Chapter 62 Some Interesting Questions.

  Klein pulled a wooden folding chair of thin air and sat on it as his way of getting comfortable for another thoughtful session of question and answer. “As for why I looked so strained while Gil was fighting, there is both a short and a long answer. Which would you prefer?” Klein questioned his young interlocutor.

  “As much as I would love to dive back into what we were doing before this mission, I don’t see that happening.” Isaac replied. “So my curiosity trumps all else in this situation and I would like the long answer.”

  Klein nodded as he continued to steal glances at Gilgamesh while the dragon searched for the heart of the Tarasque. “Go- Gil!” Klein cut himself off. “It’s that.” He spoke through a small portal that appeared next to him and next to the dragon in question.

  Gilgamesh tossed the strange tube of muscle that was still attempting to squeeze blood through itself. “What of the rest?” The Guild Leader questioned the demigod.

  “Please refrain from eating the rest. We both know how important potions are to adventurers and Gia’s Embrace potions are some of the most valuable of all time.” Klein reminded his friend. “The armor plates make excellent shields as well and I’m sure that the alchemists can use just about every single part of a Tarasque corpse. At the very least, they can make better use of it than your stomach.”

  Gilgamesh rolled his massive reptilian eyes and then slowly extricated himself from the corpse crater. He began casually walking over to join the quartet but each of his steps took him a dozen feet just from his size alone. He moved with such perfect predatory grace that he made almost no sound and there were no vibrations to be felt through the ground despite his size and weight.

  “Where were we, ah, yes. The long explanation of why Gil fighting takes so much out of me.” Klein brought himself back on target. “It all comes down to the Veil. Think of a ball formed out of a bunch of solid plates that are all held in place by stretchy string. The string in this example is my mana and the plates are essentially what I used to stop Gil’s explosive impact from taking all four of us out. Are you following so far?”

  Isaac nodded. “Well enough, yes.” He replied. “So your expenditure of mana on maintaining the Veil increases the pull or tenacity of the strings proportionally, I take it.”

  Klein smiled. “Just so, my young friend.” He praised Isaac. “The plates are formed in such a way that outwards forces just press them more firmly together, unless the forces are coming in from multiple different directions at once and in the correct orientation. This allows the Veil to do most of the heavy lifting by itself, with just a basic expenditure of mana on my part to keep it all in place. The problems arise when there are things trying to leave. You see, because of the way that the Veil was formed, leaving actually isn’t that much harder than it was before. I had to do it in such a manner or else every dead person would turn into a ghost or the like.”

  “Because their souls would be unable to pass on.” Isaac surmised.

  Klein gave Isaac another smile and nodded. “Precisely.” He said and continued: “This means that when someone like myself, Ori, Gil, or any of the others that I am holding onto, use too much of their power at once, the natural law that attempts to bring their very real and very divine levels of power into the Realm of the Divine attempts to rip them completely from Primatia, I have to try and force the plates to stay in place, all of them, across all of the underlying fabric of our plane of existence, at the same time. If I slip up, then I will lose not only a friend to the other side, but also a powerful asset that we will need come the next Dragon Surge.”

  “So how much of your power can you actually bring to bear at once? Considering that you’ll have to keep yourself from slipping through the cracks as well.” Isaac wondered.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Only about twenty percent of it.” Klein very easily and honestly replied. “Thankfully, I have everything set up in a way that even if I were to fall unconscious, like from dying for instance, the Veil will continue to burn my power to maintain itself. As I mentioned before, I have been smited before, on multiple occasions, just not by anyone capable of hitting me in my own divine domain. The true divinities could do that, but thankfully none of them have bothered to do so. If that happened, well, it would not be my problem anymore but there would be a very different world come the next sunrise.”

  “From a scale of Karthen Eidi’Diasta to Gilgamesh, how much is twenty percent of your power?” Isaac continued fishing for the Demigod of Space’s available power level.

  “Hmmm.” Klein looked deep in thought and rubbed his chin. It didn’t surprise Isaac that Klein knew who Karthen was in the least. “Around Catastrophe if she could only use space magic and got a bit creative with it.” Isaac leaned back slightly. THAT was twenty percent of Space’s power. That was utterly insane on every level. “You look surprised.”

  “I am.” Isaac replied honestly. “That is a bit more than I had expected, even after seeing how casually you have been using portals and teleportation.”

  Klein hummed again in thought. “You might not be aware of this, because of your color coded nature, but space magic and mana are very difficult to use offensively. The amount of power it takes to forcefully affect someone else with space magic is incredible as it both lacks subtlety, meaning it is easily contested, and was never meant for such uses. It is like trying to bail out a boat with a shot glass. If there were a hundred of me working in tandem, sure, we could bail out a noticeable amount of water, but just one of me? Just one mana? Not a chance. Even space adjacent spells are horrible for dealing damage directly. Telekinesis is one such example. That is a mid level spell that can just be shrugged off by anyone of sufficient weight, magical or otherwise, and that is only around half spatial magic.” He lectured Isaac on a topic that Isaac would never be able to make proper use of.

  “So it’s like me trying to fight a dark creature, but all the time.” Isaac said more to himself than to Klein.

  “Precisely.” Klein agreed. “The power is there, it just takes such an unreasonable amount that the effectiveness is called into question. For me, I could cut the top off of a mountain, split the clouds in two, and even send almost any spell or attack directly back into the attacker, but I have to use almost all of my available power if I want to do something like cut a person in half, and even then, they cannot be any stronger than a level twenty non-paladin, cleric, or monk. Those three are sufficiently naturally resistant to hostile effects that it might only work if I catch them unaware.”

  Isaac nodded in understanding. “Thanks for being so forthcoming.” He really did appreciate the demigod spilling his capabilities like that. And it put the feelings that he had regarding Space more into perspective. It wasn’t that Space couldn’t just erase him from existence, it was just that it wasn’t worth it. Isaac actually guessed that if they were to spar, that Isaac had a decent chance of winning. If they fought for real, and Klein was willing to ascend in order to kill him, then Isaac knew without a shadow of doubt that he would be completely and utterly screwed. But it did help Klein’s title of ‘First Among Equals’ feel more earned than forced upon any of the other demigods.

  “Of course.” Klein replied with a nod. “Think of it as my repayment for the information you gave us earlier today.”

  “Speaking of information, the lich that we killed seemed to have known the Guild Leader specifically and was on a dragon hunt, as insane as that sounds now that I’ve seen him in action.” Isaac informed both Klein and Gilgamesh who had just decided to stand guard over them. It almost looked like Gilgamesh wasn’t entirely certain that another Tarasque wasn’t about to show up. Especially considering that he was still in his true dragon form.

  Speaking of Gilgamesh’s true dragon form, his horns swept around behind the back of his head and then back forwards again until they formed a broken halo with the missing section starting just above both of his eyes. Just like the rest of the majestic creature, they looked like they were made out of real gold. “Who was it?’ Gilgamesh finally joined their conversation.

  “King Malcolm Millen, of Millenia.” Lenna answered. “He really seemed to have it out for you.”

  Gilgamesh finally paused and turned to look inquisitive at Lenna. “The half-elven king of misfits?” Gilgamesh questioned.

  Isaac shrugged. “No idea about that part, but he sure wanted to fight you.”

  Gilgamesh’s sigh rustled clothes and hair within a few dozen feet from him and bathed everything in the scent of ash, sulfur, and wet soil which must’ve been what the Tarasque’s blood smelled like. “I told them to come to the top of the mountain if they wanted my protection.” Gilgamesh explained. “I cannot be in more than one place at a time. It is their own fault for not coming to me.”

  “Fair enough, I guess.” Isaac agreed.

  “Are there any more questions?” Klein asked Isaac.

  “No more about you, for now.” Isaac told the Demigod of Space. “I do have a few about myself though. Do I actually have the power of a black dragon? Is it different somehow? Is there anyone else who I can go to for advice on increasing my own power down this path that was laid out for me?”

  Klein smiled. “Now those are some interesting questions.”