Chapter 242: The Stages of Bonds

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AN: Got some editing suggestions? Suggest it on the Google Docs here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YNjI9DaJdTnvERKyVgUWm2jMWNpOk3yTFuqoZcO_yaE/edit?usp=sharing

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“So, what stage of your Bond are you on?” Alexander asks.

“I have begun to infuse my anima with my Bond,” I reply.

“Hmm, have you chosen your Bond’s specialty?”

“Bond’s Specialty?” I ask, unfamiliar with it.

“A Bond can be very vague in what it means. What is beauty? How do you define beauty? I’ve met many beauty Bonded beings, and most define their beauty in wildly different ways. Beauty can be peaceful serenity, it can be passionately creative, it can be alluringly seductive, and even frighteningly destructive. That is your specialty and needs to be chosen at your current stage.”

“How do I choose? And what does it mean?”

“When you meditate to fuse your Bond and anima, you must focus on your ideal of beauty; this will instill that identity in your Bond. Doing so will vastly empower your Bond strength for that identity. This doesn’t mean you can’t do other things outside of your specialty, just that doing so will be weaker,” Alexander answers, taking a sip of his tea.

“I see, and by doing this, it should speed up my Bond’s growth.”

I’ve been gaining about one level per day, so by choosing a specialty it should increase a lot more.

“Yes. Bonds are hard to level if you do so poorly.” Alexander nods toward Kayafe, making her pout. “But if you follow the correct methods, you can expect reasonable growth; however, finding out what the Bond wants you to do is the hard part. This makes it so there are often periods of stagnancy between periods of fast growth. However, I would encourage you to take your time to really think about a specialty that fits you. You can’t change it once you have passed this stage, and a more fitting one is more powerful and easier to level.”

So, if I want what’s best in the long run, I should take my time and really figure out my beauty.

“What if I don’t choose?” I ask.

“Then one will be chosen for you based on how you used your Bond in the past. This is something I wished I knew since I never had the luxury to choose my specialty.” Alexander then looks at Kayafe. “You still have a chance; please don’t waste it.”

“Well, I can train with Alysara, I guess,” Kayafe says, looking away.

“What are the other stages?” I ask.

“Let’s start at the beginning so we have the full picture,” Alexander says. “The first stage, level one through one hundred, is to form a connection with your Bond. What I mean is that you must try to use the Bond and build up the ease of use with your Bond.”

“I never had trouble using my Bond; it’s always been easy,” I say. Did I somehow skip a stage?

“Did Myrou grant you her blessing?”

“Yes, but I never knew what it did.”

“Blessings from Legendary beings, or at least those at the equivalent Bond stage, grants you automatic recognition from your Bond. The blessing has to be from someone of the same Bond and will let you use the Bond at one stage higher with diminishing benefits the more you improve. To put it simply, A Legendary being’s connection to their Bond is so great that they can influence yours. Think of it as trusting someone because your friend or family does.”

So Myrou was my Bond equivalent of a wingman. I guess that explains why it was so easy to use my Bond and, in turn, level it.

“The second stage, level one hundred to two hundred, is the familiarity stage, where you learn about what the Bond is and what it is capable of. To advance through the stage, you must simply learn and try new things.”

This one was pretty easy to figure out when I got a bunch of levels for doing something new.

“Stage three, level two hundred to five hundred, is mastery of your Bond and building trust and faith in it. To learn most of what your Bond is capable of at this time.”

I suppose this is the stage most suited for combat. Successfully taking down stronger foes shows faith and competence in one’s abilities. I never did figure out what this stage wanted, but considering this was when we were dungeon delving, it makes sense.

“Stage four, level five hundred to one thousand, is expanding the scope of your Bond. This means learning about the sub-essences of your Bond. In the case of beauty, it is serenity, awe, allure, elegance, and more.”

It was around that time that I really started to use those sub-essences, although I didn’t quite know what to call them then, that I began to achieve things that should have been outside the ‘identity’ of beauty.

“Those four are the easy ones to figure out,” Alexander says. “But the next is what stumps most. Stage five, the stage you are at, is level one thousand to two and a half thousand. As you figured out, it is infusing your Bond and anima, as well as the stage where you need to choose your specialty. Stage six, which goes to level five thousand, is to finish fusing your Bond and anima.”

“It sounds like stage five is more for choosing one’s specialty than fusing anima and Bond,” I point out.

“Indeed.” Alexander nods. “But the act of choosing requires fusing anima and Bond, which is why the next stage is to finish what the fifth started. As for the seventh stage, the one where I am at, I only recently figured out that it is to learn how to remove your dependency on mana and instead use pure Bond.”

I am surprised he willingly told me all this without saying that it counts as another payment to me. He even told me the next stages, which honestly should have each counted for different payments, if it took him so long to figure it out.

Perhaps I should give him more credit than I have been, but maybe he has an ulterior motive. Just because someone is generous at first doesn’t guarantee they mean well.

“One thing I would like to point out is that the stages aren’t quite correlated to tiers,” Alexander says.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Legendary tier is the seventh tier, and while I am at the seventh Bond stage, my Bond isn’t yet equivalent to Legendary tier. The scholars are still debating on whether or not to rename the stages to better fit the tiers by starting at the null stage.”

“Null stage?” I mutter. I think what he means is to start at zero, but considering the idea of zero in mathematics isn’t widespread, saying ‘null stage’ is just as effective. “So basically, the first stage is less than Minor tier.”

“Exactly. In order to match up with the tier system, the first stage has to be null. I don’t quite agree with that seeing as it’s the first stage, not the nothing stage, but those scholars are always thinking up strange concepts. It’s actually a point of heated discussion between philosophers and scholars. Philosophers are adamant that ‘Null’ is an idea, not a number, so it must not contaminate the beauty of math. And considering that many mathematicians are also strong supporters of that argument, renumbering our concept of the tier system hasn’t made any progress for thousands of years. I don’t know enough about the subject to have a strong opinion, so I just leave it to the experts.”

I guess I can pay him back for the extra he just gave me, just in case he brings it up later as an unpaid favor.

“In my past life, the concept of null as a number, as well as the concept of negative numbers, led to revolutions in mathematics. It may seem strange, but the technological advancement that can come from those strange ideas can really help your Empire. You should consider increasing support of the scholars.”

“I don’t see how it can have that much of an effect, but if you have personally experienced the benefit, then I should trust you.”

“So I am curious, now that you bring up your past life, what age did you live in? I have met several legacy souls, and also, from what the Spirit Gods said, the system wasn’t always the same. There was a time before there even were Bonds. They only had an affinity toward certain elements or essences.”

I’ve already told him all the damning information; this isn’t going to make things any worse.

“The primordial age. The age before the system, before Skills, before even mana. My soul witnessed every age and every world message since the birth of the system.”

“I see. That’s why you are the Archive of Eternity; quite literally, it seems.”

I nod. “I even witnessed the spawn message of Fafnir; he was born the moment the first age began. He wasn’t the only one; twenty great monsters were born, and I never saw the death messages of some of them, although more than half are dead now.”

“Really? Which ones are still alive? I am willing to pay for that information,” Alexander says, sitting up straighter. Kayafe even has her ears perked and eager.

“They are long since gone, so that information won’t ever be useful to you. They simply left when the Reality Eater showed up. However, before that, more great monsters spawned during following ages, like great Elementals of which only one still survives.”

“Where’d they leave to? If we can find them, we can escape the Reality Eater too!” Kayafe asks.

“Well, Fafnir literally left. He breached this reality and went to another. The others made their own realities. I suppose the only way to find them is to find Fafnir,” I say with a shrug.

“Alex, do you still have that?” Kayafe asks.

“Yes, but I’d rather not use it unless I have to. Fafnir can be tracked down like we did the first time.”

“But—”

“No! It’s meant to be used in an emergency. I know it’s a pain to contact him, and the price is high, but you can entice him with Alysara’s presence. He should be very interested in a soul older than him.”

What are they talking about? Do they actually know a way to contact Fafnir?

“You guys know how to find Fafnir?” I ask.

“Yes, but it’s not easy, and it will require something to interest him. And considering how old he is, it’s not easy to find something that interests him,” Kayafe explains.

“Emperor Alexander is right, he would be interested in me, and besides, if I can secure his aid, we won’t have to worry about the Spirit Gods.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Alexander says. “He vowed not to interfere with other realms. In his words, he is ‘so old he began to count in eternities,’ so the events in one ‘short-lived’ realm do not matter to him.”

…Understandable. If there is a way to find Fafnir, then I can ask him about how to reach the other great monsters. Even if he won’t help me, maybe the others will… assuming they also don’t want to use me for materials. I can ask Fafnir if they would and stay away from those ones.

“Well, if we are going on a journey to find Xerithro and Ithronan, then we might as well add Fafnir to the list,” I say to Kayafe. “As soon as we are done here, let’s get your body back.”

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Clone POV:

My airship industry is finally starting to show the fruits of my labor. In the past week, people have been using airships to travel to other villages and to the risen city, which is turning into a centralized trade hub.

Previously people would typically only travel to other nearby villages, and trade from one edge of the Nexus to the other was very rare and only happened during the annual celebrations at Temple Island. However, with a new and better location for trade, it’s almost become a default location for selling things. Intervillage trade is booming, and the economy is very bullish; all possible due to airships.

I am now getting more and more requests for airships. However, I fear this isn’t enough for my trial. There needs to be something more, something that can really launch the adoption of airships throughout society as a whole. That something is the miniaturization of airships. However, there are significant obstacles standing in the way of that.

The first is the mana requirement of airships. Either it needs massive wings to draw in mana or to have a mana generator which requires extremely rare resources to make. Kayafe and I can easily make small airships with the application of magic, but that isn’t a solution.

So how do I miniaturize airships? The first thing that comes to mind is developing inscriptions to accomplish the task. However, that doesn’t solve the mana consumption issue. The second thing is a redesign of the airships for something that allows for miniaturization.

Wing space is probably the biggest problem. If I am to make the car version of airships, they need to be easily storable.

I pace around in my experimentation room, wracking my mind for a solution. There has to be a way to miniaturize airships. In my past life, great things were achieved through simple, clever workarounds. Hang on, isn’t this sort of similar to satellites needing to be as small and compact as possible? How did they get wide solar arrays on satellites? Didn’t they just fold them up like origami? Can't I just fold up the wings in the same way?

Yes, this is the answer! The only problem is I never learned origami, so I will have to re-invent it. I wonder if I can get my knowledge Bonded apprentice, Kyhana, to help. The twins, too, might find it fun to learn origami if I can show them successful examples.

I remember watching a video that explained a method to make any shape with origami, a mathematical solution that converts the area of the intended object into a flat plane that can be folded into the approximate shape, or something like that; I don’t quite remember it. It’s a shame my memory improvements don’t work retroactively. Everything I’ve forgotten in my past life doesn’t come back; I just can’t forget any more than I already have.

It’s a start, though. I know that there’s a method, so I don’t have to rediscover every single type of origami. Knowing that the method exists means I have a clear goal which makes this so much easier to re-invent.

With that in mind, I get to work. Testing my ideas and tweaking them. I have several clones to dedicate to this task, sitting around a table and trying to make paper boats and other shapes. Another clone is writing down a formula with several crossed-out sections above it. It’s only a matter of time until I figure it out.