For the first time in a few months, all of Gehrman's brains coalesced into one again. Ever since he had decided to be more efficient about things, he had not had any real rest. So for this one moment, he allowed himself to take a breath.
Then he walked into the Jade Palace to see his wife.
They had seen each other often over the course of the conquest of the Burned Forest, but they hadn't yet had time to do a proper date like they used to.
Even if they had finally tied the knot, it was important to still enjoy such quality time with a romantic partner…at least, that was what Gehrman had gathered from the books he read. He was still incredibly inexperienced, after all.
Still, Seishan seemed to appreciate the idea, so he suspected there was truth in what the books taught.
They met in her room. She looked utterly ravishing, like always. Gehrman had cleaned up himself a bit too. The two sort of awkwardly stared at each other for a few moments. It was funny that despite all this time having passed, they could still be impressed by each other's appearance.
Gehrman was the first to snap out of it.
"So, do you have any place in particular you want to go?"
"I do, actually. There is a spot in the Waking World, if you don't mind us going there."
Her voice was clear and sweet, no different than it was usually. However, Gehrman suspected that there was something amiss. Still, he did not deign to pry.
"Of course."
Gehrman offered her an elbow, which she took with a smile. The both of them could transport to their tethers with ease, but in order to arrive together, Gehrman had to take the lead. After all, despite being one of the strongest Saints in history, Seishhan could not move a soul such as Gehrman between realms.
They arrived in a rather strange place. A nook had been carved out within a massive crater. Stepping out of it, Gehrman looked up at the night sky, only to barely see the glimmer of a few sparse stars.
They were currently in South America. Sunny and Mordret had already torn through this area, and they already knew about his return, so there was no worry about him being found out.
"How much longer do you think you can keep this up?" Seishan asked, catching Gehrman off guard.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean pretending to be dead. The war is inevitable, and we are in a good position now. Is there any reason why you delay?"
Gehrman frowned a bit at the question. It was a bit uncharacteristic of Seishan to push him on stuff like this. Of course, he recognized she had every right to do so. It was just odd since she usually never brought up the actions he took unless she wanted to laugh at the absurdity of them.
This was no joke though, it was serious.
"I still need to reform my Titan Core, it should be only 2 weeks until then. Still, why are you in a hurry to get to mass slaughter?"
"I'm not," she said, her voice exasperated. "I just…I want this to be over with."
Gehrman blinked. It was rare for Seishan to show any weakness. In fact, he struggled to think of a time he had seen her deflate like this. He walked over to her, stood close and took her hand in his.
He didn't hold it tightly, instead, he reverently held her hand as one would a piece of art.
"I do too."
Gehrman allowed himself to be weak for a moment. Leaning forward, he let his body press against hers. He was trying to be cute about it, but it just so happened that when their torsos met, it was less innocent than he had pictured. There was a very important difference in their chests after all. Embarrassed, he moved to pull away, but Seishan wrapped an arm around his waist and held him close.
He could feel her heart beat.
Gehrman let out a near silent chuckle.
"When we are done, let's do this more often."
"The date or the hugging?"
"Both. Maybe more as well."
Gehrman's cheeks burned as he said those words. He hadn't really meant them to sound so forward, but her heart skipped a beat, so at least he wasn't grossing her out.
"Aren't you a smooth talker?" Seisahn laughed as well, but it died down quickly, going hollow.
It was hard to remain chipper, to maintain a mood like this, when they both knew unprecedented tragedy was around the corner.
They had been leaning on each other for a while now, but neither seemed willing to part. In the end, they just stayed there in silence.
"My mother is doing worse. I think the strain of puppetering so many high quality corpses is doing more damage to her than we expected. Usually when we do this, taking over a Citadel, she collects Fallen, Corrupted, and maybe a few Great creatures. In the Burned Forest though, there are far more Great abominations than anywhere else she's conquered."
"Hence you wanting to get this over with, so she doesn't have to spread herself so thin all the time."
Seishan hummed in response.
Gehrman had to keep himself from clenching his jaw. This was indeed very tough for Seishan, but it was arguably not that much better for Gehrman. He knew something that she did not, after all. This was not to be a war in which one Sovereign became ruler of humanity after killing the other.
The strongest Saints in history would also make a move for the throne. Though Sunny was rather despondent when they first met, he appeared to be getting into proper form. As an exceedingly deadly and adaptable foe, Gehrman suspected that Sunny might be able to put up a similar performance to him in regards to fighting the King of Swords.
Nephis was less abstract, instead she boasted ridiculous healing and the highest attack potency out of all of them.
Then there was Mordret, the wild card.
If Nephis and Sunny were willing, they could likely get him on their side as well. Mordret didn't have an iron clad allegiance to Song. He only chose them because they were his only real option in fighting against his family. If he was given the opportunity to take a shot at his father, Gehrman imagined he could likely put up a good fight.
All of them working together to fight a single Sovereign was actually a fair fight. In fact, he suspected the Saints may very well be able to win without a single loss so long as they fought right.
Though, if they were only fighting one Sovereign, that meant that the other had fallen and their Domain had been consumed. In that case, the strength of either Song or Anvil would effectively double, making it much less of a fair fight.
…but what if Gehrman joined them as well?
That was the thought that had been torturing him these past few months. What kind of action he ought to take in these divisive times. Even after all that contemplation, even after gathering so much strength, he still wasn't 100% sure what he would do when the time came to make the call.
He had prepared for either option though. As it so happened, the fact that he did so would become relevant far sooner than he could have predicted.
…
In the end, Gehrman and Seishan didn't go to dinner. They just sat in that crater, talked, and laid next to each other. Somehow, that felt more romantic anyway. They were all alone with no one around for dozens of kilometers, like they had the world to themselves.
It was obvious now that the reason Seishan had suggested a place in the Waking World was not for the food, but to get some privacy from her mother. The fact that Sesiahn was doing such a thing made Gehrman even more on edge.
The next day, Gehrman split his brains again and continued on the grind.
He had absorbed a measly 200 points of Arcane these past few months, which didn't put him anywhere near the goal of 10,000. At this current pace it would take several years. However, he was getting more and more Blood Gems.
It was oddly a bit similar to the Components that Oskar used. Of course, the Blood Gems were much more particular. A Trick Weapon was needed in order for it to take hold, and the results of imbuing a weapon with one of them was still an uncertain science.
Johann had gathered enough data on Blood Gems to come up with a system that worked splendidly on the night of the Hunt.
There were a few different "shapes" of Blood Gem. Radial, Triangle, Waning, Circle, and the extremely rare "Droplet". Any given Trick Weapon could only hold the powers granted by a set of a few shapes. For example, the Saw Cleaver that was Johann's first weapon…was that his first weapon? For some reason that was a bit unclear.
In any case, the Saw Cleaver could hold two Radial Blood Gems and one Waning Blood Gem. So three Radial's could not be applied to the Saw Cleaver. The only exception to this rule was the "Droplet" Gems, which Johann only ever came across a scarce few times. Unlike the other types which appeared to be naturally occurring (though odd and rare), the Droplets formed only under the most intense of emotions and strange circumstances.
He wasn't sure the exact thing that made them appear, but at the moment he didn't have any Blood Gems of the Droplet variety, so it didn't matter.
The shape of the Gems did matter though, as the rule of "shape sets" that restrained the number and type of Blood Gems a weapon could be imbued with was retained when manifesting with the [Walking Workshop] Ability.
Fortunately, the pattern was the same as it had been in the Hunters Dream. So the slots for the [Burial Blade] were also two Radial and one Waning as it had been before…it was odd that the pattern for the scythe was the same as the Saw Cleaver, but there was a limit to the number of unique sets when there were so few Shapes, so it likely meant nothing.
In any case, that was where the similarities ended.
In the Hunters Dream there was a secondary characteristic of each Blood Gem that he had dubbed the "Effects". The Shapes were largely unimportant, but they did give a clue on what type of Effect would manifest within the Gem.
There had been Tempering, which increased the weapon's raw physical damage. Fire, Bolt, and Arcane which added the respective element to the weapon. Nourishing amplified all damage, not just physical. Heavy and Sharp changed the weapon to become more suited for strength or dexterity respectively. Beasthunter and Kinhunter increased a weapon's effectiveness against a given enemy type. Pulsing offered regenerative properties. Finally the Fool and Poorman Blood Gems increased all damage output by a larger amount when one was near death.
There were also Cursed Blood Gems. They worked just as advertised, though the power they offered were usually greater than the alternative, it also came with a curse that ranged from being manageable to downright impossible to wield.
Needless to say that there were quite a few Effects that could be leveraged to make a Trick Weapon several times more deadly. However, that had been Yharnam, and in the Dream Realm, such Enchantments were not nearly as game-changing.
Fortunately, [Walking Workshop] did not seem to be inclined to follow the old Effects without a few tweaks. So far Gehrman had a number of Blood Gems. The vast majority were simple, yet effective.
The ability to see what Enchantments the Blood Gem could provide appeared to be just another manifestation of his Aspect, and was not at all difficult.
Most Tempering Blood Gems kept in line with increasing physical capabilities. For example, a sword would gain an enchantment that increased its sharpness and armor would gain durability.
These basic Enchantments were not all that special on their own, but the fact that Gehrman could stack three of them on one Memory caused a noticeable boost in quality.
That being said, there were also several other Enchantments. Both "bolt" and fire from Yharnam could be added as active Enchantments to weapons. Arcane, unfortunately, did not manifest the same way. If it did, Gehrman suspected he might have an infinite supply of Arcane to absorb.
Instead, the Enchantments offered by those types of Blood Gems were more esoteric. At the moment, he only had two to go off of. The first granted an Enchantment called [Ethereal]. When applied, one could shift the state of matter of their weapon from physical to…well he wasn't quite sure what it turned into. The ghostly light that took hold of the weapon was incorporeal, but it also could store kinetic energy, allowing heat and power to run through one's opponent.
Unless one wielded the Will extremely carefully, it was essentially undodgeable.
That was why he applied it to the [Burial Blade].
His go-to weapon was always potent, but Anvil had made a good point a while back. A weapon that does Soul Damage but needs to make physical contact was a bit contradictory. After all, if one managed to make physical contact in the first place, what was the need of Soul Damage?
The other Blood Gem he had not yet decided on what to add it to. It was a unique Enchantment that appeared specialized to Yharnam. [Kin] appeared to overwrite the nature of whatever it was applied to, turning it into something "cosmic". What that meant exactly was unclear.
Gehrman could tell that it would offer a great increase in power, but there was also undeniably more than that.
"Kin" indicated Kin of the Cosmos, after all. Those who were touched by the Great Ones (or rather, the Void) and were able to maintain physical form somewhat. They were always grotesque and eerie. Technically, they were also Void Creatures, just on a much, much weaker scale. If the Kin ever wandered out of the Dream they were in, they would almost certainly be instantly anhilated.
Still, the fact that they had a connection with the Void was enough to give Gehrman pause.
Besides, he had other, more important Blood Gems. One of the most common – thankfully – was one called [Memory]. As it sounded, this Waning Blood Gem could turn anything he created in his Workshop into a Memory.
Unlike Sunny's Sorcery, the burden of this was placed on Gehrman himself, with an enormous amount of Essence being drained instead of a Soul Shard being implanted into it.
This meant that the highest Rank Memory Gehrman could create was Transcendent. Of course, if he had enough Blood Rock's, he could increase their Rank manually.
Right now, he had three laying around, waiting to be used when he felt it was necessary. Due to the nature of his Aspect, he felt that it would be most efficient if he upgraded Memories of a high Tier. For Sunny, it would be 7 times as hard to do so, but for Gehrman, it was the same cost.
In any case, that didn't matter, he only needed to make Transcendent Memories anyway.
At the moment, he had 12 of them in his Workshop, each and every one of them was almost identical.
[Flame Stake Driver], [Raw Stake Driver], [Bolt Stake Driver] and on they went. As it so happened, if Gehrman focused on the name while adding the [Memory] Blood Gem, the weapon would take on that title.
This was great news since each had a unique, terrible purpose. So it was important that they each be properly labeled. If they were not given to the correct people, the Saints they were meant to kill may make it out alive.