Chapter 27.West

Over the past few days I'd been struggling to find a way to incorporate the intimidation and enfeebling runes into myself. I hadn't quite figured out the principles backing composite runes so I didn't want to do any permanent damage to myself, thus I needed another medium.

The inspiration I needed came when I asked Angie. "Why not put it in your bodies? They're basically empty shells for collecting mana at the moment." Her idea wasn't that good of one, as the purpose was to spread the runes' effects across entire armies. The cost would vastly outstrip anything generated by the human bodies requiring me to constantly spend mana to keep them active. I didn't want that. What was valuable was the reference to bodies. I could make a new body designed specifically to harness the power of the rune. A body built to purpose, like my nexus cores. These would need to interact with people, though, so I thought it would be fitting to have them closer resemble those they were meant to inspire and intimidate.

The body would need to have unparalleled mana generation and to maximize the effect it would need to have the most powerful medium possible. I immediately thought of the mana-infused fat that the food goblin females taught me. Fat was stagnant, which was less than ideal, so I could simply use the principle to form a liquid mana-core.

While I thought of that, it occurred to me that I could simply make the entire body out of mana if I utilized the knowledge that mana cores weren't inherently solid. I could simply make a body that looked like what I wanted and then infuse mana into all of it. Another benefit would be that once it was fully altered into mana, I could move it anywhere my will was. Mana wasn't locked to space the same way matter was, so it wouldn't even cost much mana to transfer such a large collection across the entirety of the world.

Once I had the direction, it only took me a few days to build the right body design. I made a second just to make sure the shape wasn't a limitation. The first was shaped as a human female as thanks to Angie for giving me the idea, the other in the shape of one of my modified food ogre females as thanks for the inspiration about making non-solid mana-cores. They looked a little different as I had to modify the shape of their skulls to accommodate their second mana true circuit to the greatest degree possible. The first was in their gut, allowing the largest cavity in their body to be dedicated to either the intimidation true circuit for the human or enfeebling true circuit for the food goblin. Both were as large as ogres with the capability to grow as large as they wanted as they accumulated more mana. Their limbs had a core of mana true circuits, but I had to build a lot more circuits into them to keep them stable and those ended up inside the limbs.

With the plans complete, I activated all of the circuits for both bodies except the main one. That would cost too much mana and slow the construction of the bodies themselves. I wanted to make sure there were no issues before I activated those runes and put them to use. Liquid mana splashed in the air as crystalline bones formed while glowing muscle and skin wrapped up the construction. The density was low to start, but it that would make it easier to see potential issues as the bodies filled out before making the mana as dense as it could be.

The movement of mana was so violent that the whole army noticed. Angie was the only one that wasn't frozen in amazement. Instead she immediately bolted towards my new bodies. While the rest were watching the glowing fluid and flesh form in raw incomprehension and awe, Angie was examining the circuitry that was glowing in the rest of the shape as the bodies slowly grew to fill the rest.

The level of her awe surpassed the rest, and I felt something change in her second core, it seemed to greedily seek my influence. It closed its orbit to become closer to my will-core, seeking more concentrated influence. As it did so, it was drawing tiny lines of will into itself from the rest of the worshippers that remained in the outer layer as she sped past them. She wasn't stealing, she was using her superiority to generate more will for herself. It was slightly different, though, as this new will wasn't entirely her own. It was too tainted with my influence to call only her own and instead seemed to be a subset of my will that she had access to. In reality, her taste was entirely missing from this new will. Once she figured out how to use this will in her circuitry I could use my mana to power it instead of her using her own. Conversely, if I used the new will I could utilize her mana.

As Angie's army reveled in my amazing nature, several among them started to form their own second will-core. Euri was among them.

What none of them realized, however, was that I was facing a bit of an issue. The wind that pressed everything else into the ground seemed to hate the existence of my new bodies and was exerting much more effort in crushing them into the earth than even what it used against earthen constructions. It seemed to fight harder as the bodies had filled in up to the knees. If that resistance increased as the power of the bodies did, I'd soon have a problem. The completed bodies would be able to resist being torn apart by the wind, but the formation would be impacted as the air stole solid mana and spread it around.

This issue irritated me, though. I didn't have any more space in the bodies I wanted to make. I'd need to add parts that the inspiration for them didn't have, which made them imperfect in their purpose as reflections of those used as inspiration for their creation. Well…now I had no other option. I could rebuild them from scratch, but I'd need a lot of space for the air repulsion circuitry as well as more mana generation.

I had space on their shoulder blades and their temples, enough only for a connection to some new limb. At their temples, the space looked perfect for the horns of the intimidation horses. Their shape also had quite a lot of space. I wound the horns into the circuitry of the skulls to give them horns that curled around oppositely to the horses because I was irritated I needed them. The points came out over their eyes and jutted out instead of out from under as a result, but that didn't particularly matter.

As for the limb design of the air resistance limbs…I needed to find a circuit that actually did that before I could know if they'd fit in a limb. My idea was a similar one to what I'd used to get out of the crushing embrace of the earth. I just needed the air to be separated from the bodies and stay that way. Since I already had an idea, it only took me a few hundred attempts to find the right runes to apply it to the air. The shape was odd, though. The only limbs that matched belonged to a strange monster that I'd only encountered with my eastern army, called a banshee. Adding the obviously alien shapes onto my bodies irritated me, but I had to. With that admission, I finally worked the wings into the design of my bodies.

With the base of the wings dedicated to air expulsion, I now had a lot more space for circuitry. Most of it was too thin for powerful circuits, but it was a lot of space for miscellaneous circuitry I couldn't fit anywhere else. Maybe wings weren't so bad. Now I had space for active circuitry. The rest of the bodies were dedicated to maintaining the body and the massively expensive chest rune passively.

Once the air expulsion runes activated the issue was averted. Another issue revealed itself, though. The wind that blew off of Angie as she stood near them pressed on their bubble of air expulsion and they floated away slowly. I'd need to keep them far enough away from people that the wind they generated wouldn't make my new bodies seem to lack presence. Their purpose was to provide crowd control, so they needed to seem impervious to manipulation to the enemies. Bodies blowing about in the army didn't have that impact and may lessen the suppression of their will to fight if they saw something so silly regardless of how powerful the suppression was.

"Are these your true bodies…no, they're too lacking." Angie was muttering to herself. She was still enamored with the circuitry of them, but there was less to see now that they'd filled in up to the hips. She was also demanding less of her focus for the circuitry as she only needed to focus on what was about to be hidden by the rising flesh instead of trying to understand the whole construction. "Merely a spell for body creation. Avatars, maybe? No…these are far too powerful." That actually wasn't bad. The avatars the humans used were usually closer to mobile scrying circuits they could control the placement of, usually shadows or illusions. It was the closest thing the humans did to what I was doing with these bodies, so avatars would be a fine description. As I considered it, maybe I could give Angie an avatar once she accumulated enough of the will that was shared to occupy one.

Once the avatars were finished filling out, I activated their core circuits. The scope of the effect had exceeded my expectations. The effective distance was a radius of six leagues, two stades, and two hundred pedes. The effect was so pronounced that it instantly eradicated all the exhaustion from a day of marching and training. Angie's army responded with increased fervor as they trained without sleeping.

They'd barely started their overnight training when Samantha's army needed something to suppress their enemies. I couldn't think of a better way to test out how effective my avatars were so I sent them over. Angie's army didn't notice, though, as I'd built two more that were just starting to fill out. These two were both human based as I realized it would be very beneficial to have a set for each army. To keep things simple, I merely built the avatars as reflections of the leaders of the army. For this force, it was Angie acting as enfeeblement and Euri providing intimidation. I didn't replicate their faces, as that may become confusing if either were given avatars of their own, but the shape was in homage to their bodies. The pace at which they filled out was much slower, though, as they had their core runes activated.

Angie sat before the two filling avatars, in euphoria at the chance to see such a powerful creation being birthed not once, but twice. She was incapable of using any of the circuitry, as all of it was made of true circuits, but she now had the chance to see just how superior my circuitry was in comparison to what humans wielded. Now that she could see that even the circuitry I'd taught her was merely the beginning, she couldn't suppress the excitement.