Chapter 9 - An Irreversible Decision

  Nearly three hours into the process as Uncle Galloway worked on Raiju, he started swearing under his breath as red lights started to pop up on his System console. “Are you fucking kidding me? There’s no way this is right. That should have worked!” He hissed through clenched teeth as he turned to look at me over in the corner of the room.

  “Was Raiju always a Unique monster, or did something happen to make her that way?” He ruffled his hair nervously. “I’m guessing it’s the latter, but I have to ask.”

  “She was just a runty [Gale Wolf] until Dominus gave her the spark to become Unique.” I started pacing. “What’s going on? Why can’t you heal her?”

  “You’d think someone as powerful as she is would have done a better job splicing the patch she did on the poor thing’s soul, I’ve got a feeling it was a mess before getting slammed by that…what was it?”

  “The [Wraith King], a being who would have broken out of the Tower and ravaged the entire country if we hadn’t defeated it.” I seethed. “Speak carefully, Dominus has done nothing but good for me and mine. To speak ill of her is to do the same to me.” I leaned on him a bit with my [Lordly Aura] unconsciously.

  He held up his hands hastily. “No disrespect meant! I’m just amazed to see an artificial advancement to Unique. If someone as wise and powerful as her had this much trouble? No mortal will ever succeed. This bit of healing I’m doing has eliminated an entire field of magibiology, there are thousands of researchers working on just that as we speak and I just learned it was impossible.” The panel behind him began to beep and his face went from calm to worried in a blink.

  “Time is of the essence, and you’re the closest thing she has to family, so the decision lies with you.” He folded his arms before grabbing one forearm with his opposite hand in some sort of nervous gesture. “Your parents raised you right, so I’m going to be straight with you.”

  I nodded and he continued without missing a beat.

  “There’s no way to keep Raiju as she is, it’s just not possible.” He waved his hand and the System window he’d been working on moved where we could both see it. He pointed at the right side. “It says here that her Soul Integrity score is seven percent. To rebuild so much of her soul in a body like she has?” He motioned to her crumpled form with a sigh. “Would be the height of folly. It’s just not capable of handling the work she’d need. Plus, she’d dip below the five percent mark well before I finished prepping her for the process.”

  “What’s so special about the five percent mark?” Fear crept into my voice. “What are you saying? Can’t you save her?”

  He reached out to put a hand on my shoulder, but I swatted it away harder than I meant to with a loud slapping sound. He held up his hands. “Sorry, old habits.” He turned to the System window and flicked it to the right to reveal a pair of figures separated by a single line in the middle from top to bottom, a canine figure on one side and a humanoid figure on the other. “I can save her, but this is the only way I can do so.”

  “What am I looking at? Why are you wasting time!?” I started to panic, but took a moment with [Flash Focus] to calm down as my eyes darted over the diagrams and the writing around them. When I let [Flash Focus] go, I knew what I was looking at. “You have to let her body die, don’t you?”

  He did a double take before his eyes went wide. “Was that [Flash Focus]?” I nodded and he shook his head. “Your dad used to use that to win every damn game we ever played together. I’m guessing you read the options?”

  “Let her go back to being a [Gale Wolf], which will basically shred her personality into tiny strips and shove them into a much smaller body with less than ten percent of the capabilities of her old form, or…” I trailed off before sighing. “You found something else in her soul, didn’t you?”

  He nodded as he pointed to the ears and tail on the humanoid form. “Deep in her soul, there was this image. It makes up one percent of her whole soul and she’s protected it, even with all the damage done. It’s basically a core personality trait, even if she doesn’t look like the image outside, she wishes she did.” He seemed to be getting excited. “I think. No, I know if I let her soul reincarnate into the next pod like I was planning, this is what her body will take the shape of on its own. I just need your go ahead so I can prepare the necessary materials.”

  Why does her soul have the shape of a humanoid when her body is so amazing? She’s so huge and powerful. Why would she want to be a weak humanoid like the rest of us?

  “Let me check one thing first.” I held up a hand to the male dryad.

  He flicked the System window back and nodded. “Make it fast, she’ll drop below seven percent stability in less than two minutes and then things will get even dicier than they already are.”

  Pushing half my Mana into [Dominus’ Insight], I sent her a pair of questions directly.

  Is this what Raiju wants? Will she be happier as a humanoid?

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  Unsurprisingly, the two answers couldn’t have been more different.

  [Is this what our girl wants? Yes, with all of her being. She wants to be able to walk next to you in cities without everyone thinking she’s some stupid monster. It is her most heartfelt wish, but it won’t be all sunshine and roses. Even as a Primal Elf, which is what she’ll end up as, people will stare at her and think she’s different, but as long as you don’t scorn her? She’ll be the happiest she’s ever been. You’re her entire world and you always will be as long as you want to be.

  Galloway is correct, the soul patch I did on Raiju wasn’t my finest work, so don’t hold his inability to fix her soul against him. No one could have done it besides another deity, and they would have taken far more than they gave to do it. This bit of soul surgery will consume the bond you two have, but don’t fret, it’ll let her form a fantastic SS-ranked Class that should let her have access to her old body should she need it. If she offers to reestablish the bond, don’t push her away, or she’ll break.]

  Gathering up my courage, I nodded slowly toward my uncle. “Let her soul do what it wants. What can I do to help?”

  He clapped his hands excitedly. “Just you being here is having a stabilizing effect on her, so if you could sit on the wood between the pods, that would be for the best. Your bond should act as a natural pathway for her soul to travel through if you place a hand on each of them.” He mimed holding his hands down low to each side. “The process shouldn’t take long after I get it started.”

  “OK.”

  I walked calmly and used [Air Step] to get up on top of the pods before settling between them. I looked down at Raiju’s lupine form and winced. She looked so small all curled up like that despite her size. It was like her soul was already gone and I was merely looking at a soulless husk.

  “It’s going to be OK. I’m right here.” I laid a hand on the crystalline hatch on both sides of myself.

  Uncle Galloway stepped back from the console and pulled a couple bags of powder from his spatial ring and spun slowly to pour a perfect circle in two halves. [Essence Reading] told me they were powdered [Starlight Diamonds] and crushed [Soulblooms]. As he spun, he muttered under his breath, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  When he stopped, he pointed a hand at each pod. “Raiju, born a [Gale Wolf] and bonded to the [Suzerain] by choice, I order you to [Reincarnate]!”

  Green and silver ropes of energy sprang out from his left hand and slammed into the pod containing Raiju’s crumpled form. Her body began to convulse and tiny motes of gold, blue, and silver began to pour toward where I had my hand placed on the top of the pod. The moment they touched me, I knew we’d done what she hadn’t even been able to hope for.

  We’re granting her wish. This is what she’s wanted since before the Tower. I kicked myself for not realizing she wasn’t happy. That’s why she was so reserved, I figured she just didn’t like being inside for so long. How stupid could I have been?

  The stream of motes increased and I felt Raiju’s emotions clearly. She was so happy, her soul was practically singing. Unable to contain the worry and pain in my own soul, I sang along. It was an ancient elven nursery rhyme, something all elves learned from their mothers in the first few years of their incredibly long lives, something from the time before the elves knew war. It spoke of a time before the System, when natural magic ruled the world.

  “Silken hair and gentle eyes,

  Beneath the sun and open skies.

  A family bound, a love so pure,

  Nature’s beauty, ever sure.

  Laughter echoes, hearts aflame,

  A bond of love, a cherished name.

  Underneath the forest's shade,

  A family’s love will never fade.”

  As I sang, I felt her soul rejoice and the motes of her soul began to rush out of my other hand into the empty pod. The moment he saw it happen, Uncle Galloway unleashed the same green and silver energy toward the new pod and I saw a core start to form with his power as the shell. Raiju’s soul poured into the shell until it was fit to burst.

  Despite what I saw on the other side, I openly wept as Raiju’s old form began to dissolve into the world. When her massive form was gone, all that was left was a silver box with a bright brass nameplate atop it with her name on it.

  “She dropped loot, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” I chuckled through the tears before wrenching my gaze back to where she was now working on forming a new body.

  Over the next five hours, Uncle Galloway and I worked together to provide the Mana Raiju needed to finish her body, which ended up being far more than either of us had bargained for. As he had to keep a constant stream of energy on her new form, I had to figure out how to pass my impressive Mana pool onto him. Less than five minutes before he would have run out of Mana, I figured it out and actually unlocked my first new Skill that I hadn’t stolen or taken from a scroll since I learned [Skill Dominance]. It was called [Mana Conduit] and it let me give or take Mana to/from another willing target.

  We still ended up taking a pair of [Megara’s Mana Potion VII]’s and that was just barely enough to let Raiju form her new body. We sagged to the ground, back to back as we stared at the pod containing Raiju’s Primal Elven body, just as Dominus promised. There was a sort of fog giving her privacy, but we couldn’t have cared less. We were just glad the process seemed to have succeeded.

  “Now, we wait.” Uncle Galloway pulled a pair of [Craigspot Cigars] from his spatial ring and handed one to me as he lit up his own. “Congrats, you brought a new life into the world.”

  For some reason, I didn’t want to join him, despite loving the smell of a good [Craigspot], a particularly fruity cigar I grew up smelling as he and Dad would smoke while they hung out. It felt…wrong, for some reason.

  I gently pushed his hand away with a laugh. “Save that for when I have a kid, alright? This is Raiju, just with a new shell containing her awesomeness.” I hesitated, then decided to leave it at that.

  We sat there for another hour in companionable silence, surrounded by the sweet smelling smoke of my childhood.