[NR] Bound To NeoRealm - Chapter 587

Jason focused all of his senses onto the fuzzy edge between right and wrong that surrounded the lines. It can’t be both right and wrong. Either he sensed what was there or he couldn’t.

And so he fidgeted on that border. Poked and prodded to feel how the area reacts. This was slow and tedious. There are even numerous errors and even without that, the lines tended to twist around. Not enough to move around, but certainly enough to shift what was and wasn’t right.

Still, Jason made progress. While he had to go over the same areas multiple times, with each pass, he got better at feeling the difference. Over the next three days, the System’s obfuscation became less and less effective against his senses. Not enough to reveal what lay beneath, but to the point that a glance could eliminate the outer third of the fuzzed region.

Except at this point, the progress slowed to a near stop. If Jason had the time to spend a few years on this, his current method would have probably have gotten him there. He wanted more, though.

Besides, that just goes off of the current speed, which as this slow down showed, was not guaranteed to remain the same. Maybe after the next third finishes, it would end up slowing down by multiple magnitudes and honestly? The old saying about the last ten percent taking longer than the first ninety percent held true more often than not.

That meant Jason needed to find another method. One that was smarter than bashing his head into a wall to look for the door. Yes, he would find the door at some point, but it wasn’t a good method. So, following that metaphor, Jason needed to open his damn eyes and look around for the door.

But how? If there was another method of viewing inside himself, he didn’t have it and the method likely used Mana or Qi, anyway. Sure, it was probable that every Energy user that tried something like this probably has their own method, but that was more because the System forced them to work without a foundation like the other two powers. However, what variance might exist there is more likely to be based on personal quirks instead of actual unique principles. After all, Energy was Energy, even when used by others.

Jason pauses. Was Energy truly just Energy no matter who used it? For instance, when the System used it? Well, that’s a stupid question, yes it was still just Energy unless the System was throwing around primordial Energy for some reason. However, the System had insights into using said Energy that came at it from a different direction.

Powers like the various ones Jason is cultivating irl, NeoRealm’s trio, and what he used in his last life all have one thing in common. Their breadth exceeded what any being within the world could fully realize. The only ones who can claim to have mastered such a power are the vaunted Realm Walkers or whatever term they might be known under.

It is like that philosophy thing where you get a bunch of blind people to touch various parts of an elephant and they all describe different things. A Realm Walkers is the man standing to the side that can see. So, it was inevitable that Jason knew less than nothing about Energy’s true nature and the System was only a bit better, because even creation deities don’t get the cheat sheet for how their world works unless they are capable of leaving it. A thing the System clearly can’t do.

Why can’t the System do this? Because it was trapped within NeoRealm. Otherwise, why would breaking the level cap be all about leaving NeoRealm? If the System still existed outside of the world, NeoRealm, then escaping NeoRealm wouldn’t change anything about how the System treated you.

Could it be that the escape part is an elaborate cover? Yes. It is entirely possible, but Jason is willing to believe otherwise. For in-between lives, even if he hadn’t been allowed to learn new things, only being allowed to watch his friends rise as the Hero. Jason had still been hanging around deities and not even they were perfect so something slipped.

There wasn’t anything earth shattering. But one particular scrap of knowledge, even if it was mostly just a name, described this situation. A bound creator. Which is what it says on the tin. A creator, who for one reason or another, is bound within their own world.

Jason didn’t know anything more than that, but the fact it existed at all gave him hope that the System wasn’t all knowing within this universe. That the System wasn’t just playing along until it didn’t want to anymore. If only because the System was capable of ending humanity irl with a single thought if it was unbound. What with how everyone played NeoRealm and at least once a week nearly every adult would be in NeoRealm at the same point.

Even children would join the fun about once a month when they were allowed to experience some of their games being run at a higher time ratio to prepare them for a future in NeoRealm. And Jason wasn’t going to believe that the NeoRealm System wasn’t the source of that absurd five to one time ratio. Because nothing else had ever managed it so why could those small samples do so? The truth was clear to anyone that actually thought about it.

Every VR experience that bore the 5x time ratio was somehow related to NeoRealm and Jason was willing to bet it was just the natural temporal difference between the two universes that caused it. All the System had to do was run things in NeoRealm itself and if NeoRealm was five times as fast, whatever it was running would be as well. Though there had to be a cost. Otherwise, why wouldn’t all the other games and such make use of this work around?