Summoning the runes of the newly obtained memory, he looked at them intently.
He knew it wouldn't be useful right now, but he wished to know which kind of healing memory could be potent enough to heal such grave injuries that they had.
An entire arm being regenerated by it is an insane feat.
Memory Name: [Triad of Vitalis].
Memory Rank: Transcendent.
Memory Tier: 3
Memory Type: Charm.
Memory Description: [This slender bracelet bears three luminous beads, each pulsing with the quiet rhythm of a living heart. Said to be a gift from Vitalis, the forgotten demigod of renewal, the beads hold within them the essence of pure vitality, an echo of the world's first dawn.].
Memory Enchantments: [Grace of Renewal].
Enchantment Description: "When invoked, a soft radiance unfolds from the Triad of Vitalis, weaving through the air like the first light after a storm. The wounded feel a warmth blossom within, gentle yet absolute, as torn flesh mends and fading hearts steady once more."
Beads: [0/3]
'Okay, the memory description doesn't give me much but it seems it just has one enchantment. But that enchantment is incredibly strong. It is limited in a way that it can only be used three times in its entirety, but it is still an incredible boon to me... well, as long as I can learn how to repair this.'
Caster got an urge to say "Good girl" to tracker, for easily giving in to his demands and make her feel even more 'below' him, but he held it in. It would be immature of him, plus, there was no need to. Tracker was already submissive.
He didn't need to worry about her betrayal, did he?
"Sit. I'm sure you're still pretty low on essence, yeah?"
Tracker simply nodded, seemingly unkeen on speaking up in Caster's presence.
However, Caster doesn't care about that. He started questioning her in a straight forward manner.
"Let us talk for a bit, in that case. Tell me about this mission of yours. In detail. If I catch something not make sense, then see what happens."
Tracker hesitated to speak for a bit.
'She still has the gall to be loyal to Valor?'
But without wasting too much time she starter speaking.
"W-Well... we got orders from higher up, one of the saints that we have an assassination mission. We simply accepted it since we were the closest to the Chained Isles. They judged us powerful enough to take out a newly awakened like you."
Caster glared at her.
"I said to tell me in detail. You did not mention which saint issued that order to you."
Tracker froze up for a second, her hands shaking.
However, she willed herself to focus and spoke up again.
"M-My apologies. The saint who requested of that were esteemed Saint Jest. They said to execute this in secrecy, since it is easy to hide the tracks on Chained Isles... as long as we sink an entire island."
'That doesn't make sense though...'
"And how would you sink an island?"
Tracker spoke up once more, this time her voice was calmer.
"We were told to get help from Saint Cormac for that..."
There's a lot of things that make little sense here.
First, Caster had too much of a public influence simply due to going viral as a holder of a divine aspect, and due to his heroic deeds on the god forsaken shore.
Attempting to assassinate him was too risky. As all the suspicious would fall on the great clan Valor.
Another thing was that, they knew that Caster was a divine aspect holder, and they knew that Caster was a titan.
Yet they took the risk of sending only five masters?
Did they not learn from Mordret?
'Did they underestimate me since it was only very recently that I became an awakened? That's stupid. There's no way they'd be that complacent. They even knew that I had a transcendent echo!'
None of this made any sense.
'Unless they never wanted to kill me in the first place.'
They were told to use Saint Cormac's help for forging the proof, but not to take his help to kill Caster? If they're going to take his help anyways, isn't it better to do that from the start? Not taking a risk at all?
But they didn't.
From the point of view of the cohort of the masters, it was likely that they treated this as a challenge, or proof of their loyalty, and probably thought that they weren't supposed to take the help of Saint Cormac unless they needed to.
'But from the perspective of the higher ups, this could simply be a way to judge my strength. Since they sent just enough masters for me to be able to kill, they had a rough idea of my combat skill already. Now they know about it completely.'
How pathetic.
These people from clan Valor don't have any valor.
They used this cohort for something as simple as judging Caster.
They lost the fight, yet fulfilled their purpose.
Their deaths gave them an idea about how strong Caster is.
'How frustrating... and how overkill.'
Was it really worth losing five masters, likely one of the stronger ones, just to judge Caster's strength?
He continued to speculate things, and then asked something to tracker.
"Does Saint Cormac know about your mission?"
Tracker thought for a few moments before replying.
"He should be, but I don't know. We didn't inform him, we were just told to get Saint Cormac's help."
'This means that there's a chance that he doesn't even know. But I doubt they'd be so complacent with this, right? According to my deductions, they simply wanted to find out how many masters I could kill before I get killed, or escape. They know of my super speed, so they likely trust my ability to escape. Which means that they likely wouldn't bring Cormac into this, not this early at least. But him not even knowing about this situation would either be complacency, or just pure inability to reach Cormac fast enough, which is another form of complacency.'
Caster's mind was running at massive speeds, trying to analyse all the information he had on him.
'Since they don't really care whether I live or die, there's a chance that they didn't inform Cormac, which would make things easier for me. Because, what they don't know is that I am planning to raid the Night Temple...'
Caster looked up and sighed, all he could see was the ceiling. His face looked worrisome.
'I hope that is the case.'
Tracker looked at that quietly, simply waiting for Caster to speak up, and if need be, give him what he's asking for. She had no reason to risk her life for small things like that anyways.
Caster however, kept thinking.
'They don't know that I am trying to basically destroy the entire Night Temple, but if they find out, they will get justification to kill me. Just me unleashing Mordret would give them all the justification they need, and no one could really refute that for me.'
But why is Caster even trying to go to the Night Temple and destroy it... and even try to unleash Mordret?
The answer to that is pretty straight forward. Mordret is simply a variable too dangerous to leave be. He has to power to dictate a lot of the future plots if freed.
So despite the dangers right now, Caster wants to get rid of him right now. Because if he gets stronger... it would be borderline impossible to kill him. Especially due to his aspect making him the hardest awakened to kill in existence.
Because of that, even right now, it is impossible to kill him, if not for one thing.
Grazing.
Caster suspects that as long as he lures and traps Mordret inside his soul with the help of the fourth wall and grazes him, Mordret will have no place to escape to, and will likely die.
It would be a risk, big risk though. If things were any different, he would have waited it out and went for Mordret only after getting much stronger.
However... he needs to do this now.
Because if he's able to get a hold of Mordret's abilities after grazing him, it would give him a method to bypass his fragmented aspect.
Maybe due to the soul infusion of Keiron and Caster something went wrong, but the aspect evolution was interrupted and didn't ensue properly after Keiron's first nightmare, since his aspect effectively remained the same, and he didn't even get the second aspect. despite the fact that he got his two soul seas merged, the Caster part of the soul sea, that was effectively empty but now housed a graze and the Keiron part of the soul sea, that contained the library.
Because of that, his grazing ability has a major flaw. It only works inside soul seas but he doesn't even have the ability to enter a soul sea. He was likely supposed to get something like that in his evolved dormant ability, but he didn't get anything like that.
Which effectively soft locked him.
If not for the very convinient and specific flaw that Laylah had, he would have never been able to graze her.
If he gets Mordret's ability, he'd be able to enter the soul sea of others at will, allowing him to be freely able to use his awakened ability.
But how is he even going to graze Mordret?
With his fight against the Mirror Beast, the mirror beast knows everything about Caster's aspect, so if he frees Mordret, he would know everything about Caster's aspect. Making him especially careful about Caster's grazing ability.
So manipulating Mordret would essentially be out of question.
The only feasable tactic Caster has in mind is making the situation so bad for him that he has no choice but to enter Caster's soul sea and try to over take his body.
Unfortunately, this will be really hard to achieve.
'But what other choice do I have...'
Caster has been planning the details for the Night Temple for a while, he is confident that he at least has some chance at victory.
Now, all he needs to do is work on it.
There's even more dangers at the Night Temple though.
The dozens of lost and two masters are one thing, but the Saint Cormac is just another breed.
Nothing Caster does will make him be able to oppose the saint. And there's at least one time, where he'll have to go against the saint. Whether it's when he enters the Night Temple, or when he has to exit the Night Temple.
In the worst case scenario... both times.
The difficulty of what he wants to achieve is astronomical this time.
The last time he achieved something stupendous, he was able to prepare for it, with the help of the Book of Books.
But this time, no matter what he does, he can't get rid of the saint with pure power. But he can't let the saint remain alive either. It would change the future too much. Way too much.
He needs to scheme and finesse the saint out of the game, for at least one time. As for killing him... he'd have to first at least survive the saint protecting the Night Temple.
The goal of killing him on the other hand though... was borderline dread inducing.
But he had confidence that he will not fail.
Why? Well, because he has something in mind.
Turning the wall of impossible communications back on, he contacted Cassie.
[Hey, I want you to do something for me.]
*
*
*
After finishing the talks with Cassie he looked back at Tracker. To Tracker's dismay, he had more things to talk about.
***
I hope this chapter cleared up more about Caster's aspect thingy, and also makes the plot clearer.
Personally, I loved writing this chapter. I really liked making Caster come to all those different conclusions. Some of them, correct, some of them not.
Also, I'm excited to write this volume because I have some really interesting scenarios in mind for later. This volume might end up better than the last one. It will also be longer than the last volume, likely. Volume 1 was 70.6k words with 47 chapters. Volume 2 is already about 40k words with 18 chapters.
Also, is making notes like this at the end or start of the chapters okay?