Chapter 93: Genesis I: The Perfect Creation

By late afternoon the following day, several things had happened.

The first was simple. Freya had concluded, well, not entirely, but she was almost certain, that the object she had given Amélia served above all to enhance her physical and magical capabilities.

She knew the pull came around every twenty-four hours, that the jackpot was simply a matter of landing three symbols of the same shape, and that the unique skill Absolute Jackpot had to correspond to three 7s, something that would make little Amélia genuinely powerful, taking her from an ordinary child to a mythical being in a single pull.

On the other hand, she didn’t know the odds, and if the child failed to hit a jackpot, then the rank SS item became completely useless.

And that was exactly what had made Freya smile so much, or rather laugh, a skill tied to luck once again, something that was anything but a reliable asset.

But isn’t that beautiful?

The right moment, or rather the critical one, betting everything on luck alone and taking the pull of a lifetime, which might pay off or might not.

Isn’t that the biggest dose of dopamine any being will ever get in their life, haha?

Though, let’s be honest, the Accumulated Luck skill did kind of put a damper on the fun.

Beyond that, the second point was a little more complicated, mostly at the level of the city itself.

The beginnings of the revolt hadn’t died down in the slightest, and had even been joined by the branch of Evangel tied to the deity Gaïra, demanding that the candidate for sainthood be released immediately, with the baron refusing to so much as leave his home and the knights holding their lines.

It was only getting worse, and that was precisely what Freya had been after all along.

And finally there was the third and last point. They had filled the hole back in.

An earth mage hired by the baron had come to seal the opening, and Aria could only marvel at the sight of the stone wall coming out of nowhere and closing over itself, it stood out, it was sloppy, but it was functional.

But something caught in Freya’s mind, something that made her shiver and that connected back to what she had thought at the river that day, not entirely, but somewhat along the same line of reasoning.

Until now she had been used to seeing ephemeral magic, Naïa’s flames, the gachas, Aria’s knowledge, and the rest.

But the man in front of her had performed lasting magic, and what shocked Freya was that the stone he had made appear with those quantimanas of a greyish, brownish tint had been created out of nothing at all.

But if mana is a loop and matter is created out of nothing, that makes no sense? What is it that creates matter that lasts?

Sure, mana made matter appear before returning to the flow, but what was it that made magic last, what was it that created these materials in the first place, it wasn’t logical.

To her mind at least, she would have understood if quantimanas were literally transformed into matter in the process, thereby taking some away from the flow, but she had seen it, the quantimanas had gone into the magic and come back out in exactly the same number, so there had to be another element to account for.

Maybe quantimanas manifest a phenomenon that’s created by something else, or... no, Freya, what you’re saying is purely theoretical and has no foundation whatsoever.

So she simply did what she always did when she needed help. She relied on her lover.

"Aria?"

"Yes, madam?" said the demon, appearing beside her the instant she was called, and with her came multiple barriers all around them, which Freya suspected were sound barriers, illusion barriers, and others besides.

"You see that wall over there?"

"Hmm..." said her servant, no doubt understanding which way the conversation was about to lean.

"There’s a hole in the equation, Aria. I don’t understand why it works this way, why matter is created out of nothing when not a single quantimana is transformed? It doesn’t make sense, Aria."

"Would you like the short answer or the full one this time, madam?"

"The full one!"

"I see. Then, if you’ll allow me."

Aria passed her hands behind Freya and made a chair appear by magic, then held it steady, one hand on the backrest and the other ready to guide her mistress, waiting for her to take her seat.

She waited until Freya was settled, tucked a stray lock of hair back into place, smoothed the fabric of her dress across her shoulders, then came to stand in front of her, hands folded over the front of her apron.

"This is going to be a long and thorough explanation, and I’ll do my best to lay it out for you, so you may interrupt me whenever you wish if there’s anything you don’t fully understand."

Freya simply nodded, not wanting to drag out the conversation and, by extension, the start of Aria’s explanation.

Aria, seeing this, gave a small smile at the brightness in her mistress’s eyes, before raising her hand.

And from her palm came golden quantimanas that rose slowly until they filled the whole space between them, then spread out above their heads into an immense void, speckled with points of golden light.

Stars lit up one by one, in their thousands, gathered into clusters and long trailing bands, while golden galaxies turned on themselves in slow spirals.

Planets passed by in the foreground with their rings and their moons, some colliding with one another and throwing out debris that settled back into rings, others running their course without meeting anything at all.

Further off, a star swelled, changed shape, then exploded, releasing a wave that passed through everything around it, and where it had once stood there remained only a black point toward which all the surrounding gold leaned before disappearing.

The whole cell was lit by that golden glow, right down to the stone walls and to Freya’s face, who hadn’t said another word.

"So, as you must have gathered, this is the universe, madam."

"I see. But call me Freya, please, it’s only the two of us at the moment."

"Hmm... hmm..." Aria cleared her throat before continuing. "Very well. Freya." she said, her cheeks turning red as she spoke the name, before regaining her scholar’s composure.

She made a gesture as though zooming out from the universe, and it shrank down into a single point.

"Now, let’s say that you, here," she said, pointing at Freya, "are the original being, the entity at the beginning of everything, the one from which all things originate."

Freya nodded.

"And so here is the universe, with the rules and laws you defined, which of course includes time, includes space, and encompasses everything else besides, everything that governs our universe."

She left a pause so that Freya could take it in.

"This is the perfect design of the original being."

She stopped walking and stopped moving, simply looking at Freya, in the silence and in the void.

"Now, imagine yourself looking at this already-defined point, which will never move no matter what happens, which will never surprise you. Of course, as a being outside the laws, time has no effect on you, but you know it, you created it yourself after all, and so there you are in infinity, alone, after having created the laws of the world of the living... well, when I say after, that encompasses something like a span of time we could never comprehend, it could just as easily be before, or during, or after, none of that counts outside the laws."

Realising she was drifting, she pulled herself back.

"In any case, that isn’t the question. This being felt something for the first time, something that it, standing outside of everything, should never have been able to feel."

A smile appeared on Aria’s lips as she looked at Freya.

"So what do you think that was?"

Freya didn’t hesitate for a single second, drawing on her own experience, on what she would have felt above all else in that being’s position.

"Boredom."

"That’s correct, Freya."

Freya zoomed the point back in with a flick of her fingers, and a golden arrow appeared looping around the universe, setting it turning.

The universe then began to run forward in front of her at a staggering speed, galaxies spinning on themselves as they streamed past, stars igniting and going dark in one continuous pulse, entire clusters forming and scattering in the space of a few blinks.

Systems were born inside discs of golden dust, planets gathered themselves together, settled into their orbits, then were devoured by their own star as it swelled before collapsing back in on itself.

And it started over, again and again, further off, elsewhere, in a motion that never once stopped, while Freya followed all of it with her eyes, motionless, her face lit by the golden glow her lover’s magic was offering her.

"Some say that time is a rotation."

She snapped her fingers, and the arrow stretched out into a line.

"Others, that time is a line running its course."

The universe then unfolded in front of Freya as a long golden fresco streaming from left to right, each event taking its place after the last, never once turning back.

Freya followed the fresco with her eyes, lips slightly parted, hands resting on her knees.

"It’s beautiful, Aria."

"It is, Mad—... Freya."

Freya didn’t even notice that the demon had almost called her by her usual title instead of her name, entirely captivated by the universe streaming through time in front of her, by the golden trails stretching out and closing back in, by the worlds appearing and vanishing in an instant.

As for Aria, she let her stay like that for a long while, simply offering the sight as a gift to the woman she loved so much, savouring for her own part not the universe, but the sight of the wonder on that face.

It’s you who are beautiful, madam.

Then she clapped her hands together.

CLAP—

And everything returned to a single point, before Freya’s gaze came away from it and settled back on Aria.

"But of course, all of this is nothing but boredom to the original existence, which already knows on the fingers of one hand everything that could ever be within it, everything that would happen inside it and everything that is defined by the laws."

She wore a smile, as she always did.

"So here is what the original being, the one who had nonetheless created perfect existence, a flawless design, did out of boredom."