Chapter 773 - Different Time
Lucien did not rush back outside.
Instead, he began establishing controlled temporal zones throughout his inner realm.
He started conservatively. One training region received a modest acceleration, while another isolated area was dedicated entirely to research. A third remained untouched so that he would always have an unchanged reference point for comparison.
Lucien watched how much authority and energy each region demanded. He monitored the stability of their boundaries and studied whether repeated acceleration placed any unusual strain on souls, Laws, artifacts, or the surrounding environment.
More importantly, he tested what happened when someone crossed from one temporal rate into another.
He had no intention of discovering later that entering an accelerated region too quickly caused half a person’s soul to arrive before the rest of them.
Thankfully, nothing so unpleasant occurred.
There was a brief sense of disorientation when the difference became too large, but that could be corrected by creating transitional layers between temporal zones rather than forcing someone to cross the boundary all at once.
The results were promising.
The boundaries required careful design, but the principle itself remained stable.
That was enough for now.
Lucien had learned the cost of becoming excited before properly understanding what he had built.
He would test everything first.
After that, Lootwell could become unreasonable responsibly.
The thought nearly made him laugh again.
•••
Once he was satisfied that the smaller experiments were stable, Lucien turned his attention toward the recovered small worlds.
Those were different.
They were not empty laboratories or temporary training grounds. Entire civilizations existed inside them. People were being born, growing older, forming families, building cities, arguing over things, and continuing lives that had begun long before their worlds entered his Divine Energy Core.
Lucien had no intention of turning them into experiments.
So he proceeded carefully.
He selected one uninhabited region first and increased its temporal rate.
Ten times.
The strain remained manageable.
Lucien pushed slightly higher.
The pressure on his authority increased, but nowhere near enough to threaten the stability of his Core.
That gave him the answer he expected.
If he concentrated on a single world, he could already sustain a temporal difference exceeding ten times that of the Big World.
The problem appeared when he expanded the effect.
A second world increased the burden.
Then a third.
By the time Lucien attempted to synchronize every recovered small world under the same accelerated temporal framework, the comfortable ratio had fallen considerably.
He adjusted it several times before settling on something that required little enough attention that he would not need to constantly maintain it.
Three to one.
Three years within the small worlds for every year that passed in the Big World.
Lucien held the change there.
Then he waited.
...
Fortunately, nothing happened.
At least, nothing obvious.
The worlds continued turning.
People woke beneath familiar skies. Merchants opened shops. Children complained about lessons. Experts trained. Farmers worked the same fields they had worked the day before.
Nobody suddenly felt the universe accelerate.
Nobody looked toward the heavens in terror because their lives had somehow begun moving three times faster.
From their perspective, everything remained perfectly normal.
A day was still a day.
A year was still a year.
Only the relationship between their time and the time outside had changed.
Lucien observed for several days from his own perspective before allowing himself to relax.
The temporal flow remained smooth.
There were no disturbances in souls, no abnormal aging, and no instability in the reincarnation cycle.
The Cycle Merit Web adjusted naturally, processing births and deaths according to the time of the worlds themselves rather than trying to force them back into synchronization with the Big World.
That pleased Lucien almost as much as the acceleration itself.
The system had adapted without requiring him to rewrite it.
Living Creation was becoming increasingly irritating in how often it proved his recent comprehension correct.
•••
Then Lucien thought about the incarnated volunteers.
Many of them were still young in their second lives.
Some were only beginning to establish themselves properly after completing the purpose that had originally brought them into those worlds.
They had families now, friends, responsibilities, and lives that were no less real simply because another existence had come before them.
Lucien had never intended to drag them back once their mission ended.
Now those lives had quietly gained something valuable.
Time.
If one year passed outside, they would experience three.
If the Black Mass transformed sooner than Lucien hoped, or the Prime Continuum opened and dragged the universe into another period of instability, the incarnated volunteers would still have experienced more of their second lives before those dangers reached them.
That did not make them immortal.
It did not protect the worlds from every possible disaster.
But Lucien liked the thought.
They had volunteered for something dangerous without knowing whether their second lives would become peaceful or short.
Giving them more years to actually live those lives felt like a reward he had never expected to be able to offer.
Lucien allowed the threefold acceleration to remain.
•••
Still, Lucien suspected that three times was far from the eventual limit.
His control over Time had improved enormously after reaching Extinction Grade, but Lucien could feel that he had only begun understanding what independent temporal authority inside his own universe truly meant.
If he grew stronger, the strain would decrease.
If the Divine Energy Core continued maturing, the temporal framework might eventually stabilize at higher ratios without demanding much additional effort from him.
Perhaps the day would come when every world inside him could operate at ten times the external rate as casually as they currently operated at three.
The thought was ridiculous.
So naturally, Lucien took it seriously.
Ten external years would become a century inside.
Civilizations could advance entire eras while only a fraction of that time passed in the Big World.
Experts could mature.
Researchers could develop disciplines that did not yet exist.
The younger generations born under the broader Laws of Lucien’s inner universe could grow into powers whose foundations had never suffered from the limitations of the original small worlds.
And if those worlds were ever brought openly into contact with the Big World again, the difference would be enormous.
Lucien smiled faintly.
Everyone outside would believe only a few years had passed.
The people coming out might have lived through decades.
That would be an entertaining explanation to avoid.
•••
The small worlds were only one application.
Lucien soon began constructing something more deliberate.
He chose a region of the main world within his inner realm and separated it carefully from the surrounding lands. The place was already vast enough to contain several independent training districts, and Space made expanding it easier than constructing everything from nothing.
Lucien set its temporal rate at five times the Big World’s flow.
He could have pushed it higher.
He deliberately did not.
Five times was enough to create an enormous advantage while still leaving him plenty of room to monitor stability, resource consumption, and long-term effects.
This region would not be intended for ordinary development.
It would be where Lootwell cultivated the people most likely to matter when everything finally went wrong.
Lucien spent considerable time designing it.
He did not simply reproduce the facilities from the Grand Intercontinental Competition.
Those had been built to expose weakness and force growth under controlled pressure.
This place would go further.
The Authority Resistance Fields were expanded so that participants could experience increasingly complex combinations of hostile authority rather than a single oppressive force.
The Interweaving Grounds were rebuilt with adjustable environments capable of responding to the Laws used inside them.
Combat zones could change terrain halfway through an engagement, disrupt familiar movement, sever communication, or force teams to complete objectives while defending people who could not simply be abandoned.
Command exercises became larger.
A commander might begin with a straightforward battle and discover halfway through that the expected reinforcements no longer existed, that one route had collapsed, and that the enemy had changed its objective entirely.
Lucien wanted them to learn how to win.
More importantly, he wanted them to learn what to do when winning in the original way became impossible.
Five internal years could pass while only one year moved outside.
That gave him room to train people properly instead of desperately.