Chapter 94: Inventory

Rory next awoke to the sound of someone pounding on his door. Dragging himself from his bed, which he had collapsed upon, Rory yanked the door open moments later.

“What?” Rory grunted, annoyed to have been woken up.

“Figured,” A rather disheveled-looking Apostolos sighed as he saw Rory.

“Figured what? And what’s with you? What dragged you through the mud?”

“Oh, you know, just the warning that space was collapsing by the bound circle. You can imagine that wasn’t great for the calm and collective of the citizens.”

“Huh,” Rory scratched at his chin, taking in the news. “You said space was collapsing?”

“Quite literally got an emergency notification and event relating to it,” Apostolos answered, staring at Rory with a fixed expression. “Some serious space warping had happened hours earlier, gradually collapsing inward. If it weren’t for the fact that it had been done within a bound circle, it likely would have escalated faster than I could have managed to handle.”

“But you handled it,” Rory nodded to Apostolos, patting him on the shoulder. “Look at you, all grown up and taking charge of emergencies.”

“Yeah, sort of not the point,” Apostolos muttered. “No one else here is good enough to manipulate pneuma or space-aligned concepts to have prevented it from spiraling out of control.”

“What about Violet?” Rory offered, deflecting once more.

“She’s good, but not as good as me,” Apostolos said matter-of-factly. “The fact that she has always had actual combat skills means her practical skill with freeform magic isn’t the same as mine. Anyway, that is still not the point. What the hell did you get up to?”

“And how do you know it was me?” Rory asked, feigning defensiveness.

“Based on the residue of the burnt-up gems used, they were better than anything anyone else has, much less what anyone else can burn up so easily. It didn’t take much to put two and two together. Also, space concepts, your void diamond, again, not much of a reach.”

“Fine, fine.” Rory shrugged, as there was no point in denying it. “I had a breakthrough in my understanding and didn’t feel like waiting. Turns out, it worked.”

“What worked? And why couldn’t you have just waited until morning?”

“I already said I didn’t feel like waiting. And my breakthrough was this-” Rory turned around, snatching the void diamond and showing it to Apostolos whose face instantly narrowed.

“Why does it feel like something is blaring to catch my attention from it?”

“Give it a feel, magically that is,” Rory said.

Apostolos looked at Rory with an expression that said he clearly didn’t want to, but after a moment, his face slackened. It lasted for only a five-count before Apostolos staggered back.

“What the heck was that?” Apostolos uttered. “It was like-”

“Like an ascension?”

“Yeah, sort of.” Apostolos agreed.

“Indefinite Firmament. It’s a region of esoteric space that doesn’t physically exist but is still anchored to physical reality. Anchored to something like the void diamond, it’s far more stable than even the region of esoteric space we experience upon an ascension, as those last only for as long as the ascension takes, partially maintained by the energies of ascension. I had to forcibly expand the spatial coordinates within a singular point, which likely caused the unraveling of space as an aftereffect. Something I’ll make sure to note for any future work,” Rory muttered the last part to himself, having not accounted for spatial distortions to ripple outward, his initial efforts had been mostly brute force and were a far cry from elegant.

“Alright, that’s interesting, but why?”

“I think I told you already—an inventory. You can’t just overlap matter; space doesn’t like that. Maybe you could sustain it temporarily with magic, but it wouldn’t be a long-term, stable effect. But if you shrink a region of space, fold in inward, and then inject it inside of an Indefinite Firmament, the physical space becomes intangible, residing in the space between spaces so that-”

“Right, sure, sounds good.” Apostolos cut him off, shaking his head. “Honestly, barely understood any of that. My question is, will you be doing any more weird space stuff?”

“Something potentially destructive like that?” Rory turned his head upward for a second, thinking before he shook his head. “No, not really, at least not to the scale of expanding a conceptual region within a singular point of a physical medium, thus leading to-”

“Got it,” Apostolos again interrupted, sticking a hand out to stop Rory from lecturing. “Next question, what can I do to help you so that you aren’t freaking out our citizens?”

Rory considered the question before nodding. “So, there are three last steps. I need to rearrange the Indefinite Firmament. I sort of ‘yanked’ the space larger than it needs to be or really should be. I plan to re-shrink it, so that the firmament is, well, firmer so that we -or more specifically so that I- don’t have a repeat of the little space collapsing distortion you had to deal with.”

“Seems like a smart idea.” Apostolos concurred. “What else?”

“I’ll have to fold space in the real world, before finally actually injecting that real space into the Indefinite Firmament.”

“How long will this all take?” Apostolos sighed, rolling up the sleeves of his tunic.

“About… one afternoon?”

“Wait, seriously?” Apostolos seemed taken aback. “Usually, your projects take days or weeks on the short end.”

“This isn’t really that complicated,” Rory said before reconsidering his words. “It’s not that complicated if you know what your do or have a pretty good idea in my case. That would be a different story if I didn’t have the void diamond, a lot more would have to go into making something suitable for housing the singularity point of an Indefinite Firmament, but with everything we’ve got on hand, it shouldn’t take too long. With you offering your services, it will be faster as I don’t have to split my focus on maintaining stability while I work.”

“Great, well let’s get to work so I don’t have to handle this again.”

---------------------------------

Rory hadn’t been lying when he’d said most of the stuff left to handle wouldn’t be difficult or laborious to handle. First was shrinking the overly expanded Indefinite Firmament to a more stable and manageable size. Returning to the community bound circle, Apostolos oversaw looking out for any fluctuations with local space, noticeable by the movement of Pneuma, while Rory repeated his earlier process, except pushing inward rather than outward. As it turned out, compressing space was far easier than expanding it.

Which will make the next step much easier.

Once that was handled, Rory ‘entered’ the space, examining it. It had shrunk from many meters in any given direction, to a tad smaller than the average college dorm on Earth. Prodding at the firmament of the Indefinite Firmament, Rory was pleased to find that it felt far more ‘study’ to his sense of space.

For the next phase, they made a quick jaunt to the Maw, heading to the second floor. Using some of the control he had over the first two floors of the Maw, Rory quickly created a cave that was almost exactly the same size as the space within the indefinite firmament.

“I appreciate you taking this out of the city,” Apostolos said as he stared at Rory’s back. “But what’s the reason for coming all the way here?”

“You know how we’ve got Fabricate Material for the city, right?”

“Yeah, the secondary build material.” Apostolos nodded. “Makes building a shit ton easier from John’s comments.”

“Well, there is a similar sort of system here. Normally collapsing space would probably have somewhat… energetic results -space doesn’t like patches of true emptiness-so with these patches devoid of even space, real space rushes to fill the holes. BUT-” Rory struck a finger out, in lecture mode. “-suppose you can instantly replace the empty space with another form of matter? Then you don’t have empty space to deal with.”

“Hence why we’re here and not a random patch of forest, you can directly control that process here.”

“Bingo, caught on quick. I already collapsed a cave about twice this size, so as I compress the space here, the void spaces will be instantly patched up with regular old stone, maintain the structural integrity so it doesn’t collapse on us either.”

“Smart,” Apostolos reluctantly said.

“Of course, it’s your master’s idea, is it not?” Rory winked at Apostolos. “You have two jobs. First, I don’t need to be bothered by some roaming monster as I’m working. I know MVM cleared out any respawns not too long ago, but always plan for redundancy. Second, while I make it sound easy, compressing space isn’t exactly easy. I’ve got a few gems with me that should help, a room gem, two barrier gems, and a spot gem.”

“Spot gem?” Apostolos questioned. “That’s a new one.”

“Made recently. It was an emergency counter measure I prepared for the Bane if things went south, think of it like a representation of a singular point in space. Originally it was meant to represent the idea of gravity, but that was a tad too much for even my skill at gem crafting to cram into even my highest quality gems. I’m actually going to use it as the direct focal point for the entire thing.”

“Do you have a gem for everything?” Apostolos asked.

“No, but I do fiddle around with whatever random idea comes to mind quite often, and unlike the rest of you, I don’t spend a lot of time lounging. You end up with a lot of random things like that.”

“Fair enough,” Apostolos didn’t even bother to refute Rory’s implied statement that no one else worked as much as he did, as it was simple truth. Between the time dilation of his Mind Palace and the fact that projects were his main form of entertainment, Rory had far surpassed the next several most dedicated members of Ehkorrus combined.

“Anyway, going back to what I was saying, I’ll be focusing on compressing space and folding it inward. There isn’t an intermediatory step in between that and injecting it within the indefinite firmament inside the void gem, as I don’t have anyway to ‘contain’ the compressed space other than directly injecting it within the indefinite firmament right away. I’ll be using the void diamond as the catalyst, so that is a lot of powerful conceptual energies and the like, so aside from just watching my back, you’re also to help me if anything goes sideways.”

“Going sideways like how?”

“If I start physically being dragged into the indefinite firmament for one.”

“But it’s not a real space, not until you add space. How would that even happen?”

“That’s the neat part; it would probably kill me as my ‘information’ was shredded and converted into energy.”

“Neat,” Apostolos said the word slowly before frowning at Rory. “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

“Ehh, potato, potato.” Rory waved it off. “So, feeling ready?”

“I don’t think I’m the one in real danger, so I guess so.” Apostolos answered. “And you?”

“Hell no,” Rory grinned. “All my planning and thinking and I could be missing some small details that kills us all, so let’s do it anyway and see how it all pans out.”

“Really comforting,” Apostolos sighed.

“That’s the spirit,” Rory said as he patted Apostolos on the back. “Brace yourself,”

Turning to an empty patch of wall, an opening began to slowly appear, stone melting away until there was a cave around the size of a standard dorm room. Entering the room, Rory inspected it for several seconds before placing a single gem in the middle of the room where it floated directly center. Exiting the room, Rory held several gems in his left hand, while in his right he held the void diamond.

Here goes nothing.

Splitting his mental threads, Rory focused one on concentrating on the gems within his left hand, establishing the room gem as an isolation factor, before then reinforcing it through the usage of channeling pneuma and intent through the barrier gems. Once that had been done, that same mental thread clamped down on the floating spot gem floating inside the room as from his other mental thread, he began to push his into the void gem. Using the awareness from his first mental thread, the second mental thread began to grasp the space within the room that was locked down using a room gem and drag it toward the spot gem. It was an odd feeling, like being in two places at once as one mental thread was focused on the outside real world and the second remained inside the void gem like a tower operator within a flight control tower.

With ‘half’ of his mind ‘inside’ the void gem, Rory could sense the fabric of space around him, and it was as easy as pulling a blanket close.

Or it was until the part of his mind still existing within actual physical space took note that he was beginning to bleed rather profusely from his nose, eyes, and ears.

Focused on drawing space inward, Rory couldn’t even think of making a quip, the entirety of his mental bandwidth preoccupied. At best he could muster a feeling of resignation, he’d been semiconscious that trying to harness a master-grade natural treasure would likely abrade his mind, he just hadn’t expected it so soon.

With nothing to do about it, Rory simply persevered. As space began to compress and fold in upon itself, the walls gradually closing in on the spot gem, Rory felt like he had just gotten something stuck in his throat, albeit in a more magical sense. As the space closest to the spot gem was continuously compressed and folded inward, it quickly reached a point at which it couldn’t fold anymore, at least not with his current strength. Like a pressurized tank reaching critical mass, Rory knew it was time to begin the process of injecting it into the indefinite firmament.

Except with one mental thread focused entirely on the external manipulations of space and one focused on harnessing the conceptual focus of the void gem, he was left with nothing left to actually direct the folded space.

Or so would have been the case before he’d reached A7.

From his mind, a third thread began to spool outward. The blood spewing from his orifices increased in volume as a third mental thread was drawn outward. Having a brief moment to think with third mental thread before he set it to work, Rory mental whistled to himself as he considered his state.

Rough.

A quick check of his status with his third mental thread assuaged his fears, though, as he noted he’d only burnt through fifteen percent of his overall vital energy.

Manageable.

Not wanting to waste more time, the third mental thread grasped the point within the void diamond, feeling like he were pushing open a rusted iron door.

Now for the delicate part.

One mental thread focused within the void gem, one focused externally, the third -his most recent thread- would begin directing the accumulated space through the singularity point inside the indefinite firmament, after which the mental thread fixated within the diamond would handle the rest.

In essence, he was handling a delicate, three-man process, as a one-man team. Well, one-and-a-half, given his external thread had sensed Apostolos had stepped in at some point, handling external energies that had begun to erode upon his ‘owned’ space that he contained through the room and barrier gems.

Regardless of how difficult it may have been, Rory persevered. Not because quitting wasn’t in his vocabulary -Rory was more than happy to quit a doomed project- but because for as difficult as it was, Rory felt like things were proceeding smoothly. As the minutes passed, the room which held the spot gem shrank, until it was no more than a few inches in diameter, and even that soon vanished as Rory suddenly dropped on his ass, exhaling a heavy, ragged, breath.

“Master?” Apostolos turned to look at Rory, a half frown on his face. Considering his face looked as if he had dunked his head in a vat of red paint, Rory felt as if the concern was less than he deserved.

“I’m fine,” Rory groaned, pulling up his interface and wincing. “Well, verging on not fine. Thirty-seven percent is still plenty.”

“I don’t think any other crafter has shown the same willingness to come so close to death for basically every other project they undertake.” Apostolos sighed. “Did it work?”

“Give me a second,” Rory grumbled, lying flat on his back as he let his mind recover for a bit. He had already collapsed his two other mental threads, leaving him only a single conscious train of thought. “I noticed you got involved.”

“Yeah, not sure how much you felt it, but whatever you were doing had some serious pull to it. Without a bound circle, I had to run interference, or all those energies drawn toward you probably would have interfered with the little balancing act of yours. Actually, why didn’t you even bother with a bound circle?”

“Unless I wanted to spend several weeks working on setting up a bound circle capable of not shattering, I’d rather just have gone without and have you running defense. A shattering circle would have worse effect than it not being there to begin with.”

“That’s… fair, I guess. Also, I got the direct sense there was a third acting intent.”

“I’ll get to it,” Rory smiled. “But man, that was not easy. Imagine you had a tank you were trying to fill with pressurized gas. Except, first you need one person working the compressor, then a second working the pump, and finally a third person keeping the tank nozzle open. While the analogy isn’t anywhere close to one-to-one, you get the idea. I felt like I was absolutely pulling myself thin in every direction at once.”

“Again, that sounds a lot like you were acting on three things at once, and not just automatic things either.”

“Third mental thread,” Rory held up three fingers, smiling.

“Since when could you manage a third?”

“Just recently. After I reached A7, I was given a choice for improving my mental thread splintering. It got me thinking that I hadn’t bothered testing my limits in a while regarding that. Turns out, I can do a third mental thread. Now, it’s not exactly a high-power processor, but when all it had to do was keep the ‘nozzle’ open, it would be enough.”

“And you couldn’t have brought someone else to take care of that, in case it wasn’t good enough?”

“Then their innate understanding of the involved concepts and knowledge would have been lacking. As I said, the analogy wasn’t perfect one-to-one, it wasn’t genuinely as simple as opening a nozzle on a tank.”

“Guess so,” Apostolos said. “So… did it work?”

“Here, hand me a stone.”

“Does it matter what stone?”

“No.”

Shrugging, Apostolos did as he was told, grabbing a stone and tossing it to Rory. More exhausted than he seemed, the stone smacked Rory in the head.

“Sorry,”

“Probably did it on purpose,” Rory muttered as he picked up the stone. The gems he’d used had burnt themselves up, otherwise he would have demonstrated with them instead. The item used didn’t matter, but Rory would have preferred the first ever inventory deposition would have been with something a little more special than a wrong.

Beggers and choosers and all that.

Holding the stone in his left hand, it vanished a moment later.

“Did it…?” Apostolos questioned, pointing at the void diamond.

“Check it yourself,” Rory said as he tossed the diamond to Apostolos. Snatching the diamond from midair, Apostolos narrowed his eyes as suddenly a stone dropped from the air just above his hand holding the diamond.

“It worked,”

“Thanks for noticing,” Rory chuckled.

“That’s damn weird, if I do say so.” Apostolos said after a moment. “As long as I’m holding the diamond, it’s like I can see an enclosed stone cave. Except, it only exists inside my mind. But the minute I tried to snatch the stone from it, it appeared.”

“Put the stone back.”

Glancing at the stone on the ground, Apostolos picked it up, examining it for a moment before the stone suddenly vanished once more.

“Yeah, really damn weird,” Apostolos exhaled, shaking his head. “But that’s also pretty dang cool,”

“Right?” Rory said as he attempted to stand. Attempted being the key word, as it was like his brain simply refused to send the ‘move’ signal.

Pneuma-wracked, oh, and cognition enervation. Haven’t dealt with either of those in quite a while.

“So…. How feasible you think it would be for anyone else to make one of those?” Apostolos asked after a moment. “Sure, it’s weird, but that’s damn useful. If we could get more of those, we could have far more effective gathering parties, and hell, our resources storage would be improved. Oh, could we apply those principles to buildings as well? Oh, and what about-”

“I appreciate the sudden enthusiasm,” Rory cut Apostolos off. “But you’re getting ahead of yourself. I get it, you’ve got a city to help run but slow your roll. First question first, how feasible is it that others can make stuff like this? Now that the proof of concept has been actualized, it is feasible. How long until you have people who can manage it? Awhile. You’re going to need at least three tier sevens if I had to speculate, each with a solid grasp of space concepts.”

“Going to have to encourage more people to undertake that Trial of Space,” Apostolos muttered.

“Next, they’re all going to have to have a solid grasp of direct pneuma manipulation and conceptual theory. Anyone who solely relies on skills won’t be practiced enough. Third, they’re going to have to be very practiced with working with one another. Doing this as a single person means there wasn’t any sort of ‘understanding’ required, of course I knew exactly what I was always doing, I’m one person. Turn that into a team project? Not quite so much.”

“But it is feasible.” Apostolos countered.

“It is, nothing about what I did was somehow exclusive to me. Hell, I’ll see about whipping up a general tome for each of the three parts, it might help. Given the nature of the knowledge involved, it’s probably going to have to be exclusively to those at least tier seven, that much ‘imbuement’ of my own understanding of concepts means a whole lot of me will be in those tomes, anyone below tier seven is at risk of having their identity overwhelmed.”

 “Appreciate the warning,” Apostolos said. “And the materials involved? Do we need more void diamonds?”

“Hah, no.” Rory shook his head. “The innate concepts of the void diamond made it perfect for ‘bridging’ the unknown variables. Now that I’ve done it once, I think I’ve got the understanding needed that you don’t exclusively need a master-grade natural treasure. That said, probably going to need, at minimum, rare grade materials, and those won’t have extended shelf lives. Now, as for expanding on this? Honestly, don’t bother for the time. Maybe in the future if some sort of break through is discovered, either on my end or a future crafter, but for now the idea your going for, expansion of space so that the interior of something is larger then the exterior, will one hundred percent cause the sort of space distortions that you dealt with already, but likely on a way worse scale if not contained by a bound circle.”

“Got it. I’m nixing that for the time being if that’s the case.” Apostolos sighed. “Sorry, but I didn’t realize just how major this had the potential to be until I got to see it firsthand.”

“Truthfully,” Rory began as he slowly rose from his seated position, his mind finally recovered enough. “I didn’t really even think of that other stuff.” Rory said with a sheepish smile.

“Oh, then what was the point of all this?” Apostolos asked.

“Well,” Rory rubbed the back of his neck, adverting Apostolos’s gaze.

“Spit it out,” Apostolos said, eyes narrowed.

Shrugging, Rory gave up on all pretenses.

“I just got tired of lugging a bag around everywhere.”