World Keeper

Chapter 1000: Simply A-Maze-Ing

After the initial findings from the test, Thelsa sent a report to Olympus, detailing what they had discovered. Once that report arrived, I naturally took a look at it, interested in seeing the material that Aurivy had told me about. The fact that it had two stages surprised me, as did its secondary ability.

At first, I thought that this might be a new super-material, one that we needed to mass produce in order to create powerful weapons and armors. However, after reading through the details of this new ‘memory stone’ as they were tentatively calling it… my thoughts began to change.

Admittedly, there were many potential uses for this material. But, if I were to classify it as a ‘super-material’, it would need to overwhelmingly surpass what was on the market in some way. Currently, this item had only three things going for it. First, it was naturally dense, due to being from the sixtieth floor of Fyor. From what Thelsa’s report showed, it had excellent defensive properties, even in its depleted form.

As far as defenses go, however, it would only be roughly the equivalent of iron found on the same floor. Worse, even, given that the armor may accidentally change into another form if the person wearing it wasn’t careful. 

Its second remarkable trait was its ability to replicate the power of other materials. However, in order to do this, that material had to release some form of energy, such as the weak ambient energy of the black stone gates, or the mana from a Mage Heart. It might be able to replicate Dimensium, but certainly not items like mithral or orichalcum, as these materials don’t release any ambient energy.

The final benefit of this energy was none other than its shape shifting property. This, if nothing else, made it remarkable as a weapon. After all, if someone had mastered multiple fighting styles, they would be able to have any weapon that they wanted on command. Surely, that would be more convenient than swapping items in your inventory in the middle of a battle.

But, did this make it worthy of being called a super-material? I didn’t believe so, personally. At most, it was nice for those without exceptionally powerful artifacts already. Now, if there happened to be other qualities for this material that were undiscovered in the initial tests, I would happily revise my evaluation.

This can’t be all that Aurivy was excited about. I shook my head, certain that there was more left to find on the sixtieth floor. In fact, I was fully aware that even the Greater Pantheon like her were unable to fully appraise a material just from looking at it from the Admin Room. It would be different if I did so myself, using my Keeper ability, but they didn’t have such a benefit.

Actually… that’s not a terrible idea. I thought to myself, tilting my head slightly. In the past, I wouldn’t even consider doing something like this, if for no other reason than the level restriction on Fyor. But… I fixed that problem a while ago, didn’t I? It was no longer as much of a hassle, to the point where I needed a mortal escort.

Besides, Aurivy had confirmed from the Admin Room that there were no signs of life, so it should be safe for me to visit. It might not strictly be training my combat abilities, but it would allow me to experience more of my world.

Aurivy… please send me to the fifty-ninth floor’s upper gate. I communicated to the halfling goddess. There was a moment of silence before the request was carried out. Golden mist wrapped around my body, transporting me to an area where I could feel a heavy weight pressing down against me. Without my Keeper levels, it would be hard for me to move naturally in this gravity.

Looking around, it seemed as though Thelsa hadn’t returned yet after sending the report, as nobody was present. With a shrug of my shoulder, I placed my hand on the gate and passed through. When I emerged, I couldn’t help but stare at the walls that ran high into the sky, beyond the limits of what I could see.

I closed my eyes, recalling what I had heard about this floor, and allowed my World Sight to extend outwards in an attempt to scan my surroundings. Unsurprisingly, I felt that my World Sight was dissolved soon after leaving a ten centimeter radius around my body. It was… curious that this seemed so exact, but at the same time, I felt a powerful trace of mana in the air.

Did I land close to the spire? I thought to myself, sensing which direction the mana seemed to be flowing. Without any hesitation, I treated the mana as a small stream, traveling up it to find its source. As I did, I realized something that had been bothering me since my arrival on this floor.

If all energy is dissipated when airborne… how does this floor have a day and night cycle? Reasonably speaking, one of two things should happen. Either the mana that radiates from the central spire should disperse before it resonates with anything that could produce this light, or the light itself should be blocked by the walls of the maze. However, it is clearly daytime, despite this.

Curious to uncover the truth, I sped up, practically teleporting thousands of kilometers at a time as I channeled chakra into my legs. Even so, it took me more than ten minutes to follow the trace of mana back to its source, passing through dozens of different turns.

When I arrived, I saw a great clearing, one that made the entrance to the maze look like an almost completely flat wall. If I didn’t know that this clearing was just a small part of the world, I would have thought that this was the entrance to the other half of the world, similar to the twenty-fifth floor.

Far ahead, at what I knew to be the center of the clearing, I could see the mana pillar rising high beyond the horizon. This time, when I released my world sight, there was nothing interfering. As long as I did not try to send it back into the maze, I could explore this clearing as much as I wished.

Thus, the first thing that I did was send my world sight up into the sky above me, beyond the limits of my normal perception. I wanted to see exactly what was happening on the ceiling of this layer. Where did the light come from?

What I found caused me to freeze in my steps, my eyes going wide. There were colorful veins of minerals flowing through the ceiling. Red, green, blue, yellow, white, all interwoven with one another in various shades. Wherever certain shades of the red and blue mineral veins overlapped, it produced a field of perpetual flame beneath that crossing.

It was these intersections that created the illusion of daytime, due to more than a tenth of the layer’s ceiling being covered in flame. However, I couldn’t help but pause and think. Why are there so many dimensional minerals here? This would be the last place that I expected to find them. I even thought back to Aurivy’s claim that there was no life in this layer.

With all of these here, how could nothing come through? The intersection of the manastone and the firestone even caused an automatic reaction such as this, couldn’t creatures pass through the opening?

In my mind, these concerns were justified. All of these minerals would make this floor a natural destination for anyone passing through them. I pushed my world sight into the activated firestone, studying its structure and attempting to infiltrate it.

Once again, my eyes went wide. The connection between the firestone and manastone didn’t cause it to be permanently opened, as I had initially believed. Instead, the connection was opening and closing at a rapid pace, more than hundreds of times per second.

I focused, entering ‘battle mode’ to accelerate my processing speed to the limit, and then attempted to take advantage of this opening. With my level and stats, this tiniest fraction of a second could be stretched out enough to get a good look at the situation on the other side.

To my surprise, though, the moment I slipped my World Sight through the gap, it instantly closed ahead of schedule. So that’s it… it’s not opening on a timed schedule… it’s forcibly closed as soon as enough energy passes through, and then immediately afterwards, the manastone forces it open again.

That would explain the lack of anything coming through, as nothing was able to fit. Though, it made me question why the connection was so unstable even in this clearing. Thankfully, my own energy wasn’t disrupted in this space, so I directly teleported to one of the intersections, planning to take a look at it myself. As I had speculated earlier, I should be able to use my Keeper power to analyze the materials.

My brow furrowed when I read this information. If it were the stones inside the maze, I would understand the irregular energy. However, the energy of the black stone gates didn’t touch this area, did they?

Wait… I turned to look at the distant crystal pillar, feeling as if things were starting to make sense. During the ‘day’ cycle, mana was constantly being released into the atmosphere. This mana pushed back the energy of the gates, creating this buffer zone. Then, during the ‘night’ cycle, the mana would be pulled back in, and this place would become a dead zone for energy, just like in the rest of the maze.

It’s possible that the crystal itself is the reason why the clearing exists, the stone walls unable to grow near it. If that’s the case… can intense mana interfere with the black stone walls? That shouldn’t be possible, right?

I felt the rather urgent need to test this theory. If it were true, then didn’t that mean that the walls were not as safe as we believed? However, just as I began to channel my mana, I heard Ryone’s voice in my ear. It’s fine. She said in a playful tone. I’ve already experimented with these gates and mana.

I let out a long sigh, pulling back my mana. So? Were there any results?

The gates were completely immutable. She reported with a slight huff, clearly unhappy with her own test. Even when I used my divinity to pour half a billion mana into a single point, all that I got was a frustrating mana siphon.

My theory is that this is involved in the creation of the world. Most worlds, the planet is created by a great collection of cosmic dust that comes together and condenses into the basic elements that the planet needs. In Fyor, one of these basic elements produces the seed of the central pillar, which grows high into the sky.

After it hits a certain distance, the pillar creates a protective shell by resonating with the void, imbuing it with the rules of transportation, gravity, and invulnerability. This becomes the black stone shell around each layer. However, due to the law of invulnerability, the spire would not be able to continue growing after creating the first shell. Thus, instead, it creates a ‘gate’ to accommodate it.

When the energy passes through the gate, it seeks out the area where its connection with the previous floor is the strongest, and begins growing again. The rule of gravity on the shell causes some of the materials that hadn’t settled on the previous floor to rise up, creating the ceiling. This process repeats over and over again, until  the spire is unable to continue to grow.

As for this floor, the reason why the walls rose up to form a maze should be because of these special stones. When the world was still in its growing phase, the veins of manastones resonated with the pillar and caused more walls to form. The only reason they didn’t form in this clearing was that the energy was too stable directly next to the crystal.

My brow twitched when I heard Ryone’s explanation. You put way too much thought into this, didn’t you?

It was bugging me, okay?! Ryone huffed indignantly. I can’t help but want to study something when it annoys me like that!