Molting the Mortal Coil

With that embarrassing episode over, Sage took a few moments to compose himself before heading into an isolated training room. He stopped to stand in front of a large egg and gently ran his ghostly hand over the shell. While Hei Bai had stolen the egg from his storage chamber underground, she had not taken the one he kept on the Inner World. There were also a couple spread out among the wilderness, but those were far away and he didn’t want to risk the danger of traveling for months to retrieve one.

Before making use of the Soul Spawn technique to enter this new body, he called for Tao Ba in the most respectful manner. He left the isolated chamber and waited in an extravagantly decorated hall, having the Hoplite servants prepare a dozen different dishes to serve the pot bellied boy with. A few minutes later, the white haired boy arrived and he was happy to eat Sage’s food and drink the tea and wine he was offered. Only after a few hours of feasting did Tao Ba finally pat his stomach, satisfied.

“Oh Great One, as you can see my body was destroyed. I already have a method to get another, but just like last time I’m afraid I’ll revert to a beast state again. I will be helpless again and I hope I can count upon your kind assistance once more.”

Tao Ba gently sighed, “Unfortunately, you can not. I won’t be able to help you like that again. It might have been okay to bend the rules a bit before, but now that you've damaged your ring you’ll be watched much more closely. In fact, I’ve also come bearing some bad news.”

Sage’s eyes widened, “You can’t help me, but then what should I do to-”

Tao Ba held up a hand to cut him off, “You’ll have to figure it out on your own. I just put you somewhere with many beasts for you to eat. I’m sure you can figure it out. Because of the damage your ring suffered, your space is being reduced to a tenth of what it is now. I’ve taken the liberty of centering it around your little house and storage area. Go now and move everything else you want or you’ll lose access to it.”

Sage sat in silence for a moment, and then he felt a rage welling up within him.

Not only have those bastards kicked me out of my town, destroyed my body and killed my subordinates, they even got me in trouble with Tao Ba!

He was furious, but that anger couldn’t help him right now and Tao Ba waved him off. Sage thanked Tao Ba for his kindness and quickly flew off to condense his holdings. There was a small village of Hoplites as well as many insect ranches that he kept as a complete backup of all the beast and bugs he’d gathered through his life. Unfortunately, with his space being drastically reduced down to a single square mile, it would no longer be self sufficient. He could only sigh and send the bug ranches onto his Inner World, creating a protected area for them and the Hoplites that came after to raise them. He left only a handful of them in the Universe Ring to maintain his manor and grow crops on the small space he was left with. If he lost the ring again, he wanted to make sure those here could still survive without his interference if necessary.

Tao Ba appeared beside him once he felt that his work was done, and Sage had the premonition that the boy could see everything he was doing at any time inside the Universe Ring. Tao Ba looked around and then nodded, “Alright, are you ready?”

Sage nodded, knowing he had no choice in the matter and not wanting to annoy Tao Ba by trying to argue. It was already spectacular enough to have such a huge space at all, let alone that it could support living creatures and even put things into stasis. The fog-like borders of the space slowly receded and the large land around him was consumed. Before long, the ten mile radius of property shrunk down to about a 1 mile radius.

“Before you ask, no you can’t get it back. You are only a provisional user, which means you aren’t even allowed to earn more privileges or land. All I can say is that, you are much too weak.”

Sage held in his desire to curse at his situation, and could only do some more butt-kissing until Tao Ba took his leave. That boy was extremely powerful and the source of much help over the years, so he could easily endure a little boot-licking. Unfortunately, it seemed that whoever Tao Ba answered to had made these decisions, so there was no amount of sucking up that Sage could do to change them.

With that unpleasantness over with he was back to where he’d started, getting a new body. Back then, when he died, he had no idea that using the Soul Spawn technique would revert him to basically the intelligence of a newborn. His mind was a blur for years until he woke up in a lake. He had no idea what happened, but now it seemed that Tao Ba had just brought him somewhere with many beasts for him to feed on.

So, when I use Soul Spawn I am reborn and my new body has to mature to a certain level before I can regain my intelligence again.

He was only speculating based on what Tao Ba said and his prior experience, but he felt it made some sense. The Twin Ringed Soul Serpent was a very rare beast, but it wasn’t a very powerful one. If he remembered right, they could only reach the third rank when they matured which meant the odds of them advancing further and gaining intelligence were quite small. Without many of them ever getting smart enough to notice, it wasn’t odd that this sort of problem he faced wasn’t mentioned in their ancestral memories.

It was a shame that Sage couldn’t just go to the Inner World, but it was pretty impossible to live inside one’s own body after all. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

Since he’d already been forced to change the space in the Universe Ring, he decided to just go with a drastic remodel. The space he was given seemed to cover a complete sphere, so he had quite a lot of area under the ground to play with. To that end, he brought out Warp Worms and Dragoons to start a full reconstruction. The storage area was sunk deeper into the ground, being moved down to the maximum depth he had access to. Sage had his minions do all the digging and construction while he handled the movement of all the formations. Next, he built a huge tower at the center of the space and gave it some nice pagoda-like decorative touches on the outside. Since space was now at a premium, he had to reserve as much ground area as possible and since the sky was a mile high, he had plenty of room to build vertically.

Thinking along those lines, he summoned even more Dragoons out and had them build eight more towers, running Steel Silk lines between them all and down to the ground. Anchoring them like giant tents to stabilize them so he could build even taller. The strange materials from this world made it easier for him to construct a large structure, especially since he could use shapes that people in this world hadn’t imagined in his construction. Arches, curved scaffolding, tension structures, all things that the architects of this world wouldn’t dream of including in their buildings. While Sage was certainly no structural engineer he had flying laborers with an infinite amount of cable. He just had them build a few test towers and fill them with stones. Then when they collapsed he built a tower to half the maximum height they’d previously reached.

It took a couple weeks to complete the nine structures, but Sage felt it was worth the time expenditure to optimize the space he had remaining. He had a plan for these towers.