A New World, an immersive game experience

Chapter 990 What Eldrian Was Doing While Playing Unconscious (2)

While Wrath's heat, and Tranquility's cold, could be felt in his soul. Eldrian couldn't see how to use that fact to bring time to his soul. And again, time technically existed. Else his soul shouldn't have been influenced by soul attacks, wrath, and the like. 

It would be more correct to say that the state of the world Eldrian had created was frozen. While he focused on it, time flowed, gravity worked, and all the other things that one would expect on a normal planet. 

However, it was a fact that this was not a planet. It was a plane inside his soul, not some sphere in the void of space somewhere in a galaxy. 

"Should I redo it?" Eldrian asked himself.

He considered that perhaps he needed to make this world spherical. If he did, he would be able to accommodate gravity more realistically. Instead of a constant of acceleration downward for all things, he could make it match the mass of the 'world'.

He knew gravity had an effect on time, which was where this thought came from. However, Eldrian wasn't sure how that all worked.

'No, wait. Time slows with the gravitational effect. Not increases. Time dilation, no acceleration, Eldrian...' Upon thinking a bit further, Eldrian recalled that gravity wasn't the only thing that could influence time. 

"That's right. Moving faster caused time to slow." This might sound obvious. When Eldrian uses his agility to move, he was 12 times faster than a normal person. During his battle against the Death Knight, with all his buffs, this had more than doubled. 

Naturally, his perception of time had slowed to the same effect. But that was just it, his perception. Time itself hadn't been affected. 

"Or had it?" Eldrian asked himself. Time, he recalled, was relative. It was such, such... oh such a damnable confusing subject. 

Photons didn't experience time, at least according to science. But that just didn't make any sense to Eldrian. And the reason for their lack of time experience was that they were traveling at the speed of light. 

To achieve this, they had no mass. 

"Is my soul like a photon?" Eldrian asked himself. 

He didn't agree with the photon's not experiencing time. It made no sense that you could refract light, change its state, and still say that it didn't experience time. 

Something was clearly happening to it. Influencing it. 

Or so Eldrian had wanted to believe. Ziraili, however, had told him that it didn't: "To the photon, today, tomorrow, and a million years from do not exist. They have two states of being: Birth, and Death."

"That is to say, when they are released, and when they are absorbed by something are the same frame of time. It happens, to the photon, in no time at all. Not even a second, or indeed any time at all, having passed between the two. And everything that happened to it also fits right into that non-existent second."

This, of course, sounded like nonsense to Eldrian. After all, during its entire journey, the photon would experience different states of things. It might be refracted, reflected, or diffracted. Ultimately, it would be absorbed. 

Still, the journey exists. To say it doesn't defies logic. Yet, it was the truth. Or so science says, and Ziraili agreed with said science. 

"Time's so confusing," Eldrian said with a sigh. Still, this pondering had given him two new paths of thought. 

Time, by its nature, doesn't exist outside of space. Hence the name spacetime, which is often referred to when talking of the two. They are interlinked. 

Eldrian had been assuming that the 'space' in his soul was just that. But it was completely possible it wasn't. This was all in his head. So, certainly, it might not be 'space' but just what Eldrian thought of as 'space'. 

His other thought was that his soul was weightless. As obvious as this fact might sound, it was something he had forgotten to consider since things inside his soul felt like they did have mass and weight. 

Now, Eldrian knew this was partly due to his subconscious wishing to recreate normalcy. And partly because he had tried coding in 'reality' into his soul. 

But, the fact remained, from the outside, his soul was massless. 

If it wasn't, that discovery would be the biggest one in history. Being able to detect and find the soul of living things would be massive. 

Well, that was perhaps possible with magic. Heck, it was possible to attack souls, so it certainly was. 

But that attack doesn't come from things with mass. "Yeah, mana also lacks mass. Unless you want it to have mass." Eldrian mumbled. Again, another confusing topic. But that topic was on mana, not time. And Eldrian already more or less understood how mana worked. 

It was a confusing form of matter: capable of changing into different forms of other matter (even photons) according to the will enacted on it. Despite Eldrian asking himself if mana experienced time, considering all this, he didn't waste time ont the thought. 

Getting back on the track. Eldrian realized now that as a whole, his soul was lacking mass. Meaning it was like a photon.

To him, it seemed stationary. But it was possible that he (and his soul) was moving at the speed of light (or whatever would be the equivalent) in the magic abyss.

As such, his soul couldn't experience time. Yet, things could still affect it. Just like for the photon. 

The only hiccup was Eldrian's consciousness. 

He had different reference points, allowing him to notice and feel the effects of what should all be happening in the same instance. He brought time into something timeless. 

"Or am I just making a complicated mess of something simple?" Eldrian asked himself. Though he was louth to think that something like a person's soul could be classified as simple. But perhaps his entire viewpoint was wrong. 

Perhaps it wasn't that time didn't affect this 'world' in his soul. Perhaps his conscious efforts simply reset things, making it seem like it was static, by some sort of error or something.

'Hah, this might be more plausible. Considering the damage my soul has sustained...'

Regardless, Eldrian felt that the link between his soul and a photon would still hold. If, that is, his soul was traveling at the speed equivalent of light in the magic abyss. 

Either way, Eldrian realized that trying to force time into his soul wouldn't work. The inside might not be the problem. His consciousness brought time to the inside—while it was there, at least.

No, what he needed to figure out was the rules of souls. He had always done what he wanted on his own. Like a lucid dreamer, he was the god of his soul (dream/mind space).

However, that didn't mean there weren't rules. And having time flow in his soul might need some very specific things to happen. 

Perhaps he needed to introduce true gravity. Perhaps he needed to fix the 'space' inside his soul to make it actual space. Perhaps to do that he needed to use the power of his bloodline to introduce time, and somehow make spacetime. 

Regardless, this was all too complicated for him to figure out on his own. 

As much as Eldrian wanted his soul to take on a more real form. He could wait. He had only meant to escape all the annoying questions (and ensure he had taken no damage from affecting the flow of time outside). 

Since hours had passed, surely it was safe to return to the real (simulated/game/dream) world.