World Keeper

Chapter 1003: Epiphany

By the time the fast forward had stopped, I found that twenty years had passed within the world. The first thing that I checked was to see if James had finished ‘severing his karma’ yet, only to find that he was still out in the depths of space. In fact, he had even created himself a very primitive cave dwelling within a large asteroid. From what I had seen of the malfunctions that came with this severity of karma, it was no surprise that he didn’t have anything more advanced than a bioluminescent bulb for lighting.

I gave a small sigh, shaking my head at the realization that this wouldn’t be done for quite some time. He would need a stroke of luck to get his new energy working, but his luck was currently so bad that I didn’t know how that would be possible. The worst part was that there was essentially nothing that I could do to help without causing myself and the rest of the world to be influenced by that same secondary karma that the lab had been dealing with.

James sat on his stone stool, staring at the empty wall of his cave. In his vision, dozens of different formulas were being projected, shifting and correcting themselves every second. What was it… His brows furrowed as he thought to himself, trying to catch that epiphany again.

In truth, there had been nearly a dozen times over the last three years when he had nearly resolved his crisis. He would be just on the verge of finalizing his thoughts on how to create the energy that he needed when something struck and forced him off his train of thought. Perhaps it was a collision with another asteroid, or a monster god appeared, drawn to his power.

Luck isn’t absolute… any degree of luck can be overcome by the same level of intelligence. This was the thought James had when he first entered his isolation. Unfortunately, he underestimated just how much intelligence would be needed to overcome this degree of negative luck.

He already had the ability to view the weave of fate, and had been able to do so for more than a century. The problem was how he could alter this fate weave, cutting off his bad fortune from the root. What was it… I thought that I had to combine the One Light and the Fate Window, but what else was there…

James could already feel a sensation of danger approaching as his thoughts got to this point, but he wasn’t going to let himself stop now. He triggered the recording process of the Scholar class, and sent out an avatar of himself to handle whatever dangers may be coming. He needed this breakthrough. This was the major step that he would have to take before he was able to solve his karma.

Outside of the asteroid, a cloud of mist began to flow over, with a silver sphere at its core. When the avatar saw this, it immediately identified it as one of the few spacefaring slimes, the Void Gas Slime. The avatar flew forward, creating a barrier between itself and the asteroid behind it, and prepared for a bitter battle. At the very least, it’s not a god yet…

Inside the cave, James had cut his thoughts off from those of his avatar, not allowing himself to be distracted at this crucial moment. Were there other energies that I needed to combine? If it wasn’t just One Light and Fate Window, what else would cover what’s missing?

Outside, the avatar had grown by more than a hundred meters, directly controlling the power of space to push back whenever a piece of the slime made its way over. Its eyes were on the slime’s core, thinking how it could destroy it without causing any ripples that would affect the asteroid behind him. Unfortunately, the power of space couldn’t penetrate the Void Gas Slime, nor could any other disconnected energy. As shown from its name, the slime’s body partially exists within the void, and the essence of the void leaks over, devouring any energy that enters its body.

Record! James thought to himself as he stood within the asteroid, eyes shining. He had to make sure that this moment was saved in his mind. The Eye of Ruin has to be used! The moment that thought occurred to him, the asteroid shook, almost causing him to stumble. However, that didn’t matter anymore, an almost manic grin plastered across his face.

His real body flew out of the asteroid, absorbing the strength of his avatar. When he saw the slime in the distance, he held his hand out. In fact, there was an easy way for the avatar to deal with this slime, but it would have disturbed James. There was a shudder within the asteroid as it cracked, compressing down into a spear and began to rotate at high speeds.

As if feeling threatened, the slime began to move back in a hurry, its core rapidly shifting positions within its body. However, how was James going to let it go now that he had finished his epiphany? The spear of earth shot out, piercing into the body of the slime and passing through it without striking the core. As soon as it exited the slime’s body, a portal appeared in front of it, teleporting it to a different corner of the body to continue the attack.

In an instant, dozens of lights seemed to flash by, the spear constantly accelerating until it finally struck the silver core. The gaseous body of the slime shuddered, the black mist slowly fading away. James, meanwhile, looked around, allowing his spear to break apart. He no longer needed this asteroid cave, and instead had to find a larger area where he could perform experiments.

He picked the nearest star, and flew towards it at his fastest speed, his body constantly teleporting forward mid-flight. I need to find the proper formula to combine an advanced energy with two saint energies… Although this was only the first step of his salvation, it was a crucial step forward.

When I saw James taking action, I thought he must have comprehended something, so I called Chelsea over to watch. Despite him having used a System Sphere to get the game system for himself, he was still technically not part of my assets, so I couldn’t read his mind. Neither could Chel, unless he was directing a prayer towards her. “What’s he planning?” I asked, glancing over at the smaller kitsune.

Chel shook her head, not having a proper answer. “Let me ask him.” She said, before closing her eyes. When she opened them again, her eyes went wide. “That… that could work.”

“Explanations, please?”

“He’s going to do a big combination energy, one that could result in a new saint energy. The theory is solid, and the fact that his karma kept trying to interrupt him implies that it could work. It’s… that energy that lets him see the past and potential future, the One Light that Tsubaki is practicing, and the Eye of Ruin that lets him destroy anything he has fully analyzed.”

I furrowed my brow at that, trying to imagine the three energies working together. “So, he wants to use the effects of the first two to analyze his karma, and then the Eye of Ruin to destroy his karma?”

“No, it’s not that simple. If he could just do that, he wouldn’t need to combine them.” Chel refuted, shaking her head quickly. “His hypothesis is that this combination of energies will allow him to weaponize karma to an even greater degree than One Light. Rather than using his karma as a sword, he will use it as a consumable bullet.”

“If he’s right, he should be able to pour all of his negative karma into one attack, and then fire it off into the distance. Once he does that, he won’t have to deal with the negative karma himself anymore.”

My eyes went wide, doing my best to imagine that. “He can’t do that inside of any world… he has to go to the void first. Otherwise, with his karma that comes from destroying multiple universes… that one bullet would probably be enough to destroy another universe.”

Chel pursed her lips, but nodded her head in agreement. “He should know that, too. Ideally, he would use that attack on a powerful enemy, such as your opponent in the next invasion. He won’t do that, though, because the longer he waits to fire it, the longer he is unable to come back and help with planning the defense.”

“Yeah, I don’t want him to wait, either.” In my opinion, the sooner James got back to his research facility, the better. “I just want to ask… is there any potential risk of this ‘karma bullet’ turning into a new void monster if he fires it off without a target?”

Chel paused, thinking. As she did, her face gradually went pale. “It’s… it’s possible, yes. The karma bullet would be full of the information about everything he had done until now. It’s basically his life story. If it traveled long enough to be corroded by the void, it could turn into a corrupted void beast with his intelligence, one that lives to destroy more universes.”

When she said that, she jumped up again, pacing back and forth. “We can’t just use a void beast as the target, either. Even the strongest void beast wouldn’t be able to absorb enough energy from the bullet before it was destroyed. The only way… we need to fire it at a world barrier… If the bullet pierced the barrier, it would have a theoretically infinite distance to travel and disperse naturally while the world broke down around it. But… if he destroys another universe, we’re back to square one!”

Chel brought her hands up to tug at her hair, Tsubaki speaking up next to me. “What if it is a world with a modifier that does not allow life to grow?” She asked, causing Chel and myself to both look over at her in surprise.

“Right, right… if there’s no life, there’s no harm being done for his karma…” Chel nodded her head quickly, following Tsubaki’s line of thought. “A world designed without life… that would probably be a rather niche modifier, but it wouldn’t be a powerful one, so I imagine it would be cheap.”

“It… wouldn’t count as me resetting the world if I allowed it to willingly be destroyed, right?” I asked hesitantly. After the reveal of the Heaven’s Gate, I knew that there were some perks to be had by reaching certain levels without resetting a world.

Thankfully, Chel shook her head. “There’s no reason why it would count. This isn’t resetting a world, because you won’t get the points you spend back. This will be pure world destruction. But a normal world won’t be enough… the world has to be strong enough that the karma can dissipate completely before it’s destroyed. You’ll need to buy at least a size eight world. If it’s bigger than that, the bullet might not be able to destroy it. Any smaller, and the karma won’t dissipate before the world shatters.”

I nodded my head, letting out a sigh of relief. “Let him know the plan, then. Once he’s ready to use this new power, I’ll make a lifeless world for him to use as a target.” At least there was something that I could do to help resolve this problem.

Besides… the last thing that I wanted was to have to deal with a void beast modeled after James with the sole desire to destroy every world I owned. That would be… very bad.

“I’ll let him know closer to time.” Chel said, falling back down on the couch. “If he knows you have a plan now, there might be a bit of karma feedback from him acknowledging our help.”

“Right… that would be bad.” I gulped, eyes going wide and imagining a global malfunction like what the lab had to deal with.

Chel, on the other hand, couldn’t help but smirk. “Yeah, don’t want to turn out like Three-Fifty.”

“What? Did something happen to the lab again?” I looked over at Chel in shock, and even Tsubaki seemed concerned.

“He and Syris quit the institute a few years back.” Chel shrugged her shoulders. “After that, Syria tried to join another research group, and was using his spatial ki for deliveries when something went wrong. His body made it through the jump, but his ki didn’t, effectively killing him.”

“Three-Fifty, on the other hand, was reassigned by the March to a research outpost on an uninhabited remote planet, trying to find a new method of void defense. Instead, he accidentally opened a void gate that swallowed the planet he was on.”

“...You played karma tricks on them, didn’t you?” I asked, and Chel simply rolled her eyes.

“System Companions have to be protective of their Keepers. James and I might not be in those roles anymore, but that hasn’t changed.”