Robert sat down on the grayscale floor of Noah's office and started to picture his mental palace. The blue sky and some clouds came first. Lazily floating in a gentle early spring breeze, the air slightly chilly but not too cold. He thought he should go with something easier to imagine like a smooth concrete floor but his mind betrayed him and he imagined a vast meadow, with fragrant flowers and fruit trees extending as long as the eye could see.
He smiled but cursed inward. He had to visualize each of these flowers in perfect detail. And the trees. How many leaves are in a tree? He was going to find out. Later rather than sooner. At least he should leave a stone slab for his bastion. Now it had a moat. For some reason. His imagination was running wild, making his task harder and harder by the minute.
Robert disconnected from the budding technique and opened his eyes. Now he knew why this technique was recommended for two-star Mental Archs. The amount of discipline required to keep one's mind from wandering was not something he had. It would take a lot of time but Robert had nothing if not time.
*
*
The next day, they sat in the small classroom to discuss the small details of their field trip again.
"Maintaining our supplies will be the hardest part of this journey," Noah said. "We won't always be able to forage or hunt for food. And the water in most realms is toxic or contaminated. That's where Amanda enters. You will need to grow food and distill water for us. I requisitioned three infinite canteens for us. These space dilation containers can hold up to one-half a meter of water without changing its weight, but only water. It doesn't purify the water, though."
"We also can't let our guard down while resting," he shifted his head to point the blue eye painted on his mask to Robert. "We need to do some experiments with your talent. Let's go to the testing room.
They went to a room designed to test middle to long-range abilities. It was thirty feet wide by five hundred feet long, with reinforced walls. Noah turned on the shielding and the room hummed for a moment, then went deadly silent. All sounds and interference from the world outside were blocked.
"Since your talent doesn't work only with skin-to-skin contact, I believe it might allow us to sleep in the liminal void and not only save the time spent sleeping but also gain precious hours to talk about theoretical things. We will conduct a test right now if you don't mind. We will use a weak monster as our guinea pig. Do you agree, Robert? The monster is a slime. It can barely be considered alive as it is just a giant unicellular organism."
"What do you want to test?"
"First, the distance one can be considered in physical contact without suffering detrimental effects. You will take the slime in its containment case and a spool of wool thread. Tie the thread to the case, then walk away with the spool. If the slime dies, we will know the range. I don't think you need to go more than a hundred feet away. That's more than enough for us. If you reach that distance, go and retrieve the slime. The second test will find out what is considered physical contact. You will take a slime, the same one or another, and a roll of fabric. Extend the fabric on the ground, place the slime on one end, and walk to the other one. Now, people often remove both of their feet from the ground when walking or jogging. This would break the physical contact with the fabric. To keep that from happening, you'll have this special belt."
Noah showed a belt that had a little more than a meter of rope attached to it, and a metallic ball on one end.
"Wearing this, the ball will remain on the floor unless you jump very high. If you can walk to the other side of the fully unrolled cloth and the slime doesn't die, this will be a success."
The idea of walking around with that ball hanging from his waist was weird but if it allowed them to sleep in the liminal void and gain those eight hours of real time, it would mean their expedition would move fifty percent faster. It was a huge gain.
Noah unveiled the materials. Amanda flinched when the cover came out and moved to the other side of the room, hands raised in the position she usually took when casting her spells.
The slime wasn't that cute bouncy gumdrop depicted in children's media. It was a sticky mass of long tendrils, writhing, shooting against the containment cage's walls, seeping down, pulsating, oozing. As repulsive as a giant had sneezed a few gallons of nasal mucus. And it came alive. It had a rudimentary sight as it became extremely interested in pressing itself against the wall closer to Noah.
"Nasty little critters. They dissolve almost anything they touch except for what doesn't interest them," Noah explained.
"Starting with the clothes or armor," Amanda said bitterly.
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Robert thought her remark obvious but the delivery hinted at some anime-level trauma.
"Which thing gets dissolved first changes depending on the particular slime," Noah said as he nodded in Amanda's direction. "Not very popular with the ladies, or the lads for that matter. Yet, they gather and hold so much ether that they are basically ether in gel form."
"They are also a pain to kill," Amanda said and shuddered as if she were experiencing some repressed trauma. "Blunt attacks only move them, piercing attacks do no damage, and slashing forces them to spread or split. Often the split parts rejoin."
"What about magic?" Robert asked.
"A waste of essence for most affinities. Ether attacks are costly. If you get a good matchup, like an Ice or Plant affinity slime against a Fire arch, then maybe. But are you going to burn all of it?"
"You can always try to find and break its nucleus," Noah suggested.
"Nucleus?" Robert asked, wanting more exposition. I mean, information.
"Somewhere inside that mass of living ooze, there's a solid nucleus. A core, so to speak," Noah explained. "You can't see it because it doesn't distort the light in the way a transparent object does when immersed in a fluid. But if you break the nucleus with a physical attack, the slime dies instantly."
"Do they have a mind?" Robert asked.
"As much brain power as a microbe. None." Noah replied with a shake of his head.
"Let's get it on with these tests, then."
Robert took the transparent slime containment unit and used his talent. He tied the tether to the top and set the monster down on one end of the room. Unspooling the rope, he started to walk backward slowly, watching for the moment the slime died.
He reached fifty feet. The next step caused the slime to burst into a swarm of Time wisps. Robeet focused on entering the Netherecho and harvesting the wisps. The uncomfortable feeling of a bloated star begging to go supernova increased. He only refused to ascend right there because his talent provided him with plentiful opportunities to strengthen his patience.
Robert retrieved the containment unit, now filled with a thick liquid, and trained with his acoustic guitar until it was time to return.
"Fifty feet," he said a few seconds after returning.
"That's more than we need," Noah said with a grin. His ears moved.
"Do we need to do the second test?" Robert asked.
"Yes, we do." the professor replied. "It is because I suspect the liminal void to be a conceptual dimension. The tether was an intentional connection you created, linking the cage directly to yourself. The canvas on the ground won't act the same way. In fact, I want you to specifically avoid thinking about the canvas. Imagine you've abandoned the slime on it."
"Gotcha."
Robert first entered the liminal void without the slime. He unrolled the canvas on the ground, all the one hundred feet of it. Then he waited the few minutes it took for him to return and grabbed the second containment unit.
The slime died thirty feet away from him. Robert couldn't isolate his thoughts but the difference in distance corroborated Noah's theories.
He returned minutes later. "I don't think you have a third slime, do you?"
"No, but I will take the containment units with us. We can capture other non-sentient monsters to make other tests while we travel. What was the range, this time?"
"Exactly thirty feet," Robert said. The measurements on the canvas were more precise because the tether had some slack.
"We will work with twenty-five feet of radius, then," Noah decided. "A three-bedroom tent, without spatial dilation. Because I don't think it will be necessary or safe to assume the void bothers if the distance is compressed or not."
With that last acquisition, the preparations for their field trip were complete. The next day, they took a transport to the passage.
*
*
In the transport, Robert read a history book.
The rift cataclysm erased human’s most prized technologies. It also wrecked classical physics. Quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, it all vanished. Some theoretical physicists say that if you conduct an experiment in a place devoid of Ether, things will work exactly as before. They are theoretical physicists because nobody ever discovered how to remove Ether from a thimble, much less a room or anything bigger.
Whoever finds out how to do that would be a dead man walking, anyway. Because such a place, without Ether, was a deathtrap for Archhumans. Every major faction and their great-grandmothers would band together to make sure that threat was nullified. Archhumans liked their position above the common mortals very much.
But it hadn’t, however, erased the knowledge about such technologies and how they operated. Even if they couldn’t be reproduced using the same principles, many Ether technicians spent all their time in the last two centuries recreating these technologies using magic.
The digital wristwatch Robert wore was one such emulated technology. The crystal slab attached to a leather strap could tell the time, adjust for different time zones, and set alarms, but it didn’t perform a single mathematical calculation.
Television and radio were another. It broadcasts a signal that devices could catch and replicate the audio and video using embedded illusion spells. Radio waves? What was that, again? Humanity had no way to detect radio waves. Not even Light-affinity Archhumans could work outside the visible spectrum.
Radioactivity didn’t work as well. Ether stabilized high-mass isotopes and elements, allowing for fantastic materials that were fantasy before the cataclysm. Not only that but Ether also infused these materials, giving them the properties of an affinity. The sword Robert destroyed fighting the cultist doppelganger was imbued with Water ether to let it self-repair.
Robert slammed the book shut. Then he stared at Amanda sitting next to him, opened his mouth and closed it without vocalizing a sound, then opened the book again.
“Amanda, I think I found another clue to your healing spell assignment,” he said. “Remember the sword I bought?”
“Yes?”
“It was imbued with Water to give it self-healing abilities. The metal flowed as if liquid to join the pieces.”
“Oh. That’s good. Really good,” she said with more tact than excitement.
Robert laughed. “You already knew.”
She grinned and then showed the excitement Robert expected. “Yes. I’m hap—” Amanda closed her eyes, then stared out the window. When she looked back, her skin was a notch closer to pink under the makeup. “Thanks for keeping me in mind.”
“Sure. You’re welcome,” he replied.