One Month Later…

  “Dimensionality!” Walker yelled out.

  It didn’t matter if he had life, death, and the soul. Those weren’t enough to create what was effectively its own dimension- its own plane. But if that was true, if Dimensionality was as important to the process as he thought, then why didn’t Ulysses tell him that?

  The personality had to know.

  Did he just want Walker to figure it out on his own? What was the point of that?

  Walker checked the battle timer in his vision. He still had forty-five hours, which was worse than you’d think. The last he’d looked, it had said forty-six. He needed to go deeper.

  Six Months in the Time Rings…

  Already, Walker had stepped into the third ring, its borders a hazy yellow. He’d asked Ulysses for the visual addition as he didn’t want to push into a different ring and hurt himself accidentally.

  Creating reflections wasn’t possible unless he covered himself in Temporal energy first. But every time he did so, the pain of too much speed would kick in, causing him to step out to the second ring before returning to the third after reabsorbing the resources. Often, he would stand there, his eyes seemingly vacant, staring out into the darkness.

  But he wasn’t idle.

  There were so many systems he’d never messed around with, so many different abilities he hadn’t worked on. Time and timelines had always been against him. For the first time since the start of the Protocol, Walker did some self-work.

  The afterlife was still on his mind, naturally, but he allowed himself to work on it at an unconscious level, hoping for a grand Eureka to present itself. Smaller systems, like Titles and his recently purchased Water purification, were modified and improved within only a few days and some real deep thinking.

  Symphony had a large ocean near the south, from Sonata’s perspective. But Virgil had only managed to increase the salinity to a certain level. Walker’s fortunate purchase at the Grand Auction helped him set it up so well that he ended up merging the system with the old ecology one in order to create a real oceanic management system. It took some tweaking, but he figured it out with a little help from Ulysses and his experiments, the one person he could speak to in real time during his sojourn.

  Each time he completed what he wanted to work on for the simpler systems, simpler being a relative word, he would then take a look at the larger ones.

  It took over a month before he figured out how the Reincarnation system operated. Omniversal systems, like the Communications system, were very complicated compared to the dumbed-down version the Alpha Protocol offered. There were hundreds of options, with small noted breakdowns attached to them, and his new system testing toolkit greatly helped him understand how everything worked together.

  It was another month after that before he was able to find a way to include Primordials into the equation. It drained his resources a bit extra, but from what he understood, it would work. However, because of how cost-intensive resurrecting a Primordial was, he’d had to include a limit.

  Every third stage and below Primordial could get one resurrection. You’d have to earn the right to gain a second if you reached higher stages. As for how to earn the right, he considered the idea that each entity would need to perform a great feat for Symphony, or at least something along those lines. He’d messaged Cagna quite a few notes about that.

  Well, he’d messaged many notes to everyone after six months in the newest dilation. It was nice to have the Remote system, after all.

  As for food and water, Walker had burned through it all some time ago. While his soul had certainly seen some fixing after he’d absorbed those people at the Grand Auction, he still required sustenance in an annoyingly regular amount. He’d laughed at himself quite a few times whenever he remembered his sudden need to gather provisions from Conduction.

  Now, he simply inundated an area in Magic and made it himself. It was a perfectly normal experience, all things considered. However, he didn’t like to think about what he had to do when nature called.

  Walker looked out into space and eyed the fourth ring. He didn’t need to enter it at this point, as he was already at three times the speed in an already speedy universe.

  But he wanted to.

  Turning his eyes back to his newest creation, the Soul system, Walker continued to plug away at different ideas, always checking the toolkit’s notes to make sure he wouldn’t break anything. It required A Lot of resources, the darkness of his soul in particular, but one experiment showed that he could feed his essence into the Soul strand to expand the size of it. It wasn’t Origin, as far as he could tell, but it was a simpler way of increasing how much space it filled at once. A quick bottling with essence and Walker had soul juice ready for the system to absorb.

  As might be expected, his toolkit informed him that the creation of the system would require a heaping of Primordial energy, but Walker still had plenty in the bank.

  As he sat in a time-filled darkness, Walker Reed continued to build the future.

  A little over a year in the Time Rings…

  Walker had a small mental breakdown after a year in the third ring. Enhanced Primordial that he was, nobody was meant to sit in utter darkness for great periods of time. Ulysses had shown up when he began to show erratic symptoms, saying the same two words over and over again. The Universal Personality took matters into his own hands, shunting the Creator directly into a portal against his wishes.

  “Walker, when you said you needed time, I didn’t expect it to take this long.”

  Walker couldn’t hear him. He was consumed, repeating the same words over and over again.

  “Explosion…explosion…nuke…explosion.”

  Two weeks after being kidnapped…

  Walker felt better after Ulysses began his rehabilitation period. The Universal Personality had done the one thing it knew would affect an American male in a depressed and reclusive state.

  He showed him action movies.

  Admittedly, the acting still wasn’t great. However, the visual effects could be described simply as Chef’s kiss. Walker didn’t need to know that Ulysses had long ago moved on from Visual effects. By slightly altering the script of a movie, he’d begun to create the effects with his increasingly powerful control of the metaphysical plane.

  As Walker began to return to normal, he dove inward, warning Ulysses he would look as if he was sleeping for some time.

  Instead, he turned to his memories. Happier times with his mother and father, old friends like Matt, and moments when the world was a simpler place, with clear rules and lines not to be crossed.

  And, of course, Valeries darker memories, with Athena a glowing horizon on the edge of his vision.

  Walker spent that time recovering his mental faculties.

  Just before entering the fourth time ring…

  It turned out that if you covered yourself in the Enhancement strand, the soul would align more closely with the body. He hadn’t been sure of the purpose of one of his newest strands until he’d tested it in every way he could think of. Now, by spreading it over the entirety of his figure, he should be able to step into the fourth ring with no problems. Experience taught him that the strand required continued application before it could break down, but the degradation was a slow process, giving him plenty of time to replace it.

  As for the effect of entering the fourth ring?

  He was reporting that to a questioning Ulysses at that very moment.

  Major Tom: I’m stepping through the door

  Ground Control: Roger that, Major Tom.

  Walker crossed the colored line, a simple designation informing him that he’d entered a new ring. Looking at the green coloration covering his soul, he noticed no changes.

  Major Tom: I’m floating in a most peculiar way

  Ground control: How so?

  Major Tom: Damn it, Ulysses. If I could slap you right now, I would.

  Walker took a beat as he looked around, trying to sense the difference of a Temporal stage he’d never reached before. Waving his hand was like pushing through a brick wall, the pressure seeming to come from all sides. While his mind was sped up, his body didn’t want him to move.

  But he’d done it; he’d crossed to a new level of time.

  Walker smiled.

  Two years since Walker first entered the Time Rings…

  A white explosion rang out in the fourth time ring, the green light of his soul finding a partner for the first time since reaching the darkness of the area.

  Walker’s plan was slowly coming together. At each step, each stage, he tested everything front to back. He had to be certain that what he wanted to do would work. His brief bout with insanity had damaged his psyche, but it had also resulted in him gaining a better understanding of what would be required to create an afterlife.

  Now that another step was taken, he returned to the drawing board with his systems.

  Ulysses believed they could create Temporally displaced dungeons. With Walker’s new abilities and the reincarnation system now fully prepared, it was time he built a Dungeon system. He looked back at the systems and abilities he believed he would need to use.

  The Conduction System

  The Portal system

  The Temporal Subsystem

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  The Reincarnation system

  The Item system

  The Territory system

  The Recycle ability

  The Alpha ability

  It was only by combining and sacrificing all of these together that he felt Dungeons would be worth it. It would be one of his grandest projects yet.

  Now, he just needed to spend some time to understand the Conduction system better…

  Hopefully, it wouldn’t take too long.

  Five years since Walker first entered the Time Rings…

  A portal opened up on New Olympus, one that wasn’t connected to the gifted Portal machine the Creator had granted to the Primigenials for all of their help.

  Walker stumbled through, feeling Symphony’s gravity for the first time in what felt like forever. Instantly, hundreds of messages reached him as the recipients finally responded. But that wasn’t why he’d come back.

  His plans weren’t complete. There were parts of it that still needed others' help and input. As he walked around the clouded landscape in search of the god of blacksmiths, a message he’d been waiting for came in from Virgil.

  Virgil: I am unaware of why you would need to understand how a Thermonuclear bomb works, but I can give a very basic breakdown. A chemical bomb triggers an implosion, which then triggers the fission of radioactive material. This releases energy, which fuses hydrogen into helium, leading to a positive feedback loop and creating a thermonuclear explosion.

  Virgil: I, however in vain my appeal is, hope you do not create nuclear bombs on Symphony.

  Walker sent him a message as he smiled, happy to hear from his old friend for the first time in half a decade. He rounded a corner and spotted Heph, who stumbled as they latched eyes onto each other.

  “Meh gawd, where’s your clothes? Do ya want meh damned wife to see yah?”

  Walker waved a hand at him, “I don’t have time. I need you to build me something and put it into the item system.”

  The big man crossed beefy arms as he looked Walker in the eyes, straining to keep them there, “Right. What do yah need?”

  “I need a perfectly contained arch. In fact, I need multiple.”

  Creating a portal to save time, Walker took Heph over to the Ulyssesverse to introduce him to the Universal Personality. After several hours of planning in Ulysses’ metaphysical world, they headed to the universe’s Territory seat to create several perfectly contained arches. Walker supplied the material and manpower in the form of dozens of hearty reflections, while Heph provided the fine touches and supervised.

  Eventually, they created several different types of perfectly contained arches using a variety of materials.

  Walker gifted the Primigenial for his efforts and sent him home through the portal.

  The next step in his plan complete, Walker asked for a portal back to the fourth ring. It was time to work on other efforts.

  Ten years since Walker first entered the Time rings…

  Ulysses (Lord of all inside of his giant body): Hello, here is your reminder. You have now spent ten years in the Symphony universe.

  Fuck off: Read my name

  Twenty-five years since Walker first entered the Time Rings…

  Walker had already spent several breaks in the Symphony universe. Now aware of when sanity began to leave him, he would calmly ask Ulysses for a portal, returning once he felt things had calmed down in his mind.

  He never spent too much time away. A few minutes here and there, memories formed that he could replay in his mind repeatedly when he needed them. For the man with the perfect memory and an Icon that let him relive any experience he’d ever had, jumping into a happy memory from a light-filled time wasn't so difficult.

  But his task was all-consuming. It was big. It was important. The strides he’d made in understanding strands, systems, and even his theories about how assistants work, had all made unscaleable progress.

  For the last several years, he’d been working with the Book of Souls and the weapon it contained. Walker had never had too much use for the Morningstar contained within, but that was because he didn’t understand it.

  He didn’t understand soul-constructs either, which was important. He’d already worked out how the Mount system would work. How to build them, grant them life, and create limits upon them. But as for how the citizens of Symphony would call for them, that was an elusive beast he had yet to slay.

  Still, he needed more time.

  Twenty-seven years since Walker entered the Time Rings…

  “Useless,” Walker said as he plucked the time-frozen canister from the air. It was too sporadic and random, refusing to be aimed properly.

  On a whim, he unscrewed the bottom of the item, looking within. A cyan glow emitted, so slowed down that it wouldn’t explode in time to hurt him. Walker dragged the canister away from the long-pending explosion, ending up with a random metal tube. Stashing it in his inventory, something he’d upgraded a few times already through the Communications system as he collected multiversal knickknacks, he turned his eyes back to his current project.

  Floating right next to him was a powerful strand of Dimensionality- the thing he most needed to understand for his plans to come to fruition. Like Ulysses had said, it was an enigma. An unbroken code that had eluded him for years now.

  How was he to create the afterlife with Dimensionality, when it refused to combine with the Immortal strand?

  Walker pulled out another strand of Immortality, long ago having lost its awe and wonder, now an object that filled his daily routines. If someone were to come to the fourth ring, they’d find dozens of strands floating in space; Stuck, trapped forever in time.

  He sighed, knowing he wouldn’t be able to combine them, then placed it back into his resources, the expectant white shockwave erupting into the near distance, not stalled in the slightest by time.

  His eyes, just for a moment, caught on Dimensionality as the shockwave struck it.

  For a second in time, it had turned white.

  Thirty-two years since Walker entered the Time Rings…

  The guy who figured it out: Hey Ulysses, I’ve got it! I know how to build an afterlife!

  Ulysses: Are you sure this time? Last time, your idea was pretty squirrely.

  The guy who figured it out: Yep, I’m all set.

  A portal opened nearby.

  Ulysses: Then come explain it for us dumb people.

  Walker entered the portal and proceeded to explain the entirety of the process. Ulysses helped with a few finer points, things Walker still hadn’t considered, until they nailed it down.

  The part looked at him, then back at the display they’d been using to plan it all out, “You know this is going to fundamentally change me, right?”

  Walker nodded, “Yes, I do. But it won’t be a change for the worse.”

  The part sighed, “We’ll see about that. You have my approval; let’s get your final prep going.”

  One Week Later…

  A humble Walker stood on Conduction, the Territory seat of the universe. In front of him sat a grand arch made of pearlescent white stone. It was perfectly built into the ground, sealed from top to bottom without an inch of gap in the material.

  Around it sat Three Overwhelming Mana Trees Walker had planted not long after Heph had built the arch twenty-two years ago. The arch’s mana saturation and general hardening were about as good as Walker would get without losing more time. His study of potential energy saturation showed that mana, the word he still used in his mind to this day, filled in all the gaps that makeup matter. Hardening wasn’t the correct word- it was more of filling. But not even Ulysses liked using that word.

  In front of Walker was an unexploded canister. A remnant from his experiments with the former Creator Mirail’s ability. The ability wasn’t very useful to him. Targeting with it was useless, as it simply landed where it would land, destroying anything it could with non-discriminating explosions. But the canister itself held value.

  Walker looked up at the sky, “Ready?”

  Walker felt Ulysses shift his vision, the weight of it settling over his shoulders with the feeling of destiny, “Ready.”

  Reaching into his resources, Walker withdrew the most he’d ever pulled out at once.

  Ulysses had improved his Jelly ranching in leaps and bounds. By a strictly worded agreement, he’d agreed that Walker’s resource allocation to him long ago needed to have a balance. As such, since the Universal Personality now had his own way of bringing more resources to hand, he didn’t mind if Walker took a few when he needed them.

  Around Walker sat dozens of one-thousand resource Dimensional strands.

  That part completed, Walker reached in and did the same with space, creating several hundred space strands in looser configurations around the area. Here and there, the strands bumped into each other, but without something pressing them toward one another, none attempted to combine.

  “Step one complete,” Walker said loudly as he reached down and grabbed the canister.

  “Step one is complete,” Ulysses repeated.

  “Beginning step two.”

  Walker looked at the pearlescent arch. Reaching into his abilities, he tapped on Pocket Dimension, then clicked on the arch. A moment later, the previously see-through opening that showed nothing but a white wall behind it, darkened.

  “Step two complete.”

  “Step two is complete.”

  Walker felt space harden below his hands, where he placed the Canister down. Reaching into his resources, Walker withdrew two Immortal strands. The small white pearls glistened as he placed them within. He froze up for a moment when he heard the tinkling sound of them settling near the bottom, but when nothing happened, he sighed.

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Shut up, man,” He said to the sky, “I’m just nervous.”

  Lifting the Cannister up, Walker felt the hardened space below disappear. He called on the Book of Souls to come out; the warmth it exuded bringing him confidence for what he had to do next.

  “Are you sure you got most of it?”

  “No, but I’m sure I got enough. You really don’t understand just how much is out there.”

  Walker looked up again and watched as the sky went dark. All around Conduction were the parts of Walker’s soul still floating and expanding throughout the universe. Ulysses had spent the last week gathering as much of it as he could for this moment.

  Walker nodded, “Beginning Step three.”

  Walker’s darkness flared. Across his back, great wings of black fire grew, his training with the Book of Souls and his Primordial abilities becoming apparent. Hands branched out from the flames, ones that crushed the dozens of essence-contained Soul strands Walker had infused across the years. Latching onto it with the flames surrounding him, Walker created great arms the size of mountains as he reached into the sky and beyond.

  Pushing through the sky and cresting past the clouds, Walker reached for the darkest of stars.

  The moment he touched the floating pieces of his soul in the atmosphere, he grabbed on, sensing it all connect to him like a lost appendage suddenly feeling found again.

  With a great heave, Walker brought it all crashing down toward Conduction and the floating strands around him.

  “Step three complete.” He said through gritted teeth.

  “Step three is complete.”

  “Beginning step four!” He roared as a planet’s worth of soul energy crashed into the area. Using the finest amount of control he could manage while holding what felt like an entire world, Walker bunched all of the strands together, pushing them toward a canister being gently lifted by black fire off of the ground.

  A small snake-like appendage rose up, removing the bottom of the canister and cradling the two Immortal strands within. As Space and Dimensionality crashed in, the canister lifted up. Walker took a few slow steps backward, blinking too-dry eyes to see if he’d doomed himself, or if he’d done everything as he’d planned for all these years.

  He felt as space and dimensionality began to compress over the area. He felt as the strands began to contest the area, began to push back against him before they inevitably combined.

  “Step four complete, you’re up! Step five!”

  “Step four complete. Starting step five.”

  Ulysses hardened all of the space around the area to the very best of his abilities. He did such a masterful job of it that Walker could visually see planes of space in reality. Only one hole remained. A pinhole connecting the darkness of Walker’s soul with all of him on the inside.

  He crushed the two Immortal strands together violently.

  A bright flash echoed out from the inside, puffs of it leaking into Walker’s soul as his darkness suddenly became white.

  “Step five complete!” Walker yelled out. They had to move fast now. Reaching forth with his own control and the help of the Book of Souls, He grasped everything at once. Moving one step at a time as Ulysses un-hardened and re-hardened the space around the conglomeration of strands, Walker dragged it toward the pearlescent arch holding the Pocket Dimension.

  With a gasp caused by stress, worry, fear, and not a little wonder at what they were doing, Walker dragged it the last step toward the arch. As it lined up, Walker screamed out.

  “Step six!”

  “Beginning step six,” Ulysses repeated back, a tone of satisfaction in his voice. But Walker knew it was too early to tell if what they were about to do would work.

  Space peeled away from the area facing the arch, and now it was all on Walker.

  Working with the Book of Souls, Walker pushed as hard as he could toward the arch. He felt the wall. It was as if the pocket dimension knew something like this shouldn’t enter it. But that didn’t matter to Walker. This wasn’t about pressure or force; it was a matter of domination.

  Walker wanted an afterlife, and that’s just what he would get.

  With all of the power of his congregated soul, Walker pushed on the impossible. When that didn’t work, his breathing growing more ragged, he did something desperate.

  With one hand still keeping the pressure up, Walker used the other to cover himself in Time.

  As the world slowed down around him, Walker’s efforts increased. He stepped it up again by tapping into his new isolated Temporal system, a Conduction copy of the one that the Evolvers gave him at the start of the protocol. Creating a sped-up bubble around himself and not the arch, Walker redoubled his efforts.

  Instantly, the pocket dimension in front of him cracked. With a thumping sound, the white conglomeration of strands entered, but the crack remained, small whisps of white ever so slowly leaking from it.

  With immediacy, Walker stopped pushing, his eyes trained on the broken pocket dimension. He also sensed something else…as if the arch itself had a soul. Like the grouping of strands had forever changed what it was.

  Walker reached into his resources and grabbed the Enhancement strand. Stepping forward slowly and out of the Temporal bubble, he gently rubbed it against the crack.

  It sealed itself just as a white pulse exploded in a shockwave, throwing Walker away from the Souled Arch and directly into the building holding his throne. As he blacked out, he heard a voice from the heavens.

  “Step six is complete. You did it.”

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