章 38: 38 Finishing Touches on Hell (Creator)

I was involved in giving my wives some attention, but was also able to dive back in the VMD. The whole dual Aspecting of myself with three bodies had given me plenty of mental power to spare, letting be able to take care of my Sea Volcano Hell. It was incomplete, with many features requiring more detailed attention.

There were quite a few details requiring attention. I needed a proper barrier between volcanoes, as well as a stable portal. I needed a properly outlined respawn system. I needed to ensure that my residents would constantly strive to grow, and yet be utterly doomed. I also needed to ensure there would always be enough room for any future residents.

I started with the sizes. Each volcano produced the same amount of magma, making its island grow an inch every day, but not all volcanoes required the same amount of room. Then I just tossed size restrictions out the window. If the later levels have more room, then it will just be a perk. They were floating on an infinite sea, after all.

The issue then was that eventually the volcanoes would all connect to each other. The solution for this was to address the intervening space. Space is a relative concept, and is the expression of a Definition rather than a Form in of itself. In order for the volcanoes to connect with each other, each volcano island had to absorb the intervening space and make it its own. I simply fixed the space to the in between areas, making it connected but independent. Now, the volcanoes would spread parallel to each other and never touch.

To ensure that there wouldn't eventually be no mana areas, I had the magma be never fully cool. It would always release mana. The next problem with that was that not all monsters were fire proof. I added a crust over the magma, like ice over a pond. The mana release wouldn't be as efficient, but they could break the crust to increase the rate.

I then turned my attention to the respawn system. I needed to be able to capture Souls and reform each individual Soul's body. From the deaths of the demons and monsters I've seen, their Soul simply vanishes. No help there.

I didn't want to start killing sentients to examine how death worked just yet. That was a slippery slope to the dark side of the Force. I could probably reverse engineer how life is created from an existence scan, though. I cast out my spatial awareness and hit upon a couple targets; a couple bunkered down only a few miles from where I was.

"System, scan them and upload the full results to my memories." I should be able to handle it now that I had three bodies worth of processing power. Right?

It wasn't too bad, I suppose. I now knew every little detail of each of their trillions of cells and how they interacted with each other and everything else, and what the various possibilities were for them in the past and future. If I hadn't had the extra processing power from my mind modifications and angel body, it would have taken me a week to process. With a little assist from System, I was able to digest the whole information package in under thirty seconds.

Disregarding the fluff extraneous to the information I wanted, including the rather disturbing relationship the couple had with each other, I focused on how their Souls interact with their bodies. To start with, understand that Souls are Possibility itself with its own Will. To prevent Order/Reality degenerating into Chaos, Souls are only able to interact with the world through the complex biological machine called the body. It is possible to overcome this restriction by using the power of Possibility called mana, depending on the Laws of the World in question. In fact, due to its connection to the Soul, the easiest to effect change in is the body, which is why qi cultivation can change it permanently.

I hypothesized that the reason why death occurs when the body is disrupted is because the Defined anchor to reality no longer functions. To test the theory, I simulated the couple in my Hell. I then made their hearts explode. I noted how their simulated Souls seemed to vanish, having no anchor in my simulation. I then attached the Souls to hell, setting it so that when not anchored elsewhere they would be drawn into the spawner corresponding to a level below them. The spawner was a chamber within the lava spring of each volcano containing masses of raw mana. When a Soul is present, the spawner senses its Will and regurgitates its container for it. The mana is then shaped by the Will to be its self image.

It worked perfectly. Too perfectly, without any loss of power. To enforce a death penalty, a phrase having a different connotation in regards to a respawn system, I would have to ensure the resulting body anchoring the Soul is one level lower upon respawn. To do so, I had to establish Definitions for levels 1 to 100.

I sighed mentally. Physically, I was doing something only possible when you have superhuman strength and flexibility on top of empathic and telepathic powers. "System, we need to establish levels and classes. For mana Ascension, we need an Alignment type and percentage, with the level calculated according to mana amount required for Single Ascension. At level 100, they should be called Aspects. We'll worry about the realms of power above that later."

"For qi Ascension, again separate the levels by mana amount at level 100 divided by 100. Level 100 should be called Little Worlds. For the Force Ascension, display the percentage progress to True Resonance with All at level 100 as levels."

"Mana users should be called Elementalists, qi users Immortals, and Force users Jedi. Automatically add a visual tag to a System user's eyes with light manipulation containing the class, level, Alignments and name for each individual. The tag should be located above the individual."

While Hell was not made for Force users' Ascensions, I would still be able to set the respawn system to lower their power level by 1. The best time to reduce the power would be during the forming stage. The Will reforming the body would always be subordinate to the Will of its World after all. It helped that the respawned individual would be in an area with a lower mana concentration.

Now I wanted to make it difficult for any of my citizens to level skip. I made a template for killer jellyfish, literally named killerjellyfish.vmd, and spread them far and wide, only making sure to avoid the beaches. These jellyfish served a dual purpose, one to kill everything and the other to be my backup respawn point. Their killer skills were impressive. Not only did their poison sap the Will of any who got stung, their tentacles sucked out the mana and qi, converting it to neutral qi. They shot incredibly fine jets of ice great distances to communicate with each other with the side benefit of poisoning and dicing apart any hit by the comm stream. Their second purpose was my backup in case I somehow was killed even with my invulnerability and the System reset. They functioned as a hive entity, albeit one with no Soul, and had a passive mental link to me, recording everything. My Soul was anchored to them in addition to the anchors to my three bodies.

I then thought about spatial powers. I could literally tear a world apart with mine, or simply translocate everywhere. Once my demons cultivated my qi a bit, they would also start developing spatial sense and manipulation, though it would take Ascension to become one of my Aspects to truly wield the power like I can.

To protect Hell, I hardened its space. Any attempt to bend it in any way other than its natural relativity would just result in a headache, including the portals. Each portal was in the form of a obsidian doorway, and each had a linked portal on the next island on the chain.

I grinned, watching my wives' passed out forms. "Create," I ordered. I lent my own mental strength to the effort, and my Sea Volcano Hell was made to exist.

Just in time, too. My first batch of citizens were ready to be damned for eternity.