Symphony Book 3: Edited Chapters 21-24

Chapter 21: Nullification

Walker tried talking to the Book of Souls for a time, but aside from the general warmth it exuded whenever he spoke, he never received a real response.

Logically, he knew the memory didn't exist. He had invented a hypothetical situation, and yet, he'd still been pulled into a vision not unlike his recent foray into the memories of Kwaya. The feeling was the same, although everything had held a slight haze to it. It was like looking out at the desert on a hot day and watching the heat rise in a place you'd never truly understand.

Was he a prophet, and was that a potential future? Did his lower-g godhood upgrade?

Walker stepped into the memory cataloging he'd just invented. After scanning around for a time, noticeably dodging any moments with the Slicer, he found that the only time any mention of potential futures occurred was at the very beginning, just before he was pushed into the first battle. He'd been speaking with Virgil about the different ways a Creator can fail the protocol, when they'd been discussing his guide, Mr. Harrison.

"...every guide is taken from an image of the Creator's world in the future. Mr. Harrison, as you jokingly named him after he left, is a future resident of your currently named world, Symphony."

When Walker then asked if he could stop Mr. Harrison from ever being born, Virgil gave a cryptic answer that didn't really say anything: "The complications with future imaging are vast and profound."

It made him wonder if Virgil, no longer bound by whatever geas the Evolver's placed on Assistants, could tell him now. It also made him wonder about something much more serious.

If Walker's Awakened powers were the reason he was able to see a future image, as Virgil called them, then didn't that mean that there was another Awakened within the Evolvers? One who was just as, if not more powerful, than Walker himself, and created all of the future images that identified Creators.

And if there was another Awakened, were they then bound by the bastards who run this place, or was there something else going on? 

Either way, idle speculation wasn't going to get anything done. He'd just have to accept that future images based on hypothetical thoughts may crop up more of these. He hoped that rarely would an evolution of skills develop the way that poor child’s had.

Allowing skills to cap at 100 might solve the problem, but it took away the infinite growth plan he'd started long ago. He felt the heat from his Icon at the thought of restricting future Symphonic citizens, a reminder of his oath from long ago. As usual, the burn didn't begin to fade until he decided not to follow through with the cap, removing it entirely from his mind. But, as he forced his thoughts toward a different direction, an idea began to flower.

Who said he had to cap the issue? What about a reset?

That way, as the skill Awakened and became something more powerful with the Life strand included, the Sapient could take it in a whole new direction if they wanted to. It allowed for more agency and more power in the long run. Only, how was he going to do it?

Walker sat down after pacing for so long. He tried scanning through his abilities, but nothing popped out at him. Now that he knew how the system worked, he also knew that he could modify his own abilities and potentially even create more. But none of them were close to what he wanted, except for the Domestication ability. He pulled up the ability and looked a little closer after applying a bit of darkness to his eyes.

The Domestication ability:

An ability designed to selectively remove up to one evolution and one modification per chosen entity.

Limit: One evolution per entity may be removed. One modification per entity may also be removed.

Upgradeable.

Note from Administrator Kwaya: This is a weapon for any Awakened who finds themselves lucky enough to be placed within a protocol. Each time you use it, you'll be able to take away more evolutions and modifications as it upgrades. Eventually, you'll be able to remove everything from an Evolver with the click of a button. Sure, they'll likely die in the process, but who gives a shit. Fuck em all.

"Fucking Kwaya," Walker said with a shake of his head. Sure, the Evolvers are some pretty shitty people from what he'd seen thus far, but the entities that were created by them didn't need that stigma placed on them as well. It simply...wasn't a fair way to look at the world.

If the push of a button could instantly remove their abilities, then that meant there had to be something similar within Primordial energy. Every ability he'd seen thus far was tied back to a strand. The obvious came first; the temporal subsystem was tied directly to the Temporal strand. The pocket dimension was attached to both space and dimensional strands, although he still wasn't sure how the actual ability worked. Each ability had a connected strand that empowered it and gave it direction.

With that knowledge in mind, he pulled up his resources and looked at the strands again. One obvious choice jumped out at him...nullification. He only had a few hundred resources for it right now, but that should pick up as they exited the time displacement. Walker stared at it for a time, trying to figure out how this would work.

Skills would gain consciousness strands as they went. The moment they reached one hundred, as the sapients learned new and useful ways of interacting with it, it needed to reset to level one and begin gaining life strands. Would consciousness strands still need to be added? It made him consider the broader implications of what life was. What was it without a mind attached? If he didn't add consciousness strands back into the skills, it would be like trying to talk to a jellyfish back on Earth. Sure, it may hear you, although he questioned whether jellyfish could actually hear, but there were no thoughts there.

That meant that the reset had to be done in totality, and then consciousness and life strands needed to be added step by step as had occurred when first reaching the initial one-hundred plateau.

Walker looked again at the Nullification strand. If he wanted to use it, he had to test it first. There was no point in building a system and then throwing it to the wind in the hopes that things would work.

The Creator stepped into the isolated Item system and produced a bag. He added one hundred consciousness strands to the bag, causing the already brown bag's color to deepen further, then took a good look at it.....but, nothing happened. Of course, consciousness on a standard bag wouldn't do much. In order for this to work, he'd need some kind of visual confirmation that the thing was, in effect, alive. Knowing what that meant and sighing at what it meant he had to do, Walker added ten life strands to the poor, inanimate object.

The bag still didn't move, making Walker realize the problem was the temporal fold he found himself in. He placed it on a table and created a localized temporal bubble, just as he'd done with the Crystal Nomads, then sat down to watch. The bag's green-tinged folds opened and closed, tasting its first moments of life.

"Sorry, Buddy," Walker said with a sigh, then reached into his overlay and grabbed a single resource of the Nullification strand. As he pulled it out with his right hand, he felt his arm lock in place.

"Oh fuck me," He said in realization. If it was nullifying, then by principle, it could cancel out almost anything, including Temporal resources. Walker looked at his hand, frozen in Sonata's standard time, while the rest was still in his accelerated space. On the tips of his fingers and slightly covering his hand, he found small colorless sparks floating around them.

Eyeing the bag within the localized distortion, Walker stretched his free hand out and quickly grabbed it. Looking back at his frozen arm, he found more and more of the sparkles were disappearing as he watched, implying there was a time limit to using Nullification strands. As carefully as he could be, and with one last sad look at the brown bag filled with a small amount of life in his hand, he lightly tossed it at the sparks floating on his body.

As soon as the bag came into contact with the nullifying sparks, a poof of brown and green aether slipped out, obscuring his vision. A moment later, a regular bag showed itself to him. Walker grabbed a week's worth of Temporal energy and, after covering his opposing hand in darkness, smothered it in the material, freeing his opposing arm from the time constraints of Sonata.

"Hypothesis proven," He said to himself with a nod. The Nullification strand certainly got the job done. He eyed his single resource of Entropy but ultimately thought better of it. There had to be a real damn good reason they only gave him one when the Primordial Collider had been running for quite some time.

Shaking his head to refocus on what he needed to do with his limited time, Walker continued with the idea of Skills and Masteries.

He needed to build everything in an alternate dimension, that much he knew. But, he'd never really messed around with the Dimensional strand. And, if he was being honest with himself, it was because it was one of the few strands that worried him. 

What if he accidentally sent himself to a different dimension? Would he even know how to get back? What exactly were the dimensions? Where did they come from? 

He knew that the Evolvers had a way of creating separate universes, so what was the difference between a dimension and a universe? Were they one and the same?

That took him down a rabbit hole of thoughts. Thus far, Walker had created monsters and men, planets and peculiarities...but what if he created his own Universe? One where he could design the universal system from the start.

It was a heady thought that appealed to his god-complex, big G.

It was a thought he would have to put in the couch cushion, as his mother used to say. Something to think about later. 

While he was considering his options on how to look into dimensionality, he had an idea. He did have something that touched on it, so hopefully, he would find a note from Kwaya contained within. But sadly, the Pocket Dimension ability held nothing for him.

Of course, the words Temporal resources within the description told him why. She hadn't been around yet. 

Walker started to pace around the room.

Walker needed to make his own AI.

Not only that, he needed to make an AI that would grow with the skills and catalog them. Something beyond the Advanced ones—something that would directly impact his little solar system without the limitations built into them by the system. An AI that could connect with the worlds he would build.

Walker needed something new.

Chapter 22: Kinetic-Punch Man

Walker gathered the dimensional strand in the palm of his right hand and took a deep look at it.

 Space was blue, and consciousness brown. Life came with a green color, while time was colorless, fitting the aspect of being a non-static phenomenon that danced its way across the fabric of existence. But Dimensionality was different. 

It consistently shifted every few seconds from one color to the next, as if it were telling those who held it that they had no real control over the strand. Another thing he noticed was that there were shapes held within it. One moment, it morphed into a triangular-like shape; the next, it would be round.

 Overall, it was very hard to look at for a long period of time.

All three were within the Cosmic resources category in his overlay, implying that each was connected to the others. When Walker connected time and space together, their combination’s sum was greater than their parts. Did that mean that all of the strands could be combined for increased power? 

Walker looked at the resources again to better understand the possibilities.

Cyclical Resources

Life Resources: 3.39k Death Resources: 3.41k Karma Resources: 1.7k

Cosmic Resources

Space Resources: 6.1k Temporal Resources: 14.35k Dimensional Resources: 7k

Energy Resources

Kinetic Resources: 2.3k Potential Energy Resources: 2.3k Essence Resources: 1.17k

Exotic Resources

Consciousness Resources: 6.5k Nullification Resources: 310.1 Causality Resources: 3.58k

Superior Resources

Primordial Resources: 5.2k Entropic Resources: 1

Nothing much had changed except the numbers. Walker found that the Life and Death strands gained resources at the same rate as each other, while Karma was half as quick. 

Everything was connected, with the only exception being Exotic resources.

 If combining Time and Space gave him control over a localized area, then what would combining Dimensional do to either? Was that the real secret to the power of the strands? Combinations? If he found a way to combine Space, Time, and Dimensions, what was next? Would it be different than combining Time and Dimensions? 

Would Symphony explode?

 The last thought forced him to pause. Then, he decided to do something he'd never done before. He took his hand and approached his overlay, attempting to push the Dimensional strand back into his resources. While Nullification likely would not work, he was hoping this would. Walker felt a skin of resistance, but through instinct, he knew it was a weak wall that could be bridged. Although it fought him at first, his numbers updated after a little hard pressing, and the confusing strand was gone from his hand.

 Thinking back on the potential explosion, he realized that playing with strands on Sonata could be a quick way to destroy the moon, not to mention the people living on it. Making his decision, Walker stepped out of his little cabin and walked out to the portal.

Quickly making headway, Walker reached the site of the flat ground he'd compacted when first building the area. From his pocket, he palmed the bag he'd made not long ago and used his Pocket Dimension ability on it, with darkness covering his eyes. Watching the ability take effect gave him a further idea of how the Dimensional strand worked. He then placed some space and consciousness strands within it, considerably expanding the Vault's size.

 "I need you to take on air," He said to the bag, not unkindly.

 After no response, Walker added another thirty, nearly slapped himself on the head, and created a minuscule localized temporal zone while grumbling to himself. He repeated his order, and a moment later, he felt a strong pull from the bag as it swallowed up a great amount of oxygen around him. After waiting for a minute, he nodded and tried another new strand that he was fairly certain wouldn't cause too much damage. Taking just one Kinetic strand from his resources, he cradled it and took a look.

 Kinetic was yellow lightning, reminding him of a certain superhero from his home world. His favorite, in fact. He applied it gently to the bottom of each of his bare feet, his old shoes being destroyed long ago, and then braced his legs. Deciding on the part of wisdom to tap his feet gently, Walker shot into the sky like a rocket. To anyone watching from the outside, he'd have looked like a green and black comet flying out of Sonata, rather than toward it as comets were known to do.

 Far and away, Walker flew through the stars. The Vacuum of space neither accelerating nor decelerating, as Newton's first law came into effect in a wholly different universe.

 "An object in motion stays in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force," Walker said with a smile, knowing he didn't quote it exactly right but not caring in the slightest.

 Once Walker floated for a while, he began to notice his body slowing down in its path. Looking over at the direction tugging on him, he found his bright and cheery G-type main-sequence star blazing away and thanked his lucky star that his eyes were protected by his soul. Applying a bit more kinetic force to his fists and aiming at the star, he punched out, believing this was the best course of action for his predicament.

When one strand had been applied to his feet, the force of his leap was amplified by a hundred times its original value. Therefore, a slight hop had turned into a gravity-breaking leap. But he had overestimated the power of applying five resources to each fist. 

Not only did Walker shoot away from the sun faster than even his eyes could move, but he also spied, through watery vision, a light bit of yellow force shooting away from his hands.

 "FUCKKK," He screamed out as he shot away from his world and far out to the reaches of space.

 A piece of icy comet, normally moving on its merry way, caught Walker on the shoulder in his travels. He felt immense pain as it dislocated before he was buffered on the other side by a bit of floating debris. Turning his head slightly as gravitational forces from faraway planets began to slow his speed. As his eyes adjusted, he spied multiple worlds either destroyed, close to it, or sitting happily in the oblivious notice that with only a few inches to the left on his kinetic punch, they'd be destroyed as well.

 Walker continued to slow down as on both sides of his body, two planets sat. One was hundreds of times larger than even his giant ice planet, Fortis, while the other was much smaller and covered in sand. Thinking quickly, he created a temporal zone and sucked in some fast air from his Vault.

 When he looked at his damaged shoulder, he found a great blot of purple spreading across his skin. It was the first time he'd been truly injured since losing the Evolvers' shield all that time ago, and while the pain was fierce, he appreciated the reminder of his own mortality.

 As that thought occurred, he watched as the purple section slowly began to lighten.

 "Fucking kidding me." He said to himself with a shake of his head. He guessed he'd be healed soon enough, as the benefits of being an Awakened were clear.

 Looking back around, he spied the giant planet on his left. It was massive and gray, with great piles of smoke in the atmosphere.

Nope.

To his right was a much more pleasant-seeming brown planet. He focused his eyes down below and thought he spied something standing out, likely an entity of the protocol.

 Making his choice, Walker took out half a strain of Kinetic power and applied it to his feet, then, oh so gently, kicked himself out of space. He floated, still faster than he'd prefer, right down toward the surface until its small amount of gravity picked him up. But as he was about to touch down, he bounced off something face-first.

 "Oh fuck, my nose!" He said to himself, looking for what he'd hit. Then he remembered the Alpha Protocol shield. Shaking his head, he tried to reach his hand out and grab hold of it, but there was nothing there. "...Oops." He said in realization. He'd likely just touched it with Temporal energy, and he knew from experience that it would destroy the protocol shields completely. 

He hoped that wouldn't have any lasting ramifications.

 "Sorry!" He said to no one that would be able to hear him. Mentally shrugging while also thinking he'd just royally fucked someone over, Walker dropped down with a crunch to the sandy planet. What he saw was nothing he'd ever expected.

 Everywhere he looked were tiny, multi-headed anthropods. The creatures were no bigger than his thumb, but by his guess, millions were spread across the small sandy planet. Walker tried to step around them, but there was no use as they liberally covered every inch he turned. 

He tried hopping around to reduce his presence, but his body's concussive impact on the sand seemed to cause almost as much damage in an area of effect as just walking would do. Eventually, as he continued to crunch his way across the sand and body parts, he spied what looked like a central area similar to what he'd first started with on Sonata.

 There was a much larger creature standing there. With a steel-grey carapace and a massive head three times the size of the rest of its body, the multitude of eyes and proboscices weren’t even that strange.

It was staring at something on an oddly designed screen. A rectangle floated in front of it, with blue and red spots all over. Walker was naturally curious, so, making sure he didn't touch the creature in front of him, even as he destroyed countless ones below his feet, he grew closer to the screen. That's when he noticed what he was feeling coming off of it.

 "That's a lot of heat," he said, waving a hand in front of the screen. The creature in front of him must see by infrared, so naturally, the system accommodated it by providing screens that allowed it to work. It was a unique solution he hadn't thought of, and like his mortality, it put his mind in check. 

He wasn't some super-genius. Far from it. And he needed to remember that.

Just beyond the screen were a couple of standard Evolution Chambers. Virgil had told him that they were unique and not given out too often, yet his point failed to land. What were the odds that he'd be here, of all places, and see an Evolution Chamber sitting right in front of him? And not just one, but two. 

He stepped over and quickly looked inside, but what he saw was a jumbled mess of blue goo, tiny pointy bits, and a few black eyes.

 "Fuckin gross," He said to himself with a shudder. Was the other Creator, as that's what it had to be, making a weird super food for the anthropods? But then, why the pointy bits? 

 Stepping away from the organic slush, he spied something that he hadn't seen before. 

A standard Evolution Chamber looked like a canister from one of his childhood shows, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Curved windows, a cylindrical shape, and a ridged twisty top. In front of Walker right now was something different. 

It was tall, standing at about ten feet, and incredibly thin. The bottom had multiple pipes connecting it to the ground, and it looked as if it would leap off the sandy planet were they not there.

 There was some odd writing in scratches on the front of it, and rather than get the basic information it presented, Walker just identified it.

Magic Chamber

A chamber used in the production of unique magical effects.

“Oh shit.”

Just seeing this thing gave him a mental erection. It would have huge ramifications if he could start to develop types of magic without restriction. He could even offer them as rewards for the event system.

But, immediately, he calmed down. What he was considering could have some very bad ramifications if anyone figured out what he was doing. First, he traveled to another Creator's planet, which was probably a big no-no. Then, he tore down his protocol shield, which the Evolvers likely thought impossible. And on top of that, he was considering taking said Creator's Magic Chamber away in an act of profound theft.

"Hrmm...." Walker hummed to himself as he looked back and forth between the weird alien guy behind him and the Magic Chamber in front of him. He needed to reason this out. So far, the Protocol hadn't tracked that he could mess with strands like he did. If it could, he'd likely have been attacked long ago. That meant they weren't omniscient, meaning they couldn't see every single thing that was happening. Also, they didn't really know about the Tree of the Gods. If they knew there was a planet filled with the Awakened, they'd likely have huffed and puffed their way over to blow his house down.

That implied quite a few things were hidden from them. Now, if one of them ever showed up on his planet, he and his people were well and truly fucked. But if they always kept their distance, that meant he'd have a chance of getting through the protocol with everyone none the wiser. It meant laying low and not doing anything too outstanding anymore. No more Primordial Colliders, and no more super inventions like the Vaults.

"Fuckkk." He said, taking his head in his hands. That meant the last thing he'd sold them, including the chest, was the last "great invention" he'd be able to do. It also meant he couldn't rely on strands in the Creator Wars. If they spotted him using them, that'd probably be the last thing he did. His little touch-and-go with the Icy comet proved as much.

Looking at the Creator, then the Magic Chamber, Walker chose to be the better person and not steal it away.

“We are who we choose to be,” He said a bit sadly, then began to search through his memories for the exact path and angle he'd taken to get here.

It was hard, as a lot of the memory primarily came through as him screaming, but he felt he was able to understand the correct angle for return. Putting a few strands of kinetic energy, much less than the five he'd used to get here, he did his best to angle his body appropriately and then leaped off the ground. He left two parting words as he vanished into the vacuum of space.

"Sorry, Creator!"

Unknown to Walker, he'd put a great amount of muscle into said leap. As the pressure struck the lightning covering the Kinetic Strand, multiplying its strength, it was like a bomb went off behind him. As Walker traversed the space of the fourth rendition, a Creator stood on a single piece of sand protected by his shield, staring at a screen while unknowingly stuck in time.

Only as Walker re-entered the darkness of space did two realizations hit him.

One: He still hadn't messed around with the Dimensional strand as he needed to.

And two: after he'd left Sonata, he'd only been under his own time dilation, while they had continued on as normal.

"Fuck!"

He had no idea of what had happened to the poor Creator he had left behind.

Chapter 23: All the Rewards

As he traveled through space, a big question had firmly planted itself in his mind.

What happened when you combined all three strands from the Cosmic category?

He didn’t know, but he knew he couldn’t test things where there was a chance he might harm his worlds, or even another Creator’s. It took him some time to find a location that not only let him see Symphony from a distance, but was also far enough away not to cause any damage. 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 close by 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 a long period of time, he found an ideal location. Covering his hands in the darkness of his soul, 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 temporal bubble and giving him something to see with. 

He’d created the timezone because Sonata was 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. 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, just a general feeling of vastness, which grew in line with the resource's additions.

Dimensional strands were not like the others. 

As he added each resource to the whole, the shapes grew in greater complexity. With a single resource, he mostly saw circles, lines, and triangles, slowly changing into each other. 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.

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 without harm.

"What the fuck?"

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. 

Thinking quickly while still unable to understand what was happening, he reached a hand back and grabbed it. Parts of the shirt were torn as it peeled away from him, and he mentally noted that small suction marks marred his previously clean skin. 

With a curse, he threw it hard in the direction he believed his sun to be.

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 if seeking a hug. As soon as it exited the secondary bubble, it froze in place as time reasserted control of the area. 

Looking around to make sure no other attacks were coming, he noticed his formerly black pants were now white.

"Weird, man." He shook his head, then looked at his resources in the overlay again, trying to forget the encounter with the murderous shirt.

Maybe it’s not meant to be used by itself?

Rather than test it 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, then removed a single strand of Temporal.

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 this time around, he decided to move slowly.

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. After a second, what had felt like two now resolved to only one.

Looking down, a semi-transparent blue flame sat in the palm of his hand. 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 spacetime." He said with a smile. Then, he tried something he'd never done before. He tried to absorb a combined strand. 

Identify didn’t work on strands; it never had. What he knew of the combined strand he made on Romulus was the only actual experience he had with them. That meant they needed testing, and that was why he’d come out here. 

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 what came next.

A cascading set of text that his mind interpreted as images came through. 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. That the scale of the thing alone would cause many from his homeworld to turn into a gibbering mess. At the bottom sat a single red rectangle, likely a doorway into whatever challenges were contained within.

Even though the images had happened when he first entered the Godeater Program, the disorientation after the event still hit him. He didn’t know what the tower or the red door was, but neither seemed particularly inviting.

As Walker looked at a very brief and probably inaccurate description of the strand that appeared in his overlay, another notification rang in. 

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

Deciding to be practical, he named it after something that made sense to him.

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 and Temporal 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 and Temporal 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 laughed into the darkness before taking a breath from his vault. “Now I can just teleport home after this!" He said with glee. 

Things were working out much better than he had expected. He didn’t understand how the Council already had a thousand resources to throw at him, but he wasn’t going to complain. 

Disallowing 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’d gained resources just for recombining them into his overlay. Almost like the rewards were designed to spur him forward in his testing. 

`To see how many combinations were possible, Walker returned to using his mental library to try to figure out the math. But, upgraded soul or not, nowhere in his mind or his library did he find how to calculate the combinations. 

Was it thousands?

"Better not to think about it, Walker," He said to himself quietly, "You're an English teacher. Calculations were never in your wheelhouse." With a nod to himself and a quick curse for whoever thought math was fun, Walker eyed his current resources again. He needed to look at each and try to get a feel for them all.

After all, this was an easy solution to obtain a substantial amount of resources.

Pulling out the Dimensional strand, he looked at it for a heartbeat, then reabsorbed it. And he didn’t stop there, doing the same as he moved from the Cosmic category down the list.

Removing death next, he was again by what it looked like. In the palm of his hand floated a black liquid continuously rising and falling. Although it seemed oddly terrifying, 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 it that spoke of Death in a negative fashion, which made sense. Each strand 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 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 quickly 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. The darkness of his soul seemed to pull toward it for a moment, but he thought that might’ve been just a trick of the eyes.

Essence sat on his palm as a solid purple bar of light, which confused the living hell out of him. It even had a physical presence to it, as he was able to turn it and grip it with his hand. But it still re-entered his overlay with no fuss, so he queued it up in his mind for later experimentation.

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. Each time the writing appeared, his memory would try to make connections with it, but he never found any.

Consciousness was a brown gas that didn't like to be pulled apart. It constantly moved, attempting to congeal back into its original form, and unlike its name, it didn’t seem to have a mind of its own.

Re-adding Nullification was painful. The moment it had come out, the secondary temporal bubble had begun to shrink as the strand he held did the same. To top it off, his arm had frozen in space as well. That forced Walker to bash his face toward the strand, ramming the strand into his overlay until, finally, it re-entered the overlay. Replenishing his time resources with a bloody nose was not as fun as it sounded.

Just about done, he turned to the last strand on his list. And honestly, causality was truly strange.

From what he could remember, the definition of causality had to do with cause and effect, 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 it happened, 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 both himself and his past self.

Finally, he was done. With each removal and addition back into his overlay, Walker had gained a new notification from the Multiverse. Due to the similarity of the updates, his notifications all blended into one large reward when he finally looked at them.

...Analyzing...

...

...

Combined rewards for discovering a non-standard use of Strand energy:

Congratulations Dante! You've been granted bonus resources!

Your Pocket Dimension ability has upgraded!

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!

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, Karma, Dimensionality, Kinetic, Potential, Essence, Consciousness, 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.

Chapter 24: All the World’s a Stage

In the Alpha Protocol Council Chambers…

Consular LAD95 sat in a standard rolling chair at the end of the council chambers. The assistant was feverishly going through the Localized Assistant Database, as they'd recently received a packet from LAD47. 

All information from LAD47 was fascinating to him and his colleagues, as they never knew what to expect from the assistant to Creator Dante. But recently, the scheduled updates had stopped, with information only arriving at haphazard moments. 

He didn’t know why.

They couldn't die, nor be killed, and any update that followed an attack would surely spell it out in detail. Therefore, logic and reason dictated that LAD47 was choosing not to send any more information.

Virgil, he mentally corrected himself. That was what the wayward Assistant had asked to be called now.

Lately, the only packets they'd received either held negotiation terms or requests for contact with the other Councils, which was unheard of. No assistant had ever communicatively hopped from one protocol to another. Not in the entire history of the program. And yet, the Alpha Protocol had conceded the point after receiving, of all things, a bag. Truly astonishing.

The Subsystem Assistant noticed their console light was on. Every day, different updates would filter into it, letting the viewer gain an understanding of what was happening in the current rendition. Thus far, it had been the most exciting series of updates it had ever experienced since the time of its creation. 

Not only was a Behemoth actively participating, but there was also that strange entity that kept coming up with new ways to destroy worlds. Truly, this was a rare moment that would change all future renditions going forward. He couldn't believe how lucky he was to watch it happen.

Clicking on the updates button, several lines of text came in within moments, shocking him into standing. Historically, he'd only see a few updates a week, but this many at once meant another colossal moment was about to strike the protocol yet again.

Dante has discovered a new strand! Waiting on the council for further descriptions.

Dante has discovered a non-standard...

Dante has...

The console wouldn't let him leave the screen until he'd acknowledged everything, so he frantically clicked the buttons with his tentacles as quickly as possible. Eleven times, the system updated, making him break out in a sweat.

“How?”

"What was that?" SA4 said as they drifted over, still in the shape of a green ring.

"I was just..."

But the Supreme Assistant didn’t let them finish speaking. They pressed a few buttons on the console, and LAD95 watched as all the updates were acknowledged and registered. 

SA4 floated in front of the screen for a long moment, causing LAD95 to mentally sweat, until its voice rang out, "Supreme Assistant Two, may I have your assistance?"

"Certainly," SA2 said as they gently stepped over. As gentle as an assistant in the form of a twelve-foot multi-headed hydra could, that is. "How can I assist you, Supreme Assistant Four?"

The ring turned toward LAD95 again, "I believe this unit may be malfunctioning, much like Assistant Virgil was. Will you dispose of it without infecting the database?"

LAD95 knew what that meant, but there was nothing he could do about it. He felt something long and hard wrap around his thin body, and in a moment, he was in the air.

"I would be happy to do so, Supreme Assistant Four."

The door opened, and that was the last anyone would see of LAD95 again.

The green ring looked around the room, "Well?" Their deceptively soft voice said, "What are you doing? Return to work."

Every assistant stopped watching and moved back to their consoles, furiously checking inflection points and system updates.

SA4 moved over to the former Assistant's console and pressed several keys. All of Dante's infractions and discoveries disappeared from the Council's database.

On a dark planet somewhere in the Evolver's multiverse…

The Slicer experienced something it hadn't felt in a long time.

He was exhausted.

Looking at his overlay, it updated as his previous challenger was finally ground down to nothing under the Slicer's signature move.

Slicer

Current Rank within the Psi Protocol: 154

Fucking bullshit, he thought with a hiss at his former opponent. It was now just a puddle of acidic goo, but that didn’t stop the Slicer from spitting on it for good measure. The little bastard did very little to no damage, but holy shit was it able to take the hits and keep on coming.

The translocations had ended hours ago. Pieces of the planet had long ago broken off from the core, with floating debris now covering everywhere the sky peeked through. 

However, the PSI protocol was smart. After first landing and dispatching a lone Destroyer far out of its depth, he'd analyzed the situation. Drawing on his mentor's instructions about planet sizes, he realized the protocol had placed them all on a super-terrestrial planet, thousands of times larger than the one he'd been created for. That meant they could battle to their heart's content, and there'd still be plenty of land to fight on. 

That was a good and a bad thing.

"I'm going to kill them", he said to himself with a thought toward the bastards who'd sent him here. Of course, he'd already said that line hundreds of times since his arrival, but it still felt good to get it out every once in a while. Cathartic was the word.

Taking a look around, he noticed that things were the same as they were only an hour after arriving. Everywhere you looked, lights would flare up, pieces of body parts floated around, and various liquids stained the previously drab and colorless world. As the Slicer tried to gain an idea of who to attack next, a behemoth-class destroyer fell from the sky only a mile or so away. 

Its body exploded on landing, bright green plant life springing up from everywhere the corpse’s dark blood touched.

The Slicer looked at his rank and saw his number increase. He started to laugh.

As the body settled, another creature with great, dark wings landed on top of it, ripping everything to pieces.

The Slicer had found its next challenger.

In a room at The Last Refuge…

Alexander rolled out of bed and looked in the mirror.

"What a cliché you are," He said while looking at his reflection. Who rolled out of bed and immediately looked at themself in the mirror? Was he a protagonist in some anime? Should he shave his head and go out punching things? Even better, he could grow it out, slick it forward with some strange goop, and then assume that every girl who looked at him was interested.

 That was the life! 

But no, he didn't think he was the protagonist in this story. Not even with the Champion abilities sitting quietly in his back pocket. 

He snorted at himself.

Looking back at his bed, it could be called almost anything but that. A stack of boxes stuffed with something moderately soft was covered in a threadbare blanket. He wasn't sure what was in those boxes, and at this point, he was a little scared to find out. And while he'd like to complain about the moderately clean stuffed tiger serving as a pillow, it was still better than he'd had only a month or so ago.

"Lex, you up!" A cheery voice yelled out from beyond the curtain as his door. 

It could always be worse.

"Lexxx!" an incessant voice called a second time.

"I'm up! I'm up!" He called out in return, pushing past the flimsy door to see Maria trying to look in.

"Were you trying to sneak a peek or something?" 

"No! Never!" she replied quickly—a little too quickly, in his mind. He waved a hand, showing he wasn't bothered. "It's fine. Anyways, what's up?"

Smiling at his blasé attitude, she hopped in place, striking a pose with one foot slightly forward and a fist raised in the air, "It's time for your patrol, soldier!"

Lex nodded with a serious expression, "I understand. I'll head out right away."

Maria deflated, "Don't you want to know where you're going, or what to look out for?"

He shrugged, "Why would I? It's always the same. Keep the shadows away, find survivors, find food and water, find toilet rolls. All the essentials, I get it."

She further deflated, "You're no fun."

"I'm not trying to be. It's the end of the world as we know it, Maria. Do your part and try to survive."

The stalwart girl shook her head, "But that's not enough."

He'd already started walking, so she had to skip her feet to catch up. He looked at her from the side without slowing, "What's not enough?"

"Surviving. There's gotta be more Lex, or you won't be in a good place when the bad things come."

"I'm not so certain the bad things won't always come, Maria. What's there to look forward to? My family is gone, my friends, just about everything and everyone I ever cared about."

"Everyone?" She said, stopping in place.

He noticed and turned with a sardonic smile on his face, "Okay, almost everyone."

Seeing her smile was like watching the dawn break. It was a rare moment in a too-dark world. Giving her a rare smile back, he trudged toward the desk and the Sergeant behind it.

"Hello, Alexander," The big-bellied man said as he leaned on the counter, "Here to grab your weapon, I see."

Trying not to be annoyed at the man’s refusal to use his chosen name, he gave him a light glare, "Why else would I come to the armory, Torn? Did you think I was visiting to see your great paunch? Perhaps we can dive into the mysteries of what a jelly doughnut used to taste like if I had my eyes closed and a finger in my ass?"

The man scratched his chin briefly, seeming to ponder the ideas within, before breaking out in a great laugh. "That was a good one, Alexander. I see you’ve been hard at work."

Alex gave a weak smile, "It's something to do in these times."

Torn nodded his head, "Too right, sir. Now you, bastard that you are, and I mean that in every sense, may fill out this form at your leisure."

Lex boiled over as the piece of paper slid in front of him, "It's a fucking club, man; why do you guys make me fill out forms? In fact, why do I have to do it at all? It's not a gun, it's a giant piece of fucking wood you guys whittled down so I could go all caveman."

A darkness took over Torn's face that was missing during their insults. He would allow for a lot of ribbing, gentle or not, but he wouldn't allow someone to insult due process. "It is the way of England, sir, to follow the guidelines set by our betters. Gladstone himself said that due process is not merely a legal doctrine."

"And Cromwell disagreed with him most strenuously, sir, if you're trying to turn the pages of history," Alexander replied, pulling his First-class degree in British history out.

Alexander still filled out the form, as Torn wasn't a bad man and simply liked his rules. Lifting the huge piece of wood up, he shouldered it, careful not to hit anything, and walked out with a slight hunch to keep from hitting the ceiling.

Maria did as she always did when she watched him perform something superhuman. She laughed at him.

"Every time I see that huge stick, you look more and more Neanderthal."

Lex ignored her as he made way for the Eastern gate. She stopped when they were getting close, waiting for him to react, but he wasn't in the mood for frivolity right now. There were some creatures out there, and they needed to die.

Right now.

He exited from the gate, waving at the guards for the day, and broke into a bounding sprint as the sun slowly shifted out of view. Each step took him dozens of feet, and he limbered up his shoulders in between each placement, attempting to get to a decent location before losing the last of the light.

An hour later, Lex caught his breath after moving beyond Last Refuge's bounds. Sitting on the ground, he took out the trusty lighter his father had given him long ago. On the front was the image of England, while the back held an engraving of Big Ben, a small piece of civilization brought to the wilderness. Picking up a few dead leaves, which were far too many for this time of year, he grouped them up and smothered them liberally in the lighter's flame.

A moment later, his fire was crackling merrily in front of him. Lex nodded, then stretched a little more. The hop-skipping way he had to run nowadays was good for limbering up his legs, but he needed his arms right now.

When leaving their little town, most patrols spent much of their time in hiding. Moving during the day was helpful for keeping the shadowy creatures at bay, but some were able to walk right into the sunlight with no negative effects. When those times came up, the Refuge stated the best course of action was to run away, although your chances of survival were slim to none. Still, it was a brave man or woman who could step out into the apocalypse to offer humanity a helping hand.

Lex was not like them.

He'd discovered that killing as many of the Shadows as he could each night gave the area around them a breather. He didn't know if it was the travel time from where everything had started or if they were scared of coming to an area where their brethren had died. Either way, his little sojourns out here kept the Refuge safe. 

Whether they knew it or not.

A shadow appeared on his periphery no more than ten minutes after lighting the leaves on fire. Lightly touching his cudgel, as that was the true word for his large block of wood, Lex tried to appear relaxed, as if the creature were sneaking up on him.

As it crossed toward him, moving ever closer, Lex flexed his abdominal muscles, twisting his body while simultaneously swinging the heavy piece of wood as hard as he could. A thin coating of something came out of his chest, wrapping around the cudgel as he swung the large weapon around. At impact, a loud slapping sound rang out, and the shadow broke into pieces before fading away, small bits of black dust on the ground.

"One down, thousands to go." He said to himself, sitting back down to wait for the next would-be predator.

It was going to be a long night. 

Maybe he could come up with a few catchphrases while he waited.