Chapter forty four: the world observer
The warriors didn't flinch or panic when the two massive wolves lunged toward them with that sudden burst of speed. They had no reason to, the traps were already in place.
The second the wolves closed the distance, a storm of arrows came flying in from both sides, cutting in so sharply it seemed to come out of nowhere. The impact sent both wolves crashing to the ground with a heavy thud.
The arrows had been fired by a group of golden-eye warriors positioned a short distance away. Thanks to their golden eyes, they could send a rain of arrows with precision, avoiding their own men while hitting the wolves without hesitation.
And these massive wolves, although stronger and faster than before, still couldn't shrug off that many arrows tearing into them from two directions.
"See? Told you there was nothing to be afraid of," one of the warriors said with a hint of mockery.
"I was just being cautious," the other warrior's pride was clearly stung.
"Hahaha, sure you were." With that, they brushed it off, drove their blades into the wolves a few more times to make sure they were dead, and then hauled the bodies back with them.
This wasn't an unusual scene. Since humans couldn't take down these mutated animals through straightforward fights anymore, the only way was to plan ambushes and lure them into traps.
They still needed meat, and more importantly, they needed answers about why so many animals had suddenly changed.
When people realized the beasts had grown stronger than them, it shook them badly. So they chose to dissect every mutated creature they got their hands on to figure out the cause.
By now, in every village and city, groups of people were studying these mutated animals, hoping to understand what had happened.
With so many people examining the mutated beasts, it didn't take long for them to figure out the source of the change.
Inside the bodies of these creatures, they found a bluish substance. The Prehistoric humans couldn't analyze it in any meaningful way, but they could at least agree that this odd material was what triggered the mutations.
Following that trail, they eventually uncovered why the substance appeared in the first place. Something was different about the air around the Sersikar Forest. It was like the air itself had undergone some kind of change.
Ofcourse, they had no way of knowing it was actually a form of energy spread across the entire forest, human understanding wasn't developed enough yet.
But it gave them a clear enough idea: the air within Sersikar Forest was not normal.
Once the idea was conceived, people began entering the Sersikar Forest despite the risk of mutated beasts. They wanted to breathe the air that seemed to change the beasts, or some wanted to eat the flesh of the mutated creatures.
And yes, they soon confirmed that their bodies reacted very differently. Breathing the forest's air strengthened them at a noticeable rate, and eating the meat pushed that growth even faster.
Some warriors gained raw strength to the point they could split a tree or crush a wild beast with their bare hands. Others developed sharper reflexes or changes in specific parts of their bodies, mutations varied from person to person, but it occurred without any failure.
With both sides growing stronger, humans and beasts reached a tense balance, and Dharti moved into an age where physical enhancement became part of everyday life.
Thus, Dharti entered a new era of the extraordinary.
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Caelum knew every detail of what was happening. He had been the one to seed the energy that soaked through the Sersikar Forest, without a doubt, none of this was unexpected.
But this was still far from what he wanted.
"It worked out quite well." With the people of Dharti now touching the extraordinary in their own crude way, Caelum felt the groundwork was in place.
"Since this doesn't break the balance, I should be able to bring in more types of extraordinary powers."
With his current strength, Caelum could easily build a complete, structured path for supernatural abilities inside Dharti. The only thing holding him back was the fear of upsetting the balance of life there.
If anything went wrong, everything could collapse.
And ever since he failed to affect his own illness with the "all-powerful" quill, he became paranoid. What if something didn't work out the way he intended? His absurd illness made him realize that even with the quill, he could not achieve everything perfectly.
But now that this weaker form of the extraordinary hadn't caused any disruption in Dharti, Caelum could consider building a full scale power system.
Tap–tap–tap.
"But that's only one of the many things on the list…" Caelum was lost in thought, as he tapped the table's edge.
He sat inside the white room floating above Dharti, Looking down on the world below.
"There are too many problems, and too much to handle if I want to perfect the world as a whole, eh."
He stopped tapping and began sorting out his ideas.
"Apart from the extraordinary paths, there's the issue of the painting space being finite," he said to himself. "Even if I expand Dharti endlessly, the painting space itself has limits. I need to find a way for it to grow on its own."
He leaned back on his chair.
"And there's still the matter of the missing celestial bodies. Sure, I can imitate sunlight and moonlight with the quill, but it looks off."
"Hmm… the biggest issue is this: as I keep creating, the painting space will grow so large that I won't be able to oversee everything, and that could trigger some kind of imbalance. To prevent that, the world itself needs a way to correct those imbalances without me stepping in each time."
Caelum pressed his fingers to his temples. "It's not like I enjoy creating nonstop, I just don't have another option."
His true priority had never been expanding Dharti or perfecting the painting space. Everything he did circled back to a single goal; finding a cure for the ridiculous illness eating away at him. And the fact that even the quill, something capable of bending reality, couldn't touch that sickness said enough about how dire his condition truly was.
"I can't shake this feeling that the quill, this illness, and that intangible willpower it pulls out of me… all of it is tied together in some way."
Right now, the only direction he could see was to keep pushing. If he kept breaking through his willpower limits again and again, then maybe, just maybe, he would eventually hit a point where the illness could be dealt with.
Caelum's gaze sweep across the plain white room. "I should rebuild this place too, it's far too plain."
He rose from the chair, took the quill in hand, and aimed it at one of the vacant stretches of space within the white room.
"First, let's fix the bigger problems." A heavy surge of willpower flooded into the quill as he began shaping a new creation.
He defined: 'A construct that generates its own energy, stores it, and releases it through the entire painting space.'
Caelum made the first stroke, manifesting an outline into existence.
'It will use that endless energy to expand the painting space on its own, as well as gather every trace of information through its energy spread everywhere, it's energy will be omnipresent across the entire painting space.' he continued defining.
'Through that same omnipresent energy, I'll know everything happening inside Dharti.' Caelum made aother stroke, and the outline sharpened. A square structure solidified into existence.
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With three strokes from the quill, the illusory square became real. Its definition was exactly as Caelum envisioned, designed to fix most of the problems in the painting space.
The cube hovered in a corner of the white room. It spun slowly. Its surface was blue, and each of its four sides had a distinct pattern, showing the different functions Caelum had given it.
"Haaaah! I haven't felt this level of drain in one go in a while," Caelum said, his face showing fatigue. Even without his body being affected within the painting space, he felt fatigue.
This showed how complex the creation was. He looked at the cube intently and said, "Just like the world stabilizer, let's call this 'the World Observer.'"
"It will observe the world and expand it, as well as become my eyes, so the name fits its functions."
Just when Caelum said that, a transparent energy gathered inside the World Observer. It pulsed outward in waves, spreading across the entire painting space.
The space, which had remained the same since its creation, began to stretch and expand outwards. Just like how the universe continuously expands, the painting space will also forever expand.
Even the people of Dharti felt a faint tremor, a small earthquake hit dharti out of nowhere.
Caelum then made a few more adjustments. He removed the world stabilizer's function of expanding Dharti entirely and set it so that both Dharti and the painting space would now grow under the World Observer.
"Now then." Caelum again aimed the quill at an empty spot in the white room, and poured an immense surge of willpower into it.
Creating the World Observer had already required a massive effort, but this time it was far beyond that. The quill drained over ninety percent of Caelum's willpower in a single instant.
He defined it: "This will be the origin from where all extraordinary paths of power will emerge in the endless future."
"It will be an all-encompassing canvas, the source from which all mysteries are conceived." Caelum made the first stroke.
He defined, "Just like the World Observer, this will produce its own energy. But the energy it generates will unlimited potential, it will be all-encompassing."
"With that energy, anyone will be able to carve their own path to the extraordinary."
Three precise strokes later, a faintly illusory shape appeared. It solidified, forming a tesseract that hovered in the air.
At its center, black-and-white energy swirled. The object was about the size of a basketball, radiating a subtle glow into the white room.
The definitions sounded dizzyingly complex. Infact Caelum's mind spun wildy when he defined such complex characteristics.
But it had to be this intricate. Nothing less would achieve the kind of extraordinary system he envisioned.
He had imagined countless ways to structure extraordinary powers for a while now, but every idea felt limited.
Even drawing inspiration from Earth's stories; books, myths, and even comics, he saw the same boundaries. Each system, no matter how grand, carried rules and restrictions.
And that went against the very reason he had created Dharti. He wanted freedom, wanted to escape from Earth's constraints.
He didn't want a system boxed in by rules at all. He wanted a framework that allowed infinite choices, and endless possibilities.
That's why he defined a construct capable of generating all-encompassing energy, it was a foundation on which any path could be built.