Colors exploded through the mansion's windows, thunderous booms echoed across the floors, and bodies fell to the ground like mosquitoes.
Giovanni and Sofia were swiftly eliminating the remaining creatures that still wandered through the manor.
The thurible and its magnificent incense were far too powerful a weapon, capable of incapacitating even the sturdiest of awakened aberrations. And now, with the boy accompanying her, the duo could locate every threat long before facing it head-on.
Fights never lasted more than a few seconds, even when they were outnumbered.
The lower floor was the most densely populated area of the corrupted royal guard, filling the main hall and the leisure areas. There were also other strange beings, such as household animals twisted into ravenous beasts and warped servants beyond recognition.
Having an ascended memory did not make them careless, so instead of simply throwing himself into the chaos, Giovanni used a very simple trick.
Using his seismic sense, he explored the manor and made rustic stone golems rise from the ground, often at several points at once.
As harmless as they were, their purpose was quite simple. The head of one of the constructs narrowed and then transmuted into a brass plate.
The golem grabbed its own head and slammed it into the floor with all the force it could muster.
CLANG!
A loud, painful sound echoed through the corridors. The nightmare creatures were alerted at once and ran toward what they believed was an intruder.
A second sound echoed.
CLANG!
One by one, the golems continued making a racket without pause, splitting the creatures' attention as they ran in different directions, depending on which sound was closest.
That was when Giovanni struck. Sealing off corridors with rock, he briefly isolated a group of monsters, confusing them among themselves and allowing both of them to act unseen by the rest.
Sofia handled the lethal part of the work, incapacitating the few enemies in the area and killing them shortly afterward.
Within a few hours, the manor had finally been cleared of the threats guarding it.
Sofia pulled a crystal from the body of a robust, quadrupedal reptilian creature with three lizard heads and a colorless body, reduced to a gray-and-black mass.
'Finally, no new wounds!'
Giovanni's fiasco in the desolate lands, his simple plan, and Gaius's intervention that nearly killed him had been a formative experience.
Not wanting to repeat the same situation, he decided to be more creative with his transmutation and elemental control, especially now that his abilities were far more powerful and less costly than before.
All in all, they had taken down at least three dozen of these things.
The spoils were truly plentiful.
"We're rich, Gigi, rich!"
The girl beside him spoke excitedly, lying amid several Soul Shards. Giovanni stifled a laugh and approached the pile, offering her his hand to help her up.
"Unfortunately, the fortune won't last long. Time for you to consume it."
Sofia had fallen behind in Soul Fragments, considering the number of battles she had fought. With that pile, her friend could finally break into triple digits.
"I'll become more valuable in the process, so nothing was lost, just transformed!" she said, almost singing, crushing one crystal after another.
Letting her enjoy the moment of glory, Giovanni focused on the last two additions to his runes.
True Name: Light Seeker
Rank: Dreamer
Soul Core: Dormant
Soul Fragments: [183/1000]
Memories: [Vermin Head], [Grafter's Tunic], [Master Key], [Dusty Diary], [Membranous Glider], [Maiden's handkerchief], [Draconic Pendant]
Echoes: —
Attributes: [Guided by the Light], [Acolyte], [Miracle Bearer]
Aspect: [Golden Prince]
Aspect Rank: Sacred
Aspect Description: [You are the promised successor of a kingdom long forgotten. As a prince, your power originates from your loyal followers and the lands you control. However, the laurel crown is lost, and without it, your title is hollow and diminished. You seek your divine inheritance.]
Innate Ability: [Royal Right]
Ability Description: [Find trustworthy people and make them swear loyalty. Once under your command, your vassals share in the blessings and equipment in your possession. It is improper for a noble not to offer an abundant reward.]
Vassals:
— Sofia.
Aspect Abilities: [Earth Domain], [Transmutation]
Flaw: [Sinless Spirit]
Flaw Description: [You cannot hurt others.]
Two memories! That was the real gold. Giovanni studied the information on both with satisfaction.
Memory: [Maiden's handkerchief]
Memory Rank: Dormant
Memory Type: Tool
Memory Description: [A piece of fabric bathed in the purest waters of the Whispering Caverns. No man can resist its allure.]
Okay… that sounded suspicious.
When he summoned it from his Soul Sea, a pink handkerchief, embroidered with disproportionate care, materialized between his fingers.
Aside from being pretty and useful for wiping his face, it seemed to have no special function. After some testing, it appeared he could use it without being enchanted or anything of the sort.
"Good thing! The thurible is more than enough already."
Setting aside the more harmless of the two, Giovanni focused on the one that had filled him with anticipation.
Memory: [Draconic Pendant]
Memory Rank: Awakened
Memory Type: Charm
Memory Description: [Seluvarin wished his dwelling to be an artistic and romantic paragon. He believed that only love and paint could express the true nature of things, so he offered his most trusted warriors all the colors of the world, so that even in war they would never forget what they fight for.]
Giovanni materialized the pendant and saw himself reflected in one of the hall mirrors. Fine chains, molded from bluish-green metal, held a single circular jewel, colorful and shimmering.
After a few seconds of testing his body and his aspect, there did not seem to be any physical or mystical change in power.
Wanting to discover the item's use, he sought Sofia's help.
"Hey, Sofi, can you use your aspect to see what this charm does?" he pointed at his neck.
She was already finishing up and only needed a glance to confirm it. Her expression seemed satisfied with what she discerned.
"Let me see… it looks like the charm grants a power increase depending on how strong your emotions are, and it infuses weapons in your possession with paint. It should strengthen attacks."
It really did seem good enough.
Giovanni did not have any weapons of his own, so it would be more useful in his friend's hands. He took the pendant off his neck and walked over to Sofia, placing it around her neck.
"It looks better on you."
She looked at him shyly, with an uncertain smile.
"Th-thanks… About the bodies, what do we do with them? It's going to be disgusting in here."
That was a good point. If Giovanni and Sofia intended to live in the manor, it would be best to clean up and make some emergency renovations. Having Gaius to do the job would have been ideal, but the reliable golem was still far away.
"I'll dispose of them outside, in some pit, and then clean up what I can. Meanwhile, try searching the rooms we haven't seen."
He knew Sofia would enjoy exploring the manor at a calmer pace now that it was safe, so he left her with the more fun task. She hesitated, not wanting to leave her friend with the housework.
"You can make it up to me later by telling me any juicy gossip you find. Professor Julius would actually do a backflip if he saw all this."
"All right! But… if it gets too heavy, don't hesitate to call me, okay?" She finally gave in to her desire to explore, wanting to make the most of her aspect's new capabilities and fully test her abilities.
Sofia ran off excitedly through the corridors. Giovanni, on the other hand, sighed and stared at the enormous knights he would have to drag away.
***
Walking through the corridors that had once been infested was a completely different experience now.
The silence felt right, somehow.
Sofia noticed the walls. The floors. The furniture.
Every surface seemed like a canvas in itself.
Even while inhabited by nightmare creatures, the mansion had remained preserved.
Guarded.
Obsessively so.
Using the [Master Key], Sofia managed to access new rooms, usually completely devoid of furniture, which was not very interesting.
But some caught her attention. The first was a small, private library that must once have housed dozens of scrolls and texts, but now only left intelligible remnants of its contents.
The reason was not only the materials' natural degradation but also the state of the room itself. Unlike the rest, it was destroyed, a victim of someone's irrational fury in the past.
Toppled shelves, broken tables, and dried ink stains marked some of the furniture.
'Who would commit such barbarity…?'
She felt somewhat irritated that a place meant to hold so much knowledge had been left in such a state.
She activated [Critical Insight] and analyzed the surroundings, looking for any anomalies worth attention. There were no elaborate mechanisms hidden away, nor any magical properties associated with the room.
So she went deeper… allowing herself to dive into the truth of the place. Reality melted into paint, giving way to a whispered, unrecognizable voice.
Fury.
Her mind drifted through shadows, where claws shredded paper and lost eyes sought comfort in the destruction of what hurt them.
He did not mourn what had happened, but what he had been deprived of remembering.
The words echoed within her, fading moments later as the ability was deactivated. She had become better at controlling the experience, but still avoided going too deep, so as never to be caught off guard.
'I'd be irritated too if I forgot something important… like someone's birthday… but breaking everything is a bit much. Speaking of birthdays, when is Giovanni's? I should ask later.'
Satisfied with what she had glimpsed in the library, she continued her investigation. The second place that drew her interest was a thermal bath chamber on one of the subterranean floors.
The place was completely dry, but there was a lingering scent… one that reminded her of Giovanni earlier, when they had been close. Had he been here before without her noticing? No, that was impossible.
'All I wanted was a bath at a time like this. Restoring this will be a priority!'
Activating her aspect once more, the world transformed into information, revealing runic mechanisms that controlled temperature and water flow, allowing the baths to be filled and drained.
With a thorough cleaning and simple maintenance, her ambition would be fulfilled.
As for the decoration, what stood out most was the vast wall-to-wall artworks depicting a majestic mermaid singing and stealing the hearts of her listeners with her charm and purity.
Even Sofia felt a little breathless when facing the paintings. It seemed the woman could bend anyone to her will with a simple request.
'Isn't she the same mermaid from the artwork upstairs?'
She had spent several days staring at the same painting of four figures on the ceiling of the room where she had been summoned.
They must have been some mythological figures among the local population, given how much effort went into depicting them.
When she tried to dive into the secrets hidden in the art, strangely, she felt only a powerful sense of devotion and passion.
She climbed the stairs back to the first floor and headed upward, searching for somewhere she might have missed in the rush.
That was when she found a double door, adorned with a symbol different from the rest, carved into the mansion's furnishings. A familiar castle, submerged in colorful waters that shifted between pale pink, yellow, cyan, and white, was surrounded by the dark, starry night sky.
The material was indecipherable to her, most likely beyond her grasp. There also appeared to be no lock, which rendered her memory useless.
She persisted a bit longer, trying to find a secret entrance, a mystery hidden between the lines.
Her search was fruitless.
In the end, all that remained was to try diving into the secrets it hid. Reality melted as before… but all Sofia managed to hear was a muffled word.
Thalorim.
Her mind was expelled from the paint, pulsing with an uncomfortable pain. She would not be able to extract anything more from it. Still… she finally had a name.
It could be the name of a local group, the owner of the place, or even the kingdom itself! It went straight into her notebook.
"Stay sealed while you still can, little door. I'll be back for you…" she murmured to herself, giggling afterward.
After spending another hour or two sketching the manor's environments so she could show them to her professor in the waking world, she walked to one of the rooms overlooking the outside and saw Giovanni closing yet another grave.
It seemed the boy had chosen to create a tomb for each of the creatures.
She couldn't decide whether it was inefficient or cute. Maybe both. Taking a deep breath, she raised her voice enough for Giovanni to hear her below.
"Gigi! Everything okay down there?" she called out, wanting to be sure he didn't need help.
"I'm almost done! Find anything useful on your end?" he replied, partially shrouded in shadows.
Seeing him outside, where aberrations once roamed and only darkness dwelled, made her instinctively nervous.
"Yes! Come inside already, I want to show you something." She urged him on, signaling for him to enter.
***
A few minutes later, the two were together in a meeting room, facing a table full of objects.
Sofia proudly presented the paints, brushes, and parchment rolls, all perfectly preserved in a locked storeroom whose walls were carved with runes meant to preserve the materials' quality.
"If this is going to be the new base of operations, we'll need to organize things better from now on, so…"
The girl painted a white, floating castle above a black circle at the center. After that, she drew oceanic walls to define the crater's boundary.
"This is the beginning of Gigi and Sofi's exploration map!"
Giovanni let out a small laugh, trying to assess exactly where the manor should be drawn.
"And the others? Aren't they going to participate too?" he questioned.
Sofia scratched her cheek.
"The name would get way too long. I can put their contributions right below, in the fineprint," she concluded, pouting.
"Whatever you say… and I think our manor should be here." He pointed east of the castle, very close to the natural cliff. After that, he left the rest of the work in the artist's hands.
Just above the drawing, she wrote "Tidelord Manor," using the nomenclature the spell had provided them.
While the boy seemed distracted, admiring the work, Sofia moved close again, sniffing him to settle a doubt she had had since earlier.
"Giovanni, why do you smell like a woman?" The boy's expression shattered, hovering between embarrassment and confusion. Sofia was certain it was the same scent present in the bathing hall!
Under her suspicious and curious gaze, he shouted, lost.
"What are you talking about?!"
Sofia sniffed him again, frowning.
"Weird. Definitely not perfume!"
That somehow made it worse.
Chaotic voices echoed through the corridors as an argument dragged on in one of the rooms.
For the first time in many years, the mansion seemed to have regained a fragment of the emotions it once carried.
The most important step, finally taken.