Sell you a Bridge chapter 158

February 6th 2011 New Genesis 11:00 PM EDT

The next month flew by. We basically spent the whole thing with Dreamer,  getting to know her better. We held off on having any more sex while we  got better acquainted. Once she was satisfied Zee felt a little  embarrassed that she'd rushed so much, and while she still wanted to  keep the pretty goddess she wasn't in such a hurry anymore. Dreamer for  her part was just a very affectionate person, and even without sex she  just enjoyed cuddling and being close to us, which I had to admit was a  pretty nice feeling.

That said,  Zee and I still had sex regularly, and the tantric rituals supplied  thousands of points per day. By the time the month ended, even with  consistent enchantments and regular purchases, I'd managed to rack up a  hundred thousand plus points. It was definitely a milestone for me, and a  staggering one. Meanwhile I'd been picking up pills and serums for the  girls to enhance their divinity, bringing them closer and closer to  being actual goddesses. Both of them had long since reached hybrid  status, being half divine in their own right.

That  was part of what I was doing at the moment actually. Dreamer had  informed us last night that her friends had reached out and were going  to be back in Supertown tomorrow, and I'd decided to use the hundred  thousand points I had to buy a big upgrade, I was just trying to figure  out what the hell I should get. I scrolled through the emails, looking  for anything that was in my price range that would be powerful or  useful. Not just the emails from New Genesis, even things from Gotham  were on the list, a hundred thousand was an absurd amount of points to  spend.

Granted  I couldn't become part kryptonian or but a Mother Box or anything,  there were still plenty of powerful options well out of my price range,  but I was excited to see some of the options I had. I was looking for  something powerful and that fit with my current build, and after  searching for quite a while, I found an email I was pretty sure fit the  bill. It was buried in the back of my spam folder, most likely from one  of my early forum dives, and it seemed basically perfect for my  powerset.

I clicked the email to read through it just to make sure. Master  the Void. The ancient secrets of the space between worlds are a mystery  beyond any other. To know the Void is to know creation itself. Use the  techniques contained in this book to call out to the nothingness between  worlds and bend it to your will. Shape the void into terrible creatures  and fierce attacks, unleashing the power of nothingness. The person who  holds this book is chosen of the void, and they alone can use this  power. The description was amazing, and I'd have been  interested in it no matter what, but I'd been drawn to it most because  of one thing.

The  price had gone down. Immensely. I remembered this email from before and  it had cost millions of points. The site in question sent emails  promising unique and mysterious tomes. It was basically a whole library  of scams supposedly from the collection of some powerful sorcerer and  each book had "requirements" that they would give the bearer the power  to fulfill. They basically gave you a power. The reason that was  important was that the massive reduction in price meant I could ALREADY  tap into the void. This was a book on how to use the powers I already  had.

Being  able to make constructs and cast spells with my void form would be a  huge boost to my powers. Combined with my stealth skills a tanky summon  would be a massive help in any combat situation. My clones were  invaluable for scouting or assassination, but in a straight fight they  were useless. I didn't have the energy to throw out waves of disposable  clones to bury my enemies, that would be a terrible use of my points.  But if I could make void constructs to tank in fights I could move  around the battlefield and take out my targets as I saw fit.

Wally  could fill the role of tank in our party theoretically, or at least  dodge tank, but having a meat shield would be an absolute get in terms  of our survivability as a group. Not to mention this was just a cool  power set and the book would be an amazing resource to learn more about  how my void abilities worked. I also may or may not have been looking  forward to the teeth rattling fuck session I would get from my magic  obsessed girlfriend when I introduced her to an entirely new branch of  casting.

Without  any further thought I bought the thing. I winced as a hundred thousand  points were sucked out of my soul, leaving me incredibly low at a measly  one thousand and feeling very lightheaded at their absence. I also knew  about ten million would have vanished from my bank account. The mages  redoubt collection touted unique manuscripts and the books sold for  millions. I expected other people buying them mostly wanted them as  keepsakes or just assumed they didn't have the talent to use them, but  for me ten million was a drop in the bucket.

As  per usual there was a knock on the door right after I spent the points.  I strolled over to the door to my room, careful not to wake Zee or  Dreamer (lack of sex aside she liked joining us to sleep at night) and  pulled the door open, looking for my box. The container outside my door  wasn't hard to spot, but I almost whistled at how fucking huge it was.  Luckily my strength was over a hundred, so it was basically weightless  anyway, despite its exaggerated size, and when I picked it up to carry  it into the room I didn't even strain.

I  set it down carefully on the square wooden table in the room so as not  to wake the girls, and looked down at it with a grin. As per usual, the  box was gorgeous. A huge black wooden monstrosity of a think carved with  faintly glowing green runes I absolutely could not read. The edges of  the chest and the lock were made of some kind of strange matte black  metal that seemed to eat the light. As I stared down at literally the  edgiest looking piece of construction I'd ever seen I had an unpleasant  thought.

Was I  leaning too hard into the devil ghost darkness thing? It was beginning  to get a little macabre. I was committed to my build, and it was just a  good investment to buy abilities that synergized with each other well,  but maybe my next power should be something a bit less...Poe-ish. I  shook my head, dismissing the thought. I was awesome, and all my powers  were super cool. Being dark and mysterious didn't make me an edgelord,  and the fact that people had independently ascribed me the power so  summon literal crows had nothing to do with how chuuni I cam across.  Probably.

Still, I would try to  find something a bit less death and darkness oriented for my next  ability, as long as it was still stealth or void related it would still  synergize, and branching out seemed like a smart call. The box had a key  in the lock, also dark metal, and a quick turn caused it to pop open, a  puff of dust coming out from under the edges as I opened the creaking  lid. I gave it a five out of ten for originality but a ten for style.  Inside was the book itself, sitting on a red velvet cushion, again not  original but stylish.

The  book itself though...that was much more interesting. It was black,  bound in some sort of leather darker than most things I'd seen, but what  really caught me was the pages. Hammered sheets of matte black metal  swam with white shimmering runes and symbols that climbed and swirled  around the pages. I'd never seen a book with pages that moved before,  but as I watched I could see that there were literally thousands of  different runes and that each combination of two or more of them was a  unique idea or concept.

I  somehow understood these codes, and where a rune alone meant one thing,  and another meant something else, three had a third meaning, and based  on the pattern the meaning of the first and third could form yet another  cypher and could change the meaning of the first. My speed reading,  perfect memory, reflexes, detective mode, aura sight, and a knack for  storing and replaying information caused by my Outer Body training  method all combined to allow me to take in the literal libraries worth  of information on each page.

I  sat down, scanning the first page and then checking the second,  enraptured. Even for me it was staggeringly complicated. The shifting  code changed not only with each symbol, but each page altered the  meaning and context of the one before it in insane ways. One page was  ten books worth of knowledge, and two was a hundred. A third page was a  thousand, and then another hundred when combined with the first. I could  literally read this book a thousand times and never be finished  learning, and even with all my powers it would take me probably years to  finish my first read through.

The  information on page one was simple and straightforward once I finished  committing it all to memory (something that took me an hour). It was a  series of interlocking complicated formuli that allowed one to create a  basic construct from void. In this case, that construct was called a  void pup. It was apparently a baby cornerhound with nearly no combat  abilities, but it would serve as a good foundation for a persons first  use of void, and was less dangerous than most of the other magics in  here.

Void  magic was...complex. It seemed to be almost math, but in a weird and  kind of nonsensical way that was barely math at all. Like I was trying  to use numerical values to describe the dimensions of a shape that  didn't exist, except instead of numbers I was using some sort of  universal source code. The magic itself functioned through the use of  the same ridiculous thousand symbol language that made up the insane  book. I actually had to reread the damn page after I finished because I  realized halfway into prep for casting that I only had half the spell  because I needed to read it backwards too.

Once  I had that down though I followed the steps and figured out why this  was the first spell. The process for calling the void was complicated  and long winded and this spell acted as a sort of training wheels  example. When I shifted to a humanoid void form (allowing me to complete  this spell in only a few hours instead of having to spend weeks safely  harvesting void essence) I felt the spell call out to a sort sentient  void spirit to animate the darkness I was holding.

The  spirit created a sort of template to lay the void over so I could see  the details of how it worked and how it was shaped for future spells.  When I was finished with the casting the spirit...not solidified exactly  but became more static, a small dog made of liquid shadows that ran  around on the table in circles, looking adorable. The hound could grow  into an actual cornerhound through regular void feedings.

It  was considered a starter pet for a void shaper, and I had to admit it  was cute. It was also energetic and funny, at least funny enough to  distract me from the noise. Which was why I didn't hear my girlfriends  wake up. It was fine though, Zee announced their presence easily enough  with an ear piercing shriek of "PUPPY!" at a volume that made me wince  even as the glee in her tone made me smile. I rolled my eyes and turned  to the love of my life, holding out the little dark pup as she scooped  it up and snuggled it, cooing to it happily. Ok, so maybe there were two  reasons I liked the spell.