Chapter 794 - If it was that easy

Sitting on the Abereth in outer space, Sofia watched her divinity slowly tick up from 98 to 99.

About time. I definitely need to find a way to resist divine penalty a bit. If I only get thirty points per filter… Maybe I should ask the essence-hoarding dragon? Stebron I think? Well.

First let’s go back…

Having had some time to think about a good way to return, she had an hypothesis to check.

Alright, so, if I remember correctly…

Using bone to cover herself up, Sofia encased herself in a crude bone shell. With a bone token floating next to her for an external point of view, she started sculpting the bone from memory.

It should look more or less like that.

Let’s see…

Opening up the lightmap, Sofia could only see the tiniest bubble around a single bright star, so to say, there was nowhere she could go aside from where she currently was.

Huh. Well, that’s not what I wanted to see, but it does show this plan should work. Good to know that my ‘current image’ is a pretty flexible thing.

I just need to correct it… Maybe sculpting the entire thing was dumb. I really only need to focus on the front that I remember well, only one image matters, if I understand things correctly…

Sofia spent a bit more time sculpting her bone shell by memory.

I’m confident this is what it looked like!

Yet when she checked the lightmap, it was still the same tiny bubble.

… What am I getting wrong? I even simulated the texture closely enough I think… Oh… The color, probably? Bone and stone aren't quite the same.

Hmm…

I don’t really have the experience to recolor the bone.

Well… Only light really matters, no? So the illusion type touchups from VPPV might be enough?

The power of using light to alter her appearance was perhaps her least used part of VPPV, ever since she got it, she mostly used it to make her hair less shiny, and to dim her own light when she didn’t want to be a walking lightstone. But it was pretty powerful in what it could change visually, which now proved to be invaluable.

With just a thought, Sofia altered the color of her bone shell to make it resemble polished stone.

That’s it, I don’t think I can get any closer.

Once again Sofia brought up the lightmap.

Got it!

This time the lightmap looked a lot more like what it had been the first time, although quite a bit cleaner, forming a single blurry trail.

Hmm, so, it should be somewhere near the front.

Maybe not so much front, since light goes in all directions, but… Basically I just need to find the emitter.

The process was surprisingly easy, just following where the stars were the most densely packed let Sofia find what she was looking for.

Perfect! Lock in the destination… And go!

Two orcs were having a good time sipping on afternoon beers in a tavern of the Obsidian mountain sect.

One of them glanced outside, looking at the setting sun behind the statue of ‘the boss and her sister’. Suddenly, the statue of the boss’ sister seemed to be a lot closer. As if a smaller version of it was hovering right on the other side of the window, instead of being in its place in the center of the plaza.

“Huh?”

Before the orc could even understand what he was looking at, the statue flew up out of sight in a heartbeat, revealing the real statue behind it, the same as it always was.

The orc pressed his eyes against the glass, looking up outside, but there was no trace of the flying statue.

“Did you drink too much, Zordeg?” his drinking companion asked.

“I– Maybe…”

Crap, I almost appeared inside of a window!

Absorbing her bone shell back into the halls, Sofia looked down at Zephir’s sect and the statue of herself she had used as her target ‘image of herself’.

“Truly a lifesaver. I’ll need to start leaving statues of myself everywhere.”

Pareth, I’m back, at Zephir’s sect currently, no issues.

Sofia quickly gave him a rundown of the power and the situation, and told him to get Alith into Zangdar, to save herself from having to fly back.

“So that’s what it was!” Alith said when Sofia explained the new power to her. “That’s some bullshit power right there. Well worth the trouble of getting it, I’d say.” 

“I have to agree, especially since the statue trick worked.”

“Yeah, should I just like… Keep a tiny statuette of you so you can teleport to me? Hell, maybe a simple drawing would do if it’s good enough?”

“No idea, maybe.”

“What about a statue of someone else?” Alith asked.

“... I’m not sure, we can try though.”

Sofia walked down some stairs to her statues room in Zangdar and grabbed one that would be easy to recreate with her bone armor.

“This statue of Victory should do, pretty easy to replicate.”

Alith nodded, “Bulky and almost no clothes, always amazes me the forms the Gods chose to take. Imagine you can look like whatever you want, and you still end up looking like Clint or some one-eyed orc.”

“You should have enough charisma to grow taller if you want yet you’re still a shortie.”

“Heh, being short’s pretty advantageous in battle, you know? It’s no wonder why the Dragons are always sized down.”

“The one time I saw a dragon seriously fight he was mountain-sized though,” Sofia said, storing Victory's statue to bring it outside.

“Tssk, let me have my excuses alright? I’m just too used to looking like this at this point, maybe if you’d asked me four years ago I might have wanted to grow taller but now… I’m almost thirty, basically a fossil. I don’t really care anymore.”

“Pfft. We hang out with people thousands of years old every day, we’re basically all still kids in their eyes. Will probably stay that way for at least a few centuries, too,” Sofia commented as she started walking out. “Still serious about your idea of dating Pareth, by the way? He’s even got a nice beard now.”

“Sure. Assuming he’s up for it. I just threw the idea out there, it’s up to him. Not a pressing issue either, I don’t exactly meet too many guys in between my cauldron and my alembics,” Alith said with a shrug, “Any idea what his take on it is?”

“Haven’t really brought it up again. I don’t know if he’s really interested in relationships at all,” Sofia answered, while setting up the statue outside and starting to sculpt a hollow replica of it.

“There’s hardly anything that seems to interest him at all, I’ve seen him try his hands at painting a few times, but mostly he’s just reading books.”

“Well, he was made with part of my soul and a part of Knowledge’s power, so I suppose an obsession with books was basically unavoidable for him. Aside from that… You could ask him for a spar like the old times. Training with weapons always puts him in a good mood.”

“Hmm. Not a bad idea, I need to get back into it anyway, almost done with the alchemy preparations.”

“Any more stat candies for the higher levels you think?” Sofia asked.

“Well, since you haven’t brought back any, my guess is probably not. My bet would be on one time use potions still being able to get a decent stat boost out of some of the rarest ingredients out there, but those can’t be easy to make, certainly not something I could cook up in my dingy lab even if I had the skill for it. Making stuff that works on mana hearts is surprisingly difficult.”

Sofia stopped sculpting for a second, before starting again, giving Alith a side-glance. “If you play your cards well in the next trial, you might just find yourself a new alchemy mentor. Ever heard of Fairy Hands?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I can’t say too much, but you should remember the name.”

“Anything you say, Sof.”

Done with her sculpting, Sofia stepped inside of the hollow statue of victory she had just made, and to avoid interferences, once she was fully enclosed inside, she used VPPV to change the color of her hair and skin, making all images of her from before invalid targets. Filling in the internal gaps with more bone, she wore the Victory statue like she would wear her bone armor.

She summoned the lightmap, completely blank.

Yeah figured.

With a sigh, Sofia stepped out of the statue, “No luck. ‘My’ image only, no teleporting to someone else by disguising like them.”

“Was worth an attempt,” Alith commented, “Too bad, could’ve just grabbed Jin right out of wherever the fuck he put himself in.”

“If it was that simple I don’t think Anna would have ended up how she did.”

“Yeah fair. If the actual god of mana couldn’t bring the guy back it probably wouldn’t be so easy… And by the way, if teleporting to statues of yourself work, wouldn’t it make the step two image anchors useless?” Alith asked.

“You’re making the assumption that you know what the anchors would do. Sure the name makes it sound like that but I doubt that’s all it is. All I got for now are these two words without an explanation so… I’ll see when I get there. Not going to be any time soon anyway, considering each transpose is a 100 Divinity penalty. I also need to find a way to enter the Deep at will…”

“Can’t be too hard, sure how you entered last time might not be something we can recreate but Nex entered it himself right? Just ask the guy what he did.”

“Honestly, that might be the easiest way… Just ask the admin…”