Another mega chapter. 5000 words this time.
Sorry I wasn't posting. I got stuck on this chapter, and had to further weaken the flame divination spell to progress.
It's not perfect, but do tell me if you spot any problems with the chapter.
....
"So, I was working on a new spell. It's called Flame Divination."
"One of those new spells you couldn't share with us?" My father asked, in a sour, accusatory tone that bugged me a little more than I'd have liked to admit, "What changed?"
"I said I'd share them with you after I finished them, didn't I?" I replied with just as much acridity, before I caught myself.
"I'm-"/"sorry." We both spoke at the same time.
"I shouldn't talk to you that way, Riser. I'm sure you have your reasons." My father added, humbly now, and gentler too, "But we'd appreciate if you explained them to us, those reasons."
"Me too. I should have been more forthright." I admitted, "I just didn't want to rattle off half-baked ideas and spell theories, over half of which I wasn't even sure would pan out anytime soon, and then I'd feel like a failure, like I gave you false hope, boasted so much yet achieved so little, and-"
"I understand, Riser." My father put a hand on my shoulder, "It's okay to feel that way. All of us do."
"The burden of expectations blinds you to the most obvious things sometimes." Ruval laughed, "I should know. I stalled in progress to the point I quit the rating games entirely." He looked at me as if looking into the past, "I know it's tempting to believe you can do everything all at once, and maybe you can.
But just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. It's okay to fail, or even delay things once in a while. Take time to relax, enjoy yourself. Or else you will burn out and end up like me, and quite frankly, Ravel isn't looking quite as much on the up and up as you did at her age.
There won't be any Riser Phenex sparking your inspiration, because there's only one of you. So cherish yourself."
I suppose, I have been taking on too much lately.
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.
"Maybe you're right." I gave in, and my father smiled.
"Riser, I know you're a genius, but no one wins a hundred percent of the time. That's part of life. Don't let it bother you too much. We're your family, Riser. No matter who you are, no matter what you do we'll never think less of you."
I nodded.
"I still can't give you the spells yet, you understand that… right?" I asked hesitantly.
"We know." Ruval rolled his eyes, "Now just tell us about it already."
"Yes, yes. Patience is a virtue Ruval."
"And we're devils." He countered, imperiously pointing at me, "Off with it. Now."
Brothers…
I smiled.
"Where was I- yes. Pizza." I got back on track again, "So, I teleported to the office compound and thought of what to do. Now, I could just fly around and look for a shop that way or-"
"You divined it." Ruval cut to the chase.
"It was good practice and I like to get as much of it in as possible, especially for incomplete spells that need to be workshopped. More practice means more data. More data, well, you know." I shrugged.
"Magic maniac." Ruval teased, "There is such a thing as too much practice." He turned to my father, "Remember the first time he learnt to teleport?"
My father laughed.
"He didn't walk anywhere for two whole weeks. He didn't even pick up his own food to eat! One time he even teleported a hellworm into a servant's butt. That was… horrifying. We had to give her so much time off, she might as well have taken the rest of the year, and that's not counting the therapist bills."
Oh, I remember her. She still avoids the entire wing of the castle I am in.
What can I say… I was curious on the limits of it and I found them. Because if we can pee while warded, and eat while warded, not to mention breathe... why can't something be teleported into our body while warded?
An obvious exploit to the modern warding magic system.
It's just a shame I was so lost in the joy of discovery that I didn't bother to think how it would affect the poor woman, and subsequently our reputation.
So lost in what I could do that I didn't stop to think whether I should.
Maybe this is how Oppenheimer felt after creating the nuclear bomb.
Conveniently, after that, my dad arranged for Ruval to get me stray devils as test subjects, and though I had learnt my lesson and wouldn't have repeated the same mistake again, I was glad for the chance to experiment a little more.
Knowledge is power, after all, and now I knew.
Can't telefrag stuff into people's brains. Good to know.
Like a true DND min-maxxer, I found the teleportation equivalent of using Create Water inside someone's lungs to drown them alive. Another tool in my arsenal, especially when assassinating someone. After all, who wards their butthole against teleportation?
Well, I do now, but that's the exception, not the rule.
Again, it had it's limits and only worked on someone as long as they weren't too powerful. Then they can sense it and stop it. Really, at this level it was no longer as useful as it was in Mid Class.
"And don't get me started on your telekinesis." My father looked at me, "We replaced more pots that month than we had in the rest of my lifetime. The damage to your mother's garden alone from your psychic samurai routine was…"
He shuddered at the thought.
Yes, that was mistake I never repeated. I had never seen mother so angry.
I still have nightmares.
"Anyways." I continued, in consideration of time, given that Lavinia was still waiting for me with Ravel, "As I said, I needed more data, and this spell, as the name suggests is a divination school one. Not just that, it's more than just one divination spell. It's a super spell- grand spell?- one of those.
It was made to encompass everything divination does, in one condensed, efficient package. Guidance, scrying, augury, dowsing, postcognition, locator spells, and of course, divination and foresight.
Of course, that brings with it the standard drawbacks of divination. Future sight is nebulous at best, and without the gift of prophecy to account for the uncertainty in the actions of people- a divine domain inaccessible to us, because again, no god would bless a devil- prone to missing out the forest for the trees. One of the pesky little side effects of free will.
Most people nowadays have wards against scrying, all standardized and thorough, where not three centuries earlier, they were only had by eccentrics and made homebrew. It's the reason divination has fallen out of favour with magicians and devils alike.
Then there's the fact that you can't exactly divine anything about someone that is more powerful than you. Their metaphysical weight, so to speak, is too much to push around. It muddies the waters all around them, blinding the diviner to even the fates of those close to them in any event they are part of.
But what if there was a way to bypass all of that, or at least most of that and get almost the same benefits as say, prophecy? What if instead of taking the shortcut, we took the long way around?
After all, what is the role of divinity in prophecy? Isn't it just to point the diviner in the right direction? What if we just ignore that part?
Eastern divination had many practices that focus specifically or going the long way around. The Indian practice of Jyotishi for example, which focuses on how the world affects you and how you react to it as a basis for divination. Karma, Action, reaction."
"What are you suggesting?" My father asked, confused.
"What I'm suggesting is that if prophecy is a celestial spotlight shining a road straight to the destination while we are forced to cut through the jungle brush in the pitch dark of night without it, why not find the best way to cut through?
That's what my spell does. Or will do, when it's completed. It will take the long way around. More Laplace Demon than Oracle of Delphi."
"Laplace Demon as in the hypothetical entity which can predict the future based on complete knowledge of the past?" Ruval guessed, the idea finally dawning on him.
"Yes. The future is unpredictable. The present is warded. But the past? It is fixed. An open book. Few ward against postcognition specifically, and sure, we won't be digging out Indra's past anytime this side of the Big Bang, but that doesn't mean most people aren't susceptible to it."
"Current wards prevent postcognition de jure. If you can't see through them at this point in time, that obscurity carries backwards when it becomes the past." Ruval pointed out the flaw in my argument, but I knew it too.
"Wards block sight of event, not it's participants." I countered, "Let me explain with an example. Remember when we were discussing the internet, what, two weeks back? Mephisto wasn't peeking through the wards was he?
And yet, from just one line born of Rigal's mistake, and our actions before and after the discussion, he was able to predict with certainty enough to send Tannin after me, what all we had planned.
Action, reaction, Ruval.
If you know who participated in an event, and their actions before and after, you don't need to see into the event specifically to be able to deduce what happened.
That's my cutting method. It is based on the theory of Six Degrees of Separation."
"The theory that states that everyone in the world is just six handshakes away from knowing every other person in the world?" Ruval asked, "You want to connect people with their actions in response to others?"
"Yes." I stood up, conjuring a whiteboard, "It comes with the concept of 'a guy who knows a guy' or 'friend of a friend'."
I drew a dot on the board.
"This is a person." I drew more dots, connecting them with lines, "And these are their actions as they live their life. See how they intersect with each other when they interact and affect one another?
I like to call them the Strings of Fate, bumming off of the divine authority of the Three Fates. An imitation of their power, the same way we imitated the authority of hell to grant judgement in case of the Black Flames of Judgement."
I drew a square on the board, right where the lines intersected every time.
"An event is when people interact with one another. Today, most major events are warded. But we can still see which lines go in and which lines come out.
What they did before, who they interacted with leading up to this warded event we cannot see, and then, what they did after and who they interacted with after the event was over.
Through this, we can deduce what happened in the event itself.
And…" I highlighted the web of people connecting with each other, "Instead of casting my net blindly into the river of fate, if I instead cast it along the strings of fate, hopping off of people one handshake at a time, I can cut through the madness of the jungle brush and reach the same destination as those blessed with prophecy, even without the help of a god.
What's more, by forming a greater understanding of this web of connections, where any person is no more than six hops away, and thereby my divination of them is that much easier, and more streamlined, I can form a sort of artificial Karmic Record, another imitation of an underworld divine authority, this one specifically from Chitragupta of the Hindu pantheon.
Except, instead of a Karmic Record of the Dead, ours does not breach into the offending line of divine usurpation, by only being a False Karmic Record created from all the divinations we make, compiled together, from which we can then pull more and more divine direction, bypassing the need for divinity.
Two half-divine underworld authorities combined to make up for one full divine authority, and simultaneously replacing, for our purposes, the celestial divine domain of prophecy with an infernal one, closer to us in nature.
As I said, a Laplace Demon born from the sheer expense of data. A predictive model of karma across pantheon lines."
My father looked impressed while Ruval was lost decoding the logic behind it all, and for a beat we sat in silence, before Ruval spoke up.
"How do you account for natural events? Tsunamis, earthquakes, the like?" He asked.
"There are three vectors to the spell. Me, the observer." I pointed at my chest.
"The web of fate, six degrees deep." I pointed at the drawing on the board, "Made up of people and their karma."
"And the world itself, the universe in which we reside. The canvas upon which this tapestry of fate is woven. The cosmos as the third party." I tapped the whiteboard itself, deforming a portion along one event with magic.
"See this deformation on the whiteboard? How it affects people, brings their strings closer to interaction, affecting them all regardless of whether they act to do so or not. That's a natural disaster. It counts as the karma of the world."
"That still doesn't explain one thing." My father asked, "How does this lead to you chatting up Cleria Belial?"
"Right. This spell isn't complete yet and while it replaces the need for divinity in prophecy, it unfortunately, shares the same drawbacks as regular divination spells, that is, I can't divine anything about someone more powerful than me. That includes casting divination through someone like that, even when targeting another person down the line from them, even a single hop away."
"Everyone you know is stronger than you." My father realized.
"Yup." I nodded, emphasizing the 'p', "You, Ruval, Nurarihyon, Magari. I got a lot of data off of Rigal, but most of that is from regular humans who don't have wards messing around with my divinations and have negligible metaphysical weight. I already mapped the weaker youkai and the entire nekomata clan aside from the elders.
I needed more data still to finish the spell. Ideally from someone magically inclined, marginally weaker than me, and yet having a lot of two hop connections, like say, a former journalist gossip girl who's barely High Class.
Right now, she is two hops from me, through Rigal. That is one more hop to power through, and three hops to her own connections then. That's a lot of demonic power wasted each time I divine stuff.
Because another side effect of this imitation of multiple clashing divine authorities is the exponential increase in cost, in terms of demonic power, with each hop further.
One hop divinations, like from me to you- if you were weaker than me- cost about 1/625th of my power.
Two hop divinations, on the other hand, like the one I had to make from me to Rigal and then from Rigal to Lady Cleria, cost 1/25th of my power.
Three hops? From Lady Cleria to her associates? 1/5th of my power. That means for just five divinations at her end, I run out of demonic power.
And that's just to chart the strings of fate from her to her associates. To divine actual information about them or anything else related to her or them? That's more demonic power.
That's prohibitively expensive.
So, since I was in the neighbourhood, I figured, lets cut that two hop connection through Rigal into a personal handshake with Lady Cleria. Have a little chat, take as much data as I can and get directions to pizza while I'm at it."
"If it is so costly in terms of power, how will it ever be useful? If I remember correctly, to get the furthest profitable range, you need at least four hops." Ruval asked, "Even if this False Karmic Record keeps track of all previous divinations and eliminates the need to chart connections every time you need to divine something, that's still too many courses to chart and at four hops, that one divination for your entire reserve of demonic power. That cannot be profitable."
"True." I agreed, as a sinister smile bloomed upon my face, "But if there was a way to get a one hop connection to millions of people, by means of say, a personal contract with them… wouldn't that cut down almost everyone in the world down to three hops or less from us?"
"The internet!" Ruval gasped in realization, "You thought it through to such an extent?"
"Not only that but with the False Karmic Record of Flame Divination being supplemented by all the data we will gather through the internet, we can cut short the cost of divination to a slim nothing.
After all, the more you know about someone, the easier it is to divine more about them. And if you have an object related to them, like say, a contract they signed to get access to the internet, the same principle as the Ungaikyo needing Dulio's blood or hair, to assist in summoning their souls for a séance, applies.
Double the savings on the cost of divination. Absolute surveillance, nigh omniscience in the palm of our hands."
"Won't people know we are taking their data?" My father asked, "Especially once we start divining things about them? Acting on that data?"
"No?" I looked at him confused. I thought he'd be the first to figure it out, but I guess, it's not too much to explain.
"We don't have to tell them we're taking their data. If they find out on their own, we'll just say we use to cater to them in terms of advertisements for things they'd need. They'll see our 'profit motive' and few, if any at all, will look further than that. After all who looks at advertising tactic and thinks 'worldwide surveillance scheme'."
"Conspiracy theorists?" Ruval suggested.
"We will simply discredit them. Better yet, we will do what the CIA has done since time immemorial. We'll start the conspiracies ourselves. Make up outlandish, unbelievable and easily disproven bullshit about ourselves. Then the next time people see someone claim that we're conspiring to control the world, they'll be discredited and laughed out of polite company, simply by association." I replied with arms wide.
"And Cleria Belial?" My father asked, sternly.
"What of her?" I asked.
"She called me shortly after you visited her, asking about the internet and if we were planning on having news sites on it. If she could host something, even as a guest. That sort of thing." My father said, rubbing his chin, "You didn't happen to leak anything to her, did you? She has a way with words, a certain charm to her that puts people at ease, and sets their lips loose."
"No, of course not." I shook my head, "I gleaned a lot of information from her, and she no doubt learned a fair bit about me too, but the internet was not one of the things we discussed."
"What did you discuss?" My father asked, amused, "Beyond pizza, of course."
"Well, seeing as I couldn't exactly go in and ask for a meeting on the basis of wanting direction to the nearest pizza shop-"
"Yes, that'd certainly be insulting." My father chuckled.
"I went in with a different excuse." I said, snapping my fingers to make the board disappear, as I sat back down in my seat.
"Which was?"
"One time, when Magari and Nurarihyon were day drinking, I happened to overhear them talk about succession matters. Magari was talking about this one nekoshou, Fujimai, I think her name was. She was born to the nekoshou side of Magari's clan, and left to explore the world a while back. How she regretted letting her go, and how the clan might split between her five eldest children if something were to happen to her."
"Wait, what's a nekoshou?" Ruval interrupted to ask.
"Nekoshou are stronger, rarer variants of nekomata. They are to nekomata, what super devils are to us." I said, "Which is why, this stray nekoshou interested me very much. If I could get her into my peerage, I'd have another strong piece to work with. Not to mention, we'd have a Senjutsu and Touki instructor for all of you, for free." I said, laying down double indemnity for myself, a lie couched in another lie, with an alibi built in to my future arguments for Kuroka's recruitment into the peerage.
It's no longer mysterious knowledge I pulled out of my ass. I heard it from Magari. And with her being in a contract of secrecy with me, she can't exactly contradict it, not that my father would be fool enough to go ask her to reveal her feelings on what is clearly a secret of their faction.
"Now, if I were a stray nekoshou, wanting to explore the world, where would I go? What curiosity is close by for me to visit first?"
"Kuoh. The town held by devils." My father answered and nodded in understanding.
"It was just an excuse to get my foot in the door. Since I was already going to ask you to look for her, it didn't matter if Lady Cleria knew about her or not." I shrugged.
"Did she?" My father asked.
"Yes. Unfortunately, the Naberius clan snapped her up the moment she got into the Underworld. She even has children there, so it's impossible for us to get her to come over to our side."
"Shame." My father sighed, "What else did you learn?"
"A lot." Time to create alibis for a whole bunch of stuff I shouldn't know, because again, being under a death contract of secrecy, she will be forced to agree with my version of things, if my father asked her about it. It was the most logical excuse after all.
There is a reason I ask for secrecy. It makes it easier for me to lie. After all, I'm not bound by the secrecy clause, only she is.
"She has a husband, who is apparently stronger than me, given that I couldn't divine anything about him except for the distinct feeling of holy power. The church kind. No parishioner priest is that strong and Kuoh is devil territory, so the church has been abandoned already. Which means the only church staff stationed there would be exorcists. Ergo, Lady Cleria is married to an exorcist."
"A holy sword wielder." My father corrected.
"You knew?" I was a little surprised.
"After the debacle that was her expose on Lord Mammon, I thought it prudent to keep tabs on her." My father said, "That was the first and last time I met her and that meeting told me everything I needed to know about who she was as a person, and how dangerous she could be. I was one of those who petitioned for her silent exile to desk duty."
"In her defense, Moo Moo Land is a literal deathtrap. If Lord Mammon had simply put in the adequate safety measures, none of this would have happened." I pointed out, "He had it coming."
"Safety measures cost money, Riser. That comes off of our profits. A few dead children every year are dust off the decimal points of our percentage of the cut." My father said, nonchalantly.
I chuckled at the irony.
"Didn't you forbid us from going there though? I still remember how Ravel cried for an entire day in a temper tantrum when you refused her the trip last year."
"My children are precious, because they are mine. I will not see harm come to you. Other people's children, on the other hand, are mere statistics. I cannot be expected to care for them. We're devils Riser. This is the way. Our way." He replied, pinching my cheek.
"I know." I smiled, "Anyways, that wasn't the juiciest bit of information I got off her. Maybe it was because I am a kid or maybe because I caught her off guard with my visit, but she didn't bother to hide her current investigation too hard."
"She's still on to her usual shenanigans? Hasn't she learnt a lesson yet?" Ruval asked exasperated.
"You could sooner divert a river than deny her nature. That woman… what a menace." My father sighed, rubbing his temples, "What is it this time?"
"Some church research project. The Holy Sword Project, I divined later on. I think they're manufacturing new holy swords or maybe… given her history of focusing on injustices and such, maybe they're trying to create new holy sword wielders. I did see something about a connection to orphanages, but it was partially covered up. Maybe they're experimenting on children? And her husband could have found out about it and asked for her help investigating it."
There goes my alibi for the Holy Sword Project and Kiba's recruitment. With that I'm set for the next few years.
"At least it's not us this time. After that call, I was almost worried." My father was relieved, "Let her poke the hornet's nest. Best if she's stung to death."
"Couldn't we help her?" I asked.
"Why?" My father looked at me like I had asked him to eat dung beetles.
"She could be useful, in data gathering, investigations and such. We could sic her on the Sitris." I offered but he rejected it almost immediately.
"We have spies for that. She is smart and capable, but she is too much of a wild card, and that stupidly obstinate morality of hers is not something I'll risk infecting Ravel, or calling disaster on us by association."
"Okay." I conceded. I'll just have to see to her recruitment as my spymaster under stricter conditions then. It's still two years away anyways. I have plenty of time to convince both her and my family.
"But can I at least continue to meet her for the Flame Divination spell at least. She's one of the richest sources of data right now." I asked, "I was thinking of having a base in Kuoh, to make it convenient. She recommended one with youkai I could turn into servants already living within it. It would be nice to have a safehouse there too."
My father thought for a moment before nodding in agreement.
"Okay. You can have a base there."
I pumped my fist in victory, when he laid down the law.
"As long as you can keep your little crush on her under control."
I froze like a deer in headlights and he laughed.
"Riser, I'm your father. I have known you since the day you were born, and I have never known you to have anything but cold indifference for anyone not us. Now I see you defend a stranger, a woman you've met all but once and suddenly, the naked ambition in your eyes is dulled by emotion? A blind man could tell you're smitten. I could recognize that look it a mile away."
"Then why-"
"Why let you continue to meet her?" He asked, amused, "Because if I curtail every crush you have, you won't learn to take heartbreak and move on. At least this one is married. Besides, I trust you, Riser. You're smart enough to heed my warnings." His tone then turned sharp, and stern, "Because the day you don't, is the last time you ever see her. Am I understood?"
I nodded solemnly.
"Yes, dad."
"Good. Now come. We have kept your mother waiting long enough and your neurotic little puppy will no doubt need its master's pets and cuddles." He teased.
"Yeah… she'll need some therapy to get over that. Can mom help with that?" I asked, and he nodded.
As we all got up off our seat to go see how Ravel was taking to my new peerage member, I snapped my fingers, creating and setting a copy of the spell theory for Flame Divination on the new office desk, "I'll leave a copy of the new spell with you, but please don't try it yet. Too many cooks spoil the broth and too many people divining things will introduce uncertainty into the equation.
The spellwork is already very delicate and incomplete. If it breaks, I don't know how much effort it will take to rebuild."
"That's understandable, Riser. But will it be ready by the time we release the internet?" My father asked.
"No, but it won't need to. If we introduce this from the start, people who will already be sceptical of our product will realise what we're doing. But if we wait until they're used to signing our long winded service agreements without reading, and too addicted to our product to leave, they will willingly ignore any red flags, should they even spot them in the first place." I explained.
"I also need to learn Senjutsu to get a better understanding of the World vector of the spell, so that will take time to improve as well. Everything said and done, I plan on releasing this as a bundle feature of Internet 2.0 in about ten years' time, hidden in some deep forgotten corner of the terms and services. By then, we should have enough people and their data to complete the Karmic Record in a matter of days and the technology to match the processing power required to compute it."
And the Longinus Unknown Dictator and it's wielder to manage it, though that part I left unsaid.
"Alright. If you've thought it through then that's all that matters." My father agreed.