A few minutes later, the five of us arrived at the fourth major room. I had to admit, Sallia lugging around Sekundyrr as we walked through the hallways of the facility was a rather absurd sight. However, Sekundyrr seed incredibly excited to move around a little bit, even if he could only do so while being carried around like a sack of potatoes by Sallia.
The fourth room reminded of the second room. There was no life inside of the room. In fact, as far as I could tell, there was nothing at all inside of each of the sub-chambers of the room. I looked at them for almost a full minute, trying to figure out what was even being tested in this room, before I gave up and looked at Felix.
“Any ideas what this room is for?” I asked. “I can feel the laws of reality being distorted inside of each sub-chamber, but I’m not sure how.”
Felix also shrugged. “I don’t know either. I wish-” he stopped mid-sentence, and then grinned and pointed at sothing.
I looked at the spot he was pointing at, and then blinked in surprise.
In the first three rooms, whatever research notes had originally been made by the researchers had long been lost. Ti had slowly caused all of the notes to deteriorate, until they were basically just piles of dust. By room four, I hadn’t even bothered looking at the research notes in the room, because I had assud they would also be so deteriorated that they were just garbage. I had been fully prepared to guess the purpose of the room through trial and error.
However, in this room, there was a single pile of preserved notes. Unlike the other chambers, these papers had clearly been made of a different material. This paper had a distinctive gold tint to it, and was also significantly thicker than the papers we had found in other rooms. This material had also allowed the papers to remain relatively undamaged by the ravages of ti and neglect.
I quickly walked over to the research notes, and then very carefully picked up the first docunt I could see. I kept the tiny dregs of alteration essence left in my body ready as well, just in case the notes started falling apart after I picked them up.
Luckily, the notes held together just fine under my careful movents. The script was a little hard to read, since writing styles and so rules about grammar and language had changed a little over the centuries. However it was still possible to read the old research notes, even if it took a little ti to decipher what each word ant.
I quickly angled the papers so that Sallia, Felix, and Anise could also read the papers, and began to scan the docunts.
19th of Dwarium
Test 17:
We have finally found that a mixture of gravitite and paper mixed together in a ratio of 1:23, along with a small amount of Elethyrr sap, allows us to create a type of paper that does not explode if one of the room four dinsional chambers goes out of control. This will hopefully reduce the number of accidents in the future.
Gravitite itself seems to be oddly compatible with the dinsional attributes of dinsion four, far more than our own dinsion’s Gravinium and Gravinium extract. We are uncertain why: researcher Bethel believes that it is because the way atoms bond to each other in dinsion one, including gravtitie, is based entirely on the atomic interactions between essences, but doesn’t seem to distinguish between types of essence. Since dinsion four is overloaded with large quantities of all four essences, perhaps the unique nature of gravitite allows it to survive exposure to dinsion four’s laws.
I believe that her idea makes sense, but further testing is required.
I nodded as I scanned the docunt. It was clearly so kind of research journal. The idea of papers exploding when exposed to dinsion four’s laws made chuckle a little bit, although it also made wonder if I was lucky that nothing had exploded while we ssed with the sub-chambers of each room. Perhaps it was a good idea to tone our experintation down a little bit.
22nd of Dwarium
Organic Undenthyri Sub-experint.
Another expedition from dinsion four has returned. The seventeenth experintal breed of Undenthyri seems to have suffered a great deal of damage during the expedition: apparently, anyti they remain within the dinsion for more than five days total, their organs begin to fall apart.
I have taken several of their children and begun modifying their organs, to see if there is a more stable composition I can create. I tried to slightly nudge the dinsional laws that their livers and hearts ran off of, with the idea of creating an inheritable trait that was more suited to mining dinsion four. Thus far, I have yet to succeed in finding a more stable composition: most of the children died shortly after testing. I suspect that if I hyperspecialize their organs, their livers and hearts start to fail upon contact with our own dinsion’s laws. More testing is needed to verify this assumption.
Perhaps I should have begun with an Orukthyri baseline instead. The Orukthyri are quite difficult to breed with the other slaves because they have a strong tendency to eat their partners rather than produce more test subjects. However, I could still take one of the half-Orukthyri and see if they are more capable of holding themselves together in dinsion four. Perhaps if we can find a way to make the Orukthyri genes less dominant, we can create a better mining species.
I grimaced after reading the next entry.
The casual way that the researcher ntioned trying and failing to modify the heats and livers of Undenthyri children made feel sick. Life under the Ortha had clearly been more than a little horrifying.
The dawn of the black sun had unquestionably been a catastrophe for this world as a whole, but I couldn’t say it was a bad thing that the second Orthan empire had disappeared into history.
23rd of Dwarium
Update on Undenthyri Subj-experint.
The half-Orukthyri half-Undenthyri slaves exploded imdiately upon contact with dinsion four. It is unknown why.
Clearly, my next attempts at modification were not successful.
29th of Dwarium
Test 18:
After more tinkering, I have finally managed to replicate the conditions of dinsion four inside of one of our sub-chamber testing facilities! I started out by taking one of the massive insectoid creatures that we found drifting between stars in that sub-dinsion and then dissecting its organs, to use as further experintal data. After stuffing the creature’s brain inside of one of the sub-chambers of room four, I finally managed to use it to examine the unique energy systems of that dinsion. From there, I believe I have perfectly replicated the conditions of dinsion four.
With this, the costs of further experints should be drastically reduced. It will be much easier to test organ and genetic modifications in the future, so long as nothing goes wrong.
Dinsion four has too many unique and useful resources, but retraining Undenthyri mining teams every week is simply too expensive. Finding a way to optimize a slave race subspecies for further mining use is critical if we wish to extract resources efficiently.
31st of Dwarium
New organic sub-experint
Placed one of the insectoid creatures from dinsion four into our dinsional sub-chamber. Tests show that the creature is living well, exactly as if it were living in its original dinsion. We can detect no other abnormalities.
34th of Dwarium
Item crafting test
The first attempts at creating artifacts using the unique environnt we copied in dinsion four have failed. We originally expected that since atomic bonds seem to be made of pure mana in that dinsion, we would be able to create a rather interesting set of equipnt for the Orukthyri, and had so hopes that the artifacts may even survive exposure to other dinsional conditions.
Sadly, the first four attempts at creating a set of swords resulted in explosions. It seems that any of the tals we have found from other dinsions are unable to stick together after being exposed to dinsion four’s environnt. Apart from gravitite, but that is far too expensive to use for re Orukthyri weapons and armor.
It seems that we may be restricted to mining in dinsion four, if the dinsional laws are as hostile to other types of matter as they seem to be. How unfortunate.
39th of Dwarium
Plans for future experints
The dinsion scouting team has found another dinsion near us. This one seems quite a bit more unusual than even dinsion four and the unstable laws of dinsion five. They claim that it is likely a plane with an exceptionally high amount of mana inside of it.
If we can harvest the newly found dinsion for energy, perhaps we can power all sorts of wondrous items and raise our civilization to an entirely new level.
The first Orthan empire sohow accessed the sea of stars, which lies far beyond our planet’s surface, and floated into space with almost a quarter of the planet’s mass. Perhaps they, too, had begun exploring the dinsions that lie outside of our ho dinsion before they launched themselves into space.
And since we are much superior to the ancients in intellect, bravery, and courage, we will surely succeed where they failed in the past.
41st of Dwarium
The first testing chamber for dinsion six has been created. The laws of reality in that dinsion are very distinct, and also quite unusual. One of the scepters personally created the sub-chamber, so it should be quite accurate.
The fact that the black scepter personally took action is testant to just how unique dinsion six is. Her dinsional replication spells are known to be quite exceptional, but she does not usually bother taking action for less important tests like this.
42nd of Dwarium
Dinsion six materials test
I have taken a small sample of blood from a creature of dinsion six and placed it inside of a dinsion six testing chamber, to see how it held together.
The results are fascinating.
The drops of blood that we placed inside of the testing chamber did nothing for several hours. Then, they ca to life. We are uncertain exactly how this works, since most exploration and attempts at harvesting resources from dinsion six have failed. The dinsional laws of dinsion six don’t seem to have anything to do with life, making the entire situation even more unusual.
As far as we can tell so far, Dinsion six appears to be so sort of… plane of ‘ideas,’ for lack of a better term. Physical space barely exists, although the dinsional laws related to ti seem to have stabilized fairly well in that dinsion.
Every single object in existence in dinsion six is, in so way, shape, or form, alive. Even the space between the stars in that dinsion seems to be observing our exploration teams, according to the few survivors that managed to return.
The black scepter has ordered us to try placing so weapons and armor inside of the testing chamber for dinsion six later, to see if they naturally improve after exposure to the environnt of dinsion six.
It is a most fascinating dinsion. When we succeed in subjugating the dinsion, the resources we harvest from it will surely be exceptional.
Past that point, the research notes were cut off. However, the research notes were quite interesting in what they revealed.
I strongly suspected that ‘dinsion six’ was the ho of the black sun. It simply fit too well with my own assumptions about the dinsion, which was that it was a ‘plane of ideas’ of so sort. Furthermore, many of the pieces of paper that lay underneath the research notes I had found were blank, indicating that the writer had originally intended to fill them out with more notes at so point.
In other words, sothing had probably happened to the author of these notes shortly after this dinsion had connected to dinsion six.
While it could have been a coincidence, it just lined up very well with my understanding of history and the ho dinsion of the black sun.
“Well, we should be extra careful when we enter the sixth room in this facility,” said Felix. “I’m pretty sure that’s the origin of the black sun, and so it might be filled with more weird monsters. Though I also admit that I’m quite curious to see what’s actually inside of room six. Perhaps we can get a large amount of Achievent inside of that room, if we are careful…”
“Let’s finish looking over this room and then look at room five, first,” I said. “Let’s discuss what we’re doing about room six afterwards.”
The four of us nodded, and then started slowly working our way through room four to see if we could find anything valuable.
Anise eventually found a kind of stone that was floating in midair in one of the dinsional chambers, which we only examined for a few monts before we stuffed it into my dinsional pack.
Wealth: Own 1 kilogram of prismium
Achievent 1,000
I was very surprised to realize that this random-looking rock was vastly more valuable than the Gravitite and plant core that we had found so far. It single-handedly boosted my Achievent from 15,833 to 16,833. Which was a very sizable increase in Achievent: my overall goal of around 24,000 Achievent was getting closer and closer with every room we explored.
Apart from that, Anise found so strange corpses near the edge of one of the sub-chambers. They looked almost like giant flies. Each one was about the size of my head.
I suspected these were the insects the research notes had discussed, which were the original inhabitants of dinsion four.
Apart from that, we didn’t find anything else.
Before leaving the room, Felix decided to ss with the Prismium and see if he could figure out what it was useful for. It wasn’t made of tal, so he couldn’t use his attunent to warp it, but it was still another potential tool available to us if we could figure out what it did.
After taking it out of my dinsional backpack, the Prismium imdiately began to float again.
That was all we could figure out, unfortunately.
It didn’t react to any essence we had, unlike Gravitite. It wasn’t particularly hard, and Sallia accidentally nicked a bit of the Prismium with her sword while gently poking it. As far as we could tell, the Prismium was just a magically floating rock. The only other weird thing we could figure out was that the Prismium didn’t seem to need any energy input to keep floating. Which was odd, but didn’t seem to justify its incredible Achievent reward at all.
Eventually, we gave up and kept moving. There were only two rooms left in the dinsional habitat facility.
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