Things you need to know before reading this chapter:
- Character thinking; Character remembering a past conversation; Character remembering a past passage they read
Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of Symphonia and Tales of the Abyss
Chapter 24: The Downside of Multitasking
Noir watched as the man standing a few meters before her started gathering fonons from the surroundings. Noir was never what one would call a Fonist, but she had had enough dealings with them – mostly one-sided where she and her henchmen stole valuables from them – and could feel the gathering of fonons. She also came to the conclusion that if amateurs like her could feel the vibration in air, scratch that, see shiny particles, which she suspected were fonons, floating around the man before her, then this Fonic Arte, if it could still be called one, would be very powerful.
Just as her musings came to an end, a large magic circle, about twice the size of the normal ones she saw when those she stole from tried to stop or capture or incapacitate or even kill her by throwing various Fonic Artes at her, appeared underneath the man's feet.
She saw out of the corner of her eye that her most loyal henchmen, Urushi and York, the first two men she saved when escaping from the tsunami that destroyed the Isle of Feres nearly eight years ago, started fidgeting nervously. Noir licked her dry lips and smirked, she could't really blame them for being nervous at the power display, even she was shivering from anticipation, it had been so long since she last saw anyone using such a powerful Arte, and not at her to boot!
Brown light began enveloping the sword the man was holding horizontally in front of him and the intensity of the light continued to build as the man prepared for the Arte. Just before the light became so bright that Noir would have to close her eyes to avoid being blinded by it, the man stretched out his right arm and pointed the tip of the light enveloped sword forward.
"Titan Roar!" He shouted and the light that was just now dancing around his sword started racing across the rocky terrain spreading over the ground before them. The light sipped into the ground and the moment all the light was 'absorbed', the ground started shaking. Noir, together with Urushi, York, and at least two hundred refugees from different cities all over Auldrant, gasped as they saw the ground itself started lowering.
In another few minutes, in front of them was a u-shaped valley where settlements that would have allowed not only two hundred, but two thousand people, to easily fit into. A valley that, combined with its location, would be the most secured place on Auldrant for them to live in without worrying about being detected by other nations, and in the unlikely notation that they were detected and one of the nations had the gall to attack them, would be the easiest place to defend.
The first thought that crossed Noir's mind as the man sheathed his sword was "oh my gosh! That was the craziest thing I have ever seen!", and the second was to quickly close the distance between them and hug and kiss the hell out of him, but she didn't, for she was professional and she needed to maintain the image of a calm and level headed leader in front of her followers, so she whistled instead and at the same time broke the tense atmosphere that she never noticed fell over them.
"You are right, that was way better than a few explosives." She said as calm and cool as she could manage. However, the moment she finished her comment, all hell broke loose.
"What!? Ma'am, are you kidding? I doubt even thousands of explosives could have done something like that!" York exclaimed.
"That was one hell of a spell..." Urushi said as he stared at the newly made valley.
She could also hear murmuring and shouting and cheering from the people behind her, all of them amazed and shocked at what they just witnessed. Ignoring the others, Noir walked forward and stood next to the man that just casted that gigantic Arte and heard him sigh. She understood where it came from, heck, even she was starting to get a headache from all the amazed 'ohhs' and 'ahhs' and the worship like stares and comments that would no doubt come at him later.
She almost regretted winning the argument with him when he said he didn't want anyone to witness what he was going to do. Well, keyword being almost, she couldn't really say she regretted seeing such a power display, and it was their right to know how their future home came to be.
"So you gonna tell me how you managed to do that?" Noir turned towards the man and blinked seductively as she asked the question. She knew what the answer would be, but she just couldn't help but feel curious about this Arte that she was sure he couldn't do the last time they saw each other and pulled so effortlessly just after two weeks.
"Trade secret." The man carelessly shrugged.
"You are no fun." Noir pouted but decided to leave it at that, everybody had secrets, even she herself got some, and no matter how curious she was, she wasn't going to trade her own secrets for others'.
Without another word, the man started walking away. "So you really aren't staying? You could be our new leader after all you have done for us." Noir called after the retreating man.
The man paused his steps and turned around. "I haven't done anything except conjuring the energy required for the Arte, the real work starts from here and I am sure you can handle it just fine." Then as an afterthought, he added, "I am not leader material and this is all just business anyway."
Noir rolled her eyes at the other's words. "Right, just business, then I am glad doing business with you, Kratos Aurion."
Kratos smiled slightly and nodded before continuing his retreat from Noir and the residents of the future town that would be built in the newly made valley.
"Not leader material my ass, and what business it is with you refusing anything we attempted to give you?" Noir muttered under her breath as Kratos disappeared from her line of sight, the others too caught up at the moment of awe to notice that the man that just saved them from having to continue drifting across the world without a stable home walking away.
She turned to look at the people, her people, that were happily chatting with each other, all excited at the prospect of finally having a place to call home.
Right, still a lot of work to do. I am sure it would take years before our new home is complete, but I doubt anyone would want to start today. There was a playful glint in her eyes as she joined the others. She announced happily that they would celebrate and party like crazy today before starting to work tomorrow and she smiled genuinely for the first time in years as the cheering became even louder at her announcement.
"So this is the new Derris Kharlan... it is just like what you described, a lifeless planet, with equally lifeless beings in it except for the monsters in the lower levels." Gnome said as he floated alongside Kratos. The man was walking along the silent corridors to the control room in the angelic city with occasionally an angel or two brushing past them with the robotic greetings of 'Lord Kratos'.
Gnome glanced at Kratos, his new Summoner, seeing as the pact bracelet was in his possession and he had the blood of Lorelei, his previous Summoner, well, not really previous in the sense that their pact was annulled or anything like that as Lorelei wasn't dead yet and he hadn't done anything to break the pact between them. That's also the reason why Kratos didn't have to gain the Aggregate Sentience's acknowledge to be able to use his power, he could do that just because he had the pact bracelet and was Lorelei's descendant.
He didn't know what to think of the young man, well, two thousand years old, at least according to his calendar system, was still young in Gnome's dictionary. Kratos had told him about the organization called Cruxis and how it came to be, the splitting of Aselia to preserve its depleting mana and the events leading to the reuniting of the worlds, the plantation of the new World Tree and the departure of Derris Kharlan, his arrival at Auldrant, what he had learned while here and how he came into possession of the pact bracelet. He doubted Kratos had told him everything, but that was to be expected.
"Lord Kratos, you can find the result of the calculations you asked to be performed in Terminal C." One of the angels standing next to a large white door said.
Kratos nodded and, without even sparing a glance towards the angel, entered the control room and immediately sat down in front of one of the computers and started typing.
Seeing that Kratos was busy at the moment and was unlikely to pay any attention to him right now, Gnome decided to use the time to examine the room and the machines in it. He never thought that mana could be used for so many things apart from sustaining lives. Back in the days, people, or just elves, only actively used mana to power their magic, and now they had this thing called magitechnology in which mana was used to power many different gadgets and machines, though there was the downside of having the risk of severely depleting mana if what Kratos said about the Kharlan War was true.
It wasn't just magitechnology, from what Kratos had told him, even people on Auldrant had advanced much in the field of Fontech. Gnome had known he would be put into a long slumber all those years ago, but that still didn't prepare him for the advancement of technology of either planets.
He heard a sigh coming from Kratos and floated back next to him and tried to make sense of the numbers and letters displayed on the screen in front of him. "What is the result?" Gnome finally asked, knowing that Kratos would just remain silent unless he started asking questions.
"There was a slight decrease in mana and increase in Seventh Fonon. It seems the angels monitoring the mana level didn't suspect anything due to the changes being too small." He pointed at a set of numbers that was highlighted in yellow on the screen. "In fact, if I wasn't informed of Lorelei's plan, I would have thought the increase of Seventh Fonon was because of the closeness between Derris Kharlan and the Fon Belt and not because of the mana being converted to it."
Even though Gnome wasn't sure what the numbers represented, judging from Kratos' answer, he could vaguely guess that the numbers were about the level of Seventh Fonon in this planet, he saw another set of numbers highlighted in red that had a similar value to it and guessed that the ones highlighted in red was the mana that was lost.
"If this calculation is correct, it would take another three thou- one thousand and four hundred fifty two years for all the mana in Derris Kharlan to be converted to Seventh Fonon." Kratos said.
"There is still a long time then." Gnome said.
Kratos shook his head. "This calculation is just for the planet and not the ones living in it, I also doubt the conversion will be linear. If it's exponential, we didn't have much time left."
Gnome tilted his head to the left. "Exponential?"
"The conversion becomes faster and faster as time goes on." Kratos explained.
"What about yourself and the angels?"
Kratos closed his eyes, as if thinking of how to answer. "I am not sure how the conversion will affects angel, you said before that Lorelei didn't want to know what would happen if the elves were to get caught up in his plan... and angels were beings that relied on mana even more than elves. Though if you omit the Cruxis Crystal, angels were simply half elves, with the exception of me. However, I have no idea what this conversion will do to the Cruxis Crystal, seeing as the crystal was made using living beings that was based on mana..." Kratos trailed off.
Gnome looked at his human companion furrowing his brows, as if suddenly realizing something very important, which, given the nature of their conversation, he wouldn't put it past Kratos to just make another astounding discovery and waited patiently for him to gather his thoughts and maybe share them with him if he felt like it.
He didn't have to wait long when Kratos opened his mouth about a minute later. "Cruxis Crystal is like an amplifier that boosts mana, so maybe it can also boost fonons, but at the same time, it's also crystallized mana, so the very nature of it may also be converted. If what you said about mana in objects being converted faster than that in living beings is true, then Cruxis Crystal would be the first to become something purely made of Seventh Fonon." He paused, and closed his eyes tightly as if remembering something horrible. "But... if that's the case..."
Catching on where this was going from the information Kratos had given him a few days ago, Gnome decided to finish the sentence for Kratos. "It would be like a forced removal of the Curxis Crystal from the hosts' bodies."
Kratos let out a shaky breath. "There isn't enough material to even make a Ruin Crest for a single angel." He seemed to think about what he just said for a moment before shaking his head. "Even if we had the material, I don't have the skill to make it."
Silence fell between the duo while the two thought of the implication of Kratos' most recent discovery, the only sound in the room was the continuous beeping and humming from the machines. After a while, Kratos stood up and walked to the entrance of the room. The automatic door slid open revealing that the angels were still standing in the same position and posture, except for the flapping of their wings, as when they first saw them.
"Prepare the scanning machines that was used to monitor the status of Cruxis Crystal on its host body in room four five one through to room four double five, and I want angels of rank A lining up outside the rooms according to their ID number. Find another fifteen angels to stay in the aforementioned rooms, three in each room, to wait for further orders." Kratos ordered the angel on his right, to which she replied with a monotonous 'yes, Lord Kratos' before flying away.
He turned to the other angel. "Draw up a profile chart for every angels in Derris Kharlan using Terminal F, save the template into Terminal E and set up a link between Terminal F and the computers in room four five one through to four double five."
"Yes, Lord Kratos." The angel said with their signature monotonous voice and flew into the control room, sat down before one of the computers and started typing.
Gnome looked at his companion curiously before Kratos, who was still staring at the retreating back of the first angel, said. "I refuse to do nothing and wait for something as... disastrous as that happens, the least I could do is find out how long I have left to find a countermeasure for it."
I still don't know what to think of this young man, but just for a moment, I feel as if I was back to all those years ago and was working with you, Lorelei. Gnome smiled as he recalled a similar declaration made by a certain Summoner a little over four thousand and five hundred years ago.
Kratos turned around and Gnome saw the fierce determination in the auburn haired angel's eyes. "I once said I will create a better future for the people on Auldrant, but even before that, I had committed myself to the people on Derris Kharlan and I will not let any harm befall them. If and when the time comes that I require power to accomplish such deeds, will you lend me your power?"
Although I did lend him power when he created the valley for those homeless people, it was because I wanted to help too. He isn't a Summoner, even with Lorelei's blood and all that, but then the condition for a person to be able to summon Aggregate Sentiences is never as harsh as the Summon Spirits. Gnome then recalled one of the last sentences his previous pact maker said.
"That will be my last job for all of you, and after we completed the plan, you are free to decide if you want to annul the pact or keep it, though I don't see the point of you wanting to keep the pact seeing as I won't be around anymore, at least not as a human being."
But then I never annulled the pact between us. I still have the choice to keep the pact intact with those that laid claim to the pact bracelet and has Lorelei's blood or annul it. Gnome hold his gaze with Kratos and replied with a smile.
"Gladly."
It had taken him nearly three weeks, but Kratos finally got the status of all the angels, including himself, down onto the profile chart. The magitechnology in Welgaia was advanced even when compared to Auldrant, but not that advanced and Kratos still need to have another machine compute and analyze the near-gibberish that came out of the scanning machine and was entered into the profile chart.
Granted, he already had another machine running alongside to compute and analyze the data as he was completing the profile chart, he still have to wait for another two weeks before the analysis was done. Well, if Yuan was here he could manually speed up the process but Kratos wasn't Yuan, nor was he anywhere near as good as him when it came to magitechnology, so the only thing for him to do now was wait.
Technically, that wasn't really the only thing he could do right now, but he had been working non-stop – he could have asked some of the angels to do the work for him and took some rest in between, but this was too important for any mistake to take place so he had to oversee the whole procedure, and Gnome had disappeared the second day of the scanning process, not that he could be of any help anyway – the past three weeks, five weeks if the counting started from the time he left for Akuzeriuth, and decided to rest in his room for a while.
When he entered his room, he saw piles of paper sitting on his desk and inwardly groaned. I. Don't. Need. This. Now!
Just then, the door to his room opened and an angel carrying another pile of paper flew in and placed the pile neatly on the desk next to the other piles of paper.
"Wait." He called out as the angel began leaving and halted his retreat.
He pointed to the piles of paper on his desks. "Take these to Yuan's room instead."
The angel nodded and tried stacking all the piles of paper onto his arms and failed, resulting in pieces of paper falling down scattering onto the floor and Kratos had to resist the urge to facepalm. "Forget my order just now and find someone to clean the mess later." He nearly growled.
After the angel left, Kratos sighed. We have told Mithos time and again that automated angels following orders word to word and stick to default settings when not knowing what to do will lead to many problems, we even showed him proof, but he NEVER listened.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts on his diseased student and began to leave the room. He paused as he neared the door, turned back, walked to his wardrobe and took some clothings, then walked to his desk and looked at the top pages of the piles of paper. Finally finding what he was looking for, he grabbed the first few sheets from one of the piles and left the room.
Kratos drew out his wings and flew to another part of the city and landed on a large warp circle. Mana started flowing the moment his feet touched the ground and he started calling the mana required to activate the warp. He felt the distortion of space surrounding him and the familiar tug on his mana as he disappeared from Welgaia as his physical body was thrust into the distorted space and reappeared in Vinheim, the castle of Mithos.
He looked up and around and saw angels patrolling the castle as usual and walked towards Mithos' bedroom. He ignored the slight ache in his heart as he neared his destination. He halted his step once he opened the door and took in the room before him.
I need to rest, not drown in guilt. He furrowed his brow as he reminded himself of the reason he came here. He placed the sheets onto the bed and walked into the bathroom to have a long awaited hot shower.
Since he forgot to tell the angels where to put the analyzed data, the default was for the angels to take the data to the person that ordered it, which meant his room in this case. And once all the space on his desk was filled, the angel would take the data to the person with the next highest, or equal, authority, which meant Yuan's room in this case, then Remial's room and Pronyma's room and so on and so forth.
He knew there was a lot of data and didn't want to even start thinking how many rooms would be filled with paper after all the analysis was finished nor did he want to guess which room would be spared. Thus, he came to the room that the angels would definitely not take the data to: Mithos' room.
He inwardly groaned again at the thought of going through all the data after he finished his rest. Paperwork was never his forte and he desperately hoped Yuan was here to do the job... sure, he had looked at documents and did some analysis here and there, but it was never so much and even though he could ask some angels to look at the data for him and wrote a summary report, he doubted the report would be short.
Walking out of the shower after less than five minutes, he put on the clothes he grabbed from his wardrobe and started reading the first sheet of paper he took from his room while sitting on the bed.
It was his own profile he was looking at and although he doubted his condition would be similar to the other angels seeing as 1. he was a seraph and thus had a slightly different Cruxis Crystal, 2. he was originally a human and not a half elf, 3. he had a Ruin Crest, though he didn't know if that would amount to any difference, 4. he already had Seventh Fonon forcefully injected into his body and can be considered a full-fledged Seventh Fonist, and 5. he had spent more time in Auldrant than Derris Kharlan in the past few years, again, he wasn't sure if that would amount to any difference, but still...
He flipped through the pages and memorized some of the key points as he did so, he wouldn't know how different the data of his status was compared to, say, ten years ago, as they never did any regular monitoring on the stable angels, only the experimental ones... it would seem a bit too late to start monitoring the changes in the Cruxis Crystal after the conversion had already started five years ago, but it was still better to be late than never.
Apart from the basic scanning of the status of the Curxis Crystal of each and every angels in Derris Kharlan, he also selected fifty angels, twenty five females and twenty five males, to do a scan every ten days so as to monitor any changes that might occur to their Cruxis Crystals. He also did the regular scan for himself seeing as he was the only one of his rank.
He had already given the order and set up everything for those angels to keep up their regular scans even during his absence, but he still had to be the one to read through all the data... he couldn't keep up with the regular scan himself seeing as he wouldn't be able to stay in Derris Kharlan for an extended period of time, not to mention that he wasn't in any mortal danger like the other angels so there would be no point to add the unnecessary work to his already overflowing work...
Speaking of overflowing work, I can't help but feel that there's something I forgot to do... Kratos put down the paper and started massaging his temples with his thumb and middle finger as he felt an impending headache that came from not resting for nearly five weeks straight. Even though he was a seraph, there was a limit to how much he could handle without any rest.
He placed the paper onto the desk and turned to bed as he resigned to the fact that he would be useless and couldn't get anything done unless he got some proper rest.
Five weeks, he was gone five weeks, not even forty days and Kratos was amazed at the things that could and had happened in just five weeks and once again inwardly cursed at his own stupidity for forgetting such an important thing.
He had originally wanted to help Noir and her people build their new home but in the end refused due to all this mess about mana and Seventh Fonon and later Cruxis Crystal. He still wanted to help them and had told himself that he would visit and see how things were going and see if there's anything he could help when he had the time. So that was the least of his problems.
He was to train with Dist three weeks ago and in his fear for the residents in Derris Kharlan, he had forgotten to even send a message to let him know he wouldn't be able to come. Now that wasn't really a problem as Dist would just rant and rant for maybe a week or so and wouldn't be able to keep staying angry at him for long for obvious reasons.
He promised to help Cantabile take Ion to Keterburg – not Chesedonia, as Ion's parents lived there and Cantabile was still thinking up ways to slowly break the news of his parent's death to him without upsetting him too much – secretly two weeks ago as the little would-be Fon Master was dying to take a breather out of Daath and wanted to know what snow looked like when Cantabile first described it to him. That wasn't the main problem either as he knew Cantabile would understand he had more pressing matters when even Evenos couldn't contact him.
He had told Evenos he would let him know if something big happened and, well, something big did happen and he didn't told Evenos – he didn't even know until the day before yesterday – but then there's still Dist to report to him so that was fine too.
The main problem, the biggest and stupidest mistake Kratos had ever made since he came to Auldrant, was at the moment sitting in front of him.
As he stared without really looking at the one before him who was literally inhaling the food in front of him as if he hadn't eaten in a long time, which Kratos think might be the truth in this case, he had mixed feelings. The feeling was similar to when he first found out that his son was alive after thinking he was dead for fourteen years then immediately came to the horrible conclusion that he couldn't tell him he was his father and had to lie to and betray him just to let him live.
He was brushing his teeth after he woke up from his nap – not really nap, seeing as he had slept for six hours straight, a very strange thing considering he was an angel and all – when he finally remembered what he had oh-so-conveniently forgotten in the past five weeks.
After giving some orders to the angel on what to do in his absence, he hurried back to his small apartment in Daath – after many trials and errors, he had set the warping point between Derris Kharlan and Auldrant to be somewhere in the forest near Daath – and checked to see if he had any messages.
It were the messages from Dist that reminded him of the missed training session; the ones from Cantabile that reminded him of the secret trip to Keterburg, which Cantaible and her boyfriend, Marcel, had still taken Ion to with the help of Dist, who had used his authority as the Commander of the Second Division to somehow secretly set up a distraction of sorts for them to escape; the ones from Evenos that told him something had happened.
But it were Dist's fourteenth and fifteenth messages – the first thirteen messages being ones that asked of his whereabouts and demanded him to apologize to him for never showing up among other ridiculous things – that had his attention – he would have overlooked those messages as Dist's usual ones too if not for Evenos' message telling him something had happened.
The message was simple and was encrypted – give it to Dist to encrypt a message to look like his usual annoying and ridiculous messages. It didn't take that long for Kratos to decrypt it as the key to the encryption was in Cantabile's message.
It was a protocol they decided, if something happened and they couldn't verbally pass the message to the others, they would send an encrypted message. Dist was the one tasked with the encryption seeing as he was the mathematician here. The key to decrypt the message would be sent separately by a different person and the message that something was up would be sent by another person.
For example, if it's something they needed to let Cantabile know and she was out doing other missions, Dist would pass the encrypted message to Evenos – it would look weird for Dist to directly send a message to Cantabile considering their positions and supposed relation in the Order – and pass the encryption key to Marcel, who joined them half an year ago, just before he and Cantabile became lovers, and the two of them would send the messages to Cantabile separately.
The decrypted message was also very simple, and to the poin-
The child sitting before Kratos finally finished his food and placed the bowl onto the wooden table with a small thud, snapping Kratos out of his thoughts.
"Thank you Kratos, you are such a lifesaver." The boy said with a twisted smile that Kratos was sure would look much better if it wasn't for his fatigue and his mind being occupied by other depressing thoughts. Thoughts about a certain teacher that betrayed him recently.
Not knowing what to say, Kratos only nodded calmly at the boy before him, though his mind was anything but calm as he inwardly cursed at himself for the thousandth time or so since he read Dist's messages.
Luke, replica, Coral Castle, which was sent fourteen days ago, and replica already home, original escaped, going home, which was sent three days ago.
Author's Note:
No omake for this chapter, as author was being lazy and didn't want to put off uploading this chapter anymore... nothing much to say here... being lazy again... so see you next time~
Uploaded on 3 April 2013. Edited on 29 May 2013.