Chapter 61 - Link

Gravity.

It was the most practical concept he could think of for theorizing a vision. It had given him a fighting chance again someone of Hensen's caliber.

So he closed his eyes and tapped into his perception, waiting for any kind of change.

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And as expected, nothing happened.

He was taking it slow. Even though he believed Esther, he wasn't gonna let that cloud his judgment and throw caution to the wind. What if something had changed since the time she had learned about this rune, and those Whispers were just waiting for him to make a mistake?

His perception was a blank slate right now, but it was fair to assume he was primed to Observe the balance of Gravity, not Complexity or Integrity.

Given that I don't feel much lighter or heavier out here—the gravity should be the same as usual. Its intensity should be higher close to the ground while gradually decreasing as I Observe skywards.

Nodding, he let these thoughts slowly bleed into his perception, ensuring things remained in control as he progressed in measured steps.

Yet, the darkness persisted.

He focused harder and bombarded his perception with these thoughts as if it were a wall that would break with more pressure.

There was no response. It remained as dark as a void.

He analyzed this anomaly. This in itself was unusual. He had already tried something similar outside. Attempting this in Elmhurst would invite the Whispers to assault him relentlessly, slaughtering his psyche in no time.

Here, however, all he felt was a little strain on his eyes.

This is good.

It wasn't the same free lunch as back in the Library, but it was more…real. That phenomenon of the world following his whims and bending however he wanted was more of a guided tutorial. He could test the limits, but the insights didn't carry over to his life after.

He remembered that he just had to think of a possible Balance, and his perception would be populated with grays by itself. This actually threw him for a loop.

Didn't that mean I wasn't using my own understanding of the Balance of those concepts to interpret the world?

In other words, the 'Balance' he saw was actually determined by something else. Maybe it even had something to do with the Unified Perspective theory. His eyes were determining how to distribute the grays in his perception based on the understanding of the whole planet.

Well, that means it was 'faking' my perspective.

That was ironic. It was showing him a Subjective world he wanted to see based on an Objective consensus of others.

But then he suddenly shook his head. He was going off track. It was good to add to his understanding of all these concepts, but he had a goal to achieve here.

So he resumed his earlier train of thought and dug deeper into his own insights regarding the matter while keeping in mind his previous experience in the library.

What exactly is gravity?

In terms of Fundamentals, gravity was generally considered to belong to the Upper South Eastern Octant of the Insight Sphere. Most of the theories around forces—including the Steam Force theory, Combustion art vector, Gravitational uplift, and many others originated from this Octant alone.

However, some Fundamentalists liked to group it with the Octant next to it because it also behaved like a Fundamental of Relations. Essentially, gravity was a concept that weakly linked two objects together, attracting them to each other.

The former set of Fundamentalists would die on that hill where they proclaimed it was just a force between two Objects. The bigger the mass, the greater its pulling capability. On the other hand, the second group of Synergy Fundamentalists had filed more than hundreds of petitions to 'fix' the definition of gravity in records and books of Empires all around the planet.

To them, the gravitational pull of Prima meant a binding connection between each and every object. A sympathetic link whose strength was determined based on the affinities between certain kinds of ideas.

It was an otherwise naive idea that would have long been buried under a mountain of practical evidence from the opposition if they hadn't managed to come up with some of their own.

The Synergy Fundamentalists had performed a few controlled experiments demonstrating lighter objects pulling heavier objects towards themselves. And to this day—no one had managed to find a better theory to explain the phenomenon.

But that's when he was jerked out of his deep trance, and the corner of his lips was raised in an obvious grin. His introspection had finally managed to color his Perception.

To his delight, he finally saw that beautiful gradient once again. Just like he had imagined—a black fog surrounded him, gradually fading into a lighter gray as he tilted his head upwards.

Until…

Ahh! Damn!

He snapped his eyes shut along with his perception as he realized his mistake.

The gravity here wasn't as simple as he interpreted it to be. That pyramid high in the sky wasn't floating out of hate for the land. And when he tried to forcefully interpret that as a decreasing amount of gravity, a fatal sense of incongruity filled him.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Luckily, he had realized it in time, or he would be in for some painful time.

But something worthy of note was happening here. He was sure that he hadn't assigned the gradient of gravity everywhere else perfectly, either. He couldn't have, as that would require measurement. So It should have made him feel incongruous, too.

But it didn't. That was to say, it only became a problem if he was completely off-mark in perceiving something.

Interesting. I wonder what's the tolerance.

This whole chain of events raised a bunch more questions, and his curious mindset hungered for answers. After trivially addressing the simple ones and discarding the low-priority ones, he narrowed it down to one final question that stuck out like a sore thumb.

Why was it harder to perceive Gravity compared to Complexity or Integrity?

He could easily assign grays within his perception when he tried to interpret and manipulate the Balance of Complexity, but he couldn't say the same for Gravity. One simple explanation for this was that it was because of Instability Inducement. That learning the Vision had somehow boosted him in that regard.

But he didn't buy it.

He had come up with the idea to use Balance of Complexity to Induce Instabilities on his own, and the same was true for Integrity. He either had an affinity for a whole bunch of similar ideas, or this wouldn't make sense. Why could he Induce Instabilities in Complexity but not Gravity?

There's something deeper at play here.

The silent world remained utterly motionless and still—not changing one bit as he sat there pondering this question. Sometimes, he scribbled something on the note before quickly scratching it away and starting anew.

But fortunately or unfortunately, he never lost track of time. His Shackles of Subjectivity were getting—oh so tighter every other minute, keeping him alert. Yet, the loss didn't help in giving him more ideas.

It felt good to forget everything and just ponder the mysteries of the universe.

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But he was on a leash. Not a short one, but a leash nonetheless.

So he decided to cheat.

He pulled out an iridescent fist-sized sphere from the second of the eight pockets in his coat. His Insight Sphere. Well, not technically his—but hey, finder's keepers. It was the one he had brought back from the Ascendant Council.

Luckily, Insight Spheres were one of the hardest materials to grace their civilization, or he doubted any other glass would have survived the chain of events he had faced today. Some said the spheres came from the ruins of the old world, whereas most others believed they were the gifts of Lady Lennyx herself and rained from the heavens—hence the name Lennian Fundamentals.

Not that it mattered right now. He was going to make use of those 'foreign thoughts' inside the sphere once again to accelerate his rationalization prowess.

He would generally hoard it and shy away from using it unless he encountered a dire situation, but this situation was dangerous in its own right. He had a conjecture that his non-existent Shackles of Subjectivity was the reason he had resisted turning into a vegetable after carving the Third Rune into his mind.

So if he let the Shackles tighten too much, he might just start drooling here—never to get back up.

Holding the sphere in both his hands, he leaned in and peered into the depths of this sphere of infinite knowledge, interpreting it into his perception.

In no time, his mind was at the Void of Initiation—surrounded by the most abstract Fundamentals. Not wasting any time, he linked the thoughts needed to reach that cloud of foreign ideas that had invigorated him last time. It had shrunk considerably, but it was enough for what he needed.

It was the same routine as last time.

From nothingness, particles coalesce. Particles form matter. Matter, by nature, adheres to conservation.

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Inheritance implies perpetuity. Perpetuity intertwines with preservation. Preservation, a dance eternally enshrined within existence.

The irony of the situation wasn't lost on him. He had tucked his tail and fled from someone who preached all about 'Preservation,' only to come back and seek help from some foreign thoughts related to the same idea of Preservation.

However, the moment he came in contact with those foreign thoughts, it was as if someone had shoveled ten times the coal needed to keep the engine running—overclocking it beyond limit. Even drinking fifty cups of coffee wouldn't do this to someone. It was like his thoughts were on crack.

He was sure that if anything really moved around in this world, he would see it in slow motion as he perceived their every little detail. Alas, he had better things to do.

Like figuring out why it was easier to interpret one concept in his Perception but not the other. Why Complexity and not gravity? What was common between Complexity and Integrity? What was the link between both kinds of Preservations he had just encountered?

He quickly theorized a ruled set of tests to glean necessary information, and not even a moment passed before he put them into action.

He was going to measure the difference in the time it would take him to interpret the balance of a small piece of ground under different concepts. Like Complexity, Integrity, Gravity, Height, Breathable Air—all the balances he remembered using back in the library.

He wasn't going to try and induce instabilities in them. He just wanted to plot his perception's speed.

In this maddening frenzy, it didn't take him long to finish the first set of comparisons. But he considered this one a trial and repeated it a few more times before an obvious pattern emerged.

Complexity and Integrity only took him around a tenth of the second, Height needed three-tenths, Gravity unsurprisingly spanned over two seconds, whereas Breathable Air took him over five seconds.

This…

It was very intriguing, and it spurred his thoughts into an obsessive momentum. He was getting close to an answer. There was a larger pattern to all this.

Using these numbers, he began to theorize the possible reasons as to why some came easier to him while others didn't. What was the relation between those that were easy?

This almost drug-induced lucidity and comprehension began to take a toll on his mind as he mapped out hundreds of possibilities.

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And finally, he found an answer that seemed to fit. It would answer everything.

Are they really connected!?

His heart was beating with intense thumping as the nausea threatened to overwhelm him.

But he had to confirm!

Suppressing the sickness of overusing his brain, he resumed the tireless contemplation. He needed a few other keywords, like Integrity, to confirm his hypothesis. He didn't want to sit around for hours to slowly figure them out with his dulled brain. So he charged on, ignoring his overheating brain.

He remembered that the essence of Instability Inducement was actually 'Composition.' What else could be a good keyword for this?

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After a couple of agonizing seconds, he found one, 'Refinement.'

Not letting this stop him, he continued his brainstorming and stumbled upon a whole range of them—'Firmness,' 'Resilience,' 'Sturdiness,' and 'Reliability.'

These are enough.

Cough. Cough!

Wiping away what seemed to be blood from his lips, he repeated the previous experiment, but this time with the new keywords he had figured out.

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And it was exactly as he had theorized.

I knew it!

All these keywords took less than half a second for him to perceive.

That was to say, he was proficient in perceiving ideas that originated from the Upper North Western Octant or from the school of Order Fundamentalists. They governed the concepts that pertained to the structure of reality.

That was to say, Observation and Lennian Fundamentals shared a common link. A very practical link.

He was sure that he was probably one of the very few Observers to have figured out this relationship.

And he was going to exploit it.