Luca DR
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Edge 143
🕑 Added 2023-11-21 15:35:37 +0000 UTC143 – Inventory access
Albert concentrated. Okay Jeff, pulling plates and cutlery out of my inventory was all fun and games, but how about something useful. How about a gun? I really miss handling a gun after so long.
I don’t know, Albert. Jeff’s voice, if someone could call reading text that was loaded with intent and emotion a voice, was getting more and more butlery by the day. By all means, even simple cutlery should have been impossible by your own definition of Power. Yet, you did it anyway. At this point, just try hard and see if it works. If it does, I’ll update the models. Again.
Albert was sure there was a sigh hidden in the lines of text somewhere. He smiled at the AI’s antics for a moment, but then refocused on the task at hand. He was some distance away from the hedge clearing where he left the girls, and the mutated forest seemed peaceful enough to do some experimentation.
What he wanted was to have his old inventory back. He knew he did not have enough power to open a portal to it, and not nearly enough to access it with his mind, but he had tried to force his way though space and time successfully once already. Granted, it was to retrieve useless dinnerware, but that was simply because he did not wish to ruin his things, or worse, to set off a bomb.
Now that he was far enough away not to worry about the consequences though, and now that the girls could not see him, things were different. As such, he took a deep breath, seized control of as much Power he could manage and heaved. Barely a few days ago he would have thought about what he was doing in terms of Focus, numbers and other statistics, but the more he used his power the more he understood.
His muscles tensed and strained, a strange sight considering that he was simply doing magic and not physical labor. His mind bent itself to the task, his will strong thanks to his training and his single-minded obsession with getting his stuff back.
Power +1
A small part of his mind was aware that Jeff was keeping track of his Power and changing his numerical rating accordingly. But the bulk of his being was too busy to care. Jeff would keep him safe while to him the forest disappeared, the sensations of his body receded, and even pain ceased to matter.
After what felt like a moment, but could have been hours in the outside world, finally Albert thrust his hands into the empty air in front of him and began to tear the fabric of the world apart. Pulling at the seams, like a miniature crack in the world, jagged ends of colored light became visible.
The wound in the world, the tear in space-time grew from the epicenter of his hands along a vertical line, like pulling curtains apart that were kept together by forces greater than anything humanity had ever encountered before. For a moment, the void beyond was visible, and then…
Albert caught a glimpse of his stuff. And the room it was in. It was familiar, in a way that he could not quite explain having never been there himself, but he felt like he knew it all too well. He also knew that he didn’t have much time, and needed to act before the universe closed the fault in reality that he was exploiting to get to his stuff. He analyzed what he had with impressive speed, already knowing what to aim for. He had prepared for this, using the fact that Jeff could dig through his memories far better than he himself could to prepare a list of things to retrieve. The gun he so wanted was not that high on the list, actually, but he would try to get it if he could.
He didn’t enter the space himself. Even though it presented itself to him like a small room, complete with wooden shelves and the faint smell of dust and mold, he knew it was nothing like what he was perceiving. It was a pocket world of infinite dimensions, a space folded upon itself where he could store infinite things for an infinite amount of time, provided he could pay the energy cost to keep it going. If he dared enter this place, especially with how unstable the opening was, there was no telling what sorts of weird things might happen.
What happens when the anchor of a piece of reality moves inside another part of reality that only exists because the anchor itself exists in the outside world? Who knows? Albert was not keen to find out, because caution trumped danger despite his burning curiosity. Jeff, meanwhile, added exploring and potentially exploiting this weird mechanic to the list of ongoing projects.
The first thing that came out of the hole like it had been tossed through was the big, 1000FU crystal the system had awarded Albert for a quest what felt like ages ago. Then a mountain of smaller crystals followed, for another 900FU worth of them. Not a bad haul, all things considered.
It would have to do. The portal was shimmering and flickering, the passage of this much energy having destabilized it almost to the point of breaking. Albert’s arms were numb with effort, and his head was pounding while his brow was dripping with sweat. For a moment he considered actually reaching for one of his guns, or even a nuclear warhead or anything that might come in handy later, but his grip slipped and the portal slammed shut in front of him.
He stared at the forest, now visible far ahead, for a good minute. Then he shook his head to wake himself up from his stupor. The impossibility of what he had just done only barely registering.
“That was… interesting. Right, Jeff?”
I have no words. Truly.
Albert laughed. “You sound frustrated. Was it so strange?”
Strange? You call that strange? It’s not strange, it’s supposed to be impossible.
“What?” Albert tried to compose himself but failed to. “I gain the ability to bend reality and you get all worked up when I… bend reality to my will? What did you expect me to do?”
Right. The AI said. My mistake.
“No problem. Now—”
By the way, you gained 7 Power. Your total is now 137.
Albert’s mouth hung open for a moment. “…Okay, thank you?” He said, choosing not to dwell on the annoyed tone that was certainly hiding within the innocuous line of text.
Instead he looked at the mountain of small crystals on the ground, next to which a slightly bigger but much more powerful crystal shone with inner light. “Let’s compress these crystals into something a little bit handier.”
A wave of his hand and they were gone, replaced by a small, round blue sphere. Pocketing the mana core, Albert scanned his surroundings.
“How much do you think we are missing to give the girls a nice boost?”
You tell me.
“Come on! Don’t act like that. The funky part’s over. What we need to do now is scientific and rigorous. Simple matter of providing enough energy to create and kickstart Lina’s new magic system.”
If you say so… then you probably need some more mana and at least another 10% in the form of Doom energy to balance it out. You don’t want Lina to have too much Doom in her that she goes insane, but since the world is getting saturated with it, you need her to start building some tolerance to it from the get-go.
“Right…” Albert muttered. “10% should be safe, and by integrating Doom into her magic we’ll make sure it can grow as she grows. Great idea!”
Jeff did not respond, but Albert got the sensation that the AI was quite proud of its suggestion. That, or at least it was happy that Albert wasn’t going to go all reality-bendy again and throw off any predictions it might have formulated. If that was the case, then it was going to be disappointed soon, Albert felt. He didn’t know what he was going to do, of course, but he had this feeling that the AI didn’t like his… very unscientific approach to his Power. Which was fun considering that he was a very rigorous person himself, but when it came to his Power it was all just different. Hard to explain to someone who didn’t have it.
“Well then,” Albert said. “I guess it’s time to do some actual hunting of monsters. Jeff, scan the area please.”
He hunted, then. Monsters and mutated things, warped and distorted by the new energies present in the world ever since the shield surrounding Sitea had destabilized. Animals made into grotesque monsters, or perhaps monsters themselves that were further mutated and modified by the new, more chaotic energy called Doom, or more scientifically known as Alignment Energy.
