Chapter 169: Azryx

A/N: This Chapter mixes real science with fantasy concepts, so some parts are intentionally speculative.

If anything feels confusing or you have doubts about the explanation, feel free to ask in the Chapter comments. Enjoy the read!

***

"First, I want to know what the hell that material is, and second, tell me about the war Siegfried mentioned. The one between gods and mortals."

[Fine. I can tell you about both. But as you already know, information isn’t free.]

"Of course it isn’t. How much do you want?

[For the material? That’s manageable.]

[As for the war... forget about it.]

"Why?"

[It’s millions of years of old history. Entire galactic civilizations have risen and fallen since then.]

[Other than one or two scholars who wander the universe in pursuit of ancient knowledge, even the most powerful beings only know that a war occurred. The actual details have largely been lost.]

"Just tell me how much."

[At least a million Info Points.]

"Fuck that." Zac’s expression darkened. "Instead of throwing impossible numbers at me, why don’t you just say you don’t want to tell me?"

[What exactly do you plan to accomplish by learning about a war that happened so long ago?]

Zac opened his mouth to argue but then stopped. He genuinely didn’t have an answer.

[See? You don’t even know.]

"Fine." Zac leaned back. "Tell me about the material."

[That I can do.]

[-200 Info Points.]

Zac’s expression immediately took a drastic turn. "You just took every point I earned."

He stared at the panel. "You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you? That’s why you gave me exactly two hundred points. So you could take them right back."

[First of all, "take" is an emotionally loaded word.]

[You are receiving information in return, so this is a transaction.]

"More like robbery."

[If you’re that attached to your points, then keep them.]

Zac sighed. "Fine. Don’t act like a spoiled teenager. Just give me the information."

[Before that, how much do you know about space science?]

"Not much. A little, maybe."

[Fine.]

[What you’re about to hear involves both science and things your world would consider fantasy. So broaden your mind before listening.]

The system’s tone suddenly shifted to a storyteller mode.

[The material Siegfried possesses is called Azryx.]

[And before you ask, no. It isn’t simply some rare forging ore that happens to be unusually dense.]

[What that old man discovered in the ruined journal was mostly accurate.]

[Azryx was once used to forge weapons that exceeded what your current world would classify as Divine Tier.]

Zac went still. "Exceeded Divine Tier?"

[That’s what I said.]

"Wow.What’s Divine Tier?"

[...]

[Right. I completely forgot how primitive your world’s classification system still is. Your world hasn’t even gone far beyond SS-rank materials yet.]

[You’ll understand the hierarchy eventually. For now, just think of Divine Tier as the highest level in the artifact hierarchy.]

"Fine. Continue."

[Gods aren’t merely powerful beings.]

"Wait, now we are talking about gods?"

[Stop interrupting and listen.]

[They exist on a fundamentally higher level than ordinary mortals.]

[During that war, one of the greatest problems mortals faced was they couldn’t properly injure gods.]

[As the saying goes, only a god can kill another god.]

[So if mortals wanted to accomplish that impossible feat, they needed something capable of bridging that difference.]

Zac frowned. "Why not become gods themselves? Or can mortals not become gods?"

[They can. In fact, many gods were once mortals.]

"Then why didn’t they?"

[Because they didn’t want to.]

[During that era, many mortals had grown deeply wary of gods. They had no desire to become the very beings they had come to despise.]

"That’s a pretty extreme conclusion."

[You don’t know what they experienced before reaching it.]

Fair enough.

[So instead, they searched for another solution. A way for a mortal to wield enough power to kill an immortal being without becoming one themselves.] (A/N: NO! It’s not Pandora’s box.)

"So they made weapons to kill a god."

[Yes. Although saying it like that makes the process sound far simpler than it actually was.]

"Why?"

[Because obtaining Azryx was even more absurd than killing a god.]

"How rare could it possibly be?"

[Its very formation is a cosmic anomaly. Something that may occur only once among thousands, perhaps even millions, of suitable stellar deaths.]

[Before I explain that, answer something. What do you know about black holes?]

"Not much," Zac thought for a moment. "I know their gravity is so extreme that once something crosses into them, nothing can escape. Not even light."

[Good enough. Do you know how stellar black holes form?]

"When a massive star collapses."

[It seems you know more than I gave you credit for.]

[Yes. When a sufficiently massive star reaches the end of its life, its core can collapse under its own gravity.]

[For very massive stars, that collapse may eventually produce a black hole.]

"So there isn’t always an explosion?"

[There can be. A core-collapse supernova may accompany the death of the star, depending on the circumstances.]

[The supernova and the black hole may be parts of the same stellar death, but one does not automatically cause the other.]

"All right." Zac nodded in understanding.

[Good. Now imagine that same dying star contains an extraordinarily concentrated amount of mana.]

[A star that has absorbed and accumulated mana throughout millions or even billions of years of its existence.]

[And don’t bother trying to imagine how much mana that would be. You currently have no meaningful reference for it.]

Zac ignored the insult.

[When a star like that undergoes gravitational collapse, something extremely unusual can happen.]

[According to the physics your world understands, the collapsing core forces matter inward under immense gravitational pressure.]

[But in this particular anomaly, mana becomes trapped within that collapse as well.]

(?..?)

"Explain that more clearly."

[When the stellar core collapses, gravity forces matter inward. Normally, matter and radiation behave according to the physical laws your scientists already understand.]

[But the presence of an enormous concentration of mana changes the process.]

"Because it gets trapped too?"

[Exactly.]

[As the collapse intensifies, the gravitational field becomes extreme enough that the mana accumulated throughout the star can no longer disperse normally.]

[Instead, it is dragged inward and compressed along with the collapsing matter.]

Zac frowned. "Mana can be affected by gravity?"

[Everything capable of interacting with reality is affected by something.]

"That was incredibly vague."

[Because properly explaining mana physics to you would take years. And you definitely don’t have enough Info Points.]

Zac’s eye twitched. "Fine. Continue."

[As the stellar core collapses, the mana becomes compressed to an extraordinary degree and begins interacting with the heavy elements inside the dying star.]

[Under normal circumstances, much of that matter would either remain within the collapsing core, be expelled during the stellar explosion, or eventually fall toward the newly forming black hole.]

[But when the mana concentration is high enough, something different happens.]

[Think of the compressed mana as creating a temporary center of attraction within the collapsing stellar material. Nearby heavy matter is drawn toward it while the star’s own gravity continues compressing everything from the outside.]

"So Azryx is basically compressed mana mixed with stellar metal?"

[That’s the simplified version.]

[The complicated version involves phase transitions that your civilization has yet to discover.]

"Don’t degrade us too much." The system ignored the comment and continued.

[Eventually, the mana and matter are compressed under such extreme conditions that they stop behaving as two separate components and transition into an entirely new material state.]

[Azryx.]

"And how small does it become?"

[That depends on how much Azryx is formed. But size isn’t the important part.]

[An Azryx fragment could be no larger than a golf ball and still contain an absurd amount of mass and mana.]

"So that’s why it’s so heavy."

[Exactly.]

Zac paused as the pieces finally connected. "Then that explains why taking it out of spatial isolation nearly destroyed everything around it."

[Correct. Do you remember the Schwarzschild radius I mentioned earlier?]

"Yeah. The size something has to be compressed below before it becomes a black hole."

[More precisely, every amount of mass has a corresponding critical radius. If that mass becomes confined entirely within that radius, an event horizon forms.]

Zac rubbed his forehead. "Too much science, System. Too much science."

[Fine.]

[Think of Azryx as existing dangerously close to that boundary without actually crossing it.]

"Right."

[Which is also one reason surviving Azryx is exceptionally rare.]

[During its formation, the fragment is compressed until its density becomes extreme enough to produce immense gravitational effects.]

[But it stops just short of forming a stable event horizon of its own.]

"That is already absurd enough, and somehow, that isn’t even the rarest part, is it?"

[No.]

Sigh... At this point, Zac had already abandoned any attempt to judge what qualified as normal.

The system continued.

[For Azryx to form, the dying star must satisfy several conditions.]

[First, it must contain an extraordinarily high concentration of mana. Second, there must be enough suitable heavy matter for that mana to interact with. Third, the collapse itself must occur within an extremely narrow range of conditions.]

"And how often does all of that actually happen?"

[Roughly one or two suitable cases among a million mana-rich stars.]

"And even then, the Azryx still has to survive after forming."

[Exactly.]

[Because it forms in perhaps the worst possible location imaginable.]

"Yeah. I think I can already guess where this is going."

[When the parent star’s core collapses far enough to produce a black hole, Azryx may form somewhere within the surrounding collapsing material.]

[The problem is that the newly formed black hole immediately becomes the dominant gravitational body in the region.]

[Azryx may possess an extraordinary gravitational influence for its size, but it still hasn’t crossed the threshold required to become a black hole itself.]

[So once the black hole forms, the fragment begins falling toward it.]

"How long does the Azryx usually have before it gets swallowed?"

[That depends on exactly where the fragment forms and how the collapse progresses.]

[But once the black hole has fully formed and the Azryx is trapped within its immediate gravitational region, the available time can become extremely short.]

Zac let out a long breath. "So even if a star somehow manages to produce Azryx, finding it isn’t enough."

[Correct.]

[You would need to detect the newly formed fragment almost immediately. Approach a collapsing star on the verge of forming a black hole. Navigate through the superheated stellar debris. Locate the Azryx. Contain it within spatial isolation and remove it before the newly formed black hole claims it.]

[Simple.]

"You and Siegfried have a very strange definition of simple."

[This is why even gods generally consider collecting Azryx an idiotic undertaking.]

Zac frowned. "So the mortals from that era actually managed to obtain Azryx when even gods would hesitate to go after it?"

[Yes! But it didn’t come without a price.]

[They sacrificed countless lives and spent eons experimenting before they succeeded.]

"How?"

[That is a different story for a different time.]