[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 180 - Revolutionary Invention

On the one hand, Freddy was glad that it wasn’t Emily. On the other, he was a bit frustrated that he couldn’t get it out of the way. 

Freddy looked up at the tall man with emerald eyes and purple hair. The man’s living plant clothes emitted a rather pleasant herbal scent from up close, and he almost succumbed to the intrusive thought to lean in and get a good whiff. 

“He-hello…” the man greeted, looking quite a bit more nervous than he had the time he introduced himself in front of everyone. “Mr. Cliff.” He gave a stiff nod. “I was wondering if you had some time for a conversation.”

“Sure thing,” Freddy said. “Come in, Mr. Price. Or should I call you Reginald?”

“You can call me Reggie,” the man said, shrugging a bit awkwardly. “Most people who know me call me that.”

“Right. Well, come on in.”

The servants were called upon, the table was served, and their conversation started. 

Reginald kept shooting Freddy awkward glances, but for the most part, he kept eyes trained on a nearby charcuterie board. Then, with his arm going back and forth as if he was rethinking it, he eventually settled on reaching for a slice of cheese that he gingerly took a bite out of. 

Freddy was quite taken aback by the man’s behavior. Was this an act the man put on to make Freddy drop his guard? At any rate, it was so bizarre that he found himself at a loss for what to say. Thus, he settled on following the man’s example and focused on the cheese. “Is the cheese good?”

“What? Oh, yes… It’s really good. I love cheese.”

“Right. I also love cheese.” He reached for a piece of cheese of his own. “Mmm. Tasty.”

“Fun fact—most high-end cheeses today are actually under the purview of a pretty major superpower of nature-affinity archhumans. I once had the pleasure of studying alongside one of their elders.”

“That’s cool,” Freddy said. “You an academic, then?”

The man chuckled awkwardly. “To be honest, I’m more an academic than a fighter, haha… It’s just that my family doesn’t tolerate weakness, so I’m forced to keep up with my combat training.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Partially,” Reggie said. “I’m here for a number of reasons.” He suddenly grew quiet. “My family owns Pricetech. One of the reasons I’m here is to test one of our newest inventions.” He gave a lopsided grin. “I already made my offers to the others, but only Georgie agreed to participate. I think you would be even more suited for it, though, so I will openly admit that, should you accept my offer, I will owe you.”

Freddy quirked an eyebrow. “And this invention is…?”

“I’ll get into that in a moment,” he said, suddenly regaining a bit of confidence. “But first, I’d like to ask you how much you know about soul apertures?”

“I know a bit. I know about the four most important ones. There’s the primary conduit; that’s the one where the ether from kills and gathering comes through. Then there’s the nether hatch through which the soul can project into the Netherecho. Authority roots, of course, the little veins all the essence flows through. And the gastrointestinal complex, which is how the soul digests aura from foods and medicines. That’s all, right?” he asked innocently.

For his part, Reginald looked like he’d swallowed a fly as he heard Freddy go off. “Uh. That’s… Okay, uhm… You’re not wrong, but there’s no such thing as the ‘most important’ soul apertures—they all play a crucial role. It’s like, which is more important: the heart or the brain? Can’t live without either!” He chuckled awkwardly. “But those are, indeed, the most researched ones… Although, of course, authority roots are different for every affinity, and the primary conduit is technically two different conduits which act very differently depending on whether you’re killing things in reality or the netherecho, and not to even mention the fact that the gastrointestinal complex is made up of 84 known and likely more unknown highly distinct apertures—”

“Sorry, no offense, but I’m not an etherologist. I’d love to know more about this stuff, of course, but if this isn’t related to your offer, I’d prefer you to get to the point.”

The man’s smile tightened. “Right. Sorry. I was rambling. It’s just that, you know, I’m quite passionate about education. Really, it’s a shame how much misinformation goes around and how misunderstood some things are to this day. I’ve studied a lot of fields—I’m actually in my forties already—starting with general etherology, then biology, entomology, botany, then specific courses in nature-affinity etherology… For a while I even had a phase where I was highly into social studies…” The man continued rambling about his extensive academic background, and by this point, Freddy was starting to get really frustrated.

Holy shit, can this guy shut the fuck up? 

But he kept his mouth sealed and listened, politely nodding and trying his best to be a good listener, occasionally throwing the man a shocked “Oh, really?” or an impressed “Wow, that’s incredible!”

Despite the awkwardness, Reginald was still someone with a powerful background, and Freddy would rather stay on the man’s good side. 

“… and that’s how I finally ended up joining soul studies at my father’s behest. I was actually one of the 76 assistant researchers who helped develop our newest product! And I know that doesn’t seem impressive, but for someone without a specific talent for ethertech and at only the second star, that easily puts me into the upper—”

“The newest product!” Freddy practically shouted. “Yes, I am so so so excited to hear more about that! So how about we start talking about it?”

The man blinked. “Oh, right! Yes! Just a second!” The man focused on his storage ring, and in the next moment, a small ring appeared in his hand. “Here, fetch!” he said as he threw the ring at Freddy. 

Freddy was about to catch it, but something about the ring felt dangerous. It gave off a distinctly unpleasant aura, which caused him to reflexively kick himself away from the table, causing the chair to scoot back along the floor several feet before coming to a stop. 

The ring fell right on the floor before him. 

“What?” Reginald asked. “Why did you do that?”

Freddy’s eye twitched. “You just threw a ring with a highly unpleasant aura at me. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t know why you expect me to stand in the way of a dangerous object you suddenly threw at me without warning.” His words were sharp. 

“Oh. Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry!” The man rushed to apologize. “I messed up. Sorry, let me get that for you.” He got off the chair.

Freddy raised a hand. “This thing isn’t going to hurt me if I pick it up, right?”

The man paused. “No, no. It’s perfectly safe, I promise! I wouldn’t dare to try to hurt you, especially not under an adjudicator’s protection!”

Sighing, Freddy bent over to pick up the ring. It was a rather thick, white ring, with highly complex rune etching all across its surface. He didn’t put it on, but even just holding the item, he could feel that it was trying to do something to him. It was then that he finally realized what he was holding. “This is a true cursed item?”

The man again winced. “No—well I mean, yes, but the term ‘true cursed item’ is redundant. This is just a cursed item. Most etherologists refer to items that empower users as ‘artifacts’ nowadays. People tend to confuse the terms since cursed items are the ingredients we use to craft artifacts. Get it? Cursed items are called that because they hurt the users. Meanwhile, artifacts are actually useful. Pretty big difference between the two.”

“So this thing hurts the user?” he asked as he raised the ring

“Yes, but no.” The man pointed at the ring. “You will notice that it has rune etching on it.”

Freddy looked down, and suddenly, his eyebrows jumped. “Wait, you managed to enchant a cursed item?”

This should be impossible. Cursed items couldn’t hold enchantments, and enchanted items couldn’t hold an aura. This was common knowledge, and despite numerous attempts, nobody has ever managed to succeed at fusing organic aura and enchantments. 

The man stuttered. “Uh, no. It’s—well, this was never impossible to do. It’s impossible to enchant artifacts. Cursed items with a technically negative impact on the user aren’t susceptible to such limitations. Although the process of making the item is indeed highly complex, and you’re right to be impressed.”

Freddy squinted at the man. “You said ‘technically negative impact’?”

The man snapped his fingers. “Right! I’m getting to that. But first, tell me, are you familiar with pre-ascension ether discharge?”

“I am. In fact, I’ve experienced it myself.” 

Pre-ascension ether discharge was what happened to mortals who tried killing monsters. Given that the soul was still sealed, there was nowhere for ether from kills to go. Thus, the body simply discharged it in a highly unpleasant process.

“Oh, you have?” the man asked with a sympathetic wince. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be. Anyway, yeah, you were saying?”

“Okay, so… Recently, we made a breakthrough. Until now, we had no idea how the ether discharge process worked. And in researching it, we discovered something amazing! We discovered a previously unknown soul aperture. And guess what we found?”

“I can not even begin to guess.”

“We found regressive authority roots.”

Freddy looked distinctly unimpressed. “And those do… what exactly?”

“You know how monsters have a default affinity and talent based on their species?”

“Yeah?”

“And how sapient species like humans don’t?”

Freddy frowned. “Yes?”

The man’s smile grew radiant. “Humans have the tailbone despite having no tail. And we also have authority roots for a default affinity! Two affinities, actually!” The man’s whole body was engaged as he enthusiastically shared the news. 

Freddy nearly leaped out of the chair. “Does this ring somehow awaken our base talent and affinities!?” 

The man’s smile faltered. “What? No. That’s impossible. These regressive authority roots exist, but they’re regressive. As long as we’re sapient, it is most likely that we can’t access them at all.”

“Oh.” He sat back down. “Well that’s disappointing.”

“No, you don’t get it! This is really really cool! Apparently, our default affinities are life and death! We can’t know what the default talent is, but we were able to measure that we would have a 449% default star essence capacity! That puts humans pretty damn high in the monster food chain given our size!”

“Okay, yeah, that is pretty cool,” he surrendered. 

Humans, as well as all other sapient species, have the exact same star capacity of 100%.

But that didn’t apply to monsters. 

Some, like the gorels he’d fought back in Nova York, had less at only about 70% compared to a sapient species. But others, like that leviathan Freddy killed, had essence in the thousands for every star they had. 

In fact, that leviathan was likely only a one-star of its species. 

Naturally, this didn’t necessarily make monsters more powerful than humans. The world, as Freddy found out in his meeting with Insanity, operated on a kind of logic of relative fairness. Sapience was, well, overpowered. The kind of intelligence humans had that allowed them to develop highly complex abilities, synergies, items and strategies was something that more than compensated for the overall lack of total essence. 

“So… how does this tie into the topic of the conversation?” Freddy asked, raising the ring. 

Reginald straightened his back. “Have you ever heard of a valvular conduit?”

“You mean a tesla valve?”

It was a special kind of tube that twisted in on itself. Due to the way it worked, fluids flowed significantly faster in one direction than the other. 

Reginald nodded. “Because souls operate in imaginary dimensions, it isn’t quite the same thing, but to simplify, that ring attaches a soul aperture equivalent of a tesla valve to the reality phase of your soul’s primary conduit.”

Freddy’s eyebrows jumped. “Isn’t it supposed to be impossible to alter the primary conduit?”

“Yes. But this doesn’t alter it. It just adds an attachment to the end.”

“Again, shouldn’t that be impossible?”

“No—it is impossible to block the primary conduit. Due to the way it’s arranged, nothing can impede ether from entering the soul through the primary conduit. It is fundamentally impossible. But this ring doesn’t block anything from coming in. Rather, it stops the ether from coming out.” 

That… sounded quite concerning. 

The primary conduit was like a breathing hole—things went in and out. When an archhuman killed a monster, the ether entered the soul. There, a small part of it went to latent aura, a small part went to progressing the star, and finally, it was squeezed for about 1% worth of essence before finally being expelled out the same hole.

Stopping it from leaving sounded really damn bad. There was a reason why the soul expelled most of the ether. Because it simply couldn’t handle that much.

“I can see that you’re concerned,” Reginald stated. “And I understand why. But this is where the discovery of regressive authority roots comes in.” The man grinned. “You remember how I mentioned pre-ascension ether discharge?”

“Yes?”

“Well, what I didn’t mention was that it happened through the regressive authority roots. And not only that, but because it went through inert authority roots, it is completely purified. And most importantly, for a few brief moments, that ether hangs around in reality. That ring allows us to replicate this ether discharge in archhumans. 

“Because the soul is open, there is an order of magnitude more ether discharged during the process. By slowing the rate at which the soul expels ether through the primary conduit, we can force the soul to expel it through the regressive authority roots, and then, with that ring, we can collect it to make this.” With all the drama an awkward nerd could muster, the man extracted an item from his storage ring.

Freddy’s eyes widened at the sight of it. It was the size and shape of a coin, but made of dazzling, gradient white ether. “Holy shit,” he muttered.

The man nodded aggressively. “Holy shit, indeed. Just one of these bad boys sells for almost a million dollars. They’re rather difficult to create since they require killing a large number of monsters in a short period of time, since the valvular conduit doesn’t stop the soul from expelling ether, it just slows it down. Which means you have to reach a critical point to trigger the expulsion process.”

“What do you want for this ring?” Freddy immediately asked, trying not to reveal just how desperately he wanted to get his hands on this ring.

He didn’t need to be told the value of these coins to know they were going to change the world. Even with his limited knowledge, Freddy could think of a dozen ways an alchemist could use these coins as a reagent. And that was just in alchemy. 

There were a million different uses for an object like that. 

What Freddy wanted to see was whether he could feed them to Bloodshed. 

“About that…” the man said. “Well, it’s not for sale.”

Just as Freddy was about to try arguing, the man raised a hand. “But! You can have one as long as you help me with an experiment.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Keep it on throughout the length of the invasion. It has a bunch of trackers on it that will measure its operational parameters. I’ll give you a new one and you will return that one to me after the crisis is over. We need the info for further development and research.”

Freddy scowled. “Will it track private information about me?”

“No! I swear! I will even sign a disclosure in front of the adjudicator, if it will keep you at ease.”

“What’s the catch then?” he asked.

“We-well… You told me you already experienced ether discharge once…” Reginald said leadingly. 

But Freddy didn’t catch on. “What? Will it injure my soul, or?”

“No, no… it’s just going to hurt. A lot.”

“Oh. Yeah, I don’t give a shit about that. I’ll happily do it.”

“Are you sure? You should test it first. Because this will hurt a lot more than the discharge you experienced as a mortal. And there’s no way to predict when it will happen. If it happens at the wrong moment, it might distract you during a fight.”

Freddy just shrugged. “Can’t I just take it off if I’m going up against something that might kill me?”

The man winced at that. “That would… be a little problematic, since that kind of stress-testing is exactly the kind of thing we’d like to take a closer look at.” He gave a tense sigh. “I guess you could if you’re up against something particularly nasty… but if the final measurements end up too biased or low-quality, I won’t give you the ring for free. Does that sound fair?”

Freddy thought about it. “I guess that’s fair.”

“Brilliant!” the man said. “Should we go sign the papers?”

“Sure thing,” Freddy said as he pulled the contact crystal out of his pocket. “Adjudicator,” he called. “Would you mind coming down to my room for a moment? Mr. Price would like your presence for legal reasons.”

The crystal was silent for a few moments. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” Freddy said as he hung up. It was then that he realized that Reginald was looking at him a bit strangely. “What?”

“Oh. Well… I’m just surprised you have such direct contact with an adjudicator.” The man frowned a bit. “I am rather curious about something. You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.”

“Feel free to ask.”

“As I’ve mentioned, I’m currently in soul studies. One of the subjects I’ve spent a lot of time researching aura. The others might not be as familiar with the minutiae of aura behavior as I am, so I doubt they understand the severity of your display earlier today. To put it bluntly, your soul is way above the theoretical maximum threshold of power for a two-star archhuman. What I want to ask is… how?”

Freddy was caught by surprise at the question. Perhaps it was the insane number of abilities he had. Or whatever Insanity had done to him with those vision. Or maybe it was the fact that he not only had three spirit abilities, but three unique spirit abilities, even if he didn’t know what that actually meant. 

Whatever the answer might be, he didn’t want to volunteer such information about himself. Thus, he simply shrugged. “I honestly have no idea.”

The adjudicator arrived before long, they signed the papers, and Freddy got the ring. He was dying to test one of those coins on Bloodshed. If he could, he’d run right outside to go find a monster. But he had a couple of problem children to take care of. 

With the deal out of the way, he bid the adjudicator and Reginald a farewell and turned around to check on the others. 

It was at that moment that the doors to his room suddenly burst open. “They’re finally out of the way,” Emily Umbra said as she sweetly grinned at him. She walked into the room and stepped a few meters away from him, smiling ear to ear. “Now, it’s my turn.”