Double-Blind: A Modern LITRPG

Chapter 299

Blood burbled from her mouth, leaking down the side of her face as a sea of crimson pooled around the wound of her ruined throat. The arterial blood faded away with the memory, leaving only the pale, lifeless expression of a person, small and motionless beneath a wrinkled white blanket that came up to her chest, an oxygen mask over her face.

Beneath it, Jinny's eyes stared straight up, cold and lifeless as the day we'd lost her.

I put a hand on the table for stability, compensating for the sudden weakness in my knees. "This is why you asked for pictures. So... the new ability..."

"We theorized before that, with her body being instanced, there was a good chance we'd need a vessel." Vernon nodded. "That's looking to be true. This is, for all intents and purposes, a functioning body." He pointed to the IV and the heart rate monitor. "Cycling fluids, heart beating on its own. Can't see it, but the neurons are firing." He waved a cautious hand, warding off the obvious question before I could ask it. "The body can't breathe on its own. Brain activity isn't much higher than a person who would be considered clinically dead."

"How did you even pull this off?" It was almost impossible to keep up. I couldn't stop looking at her.

"Simulacrum allows me to create a living form, but it's horrifically unintuitive. The rest was a result of practicing keeping things alive that shouldn't be, not to mention countless hours of bone and flesh sculpting." Vernon hesitated. "Drew from the references I had, tried to stay as faithful as I could, but deviations are inevitable. If it works... she'll probably experience a degree of dysphoria regardless of accuracy—after all, no matter what it looks like, this isn't her body. But she'll be alive."

"If the system doesn't pull a bait and switch and give you something else," I recalled, doing whatever I could to manage expectations.

"Yes." Vernon frowned. "There's also an issue of cost. My recent abilities have been ramping up in requirements, demanding escalating tiers of User cores."

"Anything legendary?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"I do." I fumbled with my inventory. "Want it now, or later?"

"Later." Vernon answered, a little too quickly. When I gave him a questioning look, he breathed out a long sigh. "It's nothing too alarming, but worrisome nonetheless. I've taken a number of necromancer feats centered around efficiency. Reduction of downtime. Nothing too sinister on the surface..."

"...But?" I asked.

"There's been side-effects. Some can be explained away by stress and sleep-deprivation, others, not so much. The most prominent occurrence being somnambulism."

I shrugged. "A lot of people sleep walk."

He pulled at the smock at his throat uneasily. "Less, I suspect, navigate to their operation rooms and begin working with sharp implements in a subconscious state, utilizing precious resources on questionable endeavors."

My eyebrows rose. "Yeah, okay, point taken. I assume you've established precautions?"

"Oh yes." Vernon chuckled. "One of the unexpected benefits of being a necromancer is that they, apparently, spend a great deal of time and energy securing their lair. Didn't have much use for security before, but I've since gained an interest. The security doors containing this room and a few others are on a daily rotating cypher. The solution is sent every day, but it's pre-scrambled in an odd, esoteric way that requires working it out on paper, referencing a key."

I squinted. "I get it, infinitely harder to work through a puzzle if you're half-asleep, but why would a necromancer even want that in the first place?"

Vernon laughed again. "To ward off psychics from ripping it straight from their minds, apparently. Ridiculous paranoia if you ask me."

"Sure." I agreed carefully.

"Anyway, for this, it works to my purposes." Vernon shrugged. "The sleep-walking is probably just stress. But you can understand why I want you to keep the core."

"I'll keep it safe." I patted my thigh. "What other side-effects have you been experiencing?"

Vernon smiled thinly, and shook his head. "Nothing really. Not tangible, anyway. It's more..." his face fell, dejected. "It doesn't matter. Nothing that will affect our work. But the quicker we finish this, the better."

So you can talk to Kinsley and punch your ticket. Azure?

"Woah." Azure whispered into my mind. "The suicidal ideation is on full display. Same motivation as usual, despair, guilt, an endless outpouring of guilt—but when it comes to whatever he's hinting at, he's completely closed off. Actively not thinking about whatever "it" is, even though you're talking about it indirectly. That's incredibly difficult. Whatever it is, he buried it deep."

"Repression?"

"Definitely."

"Could you crack it?"

"A necromancer's lair is similar to a realm of flauros, but it isn't quite the same. In a realm, I could, given time. Here? Probably not..." There was a pause, pregnant as they come. "Unless you're willing to use mindspi–”

“No.”

Leaving things as they were, on a question mark, made me profoundly uncomfortable. But unstable as he was, I didn't want to risk pushing him. And switching to was likely to push him more than I could reasonably justify.

As I made up my mind, Vernon slowly circled the table, clinically surveying his work. When he spoke, his voice was distant, curious. "It's such a strange thing. This vessel has musculature, organs, and a mind. Its reflexes function. Even now, her mind sends signals directing her lungs to breathe, her heart to beat. There's a part of me that wouldn't be surprised at all if she just woke up, stretched out her arms, and walked away."

Jinny's head turned towards me at a sharp angle as she smiled through bloody teeth.

"You'll bring me back. Won't you, Matt? It's the only way to keep your promise."

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I forced my eyes shut, holding them closed for several seconds. When I opened them again, Jinny was back to the way she was, the hallucination banished. Vernon, still surveying his work, hadn't noticed. "But she can't."

Vernon shook his head. "It will never not be vexing, that after thousands of years of argument and discourse the philosophers were right. Even if you have all the pieces to make a person, and assemble those pieces perfectly, there's still something missing. Something no science or magic can replicate. Bastards."

The spark.

"Any resources we should be on the lookout for, anything else you need for prep? Anything at all?" I asked casually, trying to cover my discomfort and move on.

Vernon didn't answer right away. Rather, he seemed to be mulling over something important, working up the nerve to ask. "Would you like to speak to her?"

What?

"What?" I asked sharply, sure I hadn't heard him correctly.

"What?" Azure repeated, signaling that, apparently, I had.

"I've been carving a rather direct path up the necromancer tree, only branching out when strictly necessary or advantageous. But I read each potential acquisition in detail. Some are trite, most are macabre. Others bear passing interest." For perhaps the first time, Vernon didn't sound quite as revolted as he typically did, discussing necromancy. "A few—barely more than a handful, stick, like pinions in the back of my mind."

"What the fuck are you talking about, Vernon?" I asked, trying to stay calm.

He winced a little. "There were other options adjacent to simulacrum that, while not as directly practical, might still hold value for us." The discomfort faded as he argued his point. "It's a bit expensive, yes, but barely a drop in the bucket compared to the points I've saved."

"How." I said flatly.

The doctor chewed his lip, then swiped at his UI, pulling something up before he made a flicking gesture towards me.

I worked my jaw for a moment, mouth suddenly dry. "How... uh... much would it cost?"

"Roughly a third of what I've set aside." Vernon's answer was quick enough that he must have been considering this for some time. "I've never made a body for a person before. Only monsters. Could be worth acquiring just to consult the subject on her vessel, better chance of a smoother transition that way."

"And the reason you've waited until now to mention it?"

With a sigh of frustration, he inclined his head for me to follow him.

I gave Jinny's potential body one last look, some strange, irrational part of me still convinced she might suddenly stir, and patted the outline of her hand through the sheet that covered it.

Won't be much longer.

The metal containment doors slid shut as I left, a series of heavy-duty thunks and clicks echoed behind as I followed Vernon up to a series of smaller glass panes and punched a button. The glass grew translucent revealing a small chamber within that resembled a lizard terrarium in both size and presentation, dirt, moss, and bits of dry wood shaping a faux forest floor, green leaves and ivy above forming an uneven canopy. Tiny humanoid figures contained within emanated a soft silver glow as they darted around, short stints of flight taking them to perches at various elevations, leaving trails of sparks that blinked and faded like fireflies.

As if actively aware of the observation, several of the creatures landed in front of the glass, pawing at it with tiny hands. Up close, they looked like the glowing silhouettes of tiny impish humans, blank eyes shining with mischief as they crowded the glass, pushing and shoving to get closer to Vernon, who smiled down on them dotingly. Now that they were closer, it was distinguishable that the light that formed their bodies wasn't perfectly continuous. All of them were bisected by asymmetrical dark lines. Lines that almost resembled sutures.

"Dinner time, children." Vernon announced, withdrawing an ordinary glass Tupperware filled with perfectly squared cubes of meat. He grabbed a fistful and opened a small compartment at the top, securing it again before pressing another button. There was a brief whirr, and a hidden hatch dumped the contents.

They moved before the cubes even hit the ground. Like sharks, the tiny figures leapt, sharp teeth flashing in the white light as they snatched the meat out of the air, gobbling cubes as large as their throats in seconds and shoving in more.

"Pixies?" I asked.

"Sprites." Vernon corrected, mouth quirking slightly. "Though the team that brought them in called them flying piranhas, which is equally accurate. These came from a pack of around twenty felled with an AOE. Most dropped cores, so they salvaged the bodies and brought them to me." He wiggled a finger at one, smiling as it paused from its meal to nip at him through the glass. "Endearing little things. Uh. The reason I'm showing you this, is because it's a rarity to receive so many of the same creatures at once, let alone ones killed identically at the exact same moment."

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It clicked. "Less variables and a larger sample size. Relatively."

"Exactly. An opportunity I intended to put to good use." Vernon wiggled his finger again, leading the ambitious sprite still trying to gnaw on him to a small cube of meat that had fallen in the corner. His smile faded. "Unfortunately, these are the lucky ones." He reached past me to another panel, and the frosted glass pane on the left became transparent.

From what I could tell, the small creatures in the second enclosure were also sprites. But these only glowed a fraction as bright as the others. Their movements were sluggish. Several were curled up on the ground, unmoving, save small stirrings of breath that indicated they were still alive. Or undead, rather.

"Will you eat for me today?" Vernon murmured quietly, repeating the same process, albeit with a much smaller volume. The internal hatch dropped open, dumping the cubes onto the terrarium detritus, where they tumbled to a stop.

None of the dimmer sprites stirred. One stood, but only to stumble away from a cube that had landed at her knees, mouth tight in a rictus of pain.

"Same diet, environment, and I assume reanimation process. But the difference is drastic. Any correlation between the behavior and the rarity of their cores?" I leaned forward, all but pressing my face against the glass. Towards the back, one of the small creatures turned to look at me, then glanced away, the tuft of light that formed a facsimile of hair covering her face.

In the reflection, Vernon shook his head. "It was the first thing I thought of, but both groups are a mix of common and uncommon cores. If they were more intelligent, the contrast could be attributed to differences in personality. I've studied and tested them in various ways, and in most, they are functionally identical—driven by instinct and a basic hierarchy of needs."

"You've had experiments fail before." I said, recalling a few particularly unpleasant visits to the lair. "Every necromancy process you've described is difficult and esoteric compared to the straight-laced arcane. This could be within the margin of error."

"As you've witnessed firsthand, failures in this field are as spectacular as they are violent. Obvious." Vernon bit his lip, wiggling his finger in front of the glass by the nearest sprite, to no response. "This is a third result, somewhere between success and failure. I've seen it before. The despondency, the—for a lack of a scientific term—brokenness. Sometimes even as an outcome of routine processes I've perfected."

Curious, I reached out to one of the smaller creatures with opening the mental connection wider than I typically would, tagging an image of a pleasant meadow with serenity and warmth as a simple greeting.

A psychic scream slammed back.

LIES. ALL LIES. THE DARKNESS NEVER ENDS. CAN'T FEEL, CAN'T SEE, IT FREEZES, GNASHES WITH TEETH OF IRON AND ICE. DON'T MOVE OR IT WILL FIND US AGAIN, RIP OFF OUR WINGS, SLITHER INTO OUR SKIN, MELT OUR INSIDES TO JELLY, QUENCH THE LIGHT. IT HURTS. IT HURTS. IT HURTS. IT—

A fortified mental barrier slammed down, severing the connection. Azure. In the aftermath of vertigo and mental static, he made a scathing remark about the danger of what I'd just done, my mind too confounded to fully grasp the words.

"Are you alright?" Vernon asked, staring at me quizzically.

"Could—" My voice caught as I tried to purge the imprint of terror. "Could some souls be more degraded than the others? If reincarnation is a factor—"

"—a categorically massive 'If,' but continue." He commented.

"Hypotheticals are all we have. We know definitively that the system reuses assets, so reincarnation—or some sort of continuation of the soul along those lines—could create an unseen variable."

"I have two theories." He lingered for a moment before pressing the button on the panel, concealing the crestfallen monsters behind a frosted pane once more. "The first, the one I like, is along those lines, though reincarnation as the vehicle of deterioration did not occur to me. A varying, hidden attribute that cannot be measured or identified through means we simply do not have access to. For perhaps selfish reasons, I'd prefer that to be the case."

"And the one you don't like?"

His eyes panned to the first enclosure. "Beneath all the ritualistic complexity and gruesome mysticism, true reanimation—the practice of reanimating with part or all of the soul intact—is crude, almost workmanlike. Putting it metaphorically, imagine the soul itself as a ball of yarn. When a living being dies, the ball of yarn disappears, embarking somewhere unseen. It doesn't always do so cleanly. It unspools, leaving behind an infinitesimal length of string. An anchor, or core." He pulled a glowing orb from his pocket and held it up to the light. "For a practice so entrenched in mortality, necromancy cares little for what lies beyond the curtain. It pays no mind to where the ball of yarn comes to rest." He closed his hand, obscuring the core and yanking it towards his chest. "Instead, its focus is finding the most efficient method of drawing the necessary material back from oblivion."

A slow, dawning horror washed over me, as I understood. "After the sprites were killed, their souls didn't necessarily go to the same place."

THE DARKNESS NEVER ENDS

"Eschatological pluralism is nothing new. Heaven and hell. Elysium and Tartarus. The House of Song, and the House of Lies. Valhalla and the phonebook of possible realms the vikings had." Vernon snorted. "The concept of posthumous stratification in the afterlife has been around for nearly as long as humans themselves."

I nodded slowly. He was right, of course. But it was a little different seeing potential evidence for something that, previously, had to be taken entirely on faith. Colder.

"Again, it's just a theory. And not a particularly good one, at that." Vernon insisted, still clearly shaken. "None of the monsters capable of intelligent thought I've reanimated recall anything but darkness. There's no way to know for sure."

"Unless," I hedged, as I replayed his uncharacteristic offer in my mind. "You could commune with a soul that remained in its resting place."

"I'll admit, it'd be nice to have confirmation." Vernon smiled thinly. "Along with having the opportunity to speak to your friend again, you'd be able to verify that she's well..." He tapped the glass, and the frolicking sprites stirred and chased after his hand. "And that resurrection wouldn't end up being a tragic extension of suffering."

For a moment, I seriously considered it. I'd blindly fought for this for so long that even the smallest breadcrumb of reassurance would mean everything.

And if, instead, you discover it was all for nothing?

There was that to consider, yes. But, perhaps more importantly, it wasn't my place. It was Nick's. From the description, could only communicate with a given core once. If Vernon's second theory was correct, and through an astronomical case of cosmic injustice the most humane thing we could do for Jinny was to leave her where she was, Nick needed to be the one to speak to her.

Because he'd never forgive me, if I took that from him.

Rightfully so.

Slowly, painfully, I shook my head. "Tempting as it is, we don't know how many points true resurrection is going to cost. Even if you've looked at the tree and worked out what it should potentially be, I wouldn't be shocked if logical progression gets thrown out the window when we're talking about something this game changing. Better to bank everything you have until we know for sure."

He held my gaze. There was something there. An ember of anger, indignation, maybe. Before I could work it out, it was gone.

Instead of arguing, Vernon sighed and rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed."

"If it turns out there's enough to get both, we absolutely should. You'll get your answer then."

He nodded, satisfied, an odd cheeriness coming over him as he rearranged several implements on his desk. "It'd be nice to have that curiosity sated beforehand. I think I'll ask Kinsley to give me a tour of her accomplishments." He grinned at me, eyes hollow as he retrieved a clipboard and held it under his arm, signaling our meeting had come to a close. "It's one thing to be told how well she's landed, another entirely to see it for myself."

Settling accounts. Again.

I resisted giving knee-jerk approval. "Just because she's wealthy and well-positioned doesn't mean she doesn't need you."

"That's exactly what it means." Vernon shrugged. "Children grow up. It's inevitable."

"There's a world of difference between getting older and growing up early because there's no alternative." I thought back to the most recent fiasco, then further, to the pavement puddle researcher's supposed attempt to flee directly out of a glass window, and Kinsley's emphatic claims that she hadn't ordered him thrown. "She's struggling."

Vernon stilled. "What do you mean?"

I hesitated, trying to find a way to convey what I wanted without fully understanding it myself. "I mean she's struggling. She bends over backward to cut deals, cooperate with others, only to see it thrown in her face. Everyone wants what she has and is looking for a way to take it from her. Kinsley, aware of the threat, eats like shit, never stops working until she passes out and wakes up for work again. Keeps taking on more and more responsibilities even though she's already drowning. But she's a survivor, so she sucks in water and keeps going."

Slowly, Vernon ran an idle hand through his hair, unknowingly leaving it askew, giving him a slightly unhinged look. "Funny." He chuckled in a way that clearly indicated he didn't find it amusing in the slightest. "When I first expressed my doubts about continuing my work after discovering my daughter was alive, I was told—informed rather plainly—that she had support. Access to everything she could possibly need, plenty of protection, and an impressive accumulation of wealth. You're saying that's not the case."

I shook my head, aware that he was repeating some of my wording verbatim. "You're not hearing me. She has money and power in spades. Her delegation could use some work, and she's cheap enough that she'd rather blackout her schedule than drain the coffers hiring an adequate amount of staff. No one's perfect."

"Then what's the problem?" Vernon asked. His voice, while deceptively calm, was undercut by the fists clenched at his side.

"No one tells her when to stop. Where the lines are." I said simply, sticking my hands in my pockets. "No one challenges her. No one she respects, anyway. She's surrounded by people with their own agendas who won't risk jeopardizing their positions by confronting her, because they have vested interests they're not willing to lose. They smile and nod along with whatever she does, and when she fucks up—rare, but it happens—they say nothing."

"I see. And you, Myrddin? Are you one of the people who nod along?"

I fixed him with a cold stare. To this point, I'd been doing my level best not to judge Vernon. On the scale of hard-left life turns he'd spun out completely, and in my experience, getting pissed off at someone who was already shit out of luck and more depressed than a Russian novelist was counter-productive. But his reaction, and general irritation at the possibility that reuniting with his daughter would require more effort than whatever short, sentimental goodbye he was envisioning?

Well, it was really pissing me off.

"Who do you think taught her how to cross those lines? It's not my place to suddenly flip the script and tell her to rein it in. Kinsley needs a touchstone, Vernon. Someone who prioritizes her well being over everything else. Her soul. Otherwise..."

She ends up like me.

Still staring at a corner, he murmured something I couldn't make out.

"What?"

"The irony of what you're asking." His teeth ground audibly, and he pounded the desk so hard it made me jump. "When any reasonable person, knowing what I've done, would say the best thing I could do for my daughter is stay the fuck away, you want me closer, playing the role of parent and moral paragon. I've harvested people. Torn apart monsters—no, living creatures capable of thought and speech, no matter how monstrous they appear—simply to study their biology and catalog potential use-cases. I've... done other things. Terrible things. Simply because I was curious."

"Capone, Escobar, Mussolini," I countered, rattling off names one after another. "All inarguably bad people who somehow found their way into being decent parents."

"Pablo Escobar's a little thin." Vernon rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, well, Capone isn't. Stayed the same person until the end, never really stopped doing heinous shit until his downfall. But he wanted more than that for his kid. Tried to show him the road not taken."

"And that's your idea of a good parent? A hypocrite?"

I shrugged. "Authentic, self-driven transformation is hard. Even if you have the motivation, it takes a level of doggedness and grit that's often impossible to sustain. So sure, it's not ideal, but sometimes being a hypocrite is the most effective role a parent can play. The next best thing."

"The next best thing." Vernon repeated. He buried his face in a hand, the portion still visible slack and haggard. "My reserves are still tapped from work earlier today. I need rest."

That was my cue to leave. I shoved my hands in my pockets and turned towards the door. "It's about to get busy, so this may be the last time we speak in person before we finally get answers and you get a much needed vacation. I'll be in a place with a lot of high-level monsters, so if I bag any rare cores I'll hold them for you. But is there anything else you need?"

"No." Vernon said, clearly wanting some space. He spoke again just as I started to walk away, eyes peering over his hands as he leaned forward in his chair. "Actually, your friend was a mage, yes?"

I nodded.

He stood and walked over to a nearby cabinet, opening the panel and revealing a row of shining, meticulous medical equipment. "If you're going to be around high-level monsters—particularly creatures with magical abilities—I need blood samples for reference. It's not strictly necessary, but if you want to ensure she's brought back exactly as she was, I may need to manually graft leylines into the vessel. Had to do it for a few of the sprites that were more damaged than the others, and with them, I at least had their original bodies to draw from."

Absorbing that, I avoided looking down at his blood-soaked sleeves. "Surprised you're not inundated with samples to study."

"Unfortunately, simple monsters are the easiest to capture. I get a lot of those, brought in muzzled and restrained. Anything higher level tends to land on my table as either a corpse or a core. The corpses are usually dead too long, blood compromised by coagulation." He rummaged around for a while before retrieving a small metal tube.

There was a button directly below a small LCD display, and two circular openings on either convex end, bottom aperture larger than the top. With practiced ease, he took a small glass vial and screwed it into the bottom.

Though it was different than others of its type, I immediately connected the resemblance. "Lancing device?"

"Essentially." Vernon nodded. "Another new acquisition. Draws more blood than a typical lancet, intended for posthumous use. The interior of the vials are coated with a compound that should halt degradation entirely for at least a week."

"Shouldn't slow me down too much. How many do you need?"

His head wobbled back and forth in thought. "Uh. Ten, perhaps. To give me the clearest picture."

Quest: Dubious Tithes

Primary Objective — Assist Vernon, Necromancer, in gathering samples for his research.

Obtain 0/10 Unique Blood Samples from High-Level monsters

Secondary Objective: Obtain additional rare cores.

Threat Level: ???

EXP GAIN: Significant

Time Limit: N/A

Reward: Increased relationship with Vernon, Necromancer.

Reward: ???

My mouth went dry, even as I mentally navigated the steps to accept it. On the surface it was simple enough. A literal fetch quest. It'd been a while since I'd received any direction from the system at all. To the point I'd begun to wonder if it was being intentionally denied. Suddenly receiving one after weeks of nothing felt significant. But what was more significant was the absence of something that had always been there.

The personal objective that warned me to keep my class a secret from other Users, present in every quest I'd received since the dome came down.

It was gone.

Somehow, I managed to form a coherent sentence. "Message when you hit the top of the tree. Won't be able to communicate much, with realm interference, but I'll try to check-in as much as I can."

Muttering something that sounded like an agreement, Vernon stretched and walked away as I departed, whistling something classical in a minor key that sounded a little like a nocturne.