Time Twister

"Lastly, the supplies themselves. Although most planets are quite self-sufficient, and the majority of the population in the empire have reached Mythic cla.s.s or higher already, enabling them to forgo the basic functions of eating, drinking, and even excretion, there is still a vulnerable 40% of the population who are below the Mythic Cla.s.s. Some planets are not natural exoplanets but rather terraformed for usage, but this had caused the food supplies to be imported from other planets. The planning of the division and transport of supplies can be done through algorithms, but we need to input what do we prioritize: The planet's general economy, or the number of vulnerable populations on the planet when we send in resources?" Lady Ca.s.sandra continued on, her voice a bit weary but still contained a hint of her iron will.

The other G.o.d cultivators were in thought. Although 5 of the G.o.d cultivators present are the de facto leaders of the transportation market, there were only 2 G.o.d cla.s.s cultivators who are in the security market, making them have a duopoly in pricing. Concerning the exoplanets under the Empire's rule, the G.o.d cultivators technically own a certain amount of planets to be considered part of the council, making sure that they are representing a group of people. Each of these G.o.d cultivators has established complex trade systems with other planets belonging to other G.o.d cultivators.

For a moment, the council was silent, before voices sounded out.

"Agreed."

"Agreed."

"Agreed."

...

Lady Ca.s.sandra, upon hearing the decision of the council, nodded her head in silent relief. They have tided over the initial chaos. Hopefully, the economic brunt to the empire would not be so severe in the coming days, weeks, or months.

After all, this was the universe. There were so, so many other groups of beings in play.

__________________________________

The Exoplanet 15 lightyears away from Eteria, named "Eon" by Xander.

Xander was carefully exploring the surrounding forests, jungles, and gra.s.slands that seemed to coexist perfectly with one another. The planet was already two-thirds covered with life, with the remaining still being barren. However, the atmosphere had fully stabilized, as well as the circulation of physical matter in the area produced by the elements.

He was exploring as he was waiting for the System to completely categorize the information that it had managed to copy from the database of the empire, sorting it from Spell information, people's information, G.o.dhood, political matters, etc. It has been doing the categorizing process for the past hour, and since Xander didn't have anything to do at that time, he headed down the planet and began to explore the budding exoplanet.

He basically saw different species of animals and plants all over the planet. There weren't any sentient species so far, so there wasn't much to do. There were a lot of edible fruits though growing from trees in forests and jungles but didn't harvest them all because he might destroy the ecosystem.

Xander found an empty piece of land in the planet, where no life could be observed, and created a s.p.a.ce barrier and created a time acceleration field of 1 second: 10 years. He used that time to observe and understand the red fragments he had harvested; there were a total of 108 large pieces and 1080 small pieces, all of them having varying sizes to one another.

He began to observe, prod and a.n.a.lyze the pieces one by one, from the smallest piece to the largest one.

Time pa.s.sed. Years, decades, centuries, millennia, teraseconds pa.s.s by. Within that period, Xander was continuously comprehending the aspects of elemental creation under Order and Chaos elements, deepening his understanding of the paired origin elements.

Order. The establishment of the rules, the appearance of everything and anything. The invisible, guiding force that directs random, chaotically-driven movements into an ordered formation, creating the framework of the ordered system. Everything is rigid, everything is set in its place.

Chaos. The establishment of randomness, the birth of creativity and evolution; life becomes an interesting play in the eyes of the Spectator, the invisible, chaotic force empowering the movements of anything and everything into existence. The rules may have been established, but the rules now come in different configurations and comprehensions, reaching their own extremes, as well as the possibility of the rules being destroyed and devoured by other rules.

One gives birth to the other, supplementing and contradicting one another at their extremes, creating a creative power that can defy the Void element, giving birth to the 3 sets of paired origin elements, producing everything out of anything.

Yin-Yang. The foundation of the Physical dimension. Light came from Darkness, and the combination of the 2 brought out the 5 elements of Water, Fire, Air, Earth/Metal, and Wood. From these elements, more and more elements were born, from the interaction of the elements under Life-Death, and s.p.a.ce-time elements themselves.

Life-Death. The foundation of the Metaphysical dimensions. The manifestation of order and chaos elements guides the physical and all other dimensions. From life came death, and from the cycle of the two, the overflow of data created the Fate series of elements, ranging from Karma, Fortune, Reincarnation, Purgatory, Heaven, and h.e.l.l element series that were a combination of the products of Yin-Yang and s.p.a.ce-time elements as well.

s.p.a.ce-Time. The foundation of all dimensions, the framework that every dimension, s.p.a.ce, and reality use to encapsulate the ordered system. s.p.a.ce gave rise to Time within the void, allowing the progression from nihility to infinity. The combination of the two elements allowed the formation of realities in the ordered system, which is basically a possible calculation that has been derived by the ordered system but never used, separate from one another beyond the concept of dimensions, but existing in the same ordered system.

The ordered system is basically a computing machine, that is both logical and illogical at the same time. It is immaterial and cannot be contained in a physical or immaterial presence. s.p.a.ce-time allows it to have its products encapsulated and manifested into forms. The ordered system is capable of calculating the possible "scenarios" within the encapsulated ordered system, storing them in their own virtual sandbox. Only someone who can control both s.p.a.ce-time elements can actually leave their virtual sandbox, and get (copy), delete, or overwrite data from another virtual sandbox. Only those that have broken through G.o.d cla.s.s could actually have the same ability as someone who can control and manipulate s.p.a.ce-time elements. However, they can never destroy or absorb the ordered system, no matter what stage they reach, because they have integrated a part of power into the system, in exchange for being able to create their own universes upon reaching G.o.d cla.s.s.

Meaning, if someone attempted to absorb the universe they came

Generally, the best time to absorb a universe is when it is a nascent one. The older the universe, the harder it would be to completely absorb or integrate the universe into one's own universe.

This is because every person's universe is unique upon reaching the G.o.d cla.s.s, because the unity of their primary elements would produce a different configuration and not necessarily the same configuration as someone else. If one absorbs a mature universe, that being must ensure that the universe he/she/it has is actually strong enough to destabilize, devour, and replace the ordered system's universe.

He was there for a total of 5 hours or 180,000 years. He opened his eyes, and time returned to normal, with the elemental concentration in the area rapidly spreading all over the barren land, and even reaching the other end of the planet where life was already present. Life continued to flourish and advance; time began to work on the animals and plants, creating the budding formation of sprites, magic beasts, and even sentient beings from non-biological and biological matter.

The moment his eyes opened, a magical and elemental wave appeared from his current position, echoing throughout the planet, causing the life that was just developing to be disrupted, being distorted before crumbling on itself. Everything rapidly experienced the flow of time and fate, s.p.a.ce distorting, creating pockets of s.p.a.ce all over the planet. The planet was collapsing on its own, the greenery dying and turning brown, the seas, rivers, and lakes started to dry up, the atmosphere disappears.

The moment he closed his eyes, the magic and elemental wave he released all over the planet contracted towards his location, everything was back to normal as if nothing had just happened. Life was still the same. There were no sprites, no magic beasts, or sentient beings. Xander was shocked to the core. He didn't know if what he was experiencing was a reality or just a possibility.

He continued to test it by opening and closing his eyes. He also found out by just opening and closing his mouth, his clenched fist, he could also elicit the same phenomenon. After a few hours, he stopped, because he felt that the s.p.a.ce-time around the planet was weakening due to his repeated attacks.

He decided to name it [In a Moment] and wasn't sure how to cla.s.sify this spell, since it encapsulates the power of creation and destruction, and at the same time, everything and nothing.

At this point, he heard a chiming sound from his mind; the System had finished cataloging a large amount of data that it had copied and stolen from the virtual reality world.

It also notified him that the system had upgraded.

When Xander began to read the information about it, he was surprised. It seems the universe is truly big; he never thought of discovering a dimension that was actually made up of data!

Yep, that's basically the virtual reality Xander had entered. Accordingly, this dimension was discovered by the empire 15,000,000 years ago and allowed the empire to enter the Universal stage, not limited by other galaxies, cl.u.s.ters, and the like. They rapidly expanded over 15,000,000 years. Although their domain now consisted of 1/1.26e+30 of the universe, they are considered a small, universal empire compared to other behemoths. Although there were several cases wherein the council members wanted to change the name of the empire to Federation Empire from the Galactic Empire, the name was always vetoed by the ruling speaker.

The largest public virtual reality program in the empire, [Second Life], is one of the many sandboxes in the data dimension. The mainframe A.I. is in charge of the sector, or server, in the dimension that the empire currently owns. It seems when the system hacked into the mainframe server, the A.I. managed to detect it due to the System going on a rampage rather than the insidious type of infiltration, and it attempted to stop the System from doing its task, and failed to do so, and was forced by the system to shut down and restart. In that time frame, all the data stored in the server were copied, and all the bits of data in the inventory of the avatars in the private and public programs were harvested permanently by the System, allowing it to upgrade, which was why it took a long time to sort and categorize the data.

He browsed through all the available spells from Master to G.o.d cla.s.s, and finally found a spell that was so complex that it could not be inscribed into a regular magic seed, causing it to be delegated under the forbidden spells not to be used as a foundational spell.

It was the G.o.d spell [Ender's End].

[Ender's End]: Everything returns to dust, with the collapse of time and s.p.a.ce, everything soon follows. The area it is cast upon falls into ruin, the area creating a momentary hole in the universe, before returning back to normal. The caster loses 1 point in vitality for every time it was cast, whether successful or not.

Xander quickly began the inscription process into his very dense, very large magic seed. After 2 hours, all the runic writings and formations were inscribed perfectly, causing his seed to emit the fluctuations of s.p.a.ce-time elements, with a hint of chaos elements.

With his final pseudo-spell established, he began to produce his last 3 Master level spells, allowing him to reach the peak of Master cla.s.s.

Time was sped up, this time it was 1 second: 300 years. He finished up after 2 hours, or 2.16 million years inside the time accelerated field. However, it wasn't without benefit.

He had created 3 advanced spells based on his pseudo-spells: [Shattered World], [Ragnarok], and [Garden of Eden]. The last spell, [Shattered World], was created to embody the disappearance of the ordered system's control over a certain area of the universe.

[Ragnarok]: Causes every single element, matter, and being within the area of the target to slowly breakdown in 10 seconds due to the overwhelming Destruction energy. Every form of order, of control, of power in the area is slowly eroded before resetting to zero. All exterior and interior characteristics began to mutate, disrupt, and go out of control. After 10 seconds, all the broken-down material combines and crystallizes into a Seed of Life. The spell only works for anyone 2 cla.s.ses above the caster's rank. A Seed of Life can be used to heal any injury, immaterial or material, on one's body and their life essence doll. It can also be planted, allowing the energy around the area it has to be always bountiful with the energy of creation.

[Garden of Eden]: Creation energy surges in a specific area, creating an influx of biological matter and elemental energy and particles to surge, rapidly forming a picturesque 'garden' where all spells that fall into the area would be absorbed and used by the garden to grow in size. The spell lasts until every single, created organism from the Garden has been destroyed. The organisms of the garden cannot leave the area.

[Shattered World]: This spell targets a certain area where all the elemental rules of the ordered system, all their representations, all their aspects, disconnect and disappear, causing the area to be branded as a foreign material to be digested or ejected out of the ordered system. The spell lasts until the area has been devoured or it has been replaced by the ordered system. Anyone in the target area is also removed; this spell only works for those below DemiG.o.d cla.s.s. If the caster is DemiG.o.d cla.s.s or above, this spell would be able to remove fellow DemiG.o.d and above cla.s.s cultivators, as long as the caster is in the same cla.s.s bracket as the target.

He had also created 2 legendary spells: [Apocalypse Down] and [Return of the Fallen]; the former formed from his comprehension of the Destruction Rule under Chaos element combined with the Yin-Yang rule, and the latter from the combined rule of Disorder and Death rule.

[Apocalypse Down]: Both Light and Darkness reverse, and the two elements destroy one another, causing a cataclysmic force to shatter all the elements produced by Light and Darkness. The area rapidly collapses on itself, forming an edible Chaos seed. It can be used to comprehend the Chaos element. If planted, it causes corruption in the area it was planted on, continuously spreading out as time pa.s.sed by.

[Return of the Fallen]: Life and Death's rules are broken for a moment; in the area it was cast on, life and death and their derivatives cannot exist, and only beings that don't fall in their rules may exist. Anyone that falls under their rule will be continuously transformed by the area to become such a being. This spell lasts for 24 hours, but its effects on beings are permanent.

He also created 3 Mythic spells: [Samsara Revolution], [Diyu's Overturn], and [Drain of Fortune], all stemming from his understanding of the Life-Death elements, specifically, the Fate series.

[Samsara Revolution]: Allows the target to experience 1080 revolutions of reincarnation, death, resurrection within a span of 10 seconds. If the target does not become lost in their experience, they will automatically gain 3 ranks, no matter what their cla.s.s is. If the target gets lost in their experience, they will merge into the River of Fate, and fade away. This spell can be used in an area to allow non-sentient beings to gain sentience; no cultivation level will be gained, however.

[Diyu's Overturn]: Allows the caster to resurrect a being, complete with their personality, knowledge, power, and original body, with the caster having complete control of the resurrected being. The caster may have the option to relinquish their control.

[Drain of Fortune]: Allows the caster to transfer the fortune of one thing/being to another, may it be the caster or someone/something else. The lost fortune will recover after 108 days. Every time the spell is cast on the same target, the recovery time increases, from days, to weeks, to months, to years, to decades, to centuries, to millenniums, etc.

Upon exiting the time acceleration s.p.a.ce, he calmed down and sat into meditative contemplation, preparing his body to transform and push to the next cultivation cla.s.s: Master.

Xander began surging both elemental and magic energy in his body, as well as the elemental particles and energy around him. He was rapidly coalescing the pseudo-spells, into a circular ring, hovering over a doll-like figure in his mind. This was his life essence.

To breakthrough, he needed to bring out the runic circles of the Advanced rank spells he had made, and select which spell he would want to use as a foundation. That was an easy task since he decided to select [Shattered World] as his foundation spell. The only reason is it was derived using all the 9 pseudo-spells and his own comprehension of the origin elements, with s.p.a.ce-time playing the largest role in that spell, and his most powerful Advanced rank spell.

As soon as he selected the [Shattered World] Spell, a small dot of light appeared in his mind, coming closer to his life essence doll, hovering above it, continuously getting vital essence from it, powering and strengthening itself, while the spell continued to bless and refine his very body, his biological and extrinsic characteristics, changing. Even though the small dot of light was absorbing the vital essence from the doll, it was also refining it, making it purer and stronger. The small dot of light slowly became brighter and brighter, before returning to normal after a few seconds. The pseudo-spells were still circling the life essence doll, but it was moving perpendicular to the circling movement of the master cla.s.s.

He did it. He's a Master-1 Magician. Xander exhaled a relief, before returning his focus once more.

Now, he just needed to integrate the remaining spells.

Xander continued to summon the Advanced-rank spells he had created, starting with [s.p.a.ce Crush], then [Temporal Replication], [Heavenly Divination], followed by [Elemental Dominance], [Magic Rejection], [Ethereal Sunrise], [Frenzied Sunset] respectively, before the last two spells [Garden of Eden] and [Ragnarok].

Immediately, the 9 dots of light merged into the inner circle where the first dot of light, [Shattered World] was moving. Upon their integration, he experienced a moment of weakness once again as his dots of light continued to siphon off his life essence doll, making themselves brighter and stronger, refining his body once more, with 9 times the pain and the effect. After the moment of weakness, his life essence and body recovered, thanks to the [Ordered Life Regeneration] and [Chaotic Life Evolution] skills he had. However, after a few seconds, his body and life essence weakened again, before healing to full health once again.

The process continued to repeat for a total of 108 times, for around 30 minutes. Xander opened his mouth and breath escaped, his eyes then opened, this time, one eye was black, while the other was pure silver.

If one would look into his eyes right now, the mysteries of the universe would easily be unraveled and revealed to the watcher, but it depended on their mental attribute if they could handle it. A pity, Xander can't just use this mode and stare at himself in the mirror. The mirror, instead, just disintegrates into information in his eyes.

Xander checked his interface once more, checking his attributes and skills. It surprised him to see that some parts were already filled up with spells he didn't even make, but could casually control.