“I can’t marry anymore,” I wail.
“Oh, shush. There was no monster drool involved. You got off lightly.”
I just wrap my arms tighter around my knees. “Right. Are you satisfied now?”
Rhea takes another drag of her cigarette, her arms around me as I lay next to her. Since when did I become the small spoon. Where did she get that cigarette? I shrug away the useless questions and decide to focus on the things that matter. I can always create a new mental process if these memories keep cropping up, after all. Memories are slightly rewritten each time you recall them, and I can harness this power to basically change or eliminate memories. It takes a lot of effort though, so I only do this for truly unpleasant stuff.
I take a deep breath and stand up, resuming my cleaning process as I put my clothes back on. “Alright. I admit that was kind of fun. We got to get going though, the weave is done.”
“Already? Alright. Explain it to me again. I still don’t really understand it.”
“I sent you the data, though. Just read through it one more time.”
“Knowledge isn’t understanding,” she retorts, a cast to her face that tells me she is not willing to have this discussion again.
“From the top, then.” I start walking towards the new drone I built as I put my thoughts in order. I pick up the autonomously flying object, carefully avoiding bumping the large plane against the rocks. Its three-metre wingspan allows it to fly forever, in theory, but makes it a bit unwieldy to launch. I could have let it circle around us while we were occupied with other things, but the skies have been getting more and more dangerous over the past few weeks.
“This shitty planet has a weird form of antivirus protection. It seems to work on a level-based system, with harsher threats being answered with harsher security measures. You with me so far?”
“What’s an antivirus?”
I ignore her. “Level zero is normal operations. The Dungeons produce mana, the Flight consumes it, all is well, and the military potential of this planet grows slowly but surely. Level one triggered when I arrived and made qi. Two and three are still relatively low level, activating space-based defences and allowing for rudimentary control of enforcer class mutants. Level four will trigger upon damage to high-value property, like dungeon cores. Level five is moon damage, and presumably allows for planetary-annihilation-class countermeasures.”
“I understand this. The next bit is what eludes me.”
I didn’t want to test this theory of mine this early, but here we are. “I want to know what’s inside a dungeon supercomputer, so I’m breaking one open.” She keeps staring at me blankly. I have lifted the large flying drone above me with one hand and am holding out the other to Rhea.
“Grab my hand, please.” She takes it, and I throw the drone up into the air. The second I let go, I jump through my necklace into Tree, pulling her behind me. We land next to the shining trunk, golden light illuminating half her face. I repeat my previous explanation verbatim. “I’m going to open up a dungeon supercomputer.”
“Ah, why didn’t you say so before?” she asks while looking at me funny.
“I did, though.”
“What?”
I transfer a packet of my memories, showing her the last minute from my perspective. I see her go pale immediately. “Does this suffice as a crisis with a major chance of irreversible and slash or lethal harm?”
“No. This is just a bit of inbuilt mind control. Somehow or another, the very thought of letting harm come to, or harming critical stuff yourself, is not available to you outside of Tree. No big deal, just a few parameters you need to account for.”
Rhea starts walking in small circles while repeatedly touching her earlobe. She looks around with frantic eyes that are slowly turning more and more bloodshot as the realisation sets in that something has been directly messing with her thoughts.
“Right. I seriously wondered where the sheer lack of interest in your origin came from.”
“I even spouted that shit about trees not honouring a shitting bird. Flight save me.”
I can’t help but crack a smile. “That sounded so profound, though. You really had me going there.”
“Shut up.”
I take her in my arms and rub her back for a bit. “Wanna try deploying the weave?”
“Won’t that risk level four?”
“Yes. We just need to use non-destructive methods and lift the weave after a month or so.”
She sniffles a bit, the shock of having her thoughts influenced so thoroughly leaving her reeling. She doesn’t react in any way other than to snuggle into my chest. I might not be the most social of butterflies, but I know that just being there is sometimes more valuable than trying to solve problems. I knew that something was still messing with her mind – as it did with Angeta before her – but I had little idea of the scale or method.
The scale is pretty apparent now. Rhea didn’t even register it when I tried suggesting damaging this planet’s vital infrastructure, which is a pretty large invasion of thought. The method still eludes me, though. The entropic contrast coming from the moon as reported by all the eyecore’s is a valid theory, but I have yet to detect any trace of this frequency or radiation.
I stop.
Wasn’t there something like that, though?
Wasn’t there some form of weird radiation I detected when I approached this continent for the first time?
“Didn’t you and I do a bunch of soul experiments a while back?”
“Soul experiments? I can remember… Wait a minute.” Rhea takes a step back. The freaked-out aura around her resolves into something more solid.
“Weren’t we working on deciphering the frequency, decoding the way in which these outdoor chaos dungeons function, create new bosses, and control them?” I get the feeling that I might be just as compromised as Rhea.
“Why did we stop again? I was learning a lot about my soul.” Rhea starts pacing in a circle again.
“Tess came across the hordes.” I follow in her footsteps, following half a circle behind her.
“And you concluded that they were your fault,” she stops while looking at me.
“With good reason, the composition of the non-enforcer mutants all-”
“Yeah, it matched that mana attraction circle inside Tree. But that doesn’t mean that-”
“No, that probably wasn’t the only reason. It might have just given the antivirus systems more ammunition. Shit, I made a rookie mistake. The simplest answer is not the one most apparent. I forgot to be objective.”
“Drew, does this weave block everything?”
I think it over before answering. I stop myself from pacing back and forth. “I think so. The rotation is enough to disrupt most useful wavelengths. The Mana Dungeon was blocked from communicating with the moon when I was down there.”
“Fuck the All-Dragon. I nearly killed you.” She clasps her hands across her mouth in the first reaction of true shock I have ever seen of her. “I nearly killed you. I had them switch woven formations. The moment the shield came down, you appeared, looking beat up. Even Lola looked like hell.”
“Sixteen times, actually.”
Rhea has tears running down her face. Lola hops over as if summoned and nuzzles the crouching woman. “And your fur, it was singed! I sent a request, and you… No, that was made by a process, I knew even back then, and yet I let them switch it for the qi-gathering formation.” Burying her face in the small animal, Rhea suddenly freezes. Her face slowly emerges from the bed of soft fur. “Sixteen?”
“I died sixteen times before I managed to escape. Tower Dungeon let me know the class of consciousness that’s present – whether actually there or channelled is of no consequence – in those dungeon cores. I clad myself in my braincore, layering it a couple times.”
“And it forcefully demanded your disappearance, sixteen times?”
“I really didn’t feel so good afterwards. I might have been a bit rude.” I’m not sure w
hat to feel right now. I already figured out that the weaves were switched, allowing Nexus – as I have come to call the mysterious controlling presence on the moon – full access and control to the dungeon core I was having a conversation with again. I didn’t know that she was in direct command.
“I think this qualifies as a crisis with a major chance of irreversible and slash or lethal harm,” murmurs Rhea.
“No, we shouldn’t. The only reason we even noticed this mental fuckery is because of our presence of mind. We should keep refraining from spending long amounts of time in solo time dilation.” I rub my eyes while sitting down. I completely underestimated this planet’s defence system. Or maybe not, I suddenly realize. I make an analysation process and give it a high priority. “Actually… yeah, nothing like this happened on the ordered continent.”
Rhea looks up. “What?”
“Dungeon design, I think. Why the everloving fuck did we suddenly become horny teenagers the moment we arrived here? There are over a thousand creatures here that have a significant chance of becoming potentially world-ending entities that even we won’t be able to stop in just a few short decades.”
Rhea blushes as she looks down. “I… didn’t mind that much.”
I grin and walk over. “Me neither, but I know myself. I’m not bored with the vanilla stuff yet, so why the roleplay and bondage?” Rhea blushes even further. “I’ll be fully entertained for a couple centuries at least with just the normal stuff. Afterwards, we can get into shapeshifting play. Props and theatre like that is not something I need right now.” I look her up and down, only now noticing that she is still wearing the getup from our little session.
I shortly ponder whether or not I’m even being influenced inside Tree’s dimension, but quickly conclude that the only one to blame for my current ready state is Rhea herself. I lick my lips and observe Rhea squirm. Lola sighs deeply, stares at the both of us and hops away quickly. Maybe waiting a few more hours before resuming all the serious stuff isn’t so bad.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Supposition 2
“For the last time, no, I’m not sure this will work. Since we started this stupid fucking rule that bans both of us from using battle mode, I haven’t been sure of a lot of things. This entire project would cost a mere ten seconds of actual time, you know.”
“Sure. And you’d be a stranger again. How long would this take, a year? A hundred? Your memories of me would long since be relegated to your soul, and you’d have this clinical look of separated interest in your eyes again.”
“That’s what that is? Damn, I never thought of it that way.” I pause my qi control for a moment, focusing my mind on Rhea’s words. I never really looked at this issue from that perspective, but spending massive stretches of time in my own head does indeed rearrange my memories quite a bit. All my short term and recent memories would be taken up by the problem, forcing me to dredge all remembrances about Rhea up from one of my mental databases or vaults. “Okay. A little uncertainty might not be so bad once in a while. We could do it together, maybe? Split it up in stretches of a couple of weeks while synced at the same speed.”
“Why the hurry. I’m already immortal, and you dying of old age is also unlikely. Our worst-case predictions give us decades before things become truly critical. We’ve got time.”
I focus back on the task. “Yeah, okay. We got time, but I’m starting to feel antsy. I’m too used to having years to think about even inconsequential stuff. Everything is just going too fast right now.” The silent boil of worry in my gut is something I’m no longer used to. I’m not sure if Rhea had this in mind when she suggested that we stick to realtime, but all these unaccounted variables and roughly estimated chances I see in the future are making me anxious.
“I’m willing to soften the requirement to ‘potential danger’ if you can’t handle it.” Rhea is looking at me while holding a sheet of finely crocheted patterns. The thread is made from one of the plants Valerius had been cultivating. It’s a qi infused variant of a local weed that produced surprisingly strong fibres. We throw the folded fabric over once again before I pick the surprisingly small bundle up.
“I think this is good, though. It’s been a while since I felt this uncomfortable. I haven’t voluntarily stepped out of my mental comfort zone for the past couple of centuries.”
“So you see this as… uncertainty training?” I can see the sparkle of humour in Rhea’s eyes as we walk over to Tree.
“Yeah, I guess you can say it like that.” I smile back at her while taking a deep breath.
The atmosphere inside this little dimension has changed a lot. It’s been less than a month since Rhea and I kicked everyone out, starting the qi diaspora. The power level inside Tree has only risen slightly, as the immense increase in power inflow is largely absorbed by the three foundation realm cultivators living here. None of the marked mutants I kidnapped are strong enough to constitute true power drains as of yet, but Lola, Rhea, and I are absorbing immense amounts of qi while we cultivate.
“This really blocks everything, right?” asks Rhea again as she touches her new sunhat.
“Who knows. It blocks everything I know of. The entire electromagnetic spectrum, mana radiation, qi radiation, loose qi, loose mana, and as far as I know, it even blocks gravity on an extremely small scale, smoothing out spacetime in a few metres around the wearer. If there is something like soul radiation, the sheer amount of power we stuffed inside these should be enough to disrupt that too.” I touch my own hat, a floppy cap of roughly woven grey fabric. “All subatomic particles are either absorbed or deflected.”
“You forgot about the sound, please lecture me more.”
“How could I forget! All sounds outside the audible range are filtered, disallowing any manipulation through mechanical waves. All audible sounds above a hundred and twenty decibels are also muted. Did I forget anything?”
“Is this how not entering combat is affecting you? You just jump at any chance to enter lecture mode?” She looks at me with a smirk plastered across her face.
“Let’s just go already. This wait is killing me,” I deflect while shuffling on my feet.
“Okay,” is her reply.
The bundle of folded cloth grasped between us, we both step through Tree’s portal at the same time. We pop into existence in the middle of empty air under a cruising drone, and gravity immediately asserts its hold over us. We start falling like bricks, and I take in the sights.
The continent that I have labelled the Chaos Continent truly lives up to its name. I caught a glimpse of its general layout during my brief stint of spacewalking, but it’s a rather disorganized place. Ordinary looking stretches of jungle are interspersed with purple hellscapes of brittle and bubbly rock before giving way to endless banks of fog. We flew over a tundra made from slow-motion green flames not too long ago, and I can see the edge of a fractal pattern mountain range not too far away. It’s literally like the neatly organised levels of the normal dungeons are laid out right in the open. Below us is a massive crater, a perfectly hollow void of naked ground and sharply cut rock. This is bordered by a forest of blue crystal on one side and a roiling ecosystem of smouldering coal and fire on the other.
“Drew?” Rhea asks as the wind whips her hair into a wild tangle.
“Yeah, sorry. Let’s do this.” Instead of letting my thoughts stray some more, I synchronise my actions with Rhea. We perform the well-rehearsed movements beautifully. We throw the tightly wrapped bundle up and away from ourselves, throwing it at an angle. Our throwing manoeuvre causes it to spin rapidly, making it unfold like an artificial jellyfish. We both will the air to arrest our falls, and it solidifies under our feet.
“One thing bothers me. Why are the qi levels here so low? We’re measuring higher levels at even the furthest points away from any qi spewing dungeon on the Order Continent.” Rhea has lifted her hands up into the air, sending controlled lines of power to certain points of the unfurling cloth.
“I think
it’s because of how these cores are configured.” I spare one hand to motion downwards, indicating the open-air dungeon core below us. The floating black rectangular object hangs in the air, unmoving, right in the middle of the circular crater. “They seem to be from a mass-produced origin. I’m assuming they are universal units that can serve a lot of purposes.”
Frowning in concentration, Rhea is silent for a bit. “Why, though? Why would someone ever use something as powerful as a reality-manipulating supercomputer to manage a dungeon? Doesn’t that seem overkill?”
“Who knows. A lot of junk toys used to contain electronics that only a couple decades earlier, would have cost thousands.”
We are both still for a bit. The finely woven web of formations, formulas and runes hangs but a few metres above us. I look down again and see we are drifting slightly. I will the wind to bring us back to the ideal position, just above the central point of the empty sphere below us. The floating dungeon cores are obviously responsible for eliminating any matter in a perfect sphere around themselves. We theorised that making a shielding formation in the shape of half a sphere, just a tad bit larger than the empty zone around the core, would be ideal.
Making the entire weave spherical took some doing and a bit of experimentation. The creation of the oversized doily was rather easy. The best method of deployment was what we’ve been stuck on for the past few days. Once again, I suppress the surge of irritation that comes when I think how easy it would have been to just spool some qi through my brain and brute force the problem over a couple of subjective months. No, instead of taking the optimal route, Rhea insisted that we do it in realtime, together. Infuriating.
“No reaction yet. Can you think of blowing up the moon?” I ask while smoothing a few creased areas with applications of qi.
“Yes. But maybe we shouldn’t talk about that?” Rhea looks around nervously as if she expects an enemy or an eavesdropper.
I tip my cap. “I installed a sound dampening system. Not a single bit of information – besides light – escapes from us. Only we can hear us talking.”
The Dao of Magic: Book IV Page 7
