"Xue'er..."
She snaps out of her daze into his eyes.
"Oh! Isaac… Are you okay now?"
"Yes, I'm fine… Thank you for caring; you're the sweetest girl I've ever met."
Xuě Xīlián seemed to have flushed. Not of poker but an asian flush.
"D-don't mention it…"
"But… Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"You're at the Order of Fermionic Conditioning: Somatic Integration Lock, right?"
"Mhm." She nods, baffled once more.
"But your age is 127? And your actual age is 16, right?"
"Yes?"
Isaac begins running his ratiocination once more.
The interpretations of that phrase are:
Accumulated perspective,
Intellectual maturity,
Irony,
Self-mythologizing,
or;
Overidentification.
She said it so casually.
I wonder… How do you slow aging to thousands of years with IRL science?
How do you explain story tropes with IRL science?
Unless… A subversion of tropes has occurred… Cultivators here are not slowing aging…
"May I ask… How slow is my speech in comparison to your thoughts?"
Dead on the money.
"Very slow, hehe… It's okay… I've gotten used to it." Staging a smile.
Staying true to classic tropes… New EAA took quite the leap in creative liberty.
A Monurgist does not slow down aging… Instead, the world slows down relative to them.
127 / 17 = 7.470588235
See sees and hears this world at a dilation factor of 7.47.
It's like Topological Anchor V2, or what it's mimicking, Sephalyn Veledônia's | Eye of an Emperor | Attribute, but so… So much slower… And to think she is on what is the first stage of Cultivation.
What a lonely worldview…
"I see… You're hearing my speech at a dilated factor of 7.47, right? I would sound like I'm talking at 13.4% of what I hear myself as I say these words?"
"Yes… That is true… My physical age to mental age dilation factor is 7.47; you're correct," She deterrently denied. "But seriously, Isaac. You don't have to compromise for me… I'm already ok一."
"It's fine, Xue'er. It's easier for you this way, too. Plus, how can I not after you cared for me?" Isaac expedited his speaking pace to 2.5 times his comfortable pace. "I'll continue practising faster articulation; it helps with my confidence as well."
The dilation factor Xuě Xīlián heard became a better 0.33x.
"You are far too kind to me… You and the Headmaster… Thank you, Isaac. I'm sure you can figure out how much it means to me."
On disposition, she clasped her hands.
"Don't mention it, Xue'er. I just need to know. Are you free later?"
"Oh? Uhm… I've got time. What do you need?"
"Could you explain your region's science to me? I'll meet you at the Grand Library. They'll have reference materials for me to understand better. I'd love to understand your culture and tradition with opinions and specialist knowledge from royalty no less."
"In thirty minutes?"
"Yeah, that works. See you."
Xuě Xīlián beckons with a small wave as she turns to leave.
But that recurring thought snaps back to Isaac.
The most important question as of now.
"Wait—Xue'er! Why study at EINA if you're a Monurgist? I mean, I don't see any other reason as to why? Can you apply principles of Noësis? Are Monurgy and Noësis closely tied? What dist—"
She halts Isaac's ramblings and stiffens. The red she always puts on her face creeps up again.
"...causenobodcanusebothexceptme..."
"What?"
She turns straight at him, uttering the words properly, slightly louder and more defensive.
"Cause nobody can use both. Except… Me."
Isaac's expression flatlines, the earlier anger and grief replaced now consumed by curiosity.
After all, it is in his nature to keep on learning. And such a well of information is being proffered to him.
His starvation began proliferating once more.
They bid farewell. Isaac himself headed to the library in advance, with some detours, of course.
He was a naughty student.
.
.
.
Let's get my thoughts straight first.
Am. FUCKED
ISTG… I'm in the WRONG game.
The final ḅ̵̧̰͔̦̬͔͖͇̬̳̇̐̔͒̅͆͊̓̕͜͜o̴̠̽͝s̵̰̯͑̈́͛̔͋͐̈́͐͆̿̍̀͛͂͐̕̕ͅs̶͍͖̋̊̂̀͋͒̌̌͂͐͆͊͂̕ knows that this world is a game, the capital city of Elenos is more advanced than it should be, all the students are Geniuses at mathematics and sciences, there are three more subjects and professors, there are Element-Based Lifeforms other than Carbon.
Caelum Veldt is faking idiocracy.
There is an entire other continent.
But most importantly…
Three more power syst— Three more Sciences. I assume that the Sources of Science are being literal, as each power system would have its own respective physics that govern the acting particles of each Source of Science, assuming that all have a corresponding particle similar to the Thaumiton to Noësis.
Each… that gives the apotheotic fighting chance of ascending to higher-dimensional existences. At least for one Science so far.
And there is a girl who walks through both Sciences…
Phew~ This shit couldn't get any wors—
No…. No… You know what?!
I won't even finish my sentence. If I wish that this gets any worse, it genuinely might.
At least I'll be ignorantly blissful if I don't think about it.
It still doesn't make sense how… How do HDEs (Higher-Dimensional Existences) exist?
There ARE multiple 'HDEs' out there as well…
Other than the Kabbalistic Gods and those who are assisting Caelum… There must exist a greater being above all of them… Assuming this world is a gangbang of all different types of Esoteric Interpretations. Then the most likely ideology held by them is Gnosticism. In which there should be a Demiurge and True Creator.
Perhaps an author-level entity? Who's to say New EAA's story is but entertainment for HDEs? Either those HDEs that have revealed themselves are readers… or perhaps… even past that… New EAA is a retelling of EAA for Earthly humans in the future.
All those tropes are possible…
I have no sense of what's going on in my Universe… For all I know… Eons could have passed… My Humanity may have ascended without the need for me… And they are reading my suffering right now.
In that logic… I, myself, am nothing but a character in a greater narrative…
Oh, how I've been reduced…
Isaac slumped over against a chair. The entire time he was cogitating on himself, his eyes darted across the entire library while roaming, searching for 10-letter words in particular.
'K-A-T-A-P-L-E-R-I-C'
To sour the mood, he couldn't even find the first 4 letters.
He gave up and indulged in his own mind.
In all of these types of slop stories… There's always the author intervening in some way, shape, or form… EAA was a slop fest, so that could apply here. In fact… For all I know… Even I may be a candidate of authorship whose gaze is broadcast back into the past to monitor myself.
So long as I continue to grow stronger in this 'story'...
So long as I continue assimilating all the Sciences of New EAA…
I may very well be THE 'story'.
It is a very meta-view of my situation… But I think too highly of myself…
Hah… I really said that…
In most stories, that role of apotheosis is reserved for the protagonist…
My illogical theory assumes that I am the main character and not Caelum.
I do not qualify for it either way… That's obviously false.
Could Caelum then be the Author of this Narrative in the future? Phylogenetic Root suggests he has the potential to assimilate so much authority over the world via the 4 SoS's (Source of Science) that he should have no limit.
If so, why does he hate me so much? For this 'hell' is so tailored to exploit my vulnerabilities.
It's so illogical that I, ISAAC WONG, am thinking this beyond the rhetoric of science…
But given everything that has happened lately…
I say the illogical is now logical and impossible, possible.
All the generic shitty stories did that on Earth.
So why not here?
Isaac's face lifts from his palm as he hears rapid footsteps approaching his direction.
Xuě Xīlián stands behind him, looking down at the distressed boy.
"Isaac?"
"Good afternoon.. Please. Have a seat." Isaac greeted in his 2.5x speed voice.
For now, focus on this girl in front of you.
"So... You wanted me to explain Monurgy?" She hauled a multitude.
"Yes. If you have enough time."
"I can give you a very brief explanation then. I'm busy as well… Sorry, Isaac."
"Don't fret it… Anything is fine. I can do further reading by myself."
"Okay. Do you have any prior knowledge or—"
"I don't."
"No issue. I don't know if you heard, but as explained by Archivist Orlan. You Wave Binders possess this protein in your microtubule called the Tau-9 receptor. The mutation of that protein over the course of history is in charge of the Wave Binder's T⁰-bosons sensitivity; as said, your atoms retain ~1 ppm qₜ quark from the early universe. I mean, obviously ignoring the fact that you also need the knowledge of all the mathematics and science behind it to use Noësis."
Isaac nodded silently.
As if this wasn't groundbreaking enough… What is Cultivation then?
"Our particle exists on the very other end of yours." Xuě Xīlián drew a diagram.
"For us Monurgists, we have the Monaduon."
"If the Thaumiton binds itself to force, bosons. Then the Monaduon binds matter, fermions. Forming M⁰-Fermion in our bodies. Based on current Monadic Biology, we believe that it is a sub-dimensional composite particle that arises from the informational collapse of a completed sub-Plonckian universe into a single quantized entity observable at the parent cosmological scale."
???
I'm sure I didn't say this could get any worse…
"The Monaduon, hypothetically, is a Recursive Fermion as it exhibits the properties of a point-particle in 10+1D spacetime while simultaneously constituting a compactified Einstan–Rosen bridge to a lower-dimensional 'stack' universe contained within its informational horizon."
Black hole cosmology… Plus classic cultivation trope…
If it's true that 'the informational collapse of a completed sub-Planckian universe into a single quantized entity at the parent cosmological scale'...
That means… for every fermion in a Monurgist's body… there's an entire universe housed…
'Every cell in the body is a universe.'
At the most basic level of cultivation… At birth, 'every fermion in this body is a universe.'
Every… Single… Fermion…
4.2 × 10²⁸.
The approximate fermionic composition of a 70kg male.
Every single 4.2 × 10²⁸ fermion is a sub-Planckian universe…
And that also means…
"Then what about the sub-Plonckian universes? Even if I exclude the possibility of M-Theory being true… We assume that there exist 10⁸⁹ fermions in this 3+1D observable universe… You are telling me… that all… are…"
"Monaduons. The theory that explains this is the Recursive Cosmological Stack Hypothesis (RCSH), which asserts that the 3+1D Universe exists as one layer in an unbounded hierarchy of nested cosmological systems. Where each layer is a complete, self-consistent universe."
That doesn't fucking make sense!
"And those nested universes? Is every sub-Plonckian universe composed of the same 10⁸⁹ fermions? And further down? Is every sub-sub-Plonckian universe also that? If Monaduons are themselves self-contained sub-universes, how deep does this ontological recursion extend? Are you implying an infinite regression of embedded realities?"
How? How?! How? How?!
"Sorry, Isaac… We don't know yet… We have no way to test it. We only know that, when a universe in the stack reaches informational finality, defined as the state in which no further thermodynamically irreversible processes can occur, its total informational content undergoes dimensional collapse. The Baka-Enstan Bound guarantees that this information, however vast, is finite for any spatially bounded system."
She writes one equation down. One that violates Isaac's laws of nature as he did theirs.
S ≤ 2πkᵦRE / ħc
Where:
S = thermodynamic entropy
R = final state sub-universe bounding radius
E = total mass energy
kᵦ =Boltzmann constant
ħ = reduced Plonck constant
c = speed of light in vacuum
"At the moment of informational finality, the sub-universe satisfies this bound at equality; it is maximally, informationally dense, and its entire content collapses into a single quantized entity at the next scale up: a Monaduon."
It's impossible… The math checks out… But I refuse to believe this…
"No way… There's no way… What is the evidence of this being true then?
"Baka-Enstan Saturation Anomaly by Thaumitonic Physics producing a closed, self-consistent entropy bound with no divergence artifacts. Within that framework, Monaduons have no legitimate mechanism to saturate the Baka-Enstan Bound exactly. Thaumitonic field equations should prevent it at that scale. RCSH is one of the only explanations.
Uh… If we go by the Monurgical Manipulation Syllabus from the Wùhuán Dàlù… Then I guess the mark scheme would say that if Monaduon interaction spectra show frequency ratios that map proportionally onto Agerea's large-scale cosmological structure, and Thaumitonic equations confirm this cannot arise from known field coupling. The unified framework actually makes the coincidence more damning."
…
I… I really…
I really want to give up already…
To the layman, this statement would seem otherwise normal.
A simple, perfectly evaluative point on why RCSH Theory is plausible. No different from the justification of M-Theory needing 8 more spatial dimensions.
But to Isaac.
Once more.
His life's work was annulled, alongside Earthly Humanity's.
'Thaumitonic equations confirm this cannot arise from known field coupling.'
Isaac stopped listening.
He activated Topological Anchor V2 to replay the audio in his head.
He listened to it again.
He deactivated TAV2 after he made up his mind.
Known field coupling.
Xuě Xīlián had spoken of it like a footnote, as a qualifier so obvious it barely deserved ink. But buried inside this small line, completely unremarked upon, treated as scaffolding rather than a discovery.
Was the unification of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
The problem.
The problem that had consumed the greatest minds of my Universe for centuries… It hadn't been resolved as of my death date… I wasn't even close to solving it… GR curved spacetime continuously, and QM quantized everything discretely.
You can't write one equation that does both without it collapsing into two infinities.
Xuě Xīlián, saying 'Thaumitonic field equations' had just described a quantum-scale particle using gravitational entropy constraints, in the same breath, without any noted contradiction or infinities.
If true.
It was unsolved... Possibly unsolvable.
Xue'er spoke as if it were the floor of their humanity, not as the ceiling of my Humanity.
He looked up at her.
Seventeen.
She was seventeen years old.
She had solved the greatest challenge in the progression of Physics in Isaac's Universe. Someone had, if not her. Someone old, where his solvings made it into the textbooks of children.
Fortunately for Isaac.
He desensitized himself so greatly that he had already lobotomized himself to issues regarding existential discoveries.
Yeah… At this rate… Anything goes… I must continue to learn…
"Hah…"
"Quite cool, right? Isaac?"
"Yeah…"
I can't even imagine how complex Sanātanavidyā and Esotericism will be… They both contain concepts so much more meta and existential than Magic and Cultivation…
I'm not ready for that yet, la.
Isaac flicked his gaze to the clock; it had already been an hour since he entered the library.
"I'm sorry I took up your time, Xue'er. It's getting late. Thank you for all that you've done for me today."
"No problem, Isaac~ I just… have one thing to ask of you. You don't mind, right?"
"Of course not, what do you want?"
"I wish, Isaac. You continue to sit next to me every day… Till we separate in Year 3."
"I didn't do anything for you, Xue'er. I didn't even make you laugh today. I didn't treat you to a meal for what you have done for me. Yet, you gave me 2 hours of care and 1 hour of your free time. We're both mature, you more so than I, hehe… So. Why?"
"A giggle is enough. I haven't spoken to someone who seems to know what it is like to be somewhere that has none of what made you yourself. Headmaster Orthellius indoctrinated me into EINA, but truthfully, I haven't really met anyone I can call a friend, let alone a talking buddy. And suddenly, a boy walked up to me. I don't know, honestly, but I feel as though I'd be much happier if we sat together till we choose our own paths, if possible, maybe sitting next to me while we graduate. You can't imagine the shock I felt hearing Chinese for the first time in a long while."
Isaac himself felt his heart soften; hell, he was about to blush instead of her.
But one phrase resonated with both of them deeply.
One that she could not take back.
"I think we are the same, you and I."
He was shocked. It was such a simple reason. All he could offer Xuě Xīlián was a simper.
He laughed under his breath.
"Sure. I'm gonna be asking you a lot of questions in class. Get ready."
"Sure thi—"