“Whatever you want.”
“Really?”
This time I try to convey how much I mean what I’m saying to her as I catch up, falling into step beside her. “Really.”
A small smile playing across her lips, she looks forward again. We walk towards Tree in amicable silence, the only thing of note that’s happening being Lola who jumps off now and then. She always comes back nibbling on some plant, flower, root, or fruit. I recognize some of the things as rare and precious treasures, some worth more than mid-grade sects back in the Cultivation World.
I’d normally scold the rabbit for plundering so many rare resources, but I know full well that Tree has all of that well in hand. Over the past month or so, Tree and I discovered that legendary fruits stop being legendary when there’s nobody around to think of them that way. Their medicinal and beneficial effects are all the same, somehow. If nobody believes that a certain tree can only bear fruit once every thousand years, it can start blooming weekly.
I’m actually suspecting Tree as being a massive perennial bully, the way it keeps manhandling other plants with forming consciousnesses. I look up at the towering golden giant, barely able to believe that the massive tree was just an ordinary plant not a year ago.
The stroll has been extremely peaceful so far, as Rhea and I just saunter. We both can move at rather absurd speeds when compared to regular walking, so the little bit of qi powered running and flying we both did is taking us hours to walk back. When we are three-quarters of the way there, Rhea sighs and turns to me, the translucent tree that has been forming above her head flickering out of existence. “What have you found out about the slightly bigger atom’s inside the core?”
I can’t hide the grin on my face as I turn to her. “You are very easy to love sometimes, you know that?” I take in the fact that she doesn’t falter in her step nor react to my off-handed comment in any physical way. The only proof that I know she heard what I said is the slowly rising blush coming up from her neck.
I avoid pointing it out – I can learn too, it seems – and spin up the illusion with all the dots again. Lola squeaks slightly, moving to my other shoulder to avoid some of the shining pinpricks. I want to ask her what she dislikes about qi-based illusions so much, but that can wait. “So, here is a part of the scan you uploaded. This is the inside of the core, and here is one of these slightly bigger atoms you found. Not bigger per se, but its surrounding particles are a sub-percentage above the average further removed. This is a minuscule detail within a minuscule detail, I still don’t know how you found this so quickly.”
Patting her on the shoulder while giving her a thumbs up, she somehow seems to lose a bit of the smile she was sporting. I was complimenting her, right? Why did she start smiling less? Unwilling to enter the unfathomable Dao of Women for now, I resume talking about my scientific theories. “And then I started finding more and more odd coincidences. The golden ratio keeps popping up in relational distances, the distribution of particles is very much non-random, yet I still can’t pin down the exact formula or algorithm used; more and more of these types of weird theories just didn’t add up.”
“So, what does the number one point six have to do with this?” she asks.
“Alright, so let’s say you are a plant,” I stop to hold up my hands. “Just indulge me, okay? You are a nice, long, beautiful and slender stalk, freshly burst through the earth. Now you grow a leaf. You want to catch as much sun as possible, so you make the leaf flat and large.” I ignore that extremely tepid stare she is sending my way and continue talking. “Now you grow a second leaf. Where do you put this leaf for optimal sunbathing?”
I keep staring at her with a questioning expression on my face until I get an answer. I apologise to Tree as I do so, as we both demolish a few trees in order to not break eye contact first. She only answers after a full ten minutes of the staring contest. “On the other side of the stem.”
“Great. Thank you for playing along. Now you grow a third leaf, where do you put it?”
“Abo-No. That will block the sun. So, let’s put the second leaf a third rotation from the first?”
“How can you be so good at statistical rule and managerial oversight, yet still suck so much at numbers? Now the fourth leaf blocks the first, you dunce! Only three leaves ever get sunlight.” I dodge the slow slaps coming my way while covering my eyes in exasperation.
“A fourth will just leave the top four leaves soaking up the sunlight. Wait…” I spot a single branch above her head light up in a bright flash, a willowy translucent offshoot appearing for just a single moment. I stare at her, and she tries very hard to look innocent. Then there is another flash of an ethereal tree, and Rhea coughs once.
“Very smooth,” I comment.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And you have been alluding to the decimal number the furthest away from any fractions, I assume? Zero point six one eight?”
“How many points did you give Ket?” I flatly ask. She doesn’t answer, but the slowly rising blush once again marking her face is answer enough for me. “Relying on other people is also a personal ability, I guess… The Dao of Mooching Off Of Other’s Intellect. Could work, but I’m not sure how you’d be able to cut earthly bonds in order to ascend.” My thoughts wander off towards far and fantastic futures for a few moments.
Returning to the subject at hand, I address her once again. “Yes. I was alluding to the golden mean. Plants that don’t follow this mathematical optimal are simply less efficient than plants that do. Only some other evolutionary advantage will then allow them to thrive, so most plants develop some form of non-fractional distribution system down the line. So, with that in mind, what does that number and these dots have in common?”
“Their distribution is done with the golden ratio as a basis?”
“It’s actually a rather weird and imperfect implementation of a n-dimensional Fibonacci sequence, but close enough.” Rhea rolls her eyes so hard it should have hurt. “It’s weird because the entire distribution is singularity based, so the manner in which you’d need to see the entir-No, Rhea, don’t walk away please! It’ll get interesting pretty soon, I swear.” She only stops jogging away from me after I throw Lola at her. “Just… Do any of these dots block access to another dot?”
“What do you mean. You lost me at fibbenacheese, to be honest.”
“Fair enough. Is any particle blocking line of sight between two other particles?” We resume walking towards Tree, which is looming rather impressive now. I ignore the constant streams of communication between Rhea and her mathematically gifted subordinates scattered around the globe and motion at Lola to stay put. Rhea is patting her absentmindedly and is stroking against her fur now and then. I stealthily hand her a precious treasure carrot, which she starts munching on contentedly as the dragoness carries her.
“This is statistically unlikely. There are no blocking points in any cube. The usual likelihood resumes the moment we start looking outside the square cores, but inside, only the central atom blocks some… Wait, it’s the connection point between all atoms?”
I nod enthusiastically. “Yeah! The slightly bigger atom is perfectly between any two atoms opposite each other, seen from the central atom.” Grinning at her in triumph, I wait for her amazing reaction.
“It’s a central point? The designer of this planet, or rather, the producer of the cores, can place atoms with impressive compression and precision. How do we go on from there? Was this worth nearly dying for?”
“Maybe, maybe not, but what is that central atom made from?”
We walk a bit longer in silence. “Not enough data.”
“Yeah. That’s the amazing part. I need to go do augur training. Usually, I can see what something is made of using the atomic radii. My augur. I can’t detect actual neutrons and protons with my liquid Will!”
“And now you see a path forwards, right?” Rhea chimes in, seeing where my enthusiasm is coming from.
“Yeah, totally
. I actually need to figure out how to train a new skill! Something unheard of! Even in the millions of years the Cultivation World had existed, no-one ever had tried augur training. Maybe it was something an early deity or ascender locked down, or maybe this is stuff meant for higher planes, but I actually need to train a whole new skill!”
“And you need to train your subatomic particle sensing skills because you need to find out what the central atom in the cores is made from,” Rhea continues, realisation dawning.
“Because once I know what kind of material is at the centre of the dungeon core’s many processing centres…”
“We can fuck them up!”
“We can take control!”
We look at each other, both grinning like mad. “Good talk,” I nod.
“Yeah. We need to do this more often,” she replies. “Why are we here again, though?”
“Ah, check the urgent issues section in Database,” I say while putting my improvised forge back into my ring. I really need to make a proper workshop one of these days.
“What in the Flight-cursed Dungeon-abandoned shit is this?”
“That’s just the entire south pole descending into madness. I thought that we should put a stop to that before things get out of hand.”
“THERE ARE A MILLION ANIMATED ICE GOLEMS MARCHING NORTH! HOW DID WE NOT DETECT THIS SOONER!” The wind picks up as Rhea looks through the report a drone delivered around the time I fixed my sword.
“I don’t know. Two new things to discover, can this day get any better?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Resumption 3
“I just want to get a clearer picture first, calm down.”
“No! There are at least a hundred ice-based creatures about to reach Rityn’s place. They’ll flatten the place without breaking a sweat.” Rhea is actually biting her nails; this must be bothering her more than I’d thought it would.
“Have a little faith in the woman, please. She isn’t one of the top earners for show, you know. And just in case, you’re not the only one keeping an eye out.” I point towards the ground, where a small thin figure is hiding behind one of the many frost-covered boulders.
Rhea and I are hovering in the air, partially hiding in the low hanging clouds, looking down on a rather frosty landscape. Far in the distance, the frozen tundra turns into towering walls of ice. Rivers of frost water bring their sparkling bounty down through wide waterways that meander through the snow-covered terrain.
Down below, a siege is playing out. A village of what can only be described as a combination between bears and Vikings is going to town on a steady stream of polar-themed mutants and weirder constructs. Animated chunks of ice and rock approaching the stone walls of the town are a good indicator that the qi levels are rising rapidly and disproportionately over here.
“Why did it take this long for your drones to find the anomaly, anyway?”
Looking over at Rhea, I see her huddled inside a luxurious fur coat. Eternal Moonglade Ghost Cat fur is as expensive as it is warm and comfortable. I keep my smirk hidden as I conclude that dragons are cold-blooded, after all. “The poles of this planet are weird. I don’t think this chunk of rock should have an electromagnetic field, as the only volcanic activity I have seen has been artificial, and there is no continental drift.”
I wait for Rhea’s aura to flicker, as it always does when a mind cultivator speeds up her perception of time in order to research something. The fluctuations don’t happen, and I remember that the agreement not to go on solo-crawls is still in effect. She just keeps looking at me, ignoring the carnage and slaughter that’s happening below us.
“This planet doesn’t seem to have a molten core. It’s as dead as a doorknob. We should all be frying from the cosmic rays put out by the sun, but I think that – once again – the moon is doing some weird stuff in that regard. Or maybe the satellite network? Long story short, the amount of harmful radiation touching down on the north and south pole is enough to destroy the finer components of my drones.”
“Those x-ray, beta, and gamma-ray things?”
“Among others. The poles also seem to be some form of dumping grounds, as the amount of falling stars and meteorite impacts is way above the norm at the terrestrial poles.”
“That’s why this is happening now? How bad is this?”
“Not that bad. The mutants are all specialised for cold survival and radiation resistance. The ambient golems will either melt or become inefficient due to the fact that they’ll need to expend massive quantities of qi to keep themselves cooled the further north they go. The animated piles of rock might be a problem, but not really. They are extremely easy to take down once you know how to handle them.”
“Does this usually happen? Why wasn’t the cultivation world covered by the things?” Rhea waves at the fight happening below. The partially fur-clad people governed by a rather soft-looking purple-skinned woman are holding the line with surprisingly little effort. I observe the much-changed place once again.
Looking over the earliest photos I have on file for this place, I recognize very little. The main road is still here, the previously dirt path now paved by neat cobblestones. The largest of buildings also still remain, if much changed. What used to be a small collection of wooden huts and longhouses is now a thriving, late-medieval settlement. Stone huts have replaced wooden shacks, and the number of places belching thick clouds of industrious smoke into the heavens has gone from one to dozens.
Even now, while under attack of a medium-sized wave of mutants and qi beings, I see minecarts filled with ore returning from the mines. Large and bulky men and women carrying logs over their shoulder, returning from the retreating forest line. I think it’s hilarious how they look like murder hobos while gingerly avoiding all the newly planted saplings. Others are working neatly cordoned fields, using their scarce qi to coax the plants into growing. Smiths, woodworkers, masons, and all kinds of craftsmen are busily hammering, sawing, and carving away. The town’s growth is visible to the naked eye, and at the centre of it all is a single purple woman.
“These beings,” I reply while gesturing to the mixed crowd of hostile creatures below, “only spawn in areas with large concentrations of qi that have gone totally feral. The most energetic parts of the otherwise inert matter are multiplied many times over. Bacteria, for example, either break stuff down or eat other creatures. If a particularly aggressive type of bacteria is prevalent in an area, there’s a good chance its nature starts to override the meaning behind the local qi with some aspect of this bacteria. Often, the cores of those golems are small critters that either got in over their head or clumps of native life that grew out of control.”
“And will we need to fight this stuff everywhere?” Rhea is thumbing her earlobe again, something I’ve started recognising as her worrying about something she cares about.
“They all come from afar. The ambient qi needs to go totally feral, and sapient beings that use their spiritual senses prevent that. Higher concentrations of qi can still cause this anomaly when the cultivator residing over that area is too weak, though. This is also why people have tended to cluster around powerhouses back in the Cultivation world. The qi was already pre-chewed, so to say, less wild, and less tempestuous.”
“Rityn has submitted some reports to Database,” Rhea slowly says after some more minutes of spying on the town, “but her reports are a total understatement. I want to help them.”
“No need. She isn’t here by accident, you know. Even Bassik is keeping an eye on her, and he won’t miss a thing. Have you seen his village, by the way? They got so sick of him knowing everything about them that they all either became eyecore’s or they just left. Eye-based powers are super weird.”
“Stop thinking of all of this as funny, Drew!”
“But it is funny! Everyone has it all well in hand. Except for Bord maybe, but he is doing fine in his own way, dragon or no. We just need to make sure that the seeds we’ve sown can keep growing, and that we take ca
re of the true threats that can wipe them out before they can put up a fair fight.”
“Is that why we’re all the way down here? Not even the Flight dares go this far south.”
“With good reason. I’ve seen surprisingly little measures against excessive DNA damage inside your body. Except for your dragon-form reproductive organs, they could survive a nuclea-” My clinical analysis is interrupted by a furious Rhea, her face red as a beet as she madly tries to claw my eyes out. “Alright, I’ll stop talking about your bits! Stop assaulting me, Bassik has noticed us!”
Recognizing a lost battle when I see one, I decide to flee. I wave to the skulking man far below – who hesitatingly waves back before shaking his head and returning his penetrating gaze to his wife – and start flying further south. I keep dodging Rhea, who has partially transformed into a dragon at this point, as I deflect the most dangerous attacks with my sword.
We fly over the slowly encroaching groups of monsters, coming across more and more elemental beings the closer we get to the vast ice planes. Pretty soon, the rocky tundra below us is replaced by thick ice, and the amount of randomly milling about beings increases. My drones have managed to map this area just fine. It’s when they got within a few thousand kilometres of the geographic south pole that they started having all these mysterious failures, most simply vanishing without a trace.
And the south pole is pretty large, without any human presence like the Inuit back on Earth. The most southern sign of life I have discovered is the village we just left behind, well taken care of by Rityn. “Wait a sec, Rhea. I promise that I won’t make fun of your draconic stuf-Yes, yes, stop throwing Lola at me, I’ll shut up.”
I really need to stop grinning at the woman. I catch Lola, who I narrowly dodged a few seconds ago, and appease her by scratching her between the ears. If only all females were as simple as this shitty little rabbit.
“You better. Is that what you wanted me to see?”
The Dao of Magic: Book IV Page 15