Chapter 309
Chapter 309
Kyon was enthusiastically doing experiments, ignoring the sound transmitter bursting with constant calls from Franz and Marina. The girl must deal with her issues herself, and the servant would have to keep his gratitude for later. If the theory was right, bright emotions didn’t go anywhere. They remained in the soul where they multiplied with time, so it was only reasonable to collect them all at once, not in little portions.
Since the very moment Lovr entered Cernos, he had been spending every free minute experimenting with the spatial attribute. The completion of the first stage of his unique body of the void had fueled his enthusiasm. It had granted him an altered state of darkness and light. They used to condense into a light fog, but now they looked more like a dense cloud. With the same energy consumption, their efficiency had slightly increased. When combined, the green glow of the spatial attribute also was more intense than before. Lovr had a gut feeling about the combination of these two most remarkable elements in the world. Their attribute couldn’t possibly be so useless in combat. He was desperately looking for their hidden possibilities.
The spatial attribute had two main drawbacks that made it rather useless. First, it was very noisy and noticeable (for the soul), therefore, it was not suitable for sudden attacks from the back. The enemy would hear an annoying buzz from behind. Second, it had poor penetration, especially into the animate matter. It took a colossal difference in cultivation to harm someone.
Over the past three weeks, Kyon had done lots of experiments: teleporting bullets, all sorts of combinations with other elements, attempts to make the attribute “quieter,” creating a shield or a mirror from enemy attacks… However, everything was useless or ineffective for battles. His improved spatial attribute only had a slightly increased efficiency compared to the other few owners, but it wasn’t enough to use it in combat.
{If only I could put it in my soul…} – Lovr mused dreamily. If only it were possible, he would teleport himself, flesh and bones. It’s hard to imagine how useful it would be in battle. Unfortunately, the soul repels any energy (except neutral) like magnets with the same pole. Trying to get inside your soul is as difficult as swimming up the waterfall. The higher the cultivation, the stronger resistance. No tools would help, be it formations or medicine. It was believed that the only way to get into a soul was doing it by force, on condition that the attacker was at least a stage more cultivated than the victim.
(When Kyon took the unique body of the void pill, he received the energy from the ingredients and spheres he had used to make it, which means it did not belong to Kyon even if it was synchronized with his frequency.)
However, Lovr was a legendary exception to the rule. He was the only one who could get into his soul with his own energy. He could do it with the help of the mind element, the lightest and the gentlest essence in the universe. His Synergy was in the middle of the student’s degree (2), but Kyon had no idea how long he should evolve until his blue energy could overcome the natural resistance of his soul.
To sum it up, no one in the world could do more than they could. It was impossible to get into the soul, even with the help of certain tools. Only Synergy could do it because it ignored natural resistance to a certain degree.
Lovr considered other options for instant teleportation.
Theoretically, he could create a teleportation formation, but he wouldn’t be able to use it himself. He would need a more developed pharmacist who needed special training anyway… However, it might be useful in the future. Kyon made a mental note to return to this question later.
There were also teleportation trigrams that the elite often used. There was one in the palace. Trigrams separate some space from the outside world with a unique barrier and send its contents to the place with another trigram. It takes a considerable amount of energy (spheres and keys), and it’s absolutely impossible to do something like this during a fight. The process requires a special pattern under the feet and a lot of time. Besides, it can be easily interrupted. Out of the question.
Kyon had been thinking if there was any other efficient way to implement his spatial attribute, but he could not find anything despite the huge library in his head. It was nothing but a pathetic non-combat attribute that could be used for spatial rings at most.
And then a creative spark flew through his minds. It was small but bright like a comet. The space inside the ring was located in a thin layer between the spiritual and the physical worlds where the singularity was observed, i.e, time practically stopped. Bread would get stale in a billion years there. What would happen to something that moved fast, a flying bullet, for example? Or large-caliber projectiles fired by artillery? A thousand artillery rounds? What if they appeared all at once?
The axioms describing spatial objects read: «It turns common sense inside out when you try to place a ring inside a ring, you fool; fear gods when you place a living thing in the ring, you are not omnipotent, sinner; may peace guide you when you place energy or matter in the ring!»
In other words, it’s impossible to place other similar objects, organisms, active energy or matter inside a spatial object.
Once, creating the unique body of the void pill, Kyon challenged the alchemy axiom that claimed that the ingredients of the opposite elements couldn’t work together. What came out of it? He created “The Cycle of Creation,” a method that made it possible to combine the uncombinable, something that could make all alchemists in the world kneel before him. Now Kyon had to create something that defied common sense again. He was counting on his improved spatial attribute to help him with it.
Kyon went on experimenting. He sent a little bit of pure energy to the ring and saw a water-thin, black as coal film emerge from it, striving to take the shape of a bubble. If he wrapped something with this film and activated the ring, the contents of the bubble would be instantly sent to the pocket located between the worlds where the singularity ruled.
The experimenter soon became convinced of the generally accepted axioms. He tried to wrap a burning candle, a flying pebble, a shaken bottle of water, ice infused with the cold attribute, and a blade of grass that contained the light element. The bubble moved the objects to the ring for a while and then returned them back and burst.
Kyon knew from the books that a spatial object didn’t differentiate between a flying stone or a reaction between baking soda and vinegar. It wouldn’t work anyway. The vector sum of “the molecular chaos” per space unit was the only thing that mattered.
In layman’s terms, overactive atoms are less likely to be moved into a spatial ring. It doesn’t matter if the molecules move in the same direction (a flying bullet) or at random (boiling water). The ring is too sensitive to contain anything in the storm. Fortunately, Kyon will never face such difficulties with his nine elements.
The elemental energy made things even more complicated. The teleportation would occur, but the ring might spit it back or even collapse, spewing all its contents out. A bit of active energy is enough.
To be more specific, the object must be at rest, the energy must be enclosed in a stable system (formation, sphere, key, medicine). It’s the only way the teleportation would happen. The process doesn’t depend on the quality of the ring. Even if the goddess creates it, the laws of the universe apply to everyone. Lovr planned to bypass the generally accepted rules, find a loophole in them and outwit god!
{Where do I begin?} – He rubbed his hands in anticipation
First of all, he needed to reach the “turning point” when further movement was impossible. Then he would find out what factors affected it. Was it possible to change them? What could he do to put, say, a thousand artillery rounds in the ring? May the scientific method help him!
Lovr filled a cup with boiling water and tried to place it in the ring. Failure. Water molecules heated to ninety degrees Celsius move actively enough to be transferred into the ring. Then he took a shot glass and tried again. It didn’t work either. He reduced the amount of boiling water to a drop. Failure again. As expected, the amount did not matter. The activity of the substance was important. The ring seemed to know that a drop multiplied thousand times would get a bucket of boiling water. The same situation was observed with moving objects. What is the difference between a stone and a grain of sand? None, from the ring’s point of view. A million flying grains released at once would make up a boulder, crushing everything in its path! Size doesn’t matter, after all. He had to look further. It was as if god had created spatial objects exclusively for storing and transporting things. Anyway, Kyon wasn’t giving up.
Kyon gradually reduced the degree, but the hot water refused to move into the ring. Only when the temperature dropped to 70 degrees, it suddenly began to work. Following this logic, Kyon tried to place an ice cube with a temperature of -71 degrees in the ring to no avail. However, heating it by one degree was successful.
{So the starting point is the freezing point of water?} – Kyon assumed, scratching the back of his head. The freezing point of water depends on the environmental conditions… What would happen if he placed the ring in a different environment? Would the starting point change? Had he found a loophole? Lovr changed the pressure around the ring with the wind element and tried to place some water at 71 degrees into the ring, all to no result…
{I see, there’s a fixed constant.} – This fact was really amazing. If there existed other inhabited worlds, the pressure there must be the same. Otherwise, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to use spatial rings in some corners of the universe! God couldn’t have allowed this as the infrastructure of any civilization on such huge planets would cease to exist without spatial objects.
The information that Kyon had learned since he was in the mine proved his theory. The length of this giant planet is 240,000 kilometers (75,000 in diameter) while the pressure, gravity and weather conditions are quite acceptable for simple carbon life! Kyon made a logical assumption that the other inhabited worlds must be similar to this one, regardless of their size and physical conditions. Anyway, it was just a theory that had no practical value.
Lovr returned to his experiments and tried to place a stone in the ring on the run. He was successful! However, when he took it out, the stone fell to the ground instead of continuing its flight…
He spent the whole day doing various experiments. Kyon began to despair. He couldn’t find any loopholes. The divine laws were flawless. Kyon tried everything. His improved spatial attribute didn’t help in any way. The task seemed impossible. Otherwise, millions of formacists in the entire history of the world would have already found something.
Kyon came up with a desperate idea to create his own spatial ring, fill it with his spatial element and put inside what he needed: flying bullets and artillery shells.
First of all, he took a small animal and prepared its keys with Synergy. He removed all energy waste and blockage and created instead countless micropores that sucked any energy into the thin layer between the worlds. It was the only proven way to get there. All spatial objects makers would fight to the death to get this ideal lab rat.
As soon as Kyon sent his elemental energy into the rat’s keys, the countless micropores in its channels started sucking it into the endless emptiness like holes in the spaceship. The energy disappeared without a trace in the merciless singularity. Synergy was no exception. Nobody and nothing could function there where time had almost stopped.
However, the spatial attribute didn’t scatter like everything else. It began to create a spatial pocket, a kind of container in the shape of a bubble. The process looked like blowing a soap bubble only a thousandfold more slowly. The harder Kyon infused it with green energy, the bigger it got. If he stopped “blowing” it up, the bubble would gradually deflate, which is only logical. If the bubble got detached, it would take a spherical shape, the shelf life of which depended on the quality of its creation. It should be attached to the formation or it would fly away forever. The formation attracts the bubble if it contains the spatial attribute with the same frequency as the bubble creator’s. That’s how spatial objects are created. In fact, god had outpictured their creation from beginning to end as they couldn’t have existed on their own.
Kyon knew that no one with cultivation below the superior phase could make even the smallest spatial pocket. A noble phaser at the peak stage could create a five-cubic-meter pocket in a week of painstaking efforts. The spatial attribute would lack cultivation to make anything bigger.
To Kyon’s surprise, he had created a ten-cubic-meter bubble in just 2 hours! It was phenomenal! Only peaking royal phasers (6) could achieve a similar result, not sooner than in a week!
The purity of darkness and light in ordinary people rarely exceeded 20%, whereas Kyon’s keys were as pure as could be as well as of better quality! His spatial attribute was a hundred times more powerful than that of people at his stage of cultivation! Besides, the perfectly prepared animal helped to create the spatial pocket with no waste of energy. That’s why it took only two hours, not a week! However, ten cubic meters were his limit at the moment, no matter how hard he would keep trying.
Kyon did some experiments with a high-quality ring he had created himself. But it obeyed the same laws as the other items. He didn’t gain anything. The water hotter than 70 degrees could not be sent inside the ring…
Kyon did not despair. He gritted his teeth and tried to study the structure of the bubble with Synergy. But the singularity canceled even the effect of the essence of the universe.
{What defies the very nature of space and time? Photons!} – Lovr recalled. By its nature, electromagnetic radiation travels at a constant speed, including the atmosphere, where it has to cover a longer way due to the numerous atoms. Even the black holes are just gravity traps for the photons.
Kyon converted his Synergy to radiation and began scanning. The spatial pocket turned out to be surprisingly sensitive to electromagnetic radiation of different frequencies. It bent at every angle and could break easily! Apparently, god had created a simple way to control all the spatial pockets of all the inhabitants of the universe.
The results were thrilling. It turned out that the spatial attribute created a barrier apart from blowing up a bubble! The barrier has two layers: an outer and an inner one. Apparently, the outer layer protects the pocket from breaking. Otherwise, its content would get lost in endless space. According to Synergy and common sense, the inner layer plays the role of a beacon and a radar at once. With its help, the spatial pocket gets connected with the formation. When the spatial object receives pure energy, the inner layer sends the information straight to the practitioner’s brain about the item location inside the pocket. It takes a single mental command to take out whatever is needed. This layer coordinates the pocket owner and ensures there’s no mistake.
{Well, god did put a lot of effort into creating spatial objects.} – Kyon thought sadly. Apparently, the creator had decided to provide the inhabitants of this universe with a convenient transport system that couldn’t be used in any other way.
Lovr got convinced that it was impossible to teleport anything inside a spatial object. It could only be placed according to the divine plan. The only thing that could exceed god’s expectations was Synergy, but inside the singularity it can only “shine.” However, the attribute of time that Kyon could hardly control created this very singularity in the physical world.
{That’s it? Am I wasting my time on these experiments? Is it time to give up? I guess so… I can’t surpass god, playing by his rules!} – Kyon looked lost for a while. Then his eyes sparkled. – {Wait! I can!}
(A.C. The channels and the keys between the worlds: https://ibb.co/kDnNgXd)