From the time Walker passed out until the moment he woke up, events within the Temporal bubble moved on accordingly. There were many highlights, from One losing her arm in the first five days to Hephaeustus declaring a disciple. In the martial tournament of Numbers, Seven won it easily, as close to all knew she would, while Eighteen won the Territorology quiz and Ten scored the highest on the Milestone test. Only a few took Hades' survival gauntlet, with no true winner declared by the end, as he stated all four of the contestants were losers.

Sonata, even in the time dilation, felt like it was speeding up, and things were only moving faster.

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Walker opened his eyes for the first time in a month as the planet shook below him.

Unknown changes occurring.

The Tree of the Gods is maturing!

.....Scanning.....

.....

The Tree of the Gods has borne fruit.

"What the fuck." He said as a blinding headache pounded into the back of his skull. He scrubbed his face with his hands as he sat up on the worst bed he'd ever slept on before. His notifications exploded.

Congratulations Dante!

Sonata has been recognized by the Alpha Protocol as holding multiple entities of your creation.

All task tracking is now enabled in your original location.

Walker was still rubbing the grit out of his eyes while the notifications continued to update as he looked at them. There were so many that the system was organizing them into clumps so he could look at them as necessary. He clicked on his pre-designed Milestone notifications that he'd built into the system during his personal time dilation.

Milestone update: An entity has unlocked Milestone 1 of the Traveling series

Milestone update: An entity has unlocked Milestone 2 of the Traveling series

Milestone update....x143. Please click to inspect all Milestone updates.

Walker whistled. At least he knew it worked. Cagna must've put in a ton of new series for that many Milestones to update all at once. Walker clicked on the Follower system updates.

Followers gained: 48

Followers that have obtained the rank of Explorer in The Unending Summit: 5

Followers that have obtained the rank of Seeker in The Unending Summit: 0

Walker knew why they couldn't move from the second rank to the third. He'd never set up the promotion trial for them. He had no idea how the Sapients had come to find the Unending Summit, but he wasn't about to complain about having his followers read his scripture and understand it well enough to pass the first test. Maybe the forty-three who didn't pass just needed a review guide. He chewed on it for a moment.

While he was in his personal time bubble, he had worked on and thought about a lot of different things. The Territory system, how the Class system would work, and even a few secret projects he'd kept from Virgil so he could see the look on his face when they popped up. But, he hadn't worked on the Follower system as he didn't expect them to find it. Walker looked at the second promotion requirement again.

Requirement for promotion from the Explorer rank to the Seeker rank.

Explorers will travel across the breadth of Symphony in search of greater strength. A promotion trial is required for the next stage.

That wasn't going to work out as it was too little information for his followers. He stretched and hopped out of his stone bed, landing on his feet with a great thud.

"Must've put on some weight", He said, patting his flat stomach. He couldn't stand up all the way because the place they'd put him in was too small.

Did they build this place for ants? he asked himself.

Walker made a quick change to the requirements so his followers would have a better understanding of what was needed to move to the Seeker rank. He knew he'd have to do the same for all of the ranks, but he'd do that as they approached each threshold so he didn't get bogged down in the minutiae.

Requirement for promotion from the Explorer rank to the Seeker rank.

Explorers will travel across the breadth of Symphony in search of greater strength. After obtaining the Apprentice Traveler milestone, a promotion trial may be requested for the next stage. Each trial will be decided upon by a ranking member of the Leadership branch.

Then, remembering his rename of Territory holders to Custodian, made a quick change to the Combat branch which held the same name from before. He wasn't perfect, and as all of his assistants and primigenials knew, he was terrible with names.

The Combat Branch of the Unending Summit

Sentinel

Trailblazer

Vanguard

Warden

Sentinels are a combat role within the Unending Summit whose focus is to silently guard a location without being seen. They may be deployed to any parts of Symphony at any time.

A Trailblazer is an explorer who enjoys the thrill of fighting new monsters and finding locations that have never been seen by another. This role is for those who prefer to constantly be on the move.

The Vanguard is a role that is always at the forefront of any combat within the Unending Summit. Typically deployed in squads, Vanguards tend to build their roles into self-sustaining teams.

Wardens are always assigned to libraries and are required for each across the entirety of Symphony. Each library will have one Head Warden who reports to the local Director.

Wrapping up his quick Follower system update, Walker realized that a day...well at least a day....had passed since he used his Temporal resources on himself directly. He went into the system designer, ready to get his currency program started, then thought better of it. He wasn't entirely sure how much time had gone by, both in his personal bubble or while he was unconscious afterward.

He knew now that it wasn't the wisest idea to wrap yourself in temporal resources without considering the ramifications, although he also wasn't sure what made him do it. It was...an instinct....a feeling that it needed to be done. Walker's chest pulsed for a moment in line with his thoughts. It was confusing for him and he didn't know what to make of it.

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Why

During his time by himself, everyone had been frozen entirely still. With his newfound speed, he'd circled Sonata in only a few hours, but after several days, a small depression had struck him. He didn't know how long he was going to be like that, and it was a disconcerting feeling.

The only way to stave off any loneliness was either to spend time working, planning, or pretending like the frozen people around him were having a conversation. Sure, the notes were helpful, but it was agony waiting for them to reply. Still, he did get a lot done.

Since his body was now impervious to the strands he'd found during the Primordial collider event, it should have allowed him to combine multiple strands together relatively safely. The problem was just how few resources he had for use.

Walker reached into his torn pocket to pull out one of the projects he'd spent a large amount of his time working on while his headache faded into the background.

A small brown leather bag sat in his hand.

He hadn't wanted to use the basic leather in the system, so he'd gone into his memories and pulled out an old website he'd looked up when a student had asked about how leather was made. The look of shock on the vegan girl's face had been worth studying how to create it from scratch. He wasn't vindictive or mean to vegans, but it was a funny moment. He'd explained it to....her....after and she hadn't found it funny either.

It had taken him a portion of his time, but in the end, he had created leather from scratch and felt a slight glow of accomplishment from it. The killing part had been extremely uncomfortable, but he couldn't balk at killing an animal for its resources after killing hundreds of creatures by ejecting them into space.

After he'd made the small bag, he had kept it in his pocket for a time, trying to figure out how to do what he knew was needed. He had gone into his abilities and used his new pocket dimension to create a bag that had more space in it than outside of it. It had been quite difficult to manage, with more than a few test runs, and he'd gone through a lot of his stock of leather before realizing he could just donate it to his personal Item system. The system didn't have the Territory system's itemic value breakdown, but Walker still labeled it standard leather as he felt it was fair to do so. Once he donated it, leather was much easier to come by.

Still, there was a problem with his bag. First, it only held about two times its size and thus didn't have a ton of value to him, and second, he never knew exactly what he was reaching in to grab. No, there had to be something more to this.

It all came down to the strands.

Once he realized this, Walker tried to use the strands safely through the alpha protocol, but it didn't recognize what he was trying to do. Primordial and Temporal resources only worked through a system, so it was a system that Walker needed to go through. The problem was that Walker was stuck in a personal time bubble where the system didn't recognize how his own time was moving, just Sonata's. It meant that anytime he wanted to experiment with strands, he'd have to do so by either creating a system from scratch for them, which he couldn't do after creating the Region system, or working with his own hands, which could be dangerous.

At the time, he'd had a limited amount of strand resources, so he didn't want to waste any on experimentation. Now that a good amount of time had gone by, a quick glance at his current resources showed that the Council was still sticking to its promise. He had hundreds of strand resources now, even thousands in some, although his single Entropic resource had not gone up in numbers, which was to be expected.

Walker reached into his resources and grabbed space. He didn't need to use the Dimensional strand as that was already attached to the bag itself, no, what he needed was more space, more...compressional magnitude. Walker put the bag on his stone bed and tried pushing the dark blue space strand directly into the leather. It of course didn't work, as he wasn't trying to attach space directly to the leather itself, but the dimensional hole within it. Smacking himself on the forehead with his free hand, he moved the bag so the opening was larger, then inserted the space strand directly into it. The dark blue coloring seemed to drain it right out of his hand, so he knew he'd made the right choice.

Walker reached inside and found that he could fit his whole arm now. Not knowing how long it would go, Walker went into the item system and found it had been updated with a newly minted advanced AI. He had to donate his blood again, but for some reason, the needle wouldn't pierce his skin. He solved this by biting his lip, hard, like he'd done at the start of the protocol itself. A bit of blood spit into the cup and the environment changed to the forest he had grown comfortable with. The AI, who chose the name Phil after Walker explained that John was already taken, gave decent advice.

He stepped out and picked up the standardized three-foot tall piece of wood, then measured and began etching in each division of feet and inches. Absorbing it into the item system, he went in, produced it, and popped back out. And just like that, Walker could measure things.

American style.

He stuck it in and it just kept going, which was problematic as he only had three feet in length. Walker stepped back in and hopped out, doing the same thing with a ten-foot pole this time. Standing it upright, he found he could just see over the top of the long measuring pole.

"What the fuck?" He said to himself. He must be at least ten-foot tall now, as the damn thing was near the roof and he was still hunched over. "I'm a fucking giant." He said, then gnashed his teeth, remembering himself telling Virgil he did not want giant humans if he could help it.

Just then, the giant black squirrel himself came walking in, seeming much smaller to him than he had in the past. "Hello, Walker." He said simply.

"Really? I'm gone for who knows how long, and all I get is Hello Walker."

"Certainly, would you rather I say, oh my gosh Walker, you are so big and stupid!" he said with a straight face while his voice sounded reminiscent of Rimi's when first being expelled.

"Look...."

Virgil held up a hand, "Please. You have done some incredible things since arriving here Walker, and some have also been mistakes. If you felt the need to smother yourself in a large amount of toxic temporal resources, who am I to say anything." His tone of voice was as stale as two-day-old French bread.

Walker scratched the back of his head, "I just...I don't know. It felt like I needed to. I can't explain it." He said as a pulse fluttered in his chest again.

"Yes, I had thought so." Virgil nodded, "I cannot begin to understand what you are going through, as it has never been recorded before. But, please do try to keep me in the loop in the future."

Walker gave him two thumbs up, "You got it."

"Excellent. Now, there is much we need to discuss-"

"One second!" Walker said, interrupting him, "I need to test this."

Virgil nodded without speaking and Walker took the pole, sticking it into the spacial hole in the middle of the bag. It wasn't until eight out of the ten feet went in that Walker felt it stop. He tried wiggling it around and found that it was about eight feet at all angles, meaning the bag could hold sixty-four feet of space now. He recalled the resource drain when he'd pulled from his resources. It cost about one resource per half-foot of increased space in the bag if he did his math right. That wasn't terrible.

Walker clicked on the Item system and tried to add it in.

Would you like to add this to the Item system registry?

Walker selected yes.

Error....

Item has its own dimensional reality. Please attune the item to the Item system's current dimensional holding.

"How the fuck do I do that?' Walker asked the sky.

"What is wrong?" Virgil asked.

"I tried to add this bag to the Item system but it says that the dimensional reality is different. It won't let me put it in there so I can mass produce them."

Virgil snorted, "Duh. Each dimension has its own anchoring point. If you created that here, then it is anchored to this dimension, not that one. You cannot mass-produce dimensions Walker, it would not be logical. What do you think Renditions are?"

"So how do the advanced AIs work?" Walker asked.

"They're created in each rendition by a Supreme assistant using primordial resources. Well, I should say they used primordial resources, but now they will use the much more efficient dimensional strand you found."

"So I can't just spit these out like crazy for all of my followers?" Walker asked with a sick expression on his face.

Virgil shook his head with a small laugh, "No, just the fact that you were able to bypass the dimensional restriction on space is astounding enough. If you had the ability to mass produce these items, the multiverse would be a much much different place. Honestly, you could consider selling them....one moment." He looked up at the sky for a few seconds, before looking at Walker. "I have messaged the Alpha Protocol Council and started a barter. They would like to know if you are interested in selling them, as they are unable to bypass the restriction themselves." He looked at his screen again, "Yes, they lost two assistants attempting to do so."

Walker shook his head, "Good lord they're rough." Walker looked at his bag again then shook his head a second time, "Not this one, but I will consider selling others when I have the time to make them. What do you think the going rate is going to be?"

Virgil looked at the sky, then back at Walker, "They want me to say that the value of the dimensional storage device is only worth ten primordial resources per extra foot of space, but as you like to say, they are low-balling you, quite a bit if I may add. I would estimate that each bag holding over forty feet of space or more is worth about a created planet's worth of resources because of the bag's rarity. I also know you have some plans to create a larger solar system."

Walker smiled, "That I do. It's nice that you don't have to do everything they say anymore."

Virgil smiled back at him, "I agree. My freedom is quite a boon to us both. I would suggest only giving them a few before saying you need time to work on more. Rarity brings value in commodities."

He nodded, "I agree, although I'm going to make requests per bag, plus, who says they just have to be a bag where you can't find anything you're looking for." Walker clicked on his resources and selected the consciousness strand. Pulling away the deep yellow color, he tapped the edge of the leather while Virgil watched.

"I had not thought to do that Walker." Virgil said as he looked at the bag.

"Well, I had a lot of time to think in my time-space. This is just the start." Walker put the measuring stick inside, all three feet being swallowed up by the dark-black void in the center of the bag. Then, he said "I'd like the stick please."

After waiting for several seconds nothing happened, but he thought he knew why. Walker reached in with his long arm and was barely able to grab the tip of the stick, pulling it out. Just before he put it back in, he said "This is a measuring stick." and stuck it in. A second later he repeated his earlier request, "I'd like the measuring stick please."

The measuring stick came halfway out of the bag, waiting for him to grab it.

"Remarkable." Virgil said as he watched.

"Yeah, it was one of my ideas. I figured if I added a small amount of space to the bag, increasing how much space it held overall, what would happen if I added a small amount of consciousness to the bag itself." Walker scratched his chin, "It's not life, so much as it can just take commands. If I added it to my cabin here, I bet I could get it to do some tasks for me to make life a little simpler. Like open the door when I approach or clean itself." Walker looked around his room. "It's a little basic, but I can change that over time. Also, based on what you just said about the dimensional issues, I'm worried about what will happen if someone tries to put a dimensional storage device in another."

Virgil tapped his chin, "I am not sure. Likely it would create an explosion of some kind, where all items within are rapidly expelled at speed."

Walker nodded, "That's what I was thinking too. Either way, I now have a somewhat sentient dimensional storage device....that name is not going to work." He said with a shake of his head, "Let's call it....a cosmic sack....no.....pouch of holding....no...." Walker began pacing, which caused Virgil to smirk a little. On the second circle around Walker said, "Let's just call it a magic vault, fuck it. The amount of feet it can hold will be termed Spatial Storage Units, or SSUs. This is an eight Vault." He nodded to himself.

Walker produced another bag from the Item system, and then used his pocket dimension ability on it, before adding eighty space resources to it. "That should go for quite a bit, don't you think."

"A forty Vault? Yes, I think so. But, I didn't see you add the consciousness strand to it." Virgil replied, catching onto the new lingo quickly.

Walker shook his head, "Nope, if they want that they'll have to pay extra. I know they have the life-giver ability, but that's not something they'll actually want to do unless you want a testy bag that decides it'd rather keep the items you place in it, rather than give them back."

Walker handed the bag to Virgil, who nodded before saying, "I will get you the best deal I can."

"I know you will bud. If you can, try to steer it to upgrading our systems with their own dimensional storage. That way I don't have to do a roundabout way of producing everything." Virgil nodded again, "Now, what's been happening here?"

"Oh....umm....quite a lot. How do you feel about accelerating the placement of your Sapients?"

"What?"

"Also, your hair is completely white now.....did you know that?"

Walker's face was a model of confusion, "What again?"