Chương 68: Chapter 65: Akyrodata Storage

Nolotl didn't know what it was, but loops were becoming shorter with time. Not that the loop itself was becoming shorter, but rather that his perception of time was speeding up significantly. It didn't help that he spent several weeks in a row in the same room with no windows and his only clock—he wasn't always checking the Cognition for the time—was his stomach.

Success with the Invisible Gesticulation was severely limited, and either way, most of his efforts were dedicated to Beta's triumph on the transfusion of information with the void vestiges. Now, the akyromancer failed to comprehend how to transform information into thoughts, which should have been trivial, but she still managed to develop a spell to aid their effort.

Which resulted in the following: Name: Akyrodata Storage Release Schools: Akyromancy, Divination Requirement: Hylomorphism Effect: Target an existing akyrodata storage to start a decompressing, decompiling, and deciphering process to handle its information.

"Have I mentioned that I hate the name?" Nolotl mused aloud after going over the spellware for the umpteenth time.

"Yes," Beta responded with little energy left, though it was becoming somewhat visible.

"The spellcrafter gets the naming rights and we needed a name to refer to the vestiges, didn't we?"

"Yes, but the name is horrible."

"It's descriptive," she said in a tone that was solely meant to be informative, not a justification of any kind.

"It's information in the Void, so akyrodata. It's the place where that information travels, so storage." The last part of the spell's name 'release' was limited to the spell as Beta designed it so he would have an easier time to show the information to her future iteration. Akyrodata Storage Release was a hyper-specific spell that could only target akyrodata storages—hence the hylomorphism requirement as it was technically a mandatory component—and nothing else.

It didn't matter that it was an akyromancy because it was a first-tier divination with requirements, which meant that Nolotl learned it in less than a week prompting one of his favorite notifications. Void assimilation progressed by 2%. He far preferred experience or Information Alignment notifications, but that one wasn't bad at all, especially because it was a sizeable one for the little effort he had put in.

Which only bolstered Beta on pushing back his learning of the Counterspell abjuration and instead focusing on abusing Nolotl's divination capabilities. Nearly a fourth of the way done but considering we're at the end of the fourth loop my progress has gone from ludicrous to very pressing. For obvious reasons, Nolotl wanted to be over way before Enantyum's deadline. The Regressor had said it himself, this was the Interlooper's one and only probation period. If he failed, he was good as dead.

"I know you want to continue ironing the kinks out, Beta, but it's time for the gathering of empyreans," he stood up from his stool and looked at the hunchbacked abjurer.

"Can't we skip it? Time is gold now," she logically stated.

"Depending on who you ask time might go from Deep Ebony to copper," Nolotl hummed in thought.

"No, that doesn't work out quite well, copper is very valuable. Tin then? Perhaps titanium?"

"Titanium?" The claim was so outlandish that even Beta was surprised.

"Apparently in the far east there's an expansive black desert where the sand is made of ilmenite, so it has kinda made titanium obsolete in the market after the teleportation network was established. Hmm, I guess we could ask Enantyum as the desert is at Asmarramil." The nation of Asmarramil was one in the far west littered with deserts of many kinds—ochre, white, golden, black, et cetera—and a rather successful mercantile nation due to having the only safe-conduct connecting north and south.

The mountains of the central old world were nothing to scoff at. Perhaps it wasn't at the hands of monsters, but Nolotl had already died several time in the crown of the central mountains that was Mount Empyrean.

"But I'm digressing," Nolotl snapped out of his info-dumping mode. All gnosiamancers knew what it was like to start throwing facts and trivia and simply not stop, and it wasn't necessarily limited to speaking them out. Gnosiamancers could very well rant inside their minds.

"Come on, get up. The meeting will only be like two hours long."

"That's plenty of time," Beta countered without much emotion.

"Trust me, you don't want to skip the gathering." The way the akyromancer squinted at him gave him some limited sight in her mind. Conversationally speaking, not in the gnosiamancer sense.

"No, I'm not threatening you. But Nina and Mio will pester us if we don't present ourselves."

"Mio will pester us if we present ourselves." This particular lack of emotion in her voice was one that he was familiar with as it wasn't apathy, but rather what normal people would use to express disgust.

"Oh, so you also put that information in the akyrodata storage?" He inquired. Perhaps Beta had become rather sour the last loop for some reason he still couldn't decipher, but the events with Mio pestering them had still transpired.

"I haven't, some other version of me did," the Empyrean of Void stated.

"Of course," the Empyrean of Information nodded, not wanting to antagonize her again now that the memory was fresh in his mind.

"But it's another type of pestering that I'm talking about. If we aren't present they will hound us and make useless the rest of the days leading to our favorite astral convergence." Allegedly, Nolotl didn't add that part. He had never seen Nina in that hounding mode as Enantyum had described her, but he knew better than not to push his luck. Beta rolled her eyes, which was monumental expressiveness by her part, and finally stood up.

Their march to the Central Tower was far livelier than the previous loop, though not in the sense that the akyromancer had any spring on her gait, but rather that he couldn't feel hostility from her. In that sense, this iteration of Beta was closer to the one of the first Void loop. Due to their delay, the duo reached the conference room rather late with more empyreans present that just only Nina and Mio, but that didn't stop the latter from performing her antics.

"Oh!" Mio instantaneously teleported in front of him, abruptly cutting whatever conversation she had been having. At least this time I haven't jumped back from the scare, he comforted himself even if he knew what was going to come out of the woman's mouth.

"Beta and Nolotl together? I certainly didn't expect this combination?" the short Empyrean jumped from side to side, delighted in seeing two of her fellows together.

"I had heard that something was strange about you, Nolotl, as people kept commenting that the Empyrean of Information was having bloody battles at the Life Tower, but this arrival surprises me more than that." He was surprised to find that his Simulacrum rumor about being turned into a ghost had been substituted with his antics on the underground arena of the Life Tower, but it wasn't that great of a change.

Nolotl was going to respond to her as usual, but he was instead surprised by a completely unexpected and far drastic change.

"Yes, we're a unit," Beta stated dryly.

"Now scram off." The gnosiamancer turned his head and looked at the akyromancer in utter confusion, but what mattered more was the topomancer's reaction.

"Aaaaaaaah!" Namely a high-pitched shrill that Nolotl wouldn't have been surprised to hear that it came from a banshee rather than a living woman. My ears! He blocked them all-too-late, a reflex more than anything else. Oh Celestials, they're ringing! How can a starless woman scream that loudly?

"That's marvelous! Marvelous! Marvelous!" Mio hopped on the spot repeatedly, though it couldn't be called quite like that as she teleported a few centimeters around with each hop and word, creating a curious motion that his stupid brain interpreted as wiggling. Optical illusions were only possible because brains were stupid in the first place.

"That's so incredible!"

"What part of scram off haven't you understood?" Beta reiterated with a bemused tone.

"Sure, sure!" Amusedly, Mio did teleport away and started speaking in rapid-fire at Nina about what had just happened and the overwhelmed Empyrean of Arcane constantly repeated a 'Yes, I've heard it too' as she was unable to stop the Empyrean of Space's verbal volley.

"Huh, I didn't expect her to leave us alone," Nolotl said softly so only Beta could hear him.

"Knowing her, she will keep her word for a day or too at least. Then it will become a living nightmare. But if you haven't created the world's most elaborated prank, then we should free of her." As she spoke with deep understanding, the diviner couldn't help but look at the abjurer in bewilderment.

"What?" She snapped monotonously.

"No, nothing. It's just that… well, you actually know her. That has surprised me."

"We haven't interacted much, but we have both been empyreans for many years due to both of us being peerless in our fields. I learned how she works, though not willingly." That usually would have made Nolotl smile, but instead he was assaulted by a powerful sadness. I know nothing about them. He had only been an Empyrean for less than a year and meetings weren't all that common, but he didn't enjoy how the limited selection of people that he saw every loop were basically strangers.

Perhaps that's the best due to the loop's nature… but Beta's investigation could change that. Nolotl wasn't that hopeful that they would manage to create 'free' interloopers, but if he could reward the last iteration of every person that had helped him with accrued months, if not years, of investigation and development, that would be enough for him.

"You don't have anything to do during the alignment, do you?" Nolotl asked Beta as she didn't seem to be reading for the incoming event. If there was something good about these Void loops, it was that he wasn't worrying much either. He had yet to investigate it, but he was glad that the ambushers didn't seem capable of infiltrating the Void Tower. Which is curious considering that Yaxkin is an akyromancer. Maybe Tramma Dol stops him if he infiltrates the tower?

Experience told Nolotl that the Cahtuli warrior must have had infiltration experience considering his whole Void kit revolved around being undetectable and teleporting around. But at the same time, if the twiceborn could detect it with specialized yet low-level divinations, so could the Tower Master. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"No," she answered a moment later.

"I've been thinking about it, but it's useless to do anything. At best I will try to further the investigation with the boost of the total celestial alignment, but that will only give me four minutes to tinker with the akyrodata storage. Nothing worthwhile."

"How nihilistic," Nolotl mused whilst putting everything he needed on his satchel. Beta could carry stuff for him, but knowing that her betrayal could be a possibility, he liked to have materials at hand, even if none of his spells required any esoteric material.

"Did you just ask why an akyromancer is nihilistic?" Beta was baffled by his question, and in return, Nolotl was baffled by her 'expressiveness'.

"I will admit that was a bit of a tautology, but that has been a doubt I've been having since last alignment. You completely threw away all of your efforts that must have been taken months to prepare and hone at the first sign that it wouldn't matter. Don't you have a feeling, perhaps one of lingering regret, that keeps you trying till the better end? Just to see if it does work?"

"No," her responded was emotionless and simple.

"You showed me that no matter what I do nothing will matter, and that if I aid you then I could have a resound success at some point. So there's no point in trying." That was the main difference between Beta Methasome and Nolotl Xocoyotzin. If Nolotl were to be expelled from the time loop, he would keep trying to either destroy it or find a way to infiltrate it again, no matter how impossible a task it might be.

Yet Beta didn't have that urge, that struggle inside her that motivated her to keep fighting till her last breath. In that sense, she had long given up, perhaps before even starting.

"But what about your life? You will be dying in some manner of speech the moment the total celestial alignment reaches its zenith," he inquired.

"Doesn't that bother you? Unnerve you? Or irate you even?"

"No," her answer was devoid of anything just like before… but perhaps a bit more resolute.

"For better or worse, I trust you, Nolotl. And also my efforts. I believe that at some point the akyrodata storage will become competent enough to complete my goal, and after that, I will finally be satisfied."

"Alright…" He sighed defeated and deflated.

"If you aren't going to do much during the alignment, can I then ask you to communicate with the Void or something?"

"Communicate with the Void?" Beta frowned at him.

"When you originally failed the ritual, beyond killing you, it also gave me a lot of Alignment and assimilation. I'd prefer not getting any Void Alignment, but it was a lot of assimilation for having done nothing so if you could recreate it, you could accelerate your progress."

"Your logic is flawed," she stood up with that statement.

"How come?"

"If I accelerate your progress then you will finish your task faster, ergo losing the utility that I have and reducing the odds of succeeding with my own quest."

"No." It was Nolotl's turn to deny resolutely.

"It's your logic that's flawed, because my principles wouldn't allow me to abandon you. Whatever happens, whether you get to that point before or I do, I will still aid you." Beta wordlessly appraised him and without speaking a single word, she made her way out of the workshop, prompting the terian to follow her.

"If you don't speak, I won't be able to understand you," he warned.

"Perhaps that is the case with other people, but I've never felt the need to be understood, nor I seek for understanding," she didn't bother looking back as she stepped into the sidereal infinity of the Void Tower.

"I will perform 'basic' rituals that might help your comprehension." It wasn't an excuse, just a plain statement meant to change the subject. The only thing Nolotl could do was sigh and follow the Empyrean of Void. He would once have thought that the hardest of the empyreans to deal with was Beta and she definitely was. But now he was aware that the reason was wholly different from the one he originally thought.

The Empyrean of Information originally intended to prepare for the Confluence of the One Self ritual, but he decided not to proceed with the task as he might need that Alignment later if Beta was going to perform anything similar to the first Void loop. And besides, the lower his Alignment was, the more Alignment he would get from these static boosts due to the diminishing returns.

So Nolotl did his best with Invisible Gesticulation the moment the brightness of the observation room dimmed due to the eclipse of the first phase. The partial celestial alignment had started, and his personalized notification said as much. You feel the guidance of the stars. The Starguided Blessing always sent that notification through Real-Time Status, but for obvious reasons he ignored it.

But the notification also thrummed with energy when it just wasn't common guidance, but one instead boosted by a cosmological event of once in a galaxy's lifetime.

"Bespoken extremity, mirror of my mind, heed my call and give me your hand. Invisible Gesticulation!" Nolotl floundered his cape as he finished the chant. The xenoglossia aspect of the conjuration was minimal when compared to Ode to Silence or Healing Word, but it was present and it lowered the casting difficulty. Not that he had much success as no extremity appeared for him. There were some detectable ripples in the Cognition and 4 mana pools had been evaporated instantly meaning that something had worked.

Worked, of course, in the sense that he was walking in the right direction. But still no summoning occurred.

"Isn't 4 mana pools too much for Invisible Gesticulation regardless of a successful cast?" He inquired to Beta.

"It doesn't have a physical body after all." Common knowledge dictated that spells without corporeal presence like most divinations, Cognition-based, and Spirituality-based spells were cheaper to cast.

"Not really," she mused whilst focused on her palms, weaving a new akyrodata storage. The gestures weren't required, but just like any other spell, you could shove cheironomy to make it easier. And in this case, more visual.

"4 MP isn't much when taking into account your lack of proficiencies and affinity, and the fact that this isn't quite a materialized construct, but a summoned one. You're summoning it out of nowhere, and that translation effort takes energy."

"Hmm, I guess…" Nolotl mussitated.

"But MP? I thought you would refer to them as mana pools."

"Why would I?" she tilted her head, though the gesture wasn't that visible with her hood.

"You just gave me that impression?" he explained, though his tone wasn't exactly confident.

"You know, that type of person that's only a bit pedantic so they refer to any terminology by the adequate wording."

"I'm also the type of person that doesn't like to talk and that prefers laziness to effort, so I say MP, and that's all."

"Right," the diviner mouthed as it was clear the abjurer wouldn't speak about it any longer. He focused back on her words on translation. Conjuration was one of the weirdest schools of all because it summoned things from… somewhere. What that somewhere could be located was a topic of discussion with little resolution. Some spoke of other planes—even if three only seemed to exist—and others of realms parallel to Physicality and that the conjurations were simply perpendicularities that connected both.

"From where these extremities come from though?" the dark-skinned terian inquired.

"Probably from the realm of disembodied extremities," the pale celestial responded with no passion. But it felt awfully like a jest.

"The worst thing is that I could believe it. I know for a fact that the realm of grease is a thing." The Grease spell was a rather well-known low-tiered conjuration that summoned a film of grease. It was both flammable or slippery, and whilst it had its uses, there were spells that did both of those things and more far better. Space assimilation progressed by 1%.

"Nice!" Nolotl fistpumped at the notification.

"Did you manage to cast the conjuration?" Beta asked.

"Nope, but I got my first ever Space assimilation notification," he informed.

"I was rather desperate of what the future might hold for that Alignment because of it, so it's comforting seeing that it can still level from the occasional thought in the right direction." That was how he had started powering through Void assimilation at the beginning, though now his progress left a lot to be desired after that fast initial progress.

"Then stop celebrating and focusing on practicing, you're burning precious seconds," she chided.

"Yes, yes," he rolled his eyes.

"It's not like I will have many attempts due to this ludicrous mana consumption." With his 25 mana pools, Nolotl could only cast Invisible Gesticulation six times. And the first one had already been a massive bust. Fortunately, he only needed seconds to cast the low-tiered conjuration as most of the casting cost was already falling onto the requirements like concentration.

Whilst practicing the spell, Nolotl couldn't keep up Vacuous Filtration up, or so would have been the case if it wasn't for his new improved version. It wasn't much of a change, but it helped with his casting that he wasn't pressed by the eldritch energies of the Void Tower. During the first Void loop, the diviner had sung Ode to Silence with little success, but now that he was more used to akyromancies and his mind and body were under less pressure, he had it a bit easier.

The casting was far from trivialized, but Nolotl gathered any advantage he could get. Second cast. Failure Third cast. Failure. Fourth cast. Tentative failure. The Cognition had rippled far more harshly than before, indicating that some summoning had been attempted, but it hadn't been stable enough and the connection had failed. Nolotl took a deep breath and focused on the guidance of the stars.

Starguided worked mostly as an omnidirectional sense of sight, more correctly being a sense of limited omniscience around him. It didn't give him any knowledge that wasn't from his usual senses, but in that range they were preternaturally heightened. But he was also a diviner and a priest. The High Priest of Nochochenca. Astral divinations were his specialty, and he needed of no astral communion. Basic cantrips heightened his comprehension ever so slightly and he sought further guidance.

Starguided, High Priest of Nochochenca, the Crow Crown, and the convergence of the heavens all worked to give him lectures on what he was doing wrong. Small advices that pushed him into the right path. Fifth cast. Partial success. He managed to summon a single digit before the connection became unstable and he was unable to bring any more forth into their local reality.

Even though he couldn't see it, between his connection to the Cognition and Starguided, Nolotl could feel the digit—which seemed to be keyed with his index finger—imitated the movements of the real one. It was like a bubble of air trapped in water, invisible but not undetectable.

"One minute remaining," Beta announced.

"And only one cast remaining," Nolotl replied with an exhausted sigh. He had the feeling that if he could sweat, he would be drenched by now. This communion may not be a true spell, but the haphazard cantrip was taking a lot out of him. Sixth cast. His previous experience and studying worked in tandem with his astral tutors to guide his to victory. The total celestial alignment was approaching and he could feel it in his body and soul, but most importantly, in his mind.

"Bespoken extremity, mirror of my mind, heed my call and give me your hand. Invisible Gesticulation!" Reality softly rippled from his words. Not a bombastic display, but rather similarly to how a stone might skip on the surface of a lake. The cyan Cognition let out a soft ripple that disappeared as soon as it had arrived, but that mattered not. For the cast had been successful. Void assimilation progressed by 5%. Space assimilation progressed by 2%.

"Same progression as Ode to Silence!" Nolotl hastily informed Beta as she finished weaving the akyrodata storage.

"There are no diminishing returns!" The akyromancer nodded upon hearing that.

"This means that our best path of progress will be for you to cheat the system by learning divinations. Here, take this storage." The diviner slightly bowed forward and let Beta touch his mind, overwriting the existing mote of void in the liminality of his mind with a new one. It didn't feel heavy in the slightest.

"Few seconds remain, give me time to ready what you asked for." It was Nolotl's turn to ask as Beta brought forth her might. There weren't any preparations like when she was readying the ninth-tier ritual but that didn't mean she was unprepared. From one second to the other, Beta Methasome warped reality. It wasn't a meager ripple like Nolotl had produced, but a true distortion that threatened the integrity of existence.

"How?" That was the only word that could leave Nolotl's mind. After all, what other thing could he question as he saw light, the Physicality, the Cognition, and likely the Spirituality too warp into a singularity that distorted everything. A black hole. Beta had summoned a black hole. The Empyrean of Information doubted it was a real black hole because he wasn't dead, but at the same time, his unbalanced journey started by reading a book about a crazy mage that wanted to contain a star in their pocket.

In that sense, containing a black hole didn't sound as stupid. Yet the distortion of light was very much real, reality warping around the conjured construct. But no. The actual reason why he knew that it wasn't a black hole was because those were singularities of existence, whether matter or information, which meant they were singularities of Light.

The singularities of Void would be white holes as they were the only true voids of existence completely devoid of anything, not even observation as nothing could peer into them for everything escaped them, even light. Void assimilation progressed by 5%. Level progressed by 1%. Casting a new complex spell hadn't given him any significant experience, but peering into whatever that was, certainly did.

It was a sight into something else, something that he failed to comprehend but simply acknowledging its existence was a massive treasure trove of information.

"Carefully," Beta responded and any following question died in Nolotl's lips as the corners of the akyromancer's slightly raised. He had no answer to such absurd display and, oddly, it didn't matter to him. For he had managed to make Beta finally joke and perhaps even grin. Though he didn't have any time to savor it. With the vision of a visage portraying some emotion that took precedence for him over the perfect order illuminating the skies, Nolotl's time in this coil came to an end.