Chapter 1437 - The Bridge Between the Real & Virtual (Patreon)

Jake realized very quickly that while he had a somewhat conceptual idea of what he wanted to do, he’d severely underestimated just how hard it would actually be. Before he even knew it, two full years had passed in the time-dilated chamber, and yet he had barely made any progress. He’d tried a few things, but none of them had worked, forcing him to take a step back and rethink.

Only after a few more months did he try building the framework for the finger again. It was just the pointer, not very big, and it really shouldn’t be that complex, yet it was by far the hardest thing Jake had ever tried to accomplish within his Soulspace. It didn’t help that it needed to be perfect on the first try, and he had no room for error, making him stop whatever he was doing the second even the slightest hint of doubt and insecurity entered his mind. He trusted his intuition in that regard, which led him to abandon approaches again and again as time passed him by.

Time dilation had an odd effect on the mind in that while Jake felt time passing as normal from his perspective, a certain part of him knew that it was moving far slower in the outside world. This made him, partly unconsciously, always act as if time were of no concern, making him work more slowly than before.

This was a pretty well-known phenomenon that was in no way unique to Jake. Time spent in dilation such as this was acknowledged as incredibly ineffective compared to doing things in Realtime. The system not helping and Records and concepts being distorted certainly also played a big role in slowing things down, as it made it more difficult to gain insight and understanding.

Knowledge in itself was Records. Some alchemists gained levels simply by increasing their understanding, even without any skill upgrades or successful crafts. They could level simply by reading books and reaching new heights of understanding.

Cultivators from the Dao Sect were the same. They could level up and gain power simply by meditating on concepts and training. It was a far slower Path, and it often took them ten, if not a hundred, times longer to reach the same level as others. Unless they were supreme geniuses, of course, but even they would progress more slowly than someone like Jake, who actively put theory into practice.

As a result, none of them ever meditated in time dilation, and alchemists who studied it didn’t enter dilation either. It could potentially hurt their future Path, after all. Even when they needed to practice something complex, they would rather do it in the outside world.

The only situations where time dilation made sense were when time was a really pressing matter, or when the person wouldn’t really be learning or improving much during training. That, or incredibly unique situations where they already had the knowledge and Records; they just had to integrate them with their Paths.

Jake was an example of the latter in instances where he’d used time dilation, aside from the very first time, right after his Tutorial, when he was trained by Villy and Duskleaf by being thrown into a vat of poison and told to absorb as much as he could. That one was a pure instance of time being of the essence, as he only had a few days before he had to return to Earth, and, besides, the dilation wasn’t very powerful back then, so it didn’t hurt him much.

In all other instances, it hadn’t been a problem. When he was in the process of learning how to use Shroud of the Primordial, it didn’t really hurt him, as that didn’t give him anything of value Records-wise. Shroud of the Primordial wasn’t truly Jake’s skill but fully tied to his True Blessing and the Viper’s Records, and he more or less needed the system to do everything the skill was capable of, with him only learning how to give it directions.

Improving his melee fighting skills while training with Sim-Jake also wasn’t a case of him wasting Records or being overly inefficient. He didn’t get any Records in the first place from that scenario, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he didn’t gain any new Records. Sim-Jake was a living embodiment of what Jake had been trying to learn, so when the two of them had merged, all the Records belonging to Sim-Jake had finally fully integrated with Jake and become his.

This was a very similar scenario to that one. The finger contained all the Records and all the energy Jake hoped to gain, and all he was trying to do was set up the framework for its successful absorption and integration into his Soulspace. Of course, he didn’t want to fully absorb it but keep it somewhat separate from himself, a bit like the tome of Records left by the First Sage.

So, integrated just enough to be part of him, but not enough to fully disappear. It was a tight balance that Jake hoped to strike, no matter how hard it turned out to be. He wasn’t even sure whether whatever he learned during this time-distorted training session would carry over to any other disciplines, beyond an improvement in the raw control of his Soulspace.

“If it was the First Sage trying to do this, he’d probably have just casually pulled it off while spouting some profound lesson,” Jake muttered as he stood in his Soulspace, holding a poorly made version of the finger. Flicking his wrist, it dispersed as he sighed.

“Clearly, I need to pull on the concepts of the virtual somehow...” Jake continued talking to himself. “The finger comes from a virtual world and doesn’t belong in reality, which means it shouldn’t belong in my Soulspace either...”

He had many thoughts, many theories, and he tried many approaches as the years passed him by like a flowing river. Jake never felt in a rush as he tried out new things, even if it took several years to test a theory, and when it ended up a failure, he wasn’t even frustrated. Instead, he took whatever little data he got, mentally noted it, and tried to work it into his next attempt.

Through such a process, he learned many things, and his familiarity with the finger and its Records was more or less perfect after around fifty-seven years in the time-dilated space. To Jake, it didn’t feel that long, even though he knew it was, probably because his sense of urgency was suppressed and his patience was at an all-time high.

More years passed, with Jake making more realizations before finally getting down to what he believed were the most essential realizations, theories, and conclusions.

The finger would disappear from the real world given enough time, as it didn’t belong in the real world. At the same time, it would disappear the second Jake tried to enter the World of the Exalted Prima holding the item, as it didn’t belong in that specific simulated reality either. Right now, it was effectively homeless and wasn’t meant to exist anywhere.

But this did make Jake think... why would the finger disappear once brought back to the World of the Exalted Prima? Was it truly just because the Bound God wanted to give Jake a limited time to learn how he could use it, or was there more to it? The explanation he’d gotten was that it belonged to a different simulated reality, but Jake was fairly certain that the concepts related to the virtual worlds were identical. Plus, the finger had clearly existed within the virtual world at least for a little while, right?

Plus, while Jake didn’t doubt Transcendent Artifacts played by different rules than more regular items, wasn’t the Wheel of Samsara also from a different virtual reality? Yet that could be summoned and used within the World of the Exalted Prima and had even been stronger than in the real world as far as Jake could tell. Also, while his finger wasn’t a Transcendent Artifact, it wasn’t that far off, was it? It contained Primevil Origin Energy and was related to Jake’s Bloodline, giving it some Transcendent properties for sure.

This made the finger easier to work with in some ways because of its intimate connection to him, while on the other hand made everything damn harder as he was dealing with very high-level concepts and energies.

Likely because of that and all his other realizations over the last... fuck, century already, Jake’s plan ended up being a bit on the reckless side, which honestly fit him. For a long time, he’d known that to upgrade Eternal Shadow of the Primal Hunter, he needed to do so within the World of the Exalted Prima, and clearly, based on how his shadow acted differently while in there, it was affected by the concepts.

Affected... and allowed to exist. Sim-Jake came from another virtual reality than the World of the Exalted Prima, so going by the same logic as the finger disappearing, why was it allowed to exist? Why did its Records appear to get empowered rather than negatively affected while within the virtual world?

The only explanation that made any sense was that it was now connected to Jake and part of him. That allowed his Eternal Shadow to belong in any virtual world, but when it manifested there, it was still positively affected as it connected to the Records and concepts.

Seeing as the finger belonged to the virtual world as well – even if it wasn’t the World of the Exalted Prima – wouldn’t it make some sense to get it into a state similar to his Eternal Shadow?

To make it a part of Jake and his Records, just enough for the system to recognize it as part of his Soulspace. However, Jake didn’t believe that would be enough. He still needed a way to manifest it within the World of the Exalted Prima, and that's when he got an idea.

If the finger was meant to disappear when he entered the World of the Exalted Prima as it didn’t belong there... what if he made it so it did belong in the virtual world? Sure, he couldn’t make it exactly match the World of the Exalted Prima, but he should be able to shift the balance. Amplify the aspects of it that were virtual while suppressing the ones allowing it to remain in the physical world.

Ideally, this would result in the finger resonating far more with the virtual world, allowing it to experience whatever effect was working on both the Wheel of Samsara and his Eternal Shadow within the World of the Exalted Prima. It would grow stronger in there, at the same time as his Eternal Shadow, and as both grew empowered, Jake planned to use that moment to strike by summoning them both and merging them into one.

It all seemed a lot simpler and more straightforward in his head, and in theory it should work, but this theory was kind of flimsy in itself and only based on his own thoughts and conclusions after experiencing the virtual world a few times and experimenting within his Soulspace for the better part of a century.

To achieve his goal, he’d also have to prime the finger and Eternal Shadow before entering the World of the Exalted Prima. He’d need them to be ready to merge, and fortunately, they already shared many Records as they both belonged to Jake and both were inherently connected to his Records and Bloodline.

There was one more thing that bothered Jake, though, and that was the risk of the finger disappearing while he absorbed its Records into himself or when he tried to make it lean towards virtual concepts over “real” ones. A single misstep could make it disappear into nothingness already, and now he wanted to purposefully poke holes in an already precarious bridge.

Fortunately, he and the finger both had something that was extremely good at making sure stuff didn’t get deleted:

Primeval Origin Energy.

Jake had been able to sustain his own existence despite dying in the virtual world, effectively rejecting his body getting deleted while inside. He hoped to apply a similar concept to the finger by making use of the Primeval Origin Energy within. Also, in truth, he kind of wanted to get rid of that energy inside the finger before absorbing it. Jake already had plenty of it himself, and he didn’t know what kind of effects absorbing it could have. Even if it was technically his own energy, it still came from another version of him, and who the fuck knows what kind of weird things that could lead to.

So, in summary, Jake wanted to absorb the finger into his Soulspace by building a framework it would integrate with. The finger would then be stored there in a semi-virtual state until he entered the World of the Exalted Prima again, at which point it would resonate with the virtual world and fully manifest within his Soulspace, hopefully enabling him to use its Records to help upgrade Eternal Shadow.

Sounded super easy, barely an inconvenience, and it definitely wouldn’t take him a lot of years to pull it off successfully. Fortunately for him, he still had many years to go in this hyper-time dilation, though he still hoped to be done before his year-long ban from the virtual world was over. The Viper would let him know, so until then he would dedicate every smidge of brainpower to pulling this off, remaining steadfast in his goal of upgrading a skill beyond mythical rarity without the help of the First Sage.

--

A year wasn’t a long time for B-grades, and for the World of the Exalted Prima, it also seemed to pass by far faster than anyone expected it to. Many factions remained focused on the Central Domain as they still needed to obtain enough Prima Credits to stay in the event, with especially larger alliances struggling to pull this off.

The smaller Territories needed help from the larger ones, Vassals needed assistance, and many were made Vassals with the promise of getting help to survive the event. This inevitably resulted in many Territories being weaker while their elites were out helping others, giving plenty of opportunity for places like the Milky Way Galaxy Territory to take advantage. They expanded rapidly, made a few more Vassals of their own, but as their Territory expanded, they also needed more and more resources to defend everything.

Especially manpower became a significant problem. Only Administrators could make decisions, and it wasn’t as if Miranda trusted all those they’d brought, much less believed they could do a proper job. It did help that they made contact with other allies, but they had the same problem more often than not.

In addition, some borders quickly turned into deadlocks, especially far to the south where the Behemoth’s Territory also was. They’d run into an utterly massive Territory, or perhaps an alliance of Territories, ruled by the Holy Church. Trying to break through their border was – pun intended – borderline impossible, and the longer neither side made progress, the stronger defenses they could both build, resulting in the deadlock only worsening.

Lillian did make progress on her side, though it was difficult, especially after the southern border with the Holy Church became a problem and drained resources. Fortunately for her, the Milky Way Galaxy Territory had one weapon... one that was perhaps more dangerous in an event like this than anyone else.

And no, it wasn’t Jake.