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Chapter 222: Sunlight - Markets and Multiverses
🕑 Added 2024-03-22 04:51:55 +0000 UTCAs we stepped into the room, I had a very strange feeling. It was very faint - only a little change, but it was something I was so used to that any change stood out. I frowned, and spent a few moments trying to figure out what was different in this room.
Time?
The Zelyrians were capable of manipulating time?
I pushed further with my essence senses before I confirmed my suspicions.
Someone had, indeed, messed with time in this room.
But they hadn’t done it very well. It was like an amateur hitting notes on a piano. The reason I could detect it was because it was jarring and out of tune.
After a few more moments of investigation, I felt disappointed. Once I had realized that the Zelyrians were manipulating time here, I had been hoping to learn from it. But the Zelyrians had done such a terrible job that it was a miracle the room hadn’t imploded. If I tried to copy this room, I was more likely to blow myself up than master a new type of magic. Especially if I used a completely different magic system, such as shaping. The time magic in this room was held together by duct tape and well-wishes. There was nothing worth copying here. But I could still admire the ambition displayed in this room.
The Zelyrians who had made this dimension hadn’t just been trying to create a new, second home. They had been trying to create a resource basket. A place where time would pass much faster inside of the pocket dimension than outside of it. It would amplify their weapon and food production considerably if they had succeeded.
Of course, they had barely accomplished anything. Time passed faster inside this dimension, but only just. For every five minutes we spent in the room, four minutes and fifty-nine seconds passed outside of it. And this was at the cost of enough essence to refill my essence reserves every second. And the time magic in this room didn't even apply to the rest of the dimension, although it was probably supposed to.
Still, the room was interesting. I had never seen an experiment with time magic before. I had focused a lot of my energy on countering space magic, since that seemed to show up often in the multiverse. This room still served as a reminder that I had a long ways to go before I could defend myself in some worlds.
To the side of the room, I also saw a variety of lights made of essence. I had no idea what any of them meant, but they seemed to be some sort of display panel or control panel.
Anise frowned at the display panel, then pulled out a book on Ancient Zelyrian. I couldn't see any words on the wall.
<Anise, what do you see on the wall?> I asked.
<I see a bunch of display panels, as well as some words. I can translate some of them, but not enough to figure out what anything means. Give me a few minutes,> she said. I nodded.
“It feels… weird in this room,” said Old Mo, a moment later. “Someone tried to mess with something unusual here.” He frowned. “Time magic? Is time manipulation even possible? I’ve only heard of it happening in fiction stories.”
Felix nodded. “I’m pretty sure it’s time manipulation, yes,” he said. “I've only heard of time manipulation from a few... other sources, but I know it's possible,” he said.
I blinked. Was that something Felix had learned from the old ghost? I had never asked them to share everything they had learned while I watched Anise's surgery.
Heedless of my thoughts, Felix continued on. “This room has an awful cost to results ratio. But it's still pretty interesting. Although... if their understanding of time was this bad, I’m kind of baffled that they expected results at all.”
Old Mo shrugged. “After conquering the entire continent, their empire started to decay. The empire was way, way too big for its administration to handle. Not to mention, the economy was reliant on military conquest to function. After the Zelyrains conquered the continent, there was nowhere to go. They never found the other continents. With a declining economy, no social mobility, and increasing internal corruption, it's plausible for them to do something stupid.” Old Mo shrugged. “When your country grows that rotten from the inside out, power-hungry dictators will run it into the ground sooner or later.” His face soured. “Reminds me of Verne and Enallia.”
“I know why the Worldstriders hate the Zelyrians so much,” Anise said, interrupting old Mo. “These display monitors keep track of the harvesting facilities in this pocket dimension. Their output, stability... and the reproduction rate of the worldstriders imprisoned within”
“Harvesting facilities?” I asked.
“The Zelyrians turned those cracks in this dimension into miniature prisons. They drag nearby worldstriders into them, then eat them to fuel this pocket dimension. And even if a worldstrider escapes, the cracks keep trying to drag them back.” Anise eyed the stone cube in her hand. “Even though the worldstriders broke the pocket dimension, they didn’t free themselves. They're still converted stone cubes every day. It's just much slower than it should have been.”
I blinked in surprise, before nodding. That would explain the behavior of the Zelyrians a bit better. I had found it surprising that they held such a deep grudge after hundreds of years. If they were being sacrificed and harmed RIGHT NOW things made much more sense. It also explained why their stamina was so abysmal. If their 'homes' were actually harmful to them, the same way it was harmful to us, they were constantly weakened. We had fought hordes of worldstriders that were already half-dead.
Anise looked completely horrified as she stared at the control panels, and I wished I could give her a hug. My ribs wouldn't stand up to that amount of strain yet, but I could see how disturbing she found this revelation.
“Does it change anything we need to do right now?” I asked Anise instead. Regardless of the reason for the worldstrider's actions, they had attacked us. I wasn't going to forgive them for killing Sallia.
Anise stopped staring at the displays on the wall, and glanced back towards the throne. “I guess not,” she said. Her voice still wavered as she spoke, but she sounded a little bit less nauseated than before. She stepped closer to the golden throne, and sat upon it.
I felt some of the essence in the room crackle in response. I dredged up what little alteration essence I had recovered, preparing for an emergency. Luckily, nothing happened. Whatever had fooled the worldstriders into thinking Anise was a Zelyrian hald also fooled the golden throne.
“All right, give me a second to figure things out,” said Anise, as she scanned the room and the stone cube. “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I think I can figure things out. When I sat down on the throne, a couple of different ‘buttons’ appeared, and I can translate them if you give me a bit of time." She pulled her translation book back out, and started flipping through pages.
We spent the next minute in nervous silence. Nobody wanted to interrupt Anise’s concentration, so we didn’t say a word as we waited. Finally, Anise cheered.
“I got it!” yelled Anise, as a surge of manifestation essence leapt out of the chair and into the floor. The floor started churning and bubbling, before it tore open like a maw opening to devour us. At the same time, I felt space twist and bend itself around us. We fell through space, and moments later, I saw real sunlight again.
And then I tried not to scream in pain as the landing jostled my broken ribs and ruined eyes. Every part of my body pulsed in pain before it faded into the background again.
I gasped in pain, before I started scanning the area around us with my spatial eyesight. If there was a threat, I wanted to see it and prepare to kill it, even if I was in terrible condition.
Then I relaxed.
We had left the pocket dimension. We were back in our original layer of reality. We were in the mountains somewhere. There was nothing else alive near us, except for some plants and a few rabbits. Nothing hostile.
The biggest question was where the heck we had landed.
The mountain range around us was totally ruined. It would take a miracle to use previous landmarks to navigate our surroundings. We had also gotten turned around several times in the pocket dimension, so I had no idea which direction was which. Once the sun moved a little more, we would at least be able to distinguish east and west. But I had no idea how long we had spent in the pocket dimension. It could have been evening, or morning of the next day.
I spent a few minutes trying to guess whether we were even in the same mountain range as before, and then gave up.
At the very least, we had made it out. We could figure out our surroundings and continue our journey once we had a moment to get our bearings.
As if to reward us for our efforts, I felt a small trickle of achievement worm its way into my body a few moments later.
Exploration: Explore the heart of the Zelyrian pocket dimension and exit alive.
Achievement +500
I smiled as my Achievement went from 5,932 to 6,432. It was a small boost, but every increase in Achievement was appreciated. Especially since Sallia had died early this time. It would be best if we could help Sallia get an upgrade or two after returning to the Market, and since she couldn't earn on her own, we would need to help.
Old Mo glanced at our surroundings, before he grinned.
“We made it out. This mountain range looks utterly ruined, and I don't know where we are. But our current position looks stable enough that it won't turn into a landslide. Miria and Anise need time to heal up. How about we rest for a while before we keep moving?”
Nobody in our group objected, so we pulled out our tents and prepared to heal up.
Author’s Note:
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Comments
Rain
TFC
swordmaster savage
Chapters have been getting shorter and less impactful and if you skip past most the filler garbage only take a minute or two to read. I love the story but I feel like you should spend more time on each chapter instead of rushing to the next.
Sean
Thanks for the chapter! A note about the writing here: it feels like the MC has a thought and then another character echoes the thought out loud (Felix first, then Old Mo). It feels like I’m reading the same thing twice. Love the story, just wanted to leave some feedback.
