Chapter 913: Familiar Concerns
<span style="font-weight:400">Dana was… less than excited about her familiars, at leastpared to the eagerness that she had shown when she first started her summoning. From a practical standpoint, she was fully aware that being able to mass produce fully working clones was a powerful ability, especially as each one of them could summon their own familiar. However, there were some things that she had to test first.
<span style="font-weight:400">Her first test was to try to leave the familiars operating in the real world while she returned to the Admin Room. After summoning Heaven’s Gate, Dana stepped through and began to count down from sixty. However, to her surprise, her familiars were already in the Admin Room upon her arrival.
<span style="font-weight:400">ra grinned yfully, looking at Dana. “Looks like you’re stuck with us.” She said in a teasing tone, Sienna simply nodding her head in agreement.
<span style="font-weight:400">Dana clicked her tongue at her two familiars, finding that this experiment was a failure. She had been hoping that her familiars would be able to operate in the mortal world like Tsubaki’s Servant avatars, but neglected the fact that familiars possessplete souls, making them a different type of entity than a simple avatar.
<span style="font-weight:400">With a shake of her head, Dana returned to the Sky Citadel together with her three familiars. The next thing that she tried to test was whether or not the familiars could create their spells themselves, or if it was still Dana who personally needed to create a spell for them.
<span style="font-weight:400">The result for this was… rather surprising. Despite the familiars having all of Dana’s power, they were unable to initiate the process of creating their own spells. While they could undergo each individual step, the final spell would not settle in any of the ‘spell slots’ avable to a fourth-tier familiar. Only when the spell came from Dana itself would it settle.
<span style="font-weight:400">“That’s interesting…” She muttered, but she was honestly thankful that this was the case. If the familiars were able to casually create their own spells, there was the chance that they would be able to make something over time to turn against her. Was it really considered having trust issues when the person that you were having a problem trusting was just a clone of yourself? Well, maybe…
<span style="font-weight:400">Thest test was to see how far they could operate independently from Dana. Clearly, she was not able to leave the mortal world while having them act, but what about going between different worlds?
<span style="font-weight:400">To test this, Dana sent Sienna to Fyor, and ra to Lorek. What she found confused her more than anything else. Sienna operated perfectly fine, able to walk around Fyor and function entirely without interference. ra, however, found herself slowed to an almost crawl as the world sped up around her.
<span style="font-weight:400">Seeing that reminded her of when the Virtual reality had just been released, the Keeper’s Virtual self experiencing a simr situation. <i><span style="font-weight:400">This is probably less of an interference from the familiar system itself, and probably more due to whatever happened with the Heaven’s Gate.</i>
<span style="font-weight:400">With this, Dana believed that she had everything she needed in order to fully make use of her familiars. If she wanted to, she could even create several dozen more, but she decided against doing so for the foreseeable future. As long as there were only two of them, she could still manage if something went wrong, but that would not be the case if the numbers increased too drastically.
<span style="font-weight:400">The next thing that she had to do was to create the spells for each of the familiars, determining the roles that they would y. Given that they each had her magical talent, there was no need for any basic spell that she could reproduce with another magic system. Instead, it was better to create spells that she could not easily use otherwise.
<span style="font-weight:400">To do so, she found the information that had been sent to the Citadel regarding the imagination system, and examples of some of the effects that one could create. It was hard to describe the limits of the imagination system. Simply saying that it was limited by one’s imagination… while urate, also limited it further. If you give someone too much creative freedom, they will often be unable toe up with ideas as borate as in cases where they are constrained to a set of rules.
<span style="font-weight:400">This was the primary reason why Kione hadgged behind the other worlds in its magical development, the simple fact that they had too much freedom with their magic. Now that there were guidelines and established methods being ‘discovered’, people continued to push the boundaries of what was possible.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Sienna, I’ll be giving you mostly utility magic.” She exined, her hand ced on the back of her familiar. “Once I’m done, I want you to personally manage the training of the monsters in Deckan’s shadow. Take Stone Father with you, and help him with his training, too.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Sienna’s eyes briefly widened, and she gave a firm nod at themand. In fact, Dana knew that Sienna wouldn’t object to this order. Giving personal training to the shadow monsters was something that Dana herself wanted to do for a long time. Now that she essentially had an extra body, there was no reason not to offer this chance to her familiar.
<span style="font-weight:400">“What about me?” ra asked, eyes wide and almost sparkling. “Am I going to be ying games with you and Tsuba? Or maybe working in the workshop? We never finished the new design for the Sky Chariot, after all!”
<span style="font-weight:400">Dana grinned yfully, looking at ra. “You’ll be in charge of void patrols.” ra’s face immediately fell at Dana’s words.
<span style="font-weight:400">“This is prejudice! Why does she get to train all the shadow beasts, but I have to hang out in the void all day?” ra asked, pouting her lips. Dana couldn’t help butugh at the exaggerated reaction.
<span style="font-weight:400">“The void is growing more dangerous by the day. Fifteen years passed out of nowhere, and we don’t know to what degree the void beasts have evolved. You can be considered a Fallen God, after all. It’s only right for you to do this. If I could take your ce, I would.” Dana spoke in a righteous tone, ra immediately pointing an usatory finger at her.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Then trade ces with me! I’ll stay here to y with Dale and Tsuba, and you can go run around in the void!”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Nope.” Dana nced off to the side shamelessly. “That’s what I have you for.” ra simply copsed at thatment, arms spread out on the ground.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Well… what kind of magic are you going to give me, then? If Sienna has utility magic to help her with her monster training, what about me?”
<span style="font-weight:400">Dana thought about that as she finished injecting another spell into Sienna’s body. “Combat and detection magic. Sienna is logistic support, while you are going to be a pure battle familiar. Also, we need to learn how to sync up our experiences. If you can use all of my abilities, I need to learn how to share new abilities that I learnter, as well as how to get abilities that you learn yourselves.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Sienna’s eyes shed at that. “Absurdity…”
<span style="font-weight:400">Dana simply nodded her head. “That’s right. You girls aren’t going to be the only ones busy. I am nning to work on mastering the Absurdity of Fate while you are both taking care of your tasks. I need to be able to transmit any mastery I obtain to the two of you.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“That’s cool and all!” ra began, before her face fell. “But can we even use that technique when we don’t have all those fragments?” As if to test that idea, she stood up from the ground, brushing off her skirt.
<span style="font-weight:400">ra held her hand forward, bringing her index finger and her thumb just an inch apart. She looked at one of the tools on the counter, positioning her hand so that the tool in her perspective fit neatly between the tips of her fingers. After a moment of focus, she moved her hand, the tool teleporting and shrinking to be the same size that she had ‘perceived’ it as.
<span style="font-weight:400">“That would be a yes.” Dana nodded her head. This was one of the advanced training methods of Absurdity of Fate, using perspective to warp the world around you. “I expect you to put that back at its proper size, by the way.”
<span style="font-weight:400">ra’s eyes widened at that, fumbling with the much smaller tool in her grasp. “A-Ah, right!” She nodded quickly, bringing it up to look at the table again. She adjusted her perspective, bringing her hand closer and further away, shifting the angle to try to get it just right. Afterwards, she released the tool, and it dropped down onto the table at its full size. “Okay, so we can still be as absurd as ever.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Once Dana pulled her hands off of Sienna’s back, thetter’s body melted into the shadows at her feet, leaving to carry out the orders that Dana had given. “If that’s the case, I’m almost worried what would happen if you created your own familiar…” Dana said, looking intently at ra.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Oh! You mean if I ended up only having a talent for making clone-types, as well?” She mused, before quickly shaking her head. “Maybe if I went to the Underworld, shattered my soul, and let it marinate for a few centuries. After that, I guess I’d be at the same standard you were before? Though it’s equally possible that clones can’t make more clone familiars.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Dana gave a small nod, before looking at ra. “In that case, what type of familiar would you want?”
<span style="font-weight:400">ra rolled her eyes yfully. “Obviously, I’d want the same type of familiar you’d want. Let’s see… I’d want a!”
<span style="font-weight:400">Dana’s eyes widened at the unexpected answer. “A <i><span style="font-weight:400"?</i><span style="font-weight:400">” She looked at her familiar incredulously, wondering how she hade to such an answer.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Well, yeah!” ra grinned. “Wasn’t there that case of the living god not long ago? And you can make inanimate objects into familiars. If that’s the case, what’s stopping you from getting a truly massive familiar? Oh! We should ask alia if that’s possible!”
<span style="font-weight:400">Dana’s brow twitched, but she did indeed make the call. <i><span style="font-weight:400">alia… what is thergest familiar that is possible to obtain with Kione’s magic system?</i>
<i><span style="font-weight:400">Hmm?</i><span style="font-weight:400"> Seeing how distracted she sounded, alia must have been looking elsewhere, not paying attention to the conversation of the Dana clones. <i><span style="font-weight:400">Let’s see… it depends on the size of the soul used as a material. Though, bigger familiars also require materialponents and a longer summoning time.</i>
<i><span style="font-weight:400">Okay… but what’s the upper limit?</i>
<span style="font-weight:400">There was a moment’s pause, alia looking through the information. <i><span style="font-weight:400">U-Uhmm… there’s the Celestial Body familiar? It starts off as a small star that can fit in the palm of your hand. Every rank up, it gets extras that orbit it. And… at the fourth rank, if enough mana is provided, it can expand to be a full-size sr system. If you want familiars that are massive from the start, there’s the Building type?</i>
<i><span style="font-weight:400">Y-You’re kidding, right?</i><span style="font-weight:400"> Dana gulped, eyes going wide again. <i><span style="font-weight:400">How can a familiar be an entire sr system? What would the mana requirements for that even be?</i>
<i><span style="font-weight:400">It depends on the size. However, I doubt we need to worry about anyone doing this. To get a celestial body familiar, you need to use an actual star as the materialponent for the spell, opening an Underworld gate right in the heart of it and throwing your soul in. More importantly, because the familiar is sorge, I don’t advise using it, as its main purpose would be space travel. That, or just hurlings at a target.</i>
<span style="font-weight:400">“I’m doing it!” ra said with determination. “My familiar’s going to be a star!”
<span style="font-weight:400">Dana let out a deep groan. “Why? What good is hurlings at a target? The projectile speed would be too slow, and most enemies you’d want to do that for wouldn’t even take that much damage from colliding with a.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Still doing it!” ra grinned broadly. “And I’m going to make it the location of our new workshop.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Now that… that Dana couldn’t argue against. A workshop built on a controlled entirely by them, in a sr system that only they couldmand. “We’re going to need a lot of mana.” She said with a sigh, though ra only chuckled mischievously.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Talk to Dale. Presumably, a-type familiar would have naturally urring resources. If we convince him to give us arge enough vein of Mage Heart in one of ours, we’ll have all of the mana we need to maintain its full size.”