Magic is Programming

Amber sighed, and stretched, carefully keeping her movements slow and steady to avoid startling anyone. If not for the tension and uncertainty about what would eventually happen to them, this would actually be quite boring. She didn't even have anything to meditate on like Carlos, because those damn suppression cuffs would prevent her from making a soul structure. If she tried, she'd just be feeding her irreplacable soul shell mana into the cuffs.

She wished she'd gone ahead and made her own mana redistributor. It was certainly proving its value for Carlos right now, and now that she bothered to consider it seriously she could see other uses for it even aside from dealing with the cuffs. For one thing, it would let her change her spells database so that she could remove spells she didn't want anymore and reuse the mana to learn other spells. Or she could learn an improved version of a spell by modifying the version she already knew. Or...

She shook her head. That was something to think about later, when they were out of their current predicament. Right now, what they needed was a way to escape.

They couldn't fight their way out. Darmelkon looked like he could chop both of them in half with the same single swing of his enormous sword, and if the rumors she'd heard about his soul development were anywhere near accurate then her spells would barely affect him at all. As for Tornay, he was an Enchanter. She shuddered. He was probably loaded with enough magic items to turn even a newborn baby into an overwhelming threat, and that was ignoring whatever his own capabilities might be.

They couldn't run. They had no back exit to use, and even if they did somehow get away Tornay and Darmelkon would just track them down again. Those two had tracked them even through a teleport to a location no one else had known, and she still didn't know how.

They had to talk their way out. Somehow, they had to convince their pursuers to allow them to go. Her thoughts kept circling around to that inescapable conclusion. She just could not think of any other possibility. And though she hated the idea, selling Purple and the secret of moving him seemed the only potential way to satisfy them.

They did have one potential wild card, but she was fairly sure it wouldn't be enough. Still, she should double check to make certain. [Purple, is there anything you could do? Teleport us out of here, maybe?]

[No. Not enough mana. Also, Tornay restricting. Me. Sorry.]

Amber paused at that. [Restricting? What, something like these suppression cuffs?]

[But you can still talk with me? Is that different?]

[Soul structure make bond strong.]

[Ah.] Amber nodded. It probably also helped that the bond was already established. If only she had a soul structure that would help her break these damnable cuffs!

Carlos considered their options. Fighting and running were right out, of course. Tornay and Darmelkon had already proven that those were futile. That left talking, but with what approach? There was the obvious option of just giving up and selling Purple and the secret of moving him, of course, but that was a last resort.

For other options, there were variations on deceiving, tricking, or manipulating them. Despite their evident cooperation in tracking down the dungeon core, Tornay and Darmelkon clearly were not partners or friends. They had separate interests, with a contract bringing them together, and that meant potential chinks and conflicts that might theoretically turn them against each other.

Ultimately, the best deceit would be to trick them into falsely believing that they had acquired what they came for, and thus had no further reason to hold him and his friends captive. That, or convince them that their goal was unattainable. Unfortunately, it was far too late to try to make a fake dungeon core, and he doubted they could have made one that would fool Tornay anyway. The Enchanter was still obsessively examining Purple with a bewildering variety of presumably enchanted objects. A magnifying glass, an arrangement of metal cubes, some contraption full of pipes and levers, a few scrolls, and more.

If Carlos couldn't deceive them about Purple, then could he maybe deceive them about himself, or his knowledge? He could use mana despite the suppression cuffs. Unfortunately, he didn't have many options for what to do with that. He could cast a light spell, or he could make a soul structure. Producing some light would not help, and neither would any of the soul structures he had planned. Not in the short term, at least.

However, what would they think if he demonstrated his ability to ignore the suppression cuffs? From how Amber had reacted to the idea, he was confident his mana redistributor was a very unusual soul structure, so they probably wouldn't think of it. What alternative explanation would occur to them for how he could cast despite the cuffs? What known limitations might the cuffs have?

Well, they worked by forcibly inserting a soul structure. Did that forcible insertion bypass the normal constraints on soul structures, or did it still have to abide by them? Carlos focused on his introspector, and felt it struggling a bit to answer the question. His mana redistributor had a fair bit of excess mana after its last upgrade, so he reallocated enough to upgrade the introspector, and also the comprehension aid because he might as well.

Thus upgraded, his soul structures soon provided the answer: No, the force of insertion had been far too low to break those constraints. Considering that brought another question to mind. The constraint on total number of soul structures would rarely matter because so few people maxed that out, but plenty of people had enough for the synergy requirements to matter, yet Tornay had seemed absolutely confident that the cuffs would work anyway. Why was he so confident? How did the suppression cuffs deal with the synergy constraint?

Carlos mentally rolled his eyes when his introspector gave him that answer. Actively interfering with all other soul structures by diverting their attempts to use mana technically counted as having synergy with them. Negative synergy, apparently, still qualified as synergy. The mana absorber with its universal anti-synergy thus automatically satisfied all synergy constraints.

That left the limit on maximum number of soul structures. What would happen if suppression cuffs were put on someone who already had 10 soul structures? His introspector was quick to answer that one - the insertion force was far too low to displace an existing soul structure, so the mana absorber would just rest on the outer surface of the soul and would have no effect. He grinned. That was perfect.

He'd better check a couple details with Amber first, though. [Hey, Purple, I have a few questions for Amber.]

[Ok. Why not ask direct?]

[I need to avoid Darmelkon overhearing.]

[So?]

[I can only talk telepathically with you, not with her.]

[Oh.] Carlos got an impression of some kind of effort from Purple. [Try now.]

Carlos blinked. Did Purple just make a bond between him and Amber? ...He'd ask questions about that later. For now, just go with it. He focused on the idea of sending a mental message to Amber instead of Purple. [Uh, Amber? Hi.]

Amber visibly jerked with surprise. [What the- Carlos??]

[Yeah. Apparently Purple can make bonds between other people now, or something. Anyway, I have a couple questions.]

[Um. Wow, ok. Ask away.]

[Could Darmelkon or Tornay detect what our soul ranks are?]

[Not easily. It's very difficult to detect anything about the interior of another person's soul. Soul rank assessments are rarely done, even for official government actions.]

[Good, I was hoping for something like that. Now, just to make sure, are all adamantium rank people nobles?]

[Yes. High nobles, at that. Proving adamantium rank to earn a promotion to high nobility is one of the few things people bother doing formal rank assessments for.]

[Excellent! Thank you.]

Carlos raised his cuffed arms in Darmelkon's direction and called out to him quietly. "Hey, Lord Merchant! I have something to show you."

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