Published at 1st of July 2026 7:17 am

Chapter 363: Template

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Nicolai rested in a metal chair, in the workshop situated in a corner of his ever-growing base. He held a Quelian Quiet Knife in one hand, smiling down at it.

A small noise pulled his gaze. Serrin was off to his side, sitting in one of the same chairs. He held in his hand a small silver amulet with a flat device on the end, in which was set a chunk of blood-red crystal, and was staring at it with deep focus. His Soul Sense stretched out into it, pressing inside and releasing an outpouring of ripples.

The Hornet was linking his Soul to one of the newly made Blood Orb amulets, a process Nicolai had finished himself a few minutes ago. His own amulet was now nestled comfortably beneath his skinsuit.

It was a type of Imbued, the first hed ever made. Hed rather enjoyed the process, which had involved a few purchased Symbiotes (thankfully quite common and cheap), some natural resources, a number of the Blood Orbs hed looted from the Scoundrels, and some silver to be shaped into the basic form. The Assembler had done the physical part of the process, then he and Serrin had worked to bind some of the Symbiotes into the pieces while using other Symbiotes to extract the spiritual essence of the Blood Orbs, which was then added into the mix. Finally there had been the need to perform some spiritual the only way he could really think of it was: programming. Hed used his Soul to fiddle with the Arts and tiny Souls of the Symbiotes hed fed into it all, going off what the guide had told him to doat least, at first. The Modules had merged with him, determined to improve and build upon the process.

Now, he felt it as a constant warm presence tied to his Soul, one which carried several useful functions. In the event Scoundrels used one of their Mark abilities to seek out his location, he would not only feel it, but also be able to feed the amulet some Oma to block their attempt. The efficiency of the blocking depended upon the strength of his Soul.

They would still be able to work out where he was, but only in a much rougher fashion. Previously, any time out of the bases Ritual protections would have given them an opportunity to learn his precise location, now they would only be able to learn he was somewhere within a five-mile radius.

They would also no longer be able to so simply and easily target him with Blood Hunters, as the amulet blocked those from locking onto his location, too. Of course, they would still be able to spawn the things nearby to them or, with the use of some kind of marking ritual they could perform, at a chosen spot theyd already visited in person, then send them after him. But those Hunters would effectively just be weaker copies of their creators, with no special ability to appear next to him or feel his location.

His eyes returned to the Quiet Knife he held. Hed pulled its sheath off to better admire it, the blade glinting in the light.

Hed just finished running a number of tests on it, and determined it was clean from anything troublesome. Hed also decided he liked this one slightly more than his old. Its design, a little plainer, was more to his style.

The Knife the Queen had given him had come with many problems. Not only the tracker, but also the fact of how insistent shed been that he keep it hidden, that she seemed convinced that if the Highspawn saw it, they would be able to pressure her. He wasnt sure why that was the case, but it had been very irritating, almost as much as the tracker inside it. Hed become exceedingly tired of being forced to move constantly between his fake base and his true, messing around with it.

Now those problems were solved. In the final hours of the day, when the Market grew busiest, Nicolai had returned in disguise. Hed done quite a bit of trading, and one of those trades had netted him this. The main difficulty had been finding someone who actually possessed one of these Knives, then ensuring he disguised himself well enough to not be recognised. Alas, his reputation as a scammer and trickster was quite well established. Perhaps, if he was lucky, he thought somewhat sourly, his newly developing reputation as a berserk killer would supplant the old reputation. At least then hed have gained something out of whatd happened.

Either way, hed eventually found someone. Hed swapped Knives with them, as these Quelian Quiet Knives were all fundamentally the same. Hed had to trade 100,000 points-tags alongside the Knife for the other to be willing to make the swap, and hed also needed to explain his reasons regarding the tracker, since the man hed bargained with had been completely unwilling to do it without understanding precisely why. Alas, it was not always possible to gain the maximum benefits from a trade. The simple fact he wanted to make the swap had made his slightly desperate situation obvious. Hed even had to tell the man the method of removing the tracker, which hed seemed even happier to learn than he had to gain the 100,000.

With no link between this new Knife and the Queen, he was free to use it wherever and however he pleased.

###

Some time later Nicolai was in his room, sitting cross-legged, mind all but empty. The Modules and the Mask were merged with him, trying to get into a specific state of mind. Soon he would be calling up a Cherubic Surgeon and making a great deal of changes. But before he could do that, there was something he needed to gain a thorough understanding of.

In preparation for his upgrade, hed learned of the main limitation hed need to work around. His Soul, or, more specifically, his Souls template.

The template was the basic physical shape the Soul anticipated. Its shape depended largely on three factors; the race they had been born as, the amount of time they had existed in a stable physical form were the main two, and finally any deeply held belief about what their body was supposed to be like.

Race was one of the strongest influences, and growing to adulthood cemented that further. From what hed learned, it also did not matter whether or not one had a Soul during this period or not. So far as he could tell, the template existed in a potential form throughout the entirety of ones existence, and the moment they gained a Soul, it would solidify from potential to real, with all influences attached. The amount of time spent in a body was the next strongest influence on ones template. Finally, ones belief on what their body should be like had a much lesser but still noteworthy influence.

Changing his body too far from what his template expected would cause template deviation. His Soul would become severely strained and struggle to function properly, leading to all kinds of nasty knock-on effects, the most dangerous of which was that his Soul might be forced out of his body. But even if he avoided that, from what hed learned template deviation was extremely unpleasant and if one suffered it for any significant length of time their Soul would begin to suffer scarringpermanent damage which was extremely difficult to recover from. Fortunately, so long as he kept the deviation to minor levels, he wouldnt have to worry about that. There would be some strain, but it would fade as his template gradually adjusted.

However, even minor deviation was unacceptable for his purposes. Tier 2 was all about the Soul. All throughout Tier 2 the focus was on strengthening it as much as possible, and the initial rise to Tier 2 was very important in terms of what one could gain throughout it.

If he was suffering template deviation when he reached Tier 2, there were high odds he would permanently cripple his potential spiritual strength.

During this stage, the base strength of ones Soul would initially be undecided, but would ultimately fit into one of three categories. Bronze, Silver, or Gold. Which type of Soul he had would determine how strong he would be able to grow his Soul durin the course of Tier 2. Whereas Tier 1 had simply been a matter of building all the nodes, and had seen little real focus or improvement of his Soul, reaching Tier 2 would make his Soul far firmer, allowing him to actively work on growing it stronger and stronger.

However, there was a downside that came with this. His Soul would also become vulnerable, in ways it hadnt been before. Back in Tier 1, hed once cut off one entire arm of his Soul to be rid of Soul rot, and it had regrown just fine. This was because in Tier 1 the Soul was a relatively weak and insubstantial thing. That weakness was both the reason it was very difficult to strengthen ones Soul during Tier 1, and the reason it could recovery relatively quickly and easily from damage. Once he was at Tier 2, cutting off such a large chunk of his Soul would be an extremely bad idea. Damage his Soul sustained would stay with him and be very difficult to heal.

This also related to template deviation. A Tier 1 Soul might not even notice anything less than severe template deviation, and even if it did, that deviation would likely just weaken it a bit rather than doing lasting, permanent damage. A Tier 2 Soul was pretty much the opposite and would be very sensitive to template deviation.

He wouldnt actually gain a Golden Soul immediately upon rising to Tier 2, that would be the next struggle. But what he could gain, in fact what he needed to ensure he did gain, was the potential to have one. If his Soul was too battered while rising to Tier 2, there was a risk hed cripple his ability to develop it. Even a Silver Soul might become out of reach.

With this in mind, he had come up with a method that should allow him to ultimately become something like 80% to 95% artificial, but in a way that would avoid incurring template deviation.

So long as his body remained roughly the same shape, with everything in roughly the same place, and his organs (or what he replaced them with) served a similar role he should be able to hugely improve himself without running afoul of template deviation. If he did this right, far from seeing his Cultivation and Soul in any way hindered by his enhanced body, he should in fact be able to boost the strength of his Soul. A method to truly gain the best of both worlds, while leaving himself open to future changes and new options.

But if he wanted to do so, and if he wanted to be capable of developing a Golden Soul, he would have to be careful in his augmentation.

First things first, he needed to understand his template and what he was working with. That was what he and the others had merged to try and do.

It turned out he could have done this at literally any point; he had just never known the technique. It had been in one of the many memory disks hed purchased. Hed bought a truly ridiculous amount, but knowing he and the Modules could rapidly go through the informationand that any bit of it could be exactly what he neededhed opted to go for broke, even if it used up most of his Information Guild tokens on purchases like this.

In one of them, buried deep, hed found the Soul template sensing method. It seemed that typical Cultivators rarely had reason to check on it. After all, if you werent actively modifying your body, there was no risk of deviating too far from your template. The only time it would normally come into play would be in the event a Cultivator possessed someone elses body; the near-certainty of severe template deviation and associated spiritual damage was one of the main issues with attempting to do so, assuming they were able to defeat the bodys original Soul in the first place.

It was really just a mental exercise. It revolved around focused meditation, where you actively concentrated on the sensation of your soul, then tried to feel what was around it.

However, it was perhaps one of the hardest things hed yet attempted. To the point it became very clear why most Cultivators never bothered even to try. The day was drawing to a close, and hed begun to think he might never succeed, when, finally, they found it.

Seen as a blue outline in a world of darkness, his template was very similar in shape to his human body. Only in some places it turned a little blurry, looser, like it wasnt sure what it was meant to be. He supposed that was due to the long period of time back in the hundred-odd years hed operated as an augmented assassin. Excitement surged through him at that realisation, and it took intense focus between him and others to ride that out and maintain the state.

The fact it was blurry in places meant that he had additional room to work with. He should be able to make the changes he had planned, without stretching his template. That would give him room to install the augments and parts that simply didnt match his body, of which there wouldnt be too many. From there, he should be able to make use of the loophole hed identified. So long as he was the right kind of shape, the template shouldnt be overly bothered what he was actually made of. If his bones were replaced with metal, and muscle with far stronger synthetic versions, and so onwould the template be bothered? A little bit, no doubt. But considering the generally fuzzy nature of his human template, and the fact that these changes wouldin broad termsfit, he believed he should be fine to make quite significant changes.

However, in spite of this good news, coming quick after the excitement was a wave of disappointment. Aiming, especially, was extremely dismayed.

There was no sign of Zero-Twelve, here, which blew a giant hole in his plan to install

Wait! Aiming cried, drawing the attention of him and the others. There is pull back!

Nicolai did so, drawing away from his template. Entirely focused on this mental world, he was unaware of the flash of shock that moved over his face, swiftly followed by a wild grin.

They hadnt seen it, because it was all around them. The template of Zero-Twelve was here, somehow overlaying his human template. Gazing at both of them together like this was dizzyingly confusing, and for a time it was just a senseless jumble. But he found the point where they merged, where it all sprung from, used that as a guide.

His head. Or perhaps more precisely, his brainthe only part of his human body which had been in Zero-Twelve. From that one spot there emerged two distinct templates. One was his slightly blurry human form, and the other was Zero-Twelve. His brain had been situated with the Modules, deep inside its armoured torso, and so it was with this template.

Now aware of the two, he found himself able to alter his view. If he stared carefully at the human template, the Zero-Twelve one would fade away. Whereas when he focused on the Zero-Twelve template, the opposite occurred. Right now, his human template was the default. But it seemed possible, if he really focused, to make it

Pain erupted through his Soul, and this time he was shocked from the state of mind, eyes bursting wide as he clutched at his chest with a hiss of pain. His Soul throbbed angrily beneath his skin, but already the pain was fading. With his loss of the mental state necessary, his attempt to swap the templates had ceased. The pain had come as a warning, and inspired a similar reaction as a child putting his hand on a hot stove. Dont do that.

He understood. Right now, he was his human template. Attempting to make the Zero-Twelve template dominant was not at all a good idea, because that would naturally cause severe template deviation.

Nicolai and the Modules merged closer. Aiming, especially, was extremely motivated. They had only just confirmed the Zero-Twelve template existed, but already they wished to try and make use of it.

His own body had never possessed gunlimbs. And, the ones he hoped to install were much smaller than those Zero-Twelve had borne. However, apart from the change in size the design was quite similar.

He knew that trying to make ones body larger than atural was a fantastic way to develop template deviation, at least if you went too far.

But what about smaller? And what if it was just one part?

Slowly, he and the others returned to the necessary state of mind. It only took thirty minutes, this time. He saw his human template, and he saw the Zero-Twelve template. Then he attempted to allow the entirety of the Zero-Twelve template to fade from his mind, all except two of its gunlimbs. Simultaneously he ensured his human template stayed visible. Finally, he attempted to draw them together.

It worked, in a way. Two of the gunlimbs began to light up. They werent connected to his human body, simply floating off there but he could feel a connection to them. His Soul began to ache, but of course he didnt actually have any gunlimbs.

He allowed the focus to fade, opened his eyes and put a thoughtful thumb on his chin. There was a brief discussion between him and the others.

They werent 100% certain, couldnt be until they actually attached some gunlimbs. But the odds seemed good.

Tomorrow, they would find out for sure.

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