Universe's End

"Now…. Where to begin?" Rory puzzled out, pacing in his basement. For once, he was alone -scourge mites notwithstanding- as Roxy was off at her first day of school.

I hope that goes well, but I've got to trust that it will.

Alone, Rory finally had time to return to working on the project of their walls.

"Cultivate the mites, then use them to help change the walls. Easy. Just need to make some liquid renewal pneuma. Easy, easy, easy."

Well, easy was perhaps overstating it a little. With Rory's current capabilities, transforming the regular pneuma permeating the environment into liquid form was beyond him. But that was also why he had gone to the effort of creating a Core room, where the pneuma would be far denser and thereby workable.

That was the 'weird' thing about pneuma. In its 'inert' form, the sky was the limit for how dense it could be; it would only stage up into higher forms if an outside force acted on them, concentrating the already dense pneuma and, in some cases, further refining them.

In theory, within the Core room, all that Rory would have to do was push it along.

Now, was practice ever that easy? No, seldom.

I probably need some form of container to make this easier on me. Like a bound circle, but three-dimensional. A bound space?

It sounded a lot like what a room gem already helped to achieve, but whereas a room gem was about 'claiming' space, a bound space would be a total isolation space.

"Alright, good in theory. In practice?"

There would need to be some testing, something that seemed reasonable enough.

Perhaps I can combine a few physically crafted bands to form an orb shape. Juice 'em up with some room gems, and bobs your uncle. Huh, where did that phrase ever come from? Wait, focus.

Putting aside the random stray thought, Rory mulled over the idea for a moment before nodding to himself.

"Seems workable, and truthfully not all that difficult."

Not wanting to waste resources right away, Rory flexed Earth Soul, drawing dirt and other earth elements from the ground as he shaped them into bands of clay-like substance. From there, he fired them with a quick bath of blood flame magic.

You know, putting these together is damn convenient.

Not long after, Rory held what looked like a spherical astrolabe made entirely of clay-like material.

I fully expect this to blow up in my face.

With absolutely no false notions, Rory began to trickle pneuma into the three-dimensional bound circle.

Only fifteen seconds in, the entire thing exploded. Taking a moment to spit out a glob of hardened clay and wipe off the dusty dirt that now shrouded his face like the world's newest makeup trend, Rory sighed.

"Yeah, probably should have put some sort of face mask on first. That's my fault."

Amending that, Rory was soon wearing what looked like a welder's mask as he continued to repeat the process of stabilizing a three-dimensional bound circle.

And failed.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Had it just been a matter of success or failure, Rory would have attempted a new angle of approach after the third hour straight of failures, but that wasn't what Rory was after. For now, he was wasting nothing but time and dirt, and in return, he was gaining quite a bit of insight. With each test, Rory carefully watched the flow of pneuma and the shifts in the immediate vicinity of the bound space 'device.'

A bound circle was almost binary in its base function, a yes or no that separated things, a buffer of sorts. A bound space was a literal dimension higher, existing in three dimensions, where a bound circle only existed in two.

Because of the simplistic, almost binary nature of a bound circle, anything extra Rory wanted to do required extensive planning and laying of supplementary runes to reinforce or change the overall intent. It was both its strength and its weakness.

A bound space wouldn't require the same degree of setup to match the effect of a bound circle, existing at a higher level. But that also meant that it would interact with forces and magical 'laws' that he'd never considered.

Or, magical laws that he hadn't considered in a long time.

In the end, after seven hours of testing, watching the flow of pneuma, and tracking where the failure point occurred each time, Rory realized his error —an error that he'd known about for decades.

"Oh, damn it," Rory sighed. "I can't believe I didn't think of that."

His attempts had assumed a collection of three-dimensional bound circles, working together to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts, synergy, not addition.

That was wrong.

Pneuma had a very weird trait.

Well, scratch that, pneuma had several weird traits, but Rory was focusing on one for the time.

Pneuma, unlike the physical aspects of reality, could exist at multiple points in space simultaneously. The closest old Earth analogy Rory had was likening it to quantum entanglement and bridging.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

I think that's how that worked. What do I know? I wasn't a damn physicist.

Anyway, pneuma was able to exist at multiple points at once, a weird little quirk that Rory still didn't understand the why of. In the case of a regular bound circle, or even a network of bound circles, there was no problem with that; they weren't working as a proper singular entity.

In the case of a bound space, having separate three-dimensional circles was a matter of disharmonious 'flow' even when they were meant to operate in tandem. What Rory needed, therefore, wasn't 'similar' bound circles. They needed to be the same bound circle, to capitalize on pneuma's ability to exist simultaneously in multiple points.

Now, how the hell do I do that?

It was one thing to say all of that; it was another entirely even to begin to put it into practice.

Still uncertain, Rory was finally drawn out from his rumination as he heard the sound of feet coming from further up the stairs. Turning around, Rory waited with his hands on his hips until Roxy appeared, charging down the stairs.

"How was the first day?" Rory asked nonchalantly.

"Oh, I thought I might surprise you," Roxy grumbled before seating herself on the wooden step beneath her. "What gave me away?"

"Aside from the fact that you're as sneaky as an elephant?"

"What's an elephant?" The girl curiously asked.

"Nothing important," Rory waved it off. "You weren't very sneaky, is what I'm saying."

"Oh…. Can you teach me to be sneaky?"

"I wouldn't call myself the sneaky type either," Rory laughed. "Anyway, your day? How was it?"

"Weird." Roxy sighed. "People looked at me strangely."

"Was anyone mean?"

"No, the opposite." The young girl threw her hands up in the air. "People were super interested in me, but I could feel they didn't mean it the right way."

Ahh, right, her horns can probably pick up some of that stuff.

"People just tend to be like that," Rory said as he crouched so that he was more in line with her eye level. "What about the rest of your day? How was the rest of school?"

"Uhm, easy and hard. I didn't know much. Math was the worst!"

Makes sense, her ability to perceive things through intent probably doesn't translate as well with something like math.

"And the easy parts of the day?"

"Oh, all the 'pre-vocationals,' that stuff was easy to learn."

"Pre-vocationals?" Rory asked, uncertain of the term.

"Yeah, the teacher explained, mostly for me, that it was how they help us get a feel of what direction we want to take so that we don't spend as much time without a vocation later!"

Oh, so that's what they're calling it. Fair enough.

"The other students were annoyed, so I could tell that the teacher was purposely doing only easy stuff for the pre-vocations for me."

"And it went well, you said?"

"Super easy!" The girl raised her arms as if she were flexing. "I learned super fast!"

"Glad to hear. Make any friends?"

Roxy glanced around shiftily before her shoulders slumped.

"No. They all looked at me like a kid, even when they were nice."

Figured.

"It will come with time," Rory said, playing the role of supportive parent. "That aside, do you have any homework?"

"Homework?"

"Did they give you any assignments to do at home?"

"Oh! Yeah, how did you know?" Roxy asked.

"I was a kid once, too," Rory laughed as Roxy stepped back, surprised.

"You were?"

Going to ignore that.

"Well then, kiddo, you take care of that. I've got somewhere to go that isn't suitable for you."

"Okayyyyy,"

Watching the girl run back up the stairs, Rory found himself with a slight smile on his face, before it dashed a moment later in contemplation.

I need to figure out her room situation.

She was currently using his room as her place, but Rory knew that any young girl would want a room for themselves.

Considerations for later.

Putting the thoughts aside, Rory made his way to the tunnel he'd dug from his basement into the Core room of Ehkorrus. Jogging at a leisurely pace, within minutes, Rory was standing in the Core room, arms crossed.

"So, back to the question of how the hell to manage a bound space," Rory said out loud, pacing. "What really is a circle, but an infinite collection of singular points? No, that's stupid, that sounds like just pretentious 'look at me, I'm so smart' ramblings…"

Thinking for a moment, Rory held his hand out as a blood red crystal began to form, a fusion of his affinities and his projection magic. Forming over the span of nearly a minute, Rory held what looked like a strand of RNA. Examining it, Rory's frown deepened. Closing his hand, the strand of hardened projection magic evaporated back into the ether.

Feels like I'm getting somewhere, but where?

Re-doing the process, Rory soon held what appeared to be the double-helix strand of DNA, examining it for several minutes.

I think I'm starting to get sidetracked.

Rory's entire goal was the creation of liquid pneuma, and he'd figured a proper vessel would make it easier, but the more he thought about the question of a three-dimensional bound space, the more confounding it seemed to become.

Back to basics.

Grabbing hold of the dense pneuma within the core room, Rory began to condense it forcibly until a nearly invisible vapor shimmered, lasting only as long as his hold over the pneuma.

Grade two.

Still keeping hold, Rory really began to put some magical muscle into the process, the barely perceptible vapor transforming into a thick cloud of reddish-green coloration.

Grade three.

Grade four, liquid pneuma, was something Rory could not brute-force, not with a more advanced form of pneuma, such as renewal aspect pneuma. In the past, he'd managed to make some liquid pneuma, but it had been entirely neutral in aspect, and he'd also relied on quite a setup of bound circles and other tools.

Again, that's why I wanted to figure out how to manage a bounded space, as it would help bridge that gap with even tighter control and the ability to really condense it, but for now, baby steps.

Scuffing a circle on the ground, Rory stepped within as several magic circles appeared floating above and below his hand, where the cloud of pneuma hung. Brows furrowed, Rory began splitting his mental threads as he spun up more magic. This time, a 'tube' of the same red colored crystal encircled the cloud, unfolding until it became a ball-like film that surrounded the gas cloud.

Not a real bound space, but maybe a prototype version?

Satisfied with the fact that what he was doing was about as good as it was going to get for the time being, Rory began to 'push' inward, the magical circles above and below his hand contracting at the same time that the thin crystal 'shell' surrounding the cloud began to shrink inward as well.

In the first few seconds, it felt only marginally more difficult than the earlier process of condensing the inert pneuma into stage two and stage three gaseous pneuma. Yet after a six-count, beads of sweat were already springing up on his brow.

And now for the fun part.

Throwing everything into the effort, it felt to Rory as if he were doing the magical equivalent of trying to bench his PR, but a PR that was increasing with each second until it wasn't just weights on the end of the bar, but cars.

Not enough!

Struggling, Rory continued to press in as much as he could, vaguely aware that blood had begun to seep down his nose, eyes, and ears at some point, but he continued to struggle.

Lasting for nearly a minute, at last Rory could hold out no longer as the magic shattered, the pneuma escaping in an instant as he dropped onto his ass.

Feeling something in the palm of his hand, Rory made a point of surrounding it with a tiny marble of red crystal, before his brain went into forced reboot, staring up at the cavern ceiling without a thought for nearly an hour straight. It wasn't even that he'd been knocked unconscious; his brain had just petered out from pushing so hard.

When Rory finally did slowly come back to life, sitting upright with a blistering headache, the first thing he made sure to do was investigate the marble that he'd formed in his hand.

Oh, sweet almighty.

The marble itself wasn't special, just a run-of-the-mill projection formed with his use of lattice and blood affinity so it would last longer.

No, what was special was what was inside the marble. There, no more than a drop or two of liquid splashed around, the same autumn orange mix-match of red, orange, and green that he associated with the renewal element.

"Better than I honestly hoped for," Rory sighed, feeling quite pleased with himself.

Proof of concept, confirmed.

The one or two droplets of liquid pneuma provided further confirmation that he could concentrate the pneuma to a high enough degree to be successful, but unless he planned to spend the next year straight, it was far from efficient.

But, not a dead end.

Rory hadn't really expected it to be a dead end, but then, you could never be certain until you actually ran a trial run.

"Back to basics was the right move. Now, that brings me to the not-so-basic question: I really have to figure out how to make this bound space work."

It was something that Rory was excited about, as he was for any new creation, but it would have to hold for the time being.

After all, he had a kid to feed.