Chapter 989: Elemental Displays |
This was the first time Kyle saw the Abyss.
'Not sure what I expected,' he thought as he looked at the descending slope. There was almost no vegetation growing on it. The only things he could see were lifeless earth and the occasional Demon shooting past them.
'With a name like Abyss, you would think it would be dark and foreboding, but it's kinda just a big dirt ramp.'
"We're here," Kyle said to the other two.
"What can you see?" Sebastian asked. Naturally, neither Sebastian nor Star Genesis could see anything since the Demon Car blocked their Energy Sense.
"Big dirt slope," Kyle answered.
"And?" Sebastian asked.
"That's it," Kyle answered. "Just a lot of dirt that goes down. No vegetation. Some occasional Demons. That's it."
"Does that tell you where we are?" Star Genesis asked Sebastian.
"Then, why did you ask?" Kyle asked with furrowed brows.
"Kyle, I've been in this fucking thing for 50 years. I just wanted to know what the outside looked like."
"Big dirt slope," Kyle answered.
"Amazing, thanks. Now, I know where we are," Sebastian said with a roll of his eyes.
"Oh? Where?" Kyle asked with a raised brow.
"The edges of the Abyss," Sebastian answered with a nod.
"Thank you for your valuable input. Wouldn't have known that without your help," Kyle replied.
Star Genesis just sighed as she heard the sarcastic banter between the two of them. "Can we get back to our actual task?"
"Not much we can do," Kyle said with a shrug. "We're just near the edges. The Demon Car is still profoundly slow. I'm already moving it down the slope, but it might take a while for anything to happen."
"Okay," Star Genesis said before falling quiet again.
The mood inside the Demon Car wasn't the greatest. Kyle had wished to spend more time with his friends, but this was not what he had in mind. Being forced to stay in relatively close proximity to the others without having anything to do was not the greatest experience. The three of them were used to constantly working on something, and the fact that they were just standing around made them antsy.
Sadly, things wouldn't get better anytime soon. After all, none of them would be able to leave the Demon Car while they were still inside the Abyss. They just hoped that the next part of the plan would work. If it did, things would become much easier.
The Demon Car kept going towards the east, descending the endless slope.
The edges of the Abyss stretched for a couple of billion kilometers. Getting past them would take a couple of years.
As the Demon Car kept going, Kyle looked at the surroundings. On some occasions, he could see some gatherings of Elemental Energy. Most of the time, they looked like a localized storm, a volcano, a huge mountain, or a vein of ore.
'Sure enough, I never really noticed it, but now that I'm seeing all of these Elemental Gatherings, I can see that Ayuvar's Elemental Dimension is broken,' Kyle thought.
When Kyle had been in Humanity's territories, he had rarely seen these spectacles. Yes, there had been Law Wells, but these Law Wells had been few and far between, from a Mortal's point of view. With his immense Energy Sense, Kyle had still seen tens, if not hundreds, of them, but as long as they weren't artificial, they had been hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from each other.
As for these natural spectacles, there had barely been any.
In Ayuvar, the Elemental displays were more binary. Either they turned into full-fledged Law Wells, or there was basically nothing to be seen.
'The main reason is that the Empires take care of these Law Wells. They find natural displays and reshape them so that they turn into Law Wells. Yet, the landscape is very different.'
'I've already seen a bunch of volcanoes here, but I've barely seen any in Ayuvar. There are wild gusts of wind traveling across the land, while Ayuvar barely has any wind. There are waterfalls of Yang-Water and traveling glaciers of hot Yin-Water. Not sure if I've seen that in Ayuvar before.'
'The Elements in the Abyss are far more active. In fact, several of these displays also interact with each other, which is more on the unusual side. The presence of one Elemental often discourages the presence of Elementals of other Elements.'
"I was a bit out of the loop," Kyle suddenly transmitted to his two companions. "Do we know anything about the abundant displays of Elements in the Abyss?"
"Manny said, they're unnatural and unusual," Star Genesis answered. "The Elements are interacting too much with each other in the Abyss. There are supposed to be certain distances between high-element fields. These distances are unusually small in the Abyss."
"Yep," Sebastian confirmed. "I've seen a bunch of Law Wells interacting with each other. I even saw a Minor Fire Law Well just 30 kilometers away from a Minor Water Law Well. The Elements constantly clashed, weakening both Law Wells, and yet, they never vanished."
"If you use standard calculations for Elemental Energy, the proximity of these two Law Wells should lead to a collapse of one or both of them within mere months. However, I still saw them centuries later."
"That means this is not a standard environment, right?" Kyle asked.
"Correct," Star Genesis said from the side. "The calculations are based on a natural Elemental Dimension. Since the proven calculations do not work, it can only mean that this is not a naturally grown Elemental Dimension."
"Every Elemental Dimension reaches an equilibrium at some point. That's when the presence and location of Law Wells are basically set and don't change anymore. All the Elements have been ordered, and they barely interact with Elementals of other Elements anymore."
"This equilibrium does not exist here," Star Genesis added, "and it will most likely never occur."
"How come?" Kyle asked.
"Manny said that every Elemental Dimension receives a certain amount of Energy from a superior Elemental Dimension unless it has received a fixed threshold," Sebastian said. "This means that, assuming this Primary World doesn't have a full Elemental Dimension, the Supreme World will dump a boatload of Elemental Energy into our Elemental Dimension to create more Elementals."
"I see," Kyle said as he saw where this was going. "But if that were the case, we would also have Elementals in the western half of Ayuvar, correct? After all, the Supreme World wouldn't just dump Elemental Energy into the eastern half."
"Correct," Sebastian answered. "This means that, in relation to its size and level, Ayuvar has enough Elemental Energy to reach that threshold, and since the western half of Ayuvar's Elemental Dimension is basically empty..."
"We have two kilos of shit in a one-kilo bag," Kyle finished.
Sebastian smiled a bit at the phrase. "Yep. In short, the eastern half of the Elemental Dimension is over twice as dense as it is supposed to be. That's why there are constant conflicts between Elementals."
"And how does that work?" Kyle asked. "Pretty sure such a strained system would collapse eventually."
"I should," Star Genesis commented, "but it hasn't."
"And we don't know how or why."
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