B2 Chapter 10: Limbo

[ Year ??? Month ???: 1 week has passed

My [Clock] skill was the only way I could keep track of how long I had spent in this void. With no sun or literally anything else to reference, it would be impossible to figure it out.

With humanoids living in the Burrow, I had seen the negative impact of having no sense of day and night. At first, people would maintain their usual schedule, but after a few days it slowly shifted more and more, until their sleep cycles were almost completely inverted from their original patterns. There were enough complaints that I created mana lights that would dim as the day progressed.

Even if I was a rock, time was just as important to me as to any other mortal. While I was effectively immortal unless I did another incredibly stupid thing, others around me were not, and that put me on a time limit as well.

Within the last week, I had continuously expanded, sleep being the only other option, and I was too interested in the new dimension to do so. So far, it had been completely empty, but I nonetheless continued.

My ‘influence’ had expanded to cover a tremendously higher region than mine in the physical world, the lack of resistance meaning I could continuously push the border farther and farther. Sadly, it was linear, meaning as my sphere grew larger the rate at which it expanded slowed dramatically.

It also helped that I had to take breaks. True, there was no mana cost, but once I had passed a certain size, the mental toll of observing the entire region began to stack.

Like mountain climbers ascending Everest, I took some time to adjust to the strain and continue once it relaxed, like a form of immunotherapy or just simple exercise.

Bored from the sheer repetition of the task, I could only hope it would benefit me later. ‘I better get something good from this. At least another upgrade to [Zone of Influence] would be nice.’

Although in the end, I would just be happy I made it back to my home. Skills could be upgraded late; people couldn’t.

I had been feeling strangely emotional while in this space. Reminiscing of the past and of the families lost in the original Gorn, and those who lost their lives because of the Miasma.

All unnecessary deaths.

‘Why does the System not interfere further? Or the goddesses. The System can interfere with life and death, and the goddesses can give blessings to their Chosen, but why not more? Inra spoke of how no Chosen has survived the battle with an Invasion Boss, and he was right.’

It’s just unfair, and doesn’t feel right to me. Either the goddesses are not all-powerful, or not aall-kind and it’s the same situation with the System.

Even in my case, I have great power, but it’s either highly specific and narrow in scope, or I am unable to use it.

It was frustrating to say the least, and if the other, more powerful beings also have such limitations, I feel pity for them.

[ Year ??? Month ???: 2 weeks have passed]

It was a little less than a fourth of my time in the dimension, and as I continued to ponder in the vast void of nothingness, my influence continued to expand. At this point, having been at it nonstop with absolutely no resistance, I had reached a point at which I could handle nothing else. There just was a barrier, whether that was with my mind or whatever; I hadn’t hit external resistance, but internal. Something inside of me just refused to go farther.

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I had tried to break through, but was wary. Would it cause me to shatter once again? This time not being reintegrated by the System? Or would it merely open up another faucet of power?

There was little way of knowing, and I didn’t want to risk it. Instead, I had taken to ‘moving’ the huge sphere of influence; it was a strange sensation, much like I had imagined floating in space would feel, but I quickly grew used to it.

‘This place cannot just be nothingness. The fact that I can exist here is proof of that. Even if it’s not the same type of ‘existence’ that Trendal has, maybe I am just looking at it wrong?’

While I had considered this could be a dimension that the System had direct control over, I doubted it. The lack of notifications just proved that its power wasn’t unlimited here, or at least as far-reaching.

So on my search for something in nothing, I pressed forward, well… my forward at least.