"I…"
The beads of sweat poured down Adrin's brow. If others learned that he told outsiders about this, his death would be practically guaranteed. He wasn't even worthy of having this information, but his little sister had reached a level of status where it was tacitly allowed for her to bring this information back to her bloodline. Due to this, he had benefited.
The reality was that the true name of this principle wasn't even Force Manipulation, it was just that the moment Leonel had said those words, he understood exactly what he was referring to.
This was inevitable. Leonel had deduced the existence of Force Manipulation himself, so he had also, of course, named it himself. He originally hadn't expected Adrin to know what he was talking about at all, but it seemed that he was right to ask.
Leonel leaned back in his chair, patient. Adrin wasn't going anywhere and there was only one path forward for him. There was nothing that the latter could say to get out of this.
"I…" Adrin took a deep breath. "… They call it Dimensional Layering or Dimensional Folding. According to what I know, the true reason we call our progress Dimensions is because of the existence of Dimensional Layering and the principles behind it.
"It's said that worlds fundamentally change after crossing into the Fourth Heaven and gain Force which fundamentally changes the laws of physics, but the reality is that even in its infancy and before a Metamorphosis, Force exists. The trouble is that it exists in Folds of Reality that aren't perceptible. With the way they layer, they can't interact with the real world and worlds at and below the Third Dimension are water to their oil."
Leonel frowned. "There are worlds beneath the Third Dimension?"
"Yes. The First Dimension is known as the Impetus of Creation. Some believe it's God, some believe that it's the Big Bang, some others have any number of other theories and explanations for what it might be. Ultimately, its just the moment right before existence comes to be.
"The Second Dimension is known as the Impetus of Life. It's said that this is a reality that only the Regulator can exist within. The Impetus of Life is both an instant of time and an infinite strength of time, it both touches a moment in time and all moments in time. It's a single line that wraps around all things that are, have been, or ever will be."
Leonel's gaze narrowed.
"From the very beginning, the Impetus of Creation, Force exists. When the Third Dimension forms, it can begin to slowly unfurl itself. When the Fourth Dimension descends, it matures and fully unfurls itself."
Leonel's frown deepened. "Fully?"
Adrin nodded somewhat nervously. "Depending on the strength of a Force, it will climb onto Dimensional Layers as though it was scaffolding. The stronger the Force, the more scaffolding it needs and the more Layers it will stretch into.
"The process of Dimensional Folding is taking the complex Folds of a Force, untangling it, and layering such that it could be used with less and less scaffolding. This is the best way to strengthen your Force and the only method of making a weaker Force stronger than a more powerful Force.
"The other way of doing it…"
"Is making your body stronger scaffolding," Leonel muttered, seemingly not needing Adrin's confirmation.
Adrin trembled once again before he sighed. This was the difference between someone with talent and someone without it. He had had all of this explained to him, but Leonel didn't even need him to finish.
Indeed, there were two ways of strengthening your Force.
The first was through Dimensional Folding, or decreasing the amount of scaffolding your Force needed to function.
The second was through normal practicing. By strengthening your body, you gave your Force more scaffolding to work with, and thus made it functionally stronger. However, this method required you to have great talent, otherwise, you would eventually run into a bottleneck where progress became impossible.
This was why it was called Dimensions, you were using your body as a proxy for something your Force Manipulation should be doing, and as such, you were missing out on a lot of strength.
And of course, the best results would occur when you did both at once, and best of all when you used the two in a feedback loop of sorts. Leonel had a feeling that leaning into Force Manipulation would open a path to breaking through bottlenecks you would otherwise lack the talent to make it through.
Leonel felt his entire perspective changing. He wasn't strengthening his Forces, he was just bringing them back to their origin. The more of them he understood, the easier he could "Fold" them, and the more of them he Folded, the more of its power he could use with less scaffolding, and thus the more powerful his output would be.
The more powerful the Force he was working with, the more effort he needed to put into Folding it.
Scarlet Star Force was a Ninth Dimensional Force, so it needed all Nine Dimensional Layers to unfurl itself. If Leonel wanted to shrink what it needed, he would have to truly extend himself.
Snow Force was just a Sixth Dimensional Force, so it only needed Six Dimensional Layers to unfurl itself. As such, it took less effort to Fold it.
This was a simplified version, but Leonel felt that he was missing something, that was because despite the fact he was already in the Sixth Dimension, he still felt that there was quite a bit more powerful to extricate from Snow Force.
That was when Leonel's gaze suddenly blazed to life… he understood.
The First Dimension was the Impetus of Creation. The Second Dimension was the Impetus of Life.
What had Adrin said about the latter…? He had said that it was both one instant and all instants, a line that touched all things…
How could a single human body match this level of grandeur?
Thinking of the Dimensional Levels as perfectly analogous to real Dimensions was the wrong way of thinking, they were at most approximations. The more talented you were, the better your approximation, but Leonel didn't believe any normal living being could ever match existence, that was simply impossible.
Ultimately, the body would forever be limited by the Third Dimension. Alone, it could not access the more fundamental Dimensions, even the Regulator could not return to the First Dimension.
While you could rely on your body and affinities as an approximation, the only way to truly match the grandeur of the Dimensional Verse was to Fold your Force was to reach a point where your Force Manipulation reached this untouchable level… a level only the Regulator could exist within… and maybe, ultimately, a level even the Regulator could not reach.
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