Wish upon the Stars chapter 1153 (Patreon)

The Chamber was huge. Legitimately one of the biggest things I’d ever seen underground. In fact, it was so big I couldn’t see the edges. Past a certain distance, clouds of mist obscured the edges of the room, and even directly on the other side of the door we weren't up against a wall, so I couldn’t even use that to estimate room size.

But that wasn’t what held my attention. No, that particular honor went to the THING in the center of the room.

The Void Child Overgod looked…wrong. It was almost humanoid. Kind of. It floated in the air, made of shadows too dense to make out individual details, but also lustrous enough to highlight certain features.

Subtle things about it were off, in ways that hurt to look at. Its shape was a mockery of humanity more than a similarity. Like someone had tried to design the most horrible, offensive caricature of a person they could imagine, and then dipped it in some kind of conceptually despicable acid and let it start to melt.

It was suspended over the room high enough up that I suspected it was bigger than I had guessed, perspective warping my perception of it to make it seem more of a size with the humanoids it mocked.

The actual suspension was being done by, oddly enough, chains of energy. One of them formed above us, channeled through the door from the river of resentment that had been flowing over our heads during the walk. There were innumerable chains, all linking together and braiding into bigger chains in midair to create sturdier ropes of links that would actually fit around the abomination.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Harper asked proudly. “I defeated it in single combat in a higher realm I visited. The fight lasted a hundred and twenty thousand years. I almost died over a thousand times. I did die at least seven. It remains one of my most cherished memories.”

I noted the oddly long arms, the broad shoulders, and then I glanced back at Harper. “Did you base your body off that thing?”

“Of course,” he said immediately. “It was one of my mightiest foes. I incorporate the power of all my defeated enemies into my form. Admittedly, this diminutive human appearance is not my TRUE visage. Should you lay eyes on my primal self your mind would tear itself apart in a desperate attempt to protect your soul from destruction. Even this fragment is far beyond what a mortal brain can accommodate.”

I sighed. “Alright, fine,” I said as we took in the monster. “You’re scary, the Void Child is scary, this whole place is scary. So…what does that do for us? Why do you need Callie’s Adherent Fire? How does it relate to your plans?”

“Excellent question,” he all but shouted. “I had an idea once I saw your wonderful flame. The anti Void can nurture anti Void Children. If the Void Children themselves are antibodies of a sort based on the subconscious, could we not attune the anti Void Children to the conscious, or rather, to the more overt tendencies?”

Callie’s face lit up. “You want to slip them into the system and use it to trigger the tribulation force,” she said excitedly. “I understand! The Void Children are a natural expression of the creator god consciousness. If you can trick the more active portion of the tendency into accepting the anti Void Children, they might influence it. The anti Void hates the Void. Its core is the Heretic Flame. If the tendency weaponizes the anti Void Children you’re hoping that hatred will be absorbed and give the resentment something to latch onto.”

“Precisely,” the Dean said proudly. “Of course, this is hardly a short term solution. Even for one such as myself the timescale of such a project is momentous. This possibility may only become viable far, far in the future. But still, it IS a research direction, and that in itself is worthy of celebration. After all, what purpose is there in research if not to innovate?”

“Understandable,” I said after a moment. “But is there anything more…direct you can tell us? I mean, we’ve got a lot to unpack here, admittedly, and this is going to do us a lot of good long term I suspect. But do you have like…a few other attributes we might be able to weaponize?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “I suppose I might be able to part with something that could help as one of the girl’s promised reward items. But the question then becomes, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish? Do you want to destroy the Void Children? Subvert them? I don’t know your situation, so it’s difficult to make suggestions for that purpose.”

I turned to Callie. “Well, you’re the Void expert, love. So, do you have any ideas what might help you? We could just go for some directly applicable abilities like buffs or enhancements. The opposite of curses.”

She bit her lip, clearly thinking. “The opposite of curses,” she said slowly. Her eyes flicked to Harper. “Do you have any curse based phoenix items? Do such things exist?”

“They do,” he acknowledged. “And yes. Are you planning to attempt to weaponize your husband’s bloodline abilities against the Void Children? I suppose a curse with a consciousness might be more likely to interface with the tribulation force. I haven’t tried that tactic. Another possible avenue to pursue.”

She shook her head. “Not like that,” she corrected. “Resentment is…it’s not what we need. That’s like trying to cure poison with poison. Void Children are the inner demons of the tendency. You don’t fix resentment with more resentment. You fix it with forgiveness.”

My eyes went wide. “You want to invert a resentment themed phoenix artifact with the Vault and then merge it with one of my demons,” I said in shock. “Create a phoenix whose sole purpose is to alleviate the subconscious darkness that manifests from the Void?” It was brilliant, honestly, in a very crazy sort of way. I wasn’t sure I could even use one of her manifested items as a base for a demon…but I also wasn’t sure I couldn’t.

In fact, it would make a lot of sense. Several of my demons' original forms had been based on attacks I had stored from Callie, so there was precedent for it. I’d need a demon who would resonate, but I was pretty sure I actually had one. Genesis Burst was made to heal souls, and this would essentially be healing the soul of the universe, on a very small scale.

Honestly, it was something deeply theoretical I wouldn’t have even considered if I hadn’t been training Mythcrafting with Professor Hawkins recently. I was blown away by the whole idea. I hadn’t even considered combining Callie’s vault and its inversion with my ability to integrate objects via Brad’s mysterious attribute. I glanced at Harper. “Would that work?” I asked slowly. “What would an inverted resentment attribute do to a Void Child?”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” he said with a cheerful shrug. “Do you think manifesting this much energy is simple? This project is the accumulation of generations of research and funding. It’s the collected resentment of an entire academy’s worth of students' failures and mistakes collected in the most streamlined way possible. The amount of resentment collected and shaped in this place is beyond the scale of what you could possibly conceive from your limited perspective. Manifesting an antithetical force on this scale would be impossible. And anything less…”

“Wouldn’t work,” I sighed as I glanced up at the captured Overgod. “So do you think it’s worth trying?”

He laughed at that, though not unkindly. “Of COURSE I do. It’ll be a fascinating study. I’m curious how it would even function. Would you need to purify them alive? Would destroying them purify the negative trend? Will anything happen at all? So many interesting questions.”

“And you have a phoenix artifact that’ll work?” Callie asked again. “What is it exactly? It has to be at the right level for us. I can manage a B-rank artifact, but nothing beyond that.”

“Phoenixes are fascinating creatures,” he said with a nod. “They have almost no natural affinity as a species. Or rather, they have an affinity for affinities. Phoenixes are the ultimate evolvers. They can adapt to almost any environment, change to suit any type of energy. There is almost nothing in creation that a phoenix can’t embody. I suspect it has to do with the mechanics of their rebirth. Regardless, yes, I possess an item created from such a phoenix.”

Snapping his fingers, he did…something. There was a shudder and a device appeared in his hands. It was, quite frankly, the most horrible thing I’d ever seen. A black metal gauntlet with spikes coming off of it. It had what could generously be described as a shield welded onto the forearm, but was, in reality, something more like a sawblade, except it was sort of domed (or maybe coned, since even that had a point) with small slits in it.

“This is a lantern shield,” he said with amusement as he saw our reaction. “The flame inside of it is a substance I affectionately refer to as ‘Hatefire’. Most people assume it’s some kind of ghostflame, but in fact, it originated from a resentment attributed phoenix whose soul was bound into the shield by a relatively mad witch hunter I once had the misfortune of meeting. This item is exceptionally old, and has degraded over time. It is currently approximately low B-rank in terms of Impact. The Hatefire has been eroding the structure for quite some time.”

Considering the guy who made that claim had casually mentioned have a hundred and fifty thousand year FIGHT, not long ago like it was an evening at the theater, I didn’t want to know what he considered exceptionally old.

Callie, meanwhile, was staring at the object, looking wary but determined. She reached out and touched it, and it vanished. “That’s one,” said Harper with amusement. “You have two more.”

“What do you think I should try?” she asked the Overgod. “You said you’d give advice.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I believe you should take advantage of ambiguity in the nature of your power. There’s a spear in here that absorbs blood to enhance its durability. An inversion of that would potentially be the ability to ERODE the durability of other objects the more blood it SHEDS. Which might be useful.”

“That would work,” Callie said with a nod. “How about something purely beneficial?”

“An inverted curse,” he nodded. “There’s a cursed set of manacles that prevents wounds from healing. Deeply unpleasant items. I suppose an inversion would create healing shackles, which might be useful. Their ability to shut down regeneration is one of the most effective I’ve ever seen, so I suppose the inverted set would be able to heal injuries regardless of the cause.”

Callie lit up at that. I couldn’t blame her. That sounded incredibly overpowered. “Those would work,” she said excitedly. “When can I pick them up?”

He rolled his eyes. “You can’t. The Lantern shield was never an integral part of this formation. The other two are. I’ll need to extricate them manually and send them to your residence. For now, I believe I have upheld my end of our bargain. I have research to resume.” He tossed the sphere of Adherent Fire into the air with excitement. “You two know the way out. You can go.”

And then, suddenly, he was just…gone. We turned and saw the door rushing toward us, warping the very space until it swallowed us up, slamming shit behind us, I looked around at the walls and the bones glinted menacingly in the low light. I called for Zagan, coating us both in purification, and I triggered my rank boost just in case. “We should go,” I told Callie quietly. And then I took her hand and we ran. Worst. Host. Ever.