Aurora Over a Dead World

Chapter 39: A Cube For Training

"Here we are! This is the academy’s training area. Some of you must have been here before, right? Since I honestly have no idea what any of you can concretely do, this place is perfect for us to find out," I say to them while we’re inside some kind of dome.

The floor is made of sand, but underneath there’s a layer of vector-reinforced metal, same as the walls, which use that same metal to prevent damage outside the training area—though Tanya’s heat beams can still punch holes through it.

"Honestly, I like to keep things brief, so let’s get started by testing what each of you can do with this thing," I say as I drag over a slightly translucent black block. The cube is enormous, standing three meters tall by three meters wide.

"You’re going to attack this block and try to break it with a single attack—"

"Professor, that sounds way too simple. There’s a catch, isn’t there? What would a crafty kitty like you have in mind?" Edith cuts me off, clearly a little pissed that I called her work mediocre.

"...This cube right here is made of... I have no idea." When I look at the cube and say that, all of them look confused.

"See, this thing used to be a body. This was one of the first Kairas... chips aren’t anywhere near stable, as you must have learned. This Kaira here had the power to transmute all matter around her into some kind of three-dimensional super-material, if I can even boil it down to that."

"She died turning into this cube during a training session, and this cube here is so damn resistant—so insanely resistant—that only a handful of Kairas have ever been able to ’break’ it. And by the way, when it is broken, it restores itself hours later."

"I myself only managed to scratch it. And when you look at it under a microscope or through studies, this entire cube is a single form of matter. It’s not a cluster of atoms, or quarks, or anything else."

"No! It’s as if it were a single existential structure!! An absolute physics nightmare that no one’s ever been able to replicate in a lab. It is quite literally the most resistant material in the world. Unfortunately, you can’t really do anything with it, because when the material regenerates, it pulls the missing pieces back with extreme force."

"Becoming one again. And the attraction is so strong that no one’s ever managed to stop it. Of course, vectorial powers still partly respect physics, which means there is some physical way to produce this cube—we just haven’t discovered it yet."

"Which is a shame. But since the person who created it died, there’s no way to figure out how it could be replicated," I say, tapping the cube with my hand.

"The cubic configuration is the material’s ground state. Any alteration generates a restoration force proportional to the damage, so since you can’t really destroy this cube, you can attack without worrying about the damage."

"...P-Professor, that sounds fascinating. Why don’t we replicate the material? I-It’d be easier to try to create it from scratch, right?" Ashlyn asks a good question.

"Simple, Ashlyn—we don’t replicate it because we have no clue what it even is. There is literally nothing in the universe right now that resembles this. Everything in the universe is made up of small parts of something."

"When we break a bond, we separate that something. We usually cite atoms, for example—millions, billions, trillions, etc., forming something."

"But this cube here doesn’t have that. It’s literally one single thing. There’s no internal or external structure—no fields, no layers, no particles. It’s literally a perfectly solid block."

"Of course, some scientists theorize that this material could be made if something were capable of exerting infinite gravitational pressure on certain types of materials, forcing them to fuse to the point of becoming one single thing."

"But that’s just theory. After all, even a black hole would spaghettify matter instead of condensing it into a single thing. What’s even worse is the shape—this thing is a cube and it absolutely refuses to leave its cube shape."

"Not even if I warp space itself will it stop being a cube."

"Professor, that doesn’t make any sense. If it’s a single structure, how can it break? That’s so stupid," Tanya says, like she’s just heard something completely absurd.

"...Good question. And luckily for you, I have an excellent answer. First, I said ’break’ because it’s a simplification. The reality is that the cube can’t be broken."

"When it is ’damaged,’ what happens is that a piece breaks off, for example, and after a while it’s pulled back to its perfect position. If you put something in that position, the cube crushes it to the point where the thing in question is atomically mashed and then expelled out of the cube."

"Imagine this—we live in three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. Said like that, it sounds like they’re separate, right? But all four are part of the same thing. They’re just different ways of referencing each part."

"The cube, in short, only changes phases. When it receives a strong attack, it ’deforms’ without altering anything within itself and changes its physical structure. That changed physical structure can produce a small piece, or pieces so extremely small our eyes can’t even see them."

"But those pieces exist and return to the original structure after a while. The extreme attraction is literally the answer."

"The material pulls pieces back precisely because it never stops being one single thing, even when we ’break’ it into pieces. It’s not electromagnetic fields or gravity—the material simply pulls its pieces back with no existing explanation."

"Maybe in the future someone will discover it, but right now we have no answer for it. And the cube is, in short, ’unbreakable’ by any current technology or attack."

"Now, how about we go ahead and test your strength? The cube is indeed a mysterious wonder, but it’s still just a training and study object. Besides, it technically came from a corpse, so honestly, I’d rather not even know what happened to that woman’s body for it to turn into this thing."

"Honestly, the video of her training session is horrifying. It gives me chills just remembering it."

"Professor!! I bet I can completely destroy the cube! I have one of the strongest powers of this generation! Just because a bunch of weaklings couldn’t do it doesn’t mean I can’t!" Tanya steps forward with a really arrogant smile as she starts tying her hair into a ponytail.

"...Hahahahaha!!" I laugh at her, making her go red with embarrassment and rage.

"Why are you laughing?"

"If you destroyed this cube, I’d honestly be afraid of you. Did you not understand anything? There is not a single way in the universe to destroy this, in my view! You could throw it into a star’s core or into the event horizon of a black hole, and this cube wouldn’t be destroyed."

"The day someone actually manages to destroy this cube, that person has literally broken the laws of physics. And guess what? Vectors still follow the laws of physics, even if they bend them quite a lot."

"...Are you doubting me?" she questions angrily, moving closer to the cube.

"Doubting you? Girl, don’t be so arrogant. Your power doesn’t even come close to some of the powers that have already been used to try to genuinely damage this cube."

"The greatest physical demonstration used against this cube happened sixty-nine years ago. A veteran Kaira who manipulated gravity and the molecular behavior of everything gravity reached."

"She tried to destroy this thing both with gravity and by using atoms to sand the cube down on an atomic scale, and all she did was shatter the cube into a few billion fragments that returned to their original form in a matter of minutes."

"I don’t see how heat and radiation could ever match gravity at such an extreme level. So try to ’break’ it, but destroying it is impossible. So don’t go trying anything dangerous and end up hurting someone. If you use a nuclear-level attack, I’ll be forced to hurt you and knock you out."

"..." Tanya, with a low growl, touches the cube with her hands. I hear a crack followed by a hissing sound, but soon Tanya steps back, confused.

"Why—"

"Nuclear fission presupposes that you can destroy atoms. Tanya, did you even listen to me? This is a single structure. You can’t force a separation through nuclear fission," I say, rolling my eyes at her attempt to simply blow up the cube—along with herself and everyone around her.

"...That’s so fucking unfair!!" Tanya starts charging a heat beam that instantly ionizes the air around the floating sphere of heat.

Then Tanya fires the beam like a continuous laser, trying to pierce through the cube. She keeps at it for five minutes until I tell her to stop. The result is null.

"As expected." Heat won’t even be able to make the cube deform, no matter how hot it gets, since there are no "pieces" to be heated and generate any effect.

"...This doesn’t count as a test! It’s unfair if it’s immune to heat!"

"It’s not immune to heat. There’s just nothing in there that suffers the effects of extreme heat. There’s nothing that can melt or deform under extreme temperatures. Want to try something different? If not, step back so the next one can try." Tanya sulks to the back of the group while I sigh.

"Girls, be creative. You must have understood my whole explanation, right? Many of the physical processes that result in the destruction of something don’t work on this damn cube!! So don’t come at me with normal attacks."

"If no one can even scratch this thing, I’m punishing all of you. I didn’t go through all the trouble of dragging this thing here to test you just for you to not do the work properly." Although Tanya would have barely stood a chance at any success anyway.

At best, if Tanya had tried to blow up the entire academy by generating multiple external nuclear fissions so the impact might deform the cube’s state.

Since the few things that have worked were extreme kinetic energy to deform the cube, or extremely brutal and violent impacts, as well as certain types of powers that generate external deformations, like how warping space causes the cube to suffer the deformation.

’Although sanding the cube on an atomic scale did work in the past... maybe if Tanya had focused on the exterior of the cube instead of the cube itself, she might have been able to fragment it entirely...’ I won’t say anything. Tanya isn’t ready for something that grand yet. It’s dangerous, considering her impulsive mentality.

She needs to feel that she has to push herself harder instead of just relying on what she already knows.

"Next."