Chapter 139: Samuel's Calamity |
It seemed that because they had touched on the topic of "Calamity," Wyatt's tone had unconsciously become less pleasant, slightly lower.
"This 'Calamity' is called the 'Insomnia Calamity,' meaning 'the disaster of never being able to sleep.'" Wyatt concluded. "It lasted thirty years..."
"However, you might find it difficult to look up records about this matter in the outside world, so if you're really interested, I'd suggest you just go ask the Priest directly."
Samuel easily understood why "it would be difficult to find in the outside world."
Theoretically, something this big couldn't possibly be hidden—just like the "Mutant Uprising." Although it was a matter of the extraordinary world, it couldn't be completely concealed from ordinary people.
The only thing that could be done was to polish it up, rewriting it into history books in a way that ordinary people could understand.
There was only one exception to this:
When most of the people from that time had died.
Then naturally, it wouldn't be recorded by ordinary people.
If anything, it was remarkable that this planet's civilization hadn't been completely wiped out.
A situation like that lasting for thirty years...
"I didn't expect Father Ethen to have lived that long." Samuel nodded with feigned gravity.
He didn't think there was anything wrong with Wyatt being able to find out that he knew the Priest.
Not only had he never intended to hide it anyway.
Besides, Allenay was his niece... or nephew.
Who knows when it might come up in casual conversation.
There was absolutely no need to hide such things.
"Is there anything else special about the 'Singularity of Absurdity'?" Samuel pressed with a confirming follow-up question.
This time, Wyatt didn't provide any new information. He just spread his hands.
"That's it." Wyatt replied. "That's all I could dig up."
"As for the rest, I'm afraid you'll have to find out for yourself."
"Ah, that's too bad." Samuel leaned his head back against the sofa.
But soon, as if something had occurred to him, Samuel immediately turned his head to look at Wyatt.
"Oh, right."
"Speaking of which, you said that every time a 'Singularity of Absurdity' appears, a 'Calamity' comes with it."
"Yes." Wyatt nodded.
"What about me?" Samuel raised his hand and pointed at himself.
"When will my 'Calamity' come?"
"If I'm also a 'Singularity of Absurdity,' then I should come with my own instance too, right?"
"But I haven't noticed any problems so far."
"Yeah, that's the question I want to ask too."
Wyatt's motion of swirling his wine glass slowed down. His golden eyes looked at Samuel, sizing him up from head to toe.
"That's exactly what I wanted to talk about." He looked at Samuel, dropped his smile, and spoke very seriously.
"Although I've lost my memories of the last 'Calamity,' I can say for certain that the 'Calamity's' impact on this world was absolutely terrifying."
"Even if it might not have been as disastrous as the 'Insomnia Calamity,' it was still nothing to scoff at."
Samuel nodded in agreement.
Right, right—how could his entrance not have any gravitas?
"But right now, there doesn't seem to be anything happening." Samuel said.
Though he wasn't entirely sure.
After all, he had never lived in this world before, so he didn't know what "normal" was supposed to look like here.
What if this world originally had two suns, and the "Calamity" he brought was that one of them got eaten?
If that were the case, it would certainly be a huge change, but as a transmigrator, he wouldn't notice it.
However, what Wyatt said next confirmed Samuel's thoughts, indicating his worries were unnecessary.
"Yes, no 'Calamity,' no chaos."
"Nothing happened at all."
Wyatt placed his empty glass back on the table and let out a long sigh.
"That's what's worrying."
"That's why I came to find you."
"Hmm, wouldn't no 'Calamity' be a good thing?" Samuel said thoughtfully.
"Yeah," Wyatt nodded, "no 'Calamity' is a good thing."
"But that's assuming there really isn't one." He said.
"Based on past experience, there's no way there wouldn't be a 'Calamity.'"
"If there really isn't one, that would be the best outcome. The fear is that the 'Calamity' has already been born, already happened—but we just haven't discovered it."
"If this 'Calamity' keeps hiding, we won't be able to take targeted precautions." Wyatt leaned back in his chair. "And I'm a bit worried."
"After all, the later we discover it, the less time we have to prepare."
"Even worse, if it's particularly good at hiding, we have to consider the possibility that the 'Calamity' itself possesses 'intelligence.'"
"That would be a true natural disaster."
"A 'Calamity' possessing 'intelligence'..." Samuel clicked his tongue. "That's certainly thrilling to think about."
"Don't get too thrilled." Wyatt waved his hand with a smile. "When the time comes, we'll have a rough time of it."
After saying this, his mood seemed to dip slightly.
"Sigh..."
"Humanity's research on 'Calamities' is still far too limited..."
"How many calamities have there been in history?" Samuel asked, leaning against the back of his chair.
"Five, I think, as far as I remember." Wyatt replied.
With that, he picked up a small piece of apple from the fruit bowl on the table using a small fork.
"Every single one was a major disaster." He said as he put the apple into his mouth.
"Apples taste better with yogurt." Samuel pushed an already-opened yogurt cup toward Wyatt's hand.
"Is that so? Thanks." Wyatt acknowledged with thanks, then picked up another piece of apple, dipped it in the yogurt, and put it in his mouth.
"Mm! It's really good." He nodded with satisfaction.
"Right?" Samuel shook his head. "I've always eaten them this way."
Picking up another apple piece, Wyatt suddenly asked.
"Speaking of which, do you know what day you were activated?"
He paused, then added, "Oh, 'activated' refers to the day you first stepped onto the path of the Law and became a Law Seeker."
"Well..." Samuel thought about it while holding a banana, then replied, "A long time ago."
"Maybe right after I was born?"
"Right after birth?" Wyatt leaned back on the sofa, repeating in disbelief. "Then how old are you now?"
"Eighteen." Samuel answered immediately.
The old thing was forever eighteen.
"Eighteen..." Wyatt repeated again. "...How can it be eighteen..."
"Hmm?" Samuel let out a questioning hum. "Is there a problem?"
"Of course there is." Wyatt's brows furrowed together. "Because the time the 'Calamity' appears is basically the same day as when the 'Singularity of Absurdity' is activated."
"Even if there's a discrepancy, it wouldn't be off by much. A day or two at most."
"According to what you're saying, the 'Calamity' has already been going on for eighteen years."
"Ah, is that so? How terrifying."
Samuel, who had already been activated for over a hundred years, said this.
Samuel was also thinking.
He couldn't actually be certain whether the world he used to live in was synchronized with this world's timeline.
He felt like he was now playing a game called "Calamity," with four "difficulty levels" in front of him.
[Difficulty 1: Peace—As a "non-native" "Singularity of Absurdity," the "Calamity" you brought only exists in the original world and won't bring any "Calamity" to the current world. Nothing happens.]
[Difficulty 2: Normal—The two worlds' timelines aren't synchronized. They only became synchronized after he arrived in this world. Therefore, this world's "Calamity" has only been going on for less than a week, and there's still a chance for remedy.]
[Difficulty 3: Hard—The timelines are synchronized. The "Calamity" started when he was 0 in this life and has been brewing for eighteen years and one week. When the "Calamity" fully erupts, it might cause tremendous damage.]
[Difficulty 4: Hell—The timelines are synchronized, but not completely synchronized. He kept being reborn in the original world, but time kept moving forward here. This "Calamity" started on the first day of his first life's birth, then kept hiding and accumulating power, stockpiling for over a hundred years, just to hit him with something big.]
Clearly, this difficulty wasn't for him to choose—it was purely random mode.
"But maybe the 'Calamity' has already ended." Samuel proposed a possibility. "It got stamped out before it even started."
A cigarette butt can ignite a mountain, but if you stomp it out early, it's really not that big a deal.
If the so-called "Calamity" referred to his six deaths before transmigrating, then he had already made it through.
But thinking about it more carefully, it didn't really fit. If anything, it looked more like a "seal" specifically targeting him.
Every time he reached a certain age, it killed him outright.
But that didn't seem reasonable either.
According to Wyatt, the "Singularity of Absurdity" only appeared simultaneously with the "Calamity," but that didn't mean the "Singularity of Absurdity's" growth would make the "Calamity" stronger.
So there was no point in suppressing his growth.
Ideas kept emerging, then slowly being overturned.
Now that he knew more things, Samuel instead had even more questions.
Wyatt tilted his head back, looking at the glass in front of him, lost in thought, seemingly pondering something unknown.
"Alright, alright, relax." Samuel waved his hand in front of Wyatt's eyes.
"Let's not worry about when the 'Calamity' will descend or how long it's been going on. Let's just focus on the present."
"Always thinking about all this random stuff, your brain will eventually wear out."
"True enough." Wyatt nodded, finding it reasonable. "And..."
A slight grin curled at the corner of his mouth.
"I have no memory of the last 'Calamity,' so this time I'll get to watch it properly."
"Thinking about it that way..."
"I'm almost looking forward to it..."
"I thought you'd be more concerned about humanity." Samuel casually brushed the crumbs sticking to his clothes onto the floor. "Since when the sky falls, the tall ones hold it up... and aren't you one of the tallest ones?"
"Yeah," Wyatt nodded matter-of-factly, "so I'll hold it up."
"Mm-hmm."
How matter-of-fact...
Samuel stretched lazily, took out his phone, and glanced at it.
The time for the gathering was getting closer.
Feeling he didn't like the current atmosphere, Samuel changed the subject:
"Wyatt, I attended your extraordinary gathering last time. This time, are you interested in coming to one of my extraordinary gatherings?"
"Oh? You're hosting an extraordinary gathering?" Wyatt perked up with interest. "When?"
"Today." Samuel said.
With that, he briefly explained the situation to Wyatt.
Wyatt listened while nodding frequently, providing plenty of emotional validation.
"Is that so? That sounds pretty good." He said.
"Right, right?" Samuel was equally looking forward to it.
"Well, since you've put it that way, I'll definitely come." Wyatt said with a smile.
With that, Wyatt took out a key, gently inserted it into the air in front of him, and twisted it.
It was a key wrapped in white leather, looking like it might not be very good at unlocking things.
But this key actually pierced into the air.
Click.
A window-sized "door" appeared in the air before Wyatt.
He pulled the door open, revealing a neatly organized storage room behind it.
"Well, since I'm coming to support you, I'll have to bring out some good stuff." Wyatt said as he reached his hand into the storage room.
"At that time, you can try auctioning some of these things off to build your gathering's reputation."
"I keep telling you, it's not my gathering." Samuel propped his head up with one hand, not stopping him either.
"Same thing." Wyatt said. "Since Allenay moved the venue here, you should know what he means by that."
"Well, I suppose." Samuel nodded, his gaze following the key in Wyatt's hand.
"Is this a Law Object? The material feels a bit strange." Samuel looked at the key in Wyatt's hand, finding that even though he was a "Toymaker," he couldn't completely analyze how this Law Object was made.
He could roughly see the outline, but the finer details were impossible to analyze, so he couldn't replicate it.
"You're asking about this?" Wyatt glanced at the key in his hand and shook his head. "No, this is a six-mark Extraordinary Item."
Samuel nodded. He had read about the difference between Extraordinary Items and Law Objects in the Travel Guide.
The former were mostly man-made—whatever they were made into was what they were. The latter were mostly naturally occurring, with no fixed upper limit, having the potential for further advancement.
Samuel recognized its material.
It was a bone, wrapped in a thin layer of skin.
It looked like it came from the same species as the bone's raw material...
This reminded him of the human bone pencil he had seen at Allenay's place.
Did people in this world really like making Extraordinary Items out of humans?
Samuel was curious.
He hadn't tried it yet.
Although he had used his own body as material to make "toys," using parts of other people was something he was seeing for the first time, and he hadn't attempted it.
"Speaking of which," Wyatt found what he was looking for and put them into a small cloth bag.
This small cloth bag seemed to be an Extraordinary Item too. It wasn't big, yet it managed to hold several items visibly larger than itself.
"I saw that you raised a Subhuman today. Were you trying to make some Extraordinary Item?"
"Huh?"
"I have quite a lot of resources here. If you need anything, you can just buy it directly from me—faster efficiency, better quality guaranteed." Wyatt continued, pulling the small cloth bag out of the "door" and casually closing it behind him.
"If you don't have a Law Mark like a Craftsman, you'll need especially spiritual materials to make Extraordinary Items." Wyatt rubbed his thumb over the key. "Not worth it."
"Spirituality?" Samuel repeated.
"Huh? You really are a newbie." Wyatt looked at Samuel. "I thought..."
"A genuine illiterate, no substitutes." Samuel spread his hands.
"Alright." Wyatt quickly accepted Samuel's identity as an illiterate in the extraordinary world.
Normal, normal.
"I told you before, a 'Singularity of Absurdity' is treasure from head to toe." He explained. "Other Law Seekers are the same."
Wyatt pointed at the key in his hand.
"For example, this one—it's a six-mark 'Messenger's' bone coated with a complete six-mark 'Collector's' scalp."
"Was that material hard to find?" Samuel leaned in for a closer look.
"A bit."
Wyatt nodded, then matter-of-factly raised two fingers.
"But even though the materials are relatively hard to find, if you're frugal, two six-mark Law Seekers could make several Extraordinary Items like this."
"More than several, right?" Samuel disagreed. "If you farm them, take the materials, then help them recover through other methods, you could probably sustain a continuous cycle."
"It's not that easy," Wyatt said with a helpless expression. "Samuel, you're being a bit naive."
"Making this kind of Extraordinary Item consumes the raw material's spirituality and soul."
"Spirituality is manageable—it can slowly recover over time. But the soul diminishes bit by bit with use."
"I see. That is quite rare."