Reborn: Level 100 Farmer 67 Conduits

The portal itself whirled like a buzz-saw. Its outline of warped s.p.a.ce fluxed madly, struggling to maintain a circular shape.

Li looked behind and saw Zahaka had started to lean on the basin with one arm and used her other one to tap at floating sigils emblazoned upon a transparent screen. She tapped with urgent speed, her eyes flitting up and down, her brows furrowed in heavy thought.

"The portal is fully configured and stabilizing…"

Li sighed and tapped his staff to the ground, propping himself to his usual upright posture. The G.o.ds exhaled in collective relief. Khonsu cancelled his [Shadowborn Void] and floated next to Zahaka. Chi-You held a great wide smile upon his bull face, curls of smoke puffing from his nose. Even Helius seemed to perk up a little, his sunken in eyes widening.

"But my calculations have fallen below the mark."

"You have to be kidding me," said Li. "The portal seems ready enough. I can see the farm right through it. All we have to do is pa.s.s through it."

Zahaka shook her head. "It is not so simple. To pa.s.s an ent.i.ty of our level of power and scale requires a portal of immense structural integrity and capacity. That portal right now," she said, pointing to the swirling circle of shorn s.p.a.ce-time in the air. "Can pa.s.s but one of us."

"You didn't think this would be a possibility?" said Li. He was familiar with dealing with operational variables in an experiment, and he could not believe that a G.o.ddess could not foresee something as basic as this. "To me, it seems that if you're experimenting with a method of transportation, then capacity would be the first thing to consider after a viability of initial success."

"Let us not argue," said Chi-You his six arms raised up to try and calm the increasingly tense air cloying in the room.

Zahaka narrowed her eyes, but then her expression softened. Strangely, she seemed more content than she should be, merely nodding at the situation, making a mental note of it. "Eldritch energies are highly unfamiliar to me, I am afraid. I have worked with them only once, and that experiment went disastrously wrong to the point that I could not learn from any of it. I had always thought eldritch energy as possessing limitless potential, as infinite and inevitable as the fundamental forces of decay.

To transfer one of us through a regular portal would require one as large as a country, perhaps even larger. I theorized a portal borne from eldritch energies would simply surpa.s.s these restrictions considering how freely it seems to act with s.p.a.ce-time, but it seems there are limitations to its power."

"Then how do you suppose we fix this?" said Li. He motioned to the portal above. It was starting to shrink. "How long will it take you to modify the ritual? What will it take?""

"Modification is a quick process, taking a few years, perhaps. However, to power a portal large enough to transfer all of us would require you to cast a spell similar in scale to that which you utilized to shatter Chi-You's realm. However-"

Zahaka's lips curved in a faint smile, and she motioned to the portal with an extended finger. "I do not wish to keep you here for years upon years, for you have a.s.sisted us more than enough. Go, take the portal, Old One, and return to the mortal plane. To keep you here for such time while you have mortal connections to tend to would be highly selfish of us."

"That would indeed be the right thing to do!" Chi-You nodded. "Knowing you, I thought you would fight to keep the Old One here, and I was about to argue against the matter, but it is good to see the cold Zahaka of old has worn down over the years."

Zahaka shrugged.

"I knew it. Another failure." Helius shook his head and limped himself standing. "A waste of time."

Khonsu said nothing. He merely floated there, looking to Zahaka, his masked face bereft of any emotion.

Li's skeletal head lowered a little, the jaw opening, wisps of darkness fluttering out. Zahaka seemed the most h.e.l.l-bent on getting out of here than any of the others. She had been the one to study obsessively for centuries while the G.o.ds around her either gave up or waited on her. Yet she was letting Li leave so freely.

There had to be something she wanted in exchange.

As if reading his mind, Zahaka continued, "I only ask that you may return a little token from each of us to the mortal realm."

"What would that be?" said Li, a little wary.

"A token from each of us." Zahaka called out to the rest of the G.o.ds. "Give him your conduits." She explained to Li, "Conduits are artifacts connected heavily with us that we fas.h.i.+oned in preparation for our arrival. We hope that if they are distributed across the world, then a mortal compatible with our personalities will be drawn to them, allowing us to mold them to be our vessels to escape the world's oversight."

"You're prepping something similar to avatars, I see," said Li. "But this implies that you have a means to get back. Without me, however, you all have nothing. No battery to boot up the ritual."

"And without me there to configure a means to hide you from the world's automated system, I believe you will see us again sometime, though I know not when. By then, I am hopeful I will have modified the ritual sufficiently. However, I cannot keep you here while you have your farm to tend to."

Zahaka reached a hand to her hair and plucked one of the snakes out.

It was a cobra, its hood decorated with the same eye-like pattern of rainbow scales on her tail. When she severed the live snake form her head, it curled up, its mouth eating at its tail before shrinking and calcifying into a bracelet of precious stone.

She gently pushed it towards Li, and it floated over to him. He caught it in his wooden hand.

"You still don't know for sure what exactly it is that takes me to this place?" he said.

Zahaka shook her head, her lips pursed. "In your case, I do not. But if you ever do end up here and I have not finalized the ritual, it is an easy process to simply replicate this process again and send you back."

"Fair enough." Li's strongest hypothesis right now was that he had turned into his original form one too many times or perhaps used one too many powerful spells in the mortal world, but that was, at the end of the day, just a hypothesis.

For now, though, he needed to take this way out. He couldn't just let the farm rot to stay here while Zahaka tinkered up a new portal and a way for Li to subvert the world's rules.

"Give me what you need. I can keep it stored."

"Ah, I ask that you keep the items on your person," said Zahaka. "They are enchanted such that they will automatically scatter all around the world, waiting for the right mortals to pick them up, but if they were to hide within the personal storages of beings such as yourself, then I fear the enchantment may not work."

"Alright, then don't give me anything I can't hold onto."

Chi-You came up to Li and bent to one knee, extending all six of his arms. The six palms all faced upwards and collected atop each other. A flash, and then there was a small, round s.h.i.+eld hovering above his palms, as if he was granting a sacred offering to Li. 

The s.h.i.+eld was made of bronze and completely ragged, rusted, chipped, and dented. There were no defining marks on it, no special runes, no remarkable aura of power.

"You sure this is what you want to me to take?" said Li.

"I kneel before you to acknowledge my deepest grat.i.tude that you are willing to take it," said Chi-You, his head bowed. "It would do me great honor to know that a being of such power as yourself has carried a shard of my essence. And do not worry, it is truly what I wish to send. A mortal that recognizes the worth of this s.h.i.+eld in spite of its superficial appearance is one who is willing to grow stronger and dedicate themselves to a weapon, to truly bond with it over time, and that will be a mortal I am most similar to.

Li nodded. He strapped the s.h.i.+eld to his free arm and put Zahaka's snake bracelet across his wrist.

"So these conduits basically bond to people similar to you. Then what does the bracelet represent?" said Li to Zahaka.

"Insight," said Zahaka simply. "An insurance that it does not land in the hands of a fool."  

Khonsu floated over to Li. The mask's mouth opened into a perfect circle, and inside, there was nothing but the same gaseous darkness. With a vomiting sound, he expelled a glob of condensed, dark fluid that solidified into a floating sphere the size of a hand. The sphere hovered to Li's palm, resting directly above it.

"…And what does this represent?" said Li.

"The Hunt." Khonsu floated away without any more explanation.

"Okay then. Are we done here?" said Li. He doubted Helius would have the motivation to give him anything. The G.o.d didn't even believe the ritual would succeed in the first place, so he likely hadn't prepared anything. 

But, to Li's surprise, Helius did approach Li with shuffling steps.

"You've prepared something?" said Li. "Surprising, considering all you ever seem to talk about is failure this and failure that. Almost seems like you have some hope left."

Helius scoffed. "No. I did not fas.h.i.+on any conduit. In the first place, I would not wish any mortal to take upon my broken essence. But this-"

He extended his twig-like arm, his hand curled. Flares of golden energy burst outwards, lighting up the entire throne room with an unbelievably bright and blinding solar radiance. The light dimmed, and in the sun G.o.d's hand was a spear. It was more than three meters in length, far longer than any normal spear, and fas.h.i.+oned not of any precious metal, but of sunlight forged into solid form.

Indeed, the spear's tip, protruding sharp from a neck shaped like a sun, shone with a brilliant heat that Li could even feel scorching at his being. It was more battering ram than spear, and now that the sun G.o.d had shrunk so much, he looked almost comical holding the ma.s.sive weapon up, and yet Li knew the weapon wasn't to ever be mocked.

The Sunspear.

Perhaps the strongest item in the entirety of the game not counting new game+ expansions that introduced celestial items. Even so, it was solidly the strongest item in the G.o.dgiven-item cla.s.s, almost reaching the level of some Celestial items.

"This, I wish to give to the mortals."

"Are you sure about this?" said Li. "Something like this will turn the world upside down. Any mortal that gets their hands on this will have the power to conquer any kingdom or any empire."

Helius smiled for the first time, but it was not a happy one. It was deeply sorrowful, revealing aged creases at the sides of his pale lips, his eyes as dull and lifeless as ever.

"The Sunspear can only be held by those who are worthy of its might." Helius released the spear, and Li saw that the sun G.o.d's palm had burned horribly, the flesh completely charred over with smoking black. "I am no longer worthy. I will never be the G.o.d the mortals once believed and loved, the one to protect them through any and all dangers, but it is my hope that there is one among the mortals far worthier than I who will continue to hold true to the light of life that I taught them."

Li nodded to the sun G.o.d. The G.o.d was still truly good at his heart despite how broken he was. "If this is what you want, then I have no reason to oppose it."

Li took the spear in his hand, and it did not burn him. He knew of the worthiness requirement in-game, and it generally meant that only truly good-aligned players, players that had played through the campaign without making a single villainous or selfish decision, could wield the spear. However, once a character got to level 100+, that limitation was waived, and he could see that that property still transferred over.

"Is that all of it?" said Li.

"Not counting Helius's little surprise, yes," said Zahaka as she glared at Helius. Helius gave her an aloof glance before he limped away, his form fading away into a shower of golden sparks, returning to his realm.

"Then I'll be on my way. See to it that you've figured the ritual out when I come back here, if I ever do." Li looked up at the portal, eyeing the peaceful cottage. He prepared to jump. "In a couple decades, if I haven't shown up, I'll try my best to actively get back here and give you all some help."

 Li leaped upwards, and his vision faded into nothingness.