After separating from Burn and strolling toward the treasury, Ma everything was just peachy. She’d practically taken up residence here after regaining her sciousness, so it had nearly bee her fort zone. A pce she could put her guard down.
Even knowing Burn’s father oisoned with corrupted mana, after all, she was still the inal Saintess. ing up corrupted mana was her gig for five hundred years, and holy, it would take more than a simple curse to toss her off her game.
Therolled into the treasure chamber, and bam—what a nasty surprise. This wasn’t the garden-variety poison they used on Shorof.
The moment she colpsed, because apparently the universe had a sick sense of humor, she mao ping Nemo with jumbled orders via her sciousness. Lucky for her, her mind wasirely switched off yet. The curse could take her body, but her soul? hat was still on the line.
Before long, help arrived. She was pletely incapacitated, not able to lift a finger, a she was getting the front-row seat to her own disaster. Her body was a useless husk. But her soul was still very much able to witness everything.
But unfortunately, unig with Caliburn was a bridge too far. s, no calls, not even a smoke signal. Instead, she felt herself pulled deeper into the abyss.
Until she saw that man.
“The demon lord certainly seized that golden opportunity to trap me in that mind prison curse. If presumably I’ve been the bane of his existence for so long, it makes perfect sense for him to take that slim ce to render me utterly incapacitated,” Man said, having finally retrieved her memories courtesy of Nemo, rather than Burn.
“But in that murky abyss, I discovered that he paid quite the hefty sum to pull it off,” she added, direg her gaze at Burn.
The man furrowed his brows, attempting to grasp the gravity of her words. “Price. Right, like how you offered your soul to settle our curse?”
Man nodded gravely. “To trap me, the inal Saint, in that curse, he used the equivalent of aire ti's worth of corrupted mana. And he could only sever my mind, leaving my soul and body intact. That seems to be the extent of power he could muster.”
That was why Man's soul remained intact, with her body untouched. Burn's memory fshed back to his earlier firmation that her physical form was indeed perfectly unharmed.
“If I had learned Vision Art, would I have been able to unicate with you back then?” Burn asked.
Man’s lips curled into a gentle smile. “Perhaps. But it should have beeively trying to reach out, not just relying on Nemo, who shouldn't have been able to speak.”
“Speak! Papa! Yell! Nemo! Yell!” Nemo chirped.
“Good girl,” Man sighed, patting the struct with a mix of affe and exasperation.
Most structs, created by past Mages and Vision users, cked the charm of genuiience. vely programmed to serve their creators, they were unique in funality, sure, but hardly brimming with personality.
Fashioned from magic, their so-called sciousness was merely a co of mana and materials. They typically took the form of catalysts—shiny objects or treasures desigo help regute mana and spells, as well as to calcute and program magic effects.
Now, take Mnemosyne’s Aeons. Built with an astonishing amount of soul energy—because, of course, she beloan—her plexity was more than just “very impressive.” She stood, well, floated, as one of the fi structs ever jured; an agly beautiful bination of design and magic meant to impress.
Yet, a struct, mind you, shouldn’t be grag the world with spoken words. The logic behind that is simple: nanic mouth, no vocal cords, and most importantly, no reason to speak. Sure, they could whisper into their creator’s sciousness, guiding them through the meandering paths of magic, but that was a reserved fun only for their masters.
Yet here they were—on this rather enting moon—hearing her voice as it vibrated through the ent air, finding its way tan, Burn, and Isaiah’s ears.
Oh yes, she could, of course, learn how to do it. Repeated observation of such ability could help her uand what she o do.
The problem was that artificial intelligence usually learned new skills differently from humans. They were typically fed specialized information until they could replicate it well enough, but not through uanding. Not because they wao, either.
Speaking, for one, was something Nemo shouldn’t be able to replicate because she never o or was told to. Why? Well, because she only ever o unicate with her creator, Man, and no one else.
The kind of unication a programmed struct used with its creator’s mind was not like human speech patterns—it was simplified a-based.
Another example would be when two structs unicated with each other. They didn’t even speak like humans. They spoke through codes and patterns they made up themselves using the program they were made from, in a much simpler way than humans.
Like if code was made by a toddler, they unicated through their own little symbols and patterns, vastly simpler than the voluted mess humans call nguage.
Thus, not only had Nemo done something she should never have been able to do, but she also fought through the tradi of Man’s and to try and find a way to unicate with Burn.
She talked.
She offered Burn a tract.
She created a solution Man had failed to provide, a solution unheard of before.
She brought her memory to the past for Man to read.
And she took the initiative herself.
“Mama? Proud?” Nemo asked.
Of course, her nguage wasn’t as plex as humans’, but this...
A miracle.
“I’m proud of you, Nemo, yes,” Man said, her smile warm and genuine.
Burn narrowed his eyes, gng suspiciously between Man and Nemo. The man hummed thoughtfully, his expression shifting.
“What are you thinking, Caliburn?” Man sensed some disturbahe moment the man’s expression ged.
“It was just yesterday you asked me for a child, but apparently, you already have one more,” Burn said. It was astounding how quickly one could graduate from singlehood to a father of two. And she still wanted him plowing her with his seed on top of that.
And assuming she wanted more than one of his blood and flesh—
Burn was about to say something wheopped himself. Different from Yvain, a 12-year-old teenage boy who was also a king and could handle one dirty joke or two, Nemo sounded and acted like a child.
The man closed his mouth and didn’t tih his usual shameless sarcasm.
.
.
.
.
.
.
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Daughters are fathers' aremesis.
