《Immortal Conqueror》65. Time and Space
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Chapter 29 - Time and Space
The ongoing Imperial Purge greatly narrowed the range of ways Aaron expected his enemies to react to his recent actions. Only idiots would pass the opportunity to use the purge to their advantage, and Aaron had enough proof that his enemies weren't idiots. Rather, it was quite the opposite. They were shrewd planners that certainly would take advantage of the garrison's attack.
He also had no doubt the garrison would come for him if he stayed in that kingdom. If the enemies in the shadows could make a Master Elementalist beast appear right where he would be during his travel through a forest, they would have no trouble making the incoming pawns do their bidding. Well, there was a chance the powers-that-be would stay on his side and prevent that, but he knew better than to hope for it.
Instead, he assumed his enemies would send a relatively weak probe attack soon. It would fulfill two roles. First, they would hope for him to get drunk on his victory and lower his guard. If the enemy was that weak, why should he worry? Second, it would test his power.
Should he show himself too powerful against the probe, he expected them to send an overwhelming force to deal with him. Such a force would either come together with the garrison or right after he dealt with it. Probably after, in the hopes that he would also drop his guard then. They might even send it anyway, despite his performance against the probe, just to make sure.
There were a few shapes that force could take. It would be difficult for him to survive against tens of thousands of enemies; he just didn't have enough energy. A small squad of specialized elites might also be the end of him if they landed a sneak attack. And a Master or Grandmaster could kill him with a flick of a finger unless he reached the Champion level himself.
He could plan against probes, against garrisons, against big numbers, and against specialized squads — and he would. However, if a Master came, he would be dead. Not that he would just let himself be killed. He would do his damn best to survive.
Ultimately, that meant he would stay in Illyria. Any Master could track him easily, and it was better to fight against a powerful foe in a place he knew than elsewhere while on the run. Who knows what other unpleasant surprises the road would have in store for him?
So, he entered his new tower while thinking about which formations he would set up on it to protect his clan, and which formations to set up elsewhere for his own showdown.
None of the floors had any internal divisions, and they were empty except for supporting pillars and stairways that went both up and down. His active perception told him the tower had three underground levels, for a total of nine stories.
The floor, ceiling, and walls were made of the same black stone as the outside. He had already analyzed the material, also using his active perception, and found it a terrible energy conductor. It made for a good defensive measure, as the ten-foot-thick stone could easily block Three Star skills, and even Alys, a Four Star Shaper, would have to sweat to go past it.
However, any half-assed Four Star Qi Manipulator could go through it in less than a minute. It was still just stone, and brute force could easily break it. Only its thickness made Qi Manipulators take even that long.
Since the stone was a poor conductor, he couldn't even inscribe any formations on it to improve its defenses. Well, he could, but it would be a waste of resources. His first order of business was buying tons of metal to serve as both an internal protective layer against physical attacks, and a proper base material on which he would inscribe his formations. Common steel should do the trick unless he could find something better.
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So, he left right after doing a full circuit through the tower, much to the girls' surprise.
"What, did you expect me to start expounding the greater mysteries of formation mastery right away?" Aaron asked, amused. "The first step before inscribing a formation is understanding the environment where the inscribing will take place. That's the reason you just saw me inspect, touch, and smell every corner of the tower. I can feel the entire tower at once with my Arcane skill, but no cultivator should trust just one of their senses when they have a choice. When dealing with formations that can blow up on your face, that's even more important. The second step is making sure you have the right materials. We are now on the way to doing that, which will help you realize that a proper formation master is as much a merchant as a cultivator."
He led them to the nearest blacksmith he could find and paid for information about the guy's metal suppliers. After following the supply line, he arrived at the headquarters of a smelter company.
It was an enormous brick building shaped like a box, located at what passed as the industrial district of Illyria, at its fifth layer. There were a few low-quality formations on the walls to prevent the building from being damaged by the heat inside.
When he entered the smelter, he found a surprised worker that wasn't expecting any visitors. The worker called his supervisor, the supervisor called the manager, and Aaron was led to a small room at the top of a stairway.
The room was made of cheap metal. It had five tables and a large window to oversee the factory. The manager that brought Aaron here was alone and immediately sat by his table, which was filled with production reports. Then he asked Aaron to wait for the sales manager who was doing business outside.
Aaron checked the factory from the window. Its internal structure reminded him of old factories on Earth, while the equipment felt modern — a mix of mechanic and magic constructs. The most eye-catching ones were a huge cauldron-like smelter and the magic robotic-like arms. The former heated the ores inside with no fire, while the latter, together with the conveyor belts, almost made the factory not need any human supervision.
Indeed, from what he could see, the common workers were there mostly to put the ore on the tray, dispose of the impurities that came out during the smelting, and collect the resulting metal bars after it was piled in crates. The actual supervisors were mostly concerned with preventing the common worker from stealing.
The sales manager arrived half an hour later, breathing haggardly. That was evidence that despite the production manager's blasé demeanor around Aaron, going as far as ignoring him while he waited, the man had been smart enough to check his level and send word to the sales manager.
The short round man in his mid-forties had short blond hair and brown eyes. He was a One Star Qi Cultivator, probably having cultivated the bare minimum only so the people he did business with wouldn't look at him as completely useless. Most cultivators saw Inepts as lesser beings.
"Sorry for the wait, mister..." said the man with a smile, offering his hand for Aaron to shake.
Lana replied for him, as a maid should. "You stand before Aaron Ironblood, Patriarch of the Ironblood clan, Herald of Light, Royal Duke of Lyr, Four Star Qi Manipulator, Two Star Arcanist, One Star Vitamancer." She left out his Learner class. It wasn't relevant enough to be mentioned.
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The man's smile froze on his face as his eyes were filled with fear. Aaron recognized that look, it was common enough on weak people who had experience dealing with the powerful. They knew one wrong word from them could mean the end of their company — and maybe their very lives.
Aaron smiled back while shaking the man's hand. "Don't worry about the wait, I came unannounced after all, and I can tell you did your best to arrive as quickly as possible. I just trust any materials I buy will arrive in time if we strike a deal."
A negotiation table was a battlefield of its own. Aaron wouldn't exploit the man too much, but he wasn't here to make any favors either. He wasn't dealing with essential products like food or basic health, and his weapons were only words. If the man lost the battle — and he would — he could only blame himself for entering the field of battle unprepared.
"It will! Of course, it will!" the man replied quickly. "Our company adheres to the strictest standards of quality..."
The battle was on.
"I'm still amazed that you bought their entire company — factory and stock all — for cheaper than you would've cost you to buy the metal you wanted," Alys said behind Aaron a little after they left.
He smiled. "The man almost cried when I told him how much metal I wanted. It wasn't hard to take the full story out of him after that."
According to the manager, a few months ago, a count had started making impossible demands of them. They were already late in production, and when Aaron revealed how much he wanted to buy, they thought they would also have to appease a royal duke. It would have made them even later to meet the count's needs, and the man was bound to get even more violent than the last time they had delayed a delivery.
Aaron took full advantage of their situation and bought the whole thing after making a quick assessment of their true value, including the political cost he would have to pay to tell the count to back off.
Luckily, the count was beneath the Red Duke in the kingdom's hierarchy, so Aaron could easily deal with that during his meeting with the duke. Unless the king was incompetent or wanted to piss Aaron off, he should already be taking care of the meeting, as Aaron had asked of him.
"The metal bars will start arriving in a few hours," said Aaron, "but we still need to buy the materials required for the formations proper. Come, let's visit the city markets."
What followed was a sudden inflation of prices and the shortage of many products related to formation making in the city.
Space and Time Energy were the strongest ones in that world, with the latter having a bit of an advantage. Aaron considered Space Energy superior for defense though. One method, specifically, made even Time Energy simply incapable of dealing with a spatial formation.
Ironically, such a method involved abusing the way space and time were intrinsically intertwined. Space couldn't be without time or vice versa, not unless you were an Immortal. Thus, by simply abusing the spacetime continuum, Aaron could make a relatively simple yet powerful trap against all energies.
He required Alys for that exploit. His Two Star Arcane Energy — the only energy he could use outside his body currently — was nowhere near enough to activate the formation he had in mind. So, he was teaching her some basic physics using a blackboard he had bought.
There were a couple of drawings of moving objects on the blackboard, together with an hourglass and a mathematical formula — first deducted by Einstein — that only he understood among the present. Alys and Lana, who were sitting on chairs, looked lost at the math, though they had followed him enough to get the gist of it. That would be sufficient.
"...and this theory of relativity explains why space can't be traversed without the passing of time. We tend to view time as some outside force, but what I just explained to you shows how wrong such a view is. The spacetime continuum is guaranteed by the Prime Laws of Space and Time themselves."
He cleared the board and drew a small circle on it. "We will abuse the spacetime continuum by simulating a metaphysical black hole. Four Star Space Energy is just enough to achieve it by folding space over itself multiple times in the right way, then compressing it. Think of it as folding a blanket. A small part of a blanket..." He drew a blanket and then demarcated a square on it. "...has a certain mass, but when you fold the blanket, the same area previously occupied by only that part will have greater mass."
He drew that on the board. Any physics teacher would get murderous on hearing an area had a mass, but he had to explain things in a way the girls could understand despite their lacking education. "Then, once you have enough mass, you compress it to the utmost limit, thus creating a black hole."
From Lana's now even more confused looks, she had no idea how space could be folded like a blanket, much less compressed. Alys had a much easier time here since she specialized in Space Energy.
"Of course, it would take much more power than any mortal possesses to create a proper black hole. Black holes are not jokes a random cultivator can just produce. That's the reason I said the formation shall simulate a metaphysical black hole. By metaphysical I mean the black hole will only affect the nine metaphysical energies of this world, not the physical world. And by simulating, I mean the formation shall not create an actual energy black hole. Instead, it shall fold space so many times that the metaphysical gravitational field around it will be very similar to an event horizon. Well, as close as possible by using Four Star Space Energy. That's what we are aiming for."
He drew a larger circle around the small one, which represented a black hole, that he had drawn a while ago. "An event horizon is, roughly speaking, the optimum sphere of influence around a black hole from which not even light can't escape." He drew curved arrows going from the larger circle into the smaller one. "All we see is light, so we can't see anything inside an event horizon. Things get so distorted in it that anything can only move toward the black hole, never backward from it. That means even time itself is trapped. Its gravitational pull is that powerful.
"You remember how space and time are connected, right? Nothing can move through space without the passing of time. If time itself is trapped, moving in only one direction, not even information can move back." He drew a hand inside the large circle, a human head outside, and an arrow going from the former to the latter. "Think of your bodies. When you touch something, an electrical impulse has to move through our nerves to tell our brain that you touched it. If your hand were inside an event horizon but your head weren't, you would be unable to feel your hand touching anything. The electrical impulses cannot move out of the event horizon." He crossed the arrow going from hand to head. "Neither can your hand, for that matter. Even if you survived, your hand would be lost for good.
"Information works differently when dealing with metaphysical energies." He drew a line elsewhere on the board and connected to a new head. Then he made a dot on the other end of the line. "When you use energy to feel something, the information reaches you almost instantly. It's more of a quantum jump straight into the mind rather than gradual, continuous travel. However, spacetime is still mostly respected. I said almost instantaneous, didn't I? The information has to leave one place and then appear in your mind. Nothing can leave the event horizon though, which makes it impossible for anyone to analyze our formation in search of its weaknesses.
"So, the result of our formation will be that all metaphysical attacks from Champion level downwards that enter the event horizon will be pulled into our fake black hole. Once there, its enormous gravitational pull will distort and destroy the attack. Unfortunately, it's only a simulated black hole, so enough attacks can overwhelm it. I estimate that a Champion would take about half an hour of continuous attacks to break the formation. But well, if we let them free to attack our formation for that long, they damn well deserve to kill our incompetent sorry asses."
He looked at them. "Do you get everything up to this point?"
Alys nodded cautiously. Lana just looked at Aaron and asked, "A folded blanket will create an event hole that will trap quantum hands?"
He laughed. "Good enough," he said, cleared the board, and redrew the circles representing a black hole and its event horizon. "The event horizon comes with a big issue for our purposes. We want to inscribe defensive formations on the metal-coated walls of the tower. However, the metal itself isn't very strong. Qi Manipulators will have an easy time destroying it. To avoid that, we would need to have our formation also strengthen the metal. That's impossible though. Who can tell me why?"
Unsurprisingly, it was Alys who answered, "To strengthen the metal, energy has to be kept running on it. But the simulated black hole will keep pulling the energy. It might even destroy the black hole."
"Exactly." He redrew the curved arrows inside the event horizon. "The best way to bypass that would be by forcing a spacetime superposition on the formation, but only Immortals can achieve that. The second best way is by stretching quantum physics to absolutely absurd levels."
He drew a box with a cat inside. "There's something called the Copenhagen interpretation in my home planet. Roughly, it states that a quantum particle exists in all its possible states until it's observed. A man called Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment to disprove it. If a cat inside a box has his life tied to a quantum particle inside him, will the cat be both dead and alive until someone opens the box to check? That's absurd. And yet, the Copenhagen interpretation touches some Concepts of the Laws of Time and Space that we can abuse."
Aaron drew a box around the event horizon. "Didn't I just tell you how an event horizon is unobservable? This means we can consider it a closed quantum space inside which the black hole and its pull both exist and don't. With some creative formation inscribing, we can use that Concept in a way that a material strengthening function would exist if the black hole weren't there and vice versa. Effectively, the two functions, simulated metaphysical black hole and material strengthening, will both exist and don't exist at the same time."
He erased everything and started drawing formation symbols. "We shall achieve that by drawing a formation using the runes..." He kept talking.
Aaron wasn't teaching them formation arts, or this specific formation, just for their benefit. Kindling a formation, that is, activating it for the first time, required some understanding of how the formation worked. It wasn't as simple as drawing symbols and supplying energy, else most worlds would have started mass producing magical objects long ago.
After it had been kindled, yes, anyone could just fuel the formation with the right energy and it would work. Even then though, the formation would work better if there was a cultivator linked to it, helping the energy inside it behave optimally. Also because of that, some high-level formations could be activated by people with less energy than normal, on the condition that they understood the formation well enough. That's the reason Alys had been called to activate the summoning circle that had brought him to this world.
So, not only would Alys be needed to kindle the formation, but the tower would also become her seat of power, so to say. Anytime she was inside, she would be linked to the formations. Depending on how much she understood of the formations, that might be just enough for the tower to be impervious against even Champions. Masters would still crush everything easily though.
Aaron continued with the class long into the night. He answered questions and repeated everything to make sure she absorbed as much as possible. Even Lana started getting more into it eventually. They only stopped briefly to eat and for Aaron to receive the first shipment of metal bars from his new smelting company.
It was about midnight when he felt hundreds of people invading his tower. One of them was at the Four Star level, about twenty were at the Three Star level, and all others were at the Two Star level. All of them were Devouts of Darkness.
He smiled. The probe had arrived. This would be fun.
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