Shades of the New World

Evin occasionally popped inside the World of Time to see whether Twelve was around, but no matter how big of a scene he made inside the World of Time, he could never feel the lolita's chilling stare. Eventually, he gave up on finding Twelve, deciding that she was probably busy with something else.

On a different note, the research team gradually continued to work on their jobs, and Evin could see the first prototypes of the golems starting to take shape. The concept of golems on Alvox might seem a bit misleading to some, but Evin felt that one analogy fit the situation perfectly.

Humans could technically be called golems, since they're just bone-mechs covered in an armor of flesh, that is piloted by a brain. As for orthodox golems, it was the same concept, except the materials and the thinking component were a bit different.

At any rate, the constructions of golems seemed to be going well in Evin's eyes, but the research team was facing one big problem – the Vulpine Mother's request to have the World Sprites independent from Evin or her. 

After Gizel and her team became familiar with the World of Thought methods provided by the Vulpine Mother, the team eventually decided that freeing the World Sprites using that method was impossible. The only path forward for them was Evin's Soul Magic methods, so naturally, Evin became a lot more involved in the process.

Due to this, Gizel sent a request to allow Evin to become a temporary part of the team, which would allow him to be exposed to the much deeper secrets of Magical Engineering. Sadly, the Paradra Tribe refused this request and only allowed Evin to learn runes and engravings that the project used. They also forbid the team from exposing more than 150 runes to Evin, since apparently, in a fit of stubbornness, Gizel had exposed a prior project partner to 4000 runes after making up a bunch of random uses for it. 

In any case, Evin memorized about a 100 or so runes in total using the photographic memory perk he lodged onto his soul. They weren't anything too useful – just a bunch of very specific set of runes that catered to Somaturgy. Things like [Relay-Command], [Move-Unit], or [Connect-Energy]. It would probably be considered a great boon if he was someone passionate about runes, but sadly, he just wasn't very interested in Magical Engineering.

Telling himself that it was okay to suck at some things, he just tried to do his best in finding a solution for the World Sprites through Soul Magic.

While all of this was happening, Kyune was enjoying her free time alongside Rith, as it quickly became apparent that the two got along very well. Since the team was going to use that as a method to give the World Sprites their freedom, fearing that she might become too proficient at the subject, she left the research team. Though she still made sure to speak with Evin now and then, casually explaining her thought process.

Evin could sometimes hear the two passionately badmouthing him in the background, laughing merrily all the while. Like today, they sometimes decided to bring in Evin on the ride, for the shits and giggles.

After the two had their fill of fun, Evin was let go of Kyune's hold. He didn't even bother fighting back or complaining, as he knew it was a pointless waste of breath. Evin was cool and enlightened like that. Nothing like the man that was depicted in these prior stories.

"I've been thinking of a daring idea the past few days," Kyune said suddenly, "What do you think of having me move into your shadow permanently? With my caverns and everything." 

"What, you can do that?" Evin couldn't help but ask when Kyune casually mentioned moving a whole cliff into his shadow. 

"I'm very confident it's possible. After all, it's not a specific point in the world I'm tied to, it's the land and area that's seeped in my energy that I'm stuck in. But truthfully, I'm sure I will become weaker afterwards, since the whole entire Cataract has become fairly abundant with Dark Energy due to my influence. And I reckon that some limits might be imposed on me as well." the World Sprite which Kyune was using to speak shrugged lightly.

"What kind of limits?"

"Ugh, you're so lazy with your head. Just think about it. If it's successful, you would literally have a Beast Lord at your beckoning to do whatever you want. At that point, we won't even have to merge together, as right after we merge together we'd be weaker than ever compared to before. But if you have a portable Beast Lord hanging around in your shadow, well, you'd be the strongest man alive at that point, no?" Kyune narrated.

"That does sound overpowered… Is that why you think some limit will be imposed upon you afterwards?" Evin asked.

"Yes. I'm fairly certain that Beast Lords become chained to their birthplace because of a higher being's arrangements, most likely the Empress. After all, we're considered to be the strongest beings in the world right after the Authorities, with only some Super-imposers posing a threat to us. And unlike the super-imposers who are bound by the countries, we're relatively free to do whatever we want. And some of us aren't even remotely familiar with human morals and values, since they're not reincarnated humans like myself. Because of that, the Empress needed to put some sort of chain on our us."

"That does sound plausible, but I'm feeling that you'll end up dying if we try to cheat the Empress' arrangements," Evin voiced his worries.

"You don't have to worry about that. During this long life of mine that I lived through, I've come to notice one thing. The Empress likes it when her subjects try to overcome her arrangements. Sure she might decide to put another chain on them afterwards, but I rarely hear of mages or Beasts dying because they thought outside the box. Of course, this doesn't matter for the cases were they were just died because of their stupidity."

'Now that I think about it, the Empress did seem to not care as much even though I stumbled upon her past as the Princess of Denial. She just had Twelve scold me a bit, and told me I couldn't tell anyone else about her secrets. It was more of a slap on the wrist than anything else.'

"Alright, let's say you'll be fine afterwards. How much land would we need to move in the first place?" Evin asked, remembering the size of the Third Cataract.

"I'm sure I'll be fine if I cut up the area around 300 meters and chuck it into your shadow, but just to be safe, let's involve everything in the 500-meter radius. Since it's impractical to cut off a perfect sphere, the mass of about 1 km x 1 km x 1 km would suffice, I suppose."

Evin guessed that the area was about one fourth of the whole four-kilometer Cataract. 

'Damn, Purzo's going to die in a landslide if we suddenly remove all that soil,' Evin suddenly realized.