Time Twister

They wanted to cry but it seemed that no tears would come out. The world was truly, truly playing favorites.

Miss Amelia headed towards the podium in front of the cla.s.s and took a few deep breaths before resuming her seemingly trademark smile. She knew her own talents, and she easily calmed down and resumed her early demeanor.

"Ok, what Xander mentioned and demonstrated is currently too advanced for the scope of this cla.s.s, which can cause some confusion and misdirection if you don't have your basics covered. If you want to learn more about Elemental Conversion, and the theory Therault has suggested, read his paper and ask Xander for questions or clarifications." Amelia spoke, her voice back to normal cadence, her heartbeat normal.

A few students nodded in response and began to eye Xander in a new light. Xander in the other hand, resumed playing in his watch. Xander didn't bother explaining how through his experimentations, element particles can also give birth to life, which would probably skew what Amelia would be discussing in cla.s.s today.

Nodding briefly, Amelia continued the lesson.

"So let us go back to the question I posed: What is an element? A basic understanding of an element is that it is a particle that exists in this world, but governs different functions to maintain the stability of the world, of the universe. For example, the earth and air elements, are able to naturally produce the same minerals and elements seen in the periodic table of elements in chemistry. If, one day, the whole universe was devoid of these elements, the elements in the periodic table of elements can now be considered a finite resource. The theory of entropic decay would then be held true. Why is this so?"

"Entropy dictates everything; it the measure of a system's thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work. Because work is obtained from ordered molecular motion, the amount of entropy is also a measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system. Imagine our universe as an ordered system, and the elements basically the cogs, the wiring, and driving force of this ordered system. The moment one or two elements disappear, this system goes into two modes: First, it attempts to repair/replace the element lost. Second, if the first one fails, the whole system slowly breaks down."

"Of course, this breakdown isn't instantenous, and it may take more than billions or even trillions of years to happen. Even if all elemental particles were to disappear, there's still a lot of time to either, well, look for a way to prove the multiverse theory and escape this world, or breakthrough to the realm of G.o.dhood and restablish the elemental ordered system. According to history and religious records, there were beings from our planet who reached G.o.dhood cla.s.s around 800,000 years ago. At that time, the Heavenly Tree Sprite was already a towering giant in the planet, protecting it from any invaders. There are rumors that the Heavenly Tree sprite once journeyed with one of the beings that reached G.o.dhood."

As Xander pa.s.sively listened to what Miss Amelia said while playing with his watch, he couldn't help but frown. It seems they haven't discovered the elements of s.p.a.ce and time? Or is it possible that they did, but they have no way of harnessing it? Xander didn't bother completely explaining the idea of tiered elements; if he had to it would take a week of continuously explain each and every aspect of it.

A basic summary would be:

It basically begins with the Void element. This is the origin, and at the same time, it is the end of all elements. It is characterized as pure emptiness and silence, so this element is the embodiment of nothingness.

From the void, both Chaos and Order (also known as Creation) elements sprouted.

Chaos element exists in a higher spectrum than the elemental particles; it cannot be interacted at all, but is the one in charge of disorder. it

Creation or Order element, is different, as it can be interacted with, albeit in a lower spectrum in the form of the elemental particles. It affects all the elements under it, forcing them to organize, to stabilize, to be ordered, to have a process.

From those two elements, s.p.a.ce-Time, Yin-Yang, Life-Death elements appeared. By their pairing, it is impossible for one to have no control of the other. Each is an extreme of the other, after all.

Void elements create the area where the elements can exist.

Chaos elements bring forth the randomness and change in the ordered system.

Order elements bring forth the idea of an ordered system.

s.p.a.ce and Time elements create the framework of the ordered system, allowing progression from nihility to infinity.

This goes for Yin and Yang elements as well, as they basically make up the positive and negative forces in the ordered system.

Life and Death elements create the recycling force of the ordered system.

One begets two, two begets three, three begets all.

This is the hierarchical structure the element system follows.

Under Yin-Yang, we have the 5-elements system, under them would be the secondary elements and below those would be the tertiary elements.

Under Life-death, we have the Fate system, which includes reincarnation, h.e.l.l, heaven, purgatory, luck.

Under s.p.a.ce-Time, the systems of the other two fall under its control.

All in all, these elements were supposedly categorized as the "Origin Elements", with Void element above Creation and Chaos, and the two above the 3 pairs of elements.

Using Therault's research, and adding the bits of information relating to the hierarchy and introduction of element systems to that research, Xander managed to cause the magic world of Eteria to almost have a breakdown; the paper Therault and Xander co-auth.o.r.ed seemed to prove observations and inferences that had plagued magicians and researchers since thousands of years ago!

It was like a blind man suddenly gaining vision; the thing that seemed far and blurry now seemed crystal clear.

What Xander was annoyed with was that 3 years since the paper was released, although the elemental systems were formed, the elements within it is still not completely researched or identified.

According to his personal knowledge, in this universe, there is about 1080 types of elements, including those categorized as Origin elements. According to the databases of governments and private research inst.i.tutions in the world, they had only discovered roughly 446 elements all in all, starting from the historical records they had kept from at least 10,000 years ago up until now. It didn't even manage to reach half of the elements existing. However, they managed to get 2 pairs of the Origin Elements series, Which was Life-Death and Yin-Yang elements. However, their cla.s.sification of these was actually at the same level as the 5-elements system!

They couldn't visualize the idea that the 5-elements series actually came from the Yin-Yang elements; at the same time, Life-Death system was completely unexplored; the Fate system relating reincarnation, h.e.l.l, heaven, purgatory, and fortune weren't widely researched. Maybe it's due to the rarity of magicians capable of communicating with these elements?

People who had affinity to the Fate System, were instead considered to be talented magicians that had an affinity to precognition, rather than cla.s.sified as Fate Magicians. Some of Eteria's greatest magicians were actually using the Fortune element series: Some were inherently lucky throughout their lives, while some actually caused others misfortune through their words. They were actually called wordsmith magicians, because it seemed that whatever they say came true! However, the truth was they were using an element under the Fortune series: Causality element.

A pity, though, that these people never managed to surpa.s.s to the Mythic cla.s.s. The main reason is that the primary element they were supposed to have an affinity with was never trained at all, but was supplemented by other elements! If only at their time there was a complete structure for the elements.

As he was ruminating about this issue, Amelia continued her discussion.

"Since we now have a general understanding of what an element is, a representation of a rule, or law, that exist in this universe. What we magicians do is harness this rule. We follow their preexisting rules and regulations. This is true up until the Master cla.s.s. At Mundane cla.s.s, you make your body adapt to the rules. At Elite, what you do is imbue the known conformations of these rules, summoning their power, in your magic seeds. At the Master cla.s.s, what you focus is understanding the rules, and increase your understanding of the rules through the creation of unique conformations of these rules."

"The moment you step into the Legendary cla.s.s, your goal this time is not to harness the rule the element represents. I can't completely explain it, because only when you reach that step would you understand what I am talking about. You basically 'grab' the representation of the element and slowly make it your own 'rule'. For example, I am a Legendary-6 magician, meaning I have at least grabbed 60% of my primary elements' representation of a rule, and made them my own. The 60% can be divided among your primary elements; meaning, if you have 2, it could be any percentage for each as long as it adds up to 60%."

Someone noticed something was problematic and raised a question; it was James.

"What if you reach 60% for each of your primary elements? or 100%? Doesn't that mean you would be Legend-20? or will that elevate you immediately to Mythic cla.s.s?"

Miss Amelia shook her head and replied, "No. The requirement to reach Mythic stage is quite harder. It's possible that you could have spent most of your time in Legendary-9 and have 100% representation of each of your primary element, but still not advance. The good thing about this, however, is hypothetically, you would be many times stronger than someone who just reached a c.u.mulative value of 100% of his primary elements. I am saying it as hypothetical, because no one, amongst the records of our race and other races, was there someone who reached Mythic stage with at least one primary element reaching 100%. The highest the records showed was 93%, and that was an Elf-sprite hybrid 13,000 years ago, having 2 of his 4 primary elements at 91%. The problem is, historic records were quite vague in describing that hybrid's power; at the same time, the level of technology we have now didn't exist back then. For anything older than 50,000 years, we would have to rely on oral history as well as ancient ruins being discovered to learn if there were cases in which 100% of the element's representation was completely grabbed and understood to its maxim."

Xander wondered for a bit, and asked,

"Then how would we know if a person has reached the 100% representation of an element?"

Amelia looked at Xander and replied, "That's a good question; I don't have a concrete answer to that. Some say there would be phenomena when one casts their magic, but some say it goes back to the origin, having no fluctuations whatsoever, being one with the world. I personally lean on the latter explaination; I mean, think about it: If you were to completely grab the representation of an element, that figuratively makes you part of the ordered system, the universe. If so, why would you create waves in the system you are in when you represent a 'rule' in the system?"

Xander's eyes twinkled and nodded in response before sitting down again. No wonder the system told me that I wasn't strong enough to fight the will of the world.

The will of the world was the ordered system!

And at the moment, I'm using the elements of the ordered system; no matter how much ruckus I cause, even rip the river of time, the universe will fight back by rebounding the powers to me and begin repairing; and if I don't have at least the basic authority in the system, I would easily be destroyed, Xander thought vigorously to himself.