Chapter 37: Six Months Later
A man in an all-black Grandmaster's robe lined with ornate golden threading in the mantle and seams was walking calmly to the Arcaneum, garnering the nods and interest of any who were sitting on the way. Those he passed who were still on foot in the same hallway would take the time to bow before continuing and immediately turning to the nearest friend to gossip about the man they had passed.
At 26, Yuri Nightingale was accepted by the College as the youngest Grandmaster ever graduated for his merits of the discovery of Light magic, the addition of his 'Grimoire of Curses' in the Arcaneum, and the enhancements to the bulk of theoretical and applied spellcrafting in the Alteration and Illusion departments.
Curse King, Lightbringer, Night Lord. The names he had heard the students pass around like candy would make any lesser man blush. Luckily, Yuri was a thick-skinned chuunibyou.
But Yuri's advancements, though at a more relaxed pace compared to his first few months, far exceeded what the College understood of him.
Yuri's first endeavor was to complete his last 'School'. Conjuration. In days, Yuri was able to not only conjure all types of Atronachs but reshape them to fit the image he desired. His telepathy grew from an unrefined hammer to a dexterous and far-reaching multitool. He was on the verge of making his own mental defense, even though Mages aren't typically capable of reading another Mage's mind, but Yuri was so better safe than sorry.
He found the problem was matching in nature to another problem of his. The perception cap.
So Yuri did what he always does. He researched. By and large, the results he found in the area of enhanced perception was that most of the higher races or even transcendental mortals don't enhance their sensory organs at all except their eyes for other reasons. They replace their inherently limited and fragile nervous system and fused their souls and its spiritual perception to their whole bodies. It was at this point that Yuri was once again exposed to the idea of Soul Rituals and Refinement.
Yuri's heart had already begun to beat blue blood three months after the battle with Morokei. In another month, Yuri had made a zone completely isolated from all manner of perceptions and pulled out the Eye of Magnus to circulate its mana through him and build up his capacity. The staff proved invaluable, not just for the way it can freely manipulate the mana within the Eye but how it allowed Yuri to circumvent the physical strain of certain spells by casting them straight from the Eye to the Staff. Yuri hardly felt any strain anymore thanks to his new muscles, but casting super spells without even using his own mana felt incredible. He could even do it while the Eye was in his inventory.
In the three months after his heart metamorphosed, he figured with all the things that need the attention of his soul including an impending race change to Arcane Spirit, he should get to the Spiritual.
Finding his soul was the hard part. His body was a tangle of mana and flesh, but closing in on mostly mana. He operated in the realm of the physical or the metaphysical, even with ESP. Delving into the soul with only the description was a challenge that he needed to cross alone.
And challenging it was. A whole 20 MINUTES it took. The Akashic Assimilator was embarrassed at his delay, luckily none bore witness to it.
Either by some stroke of luck or some assistance from Akasha herself, he found his soul fit in the Royal and Pure category. He had no idea how his soul was Pure, but later found that the soul is unaffected by things like morals and karma unless you pissed off someone you couldn't afford to in a previous life. Only if a person had done something they consider sin or lived filled with regret would their soul be tainted, weighed down by the considerations of the mind. There are Records that judge a person's soul by their deeds and inflict them accordingly, but Yuri didn't listen to a Record. It also seemed Akasha had done more than just get rid of his depression that day.
As for the Royal Category? It was very vague. He spent RP looking for explanations across records but each Record treats them differently. As a basis, they are people who can garner stronger will and stand above other mortals in identical situations. Yuri took this like it takes a Royal soul to use Conqueror's Haki or have a natural disposition towards leadership and special constitutions. The protagonists, in other words. He would have to test this out later, perhaps the Dragonborn has a royal soul thanks to Akatosh.
All this amounts to is that soul refinement was an order of magnitude easier than it was described. Yuri couldn't fuse his bodily senses to a weak soul, he needed to beef it up first. Every day he went to the Ancestor Glade and refined his body and soul for hours upon end. Moths took to the air above his head like he was Ghandi while he sat in meditation in the central stone area bathed in light from above.
Another consequence of the soul's growing strength was that when he combined his Tenth Eye with his ESP successfully, he found that he could see the red strings across his vision a little bit more clearly every day. Concentrating on them didn't hurt as bad, he still couldn't follow them though.
As Yuri was nearing his way to the Arcaneum under the gazes of his adoring fans, he checked his status once more as he had done repeatedly the last few weeks.
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Status: Yuri Nightingale
Titles: Champion of Akasha
Race: Arch Human
Power: 120
Speed: 120
Perception: 72
Mana: 610
Stamina: 470
Record Points: 4,500
Skills: Minor Mana Manipulation, Minor Elemental Manipulation, Shroud of the Hunter.
╚══•●•══╝
'For every day of soul refinement, all that effort still only brings me 1 perception.'
Yuri had managed to finish the Shadow manipulation skill, and to his delight found that his elemental properties immediately combined and got a slight boost. Despite the benefits, improving such an all-consuming skill was going to take even more effort.
Yuri had reached the counter of the Arcaneum and plopped a book on the desk of Urag Gro-Shub. The Orc, or more appropriately Orsimer, read the title and skimmed it before immediately pressing a highly niche button on his desk.
"Arch-Mage, he's done it again"
"I'll be right there"
Yuri was already leaving.
Last time Yuri had donated the Grimoire of Curses to the Arcaneum, Savos was left with taking the original and only passing out heavily enchanted and encrypted copies to the dozens of people demanding it. Like Light magic, curses found more appreciation and were soon applied to many avenues. Destruction and Illusion masters especially called it essential reading. Yuri also donated a number of studies, even a dumbed-down version of the Eternal Heart, which was basically a mantra he made that would transform the heart into a weaker version over a longer period of time.
The book he just plopped on the table read 'Grimoire of Blessings'... The button Savos installed came in handy since every letter of Grandmaster Nightingale's dozen or so works was treated like gold now.
Yuri teleported to his room, which he extended and rebuilt to be larger with his Elemental mastery. Not much was added with the extra space, save for a spare bed.
It went unused, but in his bed lay a familiar beauty with a caramel skin tone and a bewitching lazy smile.
"Still in bed, Toni? And I thought I was the Nightingale..." Yuri lightly quipped.
"Your sheets are sorcerous and you spoil me at night, can't a woman sleep it off?" She intoned back in a sexy almost-whisper, stretching out her firm and sculpted arms and letting the sheets reveal the cleavage of a well-crafted bust.
Yuri had done it. He brought Tonilia to Winterhold to fence for him in the day and keep him company at night. The spare bed was for working days and when they felt they were getting too close. It happened plenty of times. They still weren't dating.
They were rich, though. 80,000 Septims to Yuri's name alone, Tonilia sat on a pretty salary of 30,000 and free lodging... Yuri's works were well-traveled but his identity was not. Only the items he enchanted with intricate rune-work that couldn't be properly analyzed were the telltale sign that 'Vulcan' made that piece. Tonilia was selling in the daytime, to Solitude nobles and even Cyrodiilic travelers sent by their masters of high standing to procure a weapon of Yuri's design. But he wasn't an arms dealer. Swords were all specially made and too expensive to equip anyone less valuable than the blade themselves, Yuri had only sold less than 30 blades. He also made another one of his own and gave the old katana to Tonilia for safety's sake.
The sword he got for himself on the exchange was a standard medieval blade one would see with a knight. Or at least, the shape was so. In truth, it was longer and thinner than one would see a knight using to block anything. It was deceptively durable thanks to the silvery Mythril that constituted it, its cross guard had an ornate Fleur de Lis climb up for two inches of the blade, the black hilt and guard tips all ended with a point similar to a bishop chess piece while a gold twine swirled once around the hilt.
{A/N: Seen Alucard's sword in Castlevania? Same shit, 15% shorter, reverse color scheme}
Yuri got naked, hopped in bed with Tonilia, and took a nap with the other naked beauty. Life was good. After two hours of changing between actually sleeping and almost fucking again, Yuri received a call from his pin on the nightstand.
"Is this about the new addition?" Yuri answered the call from Savy.
"No, we've received a distress call from Solitude. Come done as soon as you are available," Savos stated calmly.
Yuri got up from bed and Toni finally followed this time. She was actually taking classes here, albeit at her own pace. Illusion and Alteration were her only focuses. She put on her Novice robes and left at the same time Yuri did. The pair shacking up was no secret, but she still managed to make a few friends of her own despite the rumors floating around.
Yuri TP'd to Savy's office and took a seat behind the desk that once interrogated him.
"Let's get down to business," Savos started. "Queen Potema is back."
"Potema, the Wolf Queen?" This was earlier than expected.
For those who don't know, Potema was a brilliant necromancer and a ruthless and cunning politician. She stepped on everyone she could and resorted to measures of all extremes in her bid for the Empire's throne while she gained the Solitude throne from her own husband and son through similar schemes. She was even postulated to be responsible for the madness of Pelagius III, despite likely having nothing to do with it. Such was her reputation. In the Dragonborn's encounters, a man who holds suspicions for the evil sounds coming from a certain cave led to the demise of a plot for her resurrection. If Potema managed to be resurrected by a few good necromancers she may have very well finished and perfected the process atop the sacrifice of those very necromancers were she not stopped. Flesh and Blood magic was not fiction here.
"Why does Solitude call for us?" Yuri was rightfully confused.
"She had amassed an army of the dead, and we have amassed a reputation. Light magic is the ultimate weapon against such foes, which some of our graduates have mastered to a great degree and used outside the Hold. Solitude pays for the defensive and suppressive services of the College. What I want to know is, can you take care of this yourself and earn the College some favor?"
Savos had watched Yuri turn more and more into a man out of reach of mortal hands. He was Yuri's greatest fan, their discussions were so long that Yuri now feared meeting him too often. Thus, his speech of the coming crisis was not as urgent as one would think.
"Sure I can. Did you want to join me?"
Are you kidding? Even if Yuri had run into a fully vampiric re-embodiment of Potema, she would be disintegrated into a shower of Light. An army? Yuri could summon that. He could even fuse his skin and organs with Light or remove them and store them temporarily for a near-perfect fusion. It was time to be flashy and earn himself a cool title like the Hero of Kvatch did. It would make his plan for meeting the Dragonborn much easier anyway.
Savos had also made some progress in Light magic. He was at the level of taking care of numerous undead with ease as long as he kept a distance and his mana held out.
"I will stay with the College. A certain student of mine has left more secrets in my care and I need to distribute them properly. Do make haste, though!"
Yuri smirked and got up to equip himself. A well-received hero doesn't wear all black to save the day, but white and red were also on Yuri's palette.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Reddsaint
Reddsaint Hey ya'll. Lots of progress today as you can see, but I still held back quite a bit for pacing reasons. The goal was to fast forward all his current projects and inch closer to the plot. Did I miss anything? If so, let me know in the comments. I'm tired as hell.
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