Spoiler: The hidden concept behind the construction of the Sphere

What is the Multiverse?

The idea of the multiverse is based on the assumption that for everything imaginable there is one reality where it is real. That for every decision ever made, there is one reality where the opposite choice was made.

But to protect everything, the barriers between realities are strong - so strong that even the most powerful beings need a lot of their strenght to bypass them. Bareen, Rolandro (R.O.B. from Shaleen's story) and their associates are strong and experienced Powers of their world, but not yet up to the levels needed to bypass those barriers on their own. But they had an idea on how to bypass the last bit of resistence: What if they build a base at a place where Reality itself was already stressed and strained to the limits?

And so the Sphere was build on the inside of a Singularity - on the inside of the largest and strongest Black Hole that they could find in their own universe. The only place where Reality was already twisted by the gravitic forces of the singularity to the point that just a "minor" energy expenditure (at least minor for god-like Powers) was needed to bypass the barriers of reality and access the uncountable possibilities of the multiverse.

But while building the Sphere they realised that the sphere needs a very fragile balance to give them the access they wanted. The sphere had to be stable enough to prevent the chaos of every reality imposing itself on the constructs (thereby destroying everything and going back to the original singularity), but on the other hand it has to be variable enough to become a base for accessing the impossible probabilities of the multiverse.

The living being inhabitating the sphere give them the variability of changing access (as expressed by Kuor'Tel), and the dungeon cores were the original controlling mechanism to keep some stability. The people of the Sphere know that their greatest ability, Kuor'Tel, doesn't work inside dungeons - which is one reason why they try to conquer and contain them. What they don't realise is that the dungeon cores also stabilise the floating lands they are living on. Without that minor stability effect created by the cores outside of their dungeons, the lands themselves would dissolve and only the black sea of condensed gravity particles would remain (as it was originally).

What is Kuor'Tel?

Basically Kuor'Tel is the energy of the multiverse seeping in through the cracks in reality, condensing the concept of "What if?". The people can't even explain it themselves, but they know that they can change local reality by putting their energy behind their wishes.

"What if the rabbit jumps left as his next step?" - resulting in knowing where to shoot the arrow.

"What if the core didn't give the command to dig that tunnel?" - resulting in the tunnel vanishing

This goes even to the use of the gods and the system - like way back when it decided to re-translate "Aura" into "Plague", which is only for some parts a better translation. The true effect is that of an energy aura/potential jumping from one object to the next as there are no germs inside the sphere - the same way as there is no air. But the System decided that "Plague" would be a better translation to describe the effect for the Xenotics.

And that is also the biggest problem with Kuor'Tel: If you change reality, other beings usually no longer remember things that never happened. Briar had to touch Gunny and expend four or five times the regular energy to make Gunny remember the other reality before his change to the tunnels. Another example was back in the first interlude, where they discussed that they don't know exactly what happened and could only assume that Markus Ohannus used Kuor'Tel because everyone else had exhaused their energy fighting the change that Markus wanted.

And during the fight on the safe floor, when he realised that the attack command was a mistake, Markus panicked and tried to "what if I never gave that idiotic command" instead of calling his soldiers to stop (which command would have been obeyed but would leave him to face his error instead of erasing it). Too bad that the stabilisation inside the dungeon prevents all regular Kuor'Tel, causing the insanity overload and him still having to face his mistakes.

When Bareen originally told the General that they made several attempts to change the rules for a more stable balance, he (and the readers) automatically assumed that those changes were one after another in linear time. But each of these changes was a reality-rewrite by the creators of the sphere, and while they did their best to have themselves remember the reasons for the change and what they tried before (like Briar did with Gunny), that effect was also limited to the most important points (or rather what they considered to be important at the time of change).

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

This is another reason why they are running low on energy and are desperate to find solutions to the problem of balancing the Sphere. And several of the inconsistencies that the General has already found were caused by the fact that they didn't change everything between the different rewrites.

So why didn't Bareen simply tell all of this to the General?

A hint to that can be found in the sneak peak that the General gained into the God's communications with the "Tachion net" during the insanity overload (chapter 2.2.1 and 2.2.2) - it actually contains quite a number of hints for different parts like the fact that it uses Tachions - Faster-than-light-particles.

Any Power or any being with sufficient additional energy can access the multiverse from the sphere. And there are already several Powers that gained access without being part of the original group of creators. That was what the comment "you don't belong here" was about. But everyone who imposes its own ideas of what should happen creates another force and power drain that needs to be balanced for the sphere to continue to exist. And that could already be described as trying to balance a brick on a needle (the general brick broken out of a house, not one carefully designed for balancing).

If Bareen had told the General what this was about, he would have realised that she doesn't need to do anything to give him his reward - if the General gets enough power he himself can create a gate to his original homeworld and send his spawn there to fight the zombies.

In fact he has already accessed the multiverse during his insanity overload - that is where a lot of the completely new environments and spawns inside that floor come from. And once he gets similar power levels without the overload problems (around level 80 to 100), he could do that without causing a problem for himself (other than risking the balance of the Sphere).

But Bareen didn't want to risk that his wish to save his home world might cause him to intentionally risk overloads and divert energy from saving the Sphere. Only after the Sphere is at least a bit better stabilized it would have no problems to handle the General using that energy to help his own homeworld.

And yes, that is the main reason why the original dungeon cores were computer programs - that way they could be programmed to never use the access they have. And only after those cores have proven to be insufficient the Powers decided to risk handing the cores to regular souls with free will.

What are the layers of the Sphere?

Back to the way the sphere is build.

The lowest level that is called the "Layer of the Xenotics" is of course the real universe of regular living beings. The system has been designed to give every Xenotic its extra points as a compensation to being unable to use Kuor'Tel inside the sphere, which is a big disadvantage. That includes the "Gods" who are all Xenotics as well, even if they hide that fact and can use an improved form of Kuor'Tel due to their direct access to the System they created.

The next layer, the "Layer of the demons", is basically the regular black hole matter. It is ultra-dense, but has already caverns in it where the demons live. The task of the demons is to keep the few intentional access points between the outside and the sphere closed and isolate the outside and the inside from each other.

The System has been programmed to describe the Demons and Xenotics as bad in order to prevent the inhabitants of the sphere from digging out, as that would create a lot of problems.

The third layer is the "Black Ocean". In reality the water is a condensed form of gravity particles created where the chaotic energies of the multiverse are influencing the black hole matter that is already as dense as physically possible. It is black and opaque because it is still too strong for normal light to escape it (the "sight" of everyone in the sphere uses tachions, that is faster-than-light-particles, instead of regular light waves).

The regular water is called "slightly poisonous and slightly acidic" by the system because those natural gravity particles have irregular 'gravity energy spikes' that can harm people. And the 'Distillers' used to make the water drinable are in reality gravity manipulators that harmonice the energy of the particles. After that it is needed as an energy source to keep the people alive.

The "Rainstorms" as described in 2.3.3 (the incomplete part) are in reality gravity storms where the 'water' is out of control and throws everything around. That is why the raingear of the sphere is mostly ropes to bind yourself to some stronger and heavier obstacle.

Above the ocean float the lands where the people live. Because they are really floating those lands change position and you'll need two aligned long half-bridges (see interlude 2.1) to travel from one land to the other - ships to sail the black ocean are an insanely risky proposition for a lot of reasons (including the acidic water destroying the ship's hull within months by simple contact).

Unknown to everyone (see above) those lands are protected from the effects of the water by the minor outer stabilisation effect of the dungeon cores. The dungeons also create the matter (treasure) of the sphere lands, the people would not be able to replace lost matter if not for the dungeons (their few mines have to be very carefull not to dig down below the floating land they're on, and that limits output a lot).

The fogs far above the lands (or asteroid fields if you can go nearer to check) are basically leftover construction materials from the first stage. They can be used to repair some specific damage until they are used up (later Briar will find some history texts in an academy telling that earlier times had more fogs).

The black half-sphere orbiting the suncore to create day and night is just that - the Powers simply wanted to have some difference in time instead of an eternal day.

And the suncore itself (which is also the point of weakest reality) emits a tachion-based light instead of regular light to the sphere as regular electromagnetic light could not escape the gravity of the Black Ocean.

OK, please keep any discussion of the truth about the sphere in this chapter, unless it's something the General officially learned of in the past.

And everyone who doesn't like spoilers: don't read the comments here if you haven't read the inside of the spoiler above either.