Capítulo 195: Chapter 85. A Mystery Hidden in the Ages
I apologise for the long break. Work took up a lot of time, even on the weekend I didn't have time to rest.
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"Come on, come on, get undressed before Mr. J. changes his mind," Harley hurried the girls, planning to enjoy the sight of their perfect naked bodies as well. She could just go to the local bathhouse, where she'd been invited many times after training at the Coliseum.
"So, dear ladies, let's not rush into this..." I said quietly, watching as several of the warriors hesitantly took up their togas, which already covered little, especially in the light, leaving little room for imagination. "After all, we are in a temple of knowledge."
"Oh, that's right..." Ismem, who had already managed to half bare her breasts, promptly returned the snow-white soft fabric to its proper place, which caused my beloved to pant indignantly.
I had no time to exhale once again with relief, because refusal from striptease performed by a dozen beauties required a serious strain of Will (the Fifth Beginning must have grown by ten points at once), as, contrary to any common sense, the keeper of knowledge suggested:
"Let's go better to the baths then. It's just the right place to be naked.
"Oh, Ismem, I always knew you were clever, but not that clever. You're a genius!" Harley praised the librarian.
Hell, I wonder if the local goddesses will finish me off right on the doorstep of the baths or wait until the girls get naked?
Although, Aphrodite is the goddess of Love, and she should not do anything even if I have sex with all the inhabitants of the island, of course, if everything will be consensual; Demeter, in addition to being the goddess of fertility and harvest, is also responsible for birth, and here again without my invaluable help can not do without; Artemis is the patroness of hunting and nature, but in addition to this her sphere of interest also includes the care of children, so she should not be much against the process of their creation. Athena and Hestia remain. The latter is considered a virgin goddess, responsible for the hearth and home, so her fighting skills are not the most impressive, even if you make allowances for divinity, besides she prefers not to interfere in conflicts. The Steppenwolf attack, where everything ended more or less well only thanks to our intervention with Harley. But Athena can really get angry, but, like her father, with a very high probability, will decide to strike the insolent with lightning, and from them I know a couple of very good defences. And even assuming the lightning bolts are divine, I have a pretty good counterargument in the form of adding ba-hion at the weaving stage. Thanks to regular sex with Abby, I've learnt to control divine energy a bit, and summoning it no longer requires too much concentration. As a side effect, I'm a bit more aroused when casting the spell, but that's successfully dealt with by wearing the right clothes.
It may seem strange that Amazons are ready to bare themselves in front of a man at all, but the fact is that the beauties present here belong to the third generation. Unlike the first, they did not catch the dawn of the ancient Greek pantheon, missed the battle with Hercules, who lost his shores and was set upon by Ares, and they know about the cruelty of men only from the stories of their older sisters, and the propaganda on the island, to put it mildly, is not of the highest quality. Plus, on top of all this, they have literally started their lives with a clean slate, whereas the first generation of Amazons remember their past lives where they were brutally killed by a man. After all, most of the ones Harley and I interact with are barely past the first hundred years old. For creatures that can easily live several thousand years, one century is only a fraction of a lifetime, so there's still a bit of adolescent maximalism here, albeit in a slightly odd form. And that's without mentioning that the large amount of prana inherent in all the locals seriously increases libido.
My personality is also not the most ordinary, even if you omit the fact that I am the only male for the next three hundred miles. Not only did I save the queen from death, possess magic, know Diana and train with the rest of the warriors under Artemis, but together with Harley I brought a lot of variety to the boring everyday life of the island state. The same coloured hairstyles appeared only thanks to runic magic, as well as interesting things from the outside world, like micro-bikinis, tasty spices, unusual fruits, beautiful exquisite jewellery and a heavy machine gun with bursting cartridges. The last one was a single copy, but it has already made a lasting impression on the girls, and I still plan to pump it with magic. In short, Ismem's idea didn't raise much protest from anyone.
Meanwhile, while I was frantically thinking about what insulating barrier to use to protect myself from lightning, Harley was already gently dragging the nearest pair of girls towards the exit.
"Don't be long, the baths are waiting for us. Mr. J., don't slow down. Oh."
"Who's waiting for the baths?" the smooth, soft voice was no match for the heavy atmosphere that had descended on the library.
Even the shadows in the corners seemed to flutter fearfully, sensing the restrained power and hinting by their behaviour that the powerful sorceress who had dropped by the fire, who went by the name of Zee, was upset about something.
I'd seen her only five times this month, and had slept with her the same number of times, helping her relax after a performance or a battle with demons, and once we'd gone together to close a small breach in the Hell Wastes, where I'd learnt a couple of highly entertaining attack weaves, and my faithful companion had finally found her true sight. It turns out that the best black candles are made from the fat and blood of demons, except that they're not happy about it for some reason. Unfortunately, unlike the rest of the harem, the position of the sorceress was firm and she refused to participate in the orgy, and here even Harley with her enthusiasm and knowledge of psychology was powerless. Well, and Zee was the only girl who escaped the naughty hands of her faithful companion, and everything was limited to the tongue. In general, the sorceress knew how to put herself in the right way.
"So, I don't hear an answer."
"Mistress Zatara, we were discussing that after the training we should go to the baths... Well, we are going to go to them now..." Ismem answered uncertainly.
Finally stifled under the piercing gaze of the sorceress, a flock of brave and proud warriors dashed outside, including the keeper of knowledge herself. Considering that my wife has seriously modified the local system of protection, redirected one of the rivers in a couple of sweeps of her hands, having pre-drawn the whole bank with runes, and enjoys the favour of the queen, such behaviour was not surprising.
"It's good to see you," ignoring the heavy atmosphere, I approached Zee and hugged her gently.
"You do realise you shouldn't pull the tiger's whiskers, right?"
"Nah. I don't understand why Amazons aren't allowed to sleep with Mr. J. at all. Their children are bound to be very strong, which means the goddesses will be stronger. And if they're so against boys, they can magically manipulate it so that only two X chromosomes are involved in conception," my assistant was outraged by the universal injustice and joined the hugging session.
"If you had read the local code carefully, you would know that there is not a single word about the prohibition of sex with a man, on the contrary, the Amazons are instructed to teach the men of the "World of Patriarchs" the virtues of virtue, love and equality. The other issue is that until not too long ago, there was a ban on men visiting the island, and any violator would be subject to the death penalty."
The blonde paused a little, trying to understand whether I would be killed when trying to seduce a local woman or everything would be fine, because I was not breaking the rules, since the queen herself allowed me to visit the island.
"So, everything is clear with Harley, and you have nothing to say?" the beautiful sorceress looked carefully into my eyes.
"I started to create a weave of lightning armour and additionally strengthened the tattoos."
"Hmm... Athena... Yes, it could work, but after a couple of unsuccessful attacks, she would use something more serious."
"By that point, I'd have already created my illusion and gotten the hell out of town where goddess magic isn't as strong."
"I'd love to see how you could use an illusion to trick a goddess... Although you did manage to fake the Mother Cube somehow... Okay, you distracted me. I didn't come here for that," Zee broke the embrace and walked briskly over to the table, pulling out a large handwritten book from her cylinder, the cover of which depicted a man sitting in the lotus position.
"Here," the dark-haired beauty said proudly, nodding at the ancient manuscript as if it would explain something.
"And what language is this?" I tried to read the name of the manuscript without success, though the symbols looked very much like the Indian script I'd come across a couple of times while exploring Themyscira's library.
"Sanskrit."
"Oh!" Harley's eyes lit up, literally, as she activated her true sight, knowing full well that magical literature could be very tricky at times.
Finding no surprises, except for the standard charms protecting the pages from the environment, she began to quickly look through the contents, among which there were very often images of some spheres located inside the human body. After a dozen seconds the girl sighed disappointedly.
"Ah, and I was glad that this is the first edition of the Kama Sutra."
"I didn't doubt you, you horny pervert," Zee snorted. "Although there are some tantric sex tips in here, we'll try it later... For research purposes."
Yeah, yeah, it sounded like the sorceress didn't like what we did when we were alone, even though she was the one who initiated most of it, coming up with interesting activities like having sex on the altar of the Shadow Peak or in the focusing seal, and in the latter case we could just cuddle and concentrate our energy on the crystals: it would do more good. And the strange fetishes of the sexy illusionist should be seriously considered, to try to broaden her horizons, so to speak. All the more reason to explore what happens when she has sex with an elemental.
"Yay, I love research," Harley, who had regained her enthusiasm, went for a hug and then froze when she caught the familiar stop spell.
"Yeah, sometimes they can be useful, but that's not why I'm here. I was finally able to find more information about Soul Shells and even got my first interesting results!"
"I hope you didn't do anything dangerous?" I asked curtly.
It wasn't as impressive as the sorceress', but the shadows in the corners flickered in a similar way, and even the light from the magical torches dimmed slightly due to the light weave of the illusion.
"It was completely safe this time. I'll show you in a moment."
Zee sat down at the table, placed a small piece of white paper in front of her, and froze. Three minutes later, I was about to ask what was going to happen, since my true sight showed nothing unusual, when suddenly the paper floated up on its own, and it wasn't an aura or telekinesis. At close range, even an amateur like me could detect the use of spells.
"Ugh..." the sorceress sighed heavily when the sheet under the influence of gravity floated down on the table. "So far, I'm having a hard time with it."
"And what was it, if not a secret?"
"Pure mind energy. Some people call it Psi, and it has nothing to do with mana or life energy."
"Now, let me get this straight."
If I understand correctly, a high intelligence value should be responsible for the mind energy, and I can become even stronger in the near future, because at this stage of development, my progress has slowed down a bit. No, my skills are slowly growing, I've become much more resilient, I've acquired quite powerful weapons, my tattoos have increased the density and volume of mana, the speed of creating weaves has increased, and training with warriors helps me to control prana better and better, putting it into blows or to strengthen the skin, which together with the use of spells makes me even stronger, there is some style of fighting; with a lot of luck I might even be able to beat up Aquaman (somewhere away from the water), but the speed of development of Beginnings has become slower. I don't know exactly what this is due to, maybe because I damaged my soul a bit by sharply pouring in a lot of points before the attack of the fake Joker, or just close to the limit, but even a single increase in Atman now has to be carried out every two days, not every day, because the ba-hion simply does not have time to digest, because of which in deep meditation become visible individual shreds on the surface of the fourth soul's shell. With the strengthening of other characteristics are also not the best and pump them with the help of divine energy is almost unrealistic, because all of them in one way or another affect the soul. At best, you can throw two or three points into the outsider Beginnings, after which you have to put a revolver to your head. The latter is not necessary, but it feels fun and sometimes I can let Ivy shoot me, because it is with the help of the revolver that I can quickly move to the right astral plane. Yeah, someone remembered that he has special potion cartridges for this purpose, so I don't have to sit in the lotus position for an hour like some Chinese cultivator. But the passive pumping with the help of points has become very hard, but the passive pumping is still in effect and goes quite briskly, otherwise it would be quite sad.
However, you should first find out what exactly Zee was able to dig up, and then make a decision. If it turns out to be a useless piece of crap that can't be used without extensive training, as the demonstration clearly implies. Fortunately, I was wrong, but let's start in order.
When the sorceress first felt the depletion of her life energy, as a result of not the smartest action, she became enthusiastic to learn more about the Soul Shells. To do this, of course, she turned to the catalogue of the Shadow Peak, but after a careful study of it, she was disappointed to realise that among the thousands of books the necessary information was simply not available. At most, some scraps that told about six "spheres", and which could be compared with the information from the System with a great strain. So everything would have been limited to a superficial understanding of the subject and dubious experiments, if Zee had not got to the island of the Amazons.
Even before the incident with Ares, the warriors were in contact with the outside world quite often and did not forget about their spiritual development, copying or buying various books, manuscripts, and sometimes natural clay tablets, so in the island library you can find really unique copies written before our era. Only the Atlanteans probably have more books, but these fishermen would rather be strangled than let a person from the surface in. It should be said that even on the island Zee could not immediately make up a complete picture, let alone put the knowledge into practice, because the magic books were incredibly rare, besides they did not contain any special revelations, and more modern schools could give them a hundred points of forte, but suddenly the girl came across the records about Chakras. The Chakras themselves did not interest the girl much, unlike the introduction, where the ancient Hindu briefly spoke about the nine Initiates and the superstructure of the soul, and then smoothly moved on to the second Initiate and the management of vital energy. Having realised that the necessary knowledge was hidden in another section, which for obvious reasons the sorceress had never been particularly interested in before, she was able to unearth a lot of interesting information quite quickly, finding at the same time an explanation of how a rather powerful school had fallen into oblivion.
It turned out that Sumerian mages were very fond of various summons and ended up summoning something that should not have appeared in our world. During the battle with the monster that came from Beyond, many practitioners and ordinary residents of the empire died, cities turned into ruins, the landscape changed beyond recognition. In connection with the incident occurred serious restrictions, which together with the way of transferring knowledge: only from teacher to student, led to the fact that soon the Sumerian school gave way to other views on magic, or divine manifestations. And the term of apprenticeship at Sumerians was the longest of all known to me: about twenty-five years. And the first full-fledged spell even the most talented created only after two years of training, and negligent students could well become an ingredient for some ritual, because by this time even ordinary people had time to develop their Seventh Beginning, and all this without cheating in the form of sex with an Elemental. And yes, understanding the way the Shells work, even an ordinary person can become a magician, it just takes a lot of time. Actually, even with the adjustment for the other universe with a more resilient population, twenty-five years of apprenticeship is a quarter of a lifetime, and you can only start studying magic at a more or less conscious age, not to mention the fact that after graduation you had to work for the empire for another twenty years, calling rain and reducing pimples on the ass of peasants somewhere in a remote village. The long period of development was partially compensated by the quality of mages, who by modern standards after graduation could be given a master of a couple of directions at once. But, most importantly, the books that survived to our days, although they were mostly devoted to working with the first two Shells, they also explained the general principles of the development of other Initiates, and also told how you can combine different types of energy, strengthening the merger between the individual structures of the soul, or to allocate some one, to get all sorts of interesting effects, which was demonstrated by the sorceress. And I must master it!
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