Chapter 52: A Thousand Deaths

  ADMINISTRATOR POV

  I sat up abruptly, hand going to my chest. It wasn’t normal for me to feel disoriented when awakening in the Sanctuary, but the way Tastka had fallen unconscious must have disrupted the smooth transition some. I spent a tiny moment confused and panicked at my lack of a heartbeat, and the lack of warmth or pain.

  That passed swiftly, without any instinctive panic from the lack of breath or the like. I glanced at Diamon nearby and tilted my ears down in an elf-frown. “I’m not sure how long I will be up, my avatar was knocked out.”

  The mammoth-creature just waved a trunk. “It is a negligible time to wait. I still have observations to make.”

  That brought me up short, and my time as Tastka had also let me clear my thoughts more than before. I stayed in the chair in case I blacked out again, but my tail swayed in a small motion to get Diamon’s attention.

  “That reminds me… don’t you have a universe of your own to tend to? Is it okay for you to spend so much time here?” I paused as I asked those questions, pondering. “Though truth be told, the whole concept of time passing here is a little strange, with all the time dilation.”

  Diamon shuffled slightly as he turned to look at me. “I do have a universe. It is slowed down for the time being, but even with that, it is reasonably stable and mature. The civilizations are winding down. I will likely attempt to incorporate some of your ideas into the next intelligent beings that rise.”

  The trunks on either side of his main rose, and he continued, “You are not strange to find the time passage outside of universes to be confusing. We merely interpret the time as passing this way, when it is more like an ordered series of events.”

  I blinked and twitched my tailtip, annoyed. That description sounded like… the passage of time. Isn’t that what time was? An ordered series of events. Cause and effect? Maybe I was too primitive in my understanding of higher concepts, but I had a feeling the truth was simpler than Diamon let on.

  With a heavy sigh, I glanced at my interface again, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to bring up what had happened yet. Once I had more information, maybe I would. For now, I’d best stay on the Senior Administrator’s good side.

  “I uh… I apologize for starting a fight over the whole thing about killing off the Aravel,” I grumbled. That still caused a flare of anger within me, but I was able to control it in this body. “I know you’re trying to get more energy for some reason that seems pretty dire, and you’re just trying to help.”

  Diamon’s middle trunk waved lightly. “All is forgiven. I, too, should apologize. It is true I believe you are too protective of your creations, but I forget what it is like to be new to this…” He hesitated, as if the next part were harder to say. “And I must recognize that you are doing much better than almost all of our newest Administrators. I should not be so quick to criticize.”

  The twitching in my tail eased somewhat. I sighed, then tilted my head curiously. “I’m surprised that there aren’t more successful ones. What do they do that fails so quickly? Aside from the ones that don’t make their universe different enough?”

  The elder Administrator let out a snort-like sound that I recognized, somehow, as his equivalent of a thoughtful sigh. “That is the most common error, but there are many.”

  The small mammoth-thing contemplated before continuing. “Most attempt to create the entire world, rather than using some level of accelerated diversification such as you did. They try to attempt too much control, and inevitably forget too many things, repeatedly. I understand you had a similar problem, at first?”

  “Mmm,” I replied in a noncommittal noise. “One big one, and small ones keep popping up. I guess if you make too many of those, or keep wiping and starting over, you’d run out of energy quick…”

  “Precisely,” Diamon agreed, his two other trunks waving in more enthusiasm than before. “As for others… often they become too invested in how their intelligence and civilization is developing, and if it does not conform to what they desire, they wipe it away and start over… again and again.”

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  His flower opened, and he gestured at it with his left trunk. “Another reason I was perhaps too quick to suggest annihilating your Aravel. Such revisions need to be done at times, but taken to an extreme it does no one good. It should be an option, yet only when done for good reason.”

  I wrinkled my snout in distaste, “Yeah… and I know someday I may have to do some cataclysmic event or something. I get it, we’re looking at the big picture. I just don’t like causing needless pain.”

  “Pain is fleeting,” Diamon argued with a loud chuff. “At least for lesser beings. Once dead, their souls are reincarnated without the bad memories, to continue existence. Unless…” He checked his flower-interface, tendrils at the end of his trunk squirming against the petals. “Good, you did not select the soul-burning option.”

  “Of course not!” I sputtered. “That’s horrible!”

  Diamon’s trunk waved again, “For once, I agree fully. But it is an option for a reason.” He shuffled a step closer. “If it will help, consider that unlike those that inevitably die for your purposes, you remember all the pain. Your avatar will struggle, be injured, grow old perhaps, and die. You will remember far longer than even your Aravel. You are not asking them to do anything you are not doing, yourself.”

  It wasn’t like he didn’t have a point, I just didn’t like the idea of using that as justification to do whatever. The thought that other Administrators had fallen into a god-complex and basically murdered entire civilizations repeatedly for minor reasons was… disquieting, to say the least.

  The reminder that I’d have to remember the entire life of Tastka, including her death, was a little more unnerving. I’d briefly thought about it before, but the chance to live was worth it. Seeing a life from another’s perspective was… interesting, too.

  Thinking of Tastka just reminded me of what had happened. The voice she had heard wasn’t mine – except in as far as Tastka was me – but had been hers, speaking in a way she could understand. While she was awake, ‘I’ couldn’t do anything, so who was it? Some aspect of myself carried around within her?

  “Diamon, what if Tastka – my avatar – suddenly had access to all my knowledge? Would that be a problem in influencing her actions?”

  The other Administrator went still as he thought for a moment. “If such a thing were to occur,” he murmured slowly, “Then the choices made would be the same as your own. Remember that your avatar uses your soul, without the memories. Give those back and they become you.”

  I scratched behind one ear, then dropped my head back against my chair. “Makes sense.”

  So that voice had possibly just been Tastka acting upon my knowledge. The swimming vision, the blacking out… she’d almost certainly had a concussion. That might have confused the connection between us – especially with her strange class – enough to let my own desires bleed through.

  I hoped this didn’t make the elves think concussions gave them prophetic knowledge.

  The trick she’d done with mana was more interesting, though. Forming a tube of Pure mana, then sending Entropic through it… that was a fine theory, but creating an ability or spell to do that would take a lot of refinement and practice. She’d done it on her own, while disoriented, on the first try. That wasn’t an ability I’d seen her use before, and that concerned me a little.

  A good spell though. Probably would take a lot more incantations to pull off for most. I’d put that part into spellcasting as a shortcut – spellcasters could use words of power spoken while activating their mana core to rapidly lay out complex patterns, and connect them with their own various mana control skills. Push more mana of the necessary essence through that structure, and it did stuff.

  It was basically how powers work, but less efficient because the caster had to build the entire framework on the fly every time. A spell that duplicated a monster’s special ability, or a class’s perk, would use several times more mana and take more concentration than the ability itself. Casters were flexible, but ran out of mana quickly. I suspected Tastka’s blackout may have partly been from using too much mana, especially with some of it being Pure.

  Strictly speaking, the incantations weren’t necessary, nor the gestures used to help shape the structures. A skilled enough caster could do it all by will alone, though they’d likely need practice to do it as swiftly as someone using the ‘helper’ abilities. Tastka was nowhere near that level yet.

  Was she?

  I’d largely added the incantations and gestures thing to make it possible at all to use ‘spells’ in the way I’d envisioned. That had probably been a holdover from how I thought magic should work from my knowledge on Earth. I could have come up with some other means of making spells possible, but this had just made sense to me.

  Regardless, the strange clarity she had in putting that together was – possibly – concerning. That new sense let her analyze not just monster powers like that thing’s pounce ability, but reviewing my memories I saw even more in-depth analysis. She was seeing her companions pushing mana through their bodies to enhance themselves.

  She was seeing class stat boosting in action, was my guess. That new ability was pretty potent, and I was almost certain it broke the rules. I’d put some restrictions on what could be developed, and that seemed far too useful to have never evolved before.

  I’d have to analyze it more closely with Diamon. Maybe he would know what’s going on.

  But first… to lay back and see what I could learn from Tastka’s viewpoint. She was confused by her class, so I was sure it would be something she’d be poking at from her perspective as well. I also needed to know if what she’d done was some new power or a strange fluke.

  It was weird, hoping that a version of me didn’t end up with some cheat power, now.

  A Foggy Mind