Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Out amongst the snow the great life spirit hovered in the air, watching the battle going on beneath her as Abrus’s child faced off against the beasts she’d created for the coming conflict. A small horde of creatures, any one of them built to tower above Thera with teeth and claws fit for killing and not much else. They were meant to be predators in their purest forms and better than any plain homunculus could be, due to the seconds' limited nature and functions.

Instead, they were her first attempt to create a chimera that used a homunculus as a base. Horribly outdated compared to what she was currently making which meant they were disposable and fit for Thera’s training, but still more dangerous than most things that undirected nature could produce due to the fact that they had all the danger that could be put into an artificially created life form, while at the same time all the benefits that were gained by an ensouled creature, able to make decisions on its own without constant input. They were violent by their very design, yet still collapsed to the ground one by one in the face of Thera’s magic while Vividus evaluated from above.

Better, but not good. She thought as she watched the display, seeing it fail to meet her standards. If she could use more of her mana at once then she could have dealt with them all after a single attack, this is barely less of a disappointment than training her as a child.

Still, Thera was a potentially powerful tool in the coming war and was already obviously more dangerous than some of her earlier attempts at living weapons, so she would be worth trying to raise up more in the short time they had.

The issue was that it was already coming to an end. After a week of stalling, acting as if she didn’t have the answers they sought from the moment she first looked at her niece’s companion, the time limit she’d given was ending tomorrow, nowhere near enough to get her anywhere near the level Vividus hoped for, not unless something drastic occurred.

Mmh, maybe I could spend one of my better creatures, but then it’s a matter of sufficiently motivating her.

But that was a decision for later. As she watched all of her early prototypes be finished off by the life magic her niece wielded, she quickly called the girl inside to her workshop, seeing just how well she’d do at the other spells she’d been spending the last few days training in.

“Still really not a fan of this,” Thera said as she finished up her practice with homunculus creation to move on to focusing on chimeras. “I can’t see any time I’d actually put this to use.”

“That's because you lack imagination,” Vividus chided. “It’s much more efficient to just have different beasts fight for you while you focus on more important things, or at least use them for support in your case. Besides, by every reasonable view, the boy you’ve brought is one.”

The effects of the system on the sapient races really couldn’t be understated. When she’d adapted the demon organs to him before, it was through her knowledge of how to produce chimeras that made it so easy and effective for her, but unlike any other time she’d made them with whatever dumb beasts were at her disposal, that was where the effect ended. She’d never had any reason to do it to a mortal before, she could see potential benefits to the act, but it would upset too many people on the world to make it worthwhile, at least until she’d gotten to see the system helping it grow beyond those initial changes to reach something greater.

I can apply it to my own work to an extent of course, but I’m not sure if I can replicate it on the same level without spending unreasonable levels of mana. The obvious choice would be to immediately start finding volunteers and grafting bits into them to see if they’d gain access to any similar jobs to the kin one they mentioned. It would also be good to confirm if this is the effect of creating a chimera with a sapient creature as a whole, or if this is only possible because the parts came from a demon. A race designed to adapt and grow, they would be unusually suited to keep changing even when applied to another organism, but if that’s the case then there’s still one or two more tasteful options I could take advantage of on this world to try.

There was so much to do and so little time, and she was wasting it watching her niece fail at the simple project she’d given her of grafting the wings of a bird to a reptile. She’d gotten to the point that they were attached and could even move, but the creature would never fly. For that more modifications would be necessary, and it required a level of finesse that Vividus doubted Thera could pull off with her current skill, so once she judged the girl was done she walked to it, giving it a slightly deeper look before moving onto her next topic.

“Better, but still far from the point where it could actually fly. If you can’t do this then you’ll never be able to do it with creatures that would prove far more useful.”

“And I don’t want to. Look, I’m thankful for the lesson on the topic and the chance to practice it, but I’m not setting up a place in my home to cut animals apart and put them back together.”

“A poor decision based on meaningless mortal values, but fine, let’s move on to your true interest.”

It was the only one that Thera showed any enthusiasm for while also being the one Vividus had to pay the closest attention to, but she could at least admit that in that case her niece had been doing a reasonable job. Lifespan enhancement, a means of using life magic to reduce the effects of aging, potentially to a significant degree. While it couldn’t be stopped altogether, if a person had enough skill and mana it could add decades to the life a person typically expected, and that was only when one considered the amount of mana a typical soul mage had. If Thera ever made it to the higher end of an awakened life magic she might be able to manage much, much more.

At first, Vividus hadn’t understood the girl's interest in the subject. It was no secret among the great spirits that they expected she’d live exceptionally long for a mortal, even if it would be nothing but a blip in the lifespans they’d already had and could still expect in the years to come, but she was at least marginally aware of the fact that Thera didn’t seem thrilled with that knowledge the way other mortals might have been. The reason for her nieces sudden interest only came to her as she saw Thera looking at the boy, the air filling with pheromones to an even greater extent than what she’d dealt with in Stonewall that neither could consciously notice was there, even if it seemed to be such a central part to succubus biology. Thera was less interested in any application of the spell for herself than for those in her life, a weakness shared by many of the soul mages she’d met in the past as well.

But an exploitable one.

She did believe Thera was taking her lessons seriously. The issue just lied in that she wasn’t properly motivated to go beyond her limits and Vividus had just formed a perfect idea on how to change that. If Thera failed then it would only cost the great spirit an interesting subject, and she already knew how he’d been made. If there was a need then to examine something like him in the future then she could simply produce more.

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