Chapter 2501: A Technological Loophole

The Hollow Ship kept moving through the void, its enormous body hidden beneath layers of Runes, while Alex busied himself with the pile of instruments that had slowly taken over the command deck.

Dozens of mechanical devices floated outside the vessel, trading signals with one another. A huge projection displayed what they found. Though, Nathan couldn’t make much sense of the numbers constantly changing across it.

"What exactly are we looking for?"

"A Summoned World, preferably one that hasn’t gotten too far into its Tutorial. The younger the world, the more predictable the System’s protections, and I don’t really feel like gambling our lives against something that’s had a few centuries to develop."

Nathan frowned.

"You can find Summoned Worlds?"

Alex grinned, though his eyes stayed on the projection.

"Pretty impressive, right? Took me almost a year to figure this one out, and another six months to make it work without accidentally frying everything within a few hundred kilometers."

Finding a Summoned World was supposed to be close to impossible.

The System put extraordinary protections around them, cutting them off from the influence of the Real World until they reached the right stage of development. Even the most powerful Clans could spend countless years searching without ever finding one.

However, Alex had noticed something odd while studying the Omnimous.

The System was incredibly good at manipulating Aether and the Mesh of Reality. That said, a lot of its authority depended on recognizing the nature of whatever was trying to interact with it.

Rune formations, spatial fluctuations, the movement of Will... The System understood all of those intimately. Technology working at the level Alex had started exploring, however, sat in a strange position.

The System could recognize technology just fine. It had simply never needed to account for technology that could examine reality at such a fundamental level.

"See, the problem with hiding an entire planet is that you can’t just make the planet disappear. You have to hide everything it interacts with too, otherwise any idiot with a telescope would eventually notice something weird."

Alex enlarged a patch of what looked like empty space. Several overlapping measurements came up, all of them completely ordinary until he pulled them apart.

"The System compensates for all that, obviously. Light bends around the protected region, particles pass through without revealing what’s inside, and the space around it keeps looking like it’s behaving exactly how it should. But making something look perfect and making it actually perfect are two different things."

Nathan leaned closer as Alex highlighted a series of microscopic discrepancies.

"These measurements don’t agree with one another."

"Exactly. On their own, they’re all within the acceptable range of error. But when you compare enough of them, you start noticing that the errors are a little too consistent. The System is correcting everything with the same set of rules, and that means those corrections leave a pattern."

The Omnimous had given Alex the foundation he needed to examine how particles behaved at scales far below conventional detection. On top of that, he had spent years building instruments that could take those measurements without relying on Aether.

He didn’t search for the hidden planet itself. Instead, he measured the space around it and compared the results against what should have been there. Once enough discrepancies piled up around one region, the computer could reconstruct the influence of whatever the System was trying to hide.

Alex tapped the projection, and the empty region slowly resolved into the outline of a planet.

"Found you, you sneaky little bastard."

Nathan stared at the image for several seconds, trying to square what he was seeing with everything he knew about the protections around Summoned Worlds.

However, Alex was already moving on to the next stage of his plan.

Finding the world was only the start. Forcing their way through its protections would be a lot more dangerous.

"The good news is that the System actually has a perfectly legitimate way of letting Demons into a protected world. All we have to do is convince it that we’re starting a challenge, not attempting an unauthorized invasion."

Alex pulled a cylindrical device out from under his console. Its surface was covered in microscopic circuits, and they began to glow as he switched it on.

"Normally, the System would notice an attempt to breach a Summoned World’s protections and stamp it out before anyone got close. But Demon Gates are part of its established rules, so there’s a specific set of conditions where it’ll open the passage itself."

The device held a small sample of Alex’s blood.

The blood itself didn’t really matter. What mattered was the Demonic signature it carried. After studying the relationship between his Genes and Demonic Aether, Alex had built a circuit that could reproduce the necessary fluctuations without needing an actual Demon army.

The machine would imitate the opening conditions of a Demonic invasion. The System would recognize it as a legitimate challenge, then build the Gate by its own rules.

Nathan watched the device vanish into the void, carried toward the hidden world by a miniature propulsion system.

"And what happens when it realizes we’re the ones responsible?"

"Well, that’s where things get a little fucked up. The System is perfectly happy to let Demons invade, but it’s also very particular about making sure they play their assigned roles."

Alex pulled up another projection, showing the structure of a conventional Demon Gate next to the restrictions placed on its participants.

"Once the challenge starts, the System registers the invading Demons and restricts their strength, their movement, and their ability to leave. If we get caught up in that, there’s a very good chance we’ll end up playing Demon King until the natives either get strong enough to beat us or fail the challenge altogether."

Nathan’s expression darkened. "Isn’t that what you told me happened to the Duchess?"

"More or less, although her circumstances were a little different. She didn’t exactly volunteer to spend an eternity babysitting a bunch of people who wanted to kill her, but the end result was pretty much the same."