[???]: 1x earth seed, 1x metal seed, 1x wood seed.
[???]: 1x fire seed, 1x water seed, 1x light seed.
[???]: 1x dark seed, 1x essence of space, 1x essence of time.
"I have Ping'yan, Kalos, and Miros in the concept nexus..."
"Miros is the concept of combat."
"Kalos the concept of earth."
"Ping'yan the concept of cultivation."
"If I wish to create a body with the monarch path. I'll need every single element."
"I had originally intended for Miros to be the concept for metal. But there are actually some concepts with a higher affinity."
"Perhaps I will be able to find a job for every single concept."
Somnus traveled through time.
TS: Year 12, Day 3;
81 was born this day. Somnus entered his dream and found something insane.
"Another anomaly..."
What he saw was a solar system that had been plunged into darkness. Not due to the loss of a star. The sun was covered in a dyson sphere. Somnus also noticed something was wrong with the flow rate of time. It was being manipulated across the entire dream!
"This person's source composition is 96% metal. I expected another battle maniac. What exactly is he doing?"
Somnus found many technological marvels. This was essentially more ridiculous then Miros! It was the equivalent of a newborn baby driving their mother home from the hospital after being born.
Somnus hadn't manifested a body in the dream. He should've been completely undetectable. But the civilization 81 had built broke common sense.
A wave of information was uploaded to Somnus's consciousness.
{W22 - 10110 E4 - 00100 L11 - 01011 C2 - 00010 O14 - 01110 M12 - 01100 E4 - 00100}
"Welcome?"
Billions of nanites formed a body floating in space at the location of Somnus's projection of consciousness.
Somnus was actually caught off guard. If this wasn't a dream. He would even feel threatened at such information gathering methods.
A man appeared in the form of nanites.
More waves of information were loaded into Somnus's intent as a form of communication.
"Are you the creator?" 81 asked.
Somnus was in a bit of a daze.
"I was sent by the creator..."
Somnus was confused about something. It had only been a few hours since 81 had entered this dream universe. How did he advance so far? So he asked this question.
"Time isn't always consistent. I used this principle to build a time dilation device. I then had a bigger time ratio to work on my inventions. My research pointed me to this being a false world. It is an illusion, or a dream."
"So I decided to find the creator."
"My detection devices noticed a fragmented soul's sweep of consciousness in this sector of space."
"So I obviously felt it would be rude to not personally come to greet the visitor!"
Somnus realized that he had left a loophole in his dream realm. He hadn't expected somebody to conceptualize a time altering device within the dream itself.
But when he thought about it. It didn't matter too much. Since it just exponentially multiplied the amount of time the concept had. If it weren't for 81's device. Only a few hours would've passed in the dream.
So Somnus didn't 'patch' this bug. Since he didn't consider it to be one. It was unlikely to be abused by ordinary concepts.
Somnus finally manifested a body floating in space in front of 81.
"I am Visdre. Nice to meet you!"
"I am Tankai... Is it time to leave?" Tankai probed. He had spent thousands of years going up the tech tree. He had grown bored of this small dream world. He wanted to leave. But he was waiting for the right moment.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Somnus sighed. He came looking for someone to be the metal dimension sovereign. But he found another gem.
"I helped the others wake up. From what I have seen. You are quite unfathomable. But even at the end of the time limit. You never woke up."
"Why is that?"
Tankai paused for a moment and then said:
"The fisherman does not empty the ocean to catch a fish... With my time dilation device. I have millions of years to explore the rules of this space."
"Let me show you something..."
A spaceship teleported near them. An airlock opened up and Somnus and Tankai entered it.
The ship went into warpdrive and they soon arrived at a special station. The ship docked and Tankai showed Somnus the monitoring room.
There he saw 81 bubbles. Two of them were red. 79 were blue.
Tankai pointed to one of them.
"These are..." Somnus was shocked! This concept was really interesting!
"They are other realities... or illusions. Around the 300 year mark. I found out that I wasn't alone in this 'dream world'. But there seemed to be an isolating force."
"I came to speculate that there are 80 others in my situation."
"But that isn't exactly true. Somebody is erasing these existences! Thus my conclusion is to never escape... because that could mean a complete wipe out!"
"These bubbles are vanishing. This is the equivalent of a reality collapsing."
"A few seconds after I was born. I constructed a mental map of differences in my state. I came to realize that I lacked most things that made a human, human."
"But for some reason. I was aging! This made no sense."
"I created a log of these realities and kept a log."
"But look at this..."
Tankai started to push buttons on the panel.
"I used the rate my body aged as well as the time outside my dilation device."
"It has only been a few hours. But I have detected other illusions overlapped on my own reality. I figured these were similar beings to myself."
"I worried about the strength of a intelligent creator. This reality doesn't look like the product of evolution. But someone intentially putting things together in a specific way. It is designed like how one would design a game. It is too flawed..."
"So my plan was to wait for the creator to show up. Or to wait until I aged to a point of death. Either way, I never planned to be the first to leave."
Somnus thought this concept was a bit... dumb. Perhaps it was the personality of someone with a source of 96% metal composition. But Tankai talked a bit too much. It was like a villain that monologued at a critical moment.
If he didn't explain himself in such a way and painted himself dumber. Somnus would've just made him the sovereign of the metal dimension. But instead, he had showed off and talked a big game about his plans and contingencies...
But then Tankai started to laugh.
"I'm guessing you probably thought I am dumb for explaining myself?"
"To be honest. It is a matter of perspective."
"Before you introduced yourself. I already deduced you are the real master of this place. This is the results of my thousands of years of prep time!"
Tankai pressed a button on the control panel.
"Not only did you let your guard down thanks to my 'idiocy'."
"But you gave me a body to experiment with!"
Red flashing lights blinded Somnus as he started to see trillions of fractals in an instant. His consciousness was bombarded with infinite information.
Tankai continued to monologue like a generic villain.
"I first confirmed whether I could interact with your consciousness by sending information."
"Once I established communication was possible."
"I realized I could input data directly into your mind!"
"This allowed me to see two sides of 'God'."
"You followed me willingly to my base! You walked right into my trap!"
Somnus started to laugh. But he felt paralyzed. For some reason. He couldn't feel the connection to the dream seed.
"I bet you are wondering what happened to your real body? What exactly are you anyway?" Tankai looked at Somnus with interest.
"Are you the very fabric of reality itself? Some god? Well... soon I'll seize your body here and create a virus to invade your reality. I'll finally be free!"
Somnus was bombarded with infinite information. Yet, he spoke.
"You remind me of my past..."
"A hidden existence is like a virus in the operating system of reality..."
"Technology at its core is information."
Somnus smiled.
Tankai frowned.
"What nonsen-"
Tankai was notified through his machines that the input signal had been lost. Somnus was just standing there. But a fog was filling up the area.
Tankai pressed a few buttons on his panel. But nothing happened.
"That's impossible!"
Somnus simply sneered.
"You're only a few thousand years old... and you want to challenge me? Come back when your entire reality isn't built off the back of my hard work!"
"How... how could it be?" Tankai cursed.
Somnus also was feeling like he should give a monologue. He just found the situation funny.
"You see..."
"Imagine you are playing on a computer. Your computer then one day gets a virus..."
"What do you do?"
"Do you factory reset the computer? Install an antivirus? A better firewall?"
"None of what you do matters..."
"Because you are a program on the computer."
"And..."
"I am the one using it!"
Somnus waved his hands and the giant superbase was blown to smithereens in an instant. Tankai was left floating in space as Somnus was surrounded by spaceships and fired at from all angles.
Yet...
He walked forward, stepping on the vacuum of space.
Tankai woke up.
----------------------------------------
Tankai's POV(81):
"Because you are a program on the computer."
"And..."
"I am the one using it!"
"Is this how it ends? Destroyed because of my greed?"
"I should've known it was impossible to beat the creator..."
Tankai smiled as his body was destroyed.
But his life didn't end like how he expected. He was expecting to get wiped out. But he found himself floating amidst others.
His body went through rebirth as he was scattered and reformed.
81 was born year 12, day 3
81 awakened year 12, day 3
81: Law: Technology
Name: Tankai
A golden tablet appeared.
----------------------------------------
Somnus extracted Tankai and stored him in the concept nexus.
Somnus then traveled back in time a few hours.
TS: Year 12, Day 3;
He placed a seal on Tankai and erased him from reality.
"That was fun."
"Time to actually find concepts for the elemental dimensions..."