Although the High Mother was mourning the loss of the March and their king, she was unable to stay still for long. After all, a significant number of their empire’s worlds were still being stored within the new devices that they had created for this exodus. Before she could deal with her personal feelings, she had to first make sure that her people were taken care of.
With a mental command, she sent an order to the bridge to find a suitable location to begin redeploying the stored solar systems. Chelsea had originally explained, this new universe was naught but scattered cosmic dust. There were no stars, galaxies, or even any rocks to be found floating in space. This made it easier to find suitable locations, merely needing to keep in mind the relative positions of each solar system.
Having lost half of their empire to the lack of time, and half of what remained to the evacuation itself, the golems were ready to start recovery. Or… at least the Metong would. As for the March, it was hard to say if they would be able to fully recover from this loss.
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I had to admit, when I heard what happened with the golem races, I was surprised. I assumed that they still had more time, that they would be able to save more of their people. However, when it occurred, not only had they not saved everyone, but almost all of the March ships had been destroyed.
Are you planning to add the March King to the Heroic Spirits? I asked Terra mentally. What he did could very well be considered a sacrifice. Although not intentionally, he died for the sake of his people.
Yet, Terra’s response was both surprising and firm. No, I won’t. She responded, before her tone softened. Sorry, but it’s just a bad idea all around. Bad timing had a part to play in it, but there was also a karmic backlash that helped to cause his death. Keep in mind that their early departure would knowingly cause the deaths of half of their universe’s surviving races.
I blinked, shaking my head in refusal. They would have only lived for a few minutes more. Is the karmic backlash really that strong?
Terra gave a bitter chuckle in response. If that was all, no murderer would ever suffer from negative karma. Everyone dies eventually. Unless it is a case where the person is in such pain that death comes as a relief, all unnatural deaths are treated as a murder. Whether they had five minutes to live or five hundred years, the weight of karma doesn’t change.
Now, because this karmic backlash caused the death of the majority of the March, including their king, the Metong are currently spared from any additional backlash. The karmic debt is considered ‘paid’, and things have largely returned to balance.
However, if I were to bring the king back, the one that pulled the trigger on that exodus, the karma would return with him. It would taint not only him, but also the survivors that fled to the new world. For that reason, I won’t be considering him as a candidate for the Heroic Spirits.
Unfortunately, I had to nod my head in acceptance. If there was such a karmic burden attached to the March King, then bringing him back would be like repeating the incident with James all over. Leaving aside whether or not he would be able to learn the karmic energy that James used to dispel his own negative karma, we can’t simply make disposable worlds every time someone needs to get rid of their ‘debt’.
Is their new home at least stable enough that they can connect to the other universes again? More and more people were beginning to draw attention to the absence of the Metong and March as time went on, and this would only worsen if they were still unable to connect after the world collapsed.
Thankfully, it’s fine for that. The world is still substantially more fragile than one created by the system, but it should last more than long enough for Chelsea’s technology to finish developing.
I was relieved to hear that, as it meant that the Metong wouldn’t turn into universal nomads, trapped in colony ships traveling through the void. That would be a cool mental image, though…
Don’t even think about it.
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Udona slumped in her chair, not sure what to make of what had happened. No matter what she did, she couldn’t find the silver lining. This event did not simply end with the destruction of the Metong’s universe or the almost complete annihilation of the March golems. There were still other effects that were yet to be resolved.
One such effect, one that could be felt all over Deckan, was how Dimensium had been changed. It might sound nice for the energy it released to become more powerful, but the truth was anything but. Dimensium was used in a lot of delicate machinery, which required fine-tuning various energy signatures. Now that the balance had suddenly been broken, all of these devices were failing.
Udona had no idea if the material would return to normal over time, or if they would simply have to adapt to the new situation. For this reason, she couldn’t give people an answer on what to do with the modified dimensium. For now, all that she could do was advise that people all over Deckan stopped using any delicate machinery that incorporated this material.
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Aside from that, she wasn’t immediately sure where Aznod had gotten off to…
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“Is this truly necessary?” Aznod asked with a resigned sigh as Lifre pulled him along towards the gate of Fyor. “I’ve heard of your Bombubble incident, but I don’t think that I am really fit to assist with that, am I?”
“At least you accepted the name!” Lifre said with a hearty laugh. “But no, bombubbles are so last week. I’ve found the next floor now! And this one, I think, you’re super super good for!”
Aznod’s brow twitched at this, trying to remember how he had gotten here. One minute, he had been looking through some new recipes that he wanted to try out. The next, Lifre had appeared through a portal, grabbed his arm, and quite literally pulled him into Fyor. “How did you even know where to open that portal?”
“You’re always in the kitchen.” Lifre pointed out, a broad grin on her face. “Anyways, get this! You’ll love the sixty-sixth floor!”
Aznod simply resigned himself to going along with Lifre’s whims for the moment. Had he been aware of the developments with the golem races, he likely would have rushed back to the palace to be with Udona, but he had yet to be informed of that matter.
“Very well, let’s get this taken care of.” Aznod nodded his head as he followed behind Lifre, trying to imagine just what a floor of Fyor had to be like for Lifre to seek him out, out of all people.
Lifre pulled Aznod through the gate, and his eyes suddenly went wide. There was an unfamiliar energy in the air, but it wasn’t a harmful one like the pink mist. As far as he could tell, the energy had no adverse effects on the body.
What it did do was highly stimulate the sense of taste of those caught within it, merging sweet and savory tastes to fill the mouth with every breath. “What is…” Aznod couldn’t quite find the words to express his curiosity.
“I know, right?!” Lifre smiled wide, taking a big breath. “It’s like it captures your favorite taste all the time. Oh, and it gets better!”
“What do you mean, better?” Aznod asked, watching as Lifre plucked a large flower next to her feet, bringing it up to her mouth.
When she inhaled, the flower seemed to dissolve into a green energy, flowing into her mouth. “Everything on this layer is made of that energy, and is completely edible! Not only does it taste really good, but it also replenishes your energy reserves like a high-class meal. That flower filled me up better than a three-course dinner, and tasted like steak!”
Aznod blinked at that, trying to decipher the meaning of what she said. According to Lifre’s words, the energy here was highly nutritious. However, as an energy lifeform herself, she wasn’t talking simply the vitamins and proteins needed for daily living, but rather how the energy itself replenished her ki, mana and spirit.
Curious, Aznod plucked a flower himself, bringing it to his mouth. As soon as his mouth opened, the flower dissolved, entering his body. He could sense how the energy that made the flower resonated with his own energy cores. Rather than directly replenishing them, this energy soothed the cores to promote the generation of more energy.
The strangest part of this, aside from the taste of cheese and caramel in his mouth, was that the energy he sensed within the flower was less than the energy that the flower helped him to recover. This was something typically unheard of when it came to any form of food, as it was simply the law of conservation. If something could produce more energy than it was given, you would have a perpetual motion machine. Thus far, people have only achieved such feats by relying on divinity, the void, or high level magic.
“Were you able to find out the cause of this?” He asked in a hesitant tone. Part of his mind was ecstatic about this discovery, already thinking of how to combine this with the energy kernels from the Hajit city to form the ultimate food.
However, there was another part of him that thought that this might just be a sweet poison. What if there were hidden side-effects, such as addiction, or long-term consequences that hadn’t been discovered yet.
“Well, I was kind of curious, so I asked the one person that I thought would know, Aurivy! A few hours ago, I had her do a scan of this floor to see what was up with all the amazing tastes and high-quality food energy! And… she actually found something!”
Aznod watched Lifre, gesturing for her to continue. “There is a primordial relic on this floor. Specifically, the relic containing the domain of Food. The energy from that relic has spread to cover the entire layer of Fyor, making it so that almost anything can be eaten.”
“I see…” If this was a consequence of a divine ability, Aznod could somewhat understand it. Especially if the ability had been active since the dawn of the world itself. “What do you mean by almost anything?”
“Huh? Oh, that’s an easy one!” She pointed behind her, at the gate that they came from. “The gates still disrupt energy like this within a meter. That dirt next to the gate is just plain dirt, not some dirt-like super food. Found that one out the hard way.”
“Is it just your instinct to eat everything you can…?” Aznod asked hesitantly, Lifre turning to raise an amused eyebrow at him.
“Is that slimist, my good sir? I’ll have you know I’m offended! Or would be, if it weren’t mostly true. Anyways, I thought you’d like to come and see this, and maybe you could figure out how to make this energy yourself!”
“You aren’t able to make it?” He asked curiously, knowing that Lifre had mastered World Sight.
However, Lifre simply shook her head. “I took a good look at the energy structure, and it’s so complicated. I can’t even tell how you’d make most of it, so I don’t know where to begin. I’d have to bring in James or Chelsea for that. Maybe Dana on a good day.”
Aznod hesitated for a moment, before nodding. “I’ll see what I can do, then.”