Kael fell onto his back, staring up at his river of Will.
"Finally." A faint smile played on his lips.
Thirty million. That was how many Thoughts he had been forced to spend before finally grasping Point Aegis. Thoughts equivalent to three thousand mindstones, or twelve Golden Horned motes bought off the black market.
He had attempted to refine Syleena's mote three times with no luck. After the third he made the decision to drop her request entirely. Refinements failed, that was simply how the world worked. He would have liked to collect the mindstones she had promised him afterward, but he couldn't afford the risk anymore. He had also considered her value and wanted to keep things between them on reasonably good terms. This would likely land a blow to that, but he knew Syleena would understand.
Sophie had proven useful in her own way as well. Her spending so much time hiding in the same space as Kael meant she could serve as an alibi for each of his attempts.
Kael pushed himself upright.
At the two thousand mindstone mark Kael had finally taken a break. He had considered whether it was worth saving the remaining thousand as a reserve, but that was when he changed strategies.
Out of curiosity he had ventured into Point Blank. It was just as ungraspable as Point Aegis, but a faint intuition told him to push on, and after spending another two hundred it finally clicked. The two motes were connected.
He had always suspected it given the names, but had never allowed himself to treat it as fact. Throughout the Luminaire world there were hundreds of millions of different motes, each with a unique name and effect. Sharing similar names was by no means unusual, let alone significant.
But through careful use of Obsidian Shard he had arrived at an understanding, not in the sense that he grasped each individual rule woven into it, but something closer to a gut feeling that the two simply belonged together.
He suspected this came down to his natural talent lying within refinement. In the same way Kael could sense these similarities, someone from a blade pathway might find it easier to understand their own techniques, or how to draw the most out of them.
And so he began studying the two simultaneously. It drained twice the Thoughts, but the results were far beyond twice the gain.
Kael lifted the broken cube.
"I've finally done it… I've reverse engineered Point Aegis."
With the mindstones he had left, he had managed not only to obtain the recipe for Point Aegis, but a recipe for its advancement as well.
He had also come away with a deeper understanding of refinement as a whole.
Technically he had created an advancement recipe for a rank two mote, but the truth was it was something entirely different from building one from scratch. While he could claim he had done it himself, the fundamentals had already been laid when the mote was first created. It was the equivalent of someone building a ladder to reach a wall, and Kael coming along years later to extend it and climb higher. Less effort, greater result.
He had no doubt he couldn't have produced a rank three mote recipe even given the full resources of a noble family. His skills were simply not there yet. But climbing on the work of others was something he could do.
He pursed his lips slightly.
Point Aegis had a strange recipe.
It contained over fifty ingredients, which was already absurd for its rank considering Stone Coffin had five. Nearly all of them were either spread across the five continents, ancient beyond reason, or simply unobtainable in this age. Put plainly, its recipe had no business belonging to a rank one mote.
Kael went through all the ingredients he had gathered from his black market haul. He had nothing for its original recipe, but he had more than two thirds of what was needed for its advancement. Under normal circumstances that would have been pleasing. Instead he couldn't help but wish he had everything.
He retracted his consciousness and returned to the hideout, massaging his temples.
'Do refinement ingredients have substitutes?'
The thought was amusing, and not entirely unbelievable. The way Kael understood Rules thus far, they implied an effect on the world. So could the hardness of a diamond, for example, be replaced in refinement by the hardness of graphite?
He clicked his tongue.
Halted once again by his own ignorance.
It could theoretically work, but he couldn't say for certain. There was no telling whether a layer existed beneath the Rule itself that made substitution impossible. And even if he somehow managed it, he would still need to measure out the exact amount of that Rule for the mote to function, and those possible measures were quite literally infinite.
"What to do… what to do…" he murmured without thinking.
Sophie raised an eyebrow and looked at him.
"What's up?" she asked, having grown a little more comfortable around him.
Kael looked at her thoughtfully for a moment.
"I need refinement ingredients."
He wouldn't normally share something like this, but he was in quite the predicament.
Sophie leaned her whole body to one side as she thought, her hair swaying with the movement.
"Mmm…"
"I mean the Valthornes without a doubt have what you need. Then there's the black market. Hmm… Claymore probably has what you need too."
Kael considered her answers. These were all options he had already weighed. The Valthornes certainly had what he needed. He had even killed one of their rank threes, dealing a real blow to their strength, but trying to storm the mansion with someone like Vael present was nothing short of suicide. The black market was a dead end too, not that Sophie knew he had already cleaned it out.
And then there was Claymore. It was an option, yes, but not one he would pursue unless there was no other choice. They held too much potential to burn carelessly. There was also Elric, who he suspected had reached rank five himself.
Kael shook his head.
"Not possible."
Sophie tapped her leg.
"Then Syleena? I'm sure she'd be up for a deal if it's you."
Kael turned his head.
'Who does she think I am?'
They had done nothing but use each other up to this point. Promising future payment wasn't a foundation worth building on.
Before he could respond, Syleena came rushing through the wall, breathing hard.
"We need to move," she said, her voice strained.
Both Sophie and Kael were caught off guard by her state.
"What? Why?" Sophie asked.
"It's father… Father and Vael are about to clash."
Sophie nearly stumbled out of the bed.
"What? Nothing is supposed to happen for another few weeks!" she protested.
Syleena scoffed and moved to the desk, starting to gather her things.
"It doesn't matter anymore. We're as good as dead if we stay this close to them."
Sophie jumped out of the bed and pulled her coat over herself.
"Let's move deeper into Velthoria and set the mote up again then."
In the corner, something hidden flickered behind Kael's eyes.
"Let's launch an attack on Valthorne."
Both Sophie and Syleena went still.
Syleena let a few books drop and turned her gaze toward Kael. If it were anyone else she would have considered them insane. But knowing him, there was no way he would suggest something so reckless without intent behind it.
"What?" she asked.
Kael rose from the corner and brushed off his coat, turning toward Syleena.
"We both know the outcome between Eireindaile and Valthorne comes down to Taric and Torin. None of us matter much in that equation. But that doesn't mean we can't have an impact. We go in and cut down as many Valthorne Luminaires as we can. That way the fight becomes more even, and more openings appear."
Syleena set down everything she was holding.
Openings. That was the word he had used. Did he know that shedding noble blood was exactly what she wanted?
"What chance do we have?" she asked.
"We're both rank three. There are only a handful of Luminaires above us here. And most importantly, I've killed Lucian and the Hidden Guardian. I've killed Luminaire after Luminaire from Valthorne, and it was all for a moment exactly like this."
Kael extended his hand.
"Hand me the mindstones you promised for the refinement. I'll finish it once the battle is over."
His expression didn't change.
Syleena's jaw tightened. She hated it. Hated that she understood his logic completely. Kael had no stake in whether Eireindaile won or lost, but resources were another matter entirely. He would jump at any opportunity that left him stronger, and the request made sense in its own cold way. If she wanted him at his best when it counted, mindstones weren't a luxury. For a Luminaire entering combat, they were a must for prolonged fights.
That didn't make handing them over any easier.
"You'll get them when we arrive," she said.