Chương 75: Time, the 5th dimension.

On average, affinity rarity is not a good method of determining "strength". Some of the most common affinities like Fire and Sword are also some of the strongest – both initially and when taken to the extreme. Documented cases have shown the tops of mountains being cut off with a single transient swipe of a blade… and there's a reason so many dragons have "simple" fire affinities instead of cool esoteric sounding ones. While there are hundreds of documented dragon breaths, fire remains the #1 most common.

Going further, a simple Earth tank is often much stronger than a "Mountain" tank and a water mage often outclasses a river mage, level per level. That being said the invisible "tier" of a mana type does a lot to offset rarity. Some of the highest tiered affinities we have analyzed include Void and Time based spells. We don't know why Time is split into two and Void is not… but its theorized that void is simply an upgraded version of the tier 7 deletion mana type and Time is a concept all on its own.

Others claim the mana flavour the system likes to claim is "Entropy", is an offshoot of kinetic mana (being a natural progression from speed mana and haste spells taken to the extreme)… but that is a theory that's heavily debated and not important for this guide. What this means for the average adventurer is that while seeking to find a rare class can make you famous for being different, its not always a rise to true strength. …

The exception of course is that if you find a class with Void or Time routes you had best take it – even if its far from your current class the permanent loss of skills will be well worth the switch. Excerpt obtained from the adventurer guild's "Affinity advice book for you and your friends." The wait up to and including adding FED was worse than the actual event. Innearth prepared an army and then sat on it for an hour before FED opened his gate.

As the newest addition was made, the void density increased slightly but – and here was a key point – the damage to everything was minimum. A few bends here or there strained and snapped but as if the walls and floors were a bone that had been repeatedly broken and healed it now held. That didn't mean there weren't plenty of holes that had been found somehow and it didn't mean the number of demons didn't drastically increase. But, it did mean the process was more subdued feeling than it had been the past few times.

Essentially most of the "danger" was relegated to the secondary shell they had made instead of their inner sanctum – because that outer shell had plenty of broken sections, an entire 100m long stretch had even been ripped off. Innearth: I get that there's hundreds of demons out in the second shell and a bunch have gotten through to our inner sanctum but… well does anyone else feel like this is easy? Abe: BRO. WHY. WHY WOULD YOU RAISE A FLAG LIKE THAT. Innearth: Oh was I the only one thinking that?

Fated Eternal Design: There are demons everywhere! Brutality Queen: No Innearth I'm with you. I feel like the danger went down. Abe: Innearth I just saw a demon eat like 20 of your snakes at a time. I didn't think you were making fodder so the fact that that many died at once should be concerning. Not to be that guy but don't tempt fate! Innearth: Oh I'm sure the roach knight will take them out shortly: 3 Abe: bruh. Okay now you're doing it on purpose. Innearth: A bit yeah, I don't believe in fate.

Fated Eternal Design:!!! How can you not believe in fate! We were fated to become friends just as I'm fated to become the eternal spring! Fated Eternal Design: But you're distracting me as well. Is no one else seeing what I'm seeing? It looks like we are being overrun everywhere. Demons are quite literally crawling out of the ground. I realise I'm new to this "shared area" but this can't be normal? Innearth: The thing is, they are out there breaking stuff instead of in here with us if that makes sense?

Like pretend your influence gate is your core. Sure we expanded out into that shell but if they smash a few walls or something its not going to break our core. Besides when me and Doc finish patching all the holes we can move to clean up and focus on periodic vermin killing. As if hearing Innearth tempting it.

As if hearing Abe's fears and as if telling them everything was going to change, a massive eye appeared at the side of the outer shell – irises poking through the 100m span and shattering the edge even further just to fit. Slowly this massive eye appeared to survey the outer shell – swivelling around and then suddenly darting to focus in on the central dome as if appraising each and every dungeon while staring directly at their soul.

Everywhere demons stilled and panicked while trapped under the gaze of a predator higher than should even care to attack them. Like an ant facing a lion – they looked like they existed in different worlds several several steps up a foodchain. Abe: … I'd say I told you so but that would just be petty you know? Abe: … now, I wouldn't call myself a coward. I'd say I'm quite brave y/k. But that thing? That… that's a beast. If that's how big its eye is how big is its body?! Amy: What's happening?

Innearth: Giant eye bigger than roachie. ZeMadDoctor: I'm going to take over your portals. If you see anything breaking that's me. Don't worry I'll only shut them if it looks like the end alright? We can always try again. Abe: Why isn't it doing anything? Its kind of awkward just being stared at. I feel exposed. Brutality Queen: Well I say we attack it. Eyes are weak points right? Abe: Sweet Gaia's embrace that eye is big. I know I just said that – But come on. Look at it.

I feel like it needs to be brought attention to. Fated Eternal Design: I haven't expanded that far yet. Where's this eye? What's it look like. Oh don't worry about it. Just give me a bit I'll make my way over. Brutality Queen: Hey, what if the demon is just an eye? What if its body is like nothing and it's just… well just a giant eye? That's not that bad. Innearth: Why do demons even need eyes? Eyes seem like a thing for creatures that need to see with light and stuff.

Like sure I add gems and stuff to some of my monsters to pretend they have eyes but it's not like they do anything… you know? Brutality Queen: I'm attacking it. Swimming through the air towards it, a leafy, snake-like creature that looked sort of like an uprooted tree… an uprooted tree complete with "dangling dirty roots" and bushy front but with a body that wiggled back and forth like an eel through water – shot towards the eye.

It took over a minute to reach its goal and left plenty of time for the group to talk about how bad of an idea this was. Abe: woah woah woah. Please. Why am I the voice of reason. This isn't a fun job but someone has to do it. Queen. WHY ARE YOU PROVOKING IT. Brutality Queen: Hey, no one else was doing anything and I want to regain some agency okay? I can't stand just sitting here waiting for it to do something. This way I'm taking matters into my own hands. I'm proactive. Abe: call it off!

There's multiple people here – your decision is affecting all of us okay? Amy: Abe, I think you're growing up. It's nice to see. Abe: No. I'm the same dungeon I've always been. I'm just the only one pointing out that Queen's being selfish and somehow that's a shock. Suddenly that's out of character. I'm the only one seeing this right? I give up. Innearth: ah I don't really care. I'm using the time the demons are distracted to continue patching up holes.

If it looks like it's going to destroy everything Doc will save us. Fated Eternal Design: Oh hey it's a giant beholder! Abe: you can see the flat of the body behind the eye if you expand past the break slightly. That is not a beholder just weird eyelid's. Brutality Queen: I always thought beholders were too much effort. Sure they are strong but look how much mana they cost! Look how much time and effort! You could make 1000 mud golems with that kinda magic.

Bringing its eye back suddenly the massive void where the demon had been caused the group to stop talking – suddenly just less than half the claimed outer shell was gone. As the mouth crashed through their oblong shape a sense of scale was obtained. The outer shell was around a kilometer away from the center dome in all directions – so the diameter was close to two kilometers.

This bite didn't quite reach the full two kilometers vertically but disappeared on both ends at an angle that spoke of being easily double that. A gaping maw that was pitch black to their mana senses – and contained what Innearth could only describe as an incredibly strong vacuum – sucked most of the atmosphere they had built into it. The mouth closed incredibly quickly – shutting in less than a second – but somehow in that brief time it sucked in 99% of the air, Air mana, and most of the materials not bolted down.

It consumed mass and mana and while it didn't suck in their influence a good portion of it trapped inside that mouth simply disappeared feeling like a dull ache as it was ripped off instead of a clean cut. As the mouth closed with a snap it broke reality. To be more exact it broke the three-dimensional illusion their claimed space held but Innearth was panicked enough he didn't feel like being pedantic.

Void liquid streamed in all directions rapidly seeming to fluctuate the number of dimensions in a given point – an action incredibly disorienting for Innearth. Just as he thought Doc was sure to cut them all off, the closed mouth – tentacle-covered lips sprayed revealing billions of flat teeth – sort of exhaled and a second wave of disorienting void was filtered through this nightmare mouth.

The liquid seemed to flow through its teeth and caused all the lip tentacles to flap about in a ridiculous-looking manner – one Innearth would have laughed at if he didn't feel like he was in mortal peril. Eddies in the liquid passed through the remaining area – momentarily blanking Innearth's mind out with the sheer overload the fluctuations caused. To reiterate. Mass and mana remained in the space whales' mouth. Void atmosphere was filtered and exhaled. The exhaled liquid pushed into their dome and then… stopped.

Liquid was a bad metaphor. The void atmosphere didn't seem to care about its momentum swirling into place and then stopping unnaturally fast. The liquid also didn't seem to care about reaching an equilibrium – the cracked egg of the second shell was packed incredibly densely with Void, while the surroundings were positively thin in comparison. … logic dictated it should flow out once more. … logic dictated dimensions shouldn't fractal like they did in this place. … And then. … That massive mouth retreated.

Innearth was surprised. The whole group was surprised. Abe: do you think its winding back to get the rest of us in one go? ZeMadDoctor: Maybe it's full? We didn't put alot of stuff in that area. But it did just eat quite a few monsters. A thick chunk of wall. And basically all our air. Brutality Queen: Maybe it's waiting for us to build back up. You know, so it can come back and eat us again. An endlessly renewing snack. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Innearth: … dammid skies. You're probably right on that one. Everything I know about demons makes me think here's no way it did that out of the goodness of its heart. Innearth: But… they are smarter in the void. Waiting for us to build up again for a bigger harvest makes some twisted sort of sense. It's the best theory we have. Fated Eternal Design: I'm partial to doc's theory. Its much nicer sounding. Brutality Queen: slagpit I hate feeling helpless. Is this place a wash?

Like is this combined floor not going happen? I can't see us facing off against that again. Innearth: One of my roach knights was eaten! I just realized. The new one! I worked hard on that and it disappeared in a single moment. Abe: … my boi was too. how strong do you think that chunker was? will we ever be able to face that? ZeMadDoctor: The lesser demons are starting to attack again. I'm going back to patching the place up. Innearth: so are we staying here?

I don't think we can bring adventurers to this place even if we rebuild. I wouldn't want to feed a whole bunch of them to that… Armageddon. ZeMadDoctor: There's some great research opportunities here. Can you not tell the materials left behind seem different? Like that exhale packed a massive amount of void atmosphere junk. Your void bricks and stuff was warped as the void washed over it? Come on. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger! Brutality Queen: I can get behind that! Survival of the fittest!

Let's not hide! Abe: As far as I'm concerned that demon would have left us alone but decided to take a nibble because you provoked it. Shh on your opinion. I'll throw my support on whatever main bro decides. So Innearth, stay or abandon? Innearth: I don't want to rebuild if it just means it's going be torn down once again… but now that I've had a moment to calm down I agree with doc. Speaking of doc, Hey I'm curious why didn't you cut us off by the way? I thought you were preparing to in case it got too dangerous?

ZeMadDoctor: No way that demon would have fit through our portals. No matter how much squishing it did. Worse case was it eating the entrances and breaking them as it sucked the mana out of my spell. Abe: m8. Couldn't have told us that? Had me worried there. Why'd you even bother getting ready to cut us off then? ZeMadDoctor: incase it let other smaller demons near. Look. Awfully nice of the demon to leave our inner shell alone. Is anyone else going help me close off that hole?

Or are you all going keep talking instead of multitasking. Innearth: once it reaches a certain point, I don't think you're allowed to call it a hole… but sure. Yeah. I'll start on the top side. Fated Eternal Design: … there's a top side? It goes in all directions? Innearth: … okay you see how I put gravity pushing materials all along one side? That's the top. Most of them are broke now… and sending fake gravity in all directions.

There's also a side that has gravity pulling materials for the bottom but those are even more broken. Tldr gravity pushing is the side I'm starting on. Fated Eternal Design: Got it. I'll refill the atmosphere when you guys close it up. Make a proper Air mana space. In the meantime… I guess I'll see about using mental mana to defend against demons? I have to admit. I'm no longer as confident after seeing that… but I'll try my best. Brutality Queen: Not to be that gal, but I have to ask.

Are we going to add Amy at some point? With how things are going I feel like we won't just to be safe, but I'd hate to have a shared floor without her. No offense but she's my closest friend amongst you guys. Amy: awww, it's okay! Don't worry about it. ZeMadDoctor: on one hand it makes sense to defend ourselves as much as possible before we try once more… on another I feel like the increased void density might be good for the process. And we should get it all out of the way right away.

My portal affinity is giving me some good thoughts towards doing it now. Abe: well as long as you don't raise any more flags I'm down. Innearth: Hey, can't get any worse than it has right? Abe: … I hate you sometimes. Innearth: <3 Abe: please tell me you don't have any other friends. You're insufferable. Brutality Queen: Ouch. ZeMadDoctor: Hey Innearth. Swap with me. I need to fix the web on the other side of your wall before you make it too thick. Innearth: No problem.

ZeMadDoctor: Hey Amy, Sending you a link please feel free to join us as soon as you are ready. … Amy: … Its nice to meet you in person – its nice to meet you all in person! Innearth: … I don't think our influences count Amy. Amy: It does too! Doc had been right. Adding Amy had barely shifted the void around slightly inside their dome. Essentially it was a painless addition to the already broken pile. Amy: Oh wow! I like what you guys have done to the place! Fated Eternal Design: This is all just temporary.

I don't think we are going to bring adventurers in until we can be sure its safe – but then a huge restructuring needs to be done. I refuse to let adventurers into this place without some serious remolding. It needs a theme for gaia's sake! Innearth: Hey queen, I left a pile of solid void chips where I'm blinking crystal mana. Feel free to reinforce our walls with void plants. Brutality Queen: done. Abe: I feel like I'm just sitting around. I'll start setting up kinetic blast factories – name pending.

Amy: What can I do? Brutality Queen: Help me grow plants. After I place them they just need life mana to grow, but if you can aspect into natural mana or growth instead of pure life it's better. More efficient. As a group, the dungeons worked away. Slowly the outer shell was reclosed and effort was spent to clean up the huge quantity of demons that had infiltrated the area.

They reached an equilibrium where a hundred demons were nearly always in the outer sphere or slipping into it before returning to figure out their next steps. Abe: feel kind of useless for the defenses so far. I'm going try experimenting to see if I can add anything because this is ridiculous. I know for a fact my explosion proof materials are next to useless against demons, but I can at least plate some inner areas. make sure magic blasts inside the sphere don't leak out of it.

Fated Eternal Design: I'm setting up a massive mental array to drive all demons away subtly. Key nodes have been set up initially – protect those pink cylinders every 100m around the edge of the sphere please – but the full strength is going need weeks for me to build up. Innearth: How are you and doc building magical stuff that's not physical? I've been curious but doc has those web things and you seem to think there's more to do than those physical cylinders you printed. Fated Eternal Design: Uh…

get a mental affinity and I'll show you. ZeMadDoctor: Kinetic and mental mana inherently lead to ethereal workings. For magic to have any effect on the real world it has to be bound to matter right? Well that's mostly true – Okay its fully true but there's a workaround. Basically you need to make a spell that is bound to any matter in the area and can swap between it by quickly swapping the element your mana is binding to partway through. So.

My webs are bound to air – I temper them with nitrogen and switch to noble gasses that take to the mana stronger and rip it out while its still partly formed. ZeMadDoctor: I do that quickly to weaken its binding – and then I can replace that "binding" by shifting its binding focus to the elements in your wall and control it after its been made. The benefit is I can build it beforehand and make some shapes that I couldn't do otherwise. The weakness is that its still loosly bound.

Someone with kinetic magic could rip my web out of your wall pretty easily. Not that demons have kinetic affinities so I think we are safe…. but I thought I'd tell you everything. Fated Eternal Design: … what he said but less clinical. You need an artist's brush. I'm surprised Doc managed it. From what I can tell dungeon cores who picked Earth shouldn't be able to do it. Innearth: … It sucks there are still so many demons in the outer shell.

If I stop for a single moment in pruning them they start to attack our inner shell and while the roach knight could probably stay on top of it… I want him in our inner sanctum protecting our gates and killing anything that gets through the hallway. Abe: Guy's come check this out. At first it was hard to figure out what Abe was talking about. Innearth looked about the whole "chamber" combing over a vast swath of empty space. Brutality Queen: Check what out? Abe: Bruh. This box.

A large swirl of fire mana highlighted an otherwise normal looking section of the shared area. Inside a single demon looked strangely more aggressive than normal. It ran about twisting slightly every time it hit one of the walls that contained it. Slowly as Innearth focused on the box he started to notice at least some of what was happening. A field of time mana covered the whole box speeding up the internal time by a sliver and embedding deep into the walls which were also filled and created with entropy mana.

The demon inside – besides acting rabid – kept running like he couldn't see the walls smashing off them and then acting surprised. It was kind of like a child running into a glass door and then immediately picking a new door to run into. ZeMadDoctor: You trapped it? How did you manage that? I can't see kinetic mana anywhere around it. Abe: idk man. I noticed the denser the void was in an area the faster time was passing. Like the dense patches are full of something like entropy?

When you are inside the dense patches you have more time than outside of them… now I'm repeating myself. Its really obvious if you have a time affinity! Basically I just tried speeding that sucker up on my terms and replaced the void sped up time with my own. It seemed to trap this demon inside of it so I figured I might as well share. Fated Eternal Design: There is more time inside the denser areas yes. I noticed because it felt like eternity to me. Well done Abe, I'm going to try slowing some areas down.

If its sped up I should normalize it with the surroundings no? ZeMadDoctor: But how is it trapping a demon? Let me run some tests. Innearth: Think that's how they've been slipping through our solid walls? Something to do with time? ZeMadDoctor: Time isn't a dimension. Its time. Innearth: Hey! That's no way for a scientist to talk. I'm trying to come up with a theory. ZeMadDoctor: … I'm sorry. You are correct. I'll wait to give my opinion until its been thoroughly dissected.

I guess I'm biased against time with my dual space affinity. I thought I thoroughly squashed any of those ticks. That's annoying. Fated Eternal Design: Eternity fields seem to provide a similar effect. Abe: how did you already set that up? Fated Eternal Design: Oh! I already had some places covered, the fluctuating time was annoying me. I just used a control mask to bring a demon into the field and trap it for testing, however. Seems to be working the same. ZeMadDoctor: Another data point! Thank you. Abe: SO.

Are we awesome or what? I'm going try speeding up the whole dome. Fated Eternal Design: You can make an entropy field this big? Abe: Yeah. I'm awesome. Its on the edge of what I can do but I can manage it just fine. Fated Eternal Design: … Alright then. I think I could manage half of it but don't feel like I can cover the full area in a single go. That's impressive. Innearth: … I feel strangely sidelined. What should I do?

Abe: Bro, how do you think I've felt this whole time you've been building while I've just been sitting here. Innearth: I'll see about making a second knight… again. Tell me if you need anything. ZeMadDoctor: Have to say the way the void is interacting with time is fascinating. Give me some time and I'll have this figured out I'm sure of it. I barely noticed all this shifting of time. It's strange. Innearth pulled back from the chat and focused on examining the area.

His mana and materials immediately were put to work making another knight, but the bulk of his attention was focused on the transmuted void-stone and solid-void materials that had been affected by the space whale. A qualitative change had gone over most of them – liquid had filled most of them so densely it looked like it had frozen. And, while testing its strength, Innearth found most of it could not be broken.

Literally could not be broken no matter how much force was applied – his roach knight charged full force into them without the material so much as budging. Of course that didn't mean it wasn't workable as a material. Innearth could absorb the material and rip the void out of it that way… but that felt wasteful when he had no way to replicate the process. … except partway through the process of deciding to leave all of it in place, he stopped and reconsidered.

First he tried shrinking some of the material finding it didn't budge and actually broke his shrunk space when he tried too hard. Not being put off by that fact he focused on picking areas deep in the middle of the zone – the outer wall of both the inner shell and outer shell were best left alone but the inner walls could be repurposed for more exciting plans. Innearth picked a thick stretch of wall and then carefully cut an oval "shell" out of it.

He scooped the inner strip out like a bowl – creating a second patch of materials he didn't want to waste – and then turned to his roach knight. I know you have incredibly strong armour, but your brother was eaten and this seems like an upgrade. Give me a bit to measure you okay? Placing the shell over top of a bemused roach, Innearth traced all of his spear holes and sliced off small pieces to make the fit closer to perfect.

He then moved to bring the shell out of the void – testing a small chunk of the material and immediately backpedalling when it lost its void infusion in the real world. I guess Steve will have to come to here… please protect the dwarf who comes through my gate okay my knight? Y. e. s. The knight intoned as if the very thought of not protecting Innearth's son was laughable. An hour later Steve spoke up while stepping back from the shell. I'm sorry I can't cut this material. You're going to have to leave it as is.

Steve said. What if I cut the runes for you? … part of the magic is being the one to carve the lines… I could see about tracing them and then being the one to finish them off… but I don't want to promise anything. Steve said after briefly thinking through the options. Okay! Innearth watched the dwarf draw chalk shapes about the inside of the shell.

He repeated several large and thick shapes across the whole inside – making sure each line was thick and drawing small notes beside everything about how wide or deep different sections were. The whole time the dwarf worked periodic demons would appear from the edge of the hallway and attempt to attack – being cut down again and again by the stoic knight. I think that should be enough, Please cut these out and make sure to keep all the dimensions exact. It's really hard to plan it out like this but it should work…

Steve spoke while standing awkwardly beside the plan. Mentally affirming Innearth began to dig groves through the material. He quickly melted off all the chalk noticing how the holes didn't seem to do anything on their own like Steve had mentioned. Turning to his portable workshop Steve began crushing several crystals into dusts and combining them with set ratios – some additions seemed to be rough handfuls and others were important enough he weighed them on a scale… very carefully getting the right amount.

Mixing them together and putting them aside Steve next went and fired up a small bowl on his desk. Runes lit up along the bowl's edges rapidly becoming bright in Innearth's mana sight before the dwarf tossed a bar of silver into it. Deep inside this chamber metal rapidly liquefied turning red hot. Adding the various dusts caused the metal to shift shades from molten red to a darker purplish-grey matching the void aesthetic of the whole environment.

The dwarf reached in and picked this molten ball out of the crucible and began squishing it into the carved runes bare-handed. Innearth could tell these runes were not quite three-dimensional because of the inherent properties of the void around them but they seemed to work fine anyways. Starting on one side and then working his way back and forth following specific channels before others, Steve worked – the line behind him cooling down to a sparkling aquamarine colour.

Finally the item was finished and the system decided to inform Innearth of the creation being prompted upon the dwarf's completion not his own loot method of analyzing items. A knights hope. [Armour Type Custom. Tier: Unknown] Description: Armor created through ritual crafting. Magically binds to its owners flesh as well as soul. Stops attacks. Increases existing speed slightly and resists unwanted momentum. Created in the void and will lose its form upon removal. Durability: N/A I think it works!

Thank you for helping I'm sure roachie will love it! No problem… The durability of this material is… fantastic. I wish I could use it in the trial it would fix all my current problems. Steve spoke while staring longingly at the scooped-out middle Innearth had left to the side. Hey well, if you want to make a trial in this area it will be available then! Trial 2. 0! … that might not happen actually. There's a chance a giant space whale will eat us all.

I'm optimistic the stuff my friends found out with time will help us however! … but yeah, on the space whale note you should probably leave. I don't want you to get hurt if it comes back and Abe's time magic doesn't protect us. Nodding his head, the dwarf passed back through a quickly opened portal and Innearth returned to puttering. The number of demons in the second shell had started dying down at some point and Innearth realized the zone was completely claimed…

well and truly claimed as their own, with no way for demons to enter. … Only time would tell if they were protected from the outside against demons as strong as dragons.