The Sixth School.

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Chapter Eighty-One: A Pawn…

Greg was silent for a long while as he looked at the five items on the screen before him. Much as he logically understood the fact that he couldn’t have them all, it was hard to reconcile himself with the idea of letting some of them go. Greg could of course hope that he’d be able to get the options again when he merged another set of feats. He, however, doubted that the system was lying when it said that these were one-time purchases. If Greg missed out on any of them, he probably wouldn’t be seeing them ever again. Gritting his teeth, Greg forced himself to look at the options critically. Yes, it would sting to lose two of these epic rewards, but rather than bemoan what was inevitable, he needed to instead focus on picking the best three options of the five presented.

Without much hesitation, Greg made the first choice. The reward card with the image of a man reaching his hand through a crack in the air glowed with a golden sheen before vanishing, leaving behind four cards. The personal pocket space was his first choice. It didn’t take a lot of thinking to figure out just what a boon it would be to have a secure hidden vault that only he could access. And that’s even before one considered the system itself and how he would now always have a secure way of buying things from the system. With it, Greg would never have to worry about the security of any of his items. Unless he died, he would never lose anything kept there. The storage ring on his finger could now be used as a decoy for anyone who might wish to try and rob him or look into his secrets.

Greg was about to turn his attention to the remaining four reward cards and contemplate his next pick when his whole body froze up. It wasn’t paralysis. Greg was certain that his physical muscles hadn’t been affected in any way, it wasn’t even at the level of his skeleton. Something had grabbed hold of something far deeper, at the very core of his being. It’s only now that Greg remembered his first time picking the rewards of cashing in a feat of lust. Any time he picked a reward, it would immediately be applied to him even with other rewards still pending. It was for this reason that Greg didn’t panic, at least, not until the pain struck him.

Having already been tortured during his ascension, Greg immediately identified where the pain was coming from, his spirit body. It felt like someone had taken a hammer and chisel and was carving something directly onto it. Some external force had taken hold of his spirit body to keep it from moving while it worked and then had begun somehow attaching the external space to it. Gritting his teeth in pain, Greg instinctually sent mana to his eyes, intending to look down at himself. Greg could remember during his ascension that, like the layers of an onion, Morpheus’s eyes had been able to see through the different layers of his teacher, from her external appearance to her internal organs to her spirit body, down to her very soul. Greg had intended to try and look past his external layers and see if he could directly observe what was being done to his spirit body.

Greg, however, momentarily forgot about what was happening to him when he felt a cold rage and sharp killing intent coming from Morpheus. ‘What's wrong?’ He found himself mentally questioning him.

“Give me control as soon as you can move again!” Rather than answer his question, Greg got this shocking response.

‘What’s wrong?’ Greg asked a second time, this time with more urgency in his voice. It was Morpheus himself who had told him that giving him control should only ever be a last resort. Just what could have set him off so much that he was willing to ignore his own words?

“She is probing me,” Greg couldn’t help the shudder that ran through him at the answer.

Morpheus didn’t rage or raise his voice, there was, however, such a sharp desire to kill in his voice that Greg could feel the hairs on his skin stand on end. Such was the fear he felt at that moment that it took a few seconds for Greg to process what had just been said. Greg was about to ask who ‘she’ was and when the probe had happened when it suddenly clicked. His gaze immediately moved to the first reward card, MANA SIGHT. Wouldn’t such an ability require that the system somehow modify his eyes, the same as was currently happening to his spirit body? Olivia’s true self, however, had already descended during his ascension and knew that there was something associated with a very powerful being in his eyes. Why would she try to somehow modify his eyes?

Of course, it remained an open question whether she had anything to do with this. Greg doubted that the primordial was constantly monitoring every system out there that she’d handed out. Perhaps the system had randomly generated this as a possible reward on its own. By the same token, however, it would be imprudent of Greg to forget the fact that Olivia’s true self was the creator of his system. Who’s to say that she didn’t have some sort of backdoor into the system that would allow her to nudge its responses in the way that she wanted from behind the scenes? Greg already believed himself to be mistrustful of the primordial. But if Morpheus was right, it would seem that he hadn’t been paranoid enough.

‘Wait, just fighting a tier-five abyssal creature for less than a minute burned away almost ten years of my life! Won’t I die if you face off with Olivia’s true self?’ He asked through their mental link, the worry clear to be heard in his voice.

A familiar figure appeared before Greg. An old man in monk robes seated cross-legged in the lotus position. The last time he saw Morpheus take this form, was right after his post-ascension coma. Unlike that time, however, there was none of the amusement and mischievous playfulness that Greg saw then. Instead, Greg could only see cold malice in the figure’s nebulous eyes. Suddenly, he no longer looked like some jolly old monk, Looking into his eyes, Greg felt like he was face to face with a viper poised to strike. Morpheus may put on a carefree façade most of the time. This, however, was the true face of the being that resided inside him. A being far older than even Greg could wrap his mind around and more dangerous than probably ninety percent of the things on this planet, if not more.

“I don’t plan to fight. I only wish to send a message!” Somehow, the calmer that his voice was, the more Greg worried.

Narrowing his eyes at the being before him, Greg questioned through their link. ‘And just how many of my years will you need to burn away to send this message?’

‘ A hundred and fifty!’

The answer came so straightforwardly without hesitation that for a second, Greg wasn’t even sure how to respond. The pain from having a pocket space attached to his spirit body was reaching a crescendo and yet, Greg barely even paid it any attention, looking askance at the being before him. ‘Have you lost your damn mind?’ The only reason Greg didn’t shout the words verbally was because of his paralyzed body. His mental voice, however, conveyed his clear incredulity at so casually being asked to throw half of his current lifespan away.

The Old man’s eyes narrowed dangerously at him. ‘A rabid dog is nipping at our heels, Greg. There is only one response to that if you don’t want to find a chunk of your calf missing,’ He stated with cold finality.

‘I don’t even have enough lust points to buy all four remaining items, I’ll just not buy the Mana sight ability and that will be that,’ He declared, not moved by Morpheus’s argument.

‘And that will be enough to tell her all she needs to know!’ Came the cold reply from Morpheus. ‘When someone holds a knife to your throat, the answer isn’t to step back and hope it stops there!’ He growled 

‘No, the answer is to let another fellow use half your lifespan just to send a message,” Greg countered in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

The Old man’s head tilted to the side amusement once again marring his features. Somehow, the amusement was even worse than when he’d merely been glaring. The expression on his face wasn’t one of happiness or humor, instead, there was dark amusement in it. As if one was watching a tragedy take place and was darkly amused by the futile struggles of the ones involved. ‘You are a mortal caught up in the machinations of two deities and a primordial, not to mention you are actively being targeted by fate! In what world did you think you were going to come out of this alive?’ He asked, his voice cold as a glacier, his eyes threatening to bore holes in him from the sharp gaze they were sending his way.

‘Of all those involved, I’m the only one hoping that you’ll live long enough to be useful to me. I’m the only one whose goal will not need you to risk dying for me to succeed. To the rest, you are like a crop waiting to be harvested, sheep waiting to be shorn. And bad as that may sound, it was actually your best hope, that perhaps you’d have time enough to grow and become powerful. That maybe, with enough time, you'd have had a one percent chance of preserving your life. Unfortunately for you, Greg, the primordial has noticed something about you that she desires more than she wants you! When she first noticed me, she was scared off by my presence. She, however, has had her puppet over there watching you for two months now. She must have realized that you can only call on my power for short periods and are left weakened right after!’

‘Still, she is not fully willing to commit to whatever she is currently planning, so she sends out this probe, just to see how I’ll react. To see if she can somehow get away with trying to mess with me. Now, tell me Roka, if she grows bold enough, what will she value more? A mortal’s life, or a deity’s eyes?’ Morpheus questioned, the answer already obvious to both of them. ‘Let’s even say that she doesn’t kill you! Blind and targeted by Fate, how long do you think you’ll live Greg?’ Morpheus dug further, the mockery in his voice increasing with every word uttered. ‘Let’s even take it a step further and say that out of the nonexistent kindness of her heart, the primordial replaces the eyes that she takes from you. What happens the next time fate comes for you and you are not powerful enough to defend yourself?’ The questions came in hard and fast like the hammer blows of a smith against an anvil.

‘Face it, Greg! You are not a player in the game that you’ve found yourself in. You’re just a pawn! And of the players involved, only one is thinking of getting you across to the other end of the board. The only question that the others are considering is when will it be most beneficial to them to sacrifice you. Are you worried about losing half your lifespan? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but right now, you should be crying tears of joy that you even get the option of living another hundred and fifty years. Make the wrong decision now and I’ll give up my quest for freedom if you are alive three years from now!” Morpheus declared with zero hesitation.

Greg went silent for a while, and it wasn’t because of the pain. His mind was going a mile a minute trying to parse out the problem he'd just been presented with. Morpheus’s words stung, but the truth in them was undeniable. He was just a pawn. So much so that he hadn’t even noticed the moves being made on the board until Morpheus pointed them out. Again, everything Morpheus had just said was predicated on the premise that the Mana Sight was the doing of Olivia’s true self and not just some random system reward. Everything within Greg wanted to believe that the latter was the case and Morpheus was just overreacting. Looking back at the past year that he’d been in this world and all the shit that had taken place in that short amount of time, however, Greg just couldn’t lie to himself. The worst-case scenario was almost certain to be what played out in the end.

And if Greg accepted the premise that Olivia’s true self was indeed testing and probing to see if she could take Morpheus’s eyes, then the rest of what Morpheus had said was nothing but the iron-clad truth. It was stupid to even question what Olivia’s true self would value more. One thousand out of one thousand times, she’d pick Morpheus’s eyes. And unlike Morpheus, Greg didn’t harbor any false hope that he’d be left alive. After all, the natural inclination of anyone who wasn’t an airhead would be to think that if he has one, he probably has another. Greg expected that he’d be taken apart inch by inch as Olivia’s true self tried to find more treasures on him. The worst part is that she’d be right to do so as there was a sealed fragment of divinity hidden within him by Morpheus’s mother!

A smile crossed Greg’s face as he answered Morpheus. ‘I guess the primordial's about to get what she wants,’ Greg said nonchalantly, his tone implying a shrug that his paralyzed body couldn’t replicate.

There was silence from Morpheus as he regarded Greg for a long while. His reasoning about Olivia’s true self and the motivation behind her actions was sound. Even his proposition of giving up half his lifespan to secure the other half, while painful, was also sound. Greg could thus understand why the being seemed confused by his choice not to go with his plan. ‘You don’t strike me as the kind to just roll over and die, Greg. So, why don’t we skip the charade and you tell me what you want,’ Morpheus finally spoke, giving up the attempt to decipher Greg’s thought process.

‘You’re absolutely right, Morpheus,’ Greg declared. ‘Weak as I am, I’m little more than a pawn in this game. But if any of you think that you are going to sacrifice me without losing a pound of flesh too, then you are sorely mistaken,’ Greg growled, not hiding the raging indignation in his voice. “We both know that whatever plans the Primordial has in store for you, it more than likely has very little to do with finding you a new body. I can’t pretend to know how she thinks, but if I were her, I wouldn’t be comfortable leaving an enemy like you alive. If she gets your eyes, you are more than likely going to perish!’

‘And as for the Primordial, whatever power she gets, I doubt it’ll be enough to save her from your mother’s wrath once she figures out what happened to me. Pawn I may be, but I was her pawn first. I’m not deluded enough to think that she cares about me, but I am certain that whatever plans she had set out for me, she won’t be too happy with them being foiled by someone far weaker than her. Not to mention that Olivia’s true self will essentially be killing the son that your mother spared. Believe me when I say that I don’t envy the fate that awaits her. So, just like you said, I’ll die. But your head is right there on the chopping block with mine. Olivia’s true self will get to live a little longer, but her end will more than likely be worse than either yours or mine. Other than the inconvenience of having her plans foiled, the only one who comes out of this unharmed is your mother. She’s the only reason I even have a second life and among all you so-called players, she’s the only one who was honest enough about the fact that she planned to use me and even went so far as to compensate me for it when she could just use her immense power against me,’ Greg laid out in exacting detail.

‘Was I not honest with you about what it is I want from you?’ Morpheus questioned.

‘You are in just as much danger here as I am Morpheus. And yet, somehow, I am the only one bearing all the cost of averting this danger. Yes, you might have been honest with me about what your larger plan was, but you still see me as a tool that you can use at your convenience, and should it get damaged in the process, then too damn bad,” With a paralyzed body, Greg couldn’t glare at Morpheus’s projection before him. This, however, didn’t diminish the scathing venom in his mental tone of voice.

This was the primary reason Greg had refused to go along with Morpheus’s plan. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see the danger that awaited him if he didn’t do as Morpheus recommended. Rather, he also saw the danger that awaited him if he did do what Morpheus wanted. If he allowed Morpheus to think that he could make use of him like some cheap tool whenever it suited him, then this wouldn’t have been the last time it happened. Again and again, Greg would find himself in this exact position where all the cost was borne by him while Morpheus just coasted by without having to bear the same burden Greg was. No, acquiescing now would have set a bad precedent, and Greg would sooner be damned than let that happen. Like it or not, they were in this together and Morpheus would have to contribute just as much to their continued survival as Greg was expected to.

The dissatisfaction in the features of the old man was clear to be seen even as he glared at Greg. On his part, however, Greg wasn’t even remotely bothered by this. The ball was entirely in Morpheus’s court. If he wanted, he could give Greg something to make the sacrifice they were about to make worth it, or they could both die at the hands of Olivia’s true self. A sigh eventually left the figure of the old man before him as he turned away in disgust. ‘Oh, how far I have fallen. Negotiating with an ant for my continued existence,’ he lamented in clear displeasure. ‘Fine then. You give me control and in return I’ll help in filling any gaps in understanding your teacher might have in the ascension manual you are currently using,’ He offered.

‘Nice try Morpheus. I’m not in any position to know if there are truly any gaps in my teacher’s understanding. Even if you noticed gaps in her understanding, you could easily choose to say nothing and I would be none the wiser,’ Greg immediately turned down the offer. “I’m going to need something more concrete from you,’ He stated.

Greg didn’t miss the way the old man’s knuckles whitened as he clenched his hands into tight fists. ‘Three,’ He growled. ‘As you currently are, you don’t have even a sliver of a chance of getting more than the promised single rank from the life order promotion elixir. But with my help, you can be certain of rising at least three ranks in your life order! Now do you agree? Or do we await death?’ Morpheus questioned. By the dangerous glint in Morpheus’s eyes, Greg could see that if he turned him down, Morpheus would probably endeavor to make their last moments as excruciatingly torturous as possible. Knowing that he had pushed far enough, Greg simply nodded in return.

It was only a second later that Greg noticed what he’d just done and realized that his body was no longer paralyzed. Once again sending mana to his eyes, Greg turned his gaze downward to his body trying to get a picture of what had been done to his spirit body. Understanding what he was after, Morpheus impatiently helped the process along by letting Greg see right past his outward appearance, his internal organs, and directly to his spirit body. Several intricately carved runes glowed as they covered his spirit body’s torso, from his chest, down past his navel and ending just above his waistline. With zero knowledge of runes and their meanings, Greg didn’t know what it was he was looking at. There was, however, a pattern on his chest, slightly off center where his heart would be, that drew Greg in.

Greg wasn’t sure how long he looked at the pattern, but eventually, something clicked into place. All of a sudden, Greg became aware of a space, about three meters in length, width, and height. The pattern he’d been looking at seemed to be the key to this space. Somehow, just focusing on it had allowed Greg to perceive the space directly. The space was both inside him and not inside him at the same time. The closest explanation that Greg could give for it was that the space was in a higher dimension than the three-dimensional view of the world he was used to. It was a lot like placing a cube on top of a circle drawn on a piece of paper. The cube is both inside the circle and not inside it at the same time. Greg was the circle and the space he'd just been granted the cube. Feeling the building impatience on the part of Morpheus, Greg gave up any further investigation of the new space. Allowing himself to recede into the background, Morpheus came to the fore.

“The process isn’t the most comfortable, but now that it’s done, it…” Greg wasn’t even sure what Olivia had been talking about, having been too preoccupied with his conversation with Morpheus. Whatever it was, however, her words were suddenly cut short as the very air itself seemed to groan with the baleful aura that had suddenly filled the cave. “M… master, are you o…?”

BOOM!

Whatever Olivia had been about to ask, it was suddenly cut short as her body was flung into the closest wall of the cave. Such was the force of the impact that Greg was certain a normal human would have broken every last bone in their body. This was a cave carved out of the side of a mountain and even then, Greg could feel the whole thing shake from the force of the impact. The only reason Greg didn’t immediately panic and try to wrestle back control of his own body, was because he’d gotten the chance to see through Olivia’s body. While she looked and felt real, Greg knew that the familiar's body was made up entirely of mana. This was why she could easily shift between her physical form and the mote of light that could disappear into Greg’s glabella. Greg didn’t know if her mana body could feel actual pain or not, what he did know was that she didn’t have any actual bones to break.

Rather than normally rise off the floor, Greg felt his body float off the ground and levitate into the air. It was only when he was at his usual height that Morpheus untangled his crossed legs and stepped down on the ground. With zero haste in his steps, Morpheus approached the familiar who was already embedded halfway into the wall of the cave. Greg didn’t know what kind of reaction to expect from Olivia. Would she continue to act confused? Would she be angry? Would she play up her injuries? Or would she pretend to feel betrayed by him? What he hadn’t been expecting, was the look of complete indifference on the familiar’s face as she watched his approach. The amount of power hanging in the air was enough to kill her ten times over, and yet, there wasn’t even a hint of apprehension, let alone fear, on her face.

“You were already bold enough to try and make a move on me,” Greg barely recognized his own voice as Morpheus spoke through him. During the fight with the abyssal creature, When he’d spoken to the healer through Greg, he’d just used Greg’s voice. Now, however, the voice that escaped Greg’s throat was a deep and sinister sound that promised nothing but pain and misery. It wasn’t just the tone of it that had changed. Greg could feel that some strange power had been interlaced into the voice making it so that even just hearing it would be enough to destroy the minds of lesser beings. If Greg wasn’t already being protected by Morpheus from these effects, his mind would have already been ravaged beyond repair. “Why not come down and finish what you started instead of watching through this… thing!” Morpheus questioned, a deceptively cordial smile playing across Greg’s features.

It took a few seconds for Greg to process Morpheus’s words, but then it suddenly dawned on him. It wasn’t that Olivia was indifferent to the attack that she had just suffered, instead, it was that her true self had taken control of this clone almost as soon as the attack had been deployed. And while Olivia the avatar might have reacted defensively or even counterattacked, the true Olivia was more interested in watching to see what he would do next. From Morpheus’s words, Greg could tell that this wasn’t a descent as had been the case on previous occasions. Olivia’s true self was remotely watching what was going on here from a distance. This, however, was cold comfort to Greg as the implications of the situation were already plain to be understood. To respond so quickly to the situation even before the first attack was fully executed meant that Olivia’s true self had already been watching the situation even before the attack. From everything Greg knew about Olivia’s true self, he was certain that she wasn’t idle enough to just be randomly watching him for no good reason. If she was watching, it was because she had been expecting something. Morpheus was right. She had made a move and was probing to see what his reaction would be.

“We both know that the boy’s body is too weak to handle a fight at our level. If I descend, you lose!” Came the cold words from Olivia’s lips. The voice was Olivia’s but from the way her very voice stirred up Greg’s lust despite her words being a threat, Greg could tell that it was her true self speaking.

Greg’s head tilted to the side as the smile on his face turned mocking. “Then descend!” Never in his two lives, had Greg heard so much venom packed into two words. Far from being cowed by the threat, Morpheus seemed to be even more desirous to see the primordial descend than even she was. Greg was certain that Olivia’s true self could hear it just as clearly as he could. Morpheus was out for blood and wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d had it.

“Before you threaten me, you would do well to remember that I made the soul seed attached to the boy’s soul. If I so wished, I could have it self-destruct, taking the boy’s soul along with it,” Came the equally cold answer from Olivia’s lips.

If Greg had been in control of his own body, he wouldn’t have been able to keep from going pale, ice settling in the pit of his stomach. In a way, it shouldn’t have been shocking. Greg knew that the system was too powerful a thing to give out randomly without some measures put in place to make sure it could never be turned against you. Greg had always suspected that Olivia’s true self had some backdoor access and override authority on the system up to and including a self-destruct mechanism. To hear it plainly stated, however, took things from the realm of speculation into concrete reality. The only thing that gave Greg some modicum of reassurance, was the fact that the system, or soul seed as it was called in this world, wasn’t attached to his soul directly but to what little remnant was left of Roka’s soul. Even if Olivia’s true self did make good on her threat, chances are that it was only the remnant that would be destroyed and not Greg’s actual soul. Losing the system would be an almost crippling blow to Greg, but at the very least, he'd get to live.

But while all these thoughts were going through Greg’s Mind, Morpheus held out Greg’s hands to the side as if presenting himself to the Primordial. “What are you waiting for?” He questioned, not even a smidgen of concern, let alone fear in his voice. “You first threaten to descend, then fail to do so. Then you threaten to destroy the boy’s soul, and again, fail to do so. Surely, you wouldn’t happen to be scared would you?” Morpheus questioned with an exaggerated note of pity in his voice.

If the mockery bothered Olivia’s true self, it didn’t show on her face. Instead, she calmly continued. “You don’t care about the boy at all, do you?” She questioned as if she had seen right through to the crux of the issue.

Greg couldn’t help but reel as a realization and a question hit him at the same time. The realization was that both threats hadn’t actually been directed at Morpheus, but at him. The question that necessarily followed was what would happen if Greg was somehow eliminated from the equation and Morpheus left behind. After all, the seals bound him to Greg. If Greg was somehow done in, wouldn’t he be released? Had Greg unknowingly signed his own death warrant? Had Morpheus played him like a fool? Pretending to be acquiescing to Greg’s demands, had he lured Greg into serving himself up to the old monster?

The smile that Morpheus caused to spread across Greg’s lips was a quiet answer to both Olivia’s true self and Greg. He wouldn’t care one way or the other if Greg was to meet his end here…

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