Chapter 783: The Seed Engine’s Influence
Despite the immense distance, Arthur could sense the dense creation law energy radiating from that location. That was enough location confirmation.
But what caught his attention next wasn’t just that single point of origin. As he focused, he realized that the same creation-based cosmic energy signature permeated the entire realm around him.
It only took him a second to form a conjecture, and he asked aloud,
"Lostvayne, that Seed Engine is meant to terraform a planet, right?"
[Yes, Master,] the sword replied. [It’s MEANT to terraform a planet.]
Lostvayne’s emphasis on the word ’meant’ was enough for Arthur to know the sword had detected and realised what he had.
The Seed Engine hadn’t just terraformed the planet it was placed on. It had gradually extended its influence over thousands of years, reshaping the entire dimensional space around it.
Before either of them could comment further, Celestia chimed in.
[Master, can you use your Spatial Authority to check the rough midpoint between those five stars?]
Curious about what Celestia wanted him to see, Arthur activated his Authority and swept it across the region of space, zooming in on the coordinates she had pointed out.
"...what the what is that?"
What he saw was a massive rupture in space, with faint traces of creation law energy still lingering. He simply hadn’t detected it earlier because it had been drowned beneath the sheer magnitude of the Seed Engine’s energy signature.
Staring at the rupture, Arthur muttered, "Something’s gone terribly wrong here."
Lostvayne spoke next.
[Well, I’ve never seen a case where a Seed Engine was left running for over ten thousand years... so this is a first for me too.]
Celestia finished the thought.
[It’s a first for all three of us. And standing around here isn’t going to tell us anything.]
Arthur raised his hand slightly and replied, "But Celestia, we’re not standing. We’re floating in space."
The sword turned, blade facing him, and Arthur was sure that if Celestia had a humanoid form, she’d be giving him a deadpan stare right about now.
Before Celestia could start tearing into Arthur, Lostvayne cut in.
[She does have a point, Master. We won’t learn anything by just floating around here.]
"Exploration time, then."
As he spoke, Arthur reached into his subspace and pulled out a different ship. But the moment he stepped into the cockpit, his eyes widened at the sight before him.
"Oh. I’ve never used this one before. That explains why the nylon is still on the seats."
He looked around at the control panels and the instrument cluster, most of which were still covered with plastic packaging.
"Unpacking all this is going to be a hassle."
Without hesitation, he sent the ship back into subspace and summoned a different one, larger, and far more suited for speed.
"Let’s go with this one."
Thus began Arthur’s journey toward the centre of the realm to investigate the Seed Engine’s influence and the abnormal phenomenon surrounding it.
◇ ◇ ◇
In the same manner that Arthur’s ship had travelled across the BK-789 Galaxy over the past week, it now moved through the distance within this smaller realm.
The ship gathered ambient spatial law energy that naturally filled space, and then used that energy to fold the space around it, shortening the distance between coordinates.
Occasionally, it generated spatial gates in front of itself, gates which it would enter and exit to instantly cut across far longer distances, essentially gate-hopping its way through the realm.
The ship was constantly folding space and gathering energy, which was stored in two separate reserves.
One was dedicated to energy used for folding space, while the other collected energy used for generating the spatial gates.
Both the entry and exit coordinates of any gate were scanned in advance before generation began. Otherwise, a miscalculation could open a gate into a dimensional wall or into the middle of a planet.
Of course, Arthur wasn’t the one performing any of these calculations. The high-level AI integrated into the ship handled it all.
Still, even advanced AIs weren’t infallible, so Arthur didn’t completely rely on automation. Whenever a spatial gate was about to be generated, he made sure to pay attention and confirm that everything was fine. Besides that, he didn’t concern himself much.
Roughly a day passed, and Arthur found himself within the central region of the space between the five stars visible in this realm.
He had now gotten significantly closer to the strange fracture in space, and from this distance, he could see it much more clearly.
It looked like space had once been a clean pane of glass, and someone had thrown a stone through it, then left it untouched for a long time, allowing dust to settle over the crack. That was the best way Arthur could describe the break in space.
The space around the break wasn’t fluctuating or warping in any unstable manner, so Arthur exited the ship and floated closer to inspect it, seeking to understand exactly what had occurred here.
As he observed the break up close, Lostvayne spoke.
[Oh Master... I think I know what happened here.]
"Explain."
[So I think this is likely where this realm’s former core was.]
Arthur blinked and asked, "Former?"
"Yes. The core of any moon, planet, realm, dimension, galaxy, or universe should be positioned where it can evenly distribute energy throughout its entire expanse.
That’s usually the centre, but certain space-specific irregularities can sometimes cause it to end up elsewhere.
This realm appears to be among the 95% of cases where the core was positioned centrally. However, for some reason, that core has long since dissipated, leaving behind this rupture.
The hole we’re looking at is where the core once was. If you use your Authority to examine it more closely, you should notice formations resembling your energy circuits wrapped around the edges of the fractured space.]
At Lostvayne’s suggestion, Arthur activated his Authority and observed the damaged region. Just as the sword had said, there were indeed structures resembling energy circuits embedded around the broken edges, except they were massive and extremely complex.
[If you saw those, then that’s definitely the internal structure of the spatial fabric that connected to the former realm core.]
"The what now?"
[Think of the fabric of space like a sheet of paper. Now imagine you sliced that paper thin and split it into two layers. What’s in between those two layers? That’s what you’re seeing now—the insides of the fabric of space.
Don’t try to analyse it or it might break your mind. Just know that what you’re seeing confirms this place once held the core of the realm. Lucifer used me to slice through enough realm cores over the years that I got used to how they looked.]
That was a strange way to gain insight into realm structures, but knowing who Lucifer was, it didn’t seem too far-fetched.
In any case, what Arthur saw confirmed that this had once been the location of this realm’s core, but it was now inert and drained of cosmic energy.
As for the reason why, that answer was easier to find.
Arthur turned his gaze to the far side of the realm. Now that he was much closer, he could sense the energy more clearly, and he could tell that the Seed Engine...
"—No, the planet the Seed Engine is on. That planet has become the realm’s core."
And at that, Lostvayne confirmed,
[Yep, definitely has.]
Thinking it through, it all made sense. The Seed Engine had terraformed the planet, but since no one had shut it down, it exceeded its intended function.
It began terraforming the surrounding space and simply kept going. Over time, its influence expanded until it had effectively terraformed the entire realm.
The Seed Engine didn’t possess a limitless power source. It functioned by absorbing ambient cosmic energy.
It had drawn on the energy produced by the original realm core to power itself, but eventually absorbed too much, draining the core completely and triggering its collapse.
By then, the Seed Engine had already redistributed the absorbed cosmic energy, re-emitting it into the realm, but mixed with Creation Law energy, thereby rewriting the realm’s configuration in its image.
Once the original realm core collapsed, the universe reassigned the task of realm stabilization to the next best candidate: the Seed Engine’s planet, which had been saturated in cosmic creation energy for millennia.
This was all conjecture, of course. Arthur and Lostvayne didn’t have any definitive proof. Their conclusions were based on past experience and spatial law comprehensions.
Long story short, there was always a possibility of outside interference.
To verify one thing, Arthur retrieved the Seed Engine’s key from his subspace. The instant it appeared, the key began to vibrate violently, trying to fly from his hand, but Arthur tightened his grip, forced it still, and returned it to his subspace.
This confirmed the Seed Engine was still active, even now.
"The Seed Engine is most definitely the thing that’s making that planet hold the position as the core of this realm. If I take away the Seed Engine, I’d basically be removing a portion of the realm’s core. And if that happens...
Arthur didn’t need to be a spatial manipulation prodigy or possess High-Rank Authority to understand the outcome.
He, Celestia, and Lostvayne all spoke the same words at once.
[["The realm would collapse."]]
A realm collapse would be catastrophic. And setting aside the fact that Arthur, still within the realm, would be caught in that collapse, the aftermath outside wouldn’t be pretty either.
The collapse would send massive energy surges rippling through space-time, destroying countless things outside the realm.
And that would definitely bring Kalvaro after him with the intent to kill, so Arthur wanted to avoid that.
"So what do we do?" Arthur muttered, eyes still locked on the distant source light of creation energy.
"We need a power source strong enough to hold the kind of energy required to sustain this realm.
It’s become a vital part of this realm’s core now, and since it’s that powerful, we’ll need something equally powerful to replace it."
He paused for a moment, thinking, then asked aloud, "Do I have anything like that on hand?"
The silence didn’t last long before Celestia chimed in.
[How about you use Lostvayne? Then have him leave after you exit the galaxy. If it collapses after that, that god won’t be able to do anything to you.]
Arthur slowly turned his head and looked toward her, expression flat. "Really, Celestia? Use Lostvayne?"
Before Celestia could respond, Lostvayne cut in.
[Well, leaving aside Lady Celestia’s jokes, such an attempt would likely cause this realm to collapse faster than you can imagine. The realm’s nature has been steeped too heavily in the Law of Creation.
Trying to replace it with something steeped in Destruction would trigger a repulsion effect. The new core’s energy would be rejected by the creation-saturated energy already filling the realm, leading to collapse.]
"Leaving aside all of that, there’s no way in hell I’m gonna use you to replace the core of this realm."
