The grand culmination of the ritual sted for less than a minute. Its steady drain on Hector’s cosmic energy reserves ended before he was fully emptied. The Arahant around him ran dry first. Theirs had been the greater contribution by far. Illusory energy empowered the ritual, his assistance only filled in the gaps to let it meld with the legal energy of the Jinn.
Fmes ravaged about half of the paper sphere’s surface before they began guttering. The death of the ritual snapped the connection to the world below, allowing the fire to fre up and consume the rest of the paper ball in a mundane chemical reaction.
Confgration swayed on his feet a moment before Zelda steadied him. “Kevin?”
“We’re reviewing satellite surveilnce now. Thermal scans indicate the fires spread to over seventy percent of nd mass globally. There are a few untouched isnd nations that I always pnned to target with hydrogen bombs. The remaining continent on the far side of the world is already entirely lost to the monsters.”
“Do you need to use more antimatter?”
“I won’t know for several hours, Confgration. The human popution levels should be extremely low already. If sufficient levels of ash make it into the upper atmosphere, the conditions for a global mass extinction event will break the resonance with other human worlds enough for primordial chaos to recim this universe. We will need to study dispersal patterns and run weather models before we can make a call.”
Confgration blew out the candle and passed it to Zelda. “Meditate on what you have seen. There was much to learn from this experience.”
She bobbed her head quickly and left the room with the candle held tight like it was a trophy. Confgration went to the side of the room to sit down, looking like he’d just run a marathon. The other Arahant filed out of the forward observation deck.
Rodrick pulled Hector away with the rest of them. “That was impressive stuff.”
“Can you expin what happened in there?”
“Come on, Hector. Do you really not know?”
He grunted. Even as a Xian outsider, he’d gotten a good enough glimpse into the mechanics of what they were doing. The Arahant had warped reality like the Jinn warped space. “How does that even work?”
“We all agreed on what the ritual was supposed to do and committed to it.”
“You can’t just… the world doesn’t work like that.”
“It does for us.”
He couldn’t seriously argue against the efficacy of what he’d just experienced. “If you people can do something like that, why haven’t you defeated the monsters yet?”
Rodrick snorted. “Toasting an unempowered world isn’t the ultimate power you think it is, Hector. What we just did drained every Arahant on the war barge. None of us can return to battle until we recover on Maya.” He pulled Hector into a small lounge where their friend group had gone and closed the hatch. “I’m going to be brutally honest here, it would have made more sense to let the antimatter guys blow themselves up.”
“Confgration really wanted to torch a pnet,” Machi muttered.
“He did,” Rodrick agreed. “And he involved Zelda.”
Vivian scoffed. “Don’t make it sound like he did her a favor. She’s a cssically trained ritualist. If she wasn’t obsessed with gaining an insight, she’d be set for life.”
The usual reverence for Confgration had gone missing. “You guys disapprove of the ritual?”
“You saw how much work we invested into restoring our energy levels,” Vivian spat. “The Sage made us throw it all away for something the Jinn could have handled on their own.”
“It’s not like Persuasion tried to stop him,” Machi noted.
“Why would she care? She’s escorting Foresight home! We’re the ones forced out of active combat against our will.” Vivian looked like she was ready to punch somebody.
Hector directed a confused expression towards Rodrick. The big guy expined the frustration within their group. “It wasn’t easy getting into the main body of the Coalition Army for any of us. We won’t be offered anything better than a minor patrol if we decide to sign on again.”
“You don’t know that,” Machi interjected.
Vivian turned her gre on Machi. “Be real. The main body will be chasing the miasma outbreak for years. They’re not going to transport level six recruits all the way to it. We’ve been sidelined because Confgration likes watching pretty fires.”
Rodrick reached out to cmp a hand over her mouth. “Let’s not make things worse?”
She bit his hand, causing Rodrick to snatch it away. “What is he going to do? He ran himself dry with that stunt.”
“He’s not going to stay like that, dummy. In a few months he’ll be fully restored. Probably stronger than ever. Confgration is the kind of Sage who never stops improving.”
Rodrick’s words penetrated Vivian’s anger enough that she went back to stewing in silence.
“You seem to be taking it well, Rod,” Hector observed.
“It’s not ideal, but I know I’ll get a lot of mileage out of the story.”
“He hopes to sway women with the tale,” Machi joked.
“Not women. Children. Grandchildren. Didn’t you grow up hearing family legends?”
Machi raised a brow. “My family doesn’t have a military tradition. I only went to war because everyone cimed all of humanity was in danger.”
“Well, let me give you some advice, Machi. Your future children must learn about the time you helped the Sage of Confgration and War Barge Kevin destroy an entire pnet. Ten generations from now, long after you’re gone, your descendants will still remember the tale.”
Hector was trying to figure out the wording for a snarky comment about how much better the story would py to the child demographic compared to the pop star shenanigans when the speakers crackled to life. “Attention all. Prepare for immediate singurity travel. We detected a perturbation in the strong nuclear force. This universe is beginning to unravel.”
“Sounds like we did a good job,” Rodrick said.
Machi was frowning. “Hector, your world looked like a science pce. Do you know what a strong nuclear force is? Is that like the weaker Jinn bombs?”
“I’m not a scientist, Machi, but as my world understood things, there were four fundamental forces that governed the universe. Gravity, electromagnetism, and two nuclear forces. The strong nuclear force is more powerful than the other three. I don’t really remember what it does. Maybe hold protons together or something like that.”
“I don’t know what a proton is,” Machi admitted.
Hector elected not to go into a physics lecture. He wasn’t entirely sure that the Arahant were even made of mundane matter. They seemed to operate by fundamentally different rules. Come to think of it, was he made of mundane matter after his body enhancement? What did infusing cosmic energy into his body and welding it to the body aperture of his soul really do to his substance?
The emergency kxons sounded a couple of times before the speaker crackled to life again. “Hard power cut coming in five seconds. Emergency lighting only.”
While Hector was trying to figure out what that meant, the lounge lights cut out. Only a faint red glow from a solitary bulb above the door relieved the darkness. He rode out the transfer between universes in that room with his friends.
Later he learned how close they came to death. The way that Jinn moved between universes required a stable starting point. When the reality they were in started to fail, Kevin had to divert the entire output of the generators into his gravitonic field to speed their escape. Every capacitor and battery on the barge was used to reinforce the hull. They slipped into the next universe over with only seconds to spare.
The cost of their desperate escape was high. Cutting power to all non-critical systems caused a plethora of minor issues that the Jinn crew spent the coming weeks remediating. There was an issue with liquid nitrogen bursting a pipe that Hector’s bunk neighbors talked about a lot. He didn’t really understand the implications of that, but they all were deeply invested in the problem. Weird smells haunted the vessel for many days due to a breakdown in the sanitation equipment.
Everyone compined about the extra work but no one ever suggested Kevin overreacted with his desperate actions. There was universal agreement that their escape had been way too close for comfort. Hector never appreciated the differences between Jinn and Xian travel more than in the aftermath of that situation. His transit sphere was his externality and as such entirely independent of any world he stood within. So long as he had the energy reserves, he could ditch a failing universe.
The ritual had taken him from fifty percent down to ten percent energy reserves, so Hector dedicated much of his time to cultivation. He continued his efforts at mental strengthening. Since the Jinn were so busy working, he was frequently able to cim a section of the mess hall to himself for calisthenics. Hector slowly began training towards doing the advanced exercises that were taught to Volithur at the fifth household. He had the strength just by virtue of his enhancement level, but he needed to develop the fine control to remain stable in the movements.
After technicians verified that the gravitonic systems weren’t damaged by their desperate escape, Kevin navigated to two more universes. They were fortunate not to encounter any invasions and ship life soon reverted to its typical routine as the repairs were completed.
Then came a problem world. A monster incursion was in progress. The invaders were not unopposed, fortunately. A team of Arahant swordsmen twenty strong fought a desperate battle of attrition with massive grizzly bears.
The defenders cheered their arrival, which was obvious even without audio from the way they jumped about after Kevin fired his sers the first time. Their shadow soon fell over the contested forests and Hector successfully begged his way onto the team of Jinn commandos heading down in person. His new comrades clung to ser rifles with white-knuckled grips as the shuttle dropped.
The sergeant snapped his fingers to get Hector’s attention. “Do you need armor, sir? We have a spare set in the overhead compartment.”
“I appreciate the offer, sergeant, but my skin is armor enough.” He really hoped his boast was accurate. Volithur never went up against monsters, so Hector didn’t know what to expect from his enhanced body. He was pretty sure he was bulletproof – so long as a Jinn wasn’t firing the gun, at least. Monsters broke physics, though. A monstrous bear’s cws should be able to tear through steel like it was made of silk – at least that was what he heard from the sergeant’s safety briefing. Did Xian flesh infused with cosmic energy resist that supernatural effect? The only monsters he had ever fought took the form of squids, so he wasn’t personally familiar with how the cws worked.
Really it shouldn’t matter how hard his flesh was. He had grown his energy reserves to eighty percent in the time since the ritual ended. That was more than enough for him to defend with his aura. So long as he didn’t burn too much attacking with his domain, he should be perfectly safe. He would be embedded within a team of Jinn special forces too. There was a good chance he wouldn’t get within spitting distance of a monster.
The shuttle touched down only briefly. The commandos jumped free and ran for the line of swordsmen. The sergeant and their leader exchanged salutes and names – hand to the brow for the Jinn, a fist over the heart for the Arahant.
Commander Duran wore a broad smile. “Well met, brothers! We are surely gd to share this task. My patrol has struggled mightily to clear these monsters.”
Sergeant Miller snapped his hand back to his side. “We welcome your advice on the best way to handle their body form.”
“I think you have the right idea with your sers. They’re dangerous up close. Very fast.”
“Has the local popution been any help?”
Commander Duran shook his head. “They have less technology than the Xian scum. Nothing more advanced than bronze.”
The sergeant and Jinn commandos grew stiff at the casual insult, so Hector smiled to show he hadn’t taken offense. The Jinn resumed questioning. “Is this the only incursion point, commander?”
“It’s not even the biggest one. This patch of woods just spits out the most dangerous beasts.”
In a couple of minutes, they learned the relevant details. Bears spawned in this stretch of wood, a cloud on the horizon generated hawk monsters, and the nearby city had been infested with rat monsters. “They’re normal rat sized. Mundane people can kill them but it’s risky. One bite and they go to their deathbed within the day.”
The sergeant radioed to Kevin for instructions, then listened to his earpiece.
“Kevin will be moving to the cloud. Our orders are to stay here. Hector, sir, we request you help out with the rat infestation. Commander Duran, could one of your men guide our Xian colleague to the city?”
Commander Duran wrinkled his nose as if smelling something unpleasant. “Barack, you bedded that savage woman, so you can sully yourself consorting with this creature.”
A lean man with rge ears that made his head look like a jug walked forward from his fellows. “The woman was a lot better looking, Duran. Come along, Xian. I’ll find you things to kill.”
