As Adam floated in the Place between Places, he set his visual interface to his personal setting instead of the default and looked out into the vastness that spread out in all directions. This Dimension, Universe, Realm? The realm, he liked that word for this location. This realm was filled with colors that moved and swirled. Adam released some nanites and found that this medium was more like the Astral Planes he’d encountered. It was gaseous and dispersed as opposed to the vacuum of space.
Adam thought it was similar to the dimension of chaos but now realized he was wrong. His nanites detected all types of magic. Unlike Chaos, the medium wasn’t morphing or changing, for the most part. he could identify those areas that were made up of chaos because they did change but then he’d find areas of earth magic, air magic Fire magic as well as small areas that contained multiple different kinds of magic. Adam also found physical particles of every element that he knew of and a couple of variations he had not seen before. They were dispersed, but they were present.
First things first, he thought about making a place to call his own here but realized in this vast nothingness, it would stand out. Instead, he looked into his soul space. Was it visible from the outside? Adam released some of his nanites and willed himself into his soul space. he connected with the nanites hovering around his entry point and they detected nothing in any spectrum they could see in. There was probably a way to detect another’s soul space, but he currently didn’t have that ability, or did he?
Adam willed himself back into the Place between Places and tried to will himself to see soul spaces. Yeah, that didn’t work because he didn’t have a frame of reference. Without someone out here with him, he might not be able to. Maybe it was as simple as casting a detect soul spell, so he did. It was successful but not helpful. He detected his soul and couldn’t detect anything else. Adam dispelled detect soul and willed a detect soul spell that detected all other souls except for his. Adam watched as a green snaking line of light led off into the distance. Adam followed the line of energy until it stopped. He didn’t see anything that stood out.
Adam cycled through his vision, trying every single spectrum but saw nothing. He moved right to where the green line of energy ended and noted that it seemed to go into something. Adam magnified his vision and noted that particles were avoiding a very small area, no larger than the size of a quarter that the green line of energy came up against. Adam brought up his finger to touch the dead zone and his mind was attacked by a consciousness that tried to enter him. It failed. Adam tried to send a question into the soul, but his mind hit a wall and he was locked out. Adam started to strengthen his will to force his way through the barrier when he received a warning.
WARNING: You are trying to access another’s Soul Space without their permission. This will lead to a contest of wills. Soul damage to you or your target may result if you continue.
Do You wish to invade the Soul of Camaxtli?
That name was Aztec or sounded like Aztec in nature. Was this the soul of an Aztec that had become lost in this place? There was only one way to find out, he chose “Yes” and heard an audible pop as a release of energy, equivalent to a small stick of dynamite went off and he was flung away from where the soul space of Camaxtli had been.
The soul space of Camaxtli has been ruptured.
You have taken 1,234 points of force damage
Adam brought himself to a stop and willed himself back through the wave of force to the point where the soul’s space had been. Adam waved his hand through the now-empty area and looked around. The soul space was gone. Adam tried to summon Camaxtli, with no success. he tried to teleport to Camaxtli, again with no success. Adam checked his Combat Log which only consisted of one line, which is why it hadn’t even been flagged for his attention.
The Soul of Camaxtli has been completely disincorporated
Disincorporated? he’d have to find another Soul and figure out what had happened. Adam cast the spell to find another soul again. This time he received a system message.
No Targets within Range
There could be other souls out there, but it looked like they were pretty rare. So, either the souls were disincorporated, on their own, or they were destroyed by individuals that didn’t know what they were doing. The ones still floating around must be extremely rare then. His high luck had let him find one, but not even his luck could prevent a lightbulb from exploding when he put way too much power through it. That’s probably what happened when he tried to break inside. Adam was making a lot of assumptions though and this was no longer something he could explore so he decided to redirect his attention to the real reason he came out into the Place between Places.
Adam willed himself into his soul space and set up a copy of his Place of Power back from when this all started. He liked the aesthetic of the setup and it just felt right. He also redirected the quantum links for his nanites so that he could call them up on the monitors in this place of power as he desired. That way he could watch them like a program on TV instead of in his head. He would still be watching in his head, but it would give him something to do with the projection of himself he had in his soul space. Adam wanted to be able separate those two in his mind just in case he needed to have his projection do something or entertain someone. He also wanted to check something. Adam willed a portal into existence from his living room on the 1st floor to Ne’lix’s office and was pleasantly surprised when that worked.
Ne’lix looked through the portal, saw that it was Adam, and asked, “Adam? Can I help you?”
“Hey Ne’lix, just testing something out, don’t need any help, keep up the good work,” he said as he closed the portal.
So, he could open a portal from within his soul space into a Cosmos. Was it just one cosmos, or others? Over the next couple of minutes, he opened portals to locations in every cosmos that he’d ever visited where he had nanites that had no one around. He did not try to step through at this point, he just wanted to see if he could open the portals. Next, he tried opening portals to two different Cosmos at the same time. Even with his mana sitting at 1.61E+36 and his mana regeneration sitting at 1.08E+34 mana per second each time he opened a portal into a cosmos his mana bar take a serious hit.
Adam watched his mana bar as he opened a portal then maintained it and realized that the mana cost to open these portals was by percentage, not a number. After he did a couple of tests he figured out that it was 10% of his mana to open a portal and 1% per minute to maintain it. If he opened a second portal it was 20% of his mana to open the portal but still only 1% to maintain. A third portal was 40% of his mana making it a total of 70%. he didn’t try to open the fourth portal though he was pretty sure it would cost 80% of his mana to do so. If he opened one portal he’d be back to full mana in 11 seconds, two would take 22 seconds, three would take 43 seconds and four portals at the same time would take 92 seconds if he was trying to maintain all four portals at the same time.
Adam could open three portals at the same time and would be able to open that fourth portal 66 seconds later. It looked like entities with unlimited amounts of mana still wouldn’t be able to open that fifth portal without some outside help. Also, he was betting there was a minimum amount of mana required to open a portal into or out of a Cosmos so beings couldn’t come and go as they wished. Then again that was covered, wasn’t it? He was a special case because of his exposure to primal chaos. If his assumptions were correct of course.
Of course, that wasn’t the reason he’d come to this place. He needed to see if he could still manifest or cross over from within his soul. The first thing he tried was to have his projection crossover
ERROR You may not Crossover into any Cosmos from within your Soul Space. You may cross over with your soul space either unattached or attached to one of your projections.
Not surprised, he chose the manifestation option.
You have chosen to Manifest a portion of yourself within a Cosmos. Please choose your target Cosmos and Destination.
Adam visualized his place of power in the Cosmos that he had started in and a new prompt appeared.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Manifestations are limited by the laws of the target Cosmos. While all earned Soul Abilities are available when your soul space crosses over the soul abilities available to your soul shard during a manifestation must be chosen and paid for with Karmic Luck. The cost is based on the number of soul abilities taken. You may choose two for free. The third Soul Ability will cost 100 Karmic Luck, the fourth will cost 200 Karmic Luck, the fifth with cost 400 Karmic Luck, and so on.
Please chose from your following Soul Abilities. Any Soul Abilities that are grayed out are not available within the target Cosmos.
“Perfect Memory”
“Pansophical”
“Temporally Inviolate” – Permanent, Always Active
“Chaos Forged” – Permanent, Always Active
“Chaos Tempered – Permanent, Always Active
“Adaptable” -Requires Convergence
“Willed-Movement” -Requires Convergence
“Incessant”
“Resistant”
“Open to new Ideas”
“Convergence”
“Spellweaver”
“Soul Storage” – Requires Convergence
“Affluent” – Requires Convergence
“Allegiance”
Adam reviewed the list quickly, noted that it looked like five would be free, and chose all fifteen soul abilities.
You have chosen fifteen Soul Abilities, two are free, and three incur no cost. The Karmic Luck cost to add all 15 soul abilities to your manifestation is 102,300 Karmic Luck.
Next, you must choose the level your manifestation will appear as. Manifestations are hard-limited to the Cosmos to which they are assigned. The maximum level possible is the highest level available in the Target Cosmos. Levels are paid for by spending experience points. You may convert 1 Karmic Luck to 1 Experience point.
You may choose to manifest as a Divine following all progression rules to attain such levels. Should Divinity Points be required to progress through the different ranks of a deity. Karmic Luck may be spent at a rate of 1 Karmic Luck for 1 Divinity Point.
He chose the maximum Divine Level
Karmic Luck cost is 5,500,000,000,000,000 (5,499,994,500,000,000 Divinity Points and 55,000,000,000 experience points.)
Please chose your manifestation type from the two available Projections: Adamantadine or Ahrem
Adam chose Adamantadine.
You have chosen to Manifest Adamantadine with 15 Soul Abilities at Maximum Deity Level for 5,500,000,000,102,300 Karmic Luck. Karmic Luck Spent in this way is tied up in your manifestation. When your manifestation ends you automatically recover the Karmic Luck spent. If the manifestation is utterly destroyed, something that can happen, All Karmic Luck spent on the manifestation is lost.
Would you Like to Create this Manifestation, Yes or No?
Adam chose “Yes” and then waited to see if he would feel any different. While he was waiting something about one of the messages that he received when Trix was eradicated crossed his mind. Trix hadn’t been a God Level being when he’d killed her though she’d been quite powerful. That meant that Textrix was out quite a bit of Karmic Luck. Getting worried, he wondered if he shouldn’t already be connected to his manifestation. Adam pulled up his links to the nanites in the Place of Power which very clearly saw a copy of himself looking around. Then a connection formed, and they synced up.
After some very quick conversations with himself at machine speed, he realized that the manifestation had indeed been created with nanites though none of the nanites in his body were quantumly linked with him or any of his previous nanites. They wouldn’t be as he had not created the manifestation, something else had. If he manifested a copy of himself somewhere there were no previously left nanites he’d have to crossover and make a link so he could keep track of the manifestation in real time or he’d have to wait until the manifestation returned. Except, that none of his manifestations were likely to return if they had nanites.
The last thing he wanted his manifestation to try was to open a portal to his current location in his soul space.
Adam received a message from the manifestation of himself.
Manifestation 1: Only the Primary Projection may open a portal to and from locations inside ERROR.
Adam: That makes sense, we’ll know we’re connected so feel free to get back out there and have some fun, I’m going to set input from that Cosmos to unmonitored unless you contact me directly,
Manifestation 1: Sounds good.
Adam double-checked his level of Karmic Luck and wasn’t at all surprised to see that it still showed as “Positive Error” So still effectively Infinite. Adam closed his interface and willed himself out of his soul space and then crossed over into his Pluto base in the Vrax Cosmos, as he thought of it. No issue with crossing over, however, he could no longer connect with his manifestation. As he surmised, while his soul space was inside a cosmos he would not be able to monitor events from one of his manifestations. If his manifestations that could die, did die, would he receive their information? Time for a test
Adam crossed back over into the Place between Places and then connected to his nanites in the Universe his parents resided in on one of the many airless bodies away from civilization. The moon he chose didn’t even have a designation as it was on the other side of the Milky Way over 100,000 light years from Earth. His nanites knew about it, which meant that Thor here knew about it.
Adam: Thor, this is Adam.
Thor: Adam, where are you?
Adam: Very soon, two very basic copies of myself are going to appear within your influence at these stellar coordinates <…> Do not assist or help them in any way. I am conducting a test and I need to see if this works. I’ll contact you within the next 24 hours to update you, and everyone else, maybe even go see my parents.
Thor: Okay, well talk then.
Adam created two chambers that would open sequentially, one after the other 30 seconds apart. He also programmed all the nanites in the area to ignore the appearance of two humans on the planet in the next five minutes. Adam chose to manifest two copies of himself. Both were level 1 and had only the abilities he could not terminate; Temporally Inviolate, Chaos Forged, and Chaos Tempered. Adam didn’t choose any other abilities for these manifestations because he wanted to see what happened to the soul shard. With no experience and no abilities chosen, it only cost him 2 Karmic Luck to manifest both copies of himself. he had one manifest in each survival tube and then waited.
After 30 seconds he received a prompt.
A manifestation has returned, would you like to incorporate it now or wait?
Adam chose to wait, then crossed over into the Pluto base in the Vrax Cosmos again. After 30 seconds had passed and nothing happened. he set a timer and waited another five minutes before he crossed back over into the Place between Places and entered his soul space. As he did, a second message appeared.
A manifestation has returned, would you like to incorporate it now or wait?
Adam chose to incorporate it and the knowledge that the manifestation had learned washed over him. There was only one minute of life to review which consisted of “me” looking around, watching the other cylinder open, and his first copy flash freezing which 30 seconds later also happened to “me”. Additionally, an information tag was added to the memories with a unique character sequence “AD…002…XXX…ADA…003”. Adam opened up the message and chose to incorporate the first message and that tag was the same except it ended in 001.
he queried his interface for all Manifestation codes and found; AD…001…XXX…ADA…001, AD…002…XXX…ADA…001, and AD…002…XXX…ADA…002. It looked like the codes were generated based on the Universe and the number of manifestations he’d sent there. The “…” characters must be clipped because they were extremely long placeholders. If he was a betting man, that “ADA” meant Adam, and if he ever manifested as Ahrem it would change that to “AHR”. That made sense, to him at least.
The manifestations were being numbered based on how many he had created, not on the Universe he was sending them to. That Universe code was probably in the areas of the tag he couldn’t read. Not to worry, in the near future, he was pretty sure he had a way to break into that section of this interface.
The last tidbits of knowledge he learned from incorporating his two manifestations were that they did not have nanites in them, so having nanites was part of another one of his abilities. Also, they had all his memories right up until the time they were manifested.
Adam connected with the nanites on the moon and set them to recover the bodies and break down the chambers then pondered what to do next, he wanted these memories fresh in his head if he did what he was thinking about doing.
For the Scientific Method to work, he needed to have a large data set. Normally that took time and resources. Adam had plenty of resources and If he wasn’t mistaken he could probably create Gods across the multiverse, which he was pretty sure would be a very bad idea. Level 1 manifestations with all his abilities? That might work. Sure, they’d be relatively weak, but they’d have nanites and their skills would still be off the chart. Besides he wasn’t trying to rule Reality, he was trying to find a way to figure out what was going on. To get the information he needed, he would need his manifestations to be able to die so that the shard of himself he had tied up in them wouldn’t be stuck. Otherwise, he’d have to visit every single Cosmos and open the link and while that was a possibility to look into, it wasn’t something he wanted to do now. His copies would not be able to connect to the local nanite network or spread themselves out. If they didn’t do that they’d be able to self-destruct if they needed to return to his manifestation to him to give up the information they discovered.
The last question was of course, how many could he make? Only one way to find out. Adam opened the Manifestation window.
You have chosen to Manifest a portion of yourself within a Cosmos. Please choose your target Cosmos and Destination.
Adam visualized one manifestation at a random habitable civilized location for humans in every known Cosmos
Criteria accepted if Karmic Luck permits.
Adam chose to give each manifestation all 15 soul abilities but started each out at only level 1. Of course, he chose all the manifestations to be Adamantadine.
You have chosen to create ERROR number of Adamantadine manifestations across ERROR number of Cosmos. This action will cost ERROR Karmic Luck
Are you sure you wish to do this? Yes or No?
It was Go Big or Go Home time so Adam chose “Yes”.
A moment later the room he was in went dark as he felt a pulling and ripping sensation from an indescribable number of directions. Adam was, but he wasn’t, surprised when everything faded to black as he fell unconscious.