The Hundred Reigns 251: The Workshop of Horrors (10)

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“The control group?”

“My wife and I have participated in more than one Exposition, yet neither of us has been replaced,” Coil explained. “The Crafter has had many occasions to recruit or abduct us. Their lack of action suggests we are intentionally being left alone, receiving neither favor nor disfavor.”

Simon almost countered that it could simply be nepotism due to being the Crafter’s secret son, but that wouldn’t explain the complete lack of support over the years. Surely Coil wouldn’t have been allowed to languish in poverty and adversity if his father truly cared. 

“Is he testing the puppets by using you as a baseline?” Simon wondered. “Comparing their creations to that of a true human genius?”

“Possible. We lack information to make a proper educated guess.” 

“Would you mind if I ran a few tests on you?” Simon asked. “It might show evidence of memory tampering.” 

Jym Coil cautiously nodded, at which point Simon briefly added him to his Party—he would have to switch him out with Shabram a bit later—and checked his stats. What he found was both expected and surprising.

Jym Coil

Human

Unclassed

Very Strong: Metal, Support, Lightning.

Strong: Mind, Corrosion, Fire, Earth, Water.

Neutral: Wind, Wood, Life, Frost, Mythic.

Weak: Ailments, Light, Darkness.

Very Weak: Physical, Soul.

Strength: 7

Agility: 8

Vitality: 8

Perception: 25

Magic: 3

Intelligence: 160

Charisma: 4

Luck: 16

Simon had to reread the stats twice in disbelief when he checked the three-digit Intelligence stat. The average unclassed human score was between 10 and 15, and he himself had started with a respectable 18. 

It would have taken him over seventy levels in a Class with S-ranked Intelligence growth to match Jym Coil’s baseline. 

On the other hand, most dogs had at least 5 in Charisma, and 3 in Magic was utterly abysmal. Only the man’s Perception remained exceptionally high. 

This man truly has no Class or Perks. Party System could see every detail of its members’ stats, and it didn’t detect any hidden abilities besides his abnormally high Intelligence. He is a once-in-a-century genius. 

Still, a natural 160 stat in Intelligence stretched believability. Coil might have received mental enhancements or chemical treatments in his youth. Simon cast Heart’s Desire on him, since using the spell on puppets usually showed their desires to be superficial or lacking depth. 

The image flaring into his mind almost fried his eyes in its intensity. 

Lightning flared and illuminated the world, a thunderstorm clearing above a shining city whose radiance put Lampwick to shame. Great towers of steel reached to the clouds, their frame coated in rainbowed lamps and signs. Steam trains carried hordes of people from one district to another in a perfectly ordered and efficient urban dance. Dams, windmills, and the very warmth of the sun fueled the beating, electric heart of civilization, powering free hospitals, schools, and entertainment parks; a future where progress and technology had abolished famine, disease, and suffering. 

A Lightning Age. 

The vision reminded Simon of Mastemo’s own reflection in Carbuncle’s mirror in that he couldn’t see Jym anywhere in this heavenly picture. Although this whole place was a temple to the great god called Science, no statue showcased Coil’s merits and genius in building this holy place; for true faith wasn’t rooted in fame or greed, but in unshakeable belief in a higher cause than oneself.  

“What are the preliminary results?” Jym Coil asked when Simon returned to reality. 

“I can’t exclude that your memories were altered, but I can guarantee you one thing,” Simon said with sincere respect. “Your dream is yours alone.”

Coil assessed the statement for a second, then nodded slightly. “I am relieved.” 

“Still, we must decide what we do.”

“We keep working and gather data,” Coil replied flatly. “The project is important, and the Crafter or his apprentices will attend the Planetary Exposition. The best way to learn of an experiment’s purpose is to see it to its end.”

Simon considered it. He didn’t think they could do much else for now either, since the Crafter wouldn’t leave his tower to answer questions anytime soon and threatening to expose the truth might result in lethal retaliation. If Coil’s hypothesis about his company being an experiment’s control group was correct, then they had nothing to fear in the short-term so long as they avoided drawing attention to themselves. 

I’ll keep studying the automatons and how they interact with pictoboxes for now, Simon decided. Lotan’s crystal could power a fully miasma-powered device. Laying low and gathering information in secret would be wiser. I have already drawn enough of a spotlight on our activities.

“Our daily pause is over,” Coil said upon returning to his work. “We have wasted too much time with this nonsense.”

“I wonder what people would say upon seeing the Overlord serving as your assistant,” Simon mused. “What should we tell Magda when she returns?”

“Your secret is yours to share, should you decide to do so,” Jym Coil replied with a shrug. Nothing about their association had changed in his mind. “Now, grab the welding tool. We are three minutes behind schedule.”

—-------------

Simon spent the rest of the month—and the year 403—delving into his research. 

He worked to master lightning during the day and to incorporate Lotan’s crystal into an improved pictobox at night; all while browsing through Bert’s library and surveying the global situation through his agents across the world. Silk continued to do discreet research on the Crafter’s conspiracy while Velvet continued to report on her organization’s activities. 

Hector continued to serve his role of decoy perfectly and moved to Uyo to keep all the factions guessing. Meanwhile, Euphemia had apparently kicked Vouivre out of Telluria, forcing the dragon to ally with the Cobweb, and continued to negotiate a treaty with the White Unicorn. It looked more and more likely that Belzemine would serve as a bargaining chip to secure peace with Illusea, much to Simon’s annoyance. 

He decided not to interfere with that particular plot in spite of his misgivings. He needed to confirm whether or not the Oracle would continue to target an Overlord-less Endymion even after she received everything she wanted. 

Moreover, if the talks went well, then Simon could exploit a similar scenario in the future. He was confident he could create his own disguised automatons between Bert’s blueprints and his own Devil Forgemaster. Adding a Belzemine or Malphas-shaped one to his Party and then granting them fake stats would create a divination-fooling spy he could use to infiltrate Illusea.

Magda eventually returned too, although she looked more tired than the day she left. She showed up one morning in the laboratory while Simon and Coil were working on the wireless electricity. 

It had been a strange moment. Whereas Simon moved to hug her—a gesture Magda returned—she and Jym simply stared at each other for a moment. Their apprentice could almost taste the uneasiness.

It was Jym who eventually broke the silence. “I took care of the cockatrices while you were gone.”

“I have seen them.” Magda fidgeted in place for what seemed like forever before asking. “Did my absence cause any issues?”

“Nothing we cannot bounce back from,” her husband replied. 

“Good.” Magda took a deep breath. “Good.”

And that was it. Magda resumed her duties as if nothing had happened, at least on the surface. 

While Simon decided against informing her of his true identity out of worry that she wouldn’t take it as well as Coil, he did come clean about his investigation into the Crafter’s conspiracy. She took it better than he expected, in that she looked more resigned than anything. The ongoing events were simply too big for her. 

“I’m sorry,” Simon apologized after taking a picture of her and confirming she wasn’t a puppet in private. “Security protocol.”

“Jym would know I hadn’t been replaced if he had bothered to check on me during my absence,” Magda replied with a scowl. 

Simon had never heard her sound so bitter before. “He just wanted to give you space,” he argued. “He checked if you had returned each morning, to the point that he always started working late. That means a lot coming from him.”

“Did he miss me, or the peace of mind I provided? Does he value me for me, or for how much I can ease his work?” Magda sighed. “You don’t need to answer.”

Simon still did. “He cares, just in his own way. He struggles to understand himself, let alone others.”

“I was fine with that when we only had bills to worry about.” Magda massaged her forehead. “Now you tell me Bert is a monster in disguise…”

“I’ve dealt with him.” 

“That’s even more worrying. Who are you to uncover this conspiracy and force a monster like Bert to back off?” Magda didn’t wait for Simon to answer. His embarrassed expression was an answer in itself. “Actually, I’m not sure I want to know. I don’t need to know.”

“All I can promise is that I’m on your side,” Simon reassured her. “Our situation keeps improving. We’ve reimbursed your debts, settled the lawsuits, and Coil Futuristics is finally cleared of all charges. We’ll soon enjoy wealth and prestige.”

“That’s… good.” Magda scowled darkly. “But those puppets… you think they’ll leave us alone if we keep our heads down until the Planetary Exposition?”

“I can’t guarantee it, but it’s likely.” So long as they didn’t distribute the miasmic pictobox at least. “I don’t think they know we know.”

“Good. Good… I… I think this is too big for us to get involved in.” Magda looked away. “If they learned we can identify them—”

“Nothing will happen to you and Jym so long as I’m around,” Simon reassured her. “You two are the safest people on the planet right now. I guarantee that.”

Magda chuckled lightly, a thin smile chasing away the scowl. “I know you’re exaggerating, but… part of me believes you when you say that.”

“That’s because it’s true. I’m here for you two.”

“We’re lucky to have you, Simon.” Magda nodded to herself with renewed resolve. “Let’s just focus on the Planetary Exposition. We’ve all worked too hard to cancel our participation now.”

“And then?”

“And then… then we’ll see,” Magda replied evasively, her smile fading away. “I… I don’t know what to do, Simon. I didn’t sign on for this conspiracy nonsense, and Jym… maybe we should take our money and leave the country.” 

“We’ll figure it out,” Simon reassured her. “Take more time for yourself to think.”   

Magda resumed her tasks after that, but a rift had opened up between the Coil couple. She stopped talking about her husband with stars in her eyes and would take more days off than usual now that she didn’t have to deal with money troubles anymore. Simon would have expected their marriage to improve now that they no longer had money-related stress to deal with, yet the pressure of knowing a terrible truth and Magda’s realization that Coil would always put his dream first had taken its toll. He hoped they could resolve their issues by the time the Planetary Exposition concluded. 

Otherwise, Duchar reported his findings on the automatons and Bert. Hector’s telepathic probe confirmed the presence of a mutilated, memory-amputated soul buried beneath the puppet’s malevolent personality. Duchar believed it fueled the creature’s emotions and filtered them through Bert’s memories. 

“Is there any way to help the buried soul retake control?” Simon inquired once he visited the archive again. 

“There is too little of it remaining to sustain much beyond an animalistic sense of self and emotions,” Duchar replied after he removed Hector’s soul-stealing helmet from Bert’s unconscious body. “However, weakening the shell personality would increase the subconscious soul’s influence over the merger. Your Majesty’s memory-erasing spell should do the trick.”

“I unfortunately have too much use for him in the short-term to try that,” Simon replied, his gaze lingering on Hector once he reclaimed his animated armor body. “Could you confirm if Verney is in there?”

“I believe so,” the undead rasped. “I sensed great guilt… anger… and a connection to something else far away… something dark.”

Then Bert retained a spiritual connection to Valravn. That bond wasn’t strong enough to harm the fiend on its own—he wouldn’t have risked the puppet’s destruction in a previous reign otherwise—but it might cause the Twins to notice something wrong with his creation. Simon would send Bert to the next Weaver council to ensure the demon didn’t suspect a thing. 

Simon was nonetheless pleased with the results. Bert should be able to serve the same purpose as a Witch’s fetish doll; a living intermediary through which they could harm Valravn. All he had to do was design the right spell, a task on which he put Duchar up to.

He would have a way of bringing the Cobweb to heel before long. 

—---------

How did Libromancy work? The question had bothered Simon for a very, very long time, and he might finally have found a lead. 

The miasma-soaked book he stole from Bert’s library, The Pattern, turned out to be Bert’s personal diary and somehow almost as disturbing as Nodens’ own Scream of the Soul. The living puppet recounted his crimes in gruesome detail, from the sensations he experienced when coating himself in the real Bert’s skin for the first time, to the joy he felt when disemboweling whores in the streets at night, and finally, to how he had watched business rivals perish in his death traps. Bert had come to the conclusion that his innate compulsion to kill, and that of other murderers across the world, derived from a primal force of the Dark he called the Pattern. 

While those ‘studies’ sounded like the absurd rambling of a deranged serial killer, Devil Forgemaster recognized the diary as a Grimoire; a book with magical power of its own. Yet Bert had sworn on his Brand of Pride that he hadn’t woven any enchantment into the pages…

“Quite the mystery,” Simon wondered as he summoned his Abyssal Chronicle in the depths of his secret workshop. One of his newer Titles allowed him to change it into any book he had previously touched, including Nodens’ Scream of the Soul, which his Perk also identified as a miasmic Grimoire. “Almost as much as this.”

He channeled miasma into the Scream of the Soul’s copy like he did in the Abyss once, and the book shrieked. 

Its pages flipped at an accelerated rate and let out a murderous noise which Simon identified as Nodens’ own cruel Apocalypse Song. While he himself was immune to its effects thanks to his many Ailment immunities, exposure drove his test rats to insanity. A few smashed their own heads against their holding cage’s bars in an attempt to escape the pain. The effect lasted until Simon either stopped channeling miasma into the book or until it flipped to the last page, at which point it snapped shut. No other book behaved that way no matter how much power he poured into it.

Until The Pattern. 

Channeling miasma through it caused a similar phenomenon, where the book opened up on its first page and then flipped through them. The effect differed slightly in that it instead compelled nearby rats to react with murderous hostility towards one another. The rodents would tear out each other’s throats and then happily coat themselves in their victims’ blood until The Pattern reached its final page. The traumatized survivors regained their minds at this point, with nothing but horror to look forward to.

Simon was pondering the implications when he sensed Agrat teleporting into the room and turned to face her. “Are you finished modifying the pictobox?”

“Almost. I could not help but investigate the screams I heard.” Agrat brought out her little notebook. “What spell was Your Majesty casting?”

“A spell?” Simon raised an eyebrow. “Interesting. You think I used a spell rather than a magical effect?”

“Am I wrong?” Agrat now looked truly curious. “I assumed Your Majesty cast a vocal Performance spell.”

Simon shook his head. “I simply channeled miasma through some books.”

“Witchcraft then? Although I don’t recall any Witchcraft spell requiring a book as a focus.” 

“I think it might be the long-lost Libromancy, a school of magic that uses certain books as a medium.” That was the likeliest conclusion Simon could come up with. Miasmic Archmage likely allowed him to use miasma Libromancy spells even if he didn’t fully understand how they worked yet. “I’m trying to figure out why and how something like The Pattern became a miasmic Grimoire when its writer didn’t use any enchantments.” 

Agrat pondered that problem for a moment. “I am reminded of a proverb among your kind,” she said, smiling. “An artist pours his heart and soul into his work.”

Simon felt as if he had been struck by a bolt of lightning. “The Dark is anger, greed, fear…” he realized, the solution clear to him. “Bert poured so many of his own diseased emotions and malice into his diary that he stained it with the Dark.”

Nodens had likely done the same with The Scream of the Soul. It was his life’s work, the research that allowed him to develop his warped, musical masterpiece. The Dark itself had taken notice of this grim masterpiece and granted it power.

Did mana-fueled Libromancy work the same? Surely a writer would have noticed one of their books gaining unusual magical properties after completion and the lost art would have been uncovered by now. There had to be another mechanism at work. 

Mana and miasma were complementary opposites. Light and Dark, community and individual, truth and lies… reflections. 

What if mana-powered Libromancy worked in reverse? Something that relied on others rather than the writer’s own warped ego and force of personality? 

“Eidolons form when people’s faith and belief coalesce into a living being embodying them,” Simon muttered to himself. “Now, suppose that many people believe in a book… embrace the theories of an influential scientific book, vividly imagine a novel’s world in their minds, refer to a philosophy text to guide their lives…”

Where would all that faith go?

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