CHAPTER 35: REN AKARI P7
~35.7~
*****
After school, the girls went for ice cream with Kye and Sanae. Rei and Ren ordered chocolate ice cream, Sora chose vanilla, and the three blondes ordered cookies and cream.
“Something I was wondering about,” Ren said, eyeing Kye. “That technique that Joey used is something you created? Mana Burst.”
“Hmm? That’s right. What’s up?”
“How does it work?”
Kye shook her head. “I don’t teach it. Joey knows it because she is both soulbound with me and is capable of performing it. Astraia is soulbound to me, but she cannot perform it.”
“Capable of performing it? What do you mean?”
Sanae formed a line out of mana. “What is this object?”
Ren was confused. “What?”
“Don’t overthink it. What is this?”
“A line?”
Sanae nodded. “How many dimensions is a line?”
Ren narrowed her eyes. “Dimensions? It’s only one dimension. Singular, not plural.”
“Correct.” Sanae molded the line into a square and repeated her question.
“A square. Two dimensions. Where are you going with this?”
Sanae giggled and molded the square into a cube. “Now we have a cube, that’s three dimensions.”
“Okay.”
“And now, I’ll put more mana into this cube until it glows like a radiant catalyst, but I’ll make a new cube for each second that passes. I’ll do this over ten seconds.”
In a series of adept mana manipulations, ten cubes of different mana densities were formed, one second at a time.
“So now, you added a fourth dimension. Time.”
“Yes. Now think of this demonstration as a line, a timeline, if you will. It is one dimension of time. What happens when you add a second time dimension? What is a square in temporal terms?”
Ren thought about it for a moment and then had an idea. “I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that for each of these cubes laid out in this line, you could have a height representation of time. You would fit more than a second into a second?”
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“Ding ding!” Sanae smiled at her. “And that is exactly what I did just now. The first cube contains mana equivalent to my maximum output, normally. The second cube is double my maximum output, normally. The third is triple, and so on. So to put that much mana into each cube, I simply spent extra time doing it, but you could not perceive that extra time I spent doing it, because that was the fifth total dimension, second time dimension.”
“Which means I cannot do it?”
“Correct,” Kye said. “Mana Burst is a technique that is possible for us, because we can manipulate more than three dimensions. You can influence length, height, and depth, but you cannot influence time. We can. And that is why I don’t teach it. Only people who can manipulate time can do even the basic version of Mana Burst, which is five dimensional. The version that Joey used briefly in your match earlier was six dimensional.”
“So then she added the equivalent of depth?”
Joey nodded. “Yes. That’s correct.”
“To elaborate,” Kye said, “in the span of one second, I can execute ten seconds of mana channeling, or more. But I also can compress that time into a shorter span of time, say a millisecond. That’s manipulating two dimensions of time at once, which means that action is existing in six total dimensions. Most people cannot perceive beyond the fourth dimension, so what appears to happen in their point of view in this scenario is ten seconds worth of mana channeling being performed in a one thousandth of a second.”
Ren looked at Rei, who only nodded. “That’s how they explained it to me before as well. I can’t do it either.”
Ren looked back at Kye, “But you can? So you can perceive six dimensions?”
Kye nodded. “And there are more dimensions than that. But they’re progressively more difficult to comprehend, much less experience.” She eyed her sister. “Right?”
Sanae laughed dryly. “Yeah…”
*****
Sometime in the night, Kye woke up and found only Sanae in the bedroom with her. The room was foggy and the balcony door was open. She felt a strange presence standing on the balcony.
She questioned where her spouses were, but quickly figured out she was in a dream when the system menu did not appear when she called upon it.
“A dream?” came Sanae’s voice as she rose out of bed. She noticed Kye as soon as Kye noticed her awake. “Hmm…” Sanae walked around the bed and tried to thump her sister on the forehead, but she caught her hand. “Shared dream?”
“It seems that way.”
Both glanced at the balcony. “You feel the strange presence, too?”
“Yeah. It’s familiar, but not familiar.”
“I’m not sure either.”
In their night gowns, both girls walked over to the balcony door and looked out. They saw another blonde leaning over the rail looking out at the sea. The two exchanged glances, then almost jumped out of their skin when the woman spoke. “You can join me if you’d like.”
She had the same voice as the two of them.
“This was bound to happen sooner or later, considering everything you’ve been through this past year,” she said. She didn’t as turn toward them at all, but simply waited for them to come to her. The woman seemed to trust them, and that confused them more.
“What is this?” Sanae asked.
“My dear Fia. My dear Eli. It’s nice to finally meet the two of you. I’ve watched from within all this time, but I could never interact with either of you, even like this. Certainly not for a lack of trying. But I was always content watching you.”
“How is this possible?” Kye asked. “Is this what I think? Are you…?”
The woman finally turned around. She looked identical to the blonde pair. “One of you inhered my given name. One of you inherited my nickname. Both of you inherited my love. My dear little sisters, I am so proud of what you’ve accomplished, and I’m so sorry for my weakness that lead to the necessity of your continued suffering. I’m so happy that you finally came here. We can talk as much as much as we want now!”
*****
Revision: 2024-12-2