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Mirage();

Setting out for Elmguard, Rian looked over the materials needed to craft a hand-wrap weapon for his class. In the meantime, he figured he’d at least make some headway on the trek to the Temporal Rift location.

With his level in the thirties, the Overworld creatures had changed again, evolving from their forms on the previous layers.

Now in the third layer of the Overworld, an elder version of a meina attempted to block his path. Though he managed to outrun it, he could tell they were getting better at reading his movement. As he fled, it cried out like his mere existence had pissed it off. It was an unnerving sound that resembled human speech, as if the creature were trying to speak to him.

He soon after found a nullshard fragment in the forest. Switching into and out of half-sync for the required time, he sat in the grass and watched the last remaining sunlight vanish among the trees. Ogrot had logged off already, and most of the members of Moonlight were offline.

Corvis provided him with the materials he’d gathered over the day. Even the gold he’d amassed was enough to form an entire tesseract. As Rian took the items and tossed them into his inventory, he said, “Well, Corv, I guess it’s just you and me now.”

“So it would seem. In my experience, off-worlders tend to be most unreliable.” He was already setting up a fire pit again for the two of them. He almost sounded regretful when he said, “It was going to happen eventually.”

Rian looked at the time. He felt a bit guilty for taking an extended break like this, but he needed time to think now that his mind was clear. He’d been about to jump into crafting, but there was one problem holding him back—something he needed reassurance on before he committed to expending the Godly Fragment he held.

He was rightfully anxious about the timing involved in what lay ahead. If he couldn’t outpace Ogrot in the rifts, then there was no point to any of this. How much time he had to prepare was an essential resource that he was spending by the second. He could progress twice as fast as any other player, given that he could play 24/7, whereas everyone else would have to sleep eventually. But weighted against that was his inexperience in the Rift beyond World 1. He couldn't progress as quickly as someone more experienced with it.

“Have you decided how to proceed?” Corvis said, sitting across from him as the fire pit burned. The flames nearly masked his figure.

“Uh, not quite.” Rian sighed. “I’m a bit worried that Ogrot’s going to get to Yindra faster than I can do anything. It seems like I just don’t have enough time.”

“It is not as simple as you’d think. I believe I overheard your partner discussing this with you, but time passes differently in the Rifts. You will have more time on the inside than out.”

“Partner?” Oh, Kat. “Well. I can’t even imagine how that would work.” He scratched his chin. “So what exactly are we talking about here when you say ‘time passes differently?’ Perception of time or the actual passing of time?”

Raising an eyebrow, Corvis said, “Is there truly a difference?”

“Yes,” Rian said. “I’d have to assume that it’s a perceptual difference. And if the game can make you think there’s more time passing, then wouldn’t it have to speed something up in exchange?”

Corvis’s expression turned slightly grim. “I suppose you could think of it this way: in this world, time is dilated the further one goes into the Temporal Rifts. But with off-worlders having their existence stemming from elsewhere, something must be compensated to synchronize the two—the minds of off-worlders and their environment. So in exchange for more time, the mind itself is accelerated. To a degree.”

“Accelerated? But that’s…” Aside from sounding completely insane, it implied the devs had found a loophole to altering the mind. Rian glanced at the sky. “Is there any official information on this?”

[!] Temporal Effects: Neural Acceleration

While in the Temporal Rifts, players’ senses will become altered, allowing for a perceived decrease in the passage of time relative to the Overworld. From a perspective outside of the Rift, time will pass quickly for those inside it. For those inside the Rift, time will pass slowly for those on the outside.

This effect is accomplished via the MIRROR-XF4 headset creating an accelerated neuro-transmission feedback loop. The amount of temporal dilation is proportional to the level of progress made toward the later stages of any Temporal Rift dungeon, with almost no effect in the early stages. To mitigate the potential for any lasting effects, there is an entry limit that applies to all Rifts; World 1 can only be entered once per day, World 2 once per week, and World 3 once per month.

Please contact a GM if you notice any unusual effects while undergoing neural acceleration. For further information, consult the handbook given to you during the tutorial.

Handbook? Rian glanced up at Corvis and narrowed his eyes. I never got a handbook…

Aside from blowing his mind a little, it was all incredibly worrisome. He almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He hadn’t checked after the coma, but something like this should’ve made the news everywhere. It was something that would completely revolutionize the way people lived. Everyone would’ve been flocking to this game to live longer, though that was assuming the technology was exclusive.

“So they found a way to make people live longer,” Rian said, “just by altering their consciousness?”

Corvis seemed to be in thought as well. “As I understand it,” he said, “our bodies—both that of Miracians and off-worlders—no longer age because of the Undoing. But given that you still perceive time and generate memories, you could say that the mind does age over time. And thus it can be altered.”

Rian had a really bad feeling about this. It sounded like the game was mentally aging its players by doing this, overclocking their minds. It would make sense as to why he hadn’t heard of this technology elsewhere—it wasn’t as if people were gaining time if they were paying for it with the long-term health of their brains. That was probably why there were limits on entries to the Rifts, too.

But it all sounded so…dangerous. Like the devs were treating the players as fodder for some kind of nefarious experiment.

Rian shook his head. Maybe the effect wasn’t as strong as he thought it would be. But if both Kat and Corvis were telling him that it would be enough to allow someone to chase after Ogrot and potentially catch up, then it had to be significant. The further Ogrot went in, the faster his time would “go” relative to people outside of the Rifts. The sooner Rian entered, the more time would be available to allow him to catch up, progressively reducing the difference between the amount of time dilation between them.

That was a bit much to take in. His head was starting to hurt just thinking about it.

He retrieved the Ezre’s Thought from his inventory. A seemingly empty vial plopped into his hand.

The odds of him reaching level cap in time to obtain his class-designated Mirage skill were slim. Kat had warned him as well that such skills were horrendously hard to use, but he’d seen the kind of power they offered. But even if he never managed to master it in time, he was still going to need it to invade Ogrot’s session.

Rian looked up at Corvis. “Is there anything I need to know before I do this?”

After a moment, Corvis stood up and pulled his gloves tight. “Ah. So the time has finally come.”

Rian blinked. Corvis was getting all dramatic again. “For…?”

“For you to harness what is known as the Mirage function. The power—of a parallel universe.”

“The—” Rian’s breath caught. “What?”

He’d been so caught up in thinking about time dilation that he found himself blindsided again. Yet the old rumors about Mirage remained at the back of his mind. The quantum server. Parallel realities.

What he’d seen during the fight with Pitune—he wondered if that had been it, a parallel universe having opened in front of him.

“Perhaps you’ve deduced it by now,” Corvis said, “but Mirage, itself, is a keyword able to be applied to items. It is a keyword that utilizes the entire universe.” He took out a small pocketbook and flipped through a few pages. “Even the temporal effects of the Rifts are accomplished through it, by causing parallel universes and their respective frames of reference to accelerate toward or away from each other.” Appearing to find what he was looking for, he tapped the page and closed the book. “Ah. ‘Special relativity’ is what you’d know that by.”

“An…entire universe,” Rian said, feeling his brain short-circuit again. “From crafting a single item.”

Corvis shrugged as if it were merely a fact of nature. “Such things you craft with Godly Fragments can transcend space and time, just as the Four themselves were able.”

Thinking it over for a moment, Rian said, “Why does it sound like I’m reconstructing a god, in a way? Using a whole ‘fragment’ like this to make something with them.”

“It is nothing more than desecration. But as you amass power, your own power will come to reflect theirs, if only fractionally. Speaking of which, I suppose there is one thing I should tell you of. It may help ease your…apparent discomfort with the concept at hand.”

“Do we really have time for it?”

Corvis smiled. “There is nothing but time when it comes to the matters of Yindra.”

“Well, go ahead, I guess.”

Folding his hands behind his back, Corvis said, “Then allow me to tell you the true nature of the Undoing—of what Yindra accomplished at the moment of her death.”

***

Having departed from what would later become Elmguard, Corvis explained, Yindra was the last of the Four to be struck down.

She and Altir had fled north from the Godslayer’s pursuit, only to find him waiting for them along their path of escape. It was there, out on the plains near where Nostdal was today, that they fought—if it could even be considered a fight. Altir was mortally injured within seconds. With Altir’s body in her arms, Yindra, knowing that death was near, had made one final ploy against her pursuer.

Corvis held out his hand. In it appeared his staff, whose pointed end he gently stuck into the ground. The obsidian material dissolved to ivory, then began to flicker. As if through a prism, dozens of mirror images appeared behind the staff in a branching formation, endlessly fanning outward: multiple variations of the staff itself, each at a different stage of transition, partially black and partially white. Ezre’s Eye atop it, closed, half-open, and open, all at once.

“She shattered reality into countless parallel versions of itself,” he said. “And through them, she cast herself throughout time and space, both forward and backward, in every direction such that she could make her escape and thusly survive.”

Entry added to lore book: “The Death of Yindra”

Progress to next lore achievement: 75%

You have gained experience! (+901)

“Oh god,” Rian said, rubbing his forehead. “So…parallel universes? I mean, things were complicated already, but I didn’t think it was gonna get that complicated.”

“Were you expecting something simple?” Corvis pulled his staff out of the ground and the mirror images vanished. “This is the great game you’re playing. But yes, by using the tracts through time and space that Yindra created during the Undoing, to harness the Mirage keyword is to tap into that same power. I don’t suppose it is right to say that one ‘creates’ a new universe via the Mirage keyword, but that one travels along a pre-existing branch from this reality into another—into a universe that is almost entirely similar, yet infinitesimally different. You shouldn’t be entirely unfamiliar with this concept. Entire instances are operated and created by the same mechanic.”

The thought hitting him like a wall of bricks, Rian recalled what the game’s engine—if not the game itself—stood for. Mirage. Multi-Instance Reality Alternation Game Engine. The devs hadn’t been kidding about the “reality alternation” part.

“So, uh,” Rian began, “I’m assuming there’s rules to this. I can’t just hop into a parallel universe where I’m strong enough to one-shot Ogrot, right?”

“You’re already doing that, in a way. Every level, every attribute point you gain and apply to yourself is, essentially, accomplished through the Mirage keyword, shifting your current reality into one where you are stronger. But the greater the change, the more the requisite cost.” He reached into his suit and pulled out a colorless tesseract.

“Releasing the temporal energy contained within tesseracts,” he continued, “allows you to swap between parallel universes. It is how such things as your inventory work.”

Corvis opened his inventory, presenting the hundred or so items he had stashed away. “No one is actually carrying anything,” he said. “When you open an inventory, you are merely viewing a nexus of parallel realities in which you may retrieve individually stored items. The act of retrieval”—he reached out and grabbed the daemonfruit Rian had given him toward the start of the game, then threw it back into his inventory—“is to shift the present universe into one where the item exists while everything else remains the same.”

That sounded horribly convoluted for something so simple as an inventory mechanic, but Rian supposed it made sense. He’d never really considered how an inventory worked in the first place—it was just some kind of magic he’d taken for granted. There was a small detail throwing him off, however. “So it doesn’t take tesseracts to operate an inventory?” Rian said. “Or level up, for that matter.”

“Of course not. Smaller changes have lesser energy requirements.”

“So then where’s the energy coming from? Isn’t conservation of energy a thing here, or—”

Corvis blinked, a slight surprise showing on his face. His expression became serious again. “It is borrowed.”

“I…don’t like the sound of that. Borrowed from where?”

“From the many parallel universes that Yindra’s death created. And I should stress this to you: they are not infinite. Someday, they will be expended, and the great game will end.” Corvis splayed his palms. “Do you understand now, why the Loyalists seek to prevent off-worlders from running amok as they please?”

Rian chewed his lip. “So…is that how death and respawning works, too? You just end up in a parallel universe where you aren’t dead?”

“That’s an exception. Whenever a Miracian or an off-worlder dies, their soul goes to Purgatory. I believe you’ve been there a few times.”

Rian, blindsided again, shook his head. “Wait, what?” He certainly didn’t remember being in any sort of world of the dead, unless—

“The world of shadows, as you saw. Your Rogue friend was able to step into that world at will to decrease her travel time across the continent.”

So everything I saw during Kat’s Shadow Walk…. All those shadow creatures he’d seen and even fought were previously deceased—souls, wandering through Purgatory. He had to wonder what happened when they were killed twice.

“Unfortunately,” Corvis said, “due to circumstances involving the Undoing, it would seem that Purgatory is, well, full. Before then, Ulm oversaw the cycling of souls through Purgatory and Miriad. It would determine whether to reincarnate a soul into the living world or let it remain for future judgment.”

“And now Ulm’s not exactly around anymore,” Rian said.

“Yes. However, certain souls are capable of being drawn back into the living world through the nullshards, which can act as conduits between the realm of the living and that of the dead. They are, as I hope you remember, physical embodiments of the Four’s will.”

Pacifism, Rian thought. The will to prevent harm. “Does that mean the nullshards…literally undo death itself?”

“Perhaps. The full extent of their properties remains a mystery even among the Loyalists, but they do serve a particular purpose for our—or rather their—intent.” Corvis gestured to the roaming creatures throughout the forests. “That purpose is to repopulate the wilderness, once the off-worlders have run through and slaughtered most of everything in their path. This world would have gone empty long before if not for our work.”

“Spawning,” Rian said. He hadn’t even considered how something like that would fit into a world like this, but now the answer was hitting him. “You guys are responsible for the mob respawn mechanic?”

“Just one of us, and only for the local fauna, as you’d understand. Tsenira the Spawner, the third-in-command of the Loyalists. You’d be quite lucky to ever encounter her, given how secretive her existence is to begin with.”

Rian pulled up the crafting window for his item. With all that he’d heard, he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to use a Mirage skill. To jump between parallel universes. What irked him now was the thought that, for such a thing to work, it meant that each universe had to have copies—of himself, of other players, and everything in this world. People were using these things all the time, swapping and recombining entire universes without him even noticing.

It sounded as if, to harness Mirage skills, it required the user to split themselves into identical copies. He still couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around it, but he had a feeling that, in practice, the nuances of such a thing would reveal themselves in time.

Besides, he was already a copy of himself, if what he suspected was true. Making one more of himself wasn’t going to hurt.

He looked over the material requirements in the crafting window: a handful of cloth scraps, the vial containing Ezre’s Thought which would be bound to the ruby gem that Kat had given him, and a bunch of tesseracts.

Taking a deep breath, he reached out to tap the CRAFT button. As his hand got near it, a warning notification popped up in his System feed.