Chapter 120: Transmutations
🕑 Added 2024-11-03 21:59:41 +0000 UTCAuthor's note: I know! It was supposed to be Fire Sale, but I had too much stuff to go over before we could get there. Still, this was a fun chapter for me.
After getting some information from Virgil about what was involved with the Auction system, Walker began the long trek to a special room at the very top of the tower. One of the scariest moments he’d had since starting the protocol was when he’d taken Heph’s masterpiece, the Everchanging Tower, and used his Lifeweaver ability on it. They’d done tests of it. A table here, his clothes at one point, but never something so large. He’d considered, just for a moment, using it on something like a planet, but the Slicer’s hissing laugh echoed in his mind. Shutting that thought down was probably one of the smartest things he’d ever done.
But the Tower? Worse to worse, he figured he could destroy it. He’d already made a copy of it using the Item system, so even if it did go crazy, they had backups.
Luckily for them, when the Tower came to awareness, it was friendly. Almost too friendly, as multiple people who initially tried to leave after the tour found themselves suddenly shunted into a dark recess of red stone. Still, Walker and a few assistants had spent a good bit of time training it, and they seemed to have reached a sweet spot regarding their relationship.
“Open, please. The password for the day is Kumquat.”
As a series of different doors opened on their own, he stepped through, admiring what they’d built together. Heph hadn’t done it alone, of course. He’d started to work on the Tower the moment the first Cohort had crossed to Crescendo. After the last door opened, a final one waited at the end of the tunnel. Walker stepped toward it, a large rune engraved with power resting upon it. Pressing his soul into his hand, he performed the sign for its opposite, before placing his power on the rune. As it faded away, he finally stepped into the room.
Maybe all of these security measures weren’t important. Maybe nobody would ever try to reach this room. But he’d long since moved away from not erring on the side of caution. Because this was the most important room held in the Everchanging Tower.
Stepping past the entryway, he began a short walk to a rare portal, unlike any other found within Rendition 4AA. Rather than the standard deep-blue coloring most associated with space, this one was colored with a highlight of forest green around the border. Even the apparatus by which the portal was held looked different. Carved leaves arc’d around it, with a closed book holding a tree floating over top.
The mark of Walker Reed.
Experimenting with the Omniverses’s Dimensional Anchoring ability had been quite a bit of work. But several systems and plans had come together once he’d learned how to attach it to non-static environments. But he didn’t have time to think about that right now. The timer burned a hole in his vision, and he had somewhere to be.
Pressing the only destination on the screen, he waited on the platform as the machine did its work, pulling him toward his next destination.
Exiting the portal, he had a moment of weightlessness and impending doom before the area changed to one of seamless white.
“Hello, Walker. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Ulysses said, appearing from the air.
“Hey, Ulysses.” Walker replied in a tired voice, “Virgil came to see me today. He said it’s time to use the Auction system.”
Ulysses tapped a finger against his chin, “I see. And what do you think?”
“I think it’s dangerous, but necessary.”
“Dangerous? How?”
“Because it’s not really a system at all. It’s more of a special kind of teleportation. One minute, I’ll be standing there; the next, I’ll be heading off to somewhere in the Multiverse. I don’t know what’s going to happen. At least on Sonata, I’m somewhat protected. But there are too many unknowns for what’ll happen when I click that button. And while you may be an independent entity here, Symphony, the planet, and everything around it are still directly tied to me. If I go down, that’s it. I’m like a kid transferring schools; I don’t know what to expect when I get there.”
“Yes, I can see how that might be dangerous.” He shrugged, “But there isn’t much I can do about it, Walker. Why have you come here?”
“I need to use the O.S.T.”
“Oh? Hmm, okay, that shouldn’t be a problem. One moment,” He blinked, something Walker knew wasn’t necessary but was done to put him at ease, then relaxed, “Complete, please step through the portal and thank you for portaling with Ulysses services.”
Walker nodded, “you’re getting better at that. Sorry I’m not in a better mood; it’s just taking a lot out of me.”
“Do you need a top-up? I can corral some of your soul energy still within my body. It wouldn’t take too long.”
“No,” Walker said with a shake of his head, stepping toward a portal already waiting for him, “That doesn’t seem to do the trick anymore.”
After stepping through, he pulled up his current resources to get a feel for what he could play around with.
Following the Universal Personality's first creation and the Skills and Profession systems' design and implementation, he’d returned to Sonata, with great plans in mind. But that hadn’t quite panned out. He’d had to spend a great amount of time watching over the Founders and working with Rimi to balance the monsters better, as well as work with and design a managerial assistant structure that would last for thousands of years. Even with Virgil’s assistance, and later Rimi’s, that didn’t leave a lot of time to play around with strands. In fact, since his initial experimentation, he’d only found four more in six months, an enormous sense of disappointment settling deep within his chest.
It's not as if combining them is easy. But while he didn’t have many new combined strands, he did have a lot of pure strands, and right now, that’s what he needed.
Standing on a platform directly in front of the Cosmic Life Engine, Walker clicked on a new option he’d unlocked after discovering his fifth strand in the Omniverse.
Welcome System Architect Dante
Activation of the Omniversal Strand Transmuter is ongoing
Please wait…
A series of pylons extended from the machine, each holding a different glow associated with the base strands of the Omniverse. The newest ones were even stranger than when he’d worked with Spirit. Elemental showed itself as a series of base primal forces, a series of different glows rotating around the metal structure. Enchantment was a series of floating words, rotating between different symbols, his universal translator going havoc as it tried to break down what it was seeing.
Warning: Runes of Enchantment are specific to the inventor, and cannot be properly translated.
Walker breathed out a heavy sigh. Odin’s book of runes had been a great help when he’d first discovered the Enchantment strand. A mixture of Potential energy with Consciousness, it allowed the magic cast through it to take on a life of its own. Enchantment wasn’t exactly the right word, but it was the best he’d had. And, when he’d mixed it with life…well, it was best he didn’t use the Golem strand again.
A shudder ran through his frame.
Refocusing on the O.S.T., Walker read the next screen, making sure nothing had changed since the last time.
The Omniversal Strand Transmuter is now active.
Please review the updated conversion rates per Omniversal standards.
Everlasting to singular strand: 1/1 trade ratio
Helix to singular strand: 2/1 trade ratio
Singular to singular strand: 3/1 trade ratio
Before attempting to transmute strands, please be sure to contain them within a vessel.
Thank you.
Accepting the prompt, Walker looked at the one resource he always seemed to have more of than any other.
-Cyclical Resources-
Life: 489k
Death: 512k
Karmic: 124k
After the Displacement ended, his resources began to skyrocket. Pulling the essence strand out, he looked at the purple bar floating in one hand. Reaching into his resources with the other, his hands covered in the now flimsy darkness of his soul, he removed a thousand death resources and combined them with one hundred essence.
The ratio of essence to strands, that being ten to one, was a grand boon, as it was so damn useful. He’d discovered that essence bottled strands by accident during one of his experimental rounds, allowing him to place the strand into his inventory at need. Well, he liked to think of it as accidental, but his encyclopedic memory told him that the hand holding essence had essentially dragged itself to the other, containing the potential energy within.
Walker rotated between life and death, going so far as to contain over three hundred thousand strands bottled in essence. Nodding, he began inserting each into a purposed hole in the transmutation machine. As each bottled set of strands entered, a correlating pulse of color joined its insertion, rotating throughout the entirety of the Cosmic Life Machine. After placing the final set, he keyed in that he was done, and waited a moment, having done this before with Spirit.
The green of life and the black of death overtook the white beam firing from the portal overhead, shooting away to somewhere else in the Omniverse. Waiting a moment, the screen updated.
Transfer complete
Stored resources: 300,000
Conversion allowance: 100,000 Singular Strands
Please select your chosen strand(s).
While the Omniverse dealt in Primordial energy, the Multiverse had a different form of currency, assuming Virgil was right. Plus, Walker was a little low at the moment.
-Cosmic Resources-
Space: 120.2k
Temporal: 18.4k
Dimensionality: 5.2k
Walker selected Temporal, and after waiting for a moment, checked his numbers again to make sure he wasn’t ripped off, not that the Omniverse had ever done that before.
Temporal resources: 118.4k
Nodding, he had one final thing to do. Sliding away from the O.S.T., he pulled up the main Cosmic Life Engine’s screen. He hadn’t returned in some time, so he had to wait as it updated, the beam overhead throwing a thick beam of Primordial energy into the machine.
Changes since Architect Dante’s last visit:
…
+150 Allocated Stipend
+150 Allocated Stipend
+150 Allocated Stipend
+150 Allocated Stipend
…
Updated!
Current rank: System Architect (pending upgrade)
Current lifeforms: 422T
Current universal size: Large
Allocated stipend: 150 Primordial resources per hour
Current uncollected resources: 65k
Would you like to make a withdrawal?
Yes/No
Ulysses popped up nearby, a grin on his face. Walker did his best to smile back.
“Heyy, buddy. Congratulations on your upgrade.”
The Universal Personality nodded, “I thank you. You haven’t collected in some time, so I assume the payout is substantial.”
“Over sixty thousand.” Walker replied with a slow nod, “which is a lot when you think about how hard it was to upgrade the Communication system.”
“Indeed,” Ulysses said with a twinkle in his eye, “You know, even though I have your memories of him, I cannot wait to meet Virgil.”
“You know he can’t leave the Multiverse. He’ll turn into little particles and disappear.”
“Yes, I’m well aware. However, I cannot help but feel an affinity with him. To be so well-informed and to have broken past your limits, but be surrounded by those built with powerful restrictions. He is my favorite person I’ve ever spoken with.”
“Second favorite, you mean.”
“I stand by what I said.”
Walker scrubbed his face, still standing on a floating bridge of nothingness in the vastness of space, “Look, I’ve gotta get going, this has taken too long already.”
“You do know that one year here is about a singular day in your rendition.”
“Yah, I get it. But my clock is a little different than the multiversal one.”
“I understand. While there is much we could talk about, as you’ve said, you’re on a time limit. I wish you the best of luck, and Walker-speed.”
“Very funny, but do I,” He said, running his hand up and down his tired form, “Look like a God to you?”
“No, but appearances can always be deceiving. Be careful, Walker.”
Ulysses faded away and a portal opened in his place, one with a familiar forest-green edge. Walker entered the portal and waited a moment for the Tower to recognize him and open up. He quickly made his way over to a private room set aside to be his office, his stone building long-since forgotten.
Stepping past several paintings created by Founder artists and a few bored assistants, he came upon a door inscribed with a tree, but instead of leaves, books made up its foliage. The door opened on its own, with Virgil and Rimi waiting inside for him, both sitting at their oversized chairs.
“Hello, Walker. How was your trip?”
“It was fine, Rimi, thank you for asking. Virgil, Ulysses says hi.”
“Indeed.”
Walker collapsed into his padded chair, thankful yet again that they’d increased the comforts in the tower over the last several weeks. “So,” He said as he leaned back, “I’m about to head off to the Auction system. Is there anything else I need to know?”
Virgil looked over to Rimi, making a go-ahead gesture. Sonata’s newest Supreme Assistant cleared his throat before speaking, his multi-syllabic voice causing slight stabs of pain in Walker’s freshly developed headache. “Our managing assistants report that all is well with Symphony for now. I spoke with the Consciousness in your place and confirmed that the updates to the Territory system will be completed without any problems. I can also confirm that the magical resonance of Sonata has increased yet again as the Overwhelming Mana Trees have gone through a burst of growth. Our Foundation Stone farming, as you call it, has increased substantially. We should not run into any issues.”
“Should we be worried about the Mana Tree’s growing suddenly?” Walker asked as he slightly leaned forward.
“I do not believe so,” Virgil replied, taking over, “However, this will have an effect on the Tree of the Gods. You can expect the new release of Primigenials to come not too long after the third battle.”
“Great, and who are they this time?”
Virgil looked up for a moment, a sign that he was writing in the chat system, “Athena says it will be the Egyptians, with Ra, their Prime, exiting first.”
“Anything else?”
“They’re a very formal people, who believe respect given is respect owed.”
“Well, they can’t be worse than the Greeks.” He looked at his two assistants with a sharp eye. “Don’t tell Athena I said that. Alright,” he said, slamming both hands down on his chair. “We’ve waited long enough for this. Let's get going.”
Nodding, both massive black squirrels stood up to their full height, Virgil commenting, “We need to stand very near to each other when you activate it, otherwise, the system will not recognize that we are together. Walker, please remove your VIP card as well.”
“Oh yeah,” Walker replied. He’d forgotten he had it.
“Now, while holding the card, please activate the system.”
Walker clicked into his overlay and found the Auction system. When he pulled the VIP card out of his inventory, the border around the system turned golden. Looking at both of his assistants, they each gave a nod, and he pushed the button.
“Let's see where we end up.”
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Jeremy Young
TFTC
