Book 4 Chapter 4: Repairs

Book 4 Chapter 4:

++The transhumanist wave kickstarted in the 20th century was, ultimately, hard to stop. There is only so much ingrained culture and conservative ideals can do when opposed by something as overwhelming as the promise of a new kidney and an extended lifespan.++

- An analysis on the spread of Biomancy, archived at the Velforn Institute. 1,992 A.E.

I took some time to get used to my new body as I left the pocket realm. As I had noted earlier, it did not have any overt magical physical abilities just yet, those would have to come through long training like any other warrior. What it did have were a few benefits I had carefully added in myself.

The immune system was deliberately dialled up, and left my body roughly equivalent to a blast furnace as far as survivability for hostile germs went. The reflexes were faster on a physical level thanks to the nerve tissues responsible for them being thickened somewhat, and I had a moderate amount more physical strength than before, albeit no greatly increased muscle mass.

And the reproductive system was tweaked slightly, significantly reducing the effect of my bastard reproductive organs when they periodically decided to attack me.

All of these were small and insignificant advantages compared to my ambitions, but each one was a step forward. I had already confirmed that I managed to keep Isabel Vornholt and Lord Dread’s Vessels through bodily transfer, just as I always did when reforming in a new body back in my days as a pure lich. Now I just needed to test the warrior aspect.

I considered that to be a task for later however, because I had a more pressing matter to attend to. I walked through my transformed refinery as I headed for it.

Since the Vorets attacked, I had done a great deal of renovating. The outer wall, damaged in the fighting, was repaired, and crested by even more magic cannons than before. The refinery’s actual machinery was no larger, though I had it protected somewhat more extensively with reinforced metal panelling.

The real transformation, though, was observed in the living quarters.

Before I had let my employees live in hastily-constructed shacks. Safe and serviceable as a means of shelter, they had been by no means comfortable. Morale had, expectedly, plummeted following that attack, and one of the ways I had combatted this, and gotten those pesky labourers off my back, was by providing a higher standard of living space.

Those shacks were gone now, demolished within a few minutes by the combined efforts of my magician staff. In their place was a set of properly made dormitories, each one a multi-story building holding private rooms as large as most factory worker’s whole houses, with common areas and kitchens between them. They were all well furnished and insulated, and just as large in scale, and I had paid careful attention to the interior of the buildings, ensuring that it all looked as homely as possible, using my own mansion in Garamon as inspiration.

It is not at all difficult to please common labourers, they have so little that giving them a newfound luxury is pathetically easy.

But it was not the labourers I wished to see, and I walked right past their housing area to go deeper into the refinery grounds, towards the cordened-off section reserved for higher-end staff and my own family. Where Qaigor was staying.

My own accommodations still did not fit my natural excellence, to have a home truly worthy of me I would need to find some way to construct a fortress larger than the solar system, but they were at least better than the previous shelter I had been using. Something between a house and a mansion, with thick walls and every luxury I had managed to import from the nearby cities inside. Qaigor was staying on the top level.

I braced myself as I walked and felt the painful emotional cocktail oozing into my mind. Qaigor had been hurt protecting me. On the one hand I acknowledged that I owed the boy a debt, and had no choice but to repay it. Such were the principles I had lived by since before mankind knew how to fashion bronze into tools.

On the other hand, I was not delusional enough to miss that there was a more primal drive to help him bubbling up inside me too. I had accepted this some time ago, but was still not fully comfortable with it. Anything that could modify my judgement was inherently suspect.

Qaigor looked up as I entered his room. The boy had gotten far lower-energy of late. I ensured that he kept up his physical training and did not fall short of his true potential, but he seemed to have lost all drive to run around and jump about as he had before. It hurt me to see him like that.

But the device I felt in my coat, weighing against the fabric, was reassurance. “Do you remember what I told you, Qaigor?” I asked him.

“About my…eye?” He asked back while I took a seat on the bed beside him.

“Yes, I said I would fix it, and I am here to keep my word.”

“You have a replacement?!” he asked eagerly.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“I do, but you need to hold still while I apply it.” Qaigor seemed as fearful as he was eager, though settled down at that and kept from moving too much while I reached up to deftly remove the patch from his damaged eye. The organ itself had already been removed to avoid infection, and the ugly, gaping socket it left behind was not at all pleasant to gaze upon.

I had, of course, seen worse though. Far worse. Spending hundreds of lifetimes working with the undead tended to toughen up one’s stomach, to say the least. I was pleased to find my tolerance remained even now that I had an actual stomach again.

I withdrew the item from my coat, a box containing a container of fluid, in which floated Qaigor’s eye. I pressed it open and held one side against his socket, letting the fluid slide the artificial organ into the socket, then begin to do its work of binding it in place with the tissue of his optic nerve and socket.

“You must not move,” I warned him. “This will take a long time.”

Biomancy, fleshcrafting, whatever word one wished to use, the deliberate manipulation of living tissue was not one of my specialties, and it was an inherently slow and clumsy effort for me to perform even a basic transplant like this.

Slow and clumsy, not impossible. Despite giving his word that he would not, Qaigor squirmed and whimpered at the feeling in his eye, which I could not fully blame him for. The little movements did not interfere too much, at least, and a few minutes later I had fully attached the organ.

Then came the moment where we would see if it worked. I removed my hand from his face and backed off.

“Does it work?” I asked him. “Close your other eye and tell me.”

Qaigor did, and I saw his face light up like a second sun was rising in the room.

“I can see!” he croaked. “It’s fine, I can see from it Isabel!” The joy in his voice reached deep into me and touched something I had not known was there.

“You must listen to me now,” I warned him. “This is important Qaigor, do you understand?”

The boy barely seemed to hear me, which I could understand, but still found highly frustrating given the gravity of the situation. “Qaigor!” I snapped. That seemed to snatch his attention at least.

“Yes,” he said at once. “Sorry, I’m listening.”

“You must not tell anyone what happened here, okay?” I pressed. “If you are asked, your eye was wounded, not destroyed, and healed itself after a lengthy recovery.”

I saw his face scrunch in confusion, totally guileless as all children are. “But why?” he asked. “You can cure blindness, don’t you want people to know?”

“Eventually, I do, yes,” I assured him. “But at the moment there are still a few…complications.”

Qaigor got annoyed at that. “I’m not a baby,” he snapped. “Tell me why you can’t tell anyone and I’ll understand.”

I weighed him, nodding slowly. “Very well.” He was growing up. He had impressed with his performance in the fighting, and if nothing else he had earned an explanation of what I was asking of him.

“This technology, the magic and science used to do it, is currently…illegal.”

I eyed my brother warily, expecting some sudden outburst. There certainly was a shot of emotion, but Qaigor did not seem to direct it at me.

“Why!?” he demanded. “It can cure blindness!”

“Because people are idiots,” I shrugged. “Unfortunately, there are billions of idiots compared to only one of me. If I let those idiots find out what I am working on, they will storm this place and ruin my research, probably throw me in prison.”

I was actually being ridiculously optimistic, I was fairly sure a Demigod would try to eat me in the hopes of jumping themselves up to first place in the divine power rankings. Qaigor seemed plenty scared by my existing threat all the same.

“So you need to keep this secret then?” he asked.

“For now,” I confirmed. “But I have plans to amass social power, wealth and allies. And one day, when this is perfected, I will be offering a cure to all sorts of ailments.”

The ability to simply remove and replace lost bodyparts this seamlessly could cure just about anything that did not affect the brain directly. I was wondering about repairing the brain too by replacing its brain cells slowly enough to maintain the flow of consciousness, but…well, that was a matter for later, and it would not benefit me in any case.

Qaigor remained deep in thought for the better part of a minute before he finally nodded. “Okay Isabel. I’ll keep this a secret, I give you my word.” The boy said that last part with the kind of grandiosity that could only have come from mimicking me, though he was not mocking me by doing so. I felt the sudden urge to reach out and ruffle his hair.

“Good,” I told him. “Now I will be departing for Garamon soon. You will be able to return there before long, though for now I would like you to get used to that new eye, test it out, tell me about any flaws, and if possible make it look like you are still recovering from magical treatment. Lots of blinking and wincing.”

Qaigor grinned. “You want me to trick everyone?”

“Yes. It should not be hard, almost everyone here is an idiot, like in most places.”

His amusement did not last as long as I might have thought, giving way soon to a thoughtful frown.

“Where are you going though?” he asked. “In Garamon I mean. What are you planning on doing there?”

I hesitated, struggling to decide how much I ought to tell him. Eventually I concluded there was no harm in being honest, if only because I would be leaving the moment this conversation finished. Unless someone set up a telegram network spanning the ocean, there was simply no physical way he could possibly send word ahead of me even if he deliberately tried to do so.

“I will be going to Laugrey,” I explained. “Meeting with the Vorets. They and I have a few new matters to discuss now that my position has strengthened and tempers have cooled.”

A lot of new matters, in fact. I was so very excited to see what they made of them.