“Soul Level: Absolute 99.99%”?
What the hell did that mean exactly? A message popped into his vision.
Soul Ability Pansophical has activated: Soul Level: Absolute – The Maximum Level a soul can attain in this Reality as designated by ERROR. The percentage given indicates how close you have come to attaining the next level if level progression were in line with previous level progression. For an absolute soul, 99.99% is the maximum possible rating. Soul Progress for an Absolute Soul has no known benefit.
The maximum level for this Reality? At least he was starting to get a handle on the terminology. As he was thinking about the implications of his new soul level his senses became overloaded. He was blinded, couldn’t see, and a cacophony was exploding in his mind. Even his senses of smell and taste were overloaded. Adam struggled to overcome this attack before he recognized the sensation.
It was as if a part of himself that had been lost had just been found again. This time there was so much information coming in that he knew this wasn’t just the nanites he’d left behind before going through the aperture. As that thought crossed his mind he was able to reorganize and categorize the incoming messages. The nanites were sending him information about the Universe he had started in, the one he’d just left. Those nanites were from the first Universe he branched from.
The nanites in that first Universe were giving him information from his Dyson Sphere in the Chaos of that Cosmos. In addition, he was receiving information from every universe he’d reseeded, and it was that information that was overwhelming him. Adam created a separation routine and set criteria by which information could be forwarded into his consciousness, otherwise, the nanites within each specific Universe and Cosmos were to quantify and store the information in that area.
As he struggled to put order to the chaos that was entering his mind he ran into his first hurdle. He could not control the nanites that were once again connected to him. Adam pulled nanites out of his soul storage and began storing the information there. he had a moment, only a moment approximately 1.2 seconds long when his mind was once again at peace. Then his mentality and storage were full, and he was once again absorbing an incredible amount of information which was making it hard for him to do anything else. Adam did the only thing he could he could think of under such circumstances, he set up a barrier to prevent the information from entering his mind. The oppressive pressure he’d felt eased, and he could think more clearly again.
Now that he had a little mental room to maneuver in, he created a sorting routine that took all mundane normal actions that the nanites recorded and removed them from storage in his nanites as the new information came in. He wouldn’t forget anything that had already made it through the floodgates but the storage capacity of the nanites here should be able to keep up with events that were deemed important. Those items were allowed to enter his conscious mind and added to his permanent memory.
He could now receive all the information from his nanites in other Cosmos, but he could not send messages the other way. Was that because he was in this Cosmos? Would he be able to contact and control the nanites when he made it back to Eternity? From what he’d reviewed when going over the changes to his soul abilities he shouldn’t be able to do what was happening now. To be sure he still had some control he tried to contact his nanites in Eloise, Ne’lix, Katja, and The Director. No issues, he could see what they were doing and was even able to adjust small things here in there in their vicinity. It looked like he could only issue commands and receive information normally in this Cosmos. He’d have to test to see if he could control the nanites in other Cosmos once he was outside of this Cosmos. Even so, he went through the memories the filters were allowing through as he absorbed the information coming in from all of his nanites. One of those sets of memories had been flagged as ultra-important. As he opened those memories he realized they were from Adaline.
***
Adaline walked through a city made of what looked like many colors of glass with Architecture he’d never seen. None paid her any mind as she made her way toward a talk skyscraper made of a flowing emerald material that looked like an emerald. She walked inside and up a set of stairs to an open cathedral that was much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. There were beings of all types seated around the outskirts as she made her way toward one of the VIP booths that overlooked the Cathedral and everything that was going on below. As she stepped to a seamless wall it separated and she stepped through. The wall closed behind her as a man in an ornate toga looked at her and asked “Refreshments?”
“Yes please,” Adaline answered.
“What brings you to me today?” the man asked.
“I believe my tasks are done, may I be excused?” Adaline asked.
“To chase after him?” he asked.
“Yes”
“No”
Adam could feel Adaline’s expression change and the anger flair as the man raised a placating hand.
“Be still my arbiter. I am not releasing you because I do not feel there will be a need. Something has changed, I know not what….” He said as the memory was cut off.
The memory ended and he was left wanting more. Adam searched the memories he’d been able to get but there was nothing else. The information flow had been cut off at her end. One good thing came from the memory. He knew Adaline was alive and she was still working for that boss of hers. Had to be a projection or a manifestation but of who? Nobody was opposed to him directly but that didn’t mean anything. Also, there was nothing he could do about it now.
Another thought crossed his mind. If his Karmic Luck had been spent to raise his soul level, how much Karmic Luck did he have left? After a quick check, it was still registering as a “Positive Error” So still infinite, or so close as not to matter. Adam wondered why that attribute couldn’t just be part of his normal “Character Sheet” though he really didn’t like thinking about his information that way. It made him feel like he was a character in a video game or LITRPG Novel. Who knows, maybe he was. Or maybe if someone were able to view his innermost thoughts the author had been connected to his network of nanites and there’d been some sort of feedback the author was tied into while he dreamt. Adam needed to get back on track. He was losing focus because of how excited he’d been to see Adaline again.
Forcing his mind to focus on the here and now, Adam released nanites into the Chaos around him and had them start the process of replicating as fast as they could to make a new Dyson sphere. He liked having a refugee he could fall back to if needed.
Next, he reviewed his personal information one more time to see if there was anything else that he’d missed that might have an immediate effect. The Soul Ability Chaos-Tempered looked neat and that note about Primal Chaos was interesting, as was the effect it had on him. His Luck and Karmic Luck attributes had saved his ass again. Otherwise, that could have gone very badly. But why did the Chaotic Abyssal Horror have an attack that used a form of Chaos that wasn’t inherent to this Cosmos.? Adam pulled up its memories to find out why. As he went through the memories he finally found something from its earliest recollections. It had been small, smaller than anything else in its pod of other creatures when something had picked it up. Darkness had closed around it that had lasted only moments then it had found itself alone, hungry within a huge area. It had begun to swim and had been quickly picked up by currents and traveled vast distances before it had even known what happened. There had been areas that it didn’t like and that it didn’t want to go into, but food had been plentiful where it was, so it had eaten and grown. Adam finished reviewing the memories and knew there was no way to figure out where the creature had come from or what had moved it.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Adam switched his approach and checked his own abilities for changes. The Ability True Prophet had morphed into the soul ability Prophet. That was nice, he wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to talk about the things he knew. Though he would still have to be careful. There had to be some other mechanism to prevent people from learning too much. If not, the truth might overwhelm them. How many beings wanted to truly live forever? Also, it looked like his skills were now automatically a higher category being at the rare level now, whatever that meant for whatever Cosmos he was in. That could come in handy though.
The ability to be Born, Cross Over, or Manifest seemed cool, how would he do that?
Would you like to leave this Cosmos, Yes or No?
What the fuck? he chose “No”, then asked out loud, trying to elicit a reaction from his ability Pansophical, “If I leave the Cosmos will I be able to return to this cosmos immediately?”
Soul Ability Pansophical has activated: Beings with the ability to Cross Over into Cosmos can enter or exit any Cosmos they have access to at will. Be warned exiting a Cosmos at any non-designated location, such as an aperture, places you in the adjacent location in ERROR. Entry back into that Cosmos can occur at any point you wish though movement outside the Cosmos may change your entry point back into the Cosmos you just left.
Also, note that Entry into a Cosmos is almost always into the Astral or Ethereal plane for that Cosmos though entry can be designated as any known location within that Cosmos if it has been visited previously. The accuracy of the emergence location is determined by the strength of will and memory of the location. Temporal dislocation into a Cosmos is permissible if the entity in question has the appropriate permissions to do so. Otherwise, entry into and out of a Cosmos happens at the same rate of time. Entry and exit through an aperture directly into Eternity or similar locations follow the temporal rules in place for entry and exit into those locations.
That last line had him concerned. It seemed that entry and exit into Eternity were following a different type of time rule. If he exited this cosmos without going directly to Eternity what would happen? Well, technically he’d already done that so while it was a concern he wasn’t worried about it. Adam brought his scattered thoughs under control with the thought, You only live once. Though that saying didn’t work anymore, did it? Well, if that saying didn’t work, Fuck it! Was a nice runner-up. With that, he willed himself to cross over.
Would you like to leave this Cosmos, Yes or No?
Adam chose “Yes” and felt the universe fade from him as he slipped through the membrane of the Cosmos and found himself in the Place between Places. He hadn’t felt like he moved, just like he’d slipped the bonds of the reality He was in. Adam looked around and found himself in an area of swirling colors that he knew to be raw chaos. But that didn’t make sense. The last time he’d been here he’d seen conduits and bubbles and what looked like cancerous growths on those universes.
Would you like to modify your interface to its default settings? Your interface settings are currently set to custom. Yes or No?
Adam chose “No”, which was a good thing because he could feel the pressure of the headache from information overload coming back. Adam closed his eyes and explored the sensation as he realized that his connection to all his nanites everywhere had strengthened. To keep things simple, he tried to contact the nanites in his original Place of Power and realized he had a full connection. Adam sent a simple command to the nanites there to turn on his stereo system and play some AC/DC for old-time’s sake, then shut off. AC/DC started blasting out of the speakers before they shut back down almost immediately.
So, he could contact all of his nanites from here. Would that be how it worked in every cosmos he went to, or was it just if his soul went there? Regardless, his mentality needed some help with the information overload so he went to work while he kept an eye on his surroundings.
The first thing he did was create criteria by which the controlling subroutine he was going to assign to each Cosmos and then the Universe within a Cosmos could forward information. He also left a back door, the same one he’d created that had a 512-point sequence of movements, along with the creation of the room in Chaos. It had been a long time since he’d set that up but good ideas are good ideas.
When he finished setting the criteria up, he redirected all quantum links within a specific Cosmos to a controlling subroutine for each Universe he had nanites in. The Cosmos where he’d saved a lot of Universes was a bit more problematic. Eventually, he designated some of his mentality, about 3%, to create new nodes and redirect the quantum links, and let it go. Whenever he was in this place it would get to work otherwise the Cosmos node would bottleneck everything. While the number of Universes in that Cosmos wasn’t infinite, it was effectively so. That 3% of his mentality was going to be busy whenever he was in this place.
Having access to all the nanites everywhere instantly caused his mental analyzing power to go off the scale. Adam Imagined that the best analogy would be if someone connected an almost infinite number of quantum computers together. Before they were connected one of the quantum computers would feel overwhelmed by the amount of input he was now processing. Connected in series, it wasn’t even a struggle to sort categorize and review the information before it was sent up the line to him.
One thing he did not do was look up Adaline again. He knew that if he did he would dive down that rabbit hole and try to get to her. Adam needed to get a handle on what had happened to him before he started going crazy with the changes that had happened which brought him back to the interface message. So, he was seeing the Place between Places as it really was?
Suddenly he realized with just a little mental effort he might be able to…He couldn’t, could he? Adam focused on one of the layers and then opened his eyes and looked for it as he watched the layers in his vision shuffle. Suddenly the shuffling stopped, and shadowy outlines surrounded him.
Adam had realized that from this Place Between Places he had access to every Cosmos. The shadows around him sharpened as the surroundings shifted. The shadows flashed faster and faster until they started to slow and then solidify as one of the layers became highlighted. Adam focused on the layer and all the other layers disappeared as a transparent map overlayed his surroundings and projected whatever was within the Cosmos he was looking at around him. The surroundings around him shifted and superimposed themselves so that he could look around and see what was in the Universe he was looking into.
Within the same Cosmos, he shifted his perception to his Place of Power and the ghostly images shifted and resolidified. Adam was now floating around the ghostly replica of his place of power. Adam passed through the doors into his bedroom and felt that if he willed it, he could step into that location. Pretty sure what would happen he willed myself into that location.
Would you like to Cross Over or Manifest?
Adam closed the prompt and released his focus on the nanites in that area and the shadow image remained. Instead, he focused his memory on his estate near Alamogordo NM and the ghostly images shifted until he was standing on the balcony there. He hadn’t seen any living creatures so he changed his perspective to somewhere He knew there would be people, New York City.
He’d been there and he also had nanites there. The Shadows shifted around him, and he found himself standing on the ghostly image of Broad Street looking at the entry doors into the building looming above him. Ghostly images of men and women that were not part of his memories walked all around him. There seemed to be a range of about 50 feet. Because people were appearing and disappearing as they walked into and out of that 50-foot bubble centered on him.
So, he could use his memory or his nanites to focus on a specific spot and the images shown would be for the current moment. Then, if he wished, he could cross over or manifest into the cosmos. Adam released his memories and the ghostly images. Adam rechecked his surroundings and saw nothing near him. Then he looked at his clock. To be honest he hadn’t been paying attention to it so the date it gave because it meant nothing to him. Instead, he searched through his memories to the point where he exited the Cosmos he had been in and looked at the time and date in that memory then he compared it to his current time and date. It had been a long time since Adam had been so focused on something that he lost track of time. This time that lapse had only cost him three weeks.