Chapter 774 - Hidden Years
Lucien stood above the unfinished region and imagined what it would become.
Not everyone would enter.
Some people required ordinary experience more than accelerated training.
Others were too young, too unstable, or simply not suited to spending years inside a place where nearly everything had been designed to challenge them.
The ones who entered would be chosen carefully.
Talents discovered through the Grand Intercontinental Competition.
Commanders who had already proven capable of operating without Lucien.
Liberators whose abilities could benefit from concentrated experience.
Specialized healers, formation masters, crafters, scouts, and others whose roles could decide entire battles despite never being the strongest person present.
The ancient beasts would use different regions suited to their bodies and Laws.
Lucien had no intention of placing a newly advanced Extinction Grade dragon beside a group of young practitioners and calling it balanced training.
Even he had standards.
Most days.
•••
The more he built, the clearer the purpose became.
Lucien did not want an army filled only with powerful individuals.
He already had plenty of those.
What he lacked was time.
Time for talented people to become experienced.
Time for inexperienced commanders to make mistakes where those mistakes did not cost thousands of lives.
𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺
Time for specialists to encounter problems repeatedly instead of seeing them for the first time during an actual catastrophe.
Now he could create some of that time.
Not freely.
Not without consequences.
But enough.
The fivefold training region slowly took shape beneath him.
Facilities rose.
Spatial corridors connected districts that were physically separated by enormous distances.
Medical districts were positioned between the most dangerous training grounds.
Emergency extraction remained possible from anywhere.
Lucien had learned too much from the competition to assume that pushing people harder always made them stronger.
Sometimes the difference between improvement and permanent damage was knowing when training had stopped being useful.
This facility would respect that.
He wanted future heroes, not exhausted survivors who had been broken before the real danger arrived.
•••
When Lucien finally opened his eyes in his room, far less time had passed outside than his own investigation and construction made him expect.
That alone felt strange.
He sat quietly for a moment before glancing toward the direction Alanthuriel had disappeared.
"Senior Alan."
Naturally, Alanthuriel was nowhere nearby.
"You could have just told me."
Silence answered.
Lucien nodded.
That was about what he expected.
He turned his attention inward again.
Now that the initial excitement had settled, too many applications were already competing for priority.
The countless beasts could spend years refining their formations while only months passed outside.
The Liberators could deepen the strange abilities Primordial Slime had left them.
Commanders could accumulate experience that would normally require several generations of warfare.
Researchers could spend years improving devices and facilities without forcing the outside world to wait for them.
Even the recovered small worlds would continue developing beneath broader Laws at three times the external rate.
Then Lucien’s attention moved toward the Tree of Creation.
That problem remained different.
Accelerating its time would not magically create divine energy.
If ten years passed around the Tree while only one passed outside, the chapels in the Big World would still have produced only whatever divine energy they actually generated during that external year.
The Tree could experience more time.
It could not consume energy that did not exist.
Lucien frowned.
Then he remembered something.
The small worlds.
Chapels had already begun spreading there.
Clara had made certain of that.
The faith remained voluntary, just as it did everywhere else, but many inhabitants of the recovered worlds had accepted the Grace System naturally after experiencing what it offered.
That divine energy still went directly to Lucien.
Nothing about the temporal change altered that rule.
But the people inside those worlds now experienced three years while only one passed outside.
That meant three years of lives.
Three years of prayers.
Three years of new believers, new chapels, births, celebrations, gratitude, doubts, returns to faith, and all the ordinary experiences through which divine energy accumulated.
Lucien became very still.
Then he smiled.
"I suppose I have Clara to thank again."
The realization was not an infinite-energy trick.
The worlds still contained finite populations.
Faith still had to be genuine.
Chapels could only produce what their communities actually generated, and maintaining the accelerated temporal framework cost Lucien power of its own.
But the advantage was real.
Internal civilizations were no longer bound to the same rate as the Big World.
Their divine energy contribution could therefore accumulate across more lived time than passed outside.
That, in turn, could help nourish the Tree.
The Tree could grow more Fruits.
Those Fruits could strengthen more people.
Those people could enter accelerated training.
Lucien stared into his inner realm.
The different systems he had built over the years were beginning to support one another in ways he had never planned.
Grace strengthened the Tree.
The Tree strengthened people.
Time gave those people room to grow.
Living Creation allowed the entire structure to keep adapting.
Lucien’s smile slowly widened.
That was another loophole.
Not one that broke the rules.
One that used all of them at once.
•••
Lucien did not start filling the training region immediately.
He informed the people who needed to know first.
The administrators were given the logistical and administrative problems of deciding how long people could remain inside accelerated regions without disrupting responsibilities outside.
The medical divisions were instructed to establish proper standards for lifespan expenditure, mental fatigue, and repeated transitions between different temporal rates.
The Grace System would help identify candidates whose growth would benefit from the additional time rather than simply rewarding anyone who wanted to become stronger quickly.
Lucien deliberately kept the program limited.
Once people learned that a place existed where five years of training could pass while only one year moved outside, demand would become absurd.
He did not need to predict that.
He knew people.
So access would be earned, evaluated, and reviewed.
Not because Lucien wanted to hoard the advantage.
Because a resource capable of consuming years of someone’s life could become dangerous the moment ambition became stronger than judgment.
•••
The first invitations went to people Lucien already trusted.
The reactions were predictable.
Some stared at the explanation for a long time.
Others immediately asked whether the ratio could be increased.
Lucien took that as confirmation that restrictions were necessary.
One particularly enthusiastic researcher began calculating how many experiments could fit into twenty internal years before anyone had even approved him for five.
Lucien quietly moved his name into a category requiring additional supervision.
•••
Preparations began.
People entered the inner realm in small groups first.
Lucien watched every transition personally.
He showed them the temporal boundaries, explained the cost, and made certain nobody misunderstood what fivefold acceleration actually meant.
If someone spent five years there, they would return five years older.
Their bodies and souls would remember every day.
Their experiences would be real.
The outside world simply would not have moved as far.
Nobody withdrew after hearing that.
Lucien had expected some hesitation.
Instead, most became more serious.
These were people who already understood what might eventually be asked of them.
Extra years were not merely an opportunity to become stronger.
They were years taken from their lives and deliberately spent preparing for a future nobody could fully predict.
Lucien respected that.
Which was precisely why he intended to make sure those years were worth something.
•••
The first training groups entered.
The gates closed behind them.
Inside, fivefold time continued moving naturally.
Outside, almost nothing changed.
Lootwell remained busy.
The five continents continued their uneasy peace.
Voidwatch still watched the conquered worlds.
Black Mass monsters continued appearing in the void.
The Prime Continuum continued moving toward whatever moment Alanthuriel had warned about.
From the outside, Lootwell looked much the same.
That was exactly how Lucien preferred it.
No announcement was necessary.
There was no reason to tell the world that deep inside Lucien’s own Core, years of preparation had begun accumulating faster than the universe around him could see.
The people entering those facilities would disappear for months.
When they returned, years would have passed for them.
Their strength would change.
Their judgment would change.
Their coordination would change.
Some would fail and need different paths.
Others would become far more dangerous than anyone outside expected.
Lucien stood before the temporal region and watched the first training cycle begin.
He had spent years wishing for more time.
Now that he finally possessed it, he had no intention of wasting a single year of it.
When these people eventually stepped back into the Big World, only a short period might have passed for everyone waiting outside.
For those who entered, however, it would be a different story.
They would not be the same people who had gone in.
That was the entire point.