Chapter 813 - Authority

Chapter 813: Chapter 813 - Authority

After the strange divinations, Lucien stopped treating preparation as something he could finish later.

The blank future had changed that.

He still did not know what the darkness meant with certainty. Aurelia, Elunara, and the Grandmaster continued testing it from different directions, but Lucien had already accepted the possibility that Alanthuriel’s warning was closer than anyone wanted.

So he began removing every dependency he could.

Instructions were rewritten.

Authority was clarified.

Contingencies that had once assumed Lucien could simply appear when something went wrong were replaced with plans that worked without him.

Vivian remained at the center of those preparations.

She would hold final authority over Lootwell while he was gone, and Lucien gradually transferred everything she might need to exercise it.

That included something far more important than ordinary command privileges.

The merged Origin Core would remain in the Big World.

Lucien had considered bringing it with him.

The thought lasted only briefly.

Too much of the world’s current infrastructure depended on it.

The communication network stretched across the five continents through the resonance maintained by the merged fragments. With the continents approaching one another and military coordination becoming increasingly important, removing that foundation before a possible war would be absurd.

So the Origin Core stayed.

Lucien adjusted its permissions carefully and established Vivian as its primary acting authority in his absence.

She would not possess Lucien’s complete relationship with it.

Nobody did.

But she would be able to direct the functions Lootwell already relied upon, maintain the communication network, authorize the necessary projections, and use the portions of its authority Lucien had deliberately prepared for emergencies.

Lucien tested everything repeatedly.

Then he tested it again without personally touching the system.

Only when Vivian could operate it without him did he move on.

He was beginning to dislike how often that phrase appeared in his thoughts.

Without him.

That was the entire purpose of these preparations.

It still felt strange.

•••

Lucien did not spend every remaining day organizing other people.

He continued improving himself.

More importantly, he started looking at the Big World differently.

Inside his inner universe, his authority bordered on absolute.

Space responded naturally.

Time could be divided into separate references.

Living Creation operated under conditions that recognized Lucien as the highest authority present.

The Big World was different.

Here, Lucien was still an existence at Extinction-Grade strength.

Absurdly powerful by the standards of most Eternals, certainly.

Still bound by a universe that had its own Laws.

Lucien could influence those Laws.

He could not simply command them in the same way he did inside himself.

That limitation had frustrated him for years.

Now he began treating it as a problem of precision rather than power.

He could not establish enormous accelerated regions across the Big World.

The strain became ridiculous almost immediately.

Time resisted.

Living organisms complicated the process even further.

But Lucien discovered that he did not need to accelerate an entire region to accelerate everything occurring within it.

The distinction appeared while he was experimenting with farmland.

Instead of forcing the entire field into a faster temporal flow, Lucien touched the structure beneath it.

The soil.

The nutrients.

The biological processes connected to the earth itself.

He altered the rate at which those processes matured.

The first test plot changed slowly.

Seeds sprouted earlier.

Roots spread.

The plants reached maturity sooner than expected.

Lucien watched carefully.

The farmers working beside the field experienced no acceleration.

The surrounding air remained normal.

Only the processes Lucien had deliberately isolated moved faster.

He smiled.

That was much cheaper.

•••

Agriculture became the obvious first application.

Lucien refined the effect until selected fields could produce additional harvests without forcing entire populations to experience accelerated time.

The method still consumed energy.

Soil quality still mattered.

Nutrients could still be exhausted if farmers treated accelerated growth as infinite abundance.

Lucien made sure everyone understood that.

Then he moved to other resources.

Certain mineral deposits responded.

Ordinary stone did not suddenly become valuable simply because Lucien pushed its processes forward, but deposits formed through long-term accumulation could be encouraged under the right conditions. ℯℯ𝑙.

The more interesting tests involved Spirit Mountains.

Spirit Mountains naturally condensed energy over long periods until spirit crystals formed inside the earth.

Lucien isolated those processes.

Time answered.

The mountain did not age as one whole object.

Its crystal-forming cycles accelerated.

The first usable deposit appeared far earlier than its natural schedule predicted.

Lucien stared at it for a while.

Then he laughed quietly.

The result would never match what he could accomplish inside his universe.

It did not need to.

Even a modest increase in renewable strategic resources mattered when the world was preparing for war.

He expanded the experiments cautiously.

Medicinal plants.

Rare woods.

Certain mineral formations.

Materials whose creation depended heavily on time rather than some unique external condition.

Lootwell’s resource projections changed almost immediately.

Lucien looked at the numbers.

Apparently, understanding Time deeply enough to travel into the past had also made farming considerably more efficient.

He accepted that as compensation.

•••

Living beings remained another matter.

Lucien tested the boundary carefully.

Accelerating the biological processes surrounding a person was possible.

Accelerating the person’s complete temporal reference became much harder.

Consciousness resisted simplification.

Memory, soul, fate, and physical existence all moved together.

Trying to push one without correctly carrying the others created instability Lucien had no intention of exploring on actual people.

That confirmed what he already suspected.

The accelerated regions inside his universe remained special.

He could reproduce fragments of their effects outside.

He could not recreate the entire structure cheaply in the Big World.

Drops like the Hourglass of Slow Passage therefore remained valuable.

Lucien had accumulated many drops over the years.

Far too many.

That realization led to another problem.

He owned more drops than he could reasonably use in one lifetime.

His Inventory were filled with equipment, consumables, materials, artifacts, formation tools, emergency items, and strange objects he had collected because Drop Rate Max apparently believed moderation was a personal insult.

Lucien stood inside one of the larger stores and looked around.

Then he began emptying it.

•••

Vivian stared at the first storage ring he handed her.

Then Lucien placed another beside it.

Then another.

Her expression changed.

"Brother."

Lucien continued.

"Those contain the more immediately useful reserves."

Vivian looked at the rings.

Their internal spaces were enormous.

"What do you consider immediately useful?"

Lucien paused.

That was a dangerous question.

He handed her the next one anyway.

"I made an index."

That did not reassure her.

Lucien had expected that.

Inside each major storage set, he included Imprint Manifestations carrying organized explanations of the contents.

Functions.

Restrictions.

Known risks.

Recommended uses.

Items suitable for rewards.

Items that could reinforce armies.

Items intended only for emergency conditions.

Drops too strange to distribute casually were separated from everything else.

Lucien had spent enough years suffering from his own inventory that he refused to inflict the same experience on Vivian without instructions.

She inspected one of the Imprints.

Her expression became increasingly complicated.

"You were keeping all of this?"

"I forgot some of it existed."

Vivian slowly looked up.

Lucien decided not to elaborate.

She accepted the storage rings with considerably more solemnity than the conversation deserved.

He understood why.

This was not Lucien cleaning his inventory.

He was leaving Lootwell access to resources he would normally have controlled personally.

Vivian knew exactly what that implied.

She closed her fingers around the rings.

"I’ll use them properly."

Lucien smiled.

"I know."