When Sunny created a bunch of Ascended equipment for the New Workshop, he had not expressly asked for anything besides a few Soul Shards. This new deal dealt with much more valuable things, and thus was actually written on paper. (Which is to say it was made online, and then officially signed via a Government tool).
That way, Aiko, Sunny's business partner saw the deal as well.
According to him, she had something of a seizure after reading it.
It made sense, they were dealing with the mythical Supreme Memories after all, the vast majority of Saints didn't have any.
It was incredibly rare for the Spell to give them out.
And while it was also horrifically difficult for Sunny to make them, he could make them relatively consistently if he had the resources.
But as he stated, it was dangerous, and it would take a lot of time.
However, now that Gehrman was Transcendent, he could give him every single one of those things.
Finding Great Creatures was a bit difficult. If he traveled to certain Death Zones in the Dream Realm, it wouldn't take too long to find a couple.
…but there was also another option, one that would have a lot more immediate benefits.
After digging through some archives, Gehrman found a lot of data about aircrafts. The technology existed, but it was always much too dangerous. Similarly to the deep ocean, since there were no humans near where their Gates spawned, it was a breeding ground for incredibly powerful Nightmare Creatures, as they would fight amongst themselves in those spaces void of other entities.
However, now that Gehrman was a Saint, now that he had advanced to his current power level, he was fairly confident he could handle defending an air transport.
When he pitched the idea, Cor looked at him like he was insane. Only when Gehrman went up into the skies, flew around for a bit and then found a number of harrowing Corrupted and Great creatures.
Flocks of hundreds of reptilian Corrupted creatures fell to his Blood Manifestations. Then, with the [Burial Blade] he had severed a Great Demon in half. The fight had lasted under 3 minutes, and the whale-like creature shot devastating bolts of power. It may have been strong enough to level a smaller Siege Capital.
Fortunately, they were far, far away from any of those, so no damage was truly done.
It appeared that dropping that 100 kilometer long corpse and the numerous Corrupted corpses, he had proven a point, and they had gone ahead with plans to develop a humongous aircraft that could help with the evacuation effort.
Gehrman now only had to sleep (he suspected) once a year. So it was only natural that he took every single hour constantly working.
The thing was, he didn't mind it that much.
He had delayed his killing of the Winter Beast, instead taking out his anger on those in the skies above, while also going into his Transformation to cover an obscene amount of ground. This way, he was defeating hundreds of Nightmare Creatures a day, containing dozens of Gates consistently.
It got to the point that Gehrman started to get concerned with how much he was killing. Though he was guaranteeing the protection of every human on the continent, he was also stunting their growth.
Having them lose out on experience was one thing, but the amount of Memories, and maybe even Echos that could have been acquired from Awakened killing these things could greatly bolster the power of humanity.
In the grand scheme of things, Awakened and Ascended Memories were nothing too special, but with the sheer amount he would get, it was almost a guarantee there would be something uniquely important or useful.
In truth though, he wanted that great supply of Memories for another reason: Sunny.
At this point they had entered into a partnership in which they both built off of each other's growth to reap tremendous gains.
Though it may have seemed like Gehrman was getting the short end of the stick, this was simply not true.
The potential Sunny had, or rather the sorcery of Weaving, was simply absurd.
At this point, the shadow could see into the Weaves of Memories, analyze them, and then copy them to another. He had made several of his own Memories as well.
And now, with Gehrman's prodding, he was looking into both Weaving with Supreme materials and also upgrading pre-existing Memories.
On that topic, something came up that Gehrman had not been expecting.
One afternoon while the pair were talking about Weaving and the potential applications of the sorcery, Gehrman was showing some of his own Memories.
Unfortunately, they didn't appear especially useful. A lot of the more complex Enchantments seemed to be complex Weaves at first, but they were not.
"It is a bit like the Divine Sorcery of the Gods," Sunny said. "Back on the Chained Isles, and in my 2nd Nightmare, there were these Immortal Saints who could only be killed by a specific knife. We managed to collect a few, and each one was the same. It didn't have some extremely powerful enchantment, instead, it held the literal Fate of their deaths."
Gehrman cocked his head to the side.
"What? How?"
"My guess is that the Gods can interact with Fate a bit, or more likely a lesser being Fate. From what I can tell, each person is strung up like a puppet by the strings of Fate. It's all one big tapestry of cause and effect. Nothing I, or even you could comprehend. At least not yet. Anyway, it looked like the Gods had pulled out a piece of those Saints Fates, their death, and stuck it in a knife. Since the concept of their "death" was removed, they couldn't die."
Gehrman's eyes were suddenly far away as he considered it. He had indeed been meddling in more high concept stuff, but some of those planes of existence he was still very wary of. One of those was Fate.
He had been able to tweak Fate a fair bit, he thought, mostly with the New Workshop and the people he saved in Antarctica, but it was still clear that the main path had not yet been strayed from.
I wonder if Void could break Fate, or are the Void Creatures also bound by it? The Gods of the Dream Realm seem to be at the level of Great Ones, probably beyond them even…and they're all dead. It seemed they couldn't escape their Fate, so it seemed unlikely that the Void could leave one truly free of Fate. A truly absurd and complex number of powers, affinity's, and abilities would probably be needed to pull off such a thing. Still, the current Fate is looking like annihilation, I should look into how I can make bigger changes.
After this long thought he snapped back, curious.
"Wait, what does that have to do with my Memories?"
"Well, I mentioned Divine Sorcery. Honestly though, that's not the best term for it. Sorcery follows rules, Divine Sorcery is the Gods breaking the rules. When I looked for the Weave in the knife, I just saw the string of Fate containing the Saints death, looped around in an infinity symbol. There was no rhyme or reason, it just was."
It sounds a bit like Will, Gehrman thought. Could the Gods do that? Will the world break its laws, change the way that even cause and effect worked? It already did a bit of that when the Pseudo-Supremes were wielding it, and the Gods were two whole Ranks above them.
It seemed a plausible idea.
Sunny continued on then.
"So, I guess, it's kinda like if you're making a very nice chair. A truly splendid and comfortable chair, mind you. You would need to gather the wood, fit the pieces together, attach the cushions through any number of methods. There are a lot of ways to get a chair, but they all follow steps and logic. What the Gods do is just cut down the tree for the wood, and then as it falls, the wood blocks fall together and form the perfect chair because they ordered it too. Your Memories are somewhere in between. For them, it's like they started to build the chair, but then they didn't like some of the steps, so instead of following the instructions it just glued the pieces together, and it's some damn good glue because it works better than it would have if they followed the order of things."
Sunny paused, realizing he was rambling on a good amount. Coughing awkwardly, he tried to explain it more technically.
"It's like the Weave started logical, but then whoever made it wanted to do something crazy, and instead of doing the learning the actual weave, there is a bit of the string that is twisted and blurred unnaturally, a bit like the twisted nature of the string of Fate in those knives."
"That tracks," Gehrman said. "The Moon Presence is fond of short cuts, I believe. Given the color of the strings used, it definitely was the one behind all the Memories I receive."
Sunny nodded, pushing the Memories back towards him.
"I appreciate you letting me take a look though, it's interesting."
"Yeah," Gehrman said. "I think there are some unique and impossible Enchantments too. For example, for my new attire it talks about "Arcane" Energy, and doesn't elaborate further. That, plus something I've never heard of. One of the Enchantments – [Old Man's Promise] – had a tracker on it, it counts the amount of Arcane Energy I've collected, and when the it gets to the end it said it would allow it to be 'Soulbound.'"
Gehrman had briefly mentioned the term to Cor, figuring that he would know if it was something important, but the old man was mystified, and he hadn't looked into it further.
Suddenly, he was glad he stopped when he did.
Sunny's eyes got huge and his attention snapped to Gehrman.
"Soulbound?" Surprise was written clearly across his face.
"You actually know what it is?"
Sunny twitched a bit before replying simply, "Yes."
The young man averted his gaze a bit, seeming to be struggling with something. Seeing this, Gehrman did not push, and allowed him to figure out whatever he was contemplating.
Eventually, his shoulders slumped.
"Do you know what the one thing I will never understand about you is?" Sunny's voice lowered. "You've lived for over a hundred years and yet you're still…You got the Waking World and told people you were an alien, and then you wrote a whole dissertation on your home world."
Gehrman's brows rose, this was not what he was expecting at all.
Sunny made an annoyed sound.
"How do you live so long and not realize how dangerous knowledge is? It's the most deadly weapon there is and you give it out like it's the most obvious thing in the world. It pisses me off."
Though his words were rather aggressive, he kept a subdued tone of voice.
Gehrman did not move, but his eyes did dart downward, averting his gaze.
"Being old does not make you wise. Wisdom comes from having a variety of experiences, knowing what could happen in different situations, being aware of the dangers one's actions could cause…I never claimed to be wise."
They sat there for a moment, silent and mulling over Gehrman's words and their past experiences.
"I've lived three lives, each of them full of pain, but each of them also very simple. Old Gehrman never left the region surrounding Yharnam, all Dorian can remember is that cabin, and Johann's Memories only start when he gets to Yharnam."
Sunny blinked, studying him.
"It's a bit comforting to know that even someone like you has something they're not confident in."
Gehrman shrugged.
"There isn't, and will never be a human who is confident, and perfect at everything."
Sunny was silent for a moment, and then he held out his hand and summoned a Memory. White sparks materialized a simple tube of bone with holes drilled into it.
It was a flute.
He blew into it, and no sound came out. However, there was suddenly an almost imperceptible difference in the air. Of course, Gehrman's senses could tell what had just happened.
A cone of silence had descended upon them.
Nobody outside could listen in, not through mystical or technological means.
"If you gain wisdom through experience, can I assume that recent experiences have made you more wise?" Sunny asked.
"Little shit," Gehrman sneered. "You're getting a bit brazen."
A smile tugged at Sunny's lips.
Though Gehrman didn't say anything, the young man could tell the answer.
After this Nightmare, Gerhman had made no move to reveal any information about it, nor did he mention any new Memories or abilities he had acquired.
"A Soulbound Memory means that, once the requirements are met, you can bind it to your Soul. This means that the armor and all of its Enchantments become an Attribute. Everything you can do with the armor, or in your case attire, will become an innate ability, even without the physical form of the attire summoned. Which, by the way, you can dismiss and recall at any moment with no Essence or delay. Plus, since it's an Attribute, you can wear an additional attire or armor over it."
Gehrman's mouth hung open for a bit.
He remembered being a bit disappointed at receiving a Rank 4 Memory from his Aspect Legacy, but with this knowledge he took it back. This thing was going to become what was equivalent to a whole new Aspect Ability, plus a few more powers thrown in on the side.
"That's…" Gehrman paused. "You seem to know a lot of details about this."
Sunny's eyes seemed to darken for a minute, and then he put his hands up in mock surrender.
Then, in a mere moment, he changed. A mantle of what looked like pristine stone carved from the darkest of obsidian and sublimely decorated appeared over his uniform. There was no summoning, and there was no Weave Gehrman could see.
A low chuckle escaped him.
"Seems I have some catching up to do."