For the last ti, no, Im not sure this will work. Since we started this stupid fucking rule that bans both of us from using battle mode, I havent been sure of a lot of things. This entire project would cost a re ten seconds of actual ti, you know.
Sure. And youd be a stranger again. How long would this take, a year? A hundred? Your mories of would long since be relegated to your soul, and youd have this clinical look of separated interest in your eyes again.
Thats what that is? Damn, I never thought of it that way. I pause my qi control for a mont, focussing my mind on Rheas words. I never really looked at this issue from that perspective, but spending massive stretches of ti in my own head does indeed rearrange my mories quite a bit. All my short term and recent mories would be taken up by the problem, forcing to dredge all rembrances about Rhea up from one of my ntal 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 sa speed.
Why the hurry. Im already immortal, and you dying of old age is also unlikely. Our worst case predictions give us decades before things beco truly critical. Weve got ti.
I focus back on the task. Yeah, okay. We got ti, but Im starting to feel antsy. Im 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 sothing Im no longer used to. Im not sure if Rhea had this in mind when she suggested that we stick to realti, but all these unaccounted variables and roughly estimated chances I see in the future are making anxious.
Im willing to soften the requirent to potential danger if you cant handle it? Rhea is looking at 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 havent voluntarily stepped out of my ntal comfort zone for the past couple of centuries.
So you see this as uncertainty training? I can see the sparkle of humour in Rheas 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 dinsion has changed a lot. Its been less than a month since Rhea and I kicked out everyone, starting the qi diaspora. The power level inside Tree has only risen slightly, as the imnse 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 imnse 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, as far as I know, it even blocks gravity on an extrely small scale, smoothing out spaceti in a few tres around the wearer. If there is sothing 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 more.
How could I forget! All sounds outside the audible range are filtered, disallowing any manipulation through chanical waves. All audible sounds above 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 with a smirk plastered across her face.
Lets just go already. This wait is killing , I deflect while shuffling on my feet.
Okay, is her reply.
The bundle of folded cloth grasped between us, we both step through Trees portal at the sa ti. We pop into existence in the middle of empty air under a cruising drone, and gravity imdiately asserts its hold over us. We start falling like a brick, and I take in the sights.
The continent that I have labelled the Chaos Continent truly lives up to its na. I caught a glimpse of its general layout during my brief stint of spacewalking, but its 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 flas not too long ago, and I can see the edge of a fractal pattern mountain range not too far away. Its 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. Lets do this. Instead of letting my thoughts stray so more, I synchronise my actions with Rhea. We perform the well-rehearsed movents 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 . Why are the qi levels here so low? Were asuring 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 its 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. Im 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 soone ever use sothing as powerful as a reality manipulating supercomputer to manage a dungeon? Doesnt 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 ters 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 so doing, and a bit of experintation. The creation of the oversized doily was rather easy. The best thod of deploynt was what we've been stuck on for the past few days. Once again, I suppress the surge of irritation that cos when I think how easy it would have been to just spool so 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 realti, 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 shouldnt 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.
Still
No. If the automated security system is good enough to barge its way through these kinds of defences without setting off any alarms, well be dead no matter what we do. Wed need millennia of constant cultivation in that case. If these are post-ascendancy containnt systems, or maybe even protection against inhabitants of a layer above that one, well never win anyway.
I guess Anyway, it's done. Should we start? Looking resigned, she continues checking the perfectly spherical formation for faults.
Lets boot it up! I happily tie the two most central threads together, connecting the mana collection formations to the qi generation nodes. Power imdiately flows through the faintly conductive wires. The formation works less on physical principle - as common plant fibres just arent that conductive - and more on the interpretation Rhea and I give it. My drones work through physical rules mostly, but because this entire shield won't need to function when there is no-one near it to give its symbols aning, we managed to cut a lot of costs.
I lower myself in the air, watching with a smile on my face as the thing starts spinning. The soft hum resulting from wind rushing past the threads turning into a higher pitch slowly. Then all its formations are suddenly powered fully, and it becos a white blur as it reaches operational speeds.
Should we get Bassik? I cant sense the data streams coming from the moon. Rhea is still on edge, a nervous cast to her entire stance.
No need. Im flexible in other ways, I deadpan.
I could tell from the way Bassik, the first eye-core cultivator, reported his experiences that he could see individual threads of aning even in the initial stage of that system. The details with which he can observe entropic differences is honestly rather baffling to . This is not the first ti the common sense of the Cultivation World is useless in the face of the absurd ways this planets inhabitants use qi, so I took it in stride. It took so experintation and changes of perspective, but I can copy the way his eyeballs seem to function to a lesser extent through my braincore.
I close my eyes and imagine a single eyeball in the emptiness of my braincore. No, thats not completely correct. I turn the emptiness of my brain core into a single eyeball. I scan both of my eyes with a small net of augur, picking and choosing features from both. I add blood vessels, the nerve cluster, a lens, and more, slowly adding detail. I carefully craft the various layers, making a symtrical amalgamation of my own set of eyeballs.
I open my eyes and see a web of brightness woven across the heavens. Around , I see thick beams of aning flow through the air towards destinations around , down below, shooting through the void of space high above. The moon - hanging low above the horizon - is a spider in a complex and ever moving web of automated conversation. Instead of the sharp and fibrous lines of communication described by all eyecores, I see faintly blurred connections. It's like I need glasses. I hum silently as I take in the sight. The downside of a slightly blurry entropic vision is well worth the imnse versatility that cos with a mutable braincore, I think.
Yeah. Its working, not a single bit of information is coming through. Its not even scattering off of the shield, as Bassik described before. It just vanishes. One of the additional counterasures we wove into it must be doing its job. I can't see which one though.
Good, is Rheas much-relieved reply. She hesitatingly takes off the wide-brimd, straw sunhat. Her face is scrunched up in concentration. And I can think of kicking Nexuss ass and shitting on those fucking dungeon bricks all I want! The genuine happiness on her face is only marred by the vicious and vitriolic glare she sends at the core below us.
She drops half a tre before I can stop her. I grab her by her arm, barely keeping her outside of the Dungeon cores area of influence. Look
Oh, shut it, she snaps at .Im not letting you go in there on your own. You barely got out last ti, rely having to die sixteen She falters, then resus with fire in her eyes. You only died sixteen tis, right? And with there, you might actually stand a chance. If there is one thing us dragons are good at, its not dying. I cant rember reading or hearing about one of the Flight perishing, ever.
Knowing when resistance is useless, I grab her hand instead of her arm and start descending.
CCCEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
The air shakes our very bones. I spread my qi in a cloud around , and feel large volus of air suddenly disappearing. The wind rushing into the violently appearing vacuums behind us kicks up quite a gust. I cover the entire empty sphere around the dungeon in a thin application of my spiritual sense. I feel parts of my qi wanting to flicker out of existence, but a simple application of my will prevents any of it slipping from my grasp.
Listen here, you little shit, I admonish the core while floating nearer to the hovering black monolith. Ill leave a small sphere behind us unobserved, so use that if you need to communicate. If you start shouting at like that Mana Dungeon idiot did, before the moon re-took control, you can just shut up, okay? And I don't see that big boy up there helping you out anyti soon.
Rhea and I stop when we near half a tre from the black object. White lights flicker inside its blackness, giving us the illusion that the thing is an eternal void filled with stars.
Its pretty, is her first reaction.
TTHHAAAANKS, I hear from behind.
I stifle a giggle.
No problem. Now, please let us study your insides, is her followup.
NNOO THAANKS.
I cant help but let a chuckle escape. I let the two converse so more as I observe the moon. I can barely see it above the forest of ice crystals now that we are hovering at ground level. It will lower beneath the horizon in a few hours, and Im not keen on testing whether or not its way of beaming information down is powerful enough to go through the planet itself. I take out a large spool of thread and call up a miniaturized version of the massive shield rotating around us.
Co on, let in! Rhea is trying to touch the rectangular solid. She flinches each ti her hand cos close to its surface, and I see bits of her fingertips disappearing and reappearing in a high-frequency struggle.
NOOOO.
It wont hurt, I promise.
STILLL NOOO.
Aw, co on. Just a little bit?
NOOOO.
As my girlfriend and an alien supercomputer argue about whether or not it should let her penetrate it, I crochet a half-spherical doily with a radius of a dozen ters. There are a lot of things wrong with this entire situation, and even more variables are unaccounted for, but maybe sotis a bit of uncertainty isnt so bad.
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