Chapter 83: All the Rewards
🕑 Added 2024-04-20 21:47:45 +0000 UTCIt took Walker a couple of hours to figure out Sonata's direction from the deep dark reaches of space. Searching his own memories seemed to give him a small sense of vertigo, as he'd plummeted so fast out of his private solar system that it was hard to figure out up from down. He continued to make wrong turns until he finally realized that the location of his planets was likely the only one with a sun. With that knowledge in mind, he spotted the brightest star in the distance and pushed himself toward it using only a small amount of kinetic force.
Each twist and turn he was forced to make allowed him to further adapt to the power his Kinetic strand gave him. By the time he was floating over Sonata, Walker felt like he had a good grasp of how many resources to use at once and where to apply them.
The glorious Creator looked down at the green moon below him; he couldn't help but watch as everyone moved about their day, likely not even realizing the man who controlled their lives was somewhere else at the moment. Oddly enough, it was nice to feel that lack of attention. He basked in the glow of being ignored far in the reaches of space, then gently pushed himself down with only a tenth of the power he'd used to leave the place.
Aiming for where he'd originally taken off from, Walker quickly sped up as the gravity of Sonata began to kick in. It wasn't powerful, but it was enough for him to feel the push from up above. Bracing his legs, Walker landed a little rougher than he wanted to, his feet stomping into the flat ground only a few feet away from the Portal system. Looking around, he spotted two entrenched marks from where he had originally taken off with more power than necessary. He had a slight laugh at the sight of the shape of his toes, now permanently embedded into Sonata's soil; A sort of reverse Neil Armstrong.
"One great leap for thievery, two bare toes for posterity," He said with a smile as he quickly walked away. Pulling the large Magic Chamber off his shoulder as he moved, he looked around. "Where do I put you?"
He spotted Virgil staring at one of the Evolution Chambers. For a second time, he felt like Virgil was watching him approach, but that didn't stop him from setting aside the Magic Chamber for a moment and flipping the giant squirrel onto his head with a smile.
"No good deed goes unpunished," He said to himself with a nod, quickly stepping away without looking back just in case the large squirrel showed some unique power. He was sure Virgil would get him back somehow, and if he was honest with himself, he was curious about what the Supreme Assistant would do. After all, there were no rubber chickens on Sonata.
Walker wandered around his green moon for a time, trying to find the perfect place. He intended to place it somewhere nobody had colonized, just in case things didn't work out as well as they should. Who knew if its previous owner had taken steps to ensure that upon its theft, it would explode on first use? Speeding around Sonata, he was having difficulty finding the correct spot. With sudden clarity, he realized what to do. The answer, of course, lay in its name.
Walker moved toward one of the Overwhelming Mana Trees and planted the Magic Chamber a few hundred yards from it, pushing the rods deep into Sonatan soil. Virgil had told him that they'd intentionally kept all buildings away from the trees in the unlikely event that they exploded. Walker didn't think it would happen, and Virgil didn't either, but they'd both agreed that caution was the best approach.
Slapping his hands together for a job well done, Walker hiked back to the portal area, what he'd dubbed in his mind as the launchpad, and re-categorized his plans. He needed to test out the Dimensional strand, test out combining it with the other two strands within its category. He also needed to see what happened when he combined it with the other two strands within the Cosmic group. And of course, the big question in his mind naturally followed.
What happened when you combined all three? Walker had yet to see what happens when three strands were combined, and he was excited to find out.
Placing his bare feet into the place he'd last launched from, literally, he applied a gentle amount of force, and a quick breath and hop later, he soared back into space. It took almost an hour of his time to move himself out to the far reaches of space. Finding the perfect area where he couldn't see anything around it for hundreds of miles was a much more difficult task than he'd ever expected. It turned out that the protocol was quite crowded, even after all of the cuts from the first and second battles of the Creator Wars. Maybe some of these planets near the distance were empty of life, and maybe they weren't, but Walker wasn't the Slicer. He wouldn't go about causing wanton destruction without good cause. At least not intentionally.
After looking omnidirectionally, tiny bursts of force causing him to circle in space, he felt that this was the place to be. Walker created a notation in his mental library for how he'd traveled to this location; that way, he'd easily find his way here and back in the future. Covering his hands in darkness, Walker created a localized Temporal zone and constricted it to a few hundred feet.
When he'd done this on Sonata and Romulus, the sphere had seemed completely transparent. But now that he had created it within the darkness of space, where very little to no light ever reached, he noticed a slight blue glow highlighting his secondary temporal bubble. It was necessary because otherwise, Sonata would be moving at the same speed as he was. By stacking the Temporal distortions on top of each other, he could move for hours while less than seconds passed on his moon. Time was always a factor in his mind. Taking a breath from his handy bag of air, he looked around.
It was finally the moment he'd been waiting for. Walker looked at his overlay and grabbed a Dimensional resource, waiting for it to appear. As the changing colors of geometric shapes appeared in his palm, he waited a moment, then took another to watch the results. When he had grabbed extra kinetic force, it hadn't increased the amount of lightning rolling across his body, but it had increased the speed at which it did so, forcing the strand to move faster and faster as each resource was added to the whole. For Space, there was no visual construct to explain how he knew he had a heavy amount of strands in his hands. But a general feeling of vastness grew in line with the resource's additions.
Dimensional strands were not like the others. As he added each new resource to the whole, the shapes grew in greater complexity. With one strand, he mostly saw circles, lines, and triangles, slowly shifting from one to another. With the addition of a second resource, quadrilaterals made an appearance. Once Walker was at five resources in the palm of his hand, Octagon's showed themselves in a kaleidoscope of color, before shifting back to a circle, a line, and so on. It was just another oddity he couldn't explain when experimenting with strands. He did notice that the shapes always moved in the same sequence each time they reset back to a circle. He wasn't sure what that meant, but it was interesting to watch in a terrifying way.
Remembering what he'd learned about using the strands in general, Walker understood he'd probably need to place this somewhere for it to react. With a great deal of trepidation, the Holder of Origin bunched up his hand, cradling the Dimensional strand, and gently tossed it out into the darkness.
He watched as the shape shifted from an octagon to a circle just before it exploded in a riot of color. The concussive force from the blast swept over him, but barely shifted him in his seat within the cosmos.
"What the fuck?" he said out loud, noting that nothing had really happened besides the explosion.
That's when his shirt tried to strangle him.
Due to the explosion, he hadn't noticed when the collar of his shirt had gently moved up and around his neck. Even if he had felt something, he wouldn't have blamed himself for not expecting it. Who thinks a shirt, a piece of fabric, would attempt murder?
Thinking quickly while still unable to understand what was happening, he reached a hand back and grabbed the formerly comfortable piece of clothing. Parts of the shirt were torn as it peeled away from him, and he mentally noted that small suction marks marred his previously pristine skin. After he tore it off, he threw it hard in the direction he believed his sun to be.
"Motherfucker," he said quietly to himself. He stood there in the reaches of space and watched as the offending piece of clothing stretched its arms towards him while slowly floating away. Even as it soared hundreds of feet from him and continued its path toward oblivion, the arms continued to strain in his general direction. As soon as it exited his secondary bubble, it froze in place as time reasserted control of the area. He briefly considered destroying the item for the sheer audacity of changing from protecting him to attacking, but he didn't know how all of the strands worked yet.
Looking down, he noticed his formerly black pants were now white.
"What the fucking fuck?" He said to himself in astonishment. "Weird, man." He finished shaking his head. Looking at his resources within his overlay again, he reconsidered using the dimensional strand by itself. Who knows what might happen the next time his uneducated fumbling made its mark? Rather than test things again, he grabbed a handful of space in his left hand. The blue vastness felt somehow comforting after his trial with Dimensional. Walker had a thought and, checking that it still worked, reabsorbed space into his overlay after a moment of effort.
"Names..." He groaned out loud. Reaching his hand out, he brought forth time and looked at the transparent strand in the palm of his hand. Space felt like vastness, whereas time itself felt like a brick wall. Just by holding it, he was influencing the idea of time within the rendition. Walker moved it over to his other hand, then grabbed space into his now empty palm. Previously, he'd always used the two strands quickly after combining them. But who said they were that volatile? Walker placed his right hand over his left and held them like that for a moment without pressing. It wouldn't do to somehow break the space-time continuum just because he felt a bit rushed.
Looking down at the palm of his hand, a semi-transparent blue flame sat in the palm of his hand. He looked at it a moment longer and realized it wasn't a flame at all, as there was no heat within it. As he pulled it closer to his eyes, it seemed more like a wave, bouncing back and forth in the palm of his hand.
"A wave of time." He said with a smile. Then, he did something he'd never done before. He tried to absorb a combined strand. The effort this time was much greater than before. At one point, he was virtually ramming his hand into his own face as the overlay refused to accept it. But, as it continued to touch, eventually, a small bit of the combined strand seeped through. A few seconds later and the whole thing was sucked up as if the System was hungry for more. Walker looked at his overlay and found what he'd expected.
Cosmic Resources:
Space Resources: 6.1k
Temporal Resources:14.34k
Dimensional Resources: 7k
??? Resources: 10
While he did think the system wouldn't know what to do with the blended strand, he didn't expect the next two series of notifications to come. The first was the same as when he'd originally gained the Godeater program.
A cascading group of images came through, his Awakened mind interpreting them to say he was walking down a path that had only been tread once before. It ended with an image he didn't recognize or understand. A tower sitting alone, high in an opaque covering of darkness. Though he saw it from a distance, he knew the tower was likely larger than anything he'd ever seen. A single red rectangle sat at the bottom, likely a doorway into whatever challenges were contained within.
The second notification was even stranger.
Space Energy: The energy of matter itself.
It allows for the temporary control of space, as well as imbuing objects with unique space-affinity properties.
??? Energy: The energy of space and time itself
It allows for the temporary control of space and time, as well as imbuing worlds and dimensions with unique properties.
Walker remembered when he'd first looked into Primordial energy when making the Territory system. That had come with examples, describing how they'd been used, while these were more barebones. It was like the protocol hadn't decided what exactly they were dealing with yet.
Looking at it, he noticed the question marks were pulsing, so he tried clicking on them.
Congratulations Dante!
As the first to discover a new strand, any future combinations, per your agreement with the Alpha Protocol Council, will automatically be siphoned to your resources.
Would you like to name your discovery?
Yes/No
Thinking of Einstein, who had first coined the term Space-Time on Earth, he considered naming it after him. But the man had rarely ever named anything after himself, so who was Walker to break that rule? Instead, he named it after something that made sense in his mind.
The Continuum strand is named.
...
.....Analyzing.....
You've discovered Space energy usage outside of the standard systems!
...
Due to your discovery, your Portal system costs are now free of charge for all future uses.
You've been granted a bonus reward for your finding!
- - -
Reward for discovering a non-standard use of Space energy:
Congratulations Dante! You've been granted bonus resources!
Your Portals have all been upgraded!
100 Primordial resources.
An amount of equal value in Space resources.
.....Analyzing.....
You've discovered Continuum energy usage outside of the standard systems!
...
error
...Adapting all future rewards due to an unexpected discovery....
...
...
...Future rewards adapted...
...
Due to your discovery, all Temporal resource requirements will be halved in the future.
You've been granted a bonus reward for your finding!
- - -
Reward for discovering a non-standard use of Continuum energy:
Congratulations Dante! You've been granted bonus resources!
You've gained the Teleportation Ability!
1000 Primordial resources.
An amount of equal value in Continuum resources.
"Ha ha!" Walker said with a hop that moved him not at all, because, you know.....space. "Now I can just teleport home after this!" He said with glee. Things were working out much better than he had expected. But that led to another thought, and he looked at the resources in his overlay again. It overlay glared at him, reminding the Creator of just how many different strands he still had to play with.
He spent a minute counting how many showed themselves and paused for a moment to think. Disallowing for the use of Primordial energy, which he was pretty sure would destroy him if he played with it, and Entropy, which he was fairly sure would eat his universe, he still had twelve overall strands to mess around with. He returned to using his mental library, pulling up a time when his teacher spoke about factoring in High School, but it was a moot point. It wasn't multiplication, but simple combining. It warped his mind to think of how many combinations there were. Nowhere in his mental library had he learned the math to calculate just how many different ways he could combine the strands. Thousands?
"Better not to think about it, Walker," He said to himself quietly, "You're an English teacher, not math, with a lowercase m." With a nod to himself and a quick curse for whoever thought math was fun, he pulled out his bag. After taking a silent breath, Walker eyed his current resources again. There was an easy solution if he wanted more resources, so he pulled the Dimensional strand out, looked at it, and then clicked on the strand description within his overlay. A notification rang up, but he didn't click on it. Instead, he pulled out each resource, weighed them out, then looked at their description and waited for each to update in his notifications.
He was very careful when pulling out the few he hadn't messed with before. Death was first, and he looked at it with quite a bit of trepidation. Making sure to firm up the darkness covering his hand, he grabbed a hold of it and held it in his palm.
It looked like nothing he expected.
A black liquid rising and falling raced in his palm, and although he looked as closely as he could, he didn't feel a hint of malice or ill will within the strand. It just continued to sit there, placidly rising and falling without a care in the world. He looked at the description and noted nothing in there speaking of Death in a negative fashion.
Walker resolved not to hold any bias towards the different strands at that moment. Each was a fundamental part of the multiverse. A part of how things were, and not something to be afraid of on their own. Nodding, he pulled out the life strand and watched as a series of green lights began to cascade off of his palm. They bounced and circled around his hand, seeming to enjoy the freedom. Of course, that freedom was not meant to be as he placed it back into his overlay.
Karma was special. It floated on his hand, a nexus of color constantly rotating in and out of it, seeming like nothing less than a bright swirl. Unlike the other strands, he felt nothing from this one. It just sat there, continuing to move and waiting for something to happen.
Essence sat on his palm as a solid purple bar of light, which confused the living hell out of him. It even had a kind of physical form, as he was able to turn it and grip it with his hand.
He remembered potential energy as the cyan of magic, but it was weird. It kept trying to form itself into strange concentric circles with odd writing on them. He'd sworn that he had seen that writing once before, but he couldn't place it.
Consciousness was a brown gas that didn't like to be pulled apart. It constantly moved, attempting to congeal back into its original form.
He had to step out of his secondary bubble and be very fast with nullification, essentially bashing his overlay, meaning his face, toward the sparks. It was a dangerous move that made him incredibly nervous. If his face and the temporal skin he was wearing right now touched the sparks, he might move in normal time, and days to months could go by before he caught up. Luckily, he was just careful enough to get it done, then reapplied temporal energy to his arm and hopped back in.
Just about done, he turned to the last strand on his list. And honestly, causality was truly strange.
From what he could remember, causality was the idea of cause and effect. At its root, causality was a form of Newton's principles, at least in a philosophical sort of way. But, physically, it was something entirely different. When he'd pulled it out, a series of blue and white strands looking very similar to spiderwebs spread across his hand. As he watched it occur, a series of images flashed in his mind, not unlike a movie in his private mental scape. He watched himself place causality into his overlay and begin to laugh. Then, it disappeared without warning, and the spiderwebs on his hand were gone. He did it again, this time using two resources, and watched the movie again, laughing. Then, he stared forward for another few minutes.
Suddenly, what he was seeing hit him. It was the future. Causality was a glimpse into the future. He laughed and placed the remaining portion of the strand into his overlay before the spiderwebs could fade again, only remembering he satisfied his mini-prophecy by doing so.
"Fucker," He said to himself. He started re-thinking using causality in the future just because of that.
Finally, he was done. Due to the similarity of the updates, his notifications all blended into one large reward when he finally looked at it.
...Analyzing...
...
...
Combined rewards for discovering a non-standard use of Strand energy:
Congratulations Dante! You've been granted bonus resources!
Evolutions will now occur twice as often in your solar system.
You've been granted the Life-Sense evolution!
You've been granted the Sensory evolution!
Your Pocket Dimension ability has upgraded!
You've gained the Shield ability!
All Magical resource requirements will be halved in the future.
You've gained the Infuse evolution!
You've gained the Multimind evolution!
You've gained the Null Field Ability!
You've gained the Prediction ability!
1000 Primordial resources.
An amount of equal value in Life, Death, Karmic, Dimensional, Kinetic, Potential Energy, Essence, Conciousness, Nullification, and Causality resources.
"Fucking random," Walker said out loud after gaining the biggest amount of rewards he'd ever received before. Still, he couldn't help but laugh again as he started to click into what everything did.
Comments
Wanderer
I guess. Btw, I sent you something on Discord.
Joshua David Mullenary
True. But, eventually, he'll have to return to everyone. Ends and means.
Wanderer
Multilayered Time dilation go!
Joshua David Mullenary
That's the idea, but, as always, time is a factor
Wanderer
He gets that many rewards for just checking out the different strands? He'll have cleaned house once he's done.
Jeremy Young
TFTC
