After sitting down and watching a couple of movies with everyone, I became more determined to avoid such excessive usage of fast forwarding after this coming match was over. Unless there was something that I critically needed to develop in order to have my world survive an attack, it was fine to let things slowly develop. I could save up system updates to just before I decided to fast forward, do a big patch all at once, and then when it’s done fast forwarding I would be ready to apply another update if needed.
For now… I had to train. The upcoming battle would be one that heavily took place within the void, and I was woefully underprepared for a protracted battle in the void. Which was why I now stood in front of both Leowynn and Tsubaki, in one of the larger training rooms that Tubrock had created within Olympus.
Leowynn had a firm look on her face as she watched me, clearly not in the mood to play around at the moment. Honestly, I was thankful for that. “Right now… I’m afraid that you wouldn’t be able to survive in the void for more than an hour at a time, dad.” She said honestly. “There are a number of problems that arise when fighting in the void, so long as one is not a Fallen God. Starting today, I’m going to work on training you to overcome these problems… both of you.” She turned her head to look at Tsubaki, who gave a small nod of acceptance.
“The first problem lies in the fact that our powers originate from the worlds we use them in.” Leowynn explained, creating a simple magic circle above one of her hands. “In the void, the geometric magic system does not exist. You can only maintain its operation so long as you carry a trace of the ‘information’ from the world whose powers you wish to use. This trace will be corroded the longer you remain in the void.”
“Fallen Gods are able to resist this corruption indefinitely, as am I due to my Void domain. However, normal people will lose their powers within fifteen minutes of entering the void. Depending on their size and power, items can take up to half an hour if they are not properly shielded. Dad, you would last an hour only because of the strength of your divinity as the Keeper.”
“When the battle comes, my incarnation will try to provide you with shielding against corrosion before the fight, but there will always be ways for a divine blessing to be negated. You need to be prepared to activate your own shielding. That will be the first step to allowing the two of you to survive a protracted void battle.”
“What do we have to do?” I asked in a firm tone, Leowynn nodding when she noted my determination.
“For now, I am going to emulate the void within this training room. This won’t be the instant power of negation that some fallen gods employ, like that other invasion. That is an accelerated corrosion meant to catch the opponent off guard. Instead, what I’m going to do is simulate it as if you were simply leaving a world.”
After saying that, Leowynn stomped one foot on the ground, the world around us seeming to shatter. I found myself floating weightlessly in the black abyss, my eyes briefly widening. However, Leowynn merely stood where she was, arms crossed in front of her chest. “I will give each of you twenty minutes to form a defense, before I cancel this power.”
“To do so, you have to sense the energy of the void while your powers persist. One of the first lessons you learn when training to be a fallen deity is that mana carries a faint connection to the void. Use this connection, shape the void and guide it. Create a protective film around yourself to prevent the void from entering and corroding your body.”
Almost as soon as she finished speaking, I saw a black aura wrapping around Tsubaki. Leowynn looked over, giving a small chuckle. “Chelsea taught you how to control void energy a long time ago. However… that is too much. You only need a thin film, or you will be needlessly wasting your mana while dividing your focus.”
As she spoke, I reached out with my World Sight. This was a Saint Energy devoted entirely to detection, so it should be more than capable of detecting the essence of the void in order to help me control it… or so I thought. Because I was focusing on such minute details, I had to use a very small amount of World Sight. And, I did indeed see tiny black and red specks of energy.
The problem was that this energy automatically broke down any World Sight that it came into contact with. The ‘vision’ I obtained immediately became blurry, before going fully black. Gritting my teeth, I released pure mana this time, trying to manipulate the energy of the void as if it were natural energy.
This worked… to a degree. I commanded the void energy to come wrap around my body, as Leowynn said, but it instead surged into my body, making my eyes go wide in shock. Thankfully, Leowynn was there, and this was only a ‘false void’, otherwise that likely would have caused explosive results.
Still, Leowynn looked at me with an approving smile. “Good start, dad. Treating it like natural energy isn’t entirely wrong. But, if you want to do it like that, there is something that you need to remember. The void operates based on rules. When issuing the commands, you have to be careful to create ironclad rules to prevent any accidents like just now.” Saying so, she pulled the energy of the fake void out of my body. “In the best case scenario, that failure just now would have deprived you of all of your power, wiping out the trace of the world whose power you wanted to wield. Try again.”
Gritting my teeth, I nodded my head. Now that I knew what to watch out for, I should have been able to do it on the second try. Create a one millimeter thin barrier around my body. The barrier must maintain a distance of one centimeter at all times. This was the command I sent to the void this time… and yet the results were exactly the same as before.
My eyes widened as Leowynn pulled the void out of me again, looking in my direction. “What rules did you set?” When I repeated my previous instructions, a helpless smile appeared on her face. “Space, and therefore distance, is a concept that applies to a world. Within the void, distance is purely based on your perception of events. Naturally, when you apply these terms to the void itself, it does not have the definition of these units of measurement.”
I glanced over at Tsubaki, who was focusing on reducing the size of her black aura. “In that case, what unit of measurement should I be using?” I asked, looking back at Leowynn.
“Units. Just units.” Leowynn answered with a smile. “Like all energy, the void can be separated into independent units of energy. However, these units can be big or small, and can self-propagate. This means that there is an infinite amount of energy within the void itself, because new units are born instantly to replace any consumed units.”
My brow furrowed, but I nodded my head, focusing again. This time, I created a barrier of mana around my body. I imagined this barrier as a weak magnet, and the void energy as iron dust. Attach a layer of void to my mana barrier, no more than three units thick, and prevent any additional void energy from passing into the barrier.
This time, I could see a flickering black field wrapped around my body. Leowynn nodded her head, but didn’t say anything. In fact, I could already feel that this barrier wouldn’t hold, and so immediately increased it to ten units. As soon as I did so, the black field seemed to stabilize.
“Good. This is step one.” She said, before looking over at Tsubaki. “How is it coming for you?”
Tsubaki’s eyes were closed, her own barrier now extending three centimeters out in all directions. Drastically smaller than her original field, but still hardly a ‘film’. “I believe that I should have this technique mastered within a few minutes.”
Leowynn nodded her head, leaning back against nothing and letting her body simply hover in place. She wasn’t in any rush, as Tsubaki had already created a barrier to repulse void energy, and now it was only a matter of refining it.
It was hard to tell how long it took, as there was no concrete way of measuring time at the moment. However, from a guess, it took roughly ten minutes for the dense armor to become a flexible film. Leowynn nodded in satisfaction, pushing herself off from the same nothingness that she had been leaning against. “Good. From now on, whenever we train in the void like this, the two of you must maintain this armor. My next question… how long have we been training?” She asked with a playful smile.
My eyes went wide, able to understand that there was a hidden meaning in her words. However, it was Tsubaki that first spoke. “While the estimated duration would be as long as sixteen minutes, this is an uncertainty. You purposely severed my connection with my avatars when coming here, after all. My assumption is that you have altered the flow of time around us?”
Leowynn flashed a thumbs up to Tsubaki. “That’s right. Time, like space, is mostly a construct created within specific worlds. I use the word mostly because you can’t travel into the past or future. The flow of one event to the next is locked, but the speed of this flow can be manipulated, just like how dad set Lorek and Spica to an accelerated flow.”
“Currently, we have spent three seconds in the void. Unfortunately, Standard time is synchronized to dad’s personally perceived time, so it’s still been more than a dozen minutes of Standard time since we entered. Otherwise, this would be a good training cheat.”
Tsubaki seemed to agree, nodding her head. “Perhaps… though, is there any significance behind that particular lesson?”
“Of course.” Leowynn smiled. “Imagine the battle is fought on three fronts. Two battlefields seem evenly balanced, while the third has a slight disadvantage. Wanting to quickly finish the fight and head to the third battlefield as reinforcements, you focus on your enemy and exert all of your strength to win.”
“However, by the time you defeat your foe, not only has the third battle been lost, but the opponent from that battle has joined the other fight, and already wiped out both of your allies. Although you may have only perceived a five second battle, your opponent interfered with your flow of time, stretching that five seconds into an hour. Plenty of time for both of the other battles to finish.”
My eyes went wide once again, imagining such a scene. “How can we defend against something like that…?” Clearly, it wasn’t a matter of creating a defensive barrier, as that barrier had altogether failed to stop this time dilation previously.
Leowynn’s smile grew slightly wider as she answered. “Points of reference. I said before that space was a matter of perspective. Time is the same way. When we arrived, I spent two seconds accelerating my activity speed to nearly a thousand times normal. Although to you it looked like I was mostly standing still, the fluctuations of the void caught this acceleration in my energy flow and responded.”
“Likewise, if you focus wholly on an opponent, they can take the opportunity to resonate with the void while slowing down their own movements. As long as they maintain a consistent flow, you will be trapped in their time. However, if you allowed your perception to continue monitoring your allies during this fight, you would have an additional point of reference to prevent this manipulation.”
“When we entered this void, both of you were wholly focused on me for this lesson, and neither of you spent those crucial seconds observing each other. If I had slowed my energy flow to a crawl instead of accelerating it, twenty minutes would have passed in the blink of an eye, and you would have been fully corroded by the void before you noticed anything wrong.”
“That makes sense…” I thought about it for a moment, before raising a question. “In that case, would we be able to have a device like a ticking clock, so we can subconsciously measure time by its rhythm?”
“Good answer! But… not good enough.” Leowynn chuckled. “You’re right, doing that would lock you into a standard flow of time, being whichever world you emerged from. However… this is also a crucial weakness.”
To demonstrate, Leowynn calmly walked over to Tsubaki, patting her on the cheek. While Tsubaki was confused, Leowynn walked over to me, lightly tapping on my chest. “In under one hundredth of a second, I just killed both of you. Tsubaki’s head was blown off, and your chest was crushed. Both of your void barriers crumbled, and your divine core detonated after being flooded with the void.”
Tsubaki’s body shook, tails standing straight as she seemed to understand. “If we use an external device to subconsciously measure time, we won’t be able to respond to an opponent’s acceleration…”
“That’s right.” Leowynn confirmed readily. “You must always be on guard against someone altering the flow of time in the void. If they are slowing themselves down, they want to buy their allies time and delay you. In this case, you have to maintain your normal time through these points of reference, allowing you to outpace your foe. If they are accelerating, you have to accelerate to match them.”
“How do we do that while maintaining the points of reference?” I asked in confusion, Leowynn offering a small smile before she explained.
“Rather than getting caught up in your opponent’s acceleration, you have to accelerate yourself to match. That’s the main reason why I brought both of you here, to serve as each other’s point of reference. You will be fighting two avatars of myself, who will irregularly accelerate or decelerate. While maintaining each other as a point of reference, you have to learn how to instantly deduce the change in my flow of time, and adjust your own time to maintain an optimal flow of combat. Remember, it only took me two seconds to accelerate my energy by a thousand times. If you take more than a tenth of a second to catch up with your opponent, you lose.”
