"Oh, wow. So, that's what the Stavch flows look like for splitting spacetime. I wonder why they're so subtly different from the Raijingeki flows for the same effect," Degritone prime said, upgrading his cloak's detection array to properly make it defend against similar attacks.

The huntress tried the same trick on Degritone prime, only for the cloak to shatter the flows before they could perform their intended action. Further attempts on the other Degritones proved as ineffectual. "Wait, no I don't. This is a different pocket of creation from there, let alone omniverse. Of course it'll be different, it's just a few steps detached from directly affecting the multiversal membrane. Being able to do that's about when things should start getting different enough to matter. Makes sense it'd trickle down to its direct descendant."

"You're way to casual in the face of someone trying to kill you."

Prime shrugged and said, "Eh, that's because you can't damage me at all. Actually, I can think of someone who'll be able to properly damage me, but he shouldn't appear for another few power-ups. Probably right before I get 31415 different timelines under my control, maybe earlier. I dunno, I'm not him."

"Who are you talking about?"

"The evil version of myself. You wouldn't be able to find him, but he'll find me when it's most annoying."

The huntress held her hand out, palm up, and a purple flower sprouted from her palm. Its petals started spinning and the Degritones all started removing their cloaks. The petals stopped and spun the other way as the huntress impaled their chests with the stalks of newly growing flowers, then all the Degritones stabbed their swords through their own heads. The flower withered and died and the Degritones all looked at her.

"Well, that's annoying," one of them said as they removed their swords from their heads, leaving behind no visible hole thanks to their regenerations. They flashed back into their cloaks.

"Congratulations, you found the only weakness down this low that we don't know how to deal with," Degritone prime said at her confused face.

"How can your survive a sword to the brain? That should be lethal for any singular existence beings."

"Simple, I don't have a brain anymore. We could go to another planet or something if you want to try out some more devastating attacks, like creating a black hole or big explosions or something. As long as we get to learn how to make a time core, that should be-" she tried growing another mind controlling flower, but her arm was cut off and the flower incinerated before it could do anything.

"Rude," Degritone prime said. "Why even bother with the flower? Just use the Stavch constructs directly. You really don't fight like a timeline hopper. Given how long you've been here, you should have already probed the thousands of copies of myself you can access in adjacent timelines for weaknesses and come to the conclusion that the only weakness is mind control, long before you actually did, if you even have, and be trying as hard as you can to use it."

During his speech, the Degritones had to stop her from creating dozens of mind controlling flowers. "Are you even actually a timeline hopper, or do you just use clones from afar? I guess you could also be new, or have a low tolerance to Stavch corruption. I know my solution shouldn't normally be done until long into the multiverse hopper stage - maybe early omniverse hopper, I forget - so I doubt it's done by you and your people."

They hovered there for a few seconds while the huntress tried tons of different things to get her flowers to grow without Degritone noticing, from creating hundreds at once to hiding them deep underground. "Alright, we could go to another planet so I don't blow this one up and fight for real, if you really want to have a reason to just sit and talk."

"Fine," the huntress said, "But-" She was cut off by Degritone flashing to her, flashing to Venus, avoiding Mars as it may still be explored by others later on, and ripping space open so her body fell in halves. She reappeared nearby and Degritone created a black hole bomb next to her, letting it explode after half a second. A fourth of Venus turned to dust and flew out of the atmosphere in the explosion.

Another Degritone went about putting everything back where it belonged as Degritone prime sucked the next appearance of the huntress unto a black hole and made it disappear. Another body was realm eaten. Another was turned to rust using the Stavch flows he just learned from the fight before. He spent the next hundred bodies testing out how he'd convert matter into other atoms and molecules, like nitrogen or water.

After the first few failures, the rest were successful and she was grabbed by the face. She tried to flash away, but Degritone was there before she could properly adjust to having a completely new scene before her eyes, slamming her into the surface of Venus, crushing her skull and opening a crater to the core of Venus. Next time, he decided to try his hand at mind control himself, making her rip herself apart with vines.

"I-" she was cut off by plasma cutting her in half. "Igvp," she said next time she appeared, holding her hands up high.

Degritone stopped his next attack and said, "What?"

"I give up," she rapidly said, though slowly enough that it came out as words instead of just meaningless sounds.

"You could have just left instead of surrendering. I can't track you through timelines. Heck, I can't even attack your time core to do real damage. I don't know the flows to do that, yet."

"...Any attack against our true dwelling-"

"-requires enough energy to rip apart the multiverse," Degritone said at the same time as her. She looked surprised as he continued, "I know. Anything any timeline hopper could reasonably figure out to do so would rip apart the multiverse because you're too imprecise with your control of Stavch. You'd puncture the multiversal membrane that you have to use to anchor yourselves outside the normal bounds of singular timelines.

"There are Stavch flows that can reasonably attack just a... true dwelling? without rupturing the multiversal membrane, they just go wild if you don't have the fine control needed to not accidentally kill yourself at mid-multiverse hopper. Really, anyone who can do this," he said, creating a thumb-sized sphere of realm eater with an infinite fractal surface to constantly keep it the same size instead of expanding, "should be able to attack a true dwelling. Trying to create a stable sphere of realm eater would usually result in it just living up to its name.

"But me and one other guy, plus my evil self, know how to do it because we cheated. We have some knowledge that's far beyond what anyone else has thought to even think about thinking about. The problem is that Stavch is controlled in a way we didn't originally think of. If I had the right knowledge on how Stavch flows are created, I, alone, could create hundreds of different versions of the System in a matter of minutes.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"But I don't have that knowledge. All I need to know is how to go about designing Stavch constructs that create arbitrary flows, and I'll be able to do anything. I have the knowledge of so many flows in my head that it'd make the Architects cream their pants for a thousand years straight, but I have no way of making almost any of them. Do you know how to create arbitrary Stavch flows?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be so reliant on the System, it sounds like."

Degritone blinked slowly twice and said, "Fair enough. Why even hunt me down, beyond the Architects saying to do so?"

"Money. I need to pay for better techniques and a good weapon to bond with so I can do harder contracts to get enough money to live comfortably off of forever. This is usually real easy, just show up, kill you, and leave."

Degritone squinted and tilted his head back and forth as he considered that for a few seconds. "Why not just make your own weapon? It's not that hard." He focused a second before waving his hand and creating a bland, pure Stavch sword with a quark-sized edge.

"I haven't done so yet because it's not really relevant until I become a timeline hopper, anyway," he said as he erased the weapon, having not fully considered what he wants for the future yet, "as it'd just kill me otherwise, but still. Also, you should be able to live off your power for as long as you want, for free. It's only people with a real goal or enemies that need to struggle for anything at timeline hopper."

"You seem to think we're somehow capable of things we're not, let alone me. I can't do 1% of what the Architects do without the System, or even just 5% of what the best Wardens can. Most of us are stuck with whatever the System allows us."

"That should still get you anything you've seen before."

"Huh?"

Degritone tilted his head before saying, "Just imagine the Stavch flow you want to create and push it at the System like you do for manifesting images. Works for - oh, hey, I just thought of a way to upgrade my cloak - anyway, works for most things that matter this far down. It doesn't seem to work for weapon worlds - or as I think you called it, weapon bonds - unless they're slightly different than what we thought they'd be. They could also be explicitly denied by the System, I don't know."

This time, the Warden tilter her head and said, "What do you mean any flow I've seen? You can't directly see Stavch flows."

Degritone's head slowly drooped as his eyes flailed back and forth for a few seconds, before returning to normal. "So, the Architects have somehow kept Stavch sight suppressed. Given the existence of the System, I figured that it'd be the opposite, but maybe not. Sounds like the Architects are super oppressive and need to be taken out. Here," Degritone said before physically creating the Stavch construct for Stavch sight around her head, guaranteeing it be permanent, as long as she doesn't dematerialize that body.

She rapidly blinked for a second before going to rub her eyes and seeming surprised, her eyes staying closed as she said, "What is this?"

"You can now see Stavch flows, at least with that body. Using the System, you can now copy anything you see. Any power you see is now yours to use. Someone made a cool sword? Just duplicate it. Someone's using some really cool technique you really like? I can do this, the Architects can definitely do this. Now you can, too."

"Why would you-" she opened her eyes and, gesturing around Degritone, exclaimed, "What in the world is that!?"

"I assume you mean the massive glowing sphere that is around me?" She nodded. "It's the mechanism by which my cloak works. It will become simultaneously more and less complex in a few seconds." He went about implementing the upgrade he had in mind, making the cloak create a simulation of all Stavch flows in the surroundings and rapidly playing them in fast-forward to see how they affect Degritone, then determining the least disruptive way to block the attack if it damaged him in any way.

Since he could use miniature Stavch sight for the Stavch flow detection, he created a new cloak that's hallow inside to hold everything, instead of requiring a whole-body sphere of Stavch detectors for everything he could imagine as reasonably dangerous. Should also allow for full-force hugs again, instead of requiring us to take off our cloaks when we hug, he thought as he was 5% of the way through with the upgrade.

"Why would you give me this power? I tried to kill you. This is amazing. Heck, this is better than anything I could have bought with the reward for killing you."

"Simple, you're an easy source of information I want. You're of no threat to me or my goals, so it's not hard to justify giving you this in exchange for two pieces of information I'm certain you have. Anything more you know would be nice, but not required as payment. If you refuse to pay me, though, in the future, I will find you and return you back to a normal, time-bound person and remove your ability to use the System to quickly regain your position. I can't do so yet, but I will be taking over the entire multiverse at some point, so blah."

She blinked and said, "That's all? You don't want to, like, have sex or anything? Just tell you two things and I'm good?"

"Ye, I just need to know the constructs to create my true dwelling and to bond with a weapon. You said you just need a weapon to bond with and you're a timeline hopper, even if you aren't good at using that fact to your advantage. After that, you can go live in whatever way you want." He lifted his eyebrows and tilted his head to the side, undoing the motion as he said, "Or you can run away now and I ruin you in the future, I guess, if you think I'm less of a threat than if the Architects find you out."

"I dunno, what are you going to do with the multiverse? Would I even find it better than how the Architects run it?"

"Well, I'm not sure about the latter, but there'd definitely be a lot less death. Simple no murder, no violence outside specified areas (according to property owners, not me,) no stealing, etc., all enforced by an army of robots that are as invincible as me and can see everything. Housing would be free, food and water would be free, even if you don't need it, modern stuff I'm not sure you have, but might, would be free, even excluding the fact that you can just create whatever you want.

"The only thing that'd be weird is that lolis are the ultimate beings and must be obeyed, unless doing so would ruin you in some way, such as dying, going bankrupt, or whatever else. Plus, I'd stop letting people fend for themselves in invasions. As far as I know, invasions only happen where the system is, since it never happened to Earth before the system came, and we've had tons already.

"The robopolice can take care of it, no problem. And I will eventually be able to see through time in a way that timeline hoppers can't. Heck, I technically can right now, with a lot more effort than it's currently worth. Point being that people won't be able to bypass the robocops forever."

"Why do you even want lolis in power? You're not one, wouldn't that go against your own well-being?"

"I love them, more than anything."

After a few seconds of waiting for him to say anything else, the Warden huntress says, "Alright. How to I create matter like you did?"

"Just push the atomic flows you see toward the system, in the shape you want them. It's like materializing an item. You can build up the shapes over time, if you can't keep the whole thing in your head at once. Though, if you stop focusing on something made that way, it'll disappear, same as anything else made through the system. You could also imagine this moving through space to create something permanent," Degritone said as the construct for pure Stavch.

She nodded and spent a few minutes building up complex shapes out of pure Stavch. Once they were done, flows that were very familiar to Degritone appeared in their centers. "There ya go. I'm interested to watch how this loli-centric society progresses. Being a little girl is basically learning psychological warfare on a small scale, though I don't think they'd wish for enough suffering around them to actually be detrimental to their lives."

"The affect it'll have on the value of motherhood will also be interesting to watch, with women being valued for their ability to produce girls, and said girls being valued for the wealth they'll bring to the family. I feel it would lead to a very complicated matriarchy."

Degritone blinked a few times before saying, "Uhhhh, ok. I didn't ask for an analysis of my plans, but that's cool. Anyway, yeah, seems the system is hard coded to not be able to create those flows because I already tried the one to make a true dwelling and my no-longer friend tried to use the weapon bond one. I understand the former being restricted, but why the latter? It seems like something they'd want to use as an extra thing in the war game they call the system."

"I dunno. We good? Not going to kill me later on?"

Degritone paused his cloak's upgrade at 28% and waved her off while memorizing the constructs in front of him, then said, "Yeah, go ahead."

She disappeared.