28 - Regarding Souldregs [Cherno]

Notably, a great swath in the south-west was outlined as nationless territory; both Jas’raba and Audunpoint itself were marked as major locations of interest. Apparently, Audunpoint’s source of water was a giant artificial river which pulled water from seaside marshes and purified it to freshwater conditions. These marshes, according to the map, were consumed by a “Stormsalt Forest”. This hostile-sounding environment transitioned into normal temperate forests as the canal pushed inland.

From the continent, she moved to material pertaining to the world at large. That was when things started to click.

Zastreon, as it seemed, was a planet substantially larger than Krahe’s Earth, and was split down the middle by a truly vast megastructure called the Banishment Wheel. It was so called due to its role in banishing the influence of “Kenomaic entities” from the material world, with Archon Flashes and the resulting Hazard Zones being symptoms of temporary tears in the wheel’s barrier. The geography tome also included a note on the Wheel’s history; in particular, the fact it constantly rotated and thus had significant effects on trade routes.

What she found on Banishers lined up with what she already knew. New information on them mainly pertained to Pilgrim Banishers, specifically the reason for the “Pilgrim” name: They would first emerge from the Wheel with their horizontal eyes closed, and pursue a specific task to completion, before awakening as sapient creatures. Pilgrim Banishers also apparently tended to possess fragmentary memories of other worlds. The fact this was a footnote raised some alarm with Krahe; was reincarnation just part of known natural law in this world? What if she came across someone from Megacity Gamma, what then? She banished the thought and moved onto souldregs.

Knowledge of the nature of souls seemed limited, but also well-established. They were, apparently, made up of two parts: the Material and Immaterial soul. Upon a living being’s death, the Immaterial Soul would depart to Kenoma, while the Material Soul would be left behind and slowly dissipate over time as the body decayed. It was this Material Soul which could be extracted as souldregs.

Curiously, it seemed that the souldregs of most sapient beings were extremely undesirable for any practical applications, which she learned from a section on why souldreg harvesting focused on animals and monsters:

“The souls of baseline humans, saurians, evoy, and even Gor'un Baneworms (further referred to as “humanoids”) leave behind marginal souldregs with a very high average impurity, making it impractical at best to focus on harvesting humanoids specifically. Harvesting of humanoid souldregs is still practiced as part of post-battle scavenging, but humanoid souldregs are by law required to be stored in clearly marked storage devices. As a result, humanoid souldregs are typically rendered down and denatured to produce thaumic fuel (Thaumine, a.k.a Liquid DDs) for various thaumatech devices or to charge dregstones.”

“The one notable exception to this rule are the souldregs of those who have progressed far in developing an Archetype; the magnitude of one’s souldregs grows with one’s Archetype level. Roughly 9/10 of all humanoids will never reach a high enough archetype level to leave behind substantial souldregs.”

“By contrast, archetype-induced growth of souldreg magnitude is, in most non-humanoid creatures, geometric from the very earliest archetype levels. This phenomenon is the reason souldreg harvesting focuses on nonhumanoids to begin with, and roughly 80% of all souldregs which are later processed into Thaumine/DDs come from archetype-possessing nonhumanoids. Unfortunately, any degree of farming will completely stifle a creature’s ability to produce souldregs, skewing them towards souldreg-poor archetypes. Thus, vast tracts of land - such as the Beyond Frontier - are left purposely uncivilized to facilitate the growth and hunting of souldreg-rich fauna.”

A small map on the side of the page depicted Audunpoint as a dot in the top right, with text that read “the Beyond Frontier” sprawling across the rest of the window. There was no milestick, so she had no way to know just how far this supposedly uncivilized land stretched… But she liked the idea of it. Such an ecology would by its very nature prevent the hellish, hyper-urbanized fate that her own world had met. She kept reading.

Animals which develop an archetype to a truly significant degree become separate from their own species, and are reclassified as Soulbeasts. It is these great beasts who provide that vast majority of the modern world’s non-denatured souldregs. Our most powerful artifacts and greatest works of Thaumatech are born from these animals’ sacrifice.”

“It has long been theorized why it is that only humanoid souldregs are near-universally tainted, when many soulbeasts develop near-humanoid-level intelligence as a result of their evolution. The most widespread theory postulates that, due to a soulbeast’s previous existence as an animal, they all hold within themselves the assumption that they would be eaten after death, one which is not present within humanoids. This theory, of course, does not hold up to scrutiny, but it is nonetheless the most widely-known theory we have.”

Krahe felt her eyes starting to glaze over; as if out of nowhere, the weight of the world itself seemed to bear down upon her. She forced herself awake, darting out of her seat and returning the tomes to their rightful places before she left. There was no choice to be had, she needed rest, and so she returned to that run-down inn. Rather than ask to be woken up, which would draw attention, she barred the door and leveraged the chair against it for good measure. The room had a clock, though it was on the wall near the ceiling.

When she awoke it was dark, the clock’s dial glowing a faint milky-white; she’d slept for three hours and some spare change, awaking just about before midnight. Wakefulness had returned to her, and she wagered she had at most ten more hours before she would inevitably crash. That left her more than enough time to conduct her investigation. Were circumstances any different she would’ve just let herself sleep normally, but as far as she knew, her target might not have more than a few hours to live. For all she knew he could already be dead.