All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 278: Classy as Always

Tony's soul slowly pieced back together, each little part pushed into place with vigorous brushing, polishing every surface. After I had ensured it was completely free of debris or any other foreign elements, I carefully fit them together, drawing on the power and skills of each and every person who had faith in me. The pieces melded together almost perfectly, but there were still small lines running through each connection I forged, no matter how hard I tried to arrange the pieces to fit together perfectly. It was as if some air was trapped between bits of a broken tile, and as I tried to push them back together, they didn't bond perfectly.

Each piece of his soul was cleaned to the point where it was as pure as it possibly could be. The small white orb held together on its own, but it wasn't fixed. It wasn't the same as it had been.

I heard Beatrice calling for help. She needed me to kill the last lieutenant, but I couldn't spare any more attention than to tell her I needed more time. Even my own timekeeping processes were suspended as I worked, dedicating a full 100 percent of my processing power to solving this puzzle.

The outside world vanished, and my thoughts for the past, present, and future shut down to make this last push. The only thing I knew was the millions of little pieces floating within Tony.

After who knew how long, I finally had a few large clumps of pieces that I was relatively sure were in the right position. However, I could never be 100 percent sure. I could see tiny gaps where pieces smaller than a speck of dust were missing, and even my sensors weren't quite powerful enough to tell some of the smallest pieces from one another in my soul sight. But it was the best I could do.

I slowly released my hold and watched as the soul floated, cracked and imperfect, in the center of Tony's being. Pulling back, I slowly restarted my other processes one at a time, fearful that maybe I hadn't done enough. Coming back to reality, I found Beatrice kneeling over us, her broom stabbed into the marble a few dozen feet away. Arthur was helping Susan limp over to us as we waited for Tony to come to.

Beatrice looked at the unconscious Tony intensely and then gasped. "He's-- He's level 25."

Susan and Arthur looked at her. "What?"

"He's level 25. He used to be in the 40s. What happened? He lost half of his levels!"

My confidence plummeted. Had I messed up that badly? I couldn't have, right? It was obviously related to his soul damage, but he hadn't lost much mass at all. Then again, I had noticed that people's souls didn't seem to grow as they leveled up. Beatrice and Susan were about the same size, after all.

She kept her hand pressed to his chest as she pulled out a vial. She held her breath, uncorking it with her teeth before wafting it under his nose. As Tony breathed in, his eyes shot open. He coughed, rolling over to his side with a dry hacking sound.

"Tony?" Beatrice asked concern in her voice.

"Oh my god. I thought I was dead there," Tony wheezed. "That was... I didn't think I'd have to go through that again. Geez.

"You okay?" Beatrice asked cautiously. She offered him a hand, pulling Tony up to a sitting position. "Do you feel any different?"

Tony put his hand to his head. "Wow. I feel weak. Really weak. And a little dizzy. Did I get hit in the head or something?"

"No, but" Beatrice laid a hand on his back, checking for other injuries. "Your level is weird now."

"What?" Tony frowned, his eyes flicking back and forth as if he was reading something. "Huh? That's strange."

"Yeah, I know. I've never heard of something like this"

"Neither have I," Susan offered. "But there's been a lot of strangeness going on lately."

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"It's not that." Tony shook his head, then winced. "Well, not exactly. It's asking me to choose a class?"

That was strange. I exchanged a look with Beatrice. "What are your options?" Beatrice asked.

"Well, currently my class is Paladin of Spot."

"Even though you're back below level 25?"

Tony shrugged. "Yeah. Huh." He made a noncommittal noise. "Apparently... Well, my choices are. Spot's Vanguard. Custodian of the Beyond and Spot's Test Subject."

We sat in silence.

"Those don't sound like level 25 classes." Arthur said slowly. We all agreed. They sounded pretty impressive, though.

"None of this makes any sense." Beatrice put a hand to her own head this time. "Why? How? How did you Void, what happened?"

I stopped and processed for a little bit. Given that the others couldn't see souls, I wasn't entirely sure if they'd understand my explanation. However, maybe I could give a bit more context. I showed the scene of the lieutenant's hand being thrust into Tony's chest. Then, I transitioned to a simulation of fixing Tony's soul. I projected the best approximation of my soul sight above my head, displaying a perfectly round orb of light shattered into millions of pieces. The pieces swirled and slotted back together into a single whole, cracked and imperfect but complete. After all that, I displayed the blueprint of Tony's soul in more detail and how I put it back together.

Tony looked at me in confusion. I saw the same expression across everyone else's faces, as well. Maybe they needed a bit more explanation. "That was Tony's soul."

One by one, their faces paled. No one spoke for a long moment. Eventually, Susan broke the silence with an awed whisper." Souls are real?"

Oh. I guess that explained the surprise.

Beatrice slowly nodded. "It's always been theorized. But skills that claim to interact with souls have always been very nebulous, so it's been hard to tell if it's just a form of karmic magic. But... not just shattering a soul, but repairing it... that's revolutionary."

Tony cleared his throat. "Well, uh... thanks, Void. For saving me."

I beeped happily. I was just happy that my efforts had worked. If not... Well, I didn't want to think about losing one of my humans.

"I need a nap," Tony declared. "But first, I need to pick a class. Which one should I go for? As grateful as I am, I'm not really thrilled by Spot's Test Subject... no offense, Void."

Arthur and Susan chuckled slightly. I wasn't sure if it was because of the joke itself or from relief. The shock of his injuries and loss levels seemed to be receding somewhat. I was just glad that he was back with us.

"Spot's Vanguard sounds like a very powerful class." Arthur commented, and Susan elbowed him hard.

"Oh, come on, you've got to be kidding me. An ordinary vanguard when you have a class called Custodian of the Beyond? How is this even a question? Why are you even thinking about it?"

"Well, I don't want to be some sort of half-undead gate keeper." Tony complained. That earned him a flat look from Susan.

Arthur just shrugged. "I'm just saying. The mystical calling isn't for everyone, kid."

Tony sighed and looked over at Beatrice and me. "What do you think?" I didn't feel entirely comfortable telling Tony which one to choose. At my hesitation, Beatrice chimed in. "I agree with Susan. I think there's a pretty obvious choice here."

Tony nodded before closing his eyes and blinking.

Beatrice frowned in thought. I could see where her mind was going. Leveling up and then losing those levels to gain extra skills and power sounded great in theory, but it was not a path I could recommend to anyone. Recreational soul damage sounded like a horrible idea. Tony might have gotten a better class for it, but I didn't think it was worth the price.

There was a very real chance I wouldn't have been able to put it back together if I hadn't luckily gotten a skill from Beatrice that gave me just what I needed to pull from. In fact, I'm pretty sure I got that skill because it was exactly what I needed. However, what else it was capable of required a lot more testing. I had so many followers that it would have been difficult for a normal person to count: 76,253, to be exact. Wait, no... 254, 252, 257. Okay. It was kind of hard to say exactly, as the number kept bouncing around. But still, if I could pull skills from all of them

Of course, it probably wasn't that simple. There had to be some drawbacks or loss in efficiency, especially based on how clumsy those repair skills had felt. But this opened up a whole new world of possibilities for... anything, really. Well, almost anything. Maybe I could learn how to cook a loaf of bread. How to shoe a horse. How to drive a stagecoach.

There were so many other things I needed to explore and test to see if they were useful. But first, we had another problem to solve. Tony had begun floating.

His eyes darted around the room in panic. As I looked, I saw that they had turned an electric blue. His panicked voice echoed in an ephemeral way as it bounced around the room. "Uh, guys? A little help here? What's going on?"