Universe's End

Rory paced around, unable to properly utilize his nervous energy.

"It's going to be fine." Rory thought to himself, shuffling around. "It totally worked."

Two weeks had passed since the establishment of Testaments and several weeks since his experiment in botany.

Botany? Or is it called something else with trees?

Of course, he was referring to his growth ritual and attempts to raise a new tree species. Judging by its gradual growth, today would be the day when he could hopefully glean something useful from his sprout.

It's going to be great.

Rory totally wasn't nervous that his first major project would fail and that weeks of effort would be wasted.

No, not at all.

Finally tired of nervous pacing, Rory left the walls of his camp and approached his growing site. The small branch shoot was now a full-on sapling. It was hard to judge it compared to other saplings of the Sol's Glory, given there weren't any saplings to compare against. He could wander for hours to find one, but it would be easier to examine his sapling with analyze.

Taking a deep breath, Rory looked at the small sapling as information sprung forward.

Sol's Glory (Corrupted-20%)

Rarity: Uncommon

Formerly an ordinary Sol's Glory, it has been slowly corrupted via the influence of Blood Essence, warping and changing the base nature.

"Alright." Rory let out a deep breath, digesting the information. "It worked… sort of."

His growing ritual was showing results, though not quite as he intended. Rory had been expecting either all or nothing; either it fully worked or not at all. For whatever reason, Rory hadn't considered that it would only have a partial effect.

"Listed as Uncommon rarity, though, unlike standard Sol Glories, which are Mundane ranked, so that's… a two-tier increase, I think?"

For only a partial corruption—the fact that it was being corrupted was only slightly concerning—to have it now listed as an uncommon rarity was quite the increase.

Will it hit rare at one hundred percent, maybe?

The next question was, would it continue to progress independently, or would he need to crossbreed it with another corrupted Sol's Glory to further the effect?

He had time before deciding his game plan, as it was only a sapling.

That's the other problem.

It had taken weeks to reach the current growth stage, which was incredibly fast compared to a tree's average growth rate, but it would still take months before he could harvest it.

So, I need to accelerate its growth, but in another way.

The easiest solution he could think of would be to undertake another wave, beat it, and then use the gained ascension energy to hopefully upgrade his ritual site.

That would also require him to face whatever was after wave ten, and if he was familiar at all with video games, he felt reasonably confident the difficulty would spike; breakpoints tended to work that way.

Hell, all I would need is another Iaslisk appearing, then I'd be screwed.

So, attempting another wave was out of the picture for some time. Rory could try to upgrade his ritual manually, but he hadn't expanded his runes or knowledge that much since he'd first made it. Sure, he had access to a better Essence Spark, but it wasn't just a blanket skill for upgrading things; it had to be applied feasibly. Saturating soil with Blood Essence? Sure. Adding a spark of essence to a freshly crafted item? Wonderful. Adding Blood Essence to something that has already been crafted for some time?

No dice.

Well, I do have one idea.

It's just that he wasn't super fond of it. Some of his recent endeavors had trended toward a rather… grisly direction.

But, in theory, it should work… right?

His theory was based on classic literature, movies, and games, but considering the universe's rules now were basically "Seen it in a game? Cool, sounds like a plan then." Rory had some degree of confidence that it would work.

And what exactly was the theory he was struggling with?

Blood sacrifices, of course.

He already had a blueprint in mind, an idle thought that had slowly expanded one day. It had been born from thoughts about how monsters seemed to grow stronger, fighting and consuming one another. Between that and his own Blood affinity Essence Spark that was fueled through his life force, Rory had realized something.

What if I used monsters as fuel for stuff other than my ascension?

Did it sound an awful lot like he was going down the route of some Dark Lord?

Yes, yes, it did.

Was he going to do it anyway, even when he tried to tell himself he wouldn't stoop so low?

Of course.

Sighing, Rory entered his camp, found his Inscription Tablet, and sat by his fireplace. He'd recently made a stylus for the tablet and twirled it around. The stylus wasn't necessary and had no real use besides feeling comfortable in his hand. It was reason enough for Rory to rationalize the effort that went into making it.

Armed with his weapons of creative choice, Rory began sketching some of his ideas. The first was simple enough: a glorified pot he could link to the growth site. Stuffing in small monsters would slowly drain them of their life force and energy, funneling it into the tree. It was a simple design with a simple function, so Rory earmarked it, liking simplicity where he could find it.

Not wanting to pigeonhole himself with whatever came to mind first, Rory continued with more sketches. His next idea was… less pleasant. He could plant a specially fashioned spear near his ritual site, then impale a small monster upon it, and the spear would draw its life force into the tree. Its advantage over his first idea was it was far faster.

The downside was that if he followed that plan, he would take a page from Vlad the Impaler's notebook.

Not a Dark Lord. Not a Dark Lord.

Repeating the mantra silently, Rory moved on to his third idea.

His third idea revolved around something more complicated, rather than the stovetop kitchenware from hell or his best impression of Vlad the Impaler. It started as nothing more than a sketch of four pillars with no actual ideas behind them, just random doodles. Doing as children bored in class did everywhere -pre-collapse, that is- Rory added onto the drawing, still without thinking much about the details of what he was drawing. Atop the pillars, Rory drew a crystal for each one.

It was then, looking at the pillars with crystals adorning them like capstones, that Rory finally began to formulate an idea for the sketch.

It is more involved, complicated, and far grander than the first two ideas but also takes the best from both worlds.

Centered in the middle of the four pillars, Rory quickly drew up a rough image of his current growth ritual site. Pillars surrounding the site, Rory then drew a link between the four, which shot off to the side toward a bound circle surrounded by its own four pillars, closer to Egyptian obelisks than the initial pillars. The obelisks were like ceremonial spears, with several spiky-looking thorns jutting out. Centered within the obelisks was some occult symbol, with an orb in the direct center.

Bingo.

His first idea was too slow and gradual, and his second was too brutal and inefficient. In both cases, while the plan was to draw in the life force of monsters to fuel the growth of his tree, their physical bodies were nothing more than waste. Sure, he could harvest them for crafting materials, but any monsters he could safely contain within the sub-ritual site would be weak enough that the materials harvested were of little value to him now.

Thus, his third idea would use everything.

A captured monster would be placed within a containment field -The fact that the runes needed for such a field didn't yet exist was only a minor hiccup- where they would be placed into a magically induced stasis or slumber. Pacified, the obelisk's core beneath the monster would drain them of their energies. Vitality, essence, Pneuma, all of it would be slurped up like magic juice. That same magic slurry would then also power the surrounding obelisks, which would begin to break the bonds of their physical matter, drawing it within.

Completely broken down into magic energy and physical matter, the energy would be shunted directly into the growth ritual site. In contrast, the physical matter would be split within the four main pillars surrounding the growth site, stored in its most concentrated form. The blood-aspected matter would go toward 'corrupting' the tree further.

I still don't like that it's referred to as corrupted.

The bone-aspected matter would be used as a strengthening agent, the tree's bark would be calcified like bone.

The flesh-aspected matter would act as a high-quality fertilizer, pushing the tree to rapidly mature.

Finally, the remaining matter that wasn't aligned with the first three attributes would be stored in the fourth crystal, to be used however he felt reasonable.

I like it. Now, how exactly do I make most of this stuff?

Rory had carved some wardstones from large obsidian boulders. Still, even those weren't large enough for the pillars and obelisks he wanted to make.

"I could always just break them up into pieces, then put it together," Rory said out loud, airing his thoughts. "I could do, what's it called, uh…. Kintsugi! Yeah, that." Rory recalled seeing a documentary on the ancient practice of repairing ceramics with gold from Japan.

If Rory wanted things to align, he would need to make some proper rulers before he started. Still, given that he didn't have to fit the metric or imperial measurements standards, as long as the rulers were consistent, it was fine. It would, at most, take him maybe half an hour, and that was being overly generous.

Other than the obelisks and pillars, the rest of the project was relatively straightforward. It just required some runes and a core to place beneath the containment field.

And thankfully, I have a pretty high-quality core nearby.

Initially, he'd had different plans for the core, but plans changed, and Rory, even as patient as he was, was getting tired of sitting on his laurels.

A week or two at max, I'll have this up and running.

Rory was beginning to understand and appreciate the potential benefits of one of the skills he had been offered before but declined Civilization's Cradle. The more he wanted to progress and improve his standing, the more and more projects he required. It was something that had been easy to take for granted on Earth. Want a sandwich? Just go and buy one or make one at home. It wasn't often that someone considered what went into making that possible, to begin with: the miles and miles of farmland, the processing factories, the highways transporting goods, all of them interconnected systems to get your hands on a basic sandwich.

Now Rory was starting to see it as well. Every step forward required weeks of effort and labor to craft even a single instrumental device or prerequisite.

Soon. It will all be worth it soon.

As Rory saw it, it was the final major roadblock toward getting his hands on an improved material to make his new bow.

"Alright, pillars and obelisks shouldn't be too bad. How about the crystals?"

In his sketch, Rory had topped the pillars with crystals to store some of the aspected matter from the monsters sacrificed, but where would he get those crystals?

No idea.

Temporarily stumped, Rory sat down, searching his memories for anything that might work.

Not exactly a geologist.

Rory spent twenty minutes twiddling his thumbs, thinking, before something came to him. There was a movie he once saw about Gandhi. The film itself wasn't that important-

Sorry, Gandhi, I don't mean it like that.

-But what mattered was a specific point from the movie in which they made salt using ocean water.

And isn't salt just a tasty crystal?

Perhaps he could do something with the aisormba from the pond surrounding his essence spire.

"Oh, and that's what I can use the last of the monster matter for! Grow the crystals further with it, so I don't have to get full-sized crystals!"

It was genius because he didn't require another week-long project.

That alone was enough to energize Rory; the thought of nearing the completion of what felt like endless projects.

I still need a proper bowstring for the bow, but that will be a lot less work than the rest of the bow.

Glancing around, Rory shrugged, seeing no point in delaying.

"Early bird gets the worm after all."

Rory, for once, was pleasantly surprised as he admired his work, hands on his hips.

Rather than a week, it had only taken five days after everything was said and done. Lugging boulders was always a pain in the ass, but Rory had done it enough times at this point that he'd developed a system for doing it without as much of a hassle. From there, he smashed the hell out of the boulders, cutting and measuring where needed before reconstructing the pieces into pillars surrounding his growth ritual. The smaller obelisks surrounding the containment field were smaller, albeit more refined in appearance, and had taken a similar timeframe to construct as the more prominent pillars. A few channels were carved into the earth and plastered with his faux ceramic glaze, and everything was set aside from the actual runes.

As for the runes, that was a surprisingly quick session, with three new runes born from it. The first was a rune meant to represent slumber. His creative juices weren't exactly flowing at the time of inception, as the rune was nothing more than three Zs directly connected to one another.

Much like the first, the second rune wasn't much more inspired, a single droplet representing blood.

The third and final of his newest runes was perhaps the most 'interesting' from a design perspective. It was a round oval with interlacing lines, mimicking the patterns of a tortoise shell, meant to represent the concept of slowness.

With those three runes, alongside some of his original runes, he had everything he needed for the containment field. Inscribing the runes onto the obelisks surrounding the empty space, it wasn't long until everything was there. The containment field didn't stop anything from entering or exiting; there was no physical barrier. Instead, it relied on several essential functions.

Utilizing one of his newest runes, anything within the field would grow tired, the effect growing more potent over time.

Vitality and blood loss. Open wounds on a body wouldn't heal, and a slow, continuous blood loss was meant to circumvent a monster's natural healing rate or additional regenerative effects. It wasn't a powerful blood loss effect, but it would compound with the first effect of making anything within the field drowsy.

Enforced calmness. With his slowness rune, further aided by a stability rune, things within the field would find themselves shockingly calm. If an intelligent being, such as a human, were subjected to the effect, they would instantly realize something was amiss. Still, low-intelligence monsters, already exhausted through the first two effects, wouldn't be able to fight the enforced calm, even if they became cognizant of it.

Together, the three effects were meant to induce a comatose state into whatever was placed within. All he needed to do was give them a small wound before being placed inside. It was a coma they would never awaken from, as Rory laid one last set of runes directly on the ground of the containment field surrounding the buried monster core. It was an absorption effect meant to drain the resources, Pneuma, essence, vitality, and everything from whatever was captured above it, even the physical mass of their bodies slowly broken down and utilized as fuel for his rather devilish ritual.

Not a Dark Lord. I swear.

Vistropic Field of Endless Slumber

Status: Inactive

A sub-ritual formation intended to completely absorb the entirety of a being's existence into usable power and matter for a primary ritual. Completion of total annihilation variable based on the strength of the contained life form. It can passively strengthen itself by utilizing excess energy and matter.

"Nifty." Rory whistled before frowning. "No, wait, probably shouldn't say that about a sacrifice ritual meant to break down something into energy and matter completely."

For a moment, Rory felt a surge of electricity through his body, passing a moment later. Examining his interface briefly, Rory took stock of the slight increase in his ascension progress before closing it. He was a rather sizeable amount off from A5. This ritual site had already given less energy than his first; whether it be from the fact that he'd already made a ritual or that it hadn't used anything overly complicated to obtain wasn't important for the time being.

What matters is testing it.

"And only one way to do that," Rory muttered as he entered his camp and found his glorified cudgel.

Time to kidnap a bunny.

In a relatively uneventful afternoon, Rory wandered until he found a small den of killer rabbits. Being A4, finding a lone rabbit, smacking it over the head, and bringing the unconscious creature back to camp with him had been relatively simple. Even after it had woken up, Rory held the squirming monster tight against his chest; his superior attributes made it only mildly annoying to handle. Back at his camp, Rory had taken the beast, already exhausted from struggling against his superior strength, and placed it within his containment field. Taking a standard knife, he slashed a thin cut into its flank before examining the ritual once more.

Vistropic Field of Endless Slumber

Status: Active

Time Remaining: 12:00:00

A sub-ritual formation intended to completely absorb the entirety of a being's existence into usable power and matter for a primary ritual. Completion of total annihilation variable based on the strength of the contained life form. It can passively strengthen itself by utilizing excess energy and matter.

"And there you have it." Rory grinned. The monster rabbit had passed out almost instantly upon being placed within, and Rory watched as a slow, continuous trickle of blood seeped out of its cut leg. Asleep, Rory couldn't deny feeling a wince of guilt as he stared at the cute, albeit bloodthirsty, monster.

At least this method is far more humane than my other option of sticking them up on draining spears.

Seeing the ritual active and operating, Rory let out a long yawn. Days of hard work were catching up to him now that he had a moment of respite.

"Game plan," Rory muttered, another yawn escaping him. "First, go to sleep. Then, assuming I don't wake up to any unexpected surprises, I've got another busy day starting tomorrow."

A grin split his face, an old cartoon coming to mind.

"It's wabbit season."