My eyes narrowed while watching the black mass atop the ceiling of Fyor. It was currently night-time, so I might not have noticed the mass at all, if not for the faint glow of the Balton, and their decorative lights placed around their spires. From what I could tell, it did not appear to be doing any damage directly to the buildings, but… any Balton that was caught within it dissolved immediately.
I watched the scene play out for a few moments, before starting to rewind time once again, hour by hour. It looked like the black mass seeped down from the ceiling, making me worried that there might be some danger on the upper floor that was able to bypass the black stone wall. If that was the case, this was a major emergency, and I would need to report not only to Jordan, but also the guild as soon as I confirmed the truth.
Soon, I was able to see the black mass disappear into the ceiling above the Balton cities, but something was bothering me. I had gone back more than eighteen hours at this point, but the world was still in its ‘night time’ period. All layers of Fyor, regardless of their size, had twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night. Granted, particularly large floors could have multiple ‘time zones’, due to the light taking longer to reach them, but the fact remained that any individual point should only experience twelve hours of night at a time.
Closing my eyes, I directed my sight towards my inner world, the new slice of history that had appeared within the universe. I didn’t know exactly where the crystal spire would be located on this floor, so I was doing this as a way to find it without having to manually teleport all across this massive expanse.
Eventually, I found the crystal spire, and compared it with my current location. My mana surged around my body, and I teleported to the coordinates of the pillar. Upon my arrival, I saw a spire over a hundred kilometers wide, shattered within the window through time. From what I could see, this had actually happened quite a long time ago, with the broken crystal even starting to show signs of regrowth.
I held out one hand, and began to revert time once again, this time to uncover the source of the crystal’s destruction. Jordan had said that the ‘variant bubbles’ were likely to be the result of a mana siphon. If that was true, then the black mass that I saw was likely just the first stage of that siphon.
After all, the sheer amount of mana that would be released from this pillar’s destruction, as well as the mana unable to find its way back afterwards, would be more than enough to trigger an apocalyptic siphon. So, I simply needed to know what had caused this thing’s destruction. Had a divine Balton attacked it for some reason?
Going back a month did not give me any information, nor did another. On the third month, the crystal was completely intact, so I began to cycle through one day at a time, and then back one hour once the crystal was destroyed again. This allowed me to accurately see the battle that led to the destruction of the pillar.
That’s right… a battle. In a land where no creatures other than the Balton existed, there was a battle raging. Fire, lightning, and wind were being thrown against a massive, disembodied hand. This hand had seven fingers, each finger having a glowing, red eye at its tip. In the center of its palm was a mouth more than fifty meters across, with a dozen, thin tongues stretching out and grabbing at the nearby structures.
The Balton were fighting back as hard as they could, but… it wasn’t enough. Their attacks did not so much as faze the monster, while it could grab an entire building to swallow in a single gulp. One of the Balton directed a blast of lightning at one of the monster’s seven eyes, only for the other six to glow red. The window to the past became filled with static at that instant, causing me to step back mid-air in alarm.
When the static cleared, the Balton were fighting one another, detonating and destroying their own buildings. Nobody was attacking the giant hand anymore. Had it not been for the static that I saw, I might have been confused. However, that static was an automatic safety measure that I created to avoid observing civilizations destroyed by the void.
This static will only occur when a memetic power is captured by the window, and it will completely obscure the source of the power. The fact that the entire window was obscured meant that, in that moment, the power completely filled the area.
With its path unobstructed, the giant hand began devouring other nearby buildings, eventually leading the Baltons to scatter and attack other cities. Meanwhile, the hand moved to grab the crystal pillar. As soon as it did so, cracks began to appear along the pillar, its light fading. Within the pillar, I could see a rush of blue being drawn into the mouth on the palm of the giant hand.
This is bad. I gulped, my eyes wide. At this point, I knew what caused the fall of civilization, as well as the appearance of the predatory siphon. Two fears combined into one when the crystal shattered. First, there was the fear of the unnatural darkness, which seemed to consume everything. Secondly, there was the fear of the rogue Balton that had been charmed by this giant hand.
Given the circumstances, the first fear likely outweighed the second by a significant margin, which led to the first stage of the siphon being the black mass. Then, as it developed, the fears of those who had encountered the rogues began to further evolve the siphon, leading to the creation of the mutated Balton.
Knowing this was all fine, but there was something more important for me to do right now. Pausing the window on the moment when the hand crushed the pillar, I called out with divinity in my voice. “I issue an urgent call to any of the Greater Pantheon who will hear me! A dire threat to the safety of Fyor has been found, one that could endanger everything that we know! Please, answer this summons!”
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My voice echoed out against the surroundings, carrying with it a faint, golden glow. I couldn’t be bothered with the fact that my voice caused another building to fall, not at the moment. There were few enough buildings left in this region anyways.
I waited, maintaining the window while gritting my teeth. For five minutes, there was no response, and I took a deep breath to shout again, before a voice appeared behind me. “We’re here.”
Turning around, I saw four figures standing in midair. There was the pink-haired halfling Goddess of Love, Travel, and Dungeons, Aurivy. The elven Goddess of Magic, Merchants, and Wealth, Ryone. Her daughter, the elven Goddess of Void, Space, and Gravity, Leowynn. The lycan Goddess of Wisdom, Wind, and the Hunt, Accalia. And finally, the human Goddess of Peace, Battle, and the Ocean, Bihena.
“We don’t usually get calls like this.” Accalia said with a small smirk, crossing her arms. “I hope you have a good reason for summoning us here?”
I nodded my head, stepping to the side. “Please, take a look at what I’ve found. I am Helen Dour, an archaeologist sent to Fyor to research the newly discovered lost civilization. In doing so, I searched through this area’s history, and found something that I believe you will all agree is worth the call.”
The five goddesses stepped forward, peering through the window that I left hanging in the air. “A giant hand?” Aurivy asked in confusion. “I thought only bubbles lived on this floor?”
“They’re called the Balton, and that is correct. This entity does not come from this floor. Until this moment, it was locked in battle with the local Balton forces, which failed to inflict any damage on it, despite possessing their own deities. If you look at the tips of each finger, where the eyes are… one Balton attacked those eyes, and it triggered a memetic ability that caused the Baltons to begin fighting each other and destroying their own homes.”
When I said that, the goddesses tensed up. Leowynn pursed her lips, staring into the window. “Can you provide a more detailed simulation? I need to discover if this is a monster with memetic properties, or the true manifestation of a void beast.”
From how the others looked, neither of these were good options, but one was significantly worse than the others. Thus, I nodded my head. “I can, but it will use a considerable amount of energy. Additionally, the moment in time I will be recreating will be frozen, to prevent it from activating its power while we are observing it.”
The five goddesses nodded their agreement, and I began to focus my divinity. Fully recreating a moment in history was something that I only did in rare circumstances, when I needed to observe the energy composition of an artifact for research purposes. Gradually, the window began to widen, moving to wrap around the entirety of the mana pillar. As it did so, the hand seemed to materialize, frozen in a single moment of time.
“Once you enter the area of the projection, you will be able to sense everything as if you were there in that moment.” I told them, and Leowynn began to walk forward. “I won’t be joining you, because I have to focus on maintaining this as a simple window, rather than a portal.” There was some strain in my voice as I said this.
The more I simulated history, the more I ran the risk of transitioning from a simple observation to a full portal. So far, I had crossed that line once, and it made me lose one of my hands to the period I was observing. Granted, I was able to regrow it, but I was never able to find it again after it was lost. Fully simulating an area this large, I had to maintain total focus.
Thankfully, I heard Leowynn speaking a few moments later, after she exited the projection. “It’s done, you can stop.” She assured me, and I closed the window entirely. Now that I had learned all I needed from the past, I did not need these windows anymore, other than simple fact-checking later.
“Well, Leo?” Aurivy asked in a serious tone. “Which was it?”
Leowynn hesitated, glancing in my direction. “You’re the one that discovered this, so you have the right to know… it was a memetic monster, but it was heavily tainted with void corruption.”
Ryone’s eyes widened when she heard that. “We have to find the connection point on this floor, and destroy it immediately.”
“There’s something else.” I said, lifting a hand as they turned their attention back towards me. “It’s not as bad as this, but… during my investigation, I was able to confirm that the researcher James visited this layer of Fyor, a little more than two years before this incident occurred.”
Aurivy’s eyes twitched when she heard that. “I thought you said it wasn’t as bad…” She said, causing me to tilt my head in confusion. Aurivy turned to look at the others. “We need to find out if this thing took the same exit he did. If it did, there’s the chance that it could end up at the natural core, or any of the other floors he’s visited.”
“Right.” Bihena nodded firmly. “You go with Helen to investigate the path that James and this creature took, as well as their origin points. The rest of us will look for any connecting material on this floor to begin sealing.”
With that, four of the five goddesses disappeared, leaving only myself and Aurivy. Aurivy turned to face me, putting on a forced smile. “Sorry to ask you to do this. However, we need to trace that thing’s path through this floor. Afterwards, we’ll need to do the same with James, to see if there is any overlap.”
“Are you worried that this thing is connected to the researcher?” I couldn’t help but ask, causing Aurivy to blink and quickly shake her head.
“Oh no, nothing like that! However, there’s the chance that they took the same path when traveling. If that’s the case, we need to find out if there is a danger to the other floors. This thing… it didn’t come from one of the floors of Fyor, but rather above the surface. If not for the black stone walls, it could destroy all of Fyor just as easily as it did that pillar. As it stands, its destruction is limited to only a single floor at a time, but we don’t know where it will appear.”
“To be honest, the worst case scenario isn’t even that it followed James to his next destination. The worst case scenario is that it came from James’s destination. That would mean that there was another connecting point between the surface of Fyor and the inner layers that we haven’t found yet.”
I nodded my head, feeling my body tensing up at the thought of that thing being set loose on the other layers. As she requested, I opened another window, resuming from the moment that the crystal was destroyed. If I had to do this, I’d make sure that I saw it through.