Chapter 11 - Experimentation
Vern sat there motionless as minutes passed by. Then, there was a flash.
Did that just happen? His tired mind snapped back to wakefulness in an instant. Was it just his new eyes playing pranks on him? Not knowing what to believe, Vern rose up and performed a few quick jumps to shake away the lethargy. It’s getting worse.
He had gotten a hang of keeping the vision active even when he wasn’t focusing too hard, but his body felt more and more tired by the second. He wasn’t lacking sleep for the day, so it was quite unnatural for him to be so drowsy.
There was an obvious probable reason for this—the whole enlightenment process. Getting up right after seeing that thing was an ordeal in itself, and it was only getting worse. But it was still within realms of plausibility for now.
Following his earlier train of thought—It was simple. The actual process of observation was too simple. He had a rough time at the start because he had to work against the clock. But otherwise, it was too simple to break any and all Lennian Fundamentals with this.
It’s like there’s really no limit to this power. This vision had been going on for about half an hour. Instead of feeling any deficiency or loss of some resource, his eyesight was becoming sharper. Unless, getting sleepier is the cost. Because if it is, I am willing to go to bed six times a day.
The pain in his eyes had completely subsided, and this vacuum pocket almost didn't strain him at all. It was too good. His earlier conjecture of being unable to destroy reality by painting it black held less and less weight by the second.
If not for the possibility of the vacuum being dismissed, he would have tried so many things to tease the constraints of observation. There was some limit on the range, sure. He had already hit that threshold when he tried to change the balance of temperature to coldness. But that seemed to have more to do with his method than ability, as the range wasn't always constant.
It was quite hard for him to suppress his temptations to experiment with the possibilities. But he wouldn’t have to do so for much longer.
The relentless fire had devoured countless pages of narrative and knowledge, their ash slowly falling like dark snow, escaping the shrinking cloud of soot and darkness. The previously vibrant mahogany shelves had long surrendered to heat, their polished surfaces now charred and cracked—the final vestige of their proud structure collapsing in defeat.
The fire itself was beginning to show signs of fatigue. What were just a few minutes ago, mighty, hungry flames had been reduced to lethargic licks of fire that clung to the more resilient materials, struggling to keep their essence alive.
Just in time too. Vern calculated that the air within the bubble would get dangerous to breathe very soon. Ariane had been breathing from that enclosed hemisphere without a new supply of fresh air. Based on the breathing rate of an average human and the size of that bubble, the fresh air would, at most, last for another ten minutes.
To that end, he didn’t have to worry much. The fire had almost completely died out close to the center of the library. From what he could make out at the edges of the floor from here, the hearths had already burned away their combustion chamber—not meant to handle the heat, nullifying the cycle. So there wasn't a proper source of heat anymore.
What sickened him, however, was the stench. If not for this ethereal form and its unusual suppression of his senses, he doubted he would have managed to sit here without throwing up all over. It was a gruesome scene, more so now that the fire was gone.
The bodies, once human, were now reduced to grotesque forms—blackened, charred, and partially incinerated. The fire had eaten away at their clothes, and the skin beneath was blistered and cracked open in several places.
Limbs lay in unnatural angles, stiffened to death, some grotesquely exposed where the flesh had been cooked away. The faces, recently filled with animated expressions, were now horrific masks, their flesh seared away, revealing skeletal grins.
Vern took repeated short breaths, somehow managing not to lose his balance as he walked over. There's nothing I could have done. But was that the truth? What if he had accepted the Enlightenment earlier? No. I already made my peace with the fact that I made a mistake in judging the severity of the situation. Nothing would have changed my decision without prior knowledge.
He had done all he could. Barely making it out alive himself before being forced to adapt and understand observation in the direst circumstances he’d ever found himself. So it wasn’t really worth weighing down his conscience over. He would live with the decisions he had made.
In another silent minute, any and all flames around Ariane were gone. The air would still be poisonous, but it would be better than whatever had become of air inside the vacuum, and he had a few plans about taking care of that too. He sighed in relief and closed his eyes. The falling ash that had subtly skirted around an invisible barrier fell right through and began to blanket Ariane.
It would be a lie to say that Vern wasn’t getting anxious by the second. Ariane is courageous and strong-willed, but how much longer can she hold on against that thing? He didn’t even know where to begin and try to help her in this situation. Join her in that nightmare? How? Help her? Just how?
Well, now that I can try out observation in more suitable conditions, I might just figure out something.
The first order of business was to figure out what was possible and what wasn't and see if there was some way to purify the air around Ariane. He might have chosen to observe balance, but it was such a vague concept even he didn’t know what to expect. So he would go through some of the test scenarios he’d thought of while moping.
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Vern followed the previous method to bring up the monochrome scape and attempted to think of factors that make up the balance of Poison.
A shiver ran down the intricate network of veins in his eyes, yet nothing changed. A failure. So there are indeed some limits. But what was the general trend?
Steadying himself, Vern thought of the situation more logically. What exactly would it mean to have the balance of poison? What even counted as poison? It wasn’t really Vern’s field of expertise, but didn’t that in itself mean something? It definitely did.
Balance of evolution. Nothing changed.
Temperature. A vision alike to his first attempt covered his eyes. Everything with some heat to it was a little gray, while the flames were straight-up white. But he was trying something else right now, this vision was just to make sure he could still see the balance.
Lennian Fundamentals. Another failure.
Mortality. Funnily enough, the earlier vision shattered, and the whole world turned pitch black except for a silhouette of a woman glowing brightly right beneath him. What!? He had thought to observe this mostly as a joke.
Am I to believe this would straight up give me control over the balance of life and death? No. Something was wrong here. The world did not work like that. He might just be overreacting. It was also quite easy for him to observe the balance of temperature, but manipulating it had nearly snapped the springs of his brain.
Not one to give up so easily, he looked at where laid one of those grotesque bodies, currently nothing more than a black mesh in an even darker backdrop. Not being an idiot like before, he imagined the indistinct silhouette to turn just a shade brighter, nothing drastic.
Ready this time, he took the fall gracefully. It didn’t send blood rushing out of his eyes, sure. But it was an unsavory experience nonetheless. This failure, however, made Vern happy. He didn’t like the idea of observers being able to play with life and death at a whim. Because if he can do it, then there’s got to be others that can do it.
Vern liked balanced frameworks. This one had an inkling of being of that nature.
But he had veered too far off his original goal. Dismissing the morbid vision of utter darkness, he found himself a more comfortable position. Vern extended his legs far in front of him with his hands placed firmly behind his upper body.
It was back to more experiments. He still didn’t know how to purify the air around Ariane. The whole thing was a little mind-bending to think about. When looking for the balance of the air, was he looking for its existence? That seemed to be what he was doing. Otherwise, how did he ‘remove’ the air to create a vacuum?
But balance wasn’t supposed to be as simple of a thing. If the earlier balance was acting upon the presence and absence of air in an area, then could he observe another kind of balance within the air? Like the balance of how each individual type of gas is distributed?
Right as he finished the thought, the scenery changed. A noise of black and white dots dominated his perception. Like tiny ants crawling all over, it was unfathomable. The whole vista was utterly random, and in but a few seconds, his eyes started to throb.
Discarding the sight, he leaned over to one side and massaged his forehead. It probably wasn’t as easy as he made it out to be. Everything did take some toll. However, If peering into the essence of reality is this cheap, I’ll gladly keep doing this whenever I get a chance.
All these unrelated assessments were actually quite insightful. He might even have figured out how to finally solve the problem with the purity of air.
The observation seemed to do better on concepts that he had some understanding of himself. On top of that, the right amount of vagueness and clarity in what to observe was necessary. Too clear, and it’d show the core concepts that he could not make any practical use of. Too vague, and nothing would happen at all.
Breathable air.
So this time, appeared a white smog that looked like polluted smoke churning out of a factory’s chimney. However, that impression couldn’t be further from reality.
At long last, he had finally found the ‘keywords’ needed to manipulate this balance. Hopefully it wouldn’t be an impossible task like fire and mortality.
Ready for any backlash, he envisioned a small sphere of lighter smog in the vicinity of Ariane. He wouldn’t make the same mistake of trying to tip the balance to the limit in one direction by imagining a completely white sphere, and possibly getting another eye-bleed.
A quick stab of pain coursed through his eyes, but nothing he couldn’t handle. However, he wasn’t done yet.
Vern was intent on not making life harder for Ariane due to his ignorance. Not waiting another second, he discarded the current monochrome vista representing balance depicting breathable air.
Instead, he conjured the vision representing the simple balance between the presence and absence of just air like the one he used to abate the fire.
Visualizing a thin hollow sphere of black around Ariane once again, he was done at last. He had first envisioned the air in that sphere to be breathable, then locked it in within position using the same vacuum bubble.
Vern had the choice between persisting either the purification of air or the vacuum. To him, vacuum made more sense due to the familiarity and ease of maintaining it.
However, there was another essential test he wanted to perform before he would call it a day. Can I maintain two visions at once?
The idea itself sounded simple, but it implied focusing on two things at the same time. According to his thousands of hours spent deciphering fundamentals, it was impossible. The closest one could come to the notion was rapidly switching between two tasks. That’s what he was attempting.
While trying to keep the veil of vacuum intact, he conceived the existence of breathable air around him—and the vision instantly shattered.
Not wasting any precious time, he discarded the thoughts of breathable air and simply conjured another veil of vacuum right back up.
It is indeed infeasible. He might be able to make some progress if he could skip some steps before every conjuration or figure out the difference between maintaining and persisting the vision. Until then, it was just a pipe dream.
Or maybe, I can just brute force it and keep practicing until it's muscle memory. He didn’t have the time for that. And his time would be better spent doing something else with this omnipotent vision rather than repeating the same thing.
Left with nothing else to do but watch Ariane once again, he buried himself in his thoughts.
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Why was she not waking up? She had yet to stop breathing, so that was a relief, but what was taking so long? It had been more than fifty minutes since the whole ordeal began.
Fifty minutes under that pressure. Even if she survived this, he couldn’t imagine the trauma this would cause. Will she ever be able to recover from this? Could his observation deal with her trauma? But was it even possible to isolate trauma to such a degree?
What if he messed with her personality on a fundamental level and broke something? It may indeed be a possibility to scrutinize humans under the lens of balance, but he didn’t feel nearly confident or knowledgeable enough to know the implications of such a thing. There could be as much as a million balances within—
A dull echo of words resounded in his ears, “Oh, mistress, forgive me. Oh, radiant empress, forgive me.”