Chapter 1440 - Down With the (Time) Sickness (Patreon)

Jake was breathing rather heavily as he tried to adapt to simply existing in the world. He wouldn’t say he felt sick, but this was definitely the closest thing a B-grade like him could experience. He’d never been the type to get carsick or seasick, but he reckoned this would be roughly how it felt, though, of course, instead of conflicting signals throwing one off balance while in motion, this was Jake’s sense of time being all out of whack.

“It takes a while for even gods to fully acclimate after a prolonged period in time dilation,” Artemis said with a smile as Jake opened his eyes and looked up at her, enjoying perhaps the greatest kind of pillow one could get in this world.

“I’d reckon it takes a lot more than just a few years, though,” Jake muttered, slowly closing his eyes again.

It had been about ten minutes since Jake exited the time-dilated chamber, and right after, he headed straight back to his residence to relax and fully recover, saving any conversation with the Viper for later.

“It does, but we also usually wind down the time dilation and don’t just promptly go from the time chamber to Realtime,” Artemis said, sounding slightly admonishing. “But someone just had to try how it felt.”

“Yeah, not doing it again next time,” Jake sighed, though a part of him thought that maybe it wasn’t too bad of a thing to do if this was the treatment he’d receive afterward.

Then again, he had been lucky Artemis wasn’t doing anything important when Jake had returned to the outside world and had come over immediately after Villy had practically just tossed him back to his home in the Order.

The two of them were quiet for a few minutes before Jake spoke again: “Anything happened while I was gone?”

“Lots of things happen all across the multiverse every day,” Artemis joked.

“Things that you think I think would be nice to know,” Jake clarified, not feeling like he was getting treated nicely considering he was a sick patient.

“Nothing major,” Artemis shook her head. “The battle within the World of the Exalted Prima continues; your Territory should be doing well, and so are many others part of our alliance. I don’t think any of the major factions are complaining too much, though, as it’s mostly the minor factions suffering continual losses these days. I only know the broad strokes of what’s going on in there, and I’m sure you’ll get a much more accurate overview when you return.”

“Yeah,” Jake said, opening his eyes slowly again. “Nothing else in the wider multiverse? New wars, movements from the unknown faction, you know, general news.”

“A god died, another two became pregnant, both with S-grade partners, so much hope for kids, and the Endless Empire destroyed or conquered a couple thousand galaxies ruled by the Automaton Legion after a grueling battle that had lasted for a few thousand years finally turned in their favor,” Artemis answered rather casually.

Jake was silent before staring up at her. “Can I just say that it’s kind of fucked up that a few thousand galaxies being potentially destroyed is thrown into the same sentence as two pregnancies?”

“Does it make things better that most would consider those pregnancies bigger news than the death of countless mortals?” Artemis said, letting out a sigh. “It sadly happens every single day of every single year. The lives of mortals are viewed as cheap; there are more galaxies than anyone even knows, and new ones appear here and there even when others are destroyed, so most gods don’t care. To a god, accidentally destroying a few galaxies is the same as you accidentally breaking a few large boulders during a fight. They don’t even give it a second thought.”

“Can I reiterate how fucked up that is?” Jake let out a low sigh.

“Fortunately, many people agree with that statement, which is why most battles between gods don’t happen in the multiverse but in sealed-off spaces,” Artemis said with a smile. “I only think it’s natural to avoid damaging one’s surroundings as much as possible. The battlefields between factions like the Holy Church and Risen also mostly take place in isolated areas of space with planets that are already fully converted to only function as battlegrounds.”

“That is at least somewhat comforting,” Jake said, slowly closing his eyes again as he just enjoyed lying there. He already felt that he’d more or less acclimated to Realtime already, which was honestly way faster than he expected. Probably due to Primal Spirit of Man? It was hard to say, but either way, Jake saw no need to share such news, as that would mean the end of the lap pillow, and why would he do that to himself?

The two of them continued chatting as Jake briefly reflected on the many years of his life and slowly adapted his mindset to the real world. He’d read that for many, this was also a major issue with long training sessions, especially those done in time dilation. That was probably one of the reasons why Artemis also wanted to talk to him about it, and he felt her probing was to see if he was truly fine mentally.

It was hard to get used to the change in mental state, with the worst cases coming from when people trained alone. The lack of social interaction for many years could prove problematic, but fortunately for Jake, he’d been shit at socializing in the first place, so it shouldn’t cause him any issues.

He was surprised how unaffected he was, though. Jake wasn’t certain yet how long he’d spent in time dilation; all he knew was that he’d been in there for roughly ten months in Realtime, and based on dilation he’d experienced before, he reckoned it had to at least be a century or two. Probably longer.

It was odd to think that he’d likely more than doubled his lifespan after this single dilated training session, meaning he’d spent more than half his life just sitting still, working on a single, rather limited project. That should, by all accounts, mess someone up mentally, but Jake felt perfectly normal.

After they’d spoken for a few hours, Jake couldn’t even pretend that the time dilation still affected him physically, and mentally he continued to feel fine. Of course, people with mental issues didn’t usually notice themselves, but it seemed that Artemis had also concluded that, despite the many years, he was more or less entirely unaffected.

“Color me surprised,” Artemis said with a smile. “I’m not going to lie, I did find your desire to enter such a long period of time-dilation questionable, given the relatively limited time you’ve been alive, but I can’t even tell that you were in there.”

“That’s one of Jake’s biggest strengths, perhaps only falling short of his Bloodline,” a familiar voice spoke from behind the couch, making Artemis quickly push Jake off her thighs, ending the lap pillow as he was forced to sit up.

“His ability to hyper-focus on a specific topic and zone the rest of the world out is impressive, and his ability to mentally adapt to whatever he’s working on is nothing to scoff at,” the snake god continued, throwing Jake a teasing look, knowing exactly what he’d just done.

“Greetings, Malefic One,” Artemis said as she stood up and bowed, being way too respectful in Jake’s opinion. Though he did have to admit that her embarrassment at the scene the Viper saw when he popped in was a little cute.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” the snake god said shamelessly, having spied on them just before teleporting in.

“You did,” Jake said, getting a glare from Artemis.

“Great,” the snake god just said, not paying any mind to Jake’s words. “Anyhow, you look plenty recovered, don’t you? I take it you’re ready to share the result of your little time dilation adventure, so tell me, did you succeed or did you fuck up and leave in shame?”

“That’s a complicated question,” Jake sighed and shrugged, not really having a good answer.

“See, that already makes me think it maybe didn’t work out well,” the Viper pointed out with a frown. “I had guessed there was a chance you’d fuck something up along the way, as you were trying to do something difficult.”

“I didn’t say I failed,” Jake said, shaking his head. “I just said I’m not sure I succeeded either.”

“Now that is a complicated answer,” Villy said, for some reason looking even more curious now. Artemis was, too, looking expectantly at Jake for an explanation.

Taking a deep breath, Jake began that explanation.

“I’ve absorbed the item into my Soulspace, but the way I did it resulted in all the Records and the item itself pretty much disappearing. I can barely sense it in there, but that was kind of the plan. I’ll only know if I actually succeeded or not when I enter the World of the Exalted Prima,” Jake said, explaining as best he could.

As far as he could tell, everything had gone according to plan. The framework for the finger had been completed, and it had turned out just as Jake wanted. He’d crossed his t’s, dotted his i’s, and double-checked everything, knowing he only had one shot.

When he finally pulled the trigger, the finger was quickly absorbed into his Soulspace, all the Records settled perfectly into the mold he’d created, as these Records were slowly shifted towards becoming more virtual than real. Inside his Soulspace, the finger still existed, though it seemed faded out as if it could disappear at any moment, only weakly anchored to existence. It likely wouldn’t be able to stay in that state for very long, but fortunately, Jake would be returning to the virtual world sooner rather than later.

It was still roughly two months away, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

“So it exists in a state of superposition? Sounds like it,” the Viper muttered. “More than halfway in the virtual world already... that could work. Of course, I don’t know how you accomplished it, but theoretically, your plan is feasible. Then again, most plans could be feasible if pulled off with sufficient competency and power, so who knows how things will turn out.”

“Let’s hope it does,” Artemis said with a smile as she continued looking at Jake. “Though I do wonder what the result will be. What do you want to happen?”

“I don’t think that will be solely up to me to decide,” Jake answered honestly, yet again, going purely off his gut feeling. The finger already had Records; the Eternal Shadow had shown what looked like independent thought when used inside the virtual world, which ultimately led Jake to believe that the skill would more or less decide itself what would happen to it. More accurately, Sim-Jake, or whatever Records were left of him, would decide.

“That sounds like a whole other can of worms I can’t even be arsed to ask about,” the Viper shrugged, with Artemis also not looking like she intended to pry.

“I’ll let you both know how things turned out the next time I return,” Jake smiled. “Now it’s my turn to ask something... how long was I in the chamber?”

“Ten months and two da-“

“From my perspective,” Jake cut the snake god off, not giving him time to finish his joking response.

“Spoilsport,” the Viper muttered, acting all hurt. “How about you guess? A fun little game of higher or lower.”

“Fine, have it your way,” Jake sighed, knowing this wasn’t a fight he would win. Wanting to get it over with fast, he started rather high, reckoning it wouldn’t be too far off the real answer.

“A hundred and fifty years.”

“Higher,” the Viper said with a smile, which didn't really surprise Jake.

“Two hundred.”

The Viper pointed upwards.

“Three hundred?” Jake asked with a frown.

The Viper just kept pointing upwards.

“Four?”

“Getting hotter,” the snake god smiled, leaning forward.

“... five?”

“And change,” the Malefic Viper grinned. “Congratulations, you’re officially an old man now.”

“How long exactly?” Jake asked, looking in disbelief.

“Five-hundred and fourteen years, give or take,” Villy said, looking oddly proud for some reason. “Way longer than I thought you could handle being under such high levels of time dilation.”

“It didn’t feel like that long,” Jake muttered, really feeling like his sense of time was completely out of whack. He’d thought it had taken between two and three hundred years, which was already extremely long, but over five hundred?

Suddenly, Artemis showing so much concern made a lot more sense. That was a long fucking time to just sit still and work inside his Soulspace. It felt like too long, even.

“Won’t it hurt my Records?” Jake asked, confused. “And why were my own estimations so damn far off?”

“You’re fine,” the Viper waved him off, and Artemis didn’t look like there were any issues either. “As for your sense of time, it’s kind of a side effect of prolonged time dilation. It gets messed up no matter how little dilation you do, but what you might not have noticed is that it gets worse the longer it keeps going. It’s an odd phenomenon, and one reason why gods can sometimes enter a time-dilated chamber to accomplish something quickly, yet spend a couple of billion years there. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?”

The last sentence was spoken to Artemis, and to Jake’s surprise, she just smiled. “It happens. I once worked on figuring out the runes left on the pelt of a slain Divine Beast, and after I exited the chamber, I realized I’d spent more than three billion years in there, even if it only felt like a couple of million.”

“Yeah, it’s a weird feeling,” Villy nodded. “My longest one was a bit over five hundred billion years. I spent it trying to solve a stupid puzzle, only to find out once I got out that the Seeker had already solved it and taken the treasure.”

Hearing the two gods talk, Jake was really reminded of the different timescales they lived on. The two of them had been alive for several times longer than his entire universe had existed, and, accounting for time dilation, it was even longer. It did also make him feel better, though, because, compared to the two of them, five hundred years really just felt like a drop in the bucket. Plus, he was a B-grade.

Jake wasn’t sure exactly how long his lifespan was, since it varied among humans depending on stats and whatnot, but he did know it had to be in the hundreds of thousands. A-grades could live in the millions, with S-grades reaching into the tens of millions, though even that seemed like nothing compared to gods who could casually spend billions of years on small projects. Immortality really was a weird thing, but Jake was looking forward to when he got it. He just had a few more grades to go and a lot more things to hunt.

“What do you plan on doing for the next few months?” Artemis asked after seeing that Jake seemed mostly back to normal after learning he’d been sitting on his ass for half a millennium.

After a second's thought, Jake knew what he wanted to do.

“Alchemy to prepare for my return to the virtual world and the war to come,” Jake said.

That’s right, despite just having spent so long in time dilation, he wanted to sit down on his ass again. Okay, truthfully, he did it partly because he hoped the next two months would pass by quickly, as he found waiting to figure out if all that time had been wasted quite anxiety-inducing, and alchemy tended to be a good way to make time fly.

Plus, how could it not be fun to make alchemical weapons that would surely break the Geneva Protocol’s rules regarding chemical warfare?