72 - Workshop Invitation
72 - Workshop Invitation
While Team Sweet and Sour trained under Khun's leadership to get ready for the 29th Floor test so that they could be qualified for the Workshop Battle on the 30th Floor, Hwa Ryun left to infiltrate the FUG team and arranged to bring Viole a fake "Thorn".
The Thorn was supposedly the ultimate weapon for killing Zahard and the Administrators, left behind by Enryu on the 43rd Floor after he killed the Administrator there.
FUG had recovered pieces of it, and had created a fake one that Hwa Ryun was going to get implanted into Viole. The rest of the FUG team would think it was just a fake to test the implantation procedure and Viole's body, but it actually had a greater purpose.
The anti-Viole FUG coalition wanted to melt him and fuse him into the Thorn, because it couldn't be activated without an Irregular, while Hwa Ryun aimed to use the fake Thorn to help Viole absorb the real one.
The Thorn was indeed incredibly powerful, and as an Irregular I might also be able to activate it.
But I had no interest, because it put a severe strain on the body that even Baam, its fated owner, whose body was built to absorb practically anything,had a lot of trouble with it.
It would just be stupid to try putting that into my body, when it probably wouldn't even do anything outside of the Tower and painted a much larger target on my back.
When Hwa Ryun left, she gave one last instruction to Khun.
"Before you leave for the Workshop, promise me this. Don't let anyone find out that you and Baam are alive, or that Axion is working with this team. Including your old teammates. The moment you break this promise, the wager is lost. Most importantly, the fact that Viole is Baam is a top secret that only a few FUG members know. You know what will happen if people in the Tower find out that Baam is alive," she said.
"Of course I do," said Khun.
I stayed with Team S&S for a while, preparing Gyetang's body and participating in some of the team training exercises that Khun had organized.
The purpose of Gyetang was merely to sneak into the test, and similarly it was possible to do various shenanigans to sneak in other things into tests if they qualified as Shinheuh or equipment, something that I'd tested with Team S&S and Yihwa over the years.
In particular, certain items could be used to store people—such as Manbarondenna or Lighthouses, and if the "person" was a "Shinheuh" or "Living Ignition Weapon", then they could be brought into the tests as well.
The caveat with using stuff like Manbarondenna was that Compression storage items couldn't be further Compressed by a second storage item if they already had some Compressed stuff inside them. Which meant for example, that I couldn't hide something inside Manbarondenna to be Compressed, and then Compress Manbarondenna itself any further. Similarly, I could not Compress my Bowls with my Shinheuh any further, so I kept them in a non-Compressing Arms Inventory separate from the rest of my standard supplementary weapons like Needles.
The exception was the Lighthouse, but that operated under a somewhat similar rule—when something normal sized was placed inside a Lighthouse, they could be Compressed together to the size of a soccer ball sized Cube, but then the Lighthouse could not be further Compressed inside anything else, neither could the Lighthouse Compress with Manbarondenna if it was already holding another item.
Like this, I had learned a lot of minor tricks and small refinements of my various techniques.
It still took two weeks to prepare Gyetang's body though, partly slowed down by the fact that I was operating through an Avatar Body.
I added a companion spell crest to Gyetang and linked it to Yihwa as if it were her familiar as well. With the entire brain intact and the remnant spiritual residue of the dead, an undead puppet like this was somewhat more intelligent than the basic animal intelligence than the Beastionts or even Axie with my will imprint. It even had some skills and feelings leftover from the person when it was still alive.
In the process, we'd explained to the team about Yihwa's status as my contractor and why Gyetang would also need her support to function.
"Right…so that demon summoning crap was real? Anak and Leesoo mentioned it, but I thought you guys were just faking it back then," said Khun.
"Only the part where we pretended to sacrifice Anak. Androssi's contract with me is real," I said.
"Well, whatever. I'll remember to put the Yeon and Gyetang together in our formations then," said Khun.
"Hey, why am I 'the Yeon', rather just 'Yeon' like 'Khun'?" Yihwa asked.
Khun waved her off and walked away. "Let's get back to work, there's no time to waste."
O O O
The team returned from the 29F test exhausted, but they passed, obtaining the right to ascend to the 30th Floor, and Khun received the Workshop invitation on his Lighthouse.
We set off in his ship with Team S&S quite excited.
The Tower was truly a huge and mysterious place. If we were not teleported through an arrangement with the test administrators and Floor Administrator, then it was necessary to travel between Floors using the Middle Area.
For many Floors under the Zahard Empire's rule, there were warp tunnels that properly licensed people and ships could use to get to a neighboring Floor, which was a much faster way of getting around than trying to climb the Tower on foot through various dark passages and the warp staircases.
But these warp areas all caused problems for the Kaleidostick if it was in agatespace. Over the years, I'd learned that even if the Kaleidostick could not be directly affected by most things in the real world, it was still subject to spell failure backlash.
Like the Waypoint Beacons that relied on gravitational reference calculations, the navigational systems that the Kaleidostick used for moving in agatespace parallel to the material world relied on input data from the physical world and the ability to capture that date via sensory spells.
If there was anything wrong with that data or if it was cut off, it could get lost, or in a particularly bad situation, suffer from spell backlash—and that was what actually happened when the water spirits used their anti-scrying spell for Cromwell back in FoZ. They didn't have to reach into agatespace to cause spell failure backlash, which could not be easily distinguished from enemy spell interference.
Here in the Tower, the physical world was strange and there were many effects that could cause problems for the Kaleidostick. Warp and Compressed space effects were just the most common occurrence that Regulars would encounter, but higher level Shinsoo flows could also have similar bad interactions.
I had once unwittingly moved through a major interfloor warp tunnel while the Kaleidostick was in agatespace—it got discombobulated, drifting for days while recalibrating, and forcing me to go on a tedious search to find it again.
So if I had the Kaleidostick with me now, I'd have retracted it back to the real world at this point.
However, since it was with Sasha and my main body, I simply relaxed.
"Hey, Axion, are you going to introduce us to the real Androssi Zahard?!" Wangnan and Dan asked together. "Can you help us get an autograph?!"
"Meeting her might be a bit difficult, with the wager rules. We can't let any of our old friends know what we're doing, that Khun is alive, that Viole is Baam, or that I'm working with this team," I said.
Actually, I told Androssi long ago about Baam and she was discreet enough not to say anything, so it wouldn't be a big problem. But it was a valid point for the rest of the team.
"Aww…"
"But I should be able to get some autographs from her for you guys."
Wangnan and Dan cheered, then started talking about her exploits.
"Guys…" Goseng said exasperatedly with a laugh.
'I want an autograph from the princess too!" said Miseng.
"Princess this, princess that! That's all you guys have been talking about since we got on this ship. We get it already!" Yihwa said, grumbling.
"You'll never understand it! She's beautiful and graceful, unlike you, flame thrower!" Wangnan exclaimed.
"She's every man's dream girl!" said Dan.
"Gyetang also joined my team because he was a big fan of Androssi and wanted to meet her," said Khun, holding his head in his hands and leaning back into his seat, looking with a melancholic expression at the permanently smiling undead chickenoid. "I promised him he would get that chance when we met at the Workshop Battle…"
"Well…it's not impossible to fulfill that wish. Androssi already knows Baam is alive, though I didn't tell her that it's Viole. She can probably guess though. We might arrange it on a break during the tournament," I said. "Away from unwanted eyes."
"No, right now, winning the bet and getting Baam back is more important. When we win, we can celebrate and do it then," said Khun.
"Sure, that works too," I said.
"Whaaat, really? We'll get to meet the princess! Woohoo!" Wangnan cheered and Dan gave him a high five.
"Only if we win, got it?" Khun said with an exasperated shake of his head, to which the guys nodded.
"I haven't seen her myself since the test Floor, but I heard from Leesoo she's gotten even stronger," continued Khun. "Anak grew a little complacent when there was nobody to challenge her when you two were away, so Leesoo's been dealing with her frustrations for a while, trying to close down the gap again."
"I can imagine. Androssi hasn't said much to me about it. But she seems happier with them than she was with me," I said.
"Really? I thought you two were enjoying your time alone together," Khun said suggestively.
"She's not allowed to date anyone for real, you know that. We had some fun in the beginning playing around, but it started to get boring after a while, and we couldn't really get along with anyone else. People were far too afraid to approach us. And our own personalities don't exactly mesh that well outside of battle. Having a whole group of friends to make things livelier probably made it easier on her in the last four years."
"That's the opposite of what Leesoo told me. He says that Androssi is keeping a distance from everyone else, and they barely get to talk to her, especially with all the paparazzi and fans that keep following her around," said Khun.
"Who knows, I guess we'll find out when we're there," I said. That did not actually sound any different from how she behaved canonically after being with them for the whole time instead of going with me for a few years.
"Does she know you have another contractor now?" Khun asked.
"Of course, I told her about it," I said.
Khun chuckled. "Well, maybe that's why, to you, she's pretending to be happier with the team than she really is."
"We don't really have that kind of relationship and she's not nearly as petty as she acts," I said. "Even if I didn't contract Yihwa when I did, I still would have needed another strong contractor close by after Viole formed his team, and I couldn't get Viole himself to do it at that point. He still doesn't know that I was there."
"I'm not the one you'll have to mollify…good luck with that," said Khun. "Well, maybe she'll get distracted by 'Viole'. Those two were also pretty close, weren't they?"
"So it was actually a love triangle?" Akraptor asked.
"What?!" Yihwa asked, shocked. "The princess and Viole too?! Why does she also get…!"
Akraptor coughed. "Correction: love rectangle."
"Is there something about Irregulars that attracts women?" Khun asked, facepalming.
"It's probably their exotic nature and mysterious circumstances," said Akraptor.
"W-what are you saying? I never said I liked Viole!" Yihwa shouted with a red face.
"I never said it was Viole you liked…" said Arkraptor with a smirk. "So there was something there after all?"
"N-nooo!" She said, shaking her head in a panic.
"There's also Yuri Zahard," said Khun to Akraptor. "She seems to have an unusual interest in both of them too."
"Oh, a pentagon then?"
"Let's see…if you include the spirit of Black March…but she only likes Baam," said Khun.
"I'm gonna have to start taking notes to keep track," said Akraptor.
"And I can't forget…Rachel," said Khun resentfully. Suddenly the jovial mood disappeared. "Goddamn Rachel, that ugly, backstabbing, bitch. Why did Baam ever like someone like her? She played me like a fool…I can't believe I tried to help them stay together back then. I must look ridiculous, huh, Axion? Even asking you and Androssi to help. Maybe Androssi had the right attitude, maybe I shouldn't have entangled myself in other people's drama."
Everyone looked like they wanted to ask for details, but were too uncomfortable to press us,
Except Prince, who had opened his mouth to ask when Goseng covered it forcefully with her hand.
"I told you before that after the Light Cubes were destroyed in the Hide and Seek test, when you guys in the lobby couldn't see what was happening on the screen anymore, that I had my special Lighthouse there still, right?" I asked Khun.
"…yes?" He asked confusedly about the abrupt change in topic.
"Back then, when she was trying to fulfill your request…Androssi asked Baam a similar question too, you know. About why he likes Rachel…why he insisted on following her when she didn't want him to, even at the cost of getting hurt, and seeing others get hurt. And in response to Androssi's questions, Baam said, 'the heart moves where the heart wills'," I said.
"…so…that's it? Love doesn't need a reason?" Khun asked.
"I was actually thinking…doesn't that describe you too? Why you chose to do all those things…wasn't it simply because you were following your heart?" I asked. "Doesn't that describe us all? No matter what it is that we strive for…so rather than thinking about how foolish we were…why don't we just try to live without regrets?"
He finally looked surprised. There was a long silence, then he laughed. "I guess you're right…yeah. I was overthinking it, huh? Though I never took you for a philosopher."
"I'm just stealing ideas from Baam and Androssi. Androssi is the one who later told Baam that we're all the same, following our hearts. We just want different things," I said.
"I never took either of them for philosophers either, if you want to be pedantic about it," said Khun.
The ship exited the warp tunnel to the 30th Floor Middle Area. In the distance, we saw an incredibly large floating ship, with gargantuan Suspendium rocks like small mountains on its two sides keeping it afloat.
The whole thing had to be the size of a small island country, and another huge floating structure was attached to the ship's front end.
"The Archimedes…that's where the Workshop is headquartered on this Floor," said Khun, looking out the deck window.
"Wow…" Multiple Team S&S members had expressions of awe on their faces as everyone went up to look at it.
My Pocket ringed, signaling a call. Everyone looked over at me and the Pocket. Androssi's name was the ID.
"I have to take this call," I said, before walking away.
The team followed after me, trying to spy, but Khun held them back. "Don't give away that he's with us!" He whispered harshly.
"We'll be quiet!" Wangnan whispered back.
I went around the corner of the deck to the hall before answering, while the team 'stealthily' turned their heads around the corner.
"Kaleidus, where are you? The ship is going to leave in a couple of days!" Androssi's voice asked.
"I'm on my way, Androssi. Already on the 30th Floor. It shouldn't be long now, hours at the most."
"Move faster! I've been waiting for too long! Are you going to stand me up when it's our first date in four years?"
"Well, if you really want me to get there faster, you could summon me. You still remember how, right?"
"Of course! Fine, that's what I'll do then."
"Alright, I'll wait for your call from the imaginary boundary then. Don't mess it up, or I'll get stuck there and won't be able to come back to reality easily."
"Then help me draw the summoning circle with Axie first. It's been a while…I don't want to make any mistakes."
"Okay."
Then the call ended, and then I sat down in a meditative position.
I retracted my consciousness from the Dua avatar, then focused on Axie instead.
My consciousness transferred over, and I was in the baby dragon form.
"I'm here," I announced, looking around her hotel room.
"What should I draw it with? Don't tell me we need blood again?" Androssi asked.
"We already have a contract so we don't need such a potent catalyst. Just some chalk or ink should be fine. Actually, you know what, we can use this too," I said, before Decompressing to human-size, then concentrating a bit before opening up a small hole in my reptilian hand through which a greenish yellow blood poured out. It collected in my hands as I cupped them together and sat on my hindlegs and tail.
"Alright," she said before taking out a Needle to dip it in the pool in my hands and proceeding to draw the circle carefully while I oversaw it.
It was done within a few minutes, then we went over the incantation to use, and finally she was ready, so I went back to the ship.
The whole team surrounded me, poking and prodding at the barrier, when I opened my eyes and they quickly retreated.
"So that's what you do when controlling another body?" Wangnan asked. "Is it the same when you controlled Gyetang with us before?"
"Yeah," I said. "Now I've got to go. So this is goodbye for now. Good luck, all of you."
We exchanged farewells, and then I cast the spell to go to the 'imaginary boundary' with the Dua avatar, deliberately dragging it out to create a visual effect.
O O O
[Interlude]
The group watched as Axion slowly turned transparent and then disappeared.
"That was kind of cool," said Prince. "Fading away like that as if he stopped being real."
"He's really going on a date with the princess…" Wangnan said enviously.
"At least we got to hear her voice," said Dan.
"Ah that's true. Even her voice is beautiful!" said Wangnan.
"Yeon, you should be able to summon him that way too, right?" Khun asked Yihwa, shaking her out of her cloud of gloom.
"Yeah, but only if he's already really close by, or if he's in the imaginary boundary. Otherwise he won't get the signal. I'd have to contact him first with my Pocket to coordinate. But once he's in the imaginary boundary, there's no way to communicate with him anymore without summoning him first," said Yihwa.
"How close is really close by?"
"Like in the same room…maybe fifty meters," said Yihwa.
"Hm…so he can only initiate control of another body from his side, and only the contractor can initiate the summoning? And you need to rely on the Pocket to call him, you can't just signal him some other way to take control of the body?" asked Khun.
"Actually, I can also send him a resonance pulse from anywhere because I have his Crest. I don't know if princess Androssi can. I can't send a complex message through the Crest though," said Yihwa. "Just some feelings."
"That might come in useful. I'll keep that in mind," said Khun.
O O O
[Kaleidus]
Once again I was in the Ring of Deterrence waiting for a summon, thinking about my upcoming plans.
This summon was a test of sorts—I had deliberately used the avatar instead of my main body, because I thought that it should be possible to answer a summons this way too, and even transport some items this way.
The Tower's Ring of Deterrence was peculiar because I'd always end up in the same place at the Top.
So if I just brought some items and then left them there, my Avatar could come and pick them up.
The only cost was that, in order to cast the high level path opening spell, I needed either my main body or one of the Avatars, and then it would need to return either by summoning or by using a Grain meld back to a physically established Waypoint.
So I had designated Sasha, and more specifically, the Lighthouse as the return Waypoint, and then went to the Ring with my main body as well, to hand over some items.
Although I had plenty of Grain now, that was still a fairly high cost to pay, but in this case I really had no other way of transferring items over, and the other avatar would need more support to complete the tasks I had intended for it.
And if the avatar couldn't be summoned? Well then I'd just have to show up in person and bring the Avatar Body in storage, before quietly switching out to leave later. Either way, I'd need to spend a unit of Grain to get back to Sasha, so the cost was worth paying.
The Workshop Battle was a point in the story where I didn't remember a lot of the details, just the main course of events.
Aside from the fight over the Thorn piece, the other major outcome I remembered from the story was Rachel extracting Emily from her imprisonment at the Workshop lab–a pitiful Living Ignition Weapon that had been melted down as the proof of concept for what the anti-Viole bloc intended for Viole. Rachel did this with the help of Cassano, and Cassano claimed the right half of his Ignition Devil from Horyang. But she wasn't going to take part in the Workshop Battle itself.
I wouldn't interfere with that, but the nature of Ignition Liquid and these Ignition Weapons was a point of fascination for me, hence my goal to break into that same lab during the Workshop Battle.
The reason had to do with a key property of Shinsoo outside of the Tower, which meant it was a concern of my interplanar strategy and not simply a local issue.
I had already done a fair few tests on Shinsoo in Worm, from which I determined some key facts.
Shinsoo that was contained and isolated retained its properties until physically exposed to the environment of a different plane. This included both foreign particles and vacuum environments, and also applied to sealed Compression storage effects, which meant that they could carry items out of the Tower and then Decompressed upon exposure, unable to Compress again after.
But many Shinsoo items and abilities required a contiguous Shinsoo enclosure to operate properly, and critically, this enclosure could not be entirely owned or activated Shinsoo. This meant that even though I could prevent Shinsoo from evaporating immediately by taking control of it before releasing it from a sealed container, that Shinsoo could only be used directly for personal techniques thereafter, it could not be sealed again or used to make a field where items could use it to operate.
On the other hand, the internal Shinsoo in my own body worked normally, as did all internal techniques. This extended to Derflinger's Shinsoo too, but to a lesser extent. Outside of the Tower, he could not use Ignition with me, even if he had stored Shinsoo, and he couldn't do anything with it.
I speculated that this was because Derf's way of using Shinsoo was more akin to Wave Controllers' external use, despite the Shinsoo being physically stored in the warp space of his Endbringer flesh.
There was something stopping Derf from actually internalizing Shinsoo as his own power. The best he could do was absorb Shinsoo like he did with spells, converting a small part to mana upon contact, but he simply did not build up Shinsoo body cultivation like me, or refined elemental essence like the water stone.
And maybe the secret lay in Ignition Liquid, the substance used to create true Ignition Weapons.
Most Ignition Weapons also incorporated some form of Compression, especially the Living Ignition Weapons.
On its own, Compression was already of immense strategic value to me, as a method of storage, especially since it allowed for carrying things across the Harmonic Corridors, even if it was one-way.
It seemed that the mystic power of Shinsoo prevented things in Compression storage from being destroyed in transit the way Tinkertech pocket dimensions relying on Wormvoid physics failed.
Its main limitation was not working without a contiguous Shinsoo enclosure. Not only that, it also required sufficient Shinsoo pressure and density.
But what if that too could be internalized somehow, to get around that limitation?
The idea sounded a little far-fetched, but it was a fact that Baam could absorb huge things like the Thorn into his body, and they just naturally Compressed to tiny sizes.
They weren't exactly internal, in the sense that they generally floated around him, but still, it seemed to me a worthy avenue of research.
Additionally, as an ability, living beings that could Compress themselves with Autocompression in the Tower were not that uncommon either, they were called Compression Licensors.
Many giant Shinheuh could do it.
The White Steel Eel was one such Shinheuh that could learn the skill naturally, which is why I hunted it down specifically after I discovered this.
But most beings did it with the help of a contract from the Administrators, and some Anima learned to imbue it onto their Shinheuh so they could trigger it as an effect rather than a skill.
With my lack of talent in Shinsoo and the water spirits' inability to comprehend most non-water based uses of Shinsoo, it was something of a miracle that I had somehow learned to use a low level imbued Compression on things I had sufficient time to prepare, perhaps because it was similar to a spell enchantment.
For Derflinger, the requisite pressure of Shinsoo was totally impractical due to his mass, even if he managed to internalize Shinsoo later. But he didn't necessarily need to use Compression to get back down to size outside of the Tower, it would just be a lot slower with the basic Endbringer crystal warping.
The White Steel Eel was of a mass that was more reasonable, so I wondered if it might be able to use Compression if I could carry around enough Shinsoo and create the necessary pressure for it.
It was still a goal that was far from actualization, since there were still many minor challenges to solve before I could engineer a solution. Like teaching the Shinheuh Autocompression first, when I hadn't had any luck learning it for myself.
No matter what though, the potential of Ignition and Compression had to be explored further, and the Workshop was the best place to acquire what I needed for my research.
O O O
As it turns out, I could indeed answer the summon while my consciousness was with the Avatar Body and use that vessel to go to the summoner.
After I got summoned by Androssi, we snuck out, wearing sunglasses, hats and casual clothes to sightsee around the beach area and talk by ourselves before returning to the team.
Sitting at a private table under a canopy at a beachside bubble tea joint, after we checked for eavesdroppers/paparazzi and put up privacy shielding, Androssi asked, "That Jyu Viole Grace. It's Baam, right? But what happened with Khun? The team is pretty angry…I think Leesoo wants to go after the Slayer candidate for revenge. But there's no way that Baam would kill Khun."
"Yeah," I said. "It wasn't Viole that did it though. And Khun is…well I'm not supposed to say anything about it, but he's alive. There was another group in FUG that wanted to bring Viole under control…and they arranged the Arlen's Hand incident to increase his reputation. The assassination was a failure though."
"So…what now? You've been with Baam for the last two years, and he never figured it out?"
"Well, I only visited occasionally, I wasn't part of their team proper. But my disguises are pretty good, so I wouldn't have expected him to figure it out," I said.
"I want to see it. Your disguise," said Androssi. "Seducing a girl from the Yeon family, what kind of face did you wear?"
"I didn't seduce her. I helped her out of a bad spot, and she helped me with some things in exchange. I think it was a worthwhile investment," I said, while changing my face to that of Dr. Dua and putting on regular fake glasses. "This is what I looked like."
"Really? She liked that? The responsible, bookish doctor with a mature older countenance?"
"I told you, there was no seduction involved. I didn't do anything with her," I said, before reverting the changes.
Actually, there was some seduction involved, I just didn't press it further in that direction after I got what I needed from Yihwa with the Crest Spirit implantation, but Androssi didn't need to know that.
"Hmph. Come to think of it, you haven't done anything with me either," said Androssi. "Did the big bad demon fail at corrupting the beautiful princess?"
"No, it's the evil princess that failed to corrupt the noble knight," I said.
"Or maybe the sinful knight was tempted away by the innocent boy with luscious long hair…"
"It couldn't be helped. Such strength, such powerful eyes, contrasted with that elegant form…"
She laughed and so did I.
"On a more serious note…" I started, before explaining the current wager in FUG regarding Viole's team.
"…I'm going to help Viole's chosen teammates win, as a favor to his teacher who also taught me. But we don't know what all the Workshop Battle competition rules are going to be, so we have to play it by ear. It's up to you what you want to do, but we can't tell Leesoo and the rest about Baam or Khun yet, as per the rules of the wager."
"Should we stop Leesoo from going after Viole for revenge though?"
"We can let that play out naturally and stay out of it until the right moment. I think Viole is too strong for them to hurt seriously, but any damage they do to the FUGs on the team should be helpful," I said.
"You might be underestimating the team a little…" Androssi said. "Unless Baam really got that strong?"
"I'll have to monitor the situation then. Perhaps it's best if I don't meet the team yet, in case I need to act," I said.
O O O
While Team Sweet and Sour trained under Khun's leadership to get ready for the 29th Floor test so that they could be qualified for the Workshop Battle on the 30th Floor, Hwa Ryun left to infiltrate the FUG team and arranged to bring Viole a fake "Thorn".
The Thorn was supposedly the ultimate weapon for killing Zahard and the Administrators, left behind by Enryu on the 43rd Floor after he killed the Administrator there.
FUG had recovered pieces of it, and had created a fake one that Hwa Ryun was going to get implanted into Viole. The rest of the FUG team would think it was just a fake to test the implantation procedure and Viole's body, but it actually had a greater purpose.
The anti-Viole FUG coalition wanted to melt him and fuse him into the Thorn, because it couldn't be activated without an Irregular, while Hwa Ryun aimed to use the fake Thorn to help Viole absorb the real one.
The Thorn was indeed incredibly powerful, and as an Irregular I might also be able to activate it.
But I had no interest, because it put a severe strain on the body that even Baam, its fated owner, whose body was built to absorb practically anything,had a lot of trouble with it.
It would just be stupid to try putting that into my body, when it probably wouldn't even do anything outside of the Tower and painted a much larger target on my back.
When Hwa Ryun left, she gave one last instruction to Khun.
"Before you leave for the Workshop, promise me this. Don't let anyone find out that you and Baam are alive, or that Axion is working with this team. Including your old teammates. The moment you break this promise, the wager is lost. Most importantly, the fact that Viole is Baam is a top secret that only a few FUG members know. You know what will happen if people in the Tower find out that Baam is alive," she said.
"Of course I do," said Khun.
I stayed with Team S&S for a while, preparing Gyetang's body and participating in some of the team training exercises that Khun had organized.
The purpose of Gyetang was merely to sneak into the test, and similarly it was possible to do various shenanigans to sneak in other things into tests if they qualified as Shinheuh or equipment, something that I'd tested with Team S&S and Yihwa over the years.
In particular, certain items could be used to store people—such as Manbarondenna or Lighthouses, and if the "person" was a "Shinheuh" or "Living Ignition Weapon", then they could be brought into the tests as well.
The caveat with using stuff like Manbarondenna was that Compression storage items couldn't be further Compressed by a second storage item if they already had some Compressed stuff inside them. Which meant for example, that I couldn't hide something inside Manbarondenna to be Compressed, and then Compress Manbarondenna itself any further. Similarly, I could not Compress my Bowls with my Shinheuh any further, so I kept them in a non-Compressing Arms Inventory separate from the rest of my standard supplementary weapons like Needles.
The exception was the Lighthouse, but that operated under a somewhat similar rule—when something normal sized was placed inside a Lighthouse, they could be Compressed together to the size of a soccer ball sized Cube, but then the Lighthouse could not be further Compressed inside anything else, neither could the Lighthouse Compress with Manbarondenna if it was already holding another item.
Like this, I had learned a lot of minor tricks and small refinements of my various techniques.
It still took two weeks to prepare Gyetang's body though, partly slowed down by the fact that I was operating through an Avatar Body.
I added a companion spell crest to Gyetang and linked it to Yihwa as if it were her familiar as well. With the entire brain intact and the remnant spiritual residue of the dead, an undead puppet like this was somewhat more intelligent than the basic animal intelligence than the Beastionts or even Axie with my will imprint. It even had some skills and feelings leftover from the person when it was still alive.
In the process, we'd explained to the team about Yihwa's status as my contractor and why Gyetang would also need her support to function.
"Right…so that demon summoning crap was real? Anak and Leesoo mentioned it, but I thought you guys were just faking it back then," said Khun.
"Only the part where we pretended to sacrifice Anak. Androssi's contract with me is real," I said.
"Well, whatever. I'll remember to put the Yeon and Gyetang together in our formations then," said Khun.
"Hey, why am I 'the Yeon', rather just 'Yeon' like 'Khun'?" Yihwa asked.
Khun waved her off and walked away. "Let's get back to work, there's no time to waste."
O O O
The team returned from the 29F test exhausted, but they passed, obtaining the right to ascend to the 30th Floor, and Khun received the Workshop invitation on his Lighthouse.
We set off in his ship with Team S&S quite excited.
The Tower was truly a huge and mysterious place. If we were not teleported through an arrangement with the test administrators and Floor Administrator, then it was necessary to travel between Floors using the Middle Area.
For many Floors under the Zahard Empire's rule, there were warp tunnels that properly licensed people and ships could use to get to a neighboring Floor, which was a much faster way of getting around than trying to climb the Tower on foot through various dark passages and the warp staircases.
But these warp areas all caused problems for the Kaleidostick if it was in agatespace. Over the years, I'd learned that even if the Kaleidostick could not be directly affected by most things in the real world, it was still subject to spell failure backlash.
Like the Waypoint Beacons that relied on gravitational reference calculations, the navigational systems that the Kaleidostick used for moving in agatespace parallel to the material world relied on input data from the physical world and the ability to capture that date via sensory spells.
If there was anything wrong with that data or if it was cut off, it could get lost, or in a particularly bad situation, suffer from spell backlash—and that was what actually happened when the water spirits used their anti-scrying spell for Cromwell back in FoZ. They didn't have to reach into agatespace to cause spell failure backlash, which could not be easily distinguished from enemy spell interference.
Here in the Tower, the physical world was strange and there were many effects that could cause problems for the Kaleidostick. Warp and Compressed space effects were just the most common occurrence that Regulars would encounter, but higher level Shinsoo flows could also have similar bad interactions.
I had once unwittingly moved through a major interfloor warp tunnel while the Kaleidostick was in agatespace—it got discombobulated, drifting for days while recalibrating, and forcing me to go on a tedious search to find it again.
So if I had the Kaleidostick with me now, I'd have retracted it back to the real world at this point.
However, since it was with Sasha and my main body, I simply relaxed.
"Hey, Axion, are you going to introduce us to the real Androssi Zahard?!" Wangnan and Dan asked together. "Can you help us get an autograph?!"
"Meeting her might be a bit difficult, with the wager rules. We can't let any of our old friends know what we're doing, that Khun is alive, that Viole is Baam, or that I'm working with this team," I said.
Actually, I told Androssi long ago about Baam and she was discreet enough not to say anything, so it wouldn't be a big problem. But it was a valid point for the rest of the team.
"Aww…"
"But I should be able to get some autographs from her for you guys."
Wangnan and Dan cheered, then started talking about her exploits.
"Guys…" Goseng said exasperatedly with a laugh.
'I want an autograph from the princess too!" said Miseng.
"Princess this, princess that! That's all you guys have been talking about since we got on this ship. We get it already!" Yihwa said, grumbling.
"You'll never understand it! She's beautiful and graceful, unlike you, flame thrower!" Wangnan exclaimed.
"She's every man's dream girl!" said Dan.
"Gyetang also joined my team because he was a big fan of Androssi and wanted to meet her," said Khun, holding his head in his hands and leaning back into his seat, looking with a melancholic expression at the permanently smiling undead chickenoid. "I promised him he would get that chance when we met at the Workshop Battle…"
"Well…it's not impossible to fulfill that wish. Androssi already knows Baam is alive, though I didn't tell her that it's Viole. She can probably guess though. We might arrange it on a break during the tournament," I said. "Away from unwanted eyes."
"No, right now, winning the bet and getting Baam back is more important. When we win, we can celebrate and do it then," said Khun.
"Sure, that works too," I said.
"Whaaat, really? We'll get to meet the princess! Woohoo!" Wangnan cheered and Dan gave him a high five.
"Only if we win, got it?" Khun said with an exasperated shake of his head, to which the guys nodded.
"I haven't seen her myself since the test Floor, but I heard from Leesoo she's gotten even stronger," continued Khun. "Anak grew a little complacent when there was nobody to challenge her when you two were away, so Leesoo's been dealing with her frustrations for a while, trying to close down the gap again."
"I can imagine. Androssi hasn't said much to me about it. But she seems happier with them than she was with me," I said.
"Really? I thought you two were enjoying your time alone together," Khun said suggestively.
"She's not allowed to date anyone for real, you know that. We had some fun in the beginning playing around, but it started to get boring after a while, and we couldn't really get along with anyone else. People were far too afraid to approach us. And our own personalities don't exactly mesh that well outside of battle. Having a whole group of friends to make things livelier probably made it easier on her in the last four years."
"That's the opposite of what Leesoo told me. He says that Androssi is keeping a distance from everyone else, and they barely get to talk to her, especially with all the paparazzi and fans that keep following her around," said Khun.
"Who knows, I guess we'll find out when we're there," I said. That did not actually sound any different from how she behaved canonically after being with them for the whole time instead of going with me for a few years.
"Does she know you have another contractor now?" Khun asked.
"Of course, I told her about it," I said.
Khun chuckled. "Well, maybe that's why, to you, she's pretending to be happier with the team than she really is."
"We don't really have that kind of relationship and she's not nearly as petty as she acts," I said. "Even if I didn't contract Yihwa when I did, I still would have needed another strong contractor close by after Viole formed his team, and I couldn't get Viole himself to do it at that point. He still doesn't know that I was there."
"I'm not the one you'll have to mollify…good luck with that," said Khun. "Well, maybe she'll get distracted by 'Viole'. Those two were also pretty close, weren't they?"
"So it was actually a love triangle?" Akraptor asked.
"What?!" Yihwa asked, shocked. "The princess and Viole too?! Why does she also get…!"
Akraptor coughed. "Correction: love rectangle."
"Is there something about Irregulars that attracts women?" Khun asked, facepalming.
"It's probably their exotic nature and mysterious circumstances," said Akraptor.
"W-what are you saying? I never said I liked Viole!" Yihwa shouted with a red face.
"I never said it was Viole you liked…" said Arkraptor with a smirk. "So there was something there after all?"
"N-nooo!" She said, shaking her head in a panic.
"There's also Yuri Zahard," said Khun to Akraptor. "She seems to have an unusual interest in both of them too."
"Oh, a pentagon then?"
"Let's see…if you include the spirit of Black March…but she only likes Baam," said Khun.
"I'm gonna have to start taking notes to keep track," said Akraptor.
"And I can't forget…Rachel," said Khun resentfully. Suddenly the jovial mood disappeared. "Goddamn Rachel, that ugly, backstabbing, bitch. Why did Baam ever like someone like her? She played me like a fool…I can't believe I tried to help them stay together back then. I must look ridiculous, huh, Axion? Even asking you and Androssi to help. Maybe Androssi had the right attitude, maybe I shouldn't have entangled myself in other people's drama."
Everyone looked like they wanted to ask for details, but were too uncomfortable to press us,
Except Prince, who had opened his mouth to ask when Goseng covered it forcefully with her hand.
"I told you before that after the Light Cubes were destroyed in the Hide and Seek test, when you guys in the lobby couldn't see what was happening on the screen anymore, that I had my special Lighthouse there still, right?" I asked Khun.
"…yes?" He asked confusedly about the abrupt change in topic.
"Back then, when she was trying to fulfill your request…Androssi asked Baam a similar question too, you know. About why he likes Rachel…why he insisted on following her when she didn't want him to, even at the cost of getting hurt, and seeing others get hurt. And in response to Androssi's questions, Baam said, 'the heart moves where the heart wills'," I said.
"…so…that's it? Love doesn't need a reason?" Khun asked.
"I was actually thinking…doesn't that describe you too? Why you chose to do all those things…wasn't it simply because you were following your heart?" I asked. "Doesn't that describe us all? No matter what it is that we strive for…so rather than thinking about how foolish we were…why don't we just try to live without regrets?"
He finally looked surprised. There was a long silence, then he laughed. "I guess you're right…yeah. I was overthinking it, huh? Though I never took you for a philosopher."
"I'm just stealing ideas from Baam and Androssi. Androssi is the one who later told Baam that we're all the same, following our hearts. We just want different things," I said.
"I never took either of them for philosophers either, if you want to be pedantic about it," said Khun.
The ship exited the warp tunnel to the 30th Floor Middle Area. In the distance, we saw an incredibly large floating ship, with gargantuan Suspendium rocks like small mountains on its two sides keeping it afloat.
The whole thing had to be the size of a small island country, and another huge floating structure was attached to the ship's front end.
"The Archimedes…that's where the Workshop is headquartered on this Floor," said Khun, looking out the deck window.
"Wow…" Multiple Team S&S members had expressions of awe on their faces as everyone went up to look at it.
My Pocket ringed, signaling a call. Everyone looked over at me and the Pocket. Androssi's name was the ID.
"I have to take this call," I said, before walking away.
The team followed after me, trying to spy, but Khun held them back. "Don't give away that he's with us!" He whispered harshly.
"We'll be quiet!" Wangnan whispered back.
I went around the corner of the deck to the hall before answering, while the team 'stealthily' turned their heads around the corner.
"Kaleidus, where are you? The ship is going to leave in a couple of days!" Androssi's voice asked.
"I'm on my way, Androssi. Already on the 30th Floor. It shouldn't be long now, hours at the most."
"Move faster! I've been waiting for too long! Are you going to stand me up when it's our first date in four years?"
"Well, if you really want me to get there faster, you could summon me. You still remember how, right?"
"Of course! Fine, that's what I'll do then."
"Alright, I'll wait for your call from the imaginary boundary then. Don't mess it up, or I'll get stuck there and won't be able to come back to reality easily."
"Then help me draw the summoning circle with Axie first. It's been a while…I don't want to make any mistakes."
"Okay."
Then the call ended, and then I sat down in a meditative position.
I retracted my consciousness from the Dua avatar, then focused on Axie instead.
My consciousness transferred over, and I was in the baby dragon form.
"I'm here," I announced, looking around her hotel room.
"What should I draw it with? Don't tell me we need blood again?" Androssi asked.
"We already have a contract so we don't need such a potent catalyst. Just some chalk or ink should be fine. Actually, you know what, we can use this too," I said, before Decompressing to human-size, then concentrating a bit before opening up a small hole in my reptilian hand through which a greenish yellow blood poured out. It collected in my hands as I cupped them together and sat on my hindlegs and tail.
"Alright," she said before taking out a Needle to dip it in the pool in my hands and proceeding to draw the circle carefully while I oversaw it.
It was done within a few minutes, then we went over the incantation to use, and finally she was ready, so I went back to the ship.
The whole team surrounded me, poking and prodding at the barrier, when I opened my eyes and they quickly retreated.
"So that's what you do when controlling another body?" Wangnan asked. "Is it the same when you controlled Gyetang with us before?"
"Yeah," I said. "Now I've got to go. So this is goodbye for now. Good luck, all of you."
We exchanged farewells, and then I cast the spell to go to the 'imaginary boundary' with the Dua avatar, deliberately dragging it out to create a visual effect.
O O O
[Interlude]
The group watched as Axion slowly turned transparent and then disappeared.
"That was kind of cool," said Prince. "Fading away like that as if he stopped being real."
"He's really going on a date with the princess…" Wangnan said enviously.
"At least we got to hear her voice," said Dan.
"Ah that's true. Even her voice is beautiful!" said Wangnan.
"Yeon, you should be able to summon him that way too, right?" Khun asked Yihwa, shaking her out of her cloud of gloom.
"Yeah, but only if he's already really close by, or if he's in the imaginary boundary. Otherwise he won't get the signal. I'd have to contact him first with my Pocket to coordinate. But once he's in the imaginary boundary, there's no way to communicate with him anymore without summoning him first," said Yihwa.
"How close is really close by?"
"Like in the same room…maybe fifty meters," said Yihwa.
"Hm…so he can only initiate control of another body from his side, and only the contractor can initiate the summoning? And you need to rely on the Pocket to call him, you can't just signal him some other way to take control of the body?" asked Khun.
"Actually, I can also send him a resonance pulse from anywhere because I have his Crest. I don't know if princess Androssi can. I can't send a complex message through the Crest though," said Yihwa. "Just some feelings."
"That might come in useful. I'll keep that in mind," said Khun.
O O O
[Kaleidus]
Once again I was in the Ring of Deterrence waiting for a summon, thinking about my upcoming plans.
This summon was a test of sorts—I had deliberately used the avatar instead of my main body, because I thought that it should be possible to answer a summons this way too, and even transport some items this way.
The Tower's Ring of Deterrence was peculiar because I'd always end up in the same place at the Top.
So if I just brought some items and then left them there, my Avatar could come and pick them up.
The only cost was that, in order to cast the high level path opening spell, I needed either my main body or one of the Avatars, and then it would need to return either by summoning or by using a Grain meld back to a physically established Waypoint.
So I had designated Sasha, and more specifically, the Lighthouse as the return Waypoint, and then went to the Ring with my main body as well, to hand over some items.
Although I had plenty of Grain now, that was still a fairly high cost to pay, but in this case I really had no other way of transferring items over, and the other avatar would need more support to complete the tasks I had intended for it.
And if the avatar couldn't be summoned? Well then I'd just have to show up in person and bring the Avatar Body in storage, before quietly switching out to leave later. Either way, I'd need to spend a unit of Grain to get back to Sasha, so the cost was worth paying.
The Workshop Battle was a point in the story where I didn't remember a lot of the details, just the main course of events.
Aside from the fight over the Thorn piece, the other major outcome I remembered from the story was Rachel extracting Emily from her imprisonment at the Workshop lab–a pitiful Living Ignition Weapon that had been melted down as the proof of concept for what the anti-Viole bloc intended for Viole. Rachel did this with the help of Cassano, and Cassano claimed the right half of his Ignition Devil from Horyang. But she wasn't going to take part in the Workshop Battle itself.
I wouldn't interfere with that, but the nature of Ignition Liquid and these Ignition Weapons was a point of fascination for me, hence my goal to break into that same lab during the Workshop Battle.
The reason had to do with a key property of Shinsoo outside of the Tower, which meant it was a concern of my interplanar strategy and not simply a local issue.
I had already done a fair few tests on Shinsoo in Worm, from which I determined some key facts.
Shinsoo that was contained and isolated retained its properties until physically exposed to the environment of a different plane. This included both foreign particles and vacuum environments, and also applied to sealed Compression storage effects, which meant that they could carry items out of the Tower and then Decompressed upon exposure, unable to Compress again after.
But many Shinsoo items and abilities required a contiguous Shinsoo enclosure to operate properly, and critically, this enclosure could not be entirely owned or activated Shinsoo. This meant that even though I could prevent Shinsoo from evaporating immediately by taking control of it before releasing it from a sealed container, that Shinsoo could only be used directly for personal techniques thereafter, it could not be sealed again or used to make a field where items could use it to operate.
On the other hand, the internal Shinsoo in my own body worked normally, as did all internal techniques. This extended to Derflinger's Shinsoo too, but to a lesser extent. Outside of the Tower, he could not use Ignition with me, even if he had stored Shinsoo, and he couldn't do anything with it.
I speculated that this was because Derf's way of using Shinsoo was more akin to Wave Controllers' external use, despite the Shinsoo being physically stored in the warp space of his Endbringer flesh.
There was something stopping Derf from actually internalizing Shinsoo as his own power. The best he could do was absorb Shinsoo like he did with spells, converting a small part to mana upon contact, but he simply did not build up Shinsoo body cultivation like me, or refined elemental essence like the water stone.
And maybe the secret lay in Ignition Liquid, the substance used to create true Ignition Weapons.
Most Ignition Weapons also incorporated some form of Compression, especially the Living Ignition Weapons.
On its own, Compression was already of immense strategic value to me, as a method of storage, especially since it allowed for carrying things across the Harmonic Corridors, even if it was one-way.
It seemed that the mystic power of Shinsoo prevented things in Compression storage from being destroyed in transit the way Tinkertech pocket dimensions relying on Wormvoid physics failed.
Its main limitation was not working without a contiguous Shinsoo enclosure. Not only that, it also required sufficient Shinsoo pressure and density.
But what if that too could be internalized somehow, to get around that limitation?
The idea sounded a little far-fetched, but it was a fact that Baam could absorb huge things like the Thorn into his body, and they just naturally Compressed to tiny sizes.
They weren't exactly internal, in the sense that they generally floated around him, but still, it seemed to me a worthy avenue of research.
Additionally, as an ability, living beings that could Compress themselves with Autocompression in the Tower were not that uncommon either, they were called Compression Licensors.
Many giant Shinheuh could do it.
The White Steel Eel was one such Shinheuh that could learn the skill naturally, which is why I hunted it down specifically after I discovered this.
But most beings did it with the help of a contract from the Administrators, and some Anima learned to imbue it onto their Shinheuh so they could trigger it as an effect rather than a skill.
With my lack of talent in Shinsoo and the water spirits' inability to comprehend most non-water based uses of Shinsoo, it was something of a miracle that I had somehow learned to use a low level imbued Compression on things I had sufficient time to prepare, perhaps because it was similar to a spell enchantment.
For Derflinger, the requisite pressure of Shinsoo was totally impractical due to his mass, even if he managed to internalize Shinsoo later. But he didn't necessarily need to use Compression to get back down to size outside of the Tower, it would just be a lot slower with the basic Endbringer crystal warping.
The White Steel Eel was of a mass that was more reasonable, so I wondered if it might be able to use Compression if I could carry around enough Shinsoo and create the necessary pressure for it.
It was still a goal that was far from actualization, since there were still many minor challenges to solve before I could engineer a solution. Like teaching the Shinheuh Autocompression first, when I hadn't had any luck learning it for myself.
No matter what though, the potential of Ignition and Compression had to be explored further, and the Workshop was the best place to acquire what I needed for my research.
O O O
As it turns out, I could indeed answer the summon while my consciousness was with the Avatar Body and use that vessel to go to the summoner.
After I got summoned by Androssi, we snuck out, wearing sunglasses, hats and casual clothes to sightsee around the beach area and talk by ourselves before returning to the team.
Sitting at a private table under a canopy at a beachside bubble tea joint, after we checked for eavesdroppers/paparazzi and put up privacy shielding, Androssi asked, "That Jyu Viole Grace. It's Baam, right? But what happened with Khun? The team is pretty angry…I think Leesoo wants to go after the Slayer candidate for revenge. But there's no way that Baam would kill Khun."
"Yeah," I said. "It wasn't Viole that did it though. And Khun is…well I'm not supposed to say anything about it, but he's alive. There was another group in FUG that wanted to bring Viole under control…and they arranged the Arlen's Hand incident to increase his reputation. The assassination was a failure though."
"So…what now? You've been with Baam for the last two years, and he never figured it out?"
"Well, I only visited occasionally, I wasn't part of their team proper. But my disguises are pretty good, so I wouldn't have expected him to figure it out," I said.
"I want to see it. Your disguise," said Androssi. "Seducing a girl from the Yeon family, what kind of face did you wear?"
"I didn't seduce her. I helped her out of a bad spot, and she helped me with some things in exchange. I think it was a worthwhile investment," I said, while changing my face to that of Dr. Dua and putting on regular fake glasses. "This is what I looked like."
"Really? She liked that? The responsible, bookish doctor with a mature older countenance?"
"I told you, there was no seduction involved. I didn't do anything with her," I said, before reverting the changes.
Actually, there was some seduction involved, I just didn't press it further in that direction after I got what I needed from Yihwa with the Crest Spirit implantation, but Androssi didn't need to know that.
"Hmph. Come to think of it, you haven't done anything with me either," said Androssi. "Did the big bad demon fail at corrupting the beautiful princess?"
"No, it's the evil princess that failed to corrupt the noble knight," I said.
"Or maybe the sinful knight was tempted away by the innocent boy with luscious long hair…"
"It couldn't be helped. Such strength, such powerful eyes, contrasted with that elegant form…"
She laughed and so did I.
"On a more serious note…" I started, before explaining the current wager in FUG regarding Viole's team.
"…I'm going to help Viole's chosen teammates win, as a favor to his teacher who also taught me. But we don't know what all the Workshop Battle competition rules are going to be, so we have to play it by ear. It's up to you what you want to do, but we can't tell Leesoo and the rest about Baam or Khun yet, as per the rules of the wager."
"Should we stop Leesoo from going after Viole for revenge though?"
"We can let that play out naturally and stay out of it until the right moment. I think Viole is too strong for them to hurt seriously, but any damage they do to the FUGs on the team should be helpful," I said.
"You might be underestimating the team a little…" Androssi said. "Unless Baam really got that strong?"
"I'll have to monitor the situation then. Perhaps it's best if I don't meet the team yet, in case I need to act," I said.
O O O
