Chapter 776 - Compounding

Chapter 776: Chapter 776 - Compounding

The Liberators progressed fastest of all.

Lucien had expected that.

He still found the results excessive.

Their abilities had never followed one common system.

Accelerated training gave the Liberators time to learn how to actually use what they had received.

Lucien put them through increasingly complicated exercises.

Their individual progress was impressive.

Their combined progress was worse.

One Liberator could create conditions another one’s ability exploited.

He stopped trying to predict all of them.

Most of the newly recovered Liberators had already reached the Celestial Realm.

Lucien personally assisted them through the creation of their Nihility Bodies once their foundations were ready.

After forming their Nihility Bodies, their progress accelerated again.

Lucien watched several of them and realized that, if nothing interrupted the current pace, a few more external months could be enough for many to begin approaching Eternal.

That was absurd.

He accepted it anyway.

The Liberators had spent most of their lives trapped beneath ceilings their abilities had never been designed to respect.

Now those ceilings were gone.

They were simply catching up.

•••

The increase in strength was not the only feedback Lucien noticed.

His divine-energy reserves had begun rising much faster.

The cause was obvious once he looked.

Three months had passed across the recovered small worlds while only one passed outside.

Clara had continued doing what Clara did.

Chapels spread.

People adopted the Grace faith because the system had become part of their lives and because communities that welcomed it often saw practical improvements in education, training, organization, and mutual aid.

Three months of internal life meant three months of genuine faith activity.

From the perspective of the Big World, that contribution had arrived during a single month.

The small worlds were therefore producing roughly three times as much divine energy as the same populations would have generated if their time remained synchronized with the outside.

Their populations were still much smaller than the combined Thousand Races of the five continents.

That should have made their contribution modest.

Instead, the accelerated flow had narrowed the difference enough that Lucien could no longer dismiss it as secondary.

When he combined the two sources, his divine-energy income became noticeably heavier.

The Divine Energy Core responded.

Its growth became steady enough that Lucien could feel the boundaries receding whenever he examined them after several internal weeks.

Something else changed with it.

The burden of maintaining the accelerated worlds decreased.

Lucien noticed it gradually.

At first, he assumed he had simply become accustomed to controlling the temporal framework.

Then Perfect Calculation showed otherwise.

The actual cost had fallen.

As the Core expanded and the inner universe stabilized, independent Time became easier for it to sustain.

Lucien stared at the result for a long moment.

That meant the temporal system was beginning to support its own growth indirectly.

The accelerated worlds produced more lived time.

More lived time produced more divine energy.

The divine energy expanded the Core.

A larger and more mature Core reduced the pressure of maintaining the accelerated time.

Lucien almost laughed.

The loophole was improving itself.

He suspected the universe would eventually object.

Until then, he intended to be polite enough not to ask.

•••

The Tree of Creation benefited next.

Its newly regenerative Fruits continued drawing heavily from Lucien’s divine energy, but the increased income shortened the time required for several of them to mature.

The first new Fruit ripened sooner than Lucien expected.

Then more followed.

The Tree did not suddenly cover itself in endless treasures.

Each Fruit still demanded an enormous amount of energy.

But the difference between finite and renewable had already changed how Lucien thought about them.

Previously, giving someone a Fruit meant permanently reducing the number available for everyone else.

Now it meant deciding who benefited first.

That was a much easier problem.

Lucien remained careful.

He did not distribute them simply to whoever possessed the highest realm.

Compatibility mattered more.

Potential mattered.

Role mattered.

What someone intended to do with the opportunity mattered.

Several of the Liberators were among the next to receive Fruits of Creation.

Their bodies adapted differently according to what they already possessed.

Lucien watched every result with increasing interest.

That was exactly what he wanted.

The Fruits did not make the Liberators identical.

They made each of them better suited to becoming whatever their own strange advantages were trying to turn them into.

Living Creation had already taught Lucien the value of allowing growth to follow its own nature.

With the Liberators, that principle became especially obvious.

They had never been meant to walk the same path.

Lucien had no intention of forcing them to start now.

•••

Lootwell’s core administrators remained first whenever an appropriate opportunity appeared.

Lucien had never hidden that bias.

They had been with him through too much.

More importantly, he trusted them.

Power given to the wrong person could become another problem waiting for the correct crisis.

Power given to someone Lucien knew would continue working while everyone else slept was considerably easier to justify.

Some administrators had no interest in becoming frontline monsters.

That did not mean the Fruits were useless to them.

A stronger body meant longer endurance.

A deeper foundation meant greater survivability.

Improved Laws could make their own specialties more effective.

Lucien did not need every administrator to kill an Eternal.

He simply preferred that the people holding Lootwell together were difficult to kill themselves.

That seemed reasonable.

•••

Lucien did not spend the entire month watching everyone else grow.

He trained too.

The difference was that he no longer needed to remain outside for every decision.

Vivian had taken over much of Lootwell’s daily coordination.

The five continents already knew her.

More importantly, they trusted her authority when Lucien was unavailable.

That trust had been earned over years rather than granted because Lucien told everyone to obey.

So while Vivian coordinated with major factions, reviewed ongoing preparations, and handled problems that did not require Lucien personally, he could spend longer stretches inside the accelerated regions without worrying that Lootwell would stop functioning.

That was exactly what he had wanted when he started building people capable of acting without him.

Lucien occasionally checked outside.

Things continued moving.

Nobody had set the continent on fire.

Vivian had not sent an emergency message asking him to return.

He considered that excellent administration.

•••

Luke and Cienna had entered the inner realm as well.

For them, the reason was not only accelerated training.

Lucien discovered something interesting shortly after they arrived.

The pull toward Primordial Space disappeared.

Both of his parents had already reached Eternal and recognized their original Laws.

Outside, that recognition created a connection to Primordial Space, the place where those Laws could eventually be established more deeply into the universe.

Inside Lucien’s realm, they could no longer feel that pull.

At first, Lucien thought something was wrong.

Then he understood.

His inner universe possessed its own increasingly independent framework.

The external universe could not reach through it cleanly enough to maintain the same call.

The connection was not destroyed.

Whenever Luke or Cienna left Lucien’s inner realm, they could feel it again.

Inside, however, the pull fell silent.

Lucien considered that extremely useful.

Neither of them needed to enter Primordial Space yet.

Recognizing an original Law did not mean someone had to rush toward the next step the moment the path opened.

They were newly advanced Eternals.

Their comprehension could deepen.

Their bodies could strengthen.

Their combat experience could improve.

Most importantly, they could spend years preparing while very little time passed outside.

Lucien had no intention of allowing his parents to enter a place as dangerous and poorly understood as Primordial Space simply because the universe had started inviting them.

The universe could wait.

Luke and Cienna did not object.

At least, not strongly enough to matter.