---Richard---
Richard loved life.
He loved how exciting it was. How much there was to explore. How much there was to do.
If you couldn’t have fun doing what you loved than what was the fucking point you know?
9/10 star review for life. If Richard had to give a single complaint – a minor one you understand, just the single dick in the punch knocking it down from perfect? Well paradoxically there might be a weeee bit too much of a good thing when it came to experimentation. Too much Richard wanted to explore.
No…that wasn’t quite right.
The amount there was to explore was perfect – his actual complaint was the time crunch. This time crunch made it hard to savour any of the new stuff to learn. It made him wish he didn’t know about all that fun stuff – like being stuck inside on a beautiful day. You almost wished the day was gloomy instead so it didn’t feel like you were missing out.
Richard had over a dozen completely different, fully realized experimental goals – each could take him months or more accurately years to truly dive into.
Just pick one out of a hat – Dimensions for example! Planes of existence or layers or however they might be structured and described. He’d already proven they existed beyond a doubt at least in this location. He’d already taken advantage of quite a few traits of the skill layer as well as boosted processing speed of his AI at the cost of both quality and quantity of aether to keep it running.
But really that could be called nothing more than dipping his toes in. As far as research topics went, Richard could happily explore every bit of this field as possible – were all layers as closely connected as he’d found so far? Did any have life in them? Could he physically visit any?
Just being able to create a drone that could record and send back a video stream was beyond Richard as is and Richard could imagine how fun it might be to find whole ecosystems or wholly unique traits in these different dimensions. Manifest destiny a whole new wilderness!
Sure they hadn’t finished wrangling this ‘wilderness’ but it didn’t stop Richard from imagining new ones.
The best or purest way of using science as far as Richard was concerned – and he was totally unbiased so his opinion was just fact – was to discover what existed and find a potential use afterwards.
But Richard didn’t have time for that sort of cataloging or exploration. All he could do is devote a teensy bit of time to dimensional exploration specifically checking how it might further their goals.
That was the worst way of using science. Having a goal and trying to solve that goal while tossing everything else aside. Much harder and much less fun even if having a direction gave you some purpose.
Fuck purpose. Embrace play.
Why double down on dimensions with different properties when you could change the properties in a local area about you? Why search for dimensions with certain traits when you could make those traits in your backyard?
The more Richard abused his admin sandbox the more he realized there was.
It felt endless – his sandbox in particular seemed only able to replicate what had been made before…he couldn’t make anything new and yet even that was broken when you considered just how much had been already done.
Richard's current estimate was that there were literally billions of potential configurations based on past laws used on past worlds or combinations of laws that fit together but hadn’t been tried before. Each with semi variable dials he could increase or decease in strength. If he focused all his energy solely on this, it would take many lifetimes to even make a dent in it. That was even considering how many were related or were similar to each other…and to fully understand most of them it would take even longer! You couldn’t review a full change in seconds or even mere minutes even if you could get a surface level understanding of it pretty quickly.
The only real problem with his sandbox ended up being how empty the results actually were. Sure, he could mould the laws of physics and more…but the final result was nearly always an empty box with different vibes. It wasn’t like there were different ecosystems to explore. That was the big difference between a dimension with different rules and a custom room with different rules. The décor. The ‘stuff’ that used these rules to thrive.
So instead of a replacement for dimensions the only real benefit he got in the short term was a confirmation that something was possible and a list of side effects that commonly appeared.
Didn’t stop Richard from feeling like he was being pulled away from something interesting.
Richard’s main test after that chaos hole was the three bases R had let slip.
If you named each distinct set of laws for aether as a different type of energy, you had three essential bases.
If he followed the system’s classification they were called: Primordial energy, Origin energy and Genisis energy.
None were actually ‘energy’ – all were types of aether and all the ‘same’ in the same way mana and aether were the same…to make matters even less clear, all had a large number of similarities muddying the water further.
None were immediately useful.
It wasn’t as if these bases were actually better than modern aether – far from it. All three were worse in several distinct ways. Richard was not able to regenerate origin energy for example. He could swap to it and it acted in a similar manner to the others but once he ‘spent it’ the power was simply gone? This wasn’t some secret hack or proof that ancient aether was stronger or somehow ‘better’. Really all they were was more ‘raw’. If you didn’t care about any modern conveniences some of these bases were easier to modify.
No, what it was was a grouping of some of the most basic and thus fundamental rules for aether and through that a guide for what was possible. Both the default aether and variant of ‘mana’ that seemed to be used currently were both distantly distantly derived from Genesis energy for example.
Nameing them differently was a tiny bit confusing. They were all the same in the end.
But once again, this was yet another field of study Richard could probably spend a lifetime chipping away at. Simply changing the default into each of the three and experiencing them gave him the shallowest of understandings.
There was also a totally not suspicious marble from his chaos hole – Richard wanted to study it thoroughly and yet he was afraid to rush and potentially break it.
He only had one and non destructive testing was quite a bit slower than destructive.
Simultaneously he was afraid it was secretly decaying and ignoring it was allowing the opportunity to slip through his fingers.
There were chunks of the killed calamities body they had recovered before the area was swarming with opportunists. He could study it.
There was a plant he had found nearly undamaged in a stretch that had been hit by the storm. A single suspicious plant surrounded by ashen rubble. Might have been a fluke – Richard could study it to confirm.
There was probably a joke answer Richard could study as well, but right now he was knee deep in potential study options. Just addressing how much there was brought even more to mind!
There was the mysterious hidden essence and its link to monsters. Richard could study just how nests formed naturally and unnaturally and how they related to dungeons and wild monsters.
There was immortality – supposedly Maddy had achieved a version of it and while Richard wasn’t afraid of death…the idea of living long enough to experience all that life had to offer was tempting. Sure, his defensive stats were theoretically increasing his lifespan and directing a lot of them towards “aging defense” extended that even further… but Richard was sure he could come up with something better given time. The sort of thing to work on sooner rather than later. Immortality as an old man sounded rough.
Everything came back to goals.
His goals, the goals of his friends he wanted to help with. The shared goals they had begun to shape together.
A few weeks previously they had all sat down together and brainstormed those overall goals. A week ago, he had brainstormed separately just with Maddy.
Now he’d taken an entire week to test the feasibility of all their ideas and he was ready to review them with Madison once again. Troy and Jess were gone and James was around…but currently the most important experiments could be done by Richard and Maddy alone.
“Okay, Let's talk about goal one. The Big cheese!” Richard began as soon as they met up.
“The separation of the strongest dangers. Our idea of finding or creating or bringing about a higher realm has been confirmed so many times I don’t think we are even considering anything else right now. R said it was possible but that our planet needed to be rank 4 first and it would be better if we solved it instead of asking the system to do it for us.” Richard started them off with some recap.
Maddy nodded playing along to start. “I can visualize dozens of ways it might work, but I don’t have the capability or understanding to actually ‘do’ any of it. If I push my perception of this goal into a metaphor, it’s a solid wall I cannot climb under, over, around or through. Just seeing the wall doesn’t let me get through the dimensional barrier no matter how much power I use or how roundabout I go…and on the other hand the amount of meaning required to purposefully make a dimension is incredible. With my magic I’d have to break a dimension to make one and it's not like I’m strong enough to break our dimension…”
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Richard nodded. “I’m not confident that dimensions can be made just yet. What I can tell you is that I’m 90% sure I’ve found one that works and solves a lot of our problems.”
Maddy looked up with interest. “Oh?”
Richard took out a tablet and began projecting diagrams and drawings he’d done before as he wasn’t able to send her AI feeds directly.
“So, a semi popular configuration for settled mana worlds seems to be using a few planes for material storage. Saw a few snippets when R was showing off worlds and confirmed it with my newest cheat. Imagine this, An Air dimension for endless gasses. A Fire dimension for endless heat and combustion. A Water dimension that’s endless H20. An Earth dimension for endless stone.”
“Earth air fire water aren’t the base affinities?” Maddy began but Richard shook his head.
“Yeah, there’s a few more, a light dimension, a poisonous dimension, a metallic dimension, an electron flux dimension etc. etc. I do believe those worlds would have whatever material dimensions they had as their base ‘affinities’ with the exact mechanism for them ‘creating’ any of those materials being closer to summing from their plane with localized one way dimension breaches… but that’s all besides the point. Those material dimensions only function as sources on those worlds. I’m 90% sure the light dimension used in this configuration is nearly identical to the one Troy visits currently although his seems to have more than light in it. At this point I’m even wondering if every black hole corresponds to a white hole in that dimension…but that’s besides the point. Of these source dimensions, the one that looks the most promising for me is the earth or stone dimension.” Richard swiped and showed his drawing of a pebble surrounded by sparkles and a checkmark.
“Endless space and free material?” Maddy began a thoughtful look in her third and fourth eye.
“Ding Ding Ding. As far as ‘free materials’ are concerned, without the system specifically set up to draw from those planes, the energy cost of getting materials from there is astronomical. With the system set up and some key rules in place…well I’ve been able to gather that it's viable but unneeded.
After all, we don’t want to pull ‘free’ stuff from there however, we want to go there.”
Maddy nodded a bit a thoughtful look on her face.
“Here’s my thought process. With aether and the system manipulating laws and their side effects, we can theoretically reach all sorts of perfect or optimal states. The remaining conflict is all human. Humans like expansion. We like to go out and conquer the wilderness. Once we’ve done that however there’s nothing left for those who come after…
“One of the biggest sources of pain I can see is lack of space. Space being a premium causes wars and generational wealth causes land to consolidate and inflate. Infinite space nips that in the bud forever. A lot of aether civilizations expand throughout their solar system and beyond in a way mana seems to find it hard to do. Expanding through space you can walk through doesn’t have that problem.” Richard laid his solution out.
Maddy nodded slowly.
“I can see a bit of what you are thinking…we’ll have to figure out how it's even possible to exist in that dimension assuming it exists and we can get there.
“Oh it exists. I pulled a tiny stone out of it at least using a sandbox with those plane summoning laws. There's a lot I like about this idea – A semi uniform base will help in all sorts of ways. By starting with something simple we have a much higher shot of building something solid. Another positive is you’ve already proven that any element can become anything else with enough power and structure. Fuck, I’ve done some incredibly small scale atomic transmutation on my own and even back on earth they were able to do so without the power of aether. Add some energy and Nickle can become copper. Platinum can become gold. Remove some and Oxygen can become nitrogen. Iron can be dropped to magnesium. Enough steps and all atoms are the same. Of course I have the problem of scale – without more study, doing this sort of base element transmutation takes massive amounts of aether to transform an element the size of a grain of rice while you seem to have strange meaning requirement…” Richard paused and realized he was getting off track.
“Sounds promising, any others?” Maddy asked.
Richard shook his head slowly. “There might be a much better candidate but so far this is my favorite option. Using the same logic, we could pick the water or metal planes but both initially seem harder to handle. To sum up what I’ve decided for this, It’s a potential location. It's potential but I haven’t been able to go there and check it out…I’m still not even sure people can travel between these planes. From what Troy does, it seems likely but that might not extend to everyone…I’m also not sure what the negatives of this plane of earth might be just yet? I think you might have a better shot scouting it.
“After that point, I think even if it's currently inhospitable we can change some laws to make it hospitable…but other than some theories I’m not even sure aether or the system can function there let along fix enough rules to make it support life.”
Maddy nodded. “Sounds good. Okay, I guess it's my turn. Secondary goal of spreading stability, I’ve been looking at ways to fix some of the damage that’s been done. A lot seems like it will be fixed by removing the highest ranked creatures from the world but even that won’t be able to undo some of this damage.
“Other bits only seem possible with system rules but falling back on that seems like it might have problems. And trying to pick specific ones means we have to argue it with everyone else on the planet.
“So smaller scale, one of the main goals is fixing our lost water. Making water from raw matter is easy enough. Making it from a specific well defined and consistent bit of matter is even easier for me. Illusion or template of water. Dissolve stone, Keep physicality, Keep weight, every bit that’s overlapping with water. Filter out everything that’s contrary to it and void it. Filter concept works great for that. Water concept has most of the remaining bits so after filling in the stones weight I’m all the way there. Still looks a tiny bit unstable to my sight but in every other way it's functional. You can drink it. Dump it. Everything’s fine.” Maddy threw a pebble in a cup, filled that cup with a black mist and then gestured to the water.
Richard had already been drinking her water on and off for weeks but he took a sip of this option just to play along.
“Now, the problem is in distribution. I can make a barrel of water pretty easily, but unless I want to dedicate all my time to generating water for everyone on the planet its not enough. I’m not able to create endless founts of magic outside of my existence and I haven’t made a domain that lets me dominate and force my understanding of magic on others so they could use the spell.” Maddy grimaced slightly.
She looked to her leg for a moment and then continued “One solution would be to find a way of leveraging as much of some larger power and weight as I can, then start dumping massive amounts of natural water to try and refill the ocean. Even if we track down all the looted bits of the mountain and try and melt it with some ‘return our water’ meaning supercharging that spell, I’m pretty sure that water is gone for good. One solution would be for you to figure out how to recreate this spell as an aether machine then share the blueprints and let aether cities build and create their own water.” Maddy continued.
Richard considered that for a moment. He…might be able to do that. Anything mana could do aether could do as well and with an example right in front of him he could probably work his way towards it…
Actually, that didn’t feel like a question or request. Richard felt like he knew Maddy enough by now to know she was sitting on something different.
“What do you lean towards?” he prompted and was rewarded with a hesitant nod.
“Okay so…I too have been looking into what’s come before. You know how R’s been gifting us artifacts? I can kind of sort of twist my perception to see there are more of them…locked up and hidden away of course, I can’t just magic them into existence just tell they exist. I did a bunch of random scrying. Found some information others have learned etc.” Maddy began.
This was a rabbit hole. As far as Richard was concerned, she had switched topics.
“…and?” Richard asked. It was nice to try and prompt people. Made them feel like you were invested.
“Okay. First my goal. I want…a way to share magic. I want to share my water making spell and more. There are dozens of spells I’d give to people if I could! Magic is deeply personal and that individuality and connection with its creator is its strength. From what I’ve discovered, there are two main ways that mana centric worlds share magic. One way is through divinity. People with mantles are designated as gods. Gods gain a resource known as faith in world dependant ways. One of the main uses of that faith is to gift spells to followers from the top down. Tons and tons of ways this actually happens. A lot of meaning in the acts to fuel its power. One example allows followers to turn their mana into faith and gift it to their god in ‘prayer’. Their god gives them back the spell in return and keeps the faith for godhood specific growth. Sometimes mana is swapped for blood or sacrifice. Sometimes the faith energy is sent down from the god instead of up and corrupts the follower's core into only generating this faith. Many options.
“Another similar method involves apprenticeships. Some worlds have mages with solidified domains take on apprentices and gift them magic they can learn only under their tutelage and can only perform under their masters domain... The apprentice has to break that gifted magic to become a true mage themselves and many never manage that…but by learning under their master, their magic will have become aligned quite a bit with them and nearly identical spells or styles of spellwork can be passed down the line.
“There are other methods but they all follow something similar to the divinity or school of magic structure. It’s a domination based system no matter what.”
Richard felt his face wrinkle slightly as Maddy described them. She noticed and nodded.
“Thought you wouldn’t be a fan. They work for my goals but…I’m not excited enough to try and push for any of them. That’s just sadly how magic as we use it can most easily spread. I’ve looked around and this is the only possible way of spreading actual magic between different people. At least the only way that’s been done before and in the way I’m imagining.
“So, here’s what I’ve come to understand. Spreading magic as I’ve thought of it – magic that can change and grow and react…that’s impossible. Spreading spells on the other hand. Spreading results…even if it sounds the same, with a whole lot of work that might be possible. The system after all, gives us all a relatively weak skill to start. That’s sort of like spreading magic, isn’t it?
“What if we work backwards? What if we take the results moulded by our domains and experiences and turn them into static skills?” Maddy started to get excited as she described her idea.
“One of the options for worlds that might be offered is a class system. A specific profession or role and then various ways for the system to give skills and stats related to those roles. Some worlds seem to have nearly entirely removed true magic in exchange for much stronger class skills. I don’t want that.
“Some worlds have classes that can access only one or two skills and others let those skills be swapped by taking different classes instead…this is closer to what I’m imagining but my goal is greater than that.
“I want to create classes completely separate from magic. I want to create classes that can access a shared pool of skills. I want to make a shared magic system that everyone can grow for the good of the collective and I think I know how we can go about achieving this even if it hasn’t been done before.” Maddy spoke sounding increasingly unsure as she continued.
All this could be solved by switching everyone to a standardized band of aether. Richard felt like it was a solved problem…but who was he to piss on his friend’s dreams?
“True Magic…all of mana seems to be routed in trades. Bargains to a higher power. You put in work expecting a reward in turn. It's ‘fair’ and the trades are even in a way…but there is a second kind of true magic. Gifts. Charity work – something given without expecting anything in return. This is what I’m basing my goal on.
“It feels like the only way a spell can be truly ‘gifted’ is by gifting more than just some time and energy to it. Just thinking about it personally I think a concept would have to be gifted with the spell as a minimum. The original skill given by the system was moulded into something that became this new skill.
“And maybe…maybe just maybe this end result we create could be more than a list of shared skills. So much of what I love about magic is individuals being able to add their own touch to it with personal language and styles…but languages are meant for communication and it feels like personal languages cannot communicate. So, this goal is... Maybe it could become what I’ve always wanted from magic. A shared language we can use to build something together.” Maddy finished.
Richard clapped an appropriate amount glancing back and riling up the invisible crowd around them.
“Alright! Well, make our own aether system with blackjack and hookers as they say! I’m in.”