93
1086 Words
After confirming that his latest test worked, Matt started to drain his mana pool.
He fed the air until it became heavy with mana, and the formation plates began absorbing and condensing it.
Each plate created a drop of mana that merged with all the others.
As the mana started to escape the single drop, it activated the talismans he had created for this purpose, which in turn, acted as a barrier to prevent any mana from escaping.
Matt watched with growing glee as the drop of mana grew larger and larger.
When it was the size of a grain of rice, he started to notice instabilities, and rushed to reinforce his formation, but it was too late.
The entire sphere exploded under the pressure. Minkalla protected him from harm, but he did need to start over.
His next test got the mana to the size of a marble, but his formation and barrier talismans were again overwhelmed.
Test after test, failure after failure, Matt kept trying until he finally had a head sized orb of dark blue mana that swirled and twisted in the center of his apparatus.
This time, massive pillars of reinforced steel beams were anchored to the walls that he had created in his testing area.
His current iteration was condensing octillions of mana into a single point.
He had been blown up at this point in the test more than a thousand times, but he didn’t give up.
If this worked, he would have confirmed a truth of the realm.
Everyone knew the saying. Life makes mana. Mana makes essence. Essence creates rifts. Rifts convert all three.
He was trying to recreate that second step. Mana makes essence. An event that normally only happened inside the cores of the planet as mana was drawn in with their tremendous gravity to condense to a single point.
If the saying was true, he would be able to create essence after subjecting his mana to enough pressure, over enough time.
Matt smiled as the world started to rumble.
From the center of his formation sphere, the head-sized orb of mana started to shrink.
As it shrank, it darkened until it lost its color all at once and turned a nearly see-through white. The translucent, head-sized ball of liquid mana that took years to make condensed to a dust mote-sized speck of essence in an instant.
Matt laughed as he finally succeeded.
Pushing his awareness to Minkalla, he knew that he could submit this as his final test.
It would be given a passing grade by the planet, and he’d get his reward. His foundation of gathered essence would be inundated and replaced with Genesis Energy, and he would know if not the specifics of what he’d done, he’d know for a fact that he could, someday, make Essence out of pure mana.
But he hesitated.
Matt had used two of the disciplines he knew from enchanting. Enchanting formations and talismans. But he was ignoring one final thing he knew and used on a daily basis.
Aperology.
Matt had spent a significant portion of his life using his mana to make rifts and do exactly what he had done in this test.
Only in a more efficient form that took a million times less effort than the experiment he had just created.
As an idea came over Matt, he started designing a part two to his test.
An aura rift that would be pure mana.
He and Erwin had tried to make it years ago, but now Matt could do all of the testing without worrying about danger, cost, or time.
If it was possible, the idea was that they could create aura rifts that wouldn’t limit people into a singular elemental affinity and would allow the cultivator to choose their own path for their Concept to grow into.
If it was possible, everything about Bottled Concepts would be turned on its head.
He just needed to test its feasibility.
Genesis Cultivation was the perfect place to do so. No test was too dangerous. No test was too expensive. No test was a waste of time.
It was the perfect testing ground.
Endless sub-aspected mana converted into essence, which was endless by nature, used to create a rift that made pure Aura.
In theory, it was possible.
He just had to put in the work and see if theory and reality aligned.
And Matt was never afraid of hard work.
Aster looked at her ice cream sundae.
It was perfect.
Larger than she was, it was a balanced blend of sweet and sour. Crunchy and soft. Warm and cold.
It was perfect.
Still, she scrapped it. She loved ice cream, but it wasn’t what she wanted to make here.
Taking a nibble of her treat, she started pulling the surroundings into the proper form.
Aster was a winter fox. Once an ice fox.
But winter wasn’t her goal.
Even aurora wasn’t her end goal.
Aster wanted to be a Space Ice fox.
To that end, she created a field of ice.
Basking in what she once was, she added wind, and the field of ice turned into a winter storm. Now, she was at her current self.
With the easy part done, she started to add light beams, illusions and spatial energies. Slowly, the area converted to a field of ice and winter with aurora lights bathing its surface with energy.
Then, Aster followed that same energy past the planet’s atmosphere and into space.
In the void, matter started to slow and eventually stop.
Everything grew cold.
So cold, even the atoms of the universe came to a halt.
Pulling at the strings of the world she created, she gathered all of its components and pulled them under her control.
From the dead universe, she gathered it up and started to shape it and mold it into her image.
From that death and stillness, Aster created life. Life of the cold and the end.
Life under her control.
Walking through the area she created, she explored where her bloodline would take her and smiled.
She saw the heat death of a universe under her control, breeding its own type of unique life.
Essence ensured that the end of a universe was an impossibility, as it started to fuel the reaction of stars with its endless energy, instead of the fusion of hydrogen into helium.
Essence ensured that she was an impossibility.
Through essence, Aster would create her own path to an end that was impossible.
- Writer
