Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (110/?) WiP 1

Hey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 110 I hope you guys enjoy! :D

The world around me faded into the background.

Noises became muffled.

Conversations sounded distant. 

Explosions barely broke through the mental barrier that was forming between all senses save for sight.

As my eyes remained transfixed not at the brilliant fireworks displays nor the zipping of upper-yearsmen on fantastical beasts, but instead… on the backdrop they all seemingly ignored.

The starless skies.

My body suddenly felt hazy, as my mind raced to find a way out of what was clearly a dream.

I needed to wake up.

No.

“I need to think.” I forced out, breaking through the growing mental fugue and the dissociation threatening to tear me from the fabric of the present.

“Think Emma, think.” I continued, my eyes frantically darting back and forth, attempting to dissect the impossible sight before me, whilst a thousand divergent thoughts started taking up almost all of my available headspace.

“Dyson sphere? Dead universe? Boötes Void-type situation? Black domain? Home star proximity? A Nightfall scenario? Near-Big Rip? Simulation—” I quickly stopped myself, course correcting with a single breath.

“No, no. Too crazy, too far. This is reality. This has to be some sort of…” I took another breath, turning towards the EVI, right as Thacea’s stern gaze and an urgent tug forced me out of my  reverie. However, not a single one of the hundreds of prying eyes from the crowds managed to make a dent on my newfound infatuation, as my body slowly entered autopilot once more; my mind easily slipping back into eccentric populations of an equally eccentric world. 

“Okay, okay… training. Differential analysis and inference. Analyze. Categorize, then hypothesize. Stop with the scatter-brained, stop with the panic.” I chastised myself, forcing myself to take long steady breaths, each of which managed to calm me down somewhat until I was faced with the sky once more.

“Alright, no stars. Correction, it’s not that there are no stars. It’s just that there’s no stars visible or detectable.” I forced myself onto a more grounded mindset, channeling Dr. Mekis and the rest of the science team as I attempted to temper the manic imagination-inclined side of myself. “All observable data is fallible. All observable data is prone to observer-bias and extraneous environmental factors. Alright. Okay. Let's start differential analysis.” 

The EVI immediately responded by creating a translucent floating mind-map on my HUD, with two distinct root nodes sitting idly and standing by. 

“Two broad categories. One — there are no stars visible due to observer limitations. Either due to some unknown atmospheric phenomenon, anomalous light interaction, the stars themselves being too far away, or the typical Nexian magical shenanigans. Fringe explanations could include something physically blocking our line of sight… like a dyson sphere or shellworld. Astrophysics explanations that’d make Dr. Mekis cry could include the fact that we might just be further along in time. Maybe the Nexus’ universe is so far into its expansion and life cycle that everything that is observable from this vantage point has slipped past the cosmological horizon?”

The first root node was promptly filled, with my hypotheses branching off from it in a tree-structure diagram, various branches and child-nodes forming to represent my ideas.

“Two — there are no stars visible simply because there are none.” I declared with a shaky voice, the EVI responding by filling in that second root node. However, instead of continuing like I did the first category, I hesitated, as the implications behind such a conclusion were… astronomical. “This could be due to… heck… I don’t know… a dead universe? Maybe we’re in an extremely mature universe that’s reached the degeneration era? Or maybe… we’re in a literal pocket dimension that exists without stars?” I pondered what I said for a moment, before denying it outright. “No, that’s absolutely insane.” 

Branches and child-nodes formed after each and every statement, though it was that last one that now remained blinking, the EVI double-checking if I even wanted it there.

I felt that child-node staring back at me with incredulity, as if Dr. Mekis himself and the rest of the science team were there on the other side of the virtual workspace ready to counter my hypothesis.

“We’ll get back to that one, but first, I just realized that a third category might be in order.” I ordered, prompting the EVI to generate a third root-node.

“Third — malicious intent. This could all just be a big game of deception on behalf of the Nexus. We can’t put it past them after all. They already did one major reality-defying reveal, what’s to say there’s no layers to this?” 

A nanosecond later, and the third tree diagram was branched out. This was followed by a beep, as the EVI circled back to that outlandish hypothesis.

“Query. Kill process: unfinished child-node?”

I thought about it for a minute. However, just before I could respond, we eventually found ourselves arriving at the entrance to the banquet hall. To which Thacea quickly regarded me with a worried expression.

“Emma, are you feeling well?”

“Yes—”

“Are you sure—”

“No, don’t kill child.” I replied.

Though this reply was made before I could properly hit mute.

Leading to a rather awkward scene where Thacea, Thalmin, Ilunor, and everyone else gathered near the entrance to the stadium’s banquet hall, all stared at me with varying levels of concern. 

“Oh erm, I meant to say, wow, this whole thing was child’s play, haha!” I attempted to ‘fix’ the situation. 

However this only ended up with even more perplexed looks and outright worried stares.

“Well crap…” I sighed inwardly with a ‘click’ of the mute button.

=====

The Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts. New Gymnasium. Banquet Hall. Local Time: 1920 Hours.

Emma

With some quick thinking on behalf of Ilunor and an attempt to defuse the situation as a ‘newrealmer’s eccentric approach to the theatre of life’, we made our way inside the banquet hall, where the professors seemed to be busy talking amidst themselves atop of an elevated stage. 

The whole room was arranged into four distinct quadrants, with four equally-long banquet tables occupying the middle of each of these sections.