novelraw Chapter 340: Untitled
Chapter 340: Untitled
Seated cross legged on the cave floor, Leon refined the blood in his system using the three blood vessel scripture.
The process was slow and deliberate.
He had lost track of time completely. There was no way to gauge how long he had been in here at this point, no reference outside the rhythm of his own breathing and the gradual progress of what he was building inside himself.
All he could focus on was the homunculus.
It had formed slowly over the course of his work, taking shape inside him layer by layer until it was something he could clearly see with his inner sight.
It looked like a child.
But not quite.
It had all of his features, his face, his proportions, everything matched exactly, except for a clear mark sitting in the center of its chest. That single difference was the only thing that separated it from simply being a smaller version of himself.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
"Out!!"
Without thinking twice Leon spat a drop of blood from his mouth and directed it toward a mound of clay sitting before him on the cave floor.
—pulse.
Creating a body outside of just the homunculus was expensive in a way that went beyond money.
It demanded materials that were not only rare but hard to extract under any circumstances. The kind of resources most people wouldn't even know where to begin sourcing, let alone gather in complete sets.
From what he had studied in the manual's making process, there were three body qualities.
Golden body. Silver body. Bronze body.
Each had its own list of required materials, its own ceiling of capability, and its own margin for failure.
The old hydra had left enough behind to make five bronze bodies, two silver bodies, and one golden body.
Each body could perfectly mimic the power of its user. The difference between grades wasn't in the output. It was in how easy it was for someone else to tell which was real and which wasn't.
What Leon had prepared in front of him now used the materials for a bronze body.
He understood the value of each grade clearly. And as someone doing this for the first time, he understood what it meant to fail with materials that couldn't easily be replaced.
He watched carefully.
The blood sample dropped into the human-sized clay mound and disappeared into it. For a moment nothing happened.
Then it began to move.
Slowly at first. The clay churning and shifting from the inside, compressing and reforming, pulling itself into shape without any external guidance.
Until it looked exactly like Leon.
"This is good."
Leon smiled without meaning to.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Despite the scripture ranking the bronze body at the very bottom of the list, to the naked eye it was completely indistinguishable from the real thing.
If Leon walked down a street right now with it beside him, anyone looking would see identical people. Same face, same build, same everything.
But it wasn't just a twin standing there.
It was him through and through. No conflict, no independent will pulling in a separate direction. A sliver of consciousness linked them and through that link they were one.
Whatever the body felt, he felt. Wherever he directed it, it went.
"That looks cool."
Levi slithered up onto Leon's back without announcement and observed the clone from that elevated position, head tilting slightly.
It really did look exactly like him.
"However…."
Levi's eyes moved between the clone and Leon.
"How does this equate to immortality?"
It sounded skeptical. The clone was standing there looking perfectly real, but from where Levi was sitting it still seemed like an elaborate puppet. A useful one, maybe. But not a path to living forever.
"The key is not in the puppet itself."
Leon said it with a slight smirk.
"It's in how it can be used."
Levi shifted on his back.
Then froze.
What it was sitting on still had Leon's body. Still had his blood, his shape, his warmth. But something was gone. The particular weight of presence that made a person feel like a person had completely vacated.
Leon's consciousness had shifted into the clone.
Levi looked at the clone standing a few feet away. Leon looked back at it through the clone's eyes, and through his original body's eyes simultaneously, both perspectives feeding into the same awareness.
The logic of it settled into place.
As long as he could make these clones fresh, and as long as his main consciousness didn't die, he wouldn't die.
The body could be destroyed. The clone could be destroyed.
But consciousness moved.
If Leon had possessed something like this back on earth, even the golden Buddha wouldn't have succeeded in casting his soul out. There would have been nowhere to permanently put him.
"Let's get out of here."
He stood up, consciousness returning fully to his original body, and waved his hand once.
The clone folded away into an armband on his left wrist, stored flat and invisible against his skin.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
The old hydra had left quite a few things behind.
A vault, for which the key Leon had been carrying was the entry point. Inside it were the materials needed to produce more clones going forward, along with a considerable collection of other tools and resources the old monster had accumulated and chosen to leave rather than take.
Leon didn't linger on the inventory.
He had what he came for.
Without a second thought he turned and walked deeper into the tunnel toward where light was beginning to show at the far end, Levi drifting alongside him on the trey, still wrapped partially in the remnants of its cocoon, unbothered.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Outside, near the three waterfalls.
A few weeks earlier.
"What do you mean the three sources suddenly stopped?"
The voice was sharp and confused in equal measure.
"A seal? What seal? Send the old demon out with his class of appraisers."
Inside the element school a full uproar had broken out.
The water sources feeding the three paths to immortality pool had been cut off without warning, drying the pool completely. And as the water level dropped, something became visible at the bottom that no one had seen before.
A stone statue.
Leading downward.
Toward an inheritance ground.
They had been following the wrong method entirely for as long as anyone in the school could remember, performing rituals at the surface of the pool while the actual entrance sat beneath it the whole time.
The entire school was in motion now, arguing about how to get in, who to send first, what the seal meant and where it had come from.
Appraisers were being assembled. Old practitioners were being pulled out of rest. Everyone had an opinion and no one had an answer.
While all of that was happening, Leon was already walking back toward Fire Town.
Levi floated beside him on the trey, half asleep.
Leon had a satisfied look on his face and said nothing.