“I swear,” said Aiw?. “That's the first time I've passed out from exhaustion.”
He seemed exhilarated by this.
“That just means you weren't trying hard enough before,” Zane informed him.
Aiw? considered this. “…I suppose I wasn’t.”
Zane was pleased to see he'd made a difference.
***
The months passed like this, and slowly Zane’s Infusion rose. From 1% to 5% to 10%…. The essence he ‘primed’ gained a certain shimmer; more and more he saw it flickering across his Flare.
***
One afternoon he stood on one end of a cavern, across from a test dummy—a golem of welded bronze.
“Test #1. Solar Flare Smash, done at 20% infused essence.” Aiw? marked it down in his notebook, nodding thoughtfully. He adjusted his goggles. “Ready when you are!”
Zane took a deep breath, stomped—and shot into action.
His knuckles ignited.
Flare exploded into the world. His fist rocketed out. The full heft of the blow crumpled the dummy’s face like straw.
Then it shot clean off. It bounced off the floor, spiraled into the ceiling, hit the floor again before rolling to a smoking halt.
Zane nodded appreciatively at his fist.
Aiw? whistled. “That dummy was rated at half-step true God. That’s about… oh—three hundred Apocalypse Units of raw force?”
Zane looked at him. “Once I’m done Infusing this thing, can it take down a True God?”
“I knew you’d ask that,” chuckled Aiw?. “Remember—there's still a vast difference between half-step and the real thing. The potential’s there! But it’s no sure thing. Don’t look so surprised.”
Aiw? was surprisingly perceptive about the little changes in Zane’s expressions. Only Reina had a better read on him.
“Do you know the difference between half-step True God and True God?”
“…Sort of?”
“Five Peak half-steps would lose to one early True God, handily.”
Zane blinked.
“That's just from the difference in raw power,” said Aiw?, wheeling over. “The reason True God sets itself apart—aside from its vastly superior essence and Laws—is because the Distortion Field strongly rewrites reality. The half-step True God’s field is only a shadow. It just doesn’t compare… it’s hard to explain. I could give you the numbers, but really you’ve just got to feel it.”
“I see.”
Aiw? clapped him on the back. “Still, you’ve already crushed that shadow, Zane. You’ve built a firm base. It’ll just take one more step to put it all together and take you to that next level. You might go through this world thinking the limits of most men don’t apply to you. And that’s true. But in this case—two power tiers, from Ascendant to True God, that’s huge. You’ve got to pay it some respect.”
Zane would have to chew on the “some.” It made sense—though he was still pretty encouraged by his progress.
He’d thrown that punch with just his bare Flare, without stacking on Limit Breaker. And he was still a ways from full Infusion. A ways from his full strength.
The closer he got, the more curious he was about just what it’d take to take down True God.
He was curious what’d happen if he went all out.
He still felt pretty good about his chances.
It wouldn’t be long before he found out.
***
The seasons came and went—though you wouldn't know it down in the deep cave. Zane still rocked the deep tunnels with his explosions, though nowhere near as often as he used to.
Once more, he fell into a pleasant grind.
Before long, he’d primed 30% of his essence for Infusion. Then 40%.
Meanwhile—two days out of the week—he tied a sweatband around his head, took up a hammer, and clanging shook the caverns and the mine shafts day and night.
***
Ten months in, and they’d already worked through most of the plans Aiw? had drawn up.
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They had to excavate new rooms to fit the new System engines Aiw? was dreaming up. With Aiw?, it felt like the more he did, the bigger he dreamed.
Every so often, he’d catch Aiw? blinking dumbly at the gleaming pipes and consoles.
***
It felt to Zane like he was making rocket fuel out of common gas—giving his essence that explosive potential, that bright shimmer. And now, over 50% of it was primed to blow.
He saw more and more how his Laws worked together, like parts of a weapon. It all fit nicely. Radiation debuffed and weakened. Hotspot buffed his attacks. Solar Winds took care of crowds and the long-range stuff. Now Infusion gave it all that explosive kick.
***
Zane let out a grunt.
A chain was strapped to each arm, and tied on their ends were massive chunks of dreamsteel—Primordial-grade rock, prime stuff. Each burdened with the weights of planets.
He made a sound of raw exertion and pulled. The giant pipes came slamming together, meeting at the center in a shower of sparks.
He collapsed to a knee, smoking, heaving in breaths.
It was done.
“Good grief, Zane,” said Aiw?. He handed Zane a flagon of ice-cold Spirit Water; he drank deeply.
“Was that it?” said Zane between swigs. He wiped at his mouth.
“That’s it,” said Aiw?. “That, my friend, is the first of the mega-tanks, all done… Goodness.”
He laughed. “Look—I’ve got shivers!”
***
The new mega-tanks opened up new worlds of possibility.
Aiw? soon expanded the sketches to include a System Store. He also got the idea for a Superdungeon once he got his containment fields big enough. New sketches popped up each week—he was just bursting with ideas. It was quite a creatively fruitful time.
Aiw? spent most of the week tinkering and prototyping. Zane spent most of his time grinding out his Law. Two days a week or so turned out to be enough time to come out and sprint-make all of Aiw?’s ideas. And then it was back to the grind.
In his spare time, Aiw? tinkered with a prototype of the Interspatial Ring too—he was pretty close to unraveling its secrets. He’d use its mechanism for the System Store—that was the idea.
“You can get common items anywhere,” said Aiw?, nodding. “But I’d like to make it so anyone, across any Galaxy in the Universe, can put their best stuff up for purchase safely and securely—stuff you just can’t get anywhere else, stuff that’s one-of-one.”
Many steamed buns were eaten in this time.
***
Reina was getting pretty swamped. Lately she was busy organizing the pan-Earth conference in less than a year. Plus she had to think about who to send to the Dragonspyre Strike teams, the new intergalactic elite special ops forces where each of the Nine Great Factions contributed.
She was also starting talks with other Faction heads too, to coordinate war efforts. She felt since she was an upstart, and quite young, some of them still didn’t take her that seriously—she felt she had to prove herself there. It was a lot.
He did ask if she would like to meet Aiw? when she had the time, since she seemed fascinated by the whole thing. But she demurred, to his surprise.
“Zane, it’s your fate,” she said, squeezing him on the arm. “No one could’ve stumbled in there except you. I think... that’s for a reason. It has to be you.”
She seemed to quite like this idea.
Reina was nearly to her third Concept too—and due to diligent leveling with Zane, she’d hit Level 499 too.
She wasn’t sure she’d be able to make Minor God by the time the First Wave broke. But she was set on being by his side when the fighting got heavy.
***
The seasons went by.
Zane’s Infusion steadily ticked up. 60%… 70%… 80%…
Soon nearly all of his Flare was primed to blow, and his main comprehension rooms were littered with crash dummies.
He didn’t get out much. But the few times he did, to nearby islands mostly, he caught word of this wild new master named ‘Jin Wei.’
The kid fought his way to the top of the Sundered Sky continent—and along the way, he’d somehow gotten the whole empire mad at him. The only thing the kid was more talented at than cultivation was getting huge numbers of very powerful folk on his case. Zane found it a bit baffling.
Jin barely made it out of the continent—according to all who told the story, it was a spectacular escape with at least two last stands. Last anyone heard, he was making his way through the demon kingdoms—the true demonlands, somewhere in the deep mists, in search of a Godbeast Roc egg.
“…This kid.”
***
He sat cross-legged at the center of the blast chamber. The air glowed faintly; heat lines streamed off his body.
He took a deep breath, wound back—and kicked off.
He roared.
Solar Flare Fist!
He blurred into furious motion.
His fist exploded in light and motion, and struck.
The blast staggered the mineshaft, sending cracks rippling up its walls, all the way back to home base. It blew a new cavern through the wall. And faintly, distantly, you could see lava streaming down.
Concept Comprehended!
The Concept of Stellar Infusion
He heard quick wheeling in the distance. Then Aiw? poked his head on through—“Zane? Zane!”
He laughed that delighted laugh of his. “You’ve done it!”
***
Later that week, they popped corks, clinked glasses, and drank.
Before them, lit against the faint warmth of the stove, polished to a shine, lay the blank face of the System.
Not the full System—nowhere close to what Aiw? had dreamed up for it. But it’d take thousands of years—and a much stronger Aiw?—to get it all the way up to shape.
But still—they both knew what this moment meant.
Aiw? wheeled on over and hovered a hand over a big red button.
Zane blew a streamer.
Aiw? took a deep breath and pressed.
And System, version 1.0.0, came online.
Welcome, User #01, Aiw?. To the System.
Made by: A & Z.
Their signatures were at the bottom.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” sighed Aiw?.
He wheeled back to Zane’s side, and together quietly marveled at it. They drank a little more.
“The city I come from,” said Aiw?. “It’s called the City of Silver Spires. Just… gorgeous. You’ve got to go someday. The fountains there are the marvel of the known world, and spells sparkle in every window. The city’s just… alive with the hum of magic. A niece of mine still lives there. …She’ll be all grown up by now.”
His eyes were hazy in memory.
“After they threw me out, I said I’d never go back. I think I was ashamed. I didn’t want to show my face—not until I made what I saw real, until I showed it could be done. It was slow going. Far too slow, I was starting to think. I had this fear—not that my vision couldn’t be realized but something worse, far worse. That… I wasn’t the one to do it. That I just didn’t have it in me.”
He took a swig. “It’s very easy to believe in something when you’ve taken all the measures and proved it by math. But when it comes to myself… that’s impossible. How can you take the measure of a man?”
He paused. “Then a Zane fell down my chimney, and I started to think… maybe that’s the beauty of it.”
Sometimes Aiw? got in these moods. Zane just clinked him, and they drank to it.
***
Aiw? gave him a parting gift before he left.
It was his own crude Interspatial Ring, forged of dreamsteel. And within—
“…It’s all dreamsteel,” said Zane, blinking.
“Twenty-six tractor cubes of it,” said Aiw? cheerfully. “I’ve done the math. You quarried enough this past year to last me a millennium. And you can melt that steel yourself now. Do put it to good use.”
Zane gave the fellow a hug.
He did feel a little melancholy. His time here at an end—and somehow, as they waved goodbye, they both got the sense it might be for the last time.
“…Good luck.”
Aiw? smiled. “You too, old friend. Go beat up some Monsters for me.”
He waved and was gone.
