[Short Story] The Four's Experiment (Patreon)

In a barren corner of creation, hidden behind a cluster of multiverses, there was a small universe. Well, small isn’t quite correct. It was actually quite middling in size compared to the average universe. An expanse of superclusters and more beyond the counting of most mortals.

However, while the technical size was alright, the theoretical size had a limit. For this out of the way universe, despite there being Quintessence present it might as well not have had it. Some inherent rule kept the power locked up and could not split out into the various mortal powers such as Mana, Qi, and so on.

This meant that while the physical size of the universe was decent, it lacked any internally expanded spaces and so it was called small. Because after a certain scale, you do need to fall back on multipliers to appreciably increase in size. So even if the “real” space was grand, even a tiny universe could contain multitudes more if its rules allowed for spatial expansion and especially spaces within spaces.

Many would consider it a science-based universe, where the “final frontier” meant going out into space and exploring. As compared to a fantasy based universe where the exploration takes place across realms or if a part of a multiverse, dimensions. That was all about to change.

Outside of this quaint, out of the way universe, Stood a gathering of four True Immortals. Their very existence anchored in the void as steadily as any mortal’s feet upon their home planet’s surface. Appearance for them meant little and yet the face they presented spoke volumes. Though even a mortal who saw them could infer much just from seeing them.

What would that mortal see?

One, A Man, maintaining a form that can only be seen as quintessentially Human. All he wears is a cultivator’s robe. For that is what he is. No one can deny him being a Cultivator and beyond that, a Sword Cultivator. His Sword still sheathed and held in His offhand. Though one would be a fool to assume the Man wasn’t as skilled with that hand as his main. Such a weakness was beat out of Him long before He rose to His current state.

Details such as the color of His skin or length of His hair would escape the mortal viewing Him. Though despite most personal details being obscured, what little was visible would enlighten the mortal to the point of forcing them down the path of being a swordsman. And that mortal would be good at it. What little they had seen would drive countless revelations on how to wield a sword deep into their brain to the point of the most basic forms being on the same level as breathing.

Even within the framework of this story, the mortal just used as an example has been too conceptually contaminated to view the next being and another mortal must be used.

And they would see a Machine. Gears capable of crushing galaxies between their teeth. Pulleys fashioned from the skin of a dead universe. Massive drive shafts that begin outside of sight and extend beyond sight. Yet at the same time, the mortal would see things smaller than possible. Not just because they are too small for them to see and yet such details seem become magnify before them, but because they truly are smaller than possible within a universe.

Interspersed across every surface of the Machine on this sub-Planck scale are all forms of runic, electronic, and so much more. The mortal would have no choice but to believe that any system ever used to create a computer, something that even if they came from a prehistoric society, they would now intimately understand, was represented in this Being’s form.

On to the next mortal, who would see idealized representations of uncountable archetypes. An Archmagi of inestimable power, capable of warping even the void. A Mechanic who seemed to barely be holding back from working on the Machine. Triplets forming a Hivemind. A horse who is the perfect Steed. A hydra with infinite heads, more constantly growing in a show of being the perfect Regenerator. A being with three limbs, two fading out of sight as they touch on the past and future, a Time Lord.

And on and on, as every possible archetype seems to be manifest. Monsters, Machines, Man, and more. Whatever form would best allow the being to perform. Each existing at the same moment and yet just as ephemeral, so as to allow even true opposites to exist.

And that Mortal ended up absorbed into the Being to begin work on being some niche form of Observer. So we bring in the fourth and final mortal. What they see is a true Predator.

Sure, the last being might have had uncountable aspects that focused on hunting, beasts, predators, and so on. None of that, however, can match this Monster. While appearing only as big as the universe they have gathered at, the mortal can tell that without even fully opening its mouth, the monster could eat the entire universe if It so desired.

The Monster’s claws shred even the void with even the barest hint that It might move them, whether It does so or not. Gills on Its neck flare with each breath, extracting power even from the void. In one of Its many hands, there is a void deity clasped which It takes bites from and none of that deities powers allow it to heal, even its form is locked in place around the bites. And at some point, one of those bites also Consumes our last mortal observer.

The four True Immortals stand outside of this universe, having all agreed not to enter for they have a use for such a place. Their interest comes from the fact that no True Immortals have ever entered it, the universe’s timeline is free to alter however they wish. Oh, and while being a True Immortal inherently places you beyond all rules, it doesn’t stop others of their kind from protecting better known locations.

And this universe? No True Immortal claimed it or the nearby cluster of multiverses. So they would play.

The three armed Time Lord surged as a dense sense of realness filled it. Its hands grabbed beginning, present, and end before dragging Their middle hand back, back, back. Within the universe, ancient solar empires shrank. Enlightened societies reversed into old hatred. Species that had recently risen, fell back while others that had gone extinct revived.

The four True Immortals go back and forth and when to start. All the while the third arm is moving back and forth like some child scrubbing through the timeline of a video. Except with each move forward, things never happen quite the same. Civilizations that once reached the stars end up dying on their home planets instead. Space born plagues drift differently on interstellar winds and ravage new places.

Though just as equally, depraved societies instead end up as paragons of righteousness. A probe goes off at a different angle and instead of a slaver ship finding a civilization that just stumbled into space, a benevolent group makes contact. Oh, and occasionally someone will end up stubbing their left toe instead of their right. Chance is like that sometimes.

After much deliberation and enough complete resets that nothing is recognizable in the universe as compared to when they first found it, the four settle on a starting point. A point within the first fifth of the universe’s lifespan where, with some subtle manipulation, there are a large number of sapient species rising up.

Then the four each choose a starting point and the fun begins as they take action at the same moment between moments, locking down the universe’s timeline.

The Sword Cultivator forces the void to condense into a sword and drops it onto His point where it pierces the sun of an inhabited system. The voidborn sword could have kept going, but it stops at precisely the point that a quarter of the sword is sticking out of both sides of the sun.

He declares, (Cultivation)!

The Machine takes out a grain of sand and places it within a gas giant, Their point once again an inhabited system. And the grain of sand crystallized the gas giant’s atmosphere into large gears, visible from the inhabited planet. Each displaying something basic such as farming or swimming.

It states, <Skills>!

The All Archetypes In One dreams a large ever shifting flower into existence that replaces the inhabited planet’s moon.

They declare, [Classes]!

The Monster considers twitching a claw and a giant rift forms on their point’s inhabited planet, cutting off a growing civilization from the rest of the pangean mass. The curl of material from this extends out of the planet’s atmosphere.

It growls, {Evolution}!

And then the moment passes.

On four separate planets inhabited by sapients, monsters, and animals a system arrives.

The cultivation system has a slow start and it takes thousands of years for someone to advance far enough to even leave the original world. On the world with skills, there is a ramp up as knowledge skills begin to unlock greater technological wonders. The class system manages the fastest start as there are those who gain classes related to teleportation. And of course evolution begins at the middle of the pack with a few specimens that go far, while most benefit from the slow and steady grind of natural evolution with a boost.

The [Class] system has soon spread to the local galaxy. Over a paltry few tens of thousands of years, the steady lock step increase of the powerful people’s life spans has allowed a critical mass of spatial Arch Magi. Great gates connect countless worlds and entire moons carved into special artifacts go hurtling out into space to spread more gates to areas yet unvisited. All the while the [Class] system proliferates each time one of its holders steps foot on a new world.

In the middle, almost tied with evolution, the <Skill> system takes almost a hundred thousand years to spread to its entire galaxy. While magic and tech are both viable with it, the skills don’t provide a simple shortcut to gates and their like. You have to build up to that knowledge instead of it being gifted to you with higher levels doing stuff like killing monsters. However, once the holders of the <Skill> system reach this point, their attempts to explore even further go much quicker. The various skills for teaching allowed knowledge to be passed down to the next generation much quicker. Though the life extension effect of the <Skill> system is technically the weakest and so that accelerated passing on of knowledge is very much required.

Evolution takes just a squidge more than a hundred thousand years to spread to an entire galaxy. On one hand, the {Evolution} system has the weakest life extension effect as most beings, and it is beings with this one, don’t experience any extension. However, it beats out skill as while it doesn’t fully pass down, any life span extension does pass on to the next generation at least a little bit. As for how it ends up conquering the stars? While some civilizations take to the stars, it is for the most part a factor of monsters evolving to live in space and spreading the system by accident whenever they stumble on a new world.

Last, there is the (Cultivation) system. Not only does it take long periods of time to gain power through it, but it doesn’t come with a built-in path to follow. However, of all the systems, it is the greatest at extending a person’s life span. More than that, some beings with talent managed to keep advancing fast enough that there are still some alive who saw the sword when it first pierced their sun. Which considering the fact that it took almost a million years to conquer their home galaxy is saying something.

But it is at this point that cultivation shows its strong points. While the other systems have all conquered multiple galaxies by this point, the (Cultivation) system rockets ahead. Their immortals who have mastered various Daos related to space, light, travel, speed, and so on that can travel to nearby galaxies in a fraction of the time the other systems require. Beyond that, they have an advantage because they don’t have to visit a world to pass on the (Cultivation) system. They can be nearby and touch it with their spiritual sense, such as when they are examining the world for any secrets.

Not that the other three systems aren’t advancing. Through nature, technology, and magic, they all have their own immortals. Beings who push ever farther outwards from their home systems in search of more. And as ever, those at the true top end of power, unless the universe restricts them itself, all paths to power are equal at the end of it all. Not to say anyone has reached that point within this universe yet.

Then the real fun starts. It happens first with evolution and cultivation. A stray stellar space whale pod comes across a world where a lone immortal cultivator of the Dao of exploration is staying. {Evolution} and (Cultivation) meet, the two systems fighting each other to become the primary system. It isn’t a stalemate though, the immortal was stronger than the whales and had been on that planet for much longer.

And so, the immortal and the whales receive a system messages outside of anything they had ever experienced before.

(The Cultivation system has claimed primary control over this solar system. The evolution of body and mind during breakthroughs has been enhanced.)

{The Evolution system has failed to claim primary control over this solar system and ceded control to cultivation. Highly evolved creatures will be considered to have special constitutions for cultivating. Further evolution within this solar system is now locked behind advancing one’s cultivation.}

Suffice it to say, the space whales did not like the sound of that last bit, so they fled. The cultivator let them, having already received the information they needed, that of where they had come from. And so they set off, only to end up on the opposite side of the coin.

The {Evolution} system had long ago claimed the solar system the space whales had come from. Because of that, cultivation couldn’t do anything besides fall under its umbrella. This entailed cultivation realms being locked behind having evolved enough. Though it did give the local sapients a chance as cultivation allowed them to match up with equally evolved monsters that weren’t aware enough to cultivate themselves.

Though this was only one point of interaction. All across the universe, similar events would begin to happen. Not just that, but those touched by multiple systems would spread them all. Though they spread their original system as the dominant one to any new worlds.

Skills and classes meshed the best. Each already having some aspects of the other. Wherever they met, it tended to be more of a matter of whether you got limited on what classes you can take by your skills or what skills you can take by your classes. Oh, and if the power difference was big enough, sometimes level limits on the weaker side based on the level of the other.

On the other hand, evolution tended to throw in the biggest monkey wrenches with all of its interactions with those two. Unlike cultivation, the class and skill systems tend to lack any sort of actual self evolution aspect unless taken as a class or skill. Besides that, evolution tended to cause the most problems for civilizations.

While sapients could and would evolve, beasts just have the advantage in that front. They do not resist changing into something more than their original species like most sapients do. And so even if evolution is a subordinate of the two, it causes great beast waves and massive loss of life. Monsters once restricted by a lack of self guidance in gaining skills or classes, skyrocket in power as they follow what comes natural to them. This is especially true with classes as the various evolutionary stages tend to end up as classes, allowing everyone to keep growing abilities gained in a previous form and even if not available in their new form.

Though this same issue isn’t there when combined with cultivation. Not because it doesn’t do all that. Rather, under cultivation, not only do beasts tend to awaken to sapience once they grow stronger. They just do grow stronger already. The difference between a beast developing a beast core and being able to breathe fire isn’t much different from a beast that evolved to breathe fire. Sure, all such worlds suck for the weak, but that was a general truth to begin with.

And speaking of the (Cultivation) system, it was a little rough around the edges, but skills and classes could fit in. A skill for the Dao of the sword isn’t that much different from a skill called swordsmanship. Classes were a slight bit harder, but that was because even with their massive life spans, cultivators tended to do just that. So the option to have multiple classes tended to be used for their main Dao and a couple side hobbies.

At this point, two major events happen around the same time. The first three system world and the meeting of equals.

For the three system world, cultivation meets up with a class and evolution combo. Class was ascendant in its own combo, but lost to cultivation. This evens out the differences between the pre-existing combo. However, they both end up locked behind having a high enough cultivation realm.

As for the meeting of equals? It was such a slight chance, and yet inevitable. What happens when two systems arrive at an un-initiated world at the same time while the two sides have close to equal power?

<[The Skill and Class systems have met as equals. Classes now grant skills and skills can unlock classes. Neither will be limited by the other]>

From here, millions of years have passed and millions more continue to pass. The systems shuffle around and bump into each other. While the core areas of each system tend to stay pure, their strength is so great that other systems can’t survive, the edges of each mingle until there are combinations of all sorts. All four even meet when a cultivator experiences a teleportation error and ends up on the other side of the universe.

Though the most important event happens when the combination of <[Skill and Class]> meets on equal grounds the combination of ({Cultivation and Evolution}).

<({[ ]})>

On that planet there lived a variety of sapients. Humans, elves, dwarves, beast kin and folk of all kinds, awakened plants and animals, and so much more. This variety was what brought the two outsiders to the planet. It was the perfect ground for new insights into how different species develop; it was the perfect melting pot for strange new physiques.

Though the introduction of all four systems and the presence of those two outsiders didn’t change much at first. Skills and classes flourished, giving the one what they wanted. All the while the cultivator would abduct anyone that looked interesting or unique to study them. However, after a good long while, the two began to run out of interesting subjects.

Not because new things stopped popping up, but they were rarely ever one specific thing. What good is a class that only a certain evolutionary variant of human can learn to the one outsider? What good is a variant monster where the difference is they have new skills to the other outsider? The four systems had become too interconnected.

So the outsiders left. First, the Cultivator as they had been motivated purely by their own progress. Then the other outsider who had stuck around about longer to catalog some of the new stuff for others that might find it useful.

Ten thousand years and more pass. Great societies rise up only to fall into darkness. Beings of all sorts gain some basic form of immortality and “ascend”, leaving their home planet to look for greater challenges. And now the world is in an upswing once again. The world’s dragon veins rumble with Qi on a scale seen only once in a thousand years while beasts all over begin to be born as rare variants.

All the while, civilizations build their way up out of the most recent dark age. Old ruins delved for secrets. More specialized classes and skills begin to appear once again as the populace is no longer forced to slave away just to survive. There are even signs of various physiques that had not shown up in ages and are once again popping up.

Among all this chaos, there was a small village based around harvesting spirit pearls from the nearby ocean. While, as with most places, there was a variety of races. Most of this village were carpkin. For some reason, the ability to breathe underwater was useful in harvesting the pearls. This being especially true when the clams fight back and you don’t want to kill them so more pearls grow.

Now, they weren’t the strongest out there. In fact, they tended to be a bit weak. There just didn’t seem to be a way forward for them with evolution. They tried though and a few of the family had managed to marry in some other stronger fishkin.

It was in one of these families that an unfortunate girl was born. Instead of showing signs of the razor fin bloodline, she experienced genetic activism. Not only was she a pure carpkin, even showing some signs more common among the carpfolk such as broader scale coverage. She had even lost many of the evolutionary gains that her people had made over the last thousand years.

Even the beauty of her extensive white and orange scales was more of a curse than a blessing. The evolutionary reversion meant no one would want her as a wife, but her beauty made her something to collect, a position worse than even a concubine.

She wasn’t willing. So what if she didn’t have any of her kin’s evolutionary advantages? She would just build up her own. Besides! There are three other systems with which she can gain strength. It wasn’t like her evolutionary would gate her progress in cultivation, classes, or skills!

Though her lack of evolution meant she didn’t have much time. Well, comparatively. Like most kin who come from a species with a shorter average lifespan, she could expect the base human allotment of 90 to 110 years. More than enough time, it just seems so much shorter when even the other pure carpkin in the village can expect a good 300 to 500 years.

This increased lifespan being one of the evolutionary advantages that comes with being closer to a beast in physique. Of the normal sapients, only the elves can beat the kin and folk from the longer lived beasts. Even the most evolutionarily advanced human at birth still only had a natural lifespan of a couple hundred years.

And it was to those very same humans that the carpkin girl fled when it became clear her family had other plans for her. Not only were the human territories the most diverse, but given their lifespan, it was also a haven for cultivation. While everyone practices if they want power, when you have hundreds of years, it isn’t important to use the most effective methods.

Most beasts use the slowest form of cultivation, that of passive gathering through breathing and eating and their folk and kin follow in their footsteps. Why do more when, by the time you would have reached old age, you’ll have cultivated enough to extend your youth? Better to focus on the other systems.

She didn’t have that choice and so she searched out the best cultivation technique for her. So many subpar techniques and so many shysters trying to sell a lie. Yet finally, she did it. A technique that provided decent speed and yet still built a solid foundation. Plus, being a fishkin had an advantage in cultivating it.

The technique (A Stone Is Carved By The Waterfall That Provides) builds upon a simple concept. While a waterfall doesn’t have more Qi than any other section of water, it jolts that energy free of the water. Thus, if you cultivate under a waterfall, you’ll never be lacking in Qi.

Though that only explains the second part, “The Waterfall That Provides”. The true genius of the technique is in the first half. For this technique uses the natural fierceness of a waterfall to purify and condense the user’s foundation.

From the same concept as how a rock under a waterfall will have the softer stone worn away, this technique uses the force of the Qi pounding down on you to erode away the impurities. This is not a comfortable or even safe method, but it works. More than that, a carpkin can breathe underwater and cultivate the technique for longer and deeper within a waterfall.

So on her thirty-fourth birthday, she entered a waterfall fed by multiple rivers and wasn’t seen again for over 2000 years. Over that time, she slowly worked her way ever deeper into the fall. Until she was sitting in the deepest section, facing forces that when she first entered would have stripped the flesh from her bones and then reduced those bones to sand.

For the rivers feeding this waterfall weren’t just normal rivers. No, they were massive monsters in and of themselves. The home of many great water beasts. Which was somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy as in living there, they worked to grow their rivers.

And then she emerged, not by leaving at the bottom, but in one jump up to the sky. At first, no one noticed something was happening, but as she ascended up against the waterfall, tribulation clouds gathered and the water split. As she pierced the top of the falls, those few able to see got to witness her orange scales turn gold and her white scales go silver.

Then, a hundred feet above the top of the waterfall, tribulation lightning falls on her, transfixing her body in the sky. A true nine by nine tribulation, 81 bolts of heavenly lightning rain down in batches of nine. First batch looked like normal lightning, then red, blue, purple, black, a stampede of horses, spears raining down, transparent pillars except for a ghosting of blue fire wisps at the edge, and white bolts that looked like they were moving slow and were so thin it almost seemed more like a static discharge instead of lightning.

Through it all, she remained steadfast, no-selling the tribulation until the last batch. The white bolts striking great gashes into her flesh as she puts all of her strength into resisting them. In the end, bloodied and battered, she survived and at that moment, a change happened.

Her hands and feet became claws, deer horns grew in her head, and for a moment a pearl seemed to form in front of her, though it was soon absorbed into her body. She had jumped over the dragon’s gate, evolving directly into one of the strongest races. Because no, she wasn’t a dragonkin, but a true dragon. And with this change, she completed her build.

Over the countless years of cultivation under that waterfall, she had been doing more than just that. Whether it was training skills or leveling classes, she hadn’t fallen behind, with only evolution taking a backseat. And now she has perfected herself.

Not to say she was suddenly the strongest being in the universe. Many have reached immortality both younger than her and much earlier. A few thousand years is nothing compared to the true monsters.

However, she had a good start of it and at the high end, the difference ends up no longer being raw power, but rather what tricks you have and favors owed. All things she can make up for with time. Time which she now has from her cultivation.

And so, over the next epoch, she develops her power. First on her home planet, but then moving out into the wider universe. Finding unknown places and spreading her balanced systems, discovering natural wonders, and fighting others doing the same. All the while, she continues to advance her power, catching up to the older generation.

An inevitability over a long enough time as more and more beings reach the bottleneck between being immortal within their universe and being a True Immortal. The difference for her is that in all categories, her limits are higher.

Where others are forced to stop, she continues just a little bit further. And so, over the uncounted years, she rises up. The difference in her age and those immortals that came before reduced insignificance, while her power begins to dwarf them.

All the way until she stands atop all others as the end of her universe draws closer. She has reached the true peak of power one can reach in her universe. But that’s the key, isn’t it? There is one more step and she can not take it. Her lifespan limit is not by how long she can live, but how long the universe can live and whether she finds a way to another, younger universe.

That doesn’t happen. Her universe draws to a close, the dimensional boundaries of her universe having contracted down until only her body remains and then not even that. And so she dies along with her universe.

Outside, the four True Immortals turn away from where that universe used to be.

(Once again, cultivation has allowed for someone to emerge who can feel the limits of their universe.)

<Another rise and fall. Though compared to last time there is a significant upward trend.>

{But still a failure.}

<It should be possible.>

{In all of creation, I’m sure someone has managed it. The question isn’t if it can happen, but if we can.}

[I have found myself all across creation and never heard of it happening besides in the oldest rumors.]

<Maybe we need another?>

(Too much help would only result in failure. There is a reason even in my personal system I have kept the tribulations for each major realm.)

{You just like seeing them suffer like you did.}

(I do enjoy that, but without tribulation the higher ranks get weighed down with trash.)

{My system takes care of that in a more natural manner.}

<We have gone over this before. Each of our methods have ways of weeding out the weak. Though I agree that any more systems and the chances will reduce by at least 9.47592333794837 percent. Even as it is, our four systems almost provides too many ways to get around those challenges.>

[Not that we expected to succeed.]

{Well no, but when you have all the time in creation, you need a long-term project.}

[True. Who has to look for the next universe?]

{Bah, we should just grab one of the nearby multiverses over there!}

<We haven’t finished testing on singular universes yet.>

(I don’t agree with {Them} for this next time, but we do need to get testing in a multiverse at some point. Though an optimal test would use a multiverse with four connected dimensions.)

<Five connected dimensions. All our test universes have shown that there needs to be a neutral ground.>

(But what if when involving multiple dimensions things change?)

[As if we wouldn’t eventually test both and more.]

<Too bad that any dimension cluster past a certain size will attract others and ruin any chance at finding one [You] can properly manipulate.>

{We should just make our own.}

(It is hard, but with enough effort we could shift universes relative to one another in the Void. The problem always stems from connecting them.)

<We start with natural multiverses. And to answer the question left hanging, {You} are the one who has to pick the next test universe.>

{Fine. I’ll start looking. I’ll contact you all when I find one.}

(Well then, I’ll see you all when it comes time to give this another shot.)

[Just make sure {You} double check it isn’t in someone’s territory again. And yes, see you all later.]

<Till next time.>

{That was one time! But yeah, see you once I find something.}