472 The Insanity of Progress

By the time I got back to Rebirth, it felt like I had spent a lifetime gaining new experiences. I went back to my room at the center of Rebirth's capital. Before I learned more about the fractals, I blinked a few times. This burgeoning city still lacked a name, and it was about time to give this planet's capital something to remember it by.

A few ideas popped into my head before I opened my system menu.

New Capital Name Accepted!

Renewal - the City of New Beginnings

Chapter Begin

Heading to my study chambers, I sat down surrounded by books brought here from old Earth. Authors from a more peaceful time rested their aggregated knowledge here, each of them offering an ambiance and respect for learning. To further that end, I took a moment and planned out a few adjustments to the room.

Firstly, I carved out a rectangular pit in the stone, leaving sheek marble the primary material for the elegant holding cell. As I crafted the structure, I unpacked several of the time leylines and incorporated them into the walls. After building several of these wells in the room, I raised a hand over the dark drop-off.

From my fingers, primordial mana poured as a dense ichor. In time, the precise energy bubbled from the vats, leaking out energized effervescence. The leylines siphoned in the dark blue miasma, converting it into cleansed, temporally charged flows. In minutes, a temporal dilation chamber formed, and I relished the sensation.

But I would go further.

Taking more steps, I put heated leylines from Firamnia's territory above me. Each of them planted onto the roof as charged, frenetic markers, and I put them in vats along the roof. As I had before, I constructed many holding cells for energized plasma. For these dolloping stones, I filled the vats with ascendance. Like an air purifier filtering besmirched air, these vats funneled the ascendance into the mana of sacrifice.

Their energies coursed through the room, and I soaked them into myself. Will and vitality surged into my mind, burning through my life force to enable extraordinary output. Taking the time mana in, I experienced a further hastened temporal flow, one guided by my newfound awareness of my dimensional wake.

As I soaked in the leyline's outpour, I pressed my wake into my surroundings. Hours later, I carved out a domain, one where I held absolute authority. Inside the changed spacetime, I soaked the Rise of Eden into the space. After drenching it, I held both Perfection's Providence and Event Horizon as a dual-dimensional wake.

I held up my hands, an overwhelming power surging through me. I could hardly contain the sheer vibrance of life in this prepared space. It gave me so much clarity, time, and overwhelming might. As I organized my thoughts, I considered my options. For starters, I had to understand the fractals, their mechanics, and how they operated in tandem with Schema's runic language.

However, the fractals weren't my only task. I also wanted to refine my psionic magic so that I wouldn't fall to some other psionic entity. While Shalahora's training gave me the ability to go full-on berserk mode using my psionics, the tutelage hadn't given me an actual understanding of mind magic's depths.

That consequence was an innate reflection of Shalahora's abilities. He wielded a psionic might that, if my theory was correct, centered on laws. He didn't know or understand the technical details because he didn't need to. Instead, he applied his overwhelming tools to full effect, and in that regard, Shalahora was potent.

On the other hand, Torix's techniques, applications, and fundamentals held strong against anyone and anything. Hell, I still fought back the mind virus after several months because of Torix's lessons. I also gained tremendous mental fortitude and psionic resilience. I never wanted this to be a weakness again, so I would seal this weakness deep below a mountain of competence.

And that stemmed from Torix's approach. His angle was a resounding success even against the highest level of foes. Mirroring him, I would hone my psionics to a piercing sword that rivaled the lich's ingrained talents. At the same time, I compressed my temporal flow, attempting to wield my dimensional wake without blending my brain to do so.

All of this took place as the new mana types coursed into me, giving me a greater understanding of their principles and qualities. I wouldn't be able to generate the mana types for a long time, but I gained a firm foundation to build on by immersing myself in them. Time warped under the will of my mind, and I breathed in the charged air.

It tasted like sweetened copper, and it cleared my mind. I closed my eyes and began. To start off my training, I dedicated a part of my many psyches to mind magic. A psionic war broke out inside my head, and a bloodbath began. Lines formed as they grouped together and formed alliances.

Their struggle would not end for many days and nights.

Around the psionic Daniels, scholarly ones studied the fractals and tested out various applications. I didn't need to move for supplies since everything I needed was in my pocket dimensions or the dimensional tears I carried.

At this point, I hauled twelve large ones at all times. They gave me an endless abundance of raw resources or eldritch to test theories on. Humane theories, mostly. Using those resources, I crafted an endless number of fractals while sitting there. Gravity and telekinesis acted as the tools I carved with, and they far exceeded the dexterity of my hands.

Each test yielded some kind of result, from deafening explosions to radiant displays of detail. As I tested these results, the fractal's mysteries cleared in my mind. What was once an enigma faded from an endless pursuit of knowledge, and as I expected, the fractals operated on mana and mana alone.

Unlike the cipher, the fractals relegated themselves to our banal reality, and they didn't change the rules of nature or bend the laws of physics. Another supposed detriment came from their demanding natures. They required power to continue powering whatever they tried applying. That mana-based specialization made the fractals far better than either Schema's runes or the cipher at that particular task.

This meant they worked well in specialized tasks requiring insane precision. It was kind of like having someone who dedicated themselves to only one profession instead of many. They ended up being better picks for involved, difficult jobs. For that reason, the fractals could handle much higher levels of detail in the mana they used.

Transistors, chips, and machinery, all of it could be composed from only these repeating patterns. In fact, it was likely how the leylines gained some of their conversion abilities, though they also had carvings on them, not just etched lines. Those mysterious waystones were a mystery for later, and I'd try to handle them after understanding these symbols.

It didn't take long to verify a few assumptions about the fractals either. Firstly, they were almost certainly what Schema was coded with. As an aside, I mean the AI's coding, not what it changes other people with. Schema likely incorporated the cipher to augment people, as it was a far more energy-efficient way of doing so.

On the other hand, I always wondered how the AI used the cipher to drive certain functions like portals, hosting servers, or handling informational tasks. Given how large and sprawling Schema's functions were, it had to use a more precise, mana-based language. The fractals were the missing piece.

Their precise partitioning of functions was how the AI wielded such enormous volumes of data so easily and offered such potent public utilities. That, and I didn't think Schema was willing to use something as messy as the cipher when composing its personal self or functions. In fact, by giving me the skill for fractals, Schema gave me the ability to create AIs and complex machines like computers.

Would I? Hell no. That was a problem for someone else to solve, like Diesel or some unknown prodigy. I stuck to practical applications, of which there were many. I outlined many of the replacement features that the fractals would be superior for. These symbols could replace most of our infrastructure for public utilities, my psionic networks for cities, and our communication network.

Pretty much anything that used large structures of information would be improved. These patterns were also better in certain kinds of magic. The most potent upgrades would be to rituals, static effects, bombs, and alteration magic. Each of those styles had serious issues due to the inherent instability of mana.

For instance, if a ritual had even one contrasting mana flow, the entire operation fell apart. Static effects were similar when done with the cipher. They could be turned volatile and warping if the corrupting influence of mana wasn't taken into account. That was a huge reason I hadn't branched out with my own personal experimentation regarding the cipher.

It was too risky, and alteration magic was much the same. It turned out that transmuting atoms and objects required finesse. Who'd have guessed? That's why the fractals could help out in those fields, giving them an effective renaissance. To ensure that process, I created an alphabet for the fractals. They had well over 900 unique patterns from what I could tell, though a linguist would probably consider my assumption a mockery of their field.

But still, I persisted. I pored over these symbols time and time again, and no matter how much I inspected my memories, I couldn't break the language down further. As a tangible example of such, each of these 900 patterns generated a different effect if someone channeled mana through them.

It gave the language a range that many Earth languages couldn't hope to compare to, but that didn't stop me from trying. I etched the fractal characters into my dimensional fabric to create gear, taking an approach based on English. It took hours, and when done, I admired the work. The fractals were astonishingly beautiful if not labor-intensive.

While visually stunning, the fractals had a much weaker effect than the cipher. It was genuinely disappointing, and it made the language look like yet another lukewarm imitation of the ancient, odd sigils. Despite the setbacks, I didn't believe this was the case. The crystals Emeralga used had an insane potency, something that could've decimated entire empires if used well.

And I wanted that ability for myself.

That's why I tackled the problem from different angles. Considering the fractal language had characters, I assumed they also had associated sounds. It reminded me of the time I tried speaking in the cipher, and a chill ran down my spine. To do so was to command the universe to bend. It sounded impossible, yet I doubted that was the case.

I thought the cipher would always be esoteric and unknowable. Now, my ideas differed. My opinion was that the cipher was the language of the dimension we occupied. It acted on the fabric of reality but not reality itself. That separation, while sounding like a bunch of nonsense, was essential.

It was like playing a board game. Most operations in any game were based on rules. Fractals were a lot like that. They changed things within bounded parameters. Using them well would be like skillfully and tactfully maneuvering through a board game's minutiae. The cipher was the equivalent of house rules. Above and beyond the game itself, the players could use house rules to change the game to suit themselves and their playgroup.

The cipher did that to our actual cosmos.

So, theoretically, speaking in the cipher could change the universe if someone held enough power. While it wouldn't be as difficult for most people, I was separate from this realm. I had a sinking suspicion that whenever I spoke out with the cipher, the universe would speak back, and I wasn't ready for that yet. I would be one day, but for now, I pursued other topics.

Such as the fractals, which just so happen to lack that ominous feeling of doom. However, I lacked any idea of what sounds the fractals could make. To be fair, the cipher didn't even sound like human speech, and the tones it used were well outside human perception. In fact, the only reason I might've even spoken it was because some outside force had wanted me to. Once again, another ushering of fear crawled forth like roaches from under the cracking floorboards.

The fractals likely implemented a similar philosophy. Not knowing where to start, I tried speaking for hours to find some odd combination of sounds. Aside from gaining a beatbox skill, that process yielded little in the way of tangible results, but I had time on my side. I dove into more experiments, spending several weeks on the project. After several hundred hours of dedicated work from sixty Daniels, I made a breakthrough.

Instead of trying to speak the language by talking, I wielded mana to compose sounds. I hovered over a variety of cubes, ones that represented different elements of nature. Shaking, vibrating, and oscillating, these cubes pulled out different sounds. In tandem, I soaked manas into them.

I tried different polygons, and after several hours of playing around, I gained a notification.

Breakthrough Achieved! Antediluvian Fractal Fluency | Level 60 ---> Level 85

I leaned back in my meditation spot before raising a hand. It was a huge burst in the skill, but more than that, it verified my assumption. Taking a few of the fractals, I kept trying out different sounds with them until I felt a strange resonance build. Each symbol required hours of effort to find its resonant note, but I gained a far better understanding of them after a while.

Each symbol I found held a corresponding pitch. I got a grasp on what those notes were, each one uniquely different and inflected to sounds I couldn't make with my mouth. If anything, these were much more in line with something a musical instrument would make. That thought gave me an idea.

I made my own fractal on a panel of my dimensional fabric. Wielding a complex set of elemental polygons in one hand, I warbled, vibrated, and shivered the materials. They resonated with the fractals, and the fractals began to glow. They harmonized, and as I followed the sounds of the many patterns, an eerie melody saturated the room.

It was music.

These weren't only symbols for mana but also a set of strange, alien songs. I listened to the tones, finding the melody soothing yet equally discordant. Taking a moment, I inspected the shifting virus from Emeralga. It let out whispers and a discordant drone that seemed to erode my sense of self and sanity.

It grated my mind while opening up new possibilities in tandem. As I continued my studies, a skill popped up.

New skill learned! Antediluvian Fractal Resonance | Level 11 - In many regards, those who learn of these symbols relegate them to mere informational transfer. However, they operate on more than simple thoughts or ideas - they reverberate with emotion. In doing so, they guide the mana of the user, helping them to achieve mental states they would otherwise be unable to summon forth.

You've learned this and more, pulling yourself into a strange world guided by sound and thought alike. Wield it well.

+11% to Antediluvian Fractal Resonance harmonization

+11% to Antediluvian Fractal Resonance effect

It was a long skill name, but it pointed me in the right direction. It also made me wonder if I could do the same with the cipher or Schema's runes. After hours of wasted effort, I couldn't achieve anything that gave even an inkling of hope for those two languages. Well, kind of. The cipher made otherworldly bellows and wails that felt like they tore at reality.

Was it the good kind of tearing reality? Eh, probably not, but I really wasn't the best source of judgment on the subject. On the other hand, Schema's runes created clashing, jarring sounds more akin to a trash compactor than music. In fact, the sheer dissonance made them seem purposefully made to sound horrid.

Moving on from those abysmal failures, I took on the project of composing music. Yeah, I was never much of a musician, but humans have had a history of learning rhythms. I'd do the same. After many hours, I achieved some feel for the process, eventually playing out simple sets of fractals while channeling mana through them.

It augmented their effects, giving them a far better range. If the rune was relegated to increasing temperature, its corresponding melody stretched that effect to also speed up objects. If I continued a tune, it gained a psionic effect over time. Unlike the cipher or mana, which took over a person's thoughts, these notes induced my own emotions. It came from within.

Which, it just so happens, was once again a lot like music. Taking a few pieces of gear, I drew fractals onto their surfaces, trying out some enchanted gear once more. I wore the pieces and played their corresponding melodies. The impact was palpable. It was like the difference between reading out a song's lyrics versus playing the song in full.

A haunting melody spread across the room, and each piece of armor augmented my abilities more than Schema's runes would. They still lacked the cipher's potency, but the fractal's stability and lack of a corrupting influence more than made up for that gap in potency. After all, the cipher's influence had evolved into a serious problem in my guild.

My legacy, while potent, had resulted in many weaker-willed individuals losing their minds. That was the case with my gear and rings, especially. My people had even developed a name for those consumed by their armor - the lost. The other half of that stemmed from how necessary my armor was for success.

If someone wanted to be competitive in the legion, they had to use both. That meant many of our soldiers couldn't handle the amount of influence on their minds at all times. They needed many breaks for recuperation, and while our warriors dwarfed most other guilds' fighters, we lacked a numerical edge due to our mental limitations.

That sounded more scathing than I intended, but regardless, these fractals changed all of that. I could use fractals for the gear alongside instruments made to create this resonance. Battle musicians could follow our warriors who wore these fractals. I could also create separate tiers for cipher and fractal-based artifacts.

The different battalions could even help incentivize discipline and the like. However, I had to admit that having my warriors run in with theme music sounded kind of absurd. To test the theory, I made a few tiny golems and gave them simplistic fractal gear. They rode forward as I played their fractal melody.

Glowing bright, the lines gave them immense strength without the same mind-altering effects as the cipher. It imbued a sense of radiant calm based on the fractals I put in, and I could even channel more mana into them in general. By the time I finished, the tiny golems sprinted forward like lightning berserkers across a field of corpses.

Or, you know, tiny, toy-sized golems running across the room. Same thing, really.

My hyperbole aside, the fractal song melded into the room, becoming a backdrop to their charge. It gave them a unity that legions lacked, and their minds became hard as steel. I smiled at the sight before sending them off to act as tiny golem helpers. In fact, making tiny golems for a city's maintenance was an idea worth exploring later.

I put that idea down before taking my experiments a step further. I etched a few of the fractals into my own armor. It gave lesser effects than the cipher, but damn did it look better. It was something I hadn't mentioned much, but the fractals were mesmerizingly beautiful. They were elegant, refined, and just felt right.

On the other hand, the cipher was utilitarian, pernicious, and was just wrong. Despite that dissonance, I couldn't shake an idea out of my head. Something about the two languages reminded me of Schema's runes. What about it? Well, that Schema created a deformed marriage of these two distinct sigil languages.

That's what they really were - languages with means of organizing the energy and flows of a wider cosmos. One basked in harmony and the other relished in corruption, but they both aimed at directing the flow of power in one way or the other. If I could take the precision or stability of the fractals and combine it with the cipher's potential or power, then I'd gain an all-encompassing runic language.

In theory, at least. Still, I couldn't help but get the feeling that it would result in a far greater language than either of them. What was the key to that union? In their melodies. To me, Schema's language was a harsh discordance. It forced two opposing concepts together, making each side weaker.

My gut told me the AI did that on purpose for some reason, but his fusion wasn't completely flawed. It still operated as the primary magical language for Schema-owned space, after all. Praying upon that premise, I carved out different sections of the AI's runic language and corrected them via sound. It didn't take long before I hit many snags in the process.

The idea held promise, but it would take many years to fully hone down the process to a razor's edge. Taking a break from that, I pivoted into several days of etching fractals into plates of my armor. It took quite a while before my psyches stopped debating on the final designs, but they ensured decent results for each piece. In the end, I gained another skill.

New skill learned! Antediluvian Fractal Etching | Level 11 - Many peer at the depths of the world, and they cower. They dismiss. They accuse. You have chosen to take it upon yourself to master the unknown and within the foreign, you have found function. Allows the user to etch fractal lines more effectively.

Antediluvian Fractal Etching +11% to precision

Antediluvian Fractal Etching +11% to harmony

I took a breath before diving into the runic work. It was a familiar feeling, and I couldn't help but remember my time learning Schema's runes from Torix so long ago. It washed me in warm nostalgia. Feasting upon that feeling, memories of Baldag-Ruhl and my armor's original cipheric ritual flooded my mind.

It left a smile on my face. From the death of one emotion, another was born, and nostalgia gave way to inspiration. Like reliving the past, a memory coursed into my mind. It funneled in as I recalled many details about that ritual. I pored over images of the rite and its intricacies, but my mind drifted from its usual focus.

Instead of perusing over the forms and formatting of the cipher, I admired the composition of the entire ritual. The tunnels helped frame the entire ritual; many of them were made for that express purpose. I always wondered why Baldag-Ruhl had done that, and then it dawned on me. The tunnels of the ritual had been fractals.

Baldag-Ruhl layered the runic language inside a fractal-based framework. The sheer complexity of the project left me once again floored by his and Alfred's ingenuity. Their combined mental might, to this day, exceeded anyone's I'd ever seen, and as if gazing at eternity, I could finally understand a piece of it.

I got to work, setting up layered projects of my own. I toiled in a relentless fervor, tearing through piece after piece. Each plate was a greater failure than the last, yet I carried no remorse or frustration. I only held onto that fading feeling of comprehension. I nursed it, fueling it by churning through my heated leylines and dragging it out using time magic.

After several hours, the spark of ingenuity dimmed to nothing. Around me, piles of intricate runic assortments littered the ground. They shined a light on my lacking ability, and doubt crept into my psyche. I crushed it. I held it down and drowned it in a well of determination. As I had pursued survival at the end of my fights, I pursued this knowledge using the same desperation.

This was not a time to consider anything other than what I'd been inspired by or given creative license for. Even as the epiphany faded to a mere echo, I carved. I ceased the mind magic practice, putting only the bare minimum minds needed to hold back the plague. I cut off extra senses, closing my eyes, locking my hearing, and eliminating my sense of touch or taste.

I peered at the darkness from closed eyes, and I saw patterns and shapes of profound complexity. I held onto them, keeping them close to my chest. I rode this wave for days, then weeks. It continued until the failures grew less blatant. The piles of junk carried a semblance of mysticism or complexity. What was once garbage was now good, and what was simple was now sublime.

In a sudden surprise, I created what I was searching for. On a panel, I carved the runes needed to make a room slightly warmer. These were as simple as cipheric intent got, but I wrote them in a continuous, flowing pattern - these were the fractals for increasing temperatures. Something about this piece felt right to me, but I had nothing tangible to go on.

I trusted my instincts. I flipped it in all directions before facepalming. I pulled out a series of cubes from different materials. After generating an odd melody, the runic lines hummed to life. I smiled as they gained a tangible, potent effect. The sound was no longer an ambient melody. It was the sound through one's soul, a sensation given life.

It coursed into the room, becoming a living, tangible thing. It raged. It roared. It held onto the foundation of reality and commanded it to bend to its will. At that moment, I was immersed in a palpable wrath, and it left me grinning with bloodshot eyes. This was the direction of my runes and my future growth.

I had finally done it. I had taken a step forward after so long, and while I hadn't unlocked all of these runes' potential by any means, I achieved a potent skill unlock.

New Unknown Skill Unlocked! 500 skillpoints awarded! Cipheric Fractals | Level 11 - The language of the Old Ones isn't something to be taken lightly, yet you have done so. Through uncompromising experimentation, you have turned the language of esoteric gods into a more worldly tongue. In doing so, you have unlocked a more stable and reliable writing style.

+11% to Cipheric Fractals' precision

+11% to Cipheric Fractals' potency

+11% to Cipheric Fractals' duration

I let out a mad laugh at my success. While I still had a ways to go before achieving Baldag-Ruhl's competence, I took my first real step in getting there. On that day, while the memory and runes were fresh, I attempted more carvings and channelings of mana. I experimented using the sound, creating and crafting in a joyous burst of creativity.

I uncovered a few of the oddities of these runes. Firstly, they mirrored the cipher's effects as the actual space around me changed. As expected, the cipheric fractals inherited the increased ambient temperature of the fractal side, but they carried it out onto the dimensional space. As I continued my experimentation, that point became ever more salient.

The fractal's precision could be used to direct the inherent chaos of the cipher. It wasn't a fully realized idea, and once again, it would take time to perfect. In that regard, it was akin to a dull block of some rare metal. I had to grind the unrefined block into a sword, and that would take many, many years.

However, this was the exact kind of breakthrough I'd been needing for so long. Even after all these years, I still only increased base stats with the cipher. This could be the first part of taking that next step into more, like trees or perks constructed from the ground up. I may even carve out cipheric fractals that helped give perks or trees to people.

That excitement bloomed in my chest before I stood up to refill the leyline's mana reserves. Every few days, I had to do this, and I got into the rhythm of doing so as they emptied out. Taking the time to check the date, my eyes widened in my skull. It had been four months in real-time. Even seeing the date made my chest swell in panic and terror, but before my emotions clouded my thoughts, I closed my eyes and took a breath.

All would be fine. Even though I couldn't keep track of the amount of time I spent on this project, I did check on my status every once in a while. I kept putting points into my attributes and returning messages as needed. From what I gathered, nothing exploded while I was gone. I just...I hadn't anticipated sitting in this single spot for such a long time.

It really wasn't that insane, considering I didn't need food, water, or even air. Those activities distracted people from intense streams of focus, and my augmented stats allowed me to handle much longer bursts of intense concentration as well. In general, people could get lost in projects for far longer in a systemized world.

And yet...Damn, four entire months. If I factored in my temporal magic and various augments, I had sat here for decades of experienced time. In fact, I might've lived more life here in this room than outside of it. Taking a deep breath, I put my head in my hands. I was at an impasse.

As a guildleader, I didn't know what to do whenever these bursts of inspiration hit me. On the one hand, they gave me palpable results. I would never reach Baldag-Ruhl's level without them. To broach that hivemind's insane skill, I had to do something equally insane, like sitting in a spot for decades. At the same time, I left my guild in a precarious position.

Still, this time I messaged and warned everyone what was to come. I tidied up everything before I went into this concentrated study session. Ah man, there had to be a phrase for that, but I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head. Anyway, I stood up, and wafts of dust floated off of me.

I shook it off, and the particles fell off me like a tiny, lint sandstorm. After going downstairs, I found several surprises. First of all, Althea was waiting with her hands on her hips. She glared at me.

"What have you been doing all this time?"