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Chapter 53 - Man of Light

I spent the next day resting as I waited for my light man to return.

I've been incredibly pleased as I munch on my grotesque meat and laze around. I've discovered that the man of light is in fact capable of updating [Soul Archive]. There are limitations naturally which are due to the light man's limited cognitive capabilities and the simplicity of my command.

His path of discovery is very tunnel visioned, exceedingly so. His discoveries are based on the purely the direction I pointed in and anything outside of the a few metres goes completely unnoticed. He also seems to have no specific desires as he did nothing but walk in the direction I pointed, then turned around at the halftime mark and returned. I should note he did defend himself from a few corrupt creatures along the way.

Clearly, I need to give more intricate commands and figure out a way to get the 'life' part into this particular organism, but, for a first try, I would consider this a resounding success.

Once the man returned, I tried a few more intricate commands with him. I have plenty of time as I wait for Snow after all so this is a good way to spend it.

I tried to have him read, write and do arithmetic but he seemed incapable. His cognitive recognition is not on the same level as my own it seems. Yet he is without a doubt capable of thinking. Or does he react entire upon instinct?

To test my theory, I tossed a rock to him without warning, but he just let it hit him and fall to the ground.

Next, I threw a rock as hard as I could at him and this time he caught it.

Viciously.

He disintegrated the rock in his grip.

I think Snow's [Beast Cadence] and [Divine Blessing] are affecting him. If instinct is to be considered the sixth sense, then it would make sense.

Reacting in combat entirely upon instinct is pretty extreme though.

I definitely couldn't do it. Then again, I am not entirely reliant on my instincts unlike my life light here. If I were truly forced to rely on nothing but instinct to survive then maybe I could manage something.

It is definitely capable of thinking though. Otherwise, it wouldn't be able to understand my commands. But is it hearing my command or is it grasping my intent because I am its creator.

I give it a few more test commands such as…

"Do a backflip."

"Do something funny."

"Build a small tower."

"Run to the closest border of the discovered area in [Soul Archive] and then return.

The results were pretty standard. When I told it to do a backflip. It did.

When I told it to do something funny, it did nothing.

When I told it to build a small tower, it did nothing.

When I told it to go to the border of the map, it did.

It seems that the commands I give it need to be extremely specific in order for it understand. A backflip is pretty simple as far as intent goes but when I ask it to do something funny, it doesn't know what funny is so what can it do?

For the tower, I didn't specify the parameter that is 'small' so it didn't know how big it should be, or what it should use to build the tower, so it did nothing.

When I gave it explicit instructions on what to do and what to use to determine the extent of its actions, it did it perfectly.

It seems that my life construct is rather robotic.

Over the next few days, I continued to give the man of light commands to further understand its capabilities. I also tested if it remembered data by having it point to a specific rock before dismissing it, then point to the same rock again after summoning it. It seems it is capable of memorisation, which is perfect.

As I came up with new ideas to test it with, I sent it to explore the area and bring me food. Man's still gotta eat and the construct needs the experience.

It's hunting capabilities are truly dismal as it lacks initiative, but slowly I managed to 'teach' the basics of hunting. The commands I gave it to do so were like, 'in this situation do this', or 'if this happens do this', and I slowly fine tuned it until he successfully hunted a small corrupt creature.

A new problem I hadn't considered is that he doesn't seem capable of using magic or any kind of special abilities. I believe this is because a certain level of self-initiative and imagination are required to do so, but, who knows, I might be wrong.

This continued until Snow arrived, to which he saw me munching on some meat and testing the constructs cognitive reflexes by throwing coloured flame balls at him with different commands for each one.

Snow was… confused but took it in stride.

"I was worried you had died", he said sombrely as he joined me at my campsite.

"I think I nearly did. It seems that I absorbed the corrupt orb I ate before, but it nearly overpowered me. The portal was trying to guide that process. After the thing assimilated properly, [Corrupt Resistance] gobbled it up and I returned to normal. Covered in shit and blood naturally."

"So, the orb is what did it. I could feel the corruption taking hold of you, but I had no idea why. I thought the portal was doing it, but I guess it was only the catalyst for orb you ate."

"More or less. Can you see my side of [Soul Manifest] yet? I know you got [Soul Archive] working."

"I can. Some drastic changes occurred in you. Your minor affinity to corruption being the most worrisome. But you seem fine, so I guess there's no point thinking about it too much. [Corrupt Resistance] made a massive leap which is great. Hopefully if you absorb more of those orbs in the future it will aid you more and keep growing. However, we need to speak about [Spark]."

"You know something about this 'life thing?"

"I do. Kind of. Listen up."

Snow's tone of voice seemed deep and serious, but his adorableness was making it difficult to take him serious enough.

"Frankly, you shouldn't exist. Something about you is an outlier in this universe. To my knowledge, a being capable of an affinity with both [Divinity] and [Corruption] doesn't and shouldn't exist. You can not tell others about this."

That got my attention. He's saying its dangerous if the wrong person, or well, God found out about it.

"The ability to create life is something that stems from both affinities, however, usually someone must be far stronger than you are now in order to create one. At this stage I am not capable of it, despite my affinity to [Divinity] being much stronger than yours. I imagine this construct is quite a simple lifeform as a result. They are meant to be more… alive. God's usually have a few that serve as servants, although I only know this because of my inborn instincts and knowledge."

"So, these lifeforms are usually either corrupt or divine as well. Never both. Does that mean the corrupt creatures were created by a God directly?"

"Yes, and possibly. At some stage they most definitely were but powerful Gods can create lifeforms capable of reproduction so these could just be descendants. The main points here are that you are now neither on the path of divinity or corruption, but both at the same time. As far as I know, its unexplored territory universe wide. It also means you could be the enemy of both or ally of both or all of the above."

"So, in other words I'll make a lot of enemies. Both Gods and monsters alike."

"Basically. Although your connection to both is so weak right now that unless a being capable of perceiving both truly focused on you, they wouldn't even notice."

"Well… fuck… I hope not."

Our conversation about the machinations involved in my existential existence continued for a while longer as we theorised the implications of the discovery.

In short, I should be able to achieve a much higher level of strength than should be possible at my level. This is because I can learn from both true schools, Creation and Destruction, as Snow called it.

We also talked about the nature of my new [Martial Affinity] but we both had no idea what [Eternity Spire] meant apart from its derivation from my connection to both schools.

After a while we turned our attention to my life construct and what our next course of action would be.

"Give it a name."

"A name?"

"Yes. Like you did for me, you should be able to name it to form a stronger connection with it. If you anchor its existence with a name, it should grow more readily as your familiar."

"You know you just dropped a whole lot of unknown nonsense on me with that explanation?"

"Just name it dammit!"

"Okay, okay… What should I call you…"

I've never been good at names so I think I will just go with the first thing that comes to mind.

"Your name is Lore."

The man of light looked at me as I declared its name and for a moment, I swore I felt intelligence in its eyes, but apart from that nothing happened.

"Ahem… shit name."

"Excuse me? Hey, are you sure that works? Nothing happened."

"Idiot. Do you think that all lifeforms have as strong a reaction to a name as a God? Do human babies' glow when they get named?"

Realising he has a point I cough away my embarrassment.

Checking [Soul Manifest] I find the new string which pronounces the existence of my new buddy Lore.

[Spark: allows the user to manifest a spark of life from within or around the user's soul with a significant radius. The life source produces a small amount of heat. Anchored manifestations: Lore.]

Looking at him I give him a nice bright smile as I say, "Welcome to the team Lore."

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