Markets and Multiverses

A few minutes later, the five of us arrived at the fourth major room. I had to admit, Sallia lugging around Sekundyrr as we walked through the hallways of the facility was a rather absurd sight. However, Sekundyrr seemed incredibly excited to move around a little bit, even if he could only do so while being carried around like a sack of potatoes by Sallia.

The fourth room reminded me of the second room. There was no life inside of the room. In fact, as far as I could tell, there was nothing at all inside of each of the sub-chambers of the room. I looked at them for almost a full minute, trying to figure out what was even being tested in this room, before I gave up and looked at Felix.

“Any ideas what this room is for?” I asked. “I can feel the laws of reality being distorted inside of each sub-chamber, but I’m not sure how.”

Felix also shrugged. “I don’t know either. I wish-” he stopped mid-sentence, and then grinned and pointed at something.

I looked at the spot he was pointing at, and then blinked in surprise.

In the first three rooms, whatever research notes had originally been made by the researchers had long been lost. Time had slowly caused all of the notes to deteriorate, until they were basically just piles of dust. By room four, I hadn’t even bothered looking at the research notes in the room, because I had assumed they would also be so deteriorated that they were just garbage. I had been fully prepared to guess the purpose of the room through trial and error.

However, in this room, there was a single pile of preserved notes. Unlike the other chambers, these papers had clearly been made of a different material. This paper had a distinctive gold tint to it, and was also significantly thicker than the papers we had found in other rooms. This material had also allowed the papers to remain relatively undamaged by the ravages of time and neglect.

I quickly walked over to the research notes, and then very carefully picked up the first document I could see. I kept the tiny dregs of alteration essence left in my body ready as well, just in case the notes started falling apart after I picked them up.

Luckily, the notes held together just fine under my careful movements. The script was a little hard to read, since writing styles and some rules about grammar and language had changed a little over the centuries. However it was still possible to read the old research notes, even if it took me a little time to decipher what each word meant.

I quickly angled the papers so that Sallia, Felix, and Anise could also read the papers, and began to scan the documents. 

19th of Dwarium

Test 17:

We have finally found that a mixture of gravitite and paper mixed together in a ratio of 1:23, along with a small amount of Elethyrr sap, allows us to create a type of paper that does not explode if one of the room four dimensional chambers goes out of control. This will hopefully reduce the number of accidents in the future.

Gravitite itself seems to be oddly compatible with the dimensional attributes of dimension four, far more than our own dimension’s Gravinium and Gravinium extract. We are uncertain why: researcher Bethel believes that it is because the way atoms bond to each other in dimension one, including gravtitie, is based entirely on the atomic interactions between essences, but doesn’t seem to distinguish between types of essence. Since dimension four is overloaded with large quantities of all four essences, perhaps the unique nature of gravitite allows it to survive exposure to dimension four’s laws.

I believe that her idea makes sense, but further testing is required. 

I nodded as I scanned the document. It was clearly some kind of research journal. The idea of papers exploding when exposed to dimension four’s laws made me chuckle a little bit, although it also made me wonder if I was lucky that nothing had exploded while we messed with the sub-chambers of each room. Perhaps it was a good idea to tone our experimentation down a little bit.

22nd of Dwarium

Organic Undenthyri Sub-experiment.

Another expedition from dimension four has returned. The seventeenth experimental breed of Undenthyri seems to have suffered a great deal of damage during the expedition: apparently, anytime they remain within the dimension for more than five days total, their organs begin to fall apart.

I have taken several of their children and begun modifying their organs, to see if there is a more stable composition I can create. I tried to slightly nudge the dimensional laws that their livers and hearts ran off of, with the idea of creating an inheritable trait that was more suited to mining dimension four. Thus far, I have yet to succeed in finding a more stable composition: most of the children died shortly after testing. I suspect that if I hyperspecialize their organs, their livers and hearts start to fail upon contact with our own dimension’s laws. More testing is needed to verify this assumption.

Perhaps I should have begun with an Orukthyri baseline instead. The Orukthyri are quite difficult to breed with the other slaves because they have a strong tendency to eat their partners rather than produce more test subjects. However, I could still take one of the half-Orukthyri and see if they are more capable of holding themselves together in dimension four. Perhaps if we can find a way to make the Orukthyri genes less dominant, we can create a better mining species.

I grimaced after reading the next entry.

The casual way that the researcher mentioned trying and failing to modify the heats and livers of Undenthyri children made me feel sick. Life under the Ortha had clearly been more than a little horrifying.

The dawn of the black sun had unquestionably been a catastrophe for this world as a whole, but I couldn’t say it was a bad thing that the second Orthan empire had disappeared into history.

23rd of Dwarium

Update on Undenthyri Subj-experiment.

The half-Orukthyri half-Undenthyri slaves exploded immediately upon contact with dimension four. It is unknown why.

Clearly, my next attempts at modification were not successful. 

29th of Dwarium

Test 18:

After more tinkering, I have finally managed to replicate the conditions of dimension four inside of one of our sub-chamber testing facilities! I started out by taking one of the massive insectoid creatures that we found drifting between stars in that sub-dimension and then dissecting its organs, to use as further experimental data. After stuffing the creature’s brain inside of one of the sub-chambers of room four, I finally managed to use it to examine the unique energy systems of that dimension. From there, I believe I have perfectly replicated the conditions of dimension four. 

With this, the costs of further experiments should be drastically reduced. It will be much easier to test organ and genetic modifications in the future, so long as nothing goes wrong.

Dimension four has too many unique and useful resources, but retraining Undenthyri mining teams every week is simply too expensive. Finding a way to optimize a slave race subspecies for further mining use is critical if we wish to extract resources efficiently.

31st of Dwarium

New organic sub-experiment

Placed one of the insectoid creatures from dimension four into our dimensional sub-chamber. Tests show that the creature is living well, exactly as if it were living in its original dimension. We can detect no other abnormalities.

34th of Dwarium

Item crafting test

The first attempts at creating artifacts using the unique environment we copied in dimension four have failed. We originally expected that since atomic bonds seem to be made of pure mana in that dimension, we would be able to create a rather interesting set of equipment for the Orukthyri, and had some hopes that the artifacts may even survive exposure to other dimensional conditions.

Sadly, the first four attempts at creating a set of swords resulted in explosions. It seems that any of the metals we have found from other dimensions are unable to stick together after being exposed to dimension four’s environment. Apart from gravitite, but that is far too expensive to use for mere Orukthyri weapons and armor.

It seems that we may be restricted to mining in dimension four, if the dimensional laws are as hostile to other types of matter as they seem to be. How unfortunate.

39th of Dwarium

Plans for future experiments

The dimension scouting team has found another dimension near us. This one seems quite a bit more unusual than even dimension four and the unstable laws of dimension five. They claim that it is likely a plane with an exceptionally high amount of mana inside of it. 

If we can harvest the newly found dimension for energy, perhaps we can power all sorts of wondrous items and raise our civilization to an entirely new level. 

The first Orthan empire somehow accessed the sea of stars, which lies far beyond our planet’s surface, and floated into space with almost a quarter of the planet’s mass. Perhaps they, too, had begun exploring the dimensions that lie outside of our home dimension before they launched themselves into space.

And since we are much superior to the ancients in intellect, bravery, and courage, we will surely succeed where they failed in the past.

41st of Dwarium

The first testing chamber for dimension six has been created. The laws of reality in that dimension are very distinct, and also quite unusual. One of the scepters personally created the sub-chamber, so it should be quite accurate. 

The fact that the black scepter personally took action is testament to just how unique dimension six is. Her dimensional replication spells are known to be quite exceptional, but she does not usually bother taking action for less important tests like this.

42nd of Dwarium

Dimension six materials test

I have taken a small sample of blood from a creature of dimension six and placed it inside of a dimension six testing chamber, to see how it held together.

The results are fascinating.

The drops of blood that we placed inside of the testing chamber did nothing for several hours. Then, they came to life. We are uncertain exactly how this works, since most exploration and attempts at harvesting resources from dimension six have failed. The dimensional laws of dimension six don’t seem to have anything to do with life, making the entire situation even more unusual.

As far as we can tell so far, Dimension six appears to be some sort of… plane of ‘ideas,’ for lack of a better term. Physical space barely exists, although the dimensional laws related to time seem to have stabilized fairly well in that dimension.

Every single object in existence in dimension six is, in some way, shape, or form, alive. Even the space between the stars in that dimension seems to be observing our exploration teams, according to the few survivors that managed to return.

The black scepter has ordered us to try placing some weapons and armor inside of the testing chamber for dimension six later, to see if they naturally improve after exposure to the environment of dimension six.

It is a most fascinating dimension. When we succeed in subjugating the dimension, the resources we harvest from it will surely be exceptional.

Past that point, the research notes were cut off. However, the research notes were quite interesting in what they revealed.

I strongly suspected that ‘dimension six’ was the home of the black sun. It simply fit too well with my own assumptions about the dimension, which was that it was a ‘plane of ideas’ of some sort. Furthermore, many of the pieces of paper that lay underneath the research notes I had found were blank, indicating that the writer had originally intended to fill them out with more notes at some point.

In other words, something had probably happened to the author of these notes shortly after this dimension had connected to dimension six.

While it could have been a coincidence, it just lined up very well with my understanding of history and the home dimension of the black sun.

“Well, we should be extra careful when we enter the sixth room in this facility,” said Felix. “I’m pretty sure that’s the origin of the black sun, and so it might be filled with more weird monsters. Though I also admit that I’m quite curious to see what’s actually inside of room six. Perhaps we can get a large amount of Achievement inside of that room, if we are careful…” 

“Let’s finish looking over this room and then look at room five, first,” I said. “Let’s discuss what we’re doing about room six afterwards.”

The four of us nodded, and then started slowly working our way through room four to see if we could find anything valuable.

Anise eventually found a kind of stone that was floating in midair in one of the dimensional chambers, which we only examined for a few moments before we stuffed it into my dimensional pack.

Wealth: Own 1 kilogram of prismium

Achievement +1,000

I was very surprised to realize that this random-looking rock was vastly more valuable than the Gravitite and plant core that we had found so far. It single-handedly boosted my Achievement from  15,833 to 16,833. Which was a very sizable increase in Achievement: my overall goal of around 24,000 Achievement was getting closer and closer with every room we explored.

Apart from that, Anise found some strange corpses near the edge of one of the sub-chambers. They looked almost like giant flies. Each one was about the size of my head.

I suspected these were the insects the research notes had discussed, which were the original inhabitants of dimension four.

Apart from that, we didn’t find anything else.

Before leaving the room, Felix decided to mess with the Prismium and see if he could figure out what it was useful for. It wasn’t made of metal, so he couldn’t use his attunement to warp it, but it was still another potential tool available to us if we could figure out what it did.

After taking it out of my dimensional backpack, the Prismium immediately began to float again. 

That was all we could figure out, unfortunately.

It didn’t react to any essence we had, unlike Gravitite. It wasn’t particularly hard, and Sallia accidentally nicked a bit of the Prismium with her sword while gently poking it. As far as we could tell, the Prismium was just a magically floating rock. The only other weird thing we could figure out was that the Prismium didn’t seem to need any energy input to keep floating. Which was odd, but didn’t seem to justify its incredible Achievement reward at all.

Eventually, we gave up and kept moving. There were only two rooms left in the dimensional habitat facility.

 

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