Armand awoke the next day and frantically jumped out of his bed. With the worship of the elves beginning to expand the silver patch on his soul, he knew he had to get to work. He quickly created another room and began to carve the consolidation ritual. Molten alchemical gold began to pour through the channels as he completed the construction.

  He nodded in satisfaction; he had strategically placed the soul-consolidating ritual by the soul-severing one. He didn’t even spare a moment as he severed the silver portion of his soul; it was small enough to not cause much damage but it was still painful nonetheless. He quickly patched the hole with fragments of purified soul and temporarily sealed the severed portion of silver soul similarly.

  The goblin could feel an untold force pulling upon the small sliver of silver soul, but the soul had not reached sufficient strength to be pulled away. But the force was enough that he had to be mindful of the little thing. He stuck the small thing with one of his soul clones while he finished the remainder of the procedure.

  Still slightly woozy from the severing, he sat within the center of the soul-condensing formation. He took several long and deep breaths to steady himself; the wooziness faded away. The goblin nodded in satisfaction; he was finally ready so he began to pour his mana within the ritual circle.

  The circle began to glow as Armand began to chant, “Collapse, condense, crumble; my soul becomes dense as the stars themselves.” His soul then began to shrink as expected; the deep, clear purple of his soul slowly became more and more opaque. The process continued till it was a deep, nearly obsidian color, and then it became so solid that it was nearly tangible.

  After this, he was supposed to allow for his soul to re-expand to its normal state. The process would not be instant but the originally collapsed soul had already recovered to half of its original size within the first few minutes after the ritual.

  He felt more whole after the ritual, more connected with himself, perhaps a side effect of the whole affair. He redirected his attention to the little segment of silver soul, even in the short period of the ritual, the silver section had begun to grow and encase more of the purple. He had to get it reattached soon here.

  The goblin had never attempted to reattach a severed portion of soul but he assumed it would be quite similar to absorbing a fragment of pure soul. He tried to reabsorb the severed section of soul, but to his surprise nothing happened. It was like trying to merge two solid objects, just bouncing off one another.

  A predicament—this was a halt in his plans and he couldn’t put it off because the small section of silver was slowly creeping. He sat for a moment and considered; he usually only absorbed purified souls, but even then that was a slow process. Generally more immediate results came when he used pure souls to restore the damaged parts of his soul.

  He moved to the soul-severing ritual again, but this time instead of severing a portion of his soul, he created a small cut across it. While painful, it was manageable; next, he grabbed the rapidly silvering soul fragment and placed another shallow cut across it.

  Then, using pure souls almost like a needle and thread, joined the two cut sections together, creating a seamless connection between both portions of the soul. “Success!” The goblin cried; in all of the literature indulgences he had ever read, he had never read anything about successfully joining two souls in such a fashion. Now to the next issue.

  On the microscale, the godification of his soul was significant, but now restored to the main body, the process was pathetically slow. With huge leaps, new chasms always appeared. “If only time would go faster, or I had more people worshiping me.” The goblin mused.

  “One of those is achievable,” said a chipper voice with uncontained malice hidden within. Of course he would appear at this time; the goblin was always astounded by the timeliness of the demon.

  “Well, Thoth?” The goblin asked his familiar, “You obviously planned something that may or may not backfire so let’s hear it.”

  “Oh, where is the fun master that I once had?” The demon chided as it leaned against the door frame, eyes pantomiming a pouting expression. “I recall a certain book I once chanced across; I never got to read it, but I did lay eyes upon it.”

  “Out with it, Thoth,” Armand said as he prepared his ultimate bribe. “Aren’t you running low on your favorite snack?”

  “You drive a hard bargain…” The demon shrugged, but his uncontained excitement was barely contained by his trembling shoulders. “But I would require more than just that.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Name your price then.” The goblin was getting quite tired after his recent efforts so he summoned a chair beneath him. The demon’s grin widened, getting close to unnatural levels.

  “I require more of the facsimile of the demon king’s wine, of course.” The demon replied with a smile.

  “Done,” The goblin agreed; while the mana required was significant, it was manageable. But the demon had not stopped grinning, clearly unfinished with his demands.

  “Excellent, now I require the only thing to turn the wine from a facsimile to a reality.” The demon paused exaggeratedly, but Armand was clearly aware of what he was going to ask for next. “I would like a stipend of pure souls to use.”

  “The ones you are skimming off the top are not enough?” The goblin countered, causing the demon to look aghast.

  “Did Uriel rat on me?” The demon asked, the humanoid form dissolving away to the true visage of a bird-shaped demon.

  “No, on the contrary, I am surprised that he was aware of it all.” Armand replied in genuine surprise. “I’ve known for a long time but thought you enjoyed thinking that you were deceiving me.”

  “I would never master,” The false air of the demon had returned after the momentary flare of anger. “But it was getting difficult to resist the accumulations within anymore.”

  “Then we can make an agreement.” The goblin replied, “You can have the equivalent of five humanoid souls a month.” With the increased cavern sizes, he was easily able to produce tens of humanoid souls monthly. But he couldn’t give all of them to the demon with the rapid expansion of the library.

  “Deal.” The demon agreed right away; what he had been sneaking were mere crumbs, and he knew he could finally have a fair share of the pie. The demon did a bit of an awkward shuffle as if holding something back.

  “What else do you want, Thoth?” Armand was curious, as he had never seen this expression before on the demon’s face.

  “I wanted to express…” The demon looked as if he was going to vomit as he said the word, “gratitude…” He gagged at the word but continued, “at not using the master-servant bond of our contract.”

  “In truth you were as much of a victim of circumstance as me.” Armand replied with a genuineness, “Perhaps I was selfish in summoning you the way that I did but I never intended to make you a slave like I once was.”

  The demon stood there unsure of how to respond; all he could muster was an awkward shuffle as he shoved a book into the goblin’s hands and fled into the safety of the library. The goblin never expected to leave a demon expressionless but he had somehow done it.

  Only after being flabbergasted for a few moments did he finally direct his attention to a specific tome; even after reading a majority of the library, he had never even seen a glimpse of this book. Perhaps by the demon’s design.

  "No Time Like the Present: A Book of Timeless Spells" was written across its cover. Its cover was like marble and, by the weight, was most likely so. The title was carved upon its surface, but as he turned the pages, the sheets folded like average paper. He began to flip through the book's contents, eyes raised in astonishment.

  If soul magic was illegal and considered taboo, this was definitely up there. Many of the magics within manipulated the fabric of time itself, speeding up time or slowing it down; there was even a section about a unique form of scrying that was in fact just using time magic to make one's soul go back to the past.

  The goblin was already machinating potential time traveling but he felt like he would be very dangerous. Perhaps that would be the subject of next year’s question to Uriel.

  He debated which spell he could use but inevitably settled on a time-slowing spell. If a time-slowing spell were used, it would cause time within the dungeon to slow down, making days within pass slower compared to the real world. In turn, a speed-up spell would make days within the dungeon pass by faster than in the real world.

  Both spells had similar results, but he chose to slow time since more faith was being collected outside the dungeon. Even with the elves worshiping him, those within the dungeon were about thirty percent of his total faith; after all, only the elderly and the young had relocated to the dungeon so far.

  But this time the spell would not be simple and required far more preparation than normal, and he had already worked hard today. So he spent the remainder of his time taking care of himself, making food, bathing, and, of course, cracking open a new book. His choice for the evening, Gnome-body But You: A Short Tale of Unrequited Love.

  Maybe he needed to abduct a random individual who had similar reading tastes to him. Night passed, uneventfully this time, and day soon came, or at least the facsimile he called day.

  He started to carve the complicated runes into a mithril sphere and filled the incredibly intricate patterns with alchemical gold. It was the first three-dimensional spell circle that he had ever created. The core of the spell was the size of a full human, and when he attempted to power it, the entire dungeon shuddered.

  The goblin’s eyes widened in surprise as the spell began to consume every little bit of mana within the space and him. He could even feel the dungeon core begin to shrink. He wasn’t sure what to do but that problem was addressed as two massive figures came flying out of the dungeon, Uriel and Terra. No words were said as the two, in almost unison, punched the spell sphere the goblin had just made.

  It shattered into pieces and the rumbling faded, the mana began to return and the core stopped shrinking. Only after it all did the two titanous figures turn to him and almost simultaneously shout, “What were you thinking!” Each slapping him upside the head, neither side of his head being spared.