The Simulacrum - Chapter 75~ Part 1

“Are you, like, sleepy or something?”

The question made me open a single eye and glance at the girl in the driver’s seat. Honestly, this was one of those ‘just how the hell did I get into this situation again?’ kind of moments. Like, if my life was a movie, this would be the part when time slowed to a freeze-frame, all the color drained from the environment, and I would cheekily monologue something along the lines of ‘I bet you wonder how I ended up in a sports car speeding down the highway, driven by a circa fourteen years old girl. Well, it’s a long story, so let’s start at the beginning.’

Except I won’t do that, because I was already annoyed enough by the whole affair without gratuitous flashbacks thrown into the mix. Also, I had better things to do at the moment.

“No, I was doing a thing,” I told the incognito Arch-mage sitting next to me before closing my eyes again and returning to my Far Sight, or at least I would’ve, if not for the continued protests coming from my left.

“You’re totally standoffish today. And not in a cool way.”

“Less complaining and more paying attention to the road so that we won’t be stopped by the police. How the hell did you even get a license with that body anyway?”

Sahi let out a small giggle as she turned at an intersection, and then she replied with, “I blew pixie dust into the face of the officer and, like, made them madly in love with me so that they wouldn’t ask any questions.”

I gave my driver the skeptical look to end all skeptical looks, and capped it with the words, “That’s not funny at all, it’s a gross violation of someone’s free will, and you should be ashamed.”

“Like, whatever. You have a Seducer for a little sister so, you know, people with glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks and stuff.” I didn’t grace her with an answer, so she let out an indignant huff followed by a sulky, “You’re no fun either.”

I wanted to point out that after the recent incident, I doubted anyone would be in a humorous mood, but I refused to give her more attention, so instead I simply closed my eyes without a word. A short second (and one more indignant huff) later my point of view shifted, and I was once again looking at Josh and the class rep.

Due to my last second intervention, and some quick but aggressive negotiations afterward, I managed to get them out of hot water, but by the looks of it, they weren’t entirely satisfied with the results, despite the fact that they just barely avoided spending the night in custody. In fact, the two of them were currently heading home on foot, with Josh sourly pushing his scooter by Ammy’s side.

“Tonight was a mess,” Josh broke the silence, and the class rep immediately nodded in agreement. “If Leo didn’t show up, we would be in sooo much trouble.”

“I think we are either way,” Ammy responded with her face twisted into a sour grimace. “Unless he can somehow convince her not to tell grandfather about what happened tonight, we’re going to be lucky if we’ll only have to go under house arrest.”

There was a long beat in the conversation, but then Josh let out a thoughtful hum and muttered, “I wonder what Leo said to her. I mean, she completely had us at her mercy, but then she just let us go and they stormed off without as much as saying goodbye.”

“Maybe we’ll learn it tomorrow,” Ammy responded with a shrug, but then added, “Though, with Leo’s track record, I doubt it.”

“Yeah, he really loves his secrets, doesn’t he?” He paused here, and I figured this was the perfect segue to bring up Ammy’s own secret, but instead my friend hung his head and whispered, “Sorry.”

Ammy froze mid-stride, but then she quickly shook it off and continued her step while asking, “What are you apologizing about?”

“Just… for not being very useful, I suppose,” Josh confessed with a downcast expression. “I mean, I thought I could help, but I couldn’t even stand up to Sahi, and—”

“To be fair, she is an Arch-mage, even if… disguised?” Ammy cut in to console the guy, but then her words ended up pretty uncertain by the end of it.

“That doesn’t change the facts. Not to mention, I was the one who triggered the alarms in the first place, so all of this is mostly my fault.”

“Wait, no. You only triggered the alarm because I slipped and you tried to catch me.”

“Yes, but you wouldn’t have slipped if not for me—”

Whatever he tried to say, I couldn’t catch the end of it, as I was jolted out of Far Sight by the car coming to a halt. I opened my eyes, and considering that the first thing I saw was a fancy, multi-story hotel on our left, I figured we successfully arrived at our destination.

“Let’s, go!” Sahi exclaimed as she threw the door open and jumped out of the car in the middle of the driveway.

I followed suit, though with slightly less vigor. The door on my side moved up at the press of a button, and while holding onto Cal made it a little difficult to get out, once I managed, I couldn’t help but sneak another long glance at our ride. For some inexplicable reason, Sahi not only had a license even though she looked younger than my sister, but she was driving a freaking Lamborghini of all things. I was afraid she would be one of those comedically reckless drivers, but she was surprisingly careful, and with a beautiful car like this, she’d better be.

“{Horseless carriages have come a long way since I was last awake,} Cal noted on the side, and I couldn’t help but agree. Hell, they even came a long way since I first woke up on the island!

“Come, Leonard. I’ll show you to my room.” When Sahi finally noticed where I was looking, a wide smile spread on her face and she added, “It’s totally nice, isn’t it? Endy let me borrow it while I’m on the island! He always had a good taste for the finer things in life.”

“I’m aware,” I noted, earning me an even wider smile.

“The valet will take care of the car. Come on; let’s not waste any more time!”

She came over and tried to grab my hand, so I casually dodged her attempt (much to her annoyance) and headed towards the main entrance on my own, with the flat of Cal’s blade resting against my shoulder. I mean, it was already pretty conspicuous, and I figured that trying to hide it would only draw more attention to me, so I decided to wear it in the open instead and act like it was totally normal to walk around with a sword in public. You know? Refuge in audacity and stuff.

In retrospect, I might’ve overthought things a little, as the placeholder hotel staff didn’t even bat an eye at my appearance. Either that, or they were just professionals. In fact, the only person in the entire hotel who questioned the presence of Cal was the incognito Arch-mage, and even she waited until we were inside the elevator to bring it up.

“So, like, I totally forgot to ask, but why do you have a sword?” the brown girl inquired while unsubtly eyeing the blade still resting against my shoulder.

“I was working on it at the time, so I brought it along,” I responded a tad curtly, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“Ooooh? So you’re working on weapon enchantments too? That’s totally wicked!”

I gave her an ambivalent shrug in place of a proper response and then proceeded to ignore her until we reached the top floor. The elevator doors opened to a spacious, clean corridor that was way less posh than what I expected from the hallway leading to the VIP suites. On the other hand, my appearance finally got a reaction out of someone, as the two guys standing guard in front of the farthest door instinctively stiffened in alarm the second they noticed me, only to stand down a moment later when Sahi’s presence also registered with them.

“Welcome back, my Lord,” the guard on the left, a tall man with a neatly cropped beard and a pair of tiny glasses greeted the girl at my side. Apparently, Arch-mages were called ‘Lord’ regardless of gender. Who knew?

“I have a guest tonight,” she stated off-handedly, and the man looked me over from head to toe, his eyes only lingering on Cal for a second.

“Chimera Slayer,” he greeted me with a nod, and his colleague did the same.

“I see that my reputation precedes me,” I grumbled under my breath, drawing a wide grin out of Sahi in response.

“{You’ve slain a Chimeric Beast of the Abyss, young knight? Was it related to the little one living in your home?}”

“It’s a long story,” I whispered softly under my breath, and based on the lack of reactions, everyone must’ve thought I was only grumbling to myself.

Anyways, Sahi and I entered the VIP suite without any further ado, and it was about as big and fancy as I expected, though not especially lavish. I wondered if my frequent visits to the Dracis mansion were skewing my perception a little, but the thought was soon popped like a bubble by the Arch-mage proxy closing the door behind us.

“I’ll go get ready! Please take a seat! If you want something to, like, drink and such, the minibar’s over there!”

After sputtering that out, she all but dashed into the room at the far end of the living area. Since I had nothing better to do, I figured I might as well sit down and collect my thoughts.

Let’s start with the reason why I was here in the first place: after Josh and Ammy were caught, I offered a simple deal for her. She’d let them go and sweep the incident under the carpet, and in exchange I’d take a look at her body-switching research and give her some pointers, free of charge. I expected that she’d drive a hard bargain, but my performance at the symposium must’ve left a deep impression on her, as she was almost suspiciously eager to take my offer and all but kicked my burglar friends out in her hurry to get moving.

Honestly speaking, I didn’t know how (or even if) I could help her pet project, but even if I failed to do so, she couldn’t exactly call me out on it, even if she tried to raise a fuss with Lord Grandpa. Not to mention, I doubted the old coot would throw his own granddaughter into prison over something like this. Josh was a different matter, but I still had quite a bit of leverage on the old man, so if push came to shove, I was confident I could get my friend out of the frying pan as well.

In other words, this was a situation where I already accomplished my main goal of getting my friends out of immediate trouble, and now I just had to play nice and coast along for a while. In the best-case scenario, I may even be able to put Saahira in my debt, which could pay some dividends later down the line. I mean, I’ve been kind of planning to play her against Lord Grandpa anyway, so this really was a win-win situation for me.

Anyhow, I was just about to grow impatient when the door in the back opened without a sound, and out walked an elderly woman draped in a thick, royal purple bathrobe. She was tall, yet thin to the point she was borderline emaciated. Her short white hair was damp, and her face had countless wrinkles framing a very prominent hook nose and a pair of intense green eyes that resulted in a sense of intangible dignity surrounding her. It reminded me of the first time I met Lord Grandpa in his study, and this impression lasted exactly until she walked over to me and opened her mouth.

“I’m sorry I made you wait. I, like, totally tried to be quick, but the suspension fluid is like tooootally grody and stuff, and getting it out of your hair is like, gosh, not in this life!”

I gave the outwardly grandmotherly woman a long, deliberate lookover, but since she showed no sign of joking, I exhaled a pent-up groan and uttered, “Is that seriously how you speak?”

“Like, what do you mean?”

“I… It doesn’t matter. Let’s get this over with.”

Saying so, I stood up at once, but I was stopped by the Arch-mage after a single step.

“Calm down, Leonard. Chill. Let’s, like, move over to my other body and discuss things first. Like, I don’t want to spazz out or anything, but if you can do what I think you can do, then it would be the bomb. Like, seriously the bomb, so I’m totally stoked!”

Oh my god. Somehow returning to her normal body made her valley speak worse! How is that even possible? Not to mention, talking like that with her raspy, aged voice made it even weirder, almost creepy in a sense. It was like I was on the set of an especially low-effort episode of The Twilight Zone. The original black and white one, to be precise.

No, never mind. Let’s not care about it. Let’s just check out what she wants, take a look at whatever enchantment she needs to be fiddled with, and then go home and make some tea and grilled cheese to wash off the bad aftertaste of this day.

With that in mind, I allowed Saahira to lead me into the room where she came from, and for a moment I felt as though I accidentally Phased into Labcoat Guy’s workshop. By the looks of it, this one used to be a bedroom, but it was completely rearranged, with the bed on one side and most of the furniture on the other. In the middle of the room, there stood an enormous glass tube on a round metallic pedestal. It was hooked up to an even bigger metal tank of some kind and it had various control panels around it displaying all kinds of vital information. I meant that literally, as one of them was a heart monitor. The glass container was currently empty, though based on a Far Glance in the past I wish I could forget, Saahira used to be floating in that thing while remote-controlling the ‘Sahi’ body.

Speaking of which, the latter was lying on the bed in the corner, seemingly asleep under a thin bed sheet, with only her head and bare feet sticking out. I couldn’t see the ubiquitous glowy line extending from her head anymore, so it was obvious she was less ‘sleeping’ and more ‘offline’ at the moment.

I took in each part of the scenery, and after a long beat, I turned to the old woman standing by my side and simply asked, “So, what exactly do you want me to do?”

“First, let’s sit and talk for a bit,” she proposed and she pointed at the chairs next to the bed where the currently occupant-less body was lying. She didn’t even wait for me to respond before she walked over, leaving me with little choice other than to follow after her. There were exactly two chairs, and by the looks of it, she put them there in preparation. She sat down onto the one right next to the nightstand near the bed, so by process of elimination, I had no choice but to take the other seat.

The moment I was seated, Saahira immediately turned to me and asked, “So, like, how much do you know about our research?”

I gave the smiling Arch-mage a sideways look, and a deep breath later I told her, “As far as I understand, you’re trying to move souls between cloned bodies as a bid to sell it to the other venerable geezers of the Assembly as bootleg immortality, but you hit a roadblock, and so far you only managed to create this proxy body that you remotely control while your real body is floating in that tube over there.”

By the time I finished, Saahira’s smile turned quite stiff, as if she had to spend inordinate effort to keep it up, but rather soon it slowly morphed into a melancholic expression, followed by a similarly forlorn sigh.

“So you know that much, huh? Bogus. But then again, I guess it’s totally obvious in retrospect. Like, you weren’t even the slightest bit surprised when I showed up like this.” She paused here as she tried to force the smile back onto her face, and once she more or less succeeded, she stated, “You’re mostly correct, except for, like, a single point. Our… my research is totally not just a bargaining chip in Assembly politics.”

“It’s not?” I inquired with a single brow raised high. “Please don’t tell me it’s for the benefit of all mankind.”

“Well, no, not really,” she responded in the company of a soft chuckle that, after a moment, turned into a rattling cough, startling me for a moment. “As a matter of fact, my research is a little selfish. You see, Leonard… I’m actually dying.” After dropping that bombshell, she was looking at me quite intently, but when I didn’t give her the reaction she was looking for, she stressed, “Like, I’m literally dying. Totally. Like, even as we speak.”

“Yeah, I got it. So?”

“So?” she raised her voice like my reaction was absurd. “I don’t want to die, so this is very important to me, for sure!”

“I think most people would agree with the sentiment,” I pointed out, only for the old lady in front of me to literally puff out her cheeks and start sulking, prompting me to raise my hands in surrender and yell out, “Okay, okay! I get it. It’s very important and I’m going to try to help, okay?”

“You better,” the currently not at all dignified Arch-mage grumbled before she pulled out the drawer of the nearby nightstand, took out a bunch of haphazardly piled up papers, and handed them over to me. When I gave her a quizzical frown, she simply told me, “It’s the documentation for, like, eeeverything in this room.”

“Oh. I see.”

After saying so, I tried to skim the wad of pages in my hands, but even a cursory glance told me it was way over my head. As in, aside from a few snippets here and there, I couldn’t make heads or tails of any of this. I’ve already run into this problem once with enchantments, where it turned out that artificers like Gowan saw and interacted with arrays very differently than how I did, but even so, there was at least some common ground. This? This might as well have been written in Mandarin. By a duck.

That said, I couldn’t exactly tell that to my expectant host, so while I pretended to study the papers, I decided to distract her with some small talk.

“So, why are you dying?”

…

Okay, in my defense, I know I’m terrible at small talk, but hey, at least I was trying. Isn’t that the most important part? Not to mention, while my host gave me a curious look, she didn’t seem offended by my question.

“Oh, you know? It’s terminal stage lung cancer. From, like, cigarettes and stuff,” Saahira answered without the slightest hint of reservation. She probably mistook my surprise at her honest answer for ridicule, as she immediately raised her voice in an indignant tirade. “What? Like, cigarettes used to be way wicked back in my day! You kids today just totally don’t get it! All the choice gals did it, and nobody wanted to be a Joanie, so of course I totally did it too! So what if it’s, like, totally killing me now? Everyone can make some small mistakes, so I don’t need you to judge me! Ugh, gag me with a spoon!”

“… Okay, I didn’t understand half of that, but maybe for the better,” I mused as I put the pages aside. “Let me get to the point then: is there an actual enchantment I can look at? Because to be honest with you, if you want me to fix your machinery or discuss theoretical nuances, I’m not your guy.”

“Like…. um… there’s the array on the artificial body, but—”

“Marvelous, give me a moment.”

Saying so, I proceeded to escape my failed attempt at small talk and the annoyingly anachronistic old lady by focusing my attention on the motionless body lying on the bed. I wanted to get away from here as soon as possible, so I unceremoniously jammed my Phantom Limb into the only slightly glowing bit I could see on her body, which was a spot around her sternum, visible even through the thin fabric.

What followed was the usual experience of flying backwards through a river made of irrational numbers before I reached a familiar non-Euclidian space. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, the inside of an enchantment, and a fairly complex one at that. I’ve spent roughly ten billion years analyzing it (okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that long), and once I had a proper grasp on it, I exited back into the alleged ‘real world’ and let out a pent-up breath.

“Okay, so here’s what I gathered: this system of yours works taking an original soul, which I presume is yours, and then mirroring it into this body by using the enchantment on it as scaffolding, where the mirror-soul kind of slots into. Did I get that right?”

“That’s… the jist of it,” Saahira confirmed, if tentatively.

“Marvelous. So, I have some good news and some bad news. Let’s start with the good one: your work is pretty clean and it’s working as intended, at least if your intent was perfect remote control. In fact, so long as you plug any soul into it, it should work like a charm. However, here’s the bad news: I don’t see any ways you can actually put a soul in there. As in, this framework of yours has no mechanism to either accept or contain a genuine soul. Am I missing something, or did you really have no plan for how to transfer the soul between the original body and the new host?”

“You are… totally right,” Saahira admitted with only mild reluctance. “It’s actually where our research stalled. Like, we focused so much on perfecting the base arrays that control the body, we never managed to figure out how to move a soul from one body to another.”

“Honestly, your body control system is not too different from the one Lord Grandpa uses, and that one could house a soul once I moved one over. It only needed minor changes to serve as a crutch until the soul properly settled in, so I think if I apply the same changes here, we could get it working, and why are you looking at me like that?”

The old Arch-mage kept blinking at me in confusion, but then she gathered her wits and uttered, “So, like, you can move souls?”

“I’ve only done it once, and I kind of had to cheat, so to speak, but yeah,” I told her, and the moment I did, her eyes lit up with a mixture of hope and greed.

“Can you, like, do it again?”

“Well, I should be able to, but it wouldn’t really help your research. I mean, my technique is unique and, as far as I know, it can’t be replicated.”

“Who cares about that?!” the old lady burst out as she balled her fingers into fists. “Are you telling me you could move me over to this body? Like, permanently?!”

“Erm… Yeah, I think I can,” I answered even though I was feeling a little off-balance at the moment. “I can work around the issues with the framework, so it should be possible.”

“Can you do it, like, right now?” came the next question, and for a moment I could only blink in confusion.

“I… guess I could, but I can’t exactly guarantee it would be successful on the first try, and if something goes wrong, you could literally die,” I pointed out, only to get scoffed at for my trouble.

“Leonard, I’m like, literally dying already!”

“I get it, but I think I should at least practice a bit before doing it live, especially since—”

“What do you want?” The sudden question from the Arch-mage shoved my warning back down my throat, and before I could properly react, she pressed on. “Like, is it money? Land? Titles? Political favors? I can get you all of those and more!”

I wanted to point out that we were already in the middle of making a deal, and that this was really reckless, not to mention quite sudden, but her expression told me she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“Would you just hold your horses for five damn seconds!?” I finally burst out once my patience reached its boiling point, and the overly excited Arch-mage immediately shut her half-open mouth with an audible clicking of teeth. After the room returned to silence, I took a deep breath to collect myself, and once I felt composed, I explained, “Listen, this isn’t a magical appendectomy. We’re talking about moving your entire consciousness, permanently, into another body without any safety protocols, controls, or precedents. If anything goes wrong, I’ll have a dead Arch-mage on my hands, and I’m not in the mood to explain that to the authorities.”

“So… you’re not doing it? Like, no matter what?”

The way the old woman in front of me was giving me the desperate puppy eyes was frankly disturbing, but it was also at least somewhat effective, and after a few seconds I softened my stance into, “Not without a written contract absolving me of any potential responsibilities, signed in triplicate.”

The moment I proposed that, Saahira’s eyes lit up with childish excitement and she immediately jumped to her feet. Well, okay, ‘jumped’ might be a bit too strong of a word there, as she was still a frail old woman, but the vigor with which she rose from her seat was still a little impressive.

“Wicked! I’ll go and get the papers! Don’t go anywhere!” After saying so, she rushed out the door, at least as much as she could, and even after she closed it behind her, I could hear her ordering her subordinates to help her.

With the Arch-mage gone, a strange and slightly uncomfortable silence settled upon the room. It lasted exactly until I exhaled a drawn-out, exasperated sigh. When I got up this morning, I definitely didn’t expect that I would be dragged into a situation like this, and Saahira was straight out creeping me out. A small part of my brain couldn’t help but wonder: maybe she was never supposed to ‘appear’ in her original body, and that’s why she had the whole ‘overly excited 80’s valley girl’ chic going on for ‘Sahi’? Or maybe she was just stuck in that decade and nobody dared to question her because of her authority? Either way, all of those verbal ticks and mannerisms were still kind of okay when they were coming out of a young girl’s mouth, but when Saahira did them, it was just plain damn weird. But then again, the two were literally the same person, so I don’t know what I was expecting.

“{Are you truly going to render help to this woman?”} Cal suddenly reminded me that they were still in my lap, and after a moment, I responded with a not particularly steadfast nod.

“She’s pretty desperate, so now that the cat’s out of the bag, I doubt she’d take no for an answer. Not to mention, having an Arch-mage indebted to me is never a bad thing.”

“{I don’t understand what putting cats into bags has anything to do with the situation, but… wait… Did you just say Arch-mage?!}”

“Yep,” I confirmed it, and now that I thought about it, I never actually told Cal about whom we were dealing with.

“{She’s an Arch-mage?! That woman?!}” They sounded about as upset as when they learned about me having an Abyssal for a little sister, and a loud groan later they added, “{It seems that even the Magi have fallen on dark times since the last time I was awake.}”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I told them off-handedly. “She’s one thing, but the local Arch-mage of the island we’re on is an old, conniving, alcoholic bastard who’s addicted to convoluted conspiracies and putting surveillance spells on everything and everyone.”

“{… That actually sounds like the average Arch-mage back in my time, young knight,}” Cal pointed out, and I couldn’t help but let out a thoughtful ‘Huh.’ in response.

“In that case, maybe she’s the only weird one.”

Cal silently agreed, and since the well of conversation dried up, and I had nothing better to do, I decided to take a second look at the enchantment I’d be working on. Just to be on the safe side. As such, I extended my phantom limb and dived into the crest on the occupantless body next to me.

I spent quite some time analyzing the arrays this time around, and while doing so, bits and pieces of the papers Saahira had me skim through suddenly started making a modicum of sense. Let me try to give a footnotes version of how it currently worked. It was actually pretty simple, all things considered: first, there was a connection leading to a separate enchantment, probably the one in the big machine on my other side, which would scan the ‘original’ soul in real-time. Then the results would be sent over to this array, which would then ’emulate’ a soul inside it. I called this a ‘mirror soul’, though they called it something else in the documentation. I liked my terminology better.

More importantly, once the connection was established, the body of the ‘original’ would be put into stasis by a separate mechanism, while the mirror soul would act as a proxy to control the new body. Now, if the goal was only to serve as a way to remotely pilot an ’empty’ body, then this system was way too robust and overcomplicated, as just transferring the bits responsible for motor functions, or even just emulating brain signals would’ve been much, much simpler. However, as far as a proper system for soul transfer was concerned, I’d easily consider it a successful… pre-beta built. Something like v0.3.4. And now I had to take it to v1.0 in one sitting.

But back to the actual enchantment in question. The ‘crest’ on the Sahi body’s chest could be divided into three parts: the one responsible for creating and maintaining the mirror soul, the one responsible for synchronizing it with the original, and finally the control system which allowed the mirror soul to actually inhabit and operate the body. There were a couple of other sub-systems, such as the ones responsible for keeping the body alive in a vegetative state when it wasn’t controlled, or some mandatory anti-tampering arrays, but at the end of the day, those three main parts were my primary concern.

Now, let’s start with the obvious: if I were to Phase Saahira’s soul over the way I did with Ichiko’s, then there’s no need for the first two parts, as there would be no mirror soul, and there was nothing to synchronize either. As for the control module, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was eerily similar to the enchantment used to control the dead Chimera. Either the idiom ‘great minds think alike’ was more true than I expected, or there might’ve been some magindustrial espionage at work. Either way, it was really helpful, as the familiarity meant I shouldn’t have too much trouble adapting it the same way as I did with the tiny miko.

In fact, I went so far as to lay some groundwork by disconnecting the unnecessary parts and tweaking the control arrays for a better fit. Whether by coincidence or the Narrative’s affinity for tight timing, I just finished my prep work and exited from the enchantmentscape to rest a bit when Saahira returned with a bundle of faintly glowing contract papers in her hands. She walked over without a word and simply handed them over to me, though her eyes said she was eager to get started.

“Give me a moment. I want to read this, just in case you put in a clause about an engagement into the fine print.”

“Oh, like, please! That was totally just a joke!” the elderly lady protested with yet another unnervingly girlish pout, so I swiftly ignored her and focused on the contracts in front of me. By the looks of it, they were written with a fountain pen, and as for the contents, they were perfectly fine, maybe with the exception of one single sentence.

“Are you sure you want to promise ‘unconditional support’? Isn’t that a little too broad?”

“Like, don’t worry about it,” the Arch-mage dismissed me with a wave of her hand and sat down on the chair next to mine. After making sure that all three contracts said the same thing and there were no hidden clauses and fine print at the bottom, I let out a defeated sigh.

“Are you entirely sure you want to go through with this?”

“Like, doy?”

It took me an embarrassingly long moment to figure out that her word meant agreement, so I stopped procrastinating. After my contract with Fred, I was well aware of the procedure, so I used the tip of Cal to prick my right thumb (much to their protests), and after spreading the blood a little, I used it to stamp all three of the contracts with my fingerprint. I confirmed that the contract took effect by observing the way the glow around the papers intensified for a second, and then I handed one page back to her and pocketed the remaining two.

“Wicked! So, do you, like, need any tools? Materials? Something to drink?”

Now that she brought it up, I was actually feeling a little parched, but I shook my head anyway and told her, “No, I don’t.”

“Awesome! So, should I, like, get back into the life support tank?”

“If you mean that glass tube over there, then no. It would only hinder the process.”

“Really?” She sounded skeptical, but when I glanced at her, she hastily added, “I mean, like, I don’t doubt you or anything. You’re the genius artificer, so if you say so, it must be totally true!”

“I’m not a genius,” I pointed out a tad wearily. “I just have access to some tools you don’t and… why am I even making excuses to you?”

“I don’t know,” she told me one hundred percent sincerely. “So, do I have to get undressed?”

“No, but it would probably help if you were unconscious. It would make the transfer process more—”

“Okay!” Saahira exclaimed with almost childlike glee, and before I could even finish my sentence, she muttered a short chant and then slapped her own forehead.

A blink of an eye later her whole body went limp, like a puppet with its strings cut, and as her arm fell down, she almost tumbled out of her chair as well. I put my hand on her shoulder to steady her, and after the first shock died down, I couldn’t help but let out a baffled, “Huh. So that just happened.”

“{Did… did an Arch-mage of the Magi just knock herself out in front of you?}” Cal spoke up, their voice more than just tinted by denial.

“By the sound of her breathing, it’s more like she put herself to sleep, but in practical terms… yes.”

“{… Young knight, please be honest with me. Are we in a fever dream? Am I still sleeping in my stone?}”

“Unless we are both sharing one, I’m about ninety percent sure you’re not,” I told the sword before putting it aside so that I could straighten the unconscious body of the old lady, and once I was sure she wouldn’t slip down her chair, I picked Cal back up and added, “Can swords even have fever dreams?”

“{I don’t know! Can I? I really wish that was the case, because then nothing making sense would make sense!}”

“Oh, sweet summer child… sword… whatever. You’ve yet to scratch the tip of the iceberg.”

“{… Is it too late to go back into my stone?}”

“Waaaay too late,” I answered with a thin-lipped smile, and once our conversation was over, I stretched my fingers and took a deep breath in preparation for the magical equivalent of a brain surgery only using my bare hands.

“Oh well, here goes nothing…”