Chapter 322

  Hidden Easter Eggs That Might Have Spoiled with Time

  Poof.

  “A cure?” I said to myself, as the limb I had been working on to this point suddenly and inexplicably burst.

  The entire limb was odd, something completely foreign, and yet surprisingly familiar at the same time. For a moment, I remember the scent of dust and of an energy void of a planet. A planet that was dying, but yet still trying to live on despite this shortcoming.

  With multiple valves and processing parts, the cells of the limbs were wholly unique. They were at their very core humans, if humans had a second more pronounced mitochondrial, one capable of reaching out and storing mana from the environment, much like a cactus would hold moisture. The only problem was that there was clearly an evolutionary flaw in the design of the cell itself, one that I couldn’t put my finger on. Then in my apparent attempt to put said finger on the flaw caused it to burst into a thousand strands of magical dust.

  “Well, that didn’t go as planned,” I state out loud, suddenly wondering why everyone is staring at me. Had this been a big thing? Was this something important that everyone had been working on? I didn’t know. I did know that I just destroyed the one and only copy due to cascading rupturing of too much energy entering the cell. I almost wonder if this would be what hyperosmosis would look like if water was replaced by energy and able to produce a visible violent discharge.

  “Wait, I thought you said you had a cure?” Penelope asked confusedly.

  “I mean, if magical explosions are what the true desired effects were, then yes, cure achieved. If trying to find a way to revert these limbs back into the human who shed them, then no.” I respond.

  “Wait, shed?”

  “Human?”

  By now everyone was asking questions, but most of what I had now was speculation. But given how the cells had been cleanly separated pointed out to me that it was likely a shedding mechanism. This would no doubt be like the way lizards and other creatures shed appendages to get away from enemies. Who am I kidding, those lizards just shed their tails. Which never seemed to make much sense from an evolutionary standpoint. For while it did allow the lizard in question to survive that day. Didn’t it effectively equate to nature’s version of Fast Food, where you wanted a quick bite, so you went after a lizard tail?

  In this case though, the shedding seemed to make more sense, the creature seemed to understand that too much energy was dangerous for it, and rather than continue to absorb and cause a cascading effect of having all the cells in its body burst from excessive absorption of energy, it instead lost a limb.

  I paused, wondering how I knew this to be true, the moment I thought of it. I’m assuming it had something to do with my Bloodline Trait Ancient Psychometry, while this wasn’t the same thing as me viewing the resting spot of a spirit, I could still almost feel the history of the magic that was being used and altered.

  With that insight, I halted for a moment, before nodding and realizing that I was correct in this assessment. At least of this likely being a way I could evolve aspects of my Ancient Psychometry bloodline Trait to be more versatile and help me to follow the history of energy. I honestly liked that idea, as it seemed to be able to open more avenues for crime solving, detecting, and most importantly the ability to steal other’s spells and abilities and make them my own. Magical plagiarism? Can there be such a thing?

  Pausing for a moment, I shutter at the idea of spells and practices being copyrighted. Magic should be free for all. That’s when I make the mental note that I would fight against companies and businesses who tried to copyright magic, enchanted items was one thing, but magic itself was too beautiful to constrict and define.

  “Wait, I think she broke again,” Gwen stated flashing magic that fluctuated in many different resonances.

  Blink.

  “Wow, you are getting better at that, good job.” I comment, staring more at the area where the spell she used to gain my attention had just been cast. Mainly because I could still see the minor bursts of residual mana still floating in the air. For a moment, I wondered if I could see the history of those mana particles, but was brought back.

  “Mom,” Gwen pressed a note of concern in her voice. Then only after pausing for a moment and making sure I was still there did she ask, “are you okay?”

  I wanted to dismiss the claim entirely, I was fine. Never better. But then I realized that she wasn’t alone in this concern. For around the room were Valeria, Penelope, and even Gabriellaz all of whom looking concerned. Though it seemed that those who were warriors first had a higher threshold for what they started to get concerned about.

  “I’m,” I began and was going to instantly dismiss the claims entirely, but I suddenly felt a tightening in my chest as I realized this was a moment when I had to be truthful. My pixie nature of course chose this exact moment to click in and force an honest confession out of me. “I’m, fin… I’m okay…”

  I barely managed to get out that last part, for it was a stretch. Even now I could feel myself needing to clarify.

  “That is, I’m going to be okay,” I finally got out, and that I believed. Which meant that growing tension within my chest, the one that told me I was lying and that it was somehow impossible to lie let me get away with this minor deflection.

  Hug.

  Before I even knew what happened, I suddenly found myself being embarrassed by my daughter. Feeling her against me, I could feel the warmth of her love for me, I paused. I wanted to struggle, to protest, but for that moment, I was powerless and ultimately felt my body give way under her hug. She is a good daughter. Sometimes.

  Gradually I felt the strength return to my body, as I suddenly felt like I could move again. Gwen as if sensing this, released her hold and let me step back for a moment.

  Only as I got back did I realize that speckles of mana were glistening on Gwen’s face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked as I flew up and instantly wiped at the glittering material, realizing they were mana tears. A byproduct of her mostly mana diet thanks to her also using the same exact Spirit Sustenance from the base healer class I trained her in.

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  Gwen for her part just shook her head, “nothing, I just need to take care of something.”

  Then I watched as Gwen quickly left the open room we were in, surreptitiously swiping at her cheek again before exiting, then immediately behind the door, away from prying eyes. Well eyes other than my own, she collapsed back into the door frame where she began to take a moment to compose herself.

  I remember her doing this a lot, particularly as a teenager when her emotions got too intense for her and she needed to leave to calm herself. This time it was slightly different as I realized that I was the cause for her apparent high emotional state, but I couldn’t quite understand why. Was I acting that oddly?

  Still, I knew Gwen wouldn’t want me to draw attention to her at this time, so I did what I had to do and went about answering the questions that had been posed.

  “Okay, so to answer, yes, that limb was that of an infected human. There was a magical bacterium that likely infected the host victim’s body with a new form of mitochondria, one that survives on absorbing and converting mana.” I explained, as I spoke, I could feel my mind instantly grabbing and filling in the portions that made the most sense.

  There was a sort of disconnected viewing to this explanation too, almost as if I was viewing what had happened now, but also what had happened in the past, for what had originally been looked at, the part that was clearly a bacteria injecting itself into a cell was doing so in an elf’s body.

  “Wait, you are saying that magical bacteria infected a human cell with these magical mitochondria? And that is what caused the change?” Penelope asked, her tone trying to make sense of everything that I was now explaining.

  Yet, even as Penelope spoke, I could almost see more history of the energy that had been used, discharged, and scattered about the converted supply depot storeroom now speaking to me. Well not speaking, that would be weird, instead it just released itself and seemed to try to reach out and touch other magical properties in the room. There were a lot of ambient properties that were left unused after so much alchemical activity. This did little more than allowing the energy to spread out and seemingly lie in wait for the next person that would encounter it.

  “No, that is not quite the case. In this case, I believe the bacteria is the Magical Mitochondria that has an outer coating to get into a host body, and then somehow inject itself into the nucleus of a cell?” I answered, trying to understand what I was seeing and explain how it got to the result. Honestly, it was a lot of speculation on my part. First bacteria with flimsy cell wall enters the host. Hosts send white blood cells to fight off the intruder. An intruder like a rogue makes a defiant stab at the approaching white blood cell. One that doesn’t do much damage but is felt. The only thing is that the blade used by the bacteria to pierce the white blood cell is itself, the true magical mitochondria, or brain of the infectious cell. The blade breaks off in the white blood cell, which then glides to the heart of the cell where it extracts itself into the nucleus and remains there, duplicating itself every time the cell goes through mitosis. This happens enough times and slowly the new magical mitochondria have a foothold within the host system. You know what, my mind trying to understand a magical infection via video game logic sounds ridiculous, even to me.

  At this point, I don’t know if this is just my mind able to read some background logic for coding related to the Blight, or a variation of the Blight, but there it is, my understanding of what is happening.

  “That makes no sense at all, how could you know that?” Rob asks.

  Once again, I must appreciate his honesty. He always made me try to slow down and take a moment to explain things in a way that made sense to everyone else, not named Cassie.

  Deep inhale.

  Hearing him speak, I took a deep breath, as I didn’t know how to answer him, but I did know that I would need to answer him. At least for my own peace of mind.

  “Actually, I can concur with the Doctor on her findings and assessments,” A ghostly gentle elf from one of the balcony viewing areas stated.

  Hearing the old elf speak, I was first surprised to see that an elf could speak the modern tongue, but then again it had been a few months of integration, and one month of forced integration at this point. So their knowledge of our tongue was not unheard of, at least not at this point.

  Gasps.

  Like a melodrama unfolding before my eyes, I could almost see the background scripted scene falling into place. As the forced subplot contrived by a writer whose section and efforts at world building were ultimately scrapped due to time and resources. But rather than delete the dialog and background as intended, they hid their script for just these moment.

  The scene felt forced, in the way a player piano would be forced to play music that scrolled past it, so too would this ghostly individual, and the others in the stand need to play out their parts, now that it had come to this, the big reveal. A plot point buried in time and dug up by one dog who wanted a chew toy. Speaking of which, I needed to inspect Umbra.

  “You see… it all began at the time of the great conclave, where the three greatest nations of the time were meeting right here to discuss the future of magic, the world and…”

  As the ghost spoke, I felt my mind getting distracted. First there was the fact that I could all but see the forced script being played out. The theatric pauses, and even the gasps from the crowed.

  Gasps!

  Yeah, it was all there, being queued into the order to be rendered, then the forced rendering. The only problem was there was a delay from the script to the rendering, which made this part feel fake. Almost like the Deolarians weren’t as real as normal NPCs, which was sad, as I really wanted them to be real. Well realer than this at least.

  Come on Umbra.

  I reached out to Umbra with the Mana Language, not wanting my own words to slow down or stop the trainwreck of a forced cutscene to last any longer than it needed to. For his part Umbra came over, albeit somewhat reluctantly. It was clear that Umbra seemed to feel that he shouldn’t be moving at this point and in turn just smiling and panting prettily but soon did as I asked as I began checking him with my third eye. Knowing what to look for, I could see that indeed a few of the bacteria cells had been able to infect Umbra, even from that minimal contact. This was sad, as it showed just how contagious this bacterium truly was.

  Focusing for a moment, I realized that there were multiple elements at play that I could focus on fixing. I could just eradicate the corrupted cells within Umbra and be done with it, that was option one. Option two would require me to get Umbra’s body to be able to detect these infected cells on its own and then get rid of them. A third option would be to create a way to harden the shell of the cell’s nucleus so it could prevent a second mitochondria from entering it, that seemed to be the best future option, but not something I could do right now.

  The first option, that of eradicating the bad cells was also easy, as it just meant finding those cells and surging the cell with so much energy that it erupts and dies. This would be the way that was the most like chemotherapy. A complete waste of an otherwise completely healthy cell that had been unjustly altered and now needed to be eradicated.

  Ultimately, I tried for a variant of the second option that could realistically only work if the body was less than fifty percent corrupted by this invasive bacterium.

  The problem came that this was not a typical problem the body faced. Most Healing focused on finding the bad parts, either clearly damaged, missing, or infected parts and replacing them slowly. The problem with this case was that the cell now thought of itself as completed. The mitochondria if anything just made it more powerful. And it did, there was apparently a lot of functionality in this second mitochondrial that might be worth evaluating under safe conditions. Unfortunately, I wanted to get rid of this before it could potentially cause permanent harm to Umbra. That’s when I began to work out a better solution for this problem.

  Focusing, I began weaving elements of Life, Mind, Light, and yes even Darkness into one spell. A spell that would momentarily awaken the Nucleus of every cell and let them be fully aware of their purpose in life, the fact that they were part of an ecosystem, and that said ecosystem was currently under attack.

  Why Darkness and Light? Well simple Light would be used on the cells that realized they were infected and be a beacon for other cells to help out, and Darkness would be used to target the Light cells and help destroy the invasive cells quickly.

  It made sense to me, and assuming the cells had the mentality of preserving the ecosystem they were a part of, self-sacrifice seemed like it would be possible, which is what the Mind aspect of the spell focused on. Bringing about consciousness to the cells, and letting them all realize that they were trying to survive as one.

  Whoosh!

  Just as the final components of the spell and how it would look and act filled my mind, I felt a mental click, letting me know I had a number of system messages. One no doubt was related to the last part of my Daily Quest, something that I was getting very tired about, but now that we were just one step away, I couldn’t be too frustrated.

  Then the next and in my mind, most important part, was the clicking into place of a spell. A spell that incorporated all the aspects I had noted, and as per normal came up with a completely stupid name that had almost no bearing on what I wanted the spell to do.

  Yeah, a spell with its own medical warning label, hardy har har.

  Still, a spell is a spell. I pause at this moment to see if I’ve missed anything important.

  “Our nation was at an impasse, for only now did we realize the danger that we faced. That’s when…”

  Nope, apparently they are still less than halfway through this dialog. I can see why it was cut, mainly because there would likely need to be an editor and someone to say, “are you sure we can’t cut out this speech entirely?”

  Moving forward, I realize I have time and cast.

  SWOOSH!

  I pause, watching as the magical effects wash over Umbra, and stare at him. Only to see that he is staring back at me with that same wide-eyed goofy smile.

  Pant, pant, pant.

  Then I see the moment the spell takes hold over the poor pup, as its face goes from a glowing smile to a bit of a cringe as it quivers.

  Then yes, pfft.

  Mild flatulence indeed.