a Sword Minion fell, it rose from its own grave. He studied Overlord who kept watch over all the battles.

Ruin compressed the distance between him and Overlord and took a step.

Overlord jerked in surprise. “I hate it when you do that.”

“Should I use your shadow?”

“Darkness, no. Poor Sift needs therapy because of that.”

“Sift required that before I met him.”

Ruin studied the madness below. “Your Multitasking is unbelievable. I’m not sure I ever thanked you for that ability. It’s almost enough to cover your rent.”

“Ha! Rent. Have you seen the facilities?” Overlord pointed at Ruin’s head. “You should be paying me to live in there.”

The conversation had gotten dangerously close to the discussion about leaving Ruin’s mind someday, and he quickly pivoted to why he’d come to talk. “How go the Sword forms?”

Ruin absentmindedly looted the thousands of bodies that littered the dunes for miles in every direction. Most had died too long ago to Harvest, but he yanked the Destruction Essence from the freshly dead and smashed it into his core.

“See for yourself,” Overlord responded waving a hand over the Sword Minions.

Ruin studied the battlefield. The constructs moved with precision, each one executing attacks and defenses with unerring efficiency. Against them, the Sandpede Liquifiers swarmed in unending numbers.

Ruin’s Outer Mind encompassed it all and it took a few seconds to comprehend what bothered him. He immediately Blinked to the surface to stand near a clump of Sword Minions each fighting their own battle. Overlord followed him.

The Sword Minion twenty feet in front of Ruin leaned away from a bite and rotated just far enough to allow the hair-like poison spears to pass. The Sword Minion moved like a Bamboo Viper Step Master.

 “How are you controlling them so perfectly?” Ruin asked. He glanced around to confirm every Sword Minion in view displayed the same incredible competence. A perfection of movement that usually required multiple decades of practice. “I can understand controlling one like this, but not a thousand. Has your Multitasking improved that much?”

“It has improved but that’s not what this is. I took a lesson from the early days. When the Narrators just started appearing. Their identities were basic, their knowledge narrow and specific, but they had great value all the same. So now I give all the combat-oriented Minions a bundle of memories.”

“Our Step training,” Ruin said.

“Yes, but I haven’t perfected it yet. They all have Grandmaster level memories along with the corresponding muscle memory, but they only perform at the Master level.”

“Only,” Ruin muttered as he watched a Sword Minion flip over an attack. He turned to Overlord. “How many can you control like this?”

“You don’t understand. I’m not controlling them directly. I give them the tools to succeed along with a desired outcome. For instance, these Sword Minions have the desire to avoid death and to experiment by combining their Step knowledge with the sword. Then I put them in a large Chat group to communicate successes and failures.”

“Amazing,” Ruin said. “Now tell me what you’re hiding from me.”

“Darkness take me!” Overlord cursed. “I was sure I didn’t give anything away.”

Ruin grinned. “You didn’t once I arrived. But I watched you before coming over. You’re tense, and that doesn’t make any sense.”

Overlord sighed and stared into the sky for a few seconds before turning to Ruin. “I keep them.”

“What does that mean? Who?”

Overlord didn’t respond and Ruin recognized the man’s body language. It was the same as Ruin’s after all, and Overlord was miserable.

A suspicion rose in Ruin’s thoughts, and he studied the nearest five Sword Minions. They all used different forms in their battles but to Ruin’s Arcangel Perception coupled with his perfection of the Bamboo Viper Steps, the answer became obvious.

“They’re different,” Ruin whispered. He tried to determine how long he’d been distracted with Uruziel as they figured out his Apocalypse Destruction Core. It couldn’t have been more than a few hours. Maybe five. Could Sword Minions, even with preloaded memories, adapt and evolve that quickly?

Overlord cleared his throat and shifted his weight from side to side. He spoke quietly. “I’ve been experimenting with transplanted memories since Rainbow’s End. It was an obvious path to scale my Multitasking. The more things a Minion could do on its own, the less attention it needed from me. Except, once in a great while, one of those Minions would grow at a faster rate. At first, I only wanted to increase my efficiency. Not having to reteach things saved a lot of time. Then, as they continued to evolve and discovered personalities of their own, they sort of became friends. This caused problems because I didn’t want to risk them in the real world anymore. Sound familiar?”

It did. Ruin had gone through the exact same thing with Overlord and then Sivart and now Uruziel.

“Then you figured out how to expand your Mind into reality,” Overlord continued. “I started as a literal sliver of your consciousness. This outer mind is like home for me. Just like you can recover me if my Minion is destroyed, I can retrieve my friends out here.” Overlord sighed again. “I’m sorry for not telling you. I was scared you’d make me destroy them.”

Ruin didn’t respond right away. He continued to study the surrounding Minions. It was obvious to him which ones contained the evolved beings.

Overlord’s anxiety climbed and Ruin turned to his friend. “I’m not mad. And I’m not destroying anything. I’m just thinking.”

Overlord slumped in relief.

Ruin gently patted Overlord’s back. “We’re cut from the same cloth, and like me, you don’t want or need much when it comes to personal interactions. This isn’t the same though. A lot of those Narrators were weird and one dimensional. In hindsight it doesn’t surprise me this occurred. It’s just—”

Ruin stopped speaking and Overlord responded a moment later. “Nameless.”

“Yeah, Nameless. He’s proof that not everything that happens in my mind is good. Maybe good isn’t the right word. You know what I mean, right?”

Overlord gave a curt nod. “I do. Circumstances have forced us into what feels like a life of constant violence and survival. One of the reasons I did this was because I think friendships are what keep us from sinking in this sea of chaos. That wasn’t the only motivation though. Probably the biggest reason was because I saw myself in those tiny seeds of self-awareness. I wanted to protect them.”

Ruin didn’t trust himself to respond to that, so he just nodded agreement. Protecting others rested in the core of his identity. It only made sense it did in Overlord’s as well. His friend would make an excellent god someday.

Ruin needed to figure out a few more things, then Overlord could continue to create his own worlds but on his own.

“I’d like to meet them someday,” Ruin said. “How about you show me what you learned.”

Overlord stood up straight and Ruin knew his friend wore a grin under his helmet.