[mutation complete, dimensional laws have shifted. Space is no longer located relative to itself, and can expand into areas that are already occupied. Obelisk can now create temporary portals, and can use mana to create more permanent portals. Instead of increasing by level, space can now be created through the genesis spell. This will decrease mana density of space, which will slowly recover by level]
“Well, that seems useful, I wonder if the mana density recovers passively based on my level or if it just increases every level up”
Either way, Zeno decided to go and check up on the people he rescued, somewhere around an extra 12,000 people. First he spammed genesis in order to create enough food for a while, plopping it in a massive pile near the center of the crowd with prime standing next to it to hand the food out. People rushed towards the pile ravenously, and Zeno decided it might be a good idea to wait till they had their fill, as well as sending a few more police robots.
The 12,000 people were about half of the towns population before the attack. Zeno didn’t know what happened to the rest, hoping that they escaped outside of the town.
Soon enough people grouped up into clics and families, sitting down to eat together. Most of the people seemed starved, as if the necromancers didn’t bother feeding them. Zeno waited until they mostly finished before popping in, approaching the closest thing to an administrative personnel he saw. It was mainly some big wigs, the headmistress of the university, the town mayor, and a few of the more successful local business owners and some of the faculty heads from school. They seemed to be discussing what they were going to do now, and it seemed like they wouldn’t spare a glance for any passerby
Of course, approaching while being flanked by robots certainly helped with getting their attention…
“Ladies and gentlemen, mind filling me in on why the town was overrun with zombies?”
The group of leaders looked at Zeno like a madman, wondering how could he have missed it when it happened? The headmistress was baffled given the fact that he was still wearing his lab coat, and a faint whiff of the smell was reaching her past the 5 meters of distance he kept.
“Were you living under a rock, boy?”
“Afraid not mam, it was actually in a pocket dimension”
“...”
“So are you going to tell me what happened or?”
“You aren’t joking about the pocket dimension are you”
“Nope, now can you catch me up to speed on what actually happened?”
The headmistress seemed slightly surprised, pointing at a collar she and some of the more experienced faculty heads wore around their throats.
“They came in at midnight a several days ago. Somehow, they got through the security systems, appearing in the middle of the town. About 20 greater devils and 100 lesser devils served as shock troopers, breaking down all our defenses from the inside so that the main force could come, about 3000 necromancers as well as swarms of undead controlled by each one. The attack happened far too quickly to retaliate efficiently, most waking up to a pair of undead by their bedside. Those of us with classes were forced to put on these limiter chokers, including the bishop and captain of the guards. Soon afterwards they started shipping people out in batches, several citizens and perhaps a handful of classed individual at a time. The limiter chokers meant we couldn’t resist, even as they slowly shipped off our numbers…”
Zeno’s face began to scrunch up. This was that he was worried about, the people that Ardia took weren’t recovered. Best case scenario, they were enslaved. Worst case scenario, they died torturously in necromantic experiments.
“Do you know Thomas and Alexandra Hightower?”
One of the faculty heads got an ugly look. He was the faculty head of arcane studies, one Zeno used to work under, and his parents boss. Zeno grew terrified, feeling a chill down his spine.
“No”
“I’m sorry Zeno, they were one of the first shipped off for trying to keep others here”
“No. No. No. No no no no nononononono”
“They were heroes”
“...”
“Zeno?”
“...”
The mayor was growing disturbed by the boys silence. He understood that this Thomas and Alexandra duo seemed to be related to the kid, probably his parents, but news like this brings even grown men to tears, not silence as if their minds shut down.
A few minutes later and Zeno seemed to boot up again, taking the obelisk and absorbing the collar from each person's neck.
[level limiting device absorbed. Host can now use obelisk to suppress enemy strength as long as the difference in power is not extreme. Hostiles within poket dimension will have their abilities suppressed]
“Now then, anything else I can do for you all?”
Now the mayor was truly disturbed. The boy seemed to have recovered from that shock way too quickly.
“You seem awfully chipper for someone who has just learned that their parents have been taken prisoner by a foreign nation known for their cruelty…”
“Why would I be? I just have to go over and rescue them while murdering any Ardian I see.”
Ok, forget disturbed, the mayor was now slightly terrified.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
The headmistress was also worried. The sheer malice that was in the word “murder” showed that he wouldn’t be satisfied at simply killing a few enemy soldiers.
“Be careful Zeno, going down this path is something that will leave you broken by the end”
“With all due respect mistress, one of the benefits of madness and a broken mind is the fact that it’s very difficult to break it any further”
Zeno’s plan was simple. He would create an army, an iron legion, and have them carve through Ardia, torching it to the ground. He would make sure they never got the chance to do this again, not their leaders, not their army, not their people, not even the generation after them. He would guarantee that there would be nothing left capable of getting back up and committing another atrocity. He was so busy planning that he didn’t see the headmistress’ hand until it was too late.
The hand smashed through his shield, slamming into his chest and sending him flying into the robots behind him. Before he could get on his feet, the headmistress was in front of him yet again.
“My class is sage. I spent 50 levels cooped up in research and study, trying to see the limits of this world. I did not train for battle, and faced with someone who actually knows how to fight at my level, I could only wait to die. All of this, and I still had the raw strength to send you careening through the air. When I said this path would leave you broken, I didn’t mean mentally. I saw the people shipped of, people I loved like a mother. I know what you feel and then some, and you won’t find anything out there that will leave deeper scars. When I said it will leave you broken, I meant literally. There are people capable of ripping the fabric of space time with their bare hands, people that could kill you with a thought. I know what you are going through, and I know you are nowhere near prepared, so sit down and train. Train your body and your mind. Get each and every advantage you can, because you will need them. I can feel that you have tremendous ability for a level ten, and your mechanical toys are nothing to scoff at given your level. But when faced by something that has more digits in their level than you have levels, you will be destroyed. Go, the university should still have plenty of things you can use to get stronger. I chose the path of the teacher, so I don’t have the same ability to grow in strength. I leave it to you to become strong enough to put the Ardians through hell for me”
That little tirade shut Zeno is up pretty good. It helped him realize that he wasn’t the biggest fish in the sea. Hell, one of the creatures that gave him the most trouble was that special giant zombie back at the tent. If the devil he faced in the university was one of the greater devils the headmistress mentioned, he would be screwed.
“Thank you for waking me up, headmistress”
“I don’t need your thanks boy. I need your work”
And so the head mistress began on the walk back to the university. Now that she was no longer limited by the collar, she could handle any enemy along the way easily enough. Zeno, of course, decided to create a portal to let the old brunette through, along with the rest of the people there.
Of course he dove straight into the library, absorbing everything he could, from bookshelves to server racks to lab equipment, settling into his pocket dimension, he began reading. He decided to start off with reading everything he could on ways that could grant him a lot of power quickly. Whether it was based on upgrading his robots, new crafting methods, nanotechnology, summoning, augmentation magic, space-time magic, etc… he read up as much as he could on all of them, before deciding to try something new.
So, he picked up a book on martial arts, particularly of the internal variety. The book went over the basics of how they worked, spreading mana through the body and infusing it, allowing the body to preform supernatural feats in a similar way to how magical beasts did it. Reading about that brought Zeno to look over his old traps in the forest, finding several different creatures at each spot. Absorbing them all, Zeno began trying to study the more magical ones, though he was surprised to find a titanomyrma drone flying about, something he vowed to check up on later.
For most creatures, they just had a higher mana density than normal, with some having discreet flows in the mana. The book mentioned mana being moved in pathways unique to the internal martial art, different pathways having different effects and compatibility for certain people. The creatures seemed to disregard that in favor of just chaotically spamming mana all through themselves.
Taking a little bit of a break, Zeno decided to try and expand the factory and the garden area, hoping to both speed up the rate of production as well as give him some more space for a later experiment with ants. Returning to his reading, he decided that he probably wouldn’t achieve much with internal martial arts without some more information to guide himself with, so he decided on two things. First of all, the map had something of a “no mans land” to the south west, making a small buffer zone on part of the border with Ardia. This no mans land was actually known as the Ar jungle, and was known for its high density of magical beasts. This would provide him with more information for how to cultivate internal martial arts, as well as the opportunity to absorb whatever treasures he can find. The second thing he decided on was studying space-time magic. Space-time magic was one of the more complicated bits of magic for various reasons, one of said reasons being how mana apparently comes from leaking through space-time. Because of that, you needed a much clearer image of what you wanted the spell to do, as well as much more knowledge of the underlying principles of what you’re trying to manipulate. The main reason Zeno wanted to try this was the temporal acceleration, haste, celerity and most of all time stop spells. These spells would take the time Zeno had and increase it multiplicatively.
So, the first thing he did was to design a form of jet/rocket robot, one big enough to attach a portal to. It would be sent to the Ar jungle, mapping the way there, while Zeno stayed in the pocket dimension and used the fact that he literally owned the fabric of space-time inside it to cheat with learning space time magic.
Zeno even already had some ideas, given inspiration by how the genesis spell expanded the space inside the dimension. What he understood was that the decrease in the amount of mana counteracted the time dilation the expansion should have caused. This meant that by trying the same thing, except without letting the mana density change, would theoretically slow time around him.
So he decided to try it, stretching his focus to the limit to succeed in what was effectively forcefully stretching out a second into a minute. It was weird, because while he was stretching time he was trying to squeeze the space so the mana stayed the same. Looking through the portal on the robot, it looked like the robot was starting to slow down ever so slightly. Of course that hit him with a thunderclap headache, projectile vomiting and a bleeding nose before the speed went back to normal.
“Note to self, do not look from one region of space to another with a different ratio of spatial expansion unless you want your brain to melt”
[temporal dilation unlocked]
And so, Zeno got to work training so that he could multitask while using time dilation, spending several hours focusing on just maintaining the spell, which was actually only a couple in real time. Following up from that was a different spell. This time the spell was a bit different, and not something he wanted to test on himself.
This other spell was a similar concept to the temporal dilation spell, but focused on the singular individual instead of an area. So, he speeds himself up while slowing everything else down. Stacking the two together should make him more than twice as fast. Zeno started experimenting with a rubber ball, trying to condense the space it occupied.
The ball began bouncing notably faster, so he decided to try it on his hand and
“OH GOD THE PAIN! ITS CRUSHING MY FINGERS!!!”
Apparently having the space your hand takes up become twice as condensed as the rest of the body makes your brain think it’s being crushed into a pulp. On the bright side, the hand seemed perfectly fine by the end, so he decided to brave the risk and try it on his entire body at once.
“Ohthisisworkingperfectlyimsuprisedididntthinkofthisbeforethisisordersofmagnitudeeasierthanthetemporaldilationspell” (oh this is working perfectly, I’m surprised I didn’t think of this before, this is orders of magnitude easier than the temporal dilation spell)
[temporal condensation unlocked]
“Now we’re in business”