Ripped notebook pages had been strewn all over the hotel room like the evidence of a gristly murder. Furniture leaned against the wall in a haphazard barricade. A television stripped itself of parts and enchantments in the center of the room in compliance with Roman’s will.

Eli swept Artificer’s Nullstar across the already broken parts of the fridge, coffeemaker, and alarm clock. He forced them to change as he refined them into something far more capable than scrap. Lattices of Dreamed crystal unweave themselves from the plastic, metal, and wires.

Manuals from the reference books he had copied in the library referred to them as a form of meta material. They could adjust to fit a specific purpose or enchantment and took most of the strain of powering and maintaining enchantments in the first place. He could have copied and summoned them, but Roman had evolved his Magitech Fabrication power into the evo-2 Phantasmic Magitech. The new power demanded a lot from its materials when pushed, and it turns out regular spatial travel even at the evo-0 level wore enchantments out a lot.

If Eli wasn’t around to stabilize it the sheer resistance and stability of space tore the enchantments apart from the inside. Maeve’s planar powers shattered the fragile equipment entirely when they tried.

“Mist me.” Roman gasped as he flicked his fingers at the floating television. Plastic frames levitated alongside disassembled circuitry soldered with dream crystals. A glass tube screen wobbled in the air as it detached completely.

Lumencloud rose in an eddying sweep as it wrapped around Roman. Pure power sank directly into his skin. Roman jolted. Threads of opulence massaged into stiff, sore muscles overworked from long hours of hunching over broken machinery.

Shimmering light clung to his skin. Glowed from his eyes. Wisps of radiant vapor churned with his breath. Roman nodded as it faded. He waved his hand.

Crystalline sinew and veins harvested itself from glass, circuitry, and metal parts. Ripping the dream that allowed paltry tech to work out for their own use. Once removed, Eli teleported it over to his collection, where he worked it over. Improved it.

So they continued.

Maeve reappeared with a flicker of planar space that sent shivers down Eli’s spine.

Eli wondered if space had any similarity to the spectrum of light. Space had bands of flavor and possibility, just like light. Dimensional space probably preceded planar space, but if space was like light, in this instance, where did they lie on the spectrum? Regular space would be like visible light. Voidspace and nullspace went one way, but subspace felt remarkably similar to dimensional.

It was a puzzle that pecked at him even through Vigilant Muse’s focus while he worked.

“I bought some goodies.” She said as boxes full of junk bought from a pawn shop crashed onto the floor. Brown bags with a mysterious stain appeared too. “I also got some food if anyone’s interested.”

“Thank you Maeve.” Roman smiled as he stood up with a limber stretch, despite staying in one position for hours on end. Afterimages pulsed behind him as he shed more of the lumencloud he had absorbed.

“What is it?” Eli asked as he teleported over to it. Vague containers met his inspection full of noodles, soup, and breaded vegetables.

“Wood elf food. There’s a good restaurant with a legal dungeon in their walk-in freezer. They run it themselves, but the dungeon has a near infinite supply of food.” Maeve explained while she unpacked the bag with a quick tug of the handles. Brown paper unfolded itself into four different paper place mats.

She passed out the containers marked with a scrawled script that seemed to burn and wriggle into his eyes while he tried to read it. Beneath it in English was ‘Blossoming Spring Noodles’. Next was a tall cylinder of ‘Autumnal Descent Broth’ that seemed to stir itself while he watched. Last was a tub of ‘Summery Sprigs’.

Dishes and utensils of that same crystal Maeve created in the meeting with the Delver’s Dive staff appeared as she snapped her fingers again and again. Roman gladly took the offered set of bowls and silverware while he served himself, but Eli eyed the crystal warily.

“Everyone seemed pretty nervous about whatever this was earlier.” He frowned at it like it was a spider ready to pounce on him.

“It’s just my Sonomantic Cryst power. The more sound they absorb the more it’ll grow, but when it breaks, it releases the gathered sound. All the shards will continue to grow as they absorb sound too. It’s an excellent tool with Storm Regalia.”

“Um. That doesn’t really make me feel comfortable eating with it.” Eli frowned as he constructed his own set of dishes with lumencloud. Technically, he could teleport it as he wanted into his mouth, but he’d done it enough to know it was both weird and people didn’t like it. Too antisocial.

“Fair enough.” Maeve shrugged as she swirled some of the noodles on the tip of her crystalline fork.

They ate in near silence as Roman shoveled all his food onto his plate and mouth in minutes. Before Eli even form more of an opinion than ‘good’, he was done and back to work.

“You alright, man?” Eli asked as a mechanical pencil slid out of Roman’s body. Graphite scraped against paper as the pencil skated across the page. He immediately began orchestrating the mass assembly of their gathered parts. Gears, hinges, circuits, and screens blurred as they changed their shape to fit together.

“We’re so close… I can feel it.” Roman muttered while lines of power vibrated through the air into the podium being crafted. Grooves notched into the material. Dream crystal liquefied into sludge as it slurried through the canals carved into the metal and circuits.

Sparks of electricity fizzed as the glass from the screens molded itself into a doorway clamped onto the podium. Space and reality wavered as the fragments of Eli’s power flooded through the frame.

Darkness consumed the translucent glass as an imitation of his void filled the image. Spots of color flitted across the screen. Regular space wobbled as Dream pulsed.

Maeve lurched forward. Faster than Eli could think or react, her planeshift swept over the device.

Vigilant Muse, Lumencloud Transfiguration, and Body of Light linked together as his mind went into overdrive. Planar space, a distant subset he was barely aware of normally, shuddered as an explosion rippled through the black-and-white plane Maeve used.

Artificer’s Nullstar twinged at the sensation.

Fragments of the other kinds of space bombarded him as Maeve reappeared with the slagged remains of their latest failure. The volatile spatial energies had devoured chips of metal.

“Fuck!” Roman snarled as he paced in front of the wreckage. His hands clenched at his side. He kicked it. “It still isn’t working after evolving Magitech Fabrication to evo-2!”

Eli suppressed a wince at the outburst.

“Romulus, shit sorry, Roman. People here still don’t understand dimensional travel. People with spatial powers here, especially at that caliber, are incredibly rare. Practically legendary. You’ve made great progress already.” Maeve smiled gently as she planeshifted closer to him. “We’ll crack it, I swear.”

“It’s just so goddamn frustrating!” Roman hissed. “I miss my brothers so much. I’m worried about them. My parents… my parents are not great at all. They’re barely around, always out partying when they aren’t working or sneaking around each other’s backs. And none of us can figure it out! I’ve been trying so, so fucking hard to fix this! To take us back and I still can’t. I don’t want them to think I abandoned them too.”

Eli shifted anxiously as Roman shouted with tears rolling down his face. He froze. All this time he had been pushing Roman out. Away. Just so he could play around with the life he always wanted. But nothing was stopping him from living this life back home except for him.

Maeve and Roman continued talking while Eli glanced at his status. He could equip two different perks on Artificer’s Nullstar before evolving it. Then he could try using the power gem to further improve it, level it, or even see if he could modify his System somehow to help them get out of this mess.

Farsense as a perk would boost the range of his perception, while the Perception book would improve it entirely. He also had the Warp perk which could help him, but would it be enough? Navigate could do the same as Farsense and Perception with this. After all he needed something to help him sense out and navigate the multiverse.

He equipped the Navigate and Amplify perks onto Artificer’s Nullstar. Immediately, his sense of direction clarified as his spatial field sharpened.

Eli teleported over to the power gem in an instant.

Warmth blazed against his fingertips as he pushed Artificer’s Nullstar into it. Sheer rejection chimed in his head again and again as the red error message carved itself across his vision.

Fine.

What else was new? He was going to have to do this himself.

Artificer’s Nullstar Ev. 0

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

Perks Equipped: [Navigate] [Amplify]

You may now select from one of the following options:

Evolve Power

Obtain New Power

N/A

N/A>

Yes.

Eli vanished.

Nullspace deepened into oblivion.

Voidspace whispered the absence of creation. Of space.

Space twisted in an endless dance of subspace spiraling in a helix of fractals.

His sanctum and vault unmoored from their tumultuous grasp on his spatial field. It slipped, then anchored into a true demiplane all its own.

Eli opened his eyes in a field of stars.

A horizon consumed by the avaricious dreams and stubborn beliefs he had clung to. Items preserved and unchanging surrounded by refined reflections of possibility. Enchantments splintering into the edifice and structure of whatever he deemed too lacking.

He turned his head exactly toward Maeve and Roman as the consumed Navigate perk helped him pinpoint exactly where they were in space.

Seeds of stars and potential glittered around Roman, but Maeve was a galaxy unto herself.

Eli nudged the power gem in his hand to upgrade Astral Starspace, but he already knew it was as refined as it was going to get. If he wanted it better, he was going to have to level and evolve it manually.

Slagged plastic and melted wires poked out of the warped wreckage of Roman’s device. It disappeared into his sanctum. A field of infinite possibilities splintered off from it. Fluctuations rippled as he dragged it from point to point of refinement until it stood as fresh and new as before.

Carpet dented under the weight as it reappeared.

He plumbed the grooves and flow of inferior nullspace as he corrected the slight flaws. The places where it ignored geometry and blurred space together instead of nestling together.

None of this was ready for dimensional travel, but he had already managed dimensional viewing of a limited sort.

Stars stitched their way through the fabric of space above the device. A one-sided portal yawned as it looped onto itself. Static frosted across the trapped panes of space as he tugged on his lackluster spatial bubble anchors back when he had Voidspace Mastery.

Flecks of color crackled across the portal as he thought about home. About his family. Rings of static resolved into an unfamiliar view of a sort of basement living room.

At a table was someone that could’ve been Roman’s twin sitting beside his younger brother, Cyrus.

“Cyrus?” Roman croaked as he rushed to push his hand through the portal. He bounced off of it. Bands of interference and static crackled across the image before it cleared.

Sitting next to Romulus was an almost splitting image of Eli. Herbert’s eyes were a frigid white though for some reason. In front of him was a variety of lists and maps written and drawn with far better ease and grace than anything Eli ever did with a pen or pencil.

“That’s Herbert.” Maeve blinked at the picture while they watched.

Vigilant Muse helped Eli split his attention as he let the image remain while he glanced at his parents huddled together in the corner where they talked animatedly. That same gray from before dusted Dad’s once black hair. Faint frown lines edged the corners of Mom’s mouth matched the slight crease in her forehead.

“What are they saying? I can’t hear them.” Roman grabbed Eli’s arm as if he were a lifeboat and they were lost at sea.

“I don’t think I can make it do sound.” He frowned as they watched Romulus set down the watch he tinkered with to steal some paper from Herbert. A knife appeared in his hand before it reshaped itself into a pen that left glowing lines of text in the paper.

“What happened to Herbert’s eyes?” Maeve muttered to herself as she gently pressed her fingers against the portal. Planar space surged as it pushed against the screen of the portal, but it wavered and threatened to break before she stopped.

Eli tried to widen the portal. To stretch and bridge space between their dimensions. He wanted to hear what they were saying. He wanted to tell his parents he was okay and to ask what had happened.

Tremulous whispers scraped through the portal.

"O…y. How many perks… you… now… are they?" Romulus drew out a familiar chart with columns for each of the power type categories.

Space shuddered as the portal nearly collapsed.

Eli strained to hold it together as it crumpled on itself. Crimson lumencloud dripped from his nose. Spots smeared across his vision. He wobbled on his feet as Maeve grabbed onto him to hold him upright.

“No!” Roman howled as he leaped toward the spot where the portal had been.

Glacial weakness leaked down Eli’s nerves as his muscles twitched. A multi-layered tapestry of space spun around him as he squeezed the power gem tight.

Eli was light.

Radiance unfolded from the stars cradled in the void in Photon Shot as he turned the space around his body into a cage. He let himself fall limp. Incandescence streamed into Astral Starspace as the portal flashbanged back into existence.

His thoughts burned. Radiant nerves blazed. Eli combusted into a sun all his own. A star.

Light and sound clarified as the portal widened ever so slightly. It was still nothing more than a two dimensional painting on a portal, but it was full of the sound of their loved ones.

Cyrus flickered as his eyes dazed for a split second before he straightened in his chair. He smirked while his eyes glanced from side to side rapidly as if he read through a great deal of information.

"What happened? What did you get?" Romulus asked.

Moments later, Cyrus was replaced by a flash of sparks. In his place was a massive unfamiliar man with bulky picturesque muscles. He laughed in a rich, deep voice that seemed slightly familiar.

“Wait… that’s the male character’s voice in that one game I bought for Cyrus before we left.” Roman blinked tears away as he lifted his hand up to touch the portal before he dropped it. “What kind of power did he get?”

“I don’t know.” Eli frowned as the video game character in Cyrus’s place slammed his hands down on the table in a splintering crash of wood. Both Herbert and Romulus jumped while Mom and Dad turned with lightning and spears of ice in their hands.

His parents stopped to look at each other with a roll of their eyes.

"How do you feel about making me some better equipment?" Cyrus asked as an arcane blue light shone across his animated eyes.

"What do you want?" Romulus blinked in the exact same way Roman did when confused.

"Everything. I want everything." Cyrus laughed like the overly melodramatic little shit he was as he reappeared in his character’s place.

“I’ve never heard of a power like that ever.” Maeve said while they watched the two draw sketches and diagrams for different weapon and armor designs. “That’s your brother?”

“Yeah. He’s been saving up his perks ever since he Initialized early.” Roman smiled with evident relief. Tension eased out of his body. Eli relaxed at finally managing to help for once.

“How early did he Initialize?”

“He’s eleven. I can’t believe he managed to turn his single perk into a power like that.” Roman chuckled while Maeve shook her head with a frown.

“There’s no way a kid can master a single perk well enough to get a power like that. No matter what. Not even the Savior’s fucking kids. It takes months if not a year at most per perk. He definitely had more than one to get whatever that was.” Maeve said gravely while they continued to watch.

“What? That’s impossible. We only got here a week ago.”

Eli glanced at his parents as the portal zoomed in on them. The hints of gray in Dad’s hair. Slight wrinkles and lines on their faces. His parents stood and moved with a kind of confidence he had come to recognize. It was the movements and stance of people used to combat.

Space blurred as the portal moved to his sisters.

Lyra held Lana in an embrace where they stood in a ring of illusive Dream like a fairytale full of fireflies. She brushed sunsets across the ceiling of a workshop teeming with tools and finished equipment.

“I can’t believe he did that! He’s such a fucking asshole.” Lana sobbed as she curled herself into Lyra’s hug. She stood taller than she had before. Eli bet they were nearly the same height.

Both of their faces were sharper, less round.

Older.

Parts of the house zoomed in a sickening blur as Eli searched. Counters and walls zipped past. Stacks of paper and bare walls met his mounting irritation. Why couldn’t he find a calendar?

Space rippled as the portal moved to another point somewhere else. It was some kind of gas station converted into a guard station with multiple people holding rifles. People patrolled outside. Plantlike spawn corpses littered the ground outside near the highway that led into Farbrook.

A calendar on the wall read May 19th, 20X1.

“It’s been a whole year since we’ve been gone.” Eli fell to his knees as the portal fizzled out. Did time flow differently between dimensions?

“But we’ve only been here for a week!” Roman protested as he bent over toward the failed device Eli had revived.

“No, that’s a failure. We’ll need to try again.” Maeve put her hand on Roman’s shoulder as she stopped him. “What do you mean it’s been a whole year, Eli?”

“Sandra fucking attacked us on my birthday around midnight, maybe one or two in the morning. So it would’ve been May 18th, 20X0. It was around midnight, maybe one or two in the morning, but still.” Eli gritted his teeth while he wished they could have just gotten her fucking Dimensional Swap power that she slotted in her Will stat, but no, stats were permanent and unobtainable. “So, either dimensional travel takes a whole year or—“

“Or the rate of time is different.” Roman said flatly before he kicked the device again. “Fuck! My brothers have been left alone for an entire year? How is Theo doing?”

“Uh, let’s see.” Eli frowned as he prodded the raw part of Astral Starspace that spun out another viewing portal. Meadows in the night opened up.

Theo stood in the middle of a clearing surrounded by endless hordes of spawn. Both alive and dead.

The same plantlike spawn hurled themselves at him again and again while giant muscled arms appeared in midair attached to Theo. They hammered down. Spawn splattered with a spray of pulped bark. Trolls lumbered forward as they raised wooden clubs—

Barriers full of light clamped around each of their necks with a snap. Multiple heads plopped to the ground as headless bodies tumbled.

“No, dammit Skeletaur! Stop being paranoid. We’re not being watched. And they will appreciate our help after we send this army to attack the greants.” Theo grumbled in a far deeper bass voice than he had before they left. Threads of flesh whipped from his body as it swiped into corpse after corpse.

“Did he say Skeletaur and Greants?” Maeve asked in a harsh whisper.

“Yeah?” Eli and Roman echoed as they turned toward her.

“That was the new spawn in the dungeon I was sent to examine before I checked up on you.” Her eyes smoldered with lightning as she turned toward Roman. “Your brother is a biomancer who is apparently creating new spawn. Dungeons always populate with new creations, I just never realized they came from other dimensions too.”

She tapped her shoe against the device.

“We need to figure out a way there fast. Forget about finals. I’m taking you both to my parents’ home tomorrow so we can fix this. If he keeps creating new spawn, we’ll be in a lot of trouble. Biomancers are carefully controlled here, but there? Everything looks like shit and your world just Initialized.” Maeve paced. “Any new spawn he creates will continue to appear here, too.”

Roman watched, crestfallen, as Theo did something to the spawn. Once still bodies twitched as they rose on shambling feet. Spurs of bone studded out of skin and muscle as the new Skeletaurs took over the dead.

“I’m going to head back to the dorm, I guess.” He mumbled as he turned toward the door. Eli watched his friend stumble through starspace. A portal to his sanctum tore open next to the hotel room’s door.

“Sleep in here, Roman.” Eli said as he pushed his sanctum to create a space for him.

A spare bedroom appeared, bubbled next to the apartment and workshop he had previously created. He made sure to hook it up to a bathroom and small kitchen stocked with copies of food taken from his vault. He enchanted the doorway out of the apartment to teleport Roman back out when he wanted to leave.

Roman said nothing as he entered and hopped onto the bed. The portal closed. Eli winced as he felt intimately aware of his demiplane now that Roman occupied it. Vigilant Muse split as it helped him process it without stalking his friend’s every move.

He didn’t want or need to watch Roman cry.

“We need to talk.” Eli bounced the power gem in his palm as he turned toward Maeve. “I don’t want to be blindsided by anything from Delver’s Dive, Zach, or your parents. I also want some help on how to use this thing since it refuses to upgrade any of my powers, including my Body of Light.”

“Alright. Let’s dip out of here though. Rooftop?” Maeve asked as darkness encroached around them as she planeshifted.

“Yeah, I’ll meet you there.” Eli nodded as he teleported himself on the hotel’s roof. She didn’t appear. It was interesting how he couldn't store the power gem with his powers, but he could still carry it when teleporting. “Oh, she meant the rooftop we trained on.”

He teleported again with a sigh.