Chapter 276 – Lessons About Perspective

They spend over a week alone in the throne room working on several methods to add protection to The Clock’s basic functions, trading small droplets of knowledge in the process in a carefully balanced game. Neither of them mentions the passing of time, with Phyllie wordlessly waving a hand and sending them back to the start of their meeting every time it runs its course, but they both track the total.

“There we go,” Phyllie says as she carves the final rune of a complex array they’ve made together into a greater time crystal, checking it over with a pass of mana before handing it over to Emily. “Try to activate it now.”

Emily nods and does so, sending a pulse of mana into the crystal. She doesn’t see anything happening, but she feels an odd sense of being watched settle in at the centre of her being.

“Tracking established,” Emily declares. “Is the barrier holding?”

“It appears so. The entire throne room has entered a stable state of temporal isolation. Give it thirty seconds and activate phase two.”

Emily doesn’t even need to count, silently waiting for the moment to arrive before activating The Clock. She feels a slight pull in her gut, which she lets take hold and, in a blink, she can feel the seconds tick back, returning them to the exact moment when she pushed mana into the engraved crystal.

“Success!” Phyllie says, tapping the air with fingers wrapped in time mana before rubbing them together, inspecting something Emily can neither see nor sense with a distant look in her crystalline eyes. “That’s now a limited but flexible concealment method, and a stable fixed one you can use. You’ll have to work on the former some more yourself if you want to improve it beyond the current hour-long limit, but that should be enough to guarantee your safety so long as you use them sensibly. I’ll consider that the basic requirements of our agreement met. Do you also see this as sufficient?”

Emily hears the question, but she’s under no illusion that she has a genuine choice in the outcome.

“Yes, thank you,” she replies with a small dip of her head, refusing to lower herself but still showing respect as she makes to stand.

“Good.” Phyllie smiles, this one more natural than all those before it, her cheeks remaining together and her teeth flat. “In that case, we continue because I deem you worthy. Let us have a little look at time paradoxes. They’re both a dangerous consequence of incompetence when working with time, and an interesting edge case that can be weaponised in the strangest ways.”

“That sounds fascinating.” Emily relaxes back into her seat. “I appreciate your approval and willingness to give me more of your time, but first, could I ask another question you’ve brought to my attention?”

“Go on.”

“What is existential weight?”

“Back to that?” The queen remains in her relaxed posture, but her eyes narrow. “Why?”

“I don’t really know, but the term has just stuck with me since you mentioned it. I just… get the feeling it’s more important to me than you’re letting on. For some reason, I feel like I should know what it is, like the answer should be on the tip of my tongue, but something’s muting my taste when recognition should come immediately.”

“Interesting.” Phyllie leans forward, her intrigue weighing on Emily like a physical force as she applies magical pressure without conscious effort. “How about this? I’ll teach you what I wanted to about paradoxes and, if by the end of that you can give me a half-reasonable guess at what existential weight is, I’ll reveal more.”

Paradoxes? Why? Is it related, or is she just giving me time to consider my answer…

“Okay, I’ll bite.”

“Perfect.” The humanoid-gem relaxes again, lifting the weight she expelled. “To start with, do you have any existing understanding of what a paradox is, or what constitute paradoxical states of existence?”

“I hadn’t encountered the specific term until leaving my home planet and scanning The Net, but I believe it means something self-contradictory,” Emily replies.

“Exactly. A time-paradox is created when someone’s meddling with time influences their own timeline too deeply. For example, if I kill your crew today, and you rewind time three days to kill me before I even have the idea, I will no longer be around to kill your crew and cause you to turn back three days in the first place. This is a time-paradox and, though there are methods to protect against the damage they can cause, there’s also a chance you’ll blink out of existence to balance it.”

A chill runs down Emily’s spine as recognition begins to spark.

“There are many larger and smaller ways of inducing a paradox, but once you have done so, the moment you return to the time you left to begin your meddling, today in this case, you will enter a paradoxical state of existence: a state in which you both should and shouldn’t exist as you are. This state can be damaging, but there have been several methods discovered to use it to our advantage-”

“I’ve done that before,” Emily cuts in almost without realising, looking up to find a small crease in her teacher’s brow but no disapproval otherwise as Phyllie nods for her to explain. “Entered a state of paradoxical existence, I mean. At least, I believe I did. Back when I first awakened and began learning the intricacies of magic, I abused The Clock a lot to absorb as much knowledge as possible in as short a timespan as possible. However, the day I created my first original potion, I ran into a strange situation I haven’t fully explained to this day.”

Phyllie’s brow relaxes, and an excited glint shines in her eyes as Emily continues.

“I reset after successfully creating the potion, to save materials from a few failed prior attempts, and I didn’t rebrew the finished draught immediately. Then, the following day, strange things started happening around me. It was small stuff at first: trays of food in the cafeteria spilling on me, some of my earliest mechanical creations finally malfunctioning thanks to wear. Inconveniences, nothing more. Then they got more dangerous when one of my large machines broke and tried to fling a shard of metal through my cortex. I guessed what had caused the misfortune and attempted to rebrew the potion to test my theory. Low-chance, random failures in the brewing process made it take a while, and a few rewinds, but the moment I finished, I relived the day without any bad luck in sight.”

“Sounds like a textbook case of a low-value paradox bending probability around you to try and fix itself,” Phyllie agrees with a nod, her lips curling into a subdued smile as she watches the gears turn in Emily’s head.

“But I hadn’t influenced my timeline in a major way; I only brewed a potion that I then didn’t use for weeks after that point. How could that induce a paradox… unless… brewing the potion itself was a great enough change to warrant it. Is existential weight the value of your past accomplishments?”

“Unbelievable.” Phyllie begins a slow, exaggerated applause, each impact between her rock-solid hands letting off a crystalline ring. “You’re so close with only a small nudge. Your mind is truly fascinating; I guess it’s the mechanical influence that aids in making connections so efficiently. Existential weight isn’t quite the value of your past achievements, but it may as well be. Did you possibly tell anyone in that first timeline that you’d created a new potion?”

“I did.” Emily nods, counting both Ivor and the system as observers.

“That’s the real crux of your problem, then. You see, existential weight is something most awakened have no awareness of until the final ascension from eight to ninth circle, when we begin to sense it in ourselves, hence why I said it shouldn’t concern you yet. It is, at its most base form, the record of impacts you’ve made on others throughout your life. Whether that be from awakening another, to simply brewing a potion they’ve distantly heard of, every action you take will influence your existential weight to a degree.”

“Why is brewing a potion big enough to cause a paradox then, but all the other shit I do and rewind that affects others is fine?”

“I can’t answer that for you, unfortunately. In part, because it’s nearly impossible to, given how hard it is to predict all direct consequences of a single action, and, possibly more importantly, because if I had the answer, it would be worth far more than a throw away comment. We’re still yet to find a substantial use for existential weight, other than the small passive boost a higher value will grant your cultivation, and any information relating to increasing or decreasing it is considered highly valuable and personal,” Phyllie explains, breaking her eyes away from Emily and gazing off into the middle-distance. “What I’ve told you is already far more than most of my equals will be willing to give away.”

“Understood.” Emily nods and drops the subject, letting Phyllie return to explaining weaponised paradoxes.

But her cortex refuses to leave it, a few threads churning through related questions the whole time.

The biggest variable I didn’t mention is the system. I know that it was a system quest that caused the paradox, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t also due to a large influx of existential weight. Does the system boost the increase I get from small actions with quests, or are the quests made to push me towards actions that will grow the weight? The latter seems more likely, especially after that legacy quest, but my progression requirements seem like they’re to that end, so why are both sub-systems separate?

***

Several days that never happened later, Phyllie comes to the end of the time magic and theory she’s willing to part with and brings their exchange to a close.

“I shall call our session there, since you now know enough that I would call you a competent time mage,” the Queen of Gems declares, dismissing the Möbius strip of time-mana she was using for a demonstration and setting her hands down flat on the armrests of her throne. “Is there anything else you would like to ask me before I return you to your fleet and send you on your way?”

“I do have a few questions,” Emily confirms, opening a new page in her system notebook. “You asked about how I created my children: is that related to how phosphelites reproduce? I know you’ve publicly claimed to have grown naturally from mana-crystals, but we both know that doesn’t apply to the rest of your species that strangely seem to only ever be born within your territory.”

“Yes, it is.” Phyllie nods without batting an eye, ignoring everything after the question that’s known to be taboo within The Guild. “I won’t show you the incubators I created and use to spread my kind, and you will never tell another soul of their existence, for obvious reasons, but I can tell you that the overall method is not too dissimilar to how you created the elemental.”

“Silica.”

“Right, Silica.”

“Thank you,” Emily says with gratitude and a genuine smile, before her expression drops and her eyes narrow. “But why are you willing to tell me that without any further enforcement of secrecy? I can understand continuing the lesson for longer than the agreed-upon time to a certain extent, but your race’s secrets?”

“Well, you’re wrong and right to question that. I did claim you as my student, after all,” Phyllie replies, raising a calm, unamused brow at Emily’s suspicion. “Although it was only a short lesson for now, I’m sure our paths will cross again. That status alone puts my consideration of you higher than anyone but my closest friends and direct family.”

“That’s… surprising.” Emily blinks, her expression blank but her mind churning with questions and a few answers.

She understands that I’m likely to reach ninth circle and stage. She helped me, and having that reputation should increase her existential weight.

“It shouldn’t be. I’ve revealed information relating to my pursuits of magic to you. Those are my most closely guarded personal secrets of all. What’s information that puts one of my many properties, my race, at small risk compared to knowledge that could allow another to directly counter a skill that might save my life?”

Emily’s confusion clears as the final pieces fall into place in her head.

Her race is to her what my mechanical legion is to me. A creation we care for, but still an expendable asset.

“I understand. Thank you for clearing my… lack of perspective,” Emily says, pausing for a moment and returning most of her cores’ focus to the fresh data on time magic before adding with a small smile. “Teacher.”