Chapter 22: Another Test

I have decided to call these crystals monster cores. It felt thematic just calling them that in my current environment.

Anyway, these monster cores can be used as a mana battery. That is great news. I have been trying to look for a solution to my slow mana recovery. Now with these monster cores, I won't have to worry about my mana anymore!

I am not joking. By just jumping into an empty alternate world, I can essentially make duplicates of these mana stones for free. I don't need to use Duplication on them through Faded World. That's great. I haven't been using my normal dimension hops lately because the Faded World is just better at doing anything. Now it has its uses again!

I made a lot of duplicated bags filled with monster cores within them and put them in one of the empty office rooms in my base. Now I have ready access to mana batteries whenever I want.

With the mana batteries, the next thing I did was obvious.

I started tying up strings with bells attached to them!

I have been so busy dealing with the plant monsters that I haven't had the time to set up my alarm area. Not like I would because I was wary about whether those flowers with eyes could see whatever I'm doing. I didn't want to hint to them that I've been staying in the car dealership building. I imagined these monsters would gawk in surprise if they suddenly saw bells tied to strings suddenly manifest all around the perimeter of my base. They might suddenly get suspicious!

Now that those monsters are gone, I could start doing that. So I am busily tying up bundles of strings so they would connect to each other and make a long thread that could connect even at long distances. The surrounding area around this building was quite empty. There were only pole signs distanced equally on each corner of this place, and adding the large carpark and the empty spaces that stretched several meters away to the road, I would need at least this much if I wanted to tie these threads securely.

Well, I estimate I would need at least fifty meters of length to ensure that I could cover the distance between the two pole signs. That might be going overboard, but whatever. I'll do it just to be sure.

After I do that, I'll just keep duplicating them. It won't take me all day.

____________________

Immediately after I'm done making a long thread with bells tied to it, I entered the Faded World to start setting up my makeshift alarm system. There was a small issue on the way when I got there, and I quickly realized that the pole I'm trying to tie this thread to couldn't be interacted with without manifesting the thread in the real world. Though I managed to solve that conundrum when I remembered that I could just interact with the real world even if I'm still at the Faded World.

It was the principle behind Invisible Strike. Invisible Strike was manifesting the force of my strike back on the real world. I could also hold an object in the real world with the same principle by just manifesting the force I'm exerting in my hands. I decided to call this technique Ghost Touch. With this new technique, I just manifested the thread I have been holding onto the real world and then tied it on the pole even when I'm not in the real world at all. It drained more mana, but it wasn't an issue because I have a lot of it!

It took me until lunchtime before there were at least three layers of threads tied on each corner of the poles. Humans would immediately guess the purpose of these threads dangling in the open like this, but zombies, whose entire gimmick was just brute-forcing their way, would be pushed against these threads. The sound of the bells when they did that would alert me. I already tried the bells when I was at the condominium, and the sound it made was so loud that I could hear it even if I dropped it in the other room.

After I was done setting them up, I finally returned back to my base and replenished my mana to start what I actually wanted to do since I got to this place.

Experimentation!

There were a lot of things I was discovering with my powers. Which meant that I still hadn't scratched the surface of what my power could actually do. There was this mysterious phenomenon where I just didn't feel anything even when I fell five stories high headfirst onto the concrete road. I wanted to experiment with the Faded World first.

So after eating another set of canned tuna, I started with my experiment. The following result surprised me when I was done.

So I tried going to the roof of the car dealership building. This building was the size of a garage with the height of a common warehouse. It doesn't have a second floor, though it had a ladder that led to the rooftop. I used that ladder to get above and, after preparing my heart for some time, just jumped back to the floor where I had just climbed up on. I was expecting a bit of pain and was already preparing myself for the inevitable pain in my legs, but the dull sense of just landing into something like some sort of soft cushion made me jolt in surprise before realization hit me. I tried verifying a bit more and finally confirmed what I suspected.

"I can't get hurt in the Faded World!"

Right. Falling from high places wouldn't harm me in any way. Even if I slipped and fell badly on my head, no harm would come to me. There was an issue that I noticed, though. Whenever I fell on the ground, a chunk of my mana got immediately drained as if it was absorbing whatever damage that should be inflicted on me. That meant my mana acted as a shield for me whenever harm came to me within the Faded World.

Learning this was useful. If I ever have to escape while I'm stuck in a highly elevated place like the higher floor of a high-rise building, I could just jump without worrying about anything. My power would just negate fall damage like it was nothing!

With that experiment out of the way, the next thing I did was experiment with what else I could do with my powers. Everything I did felt like a basic application of what was possible with my usage of the Faded World. The experiment then would be, how could I apply these techniques for the other situations?

Invisible Strike was just manifesting the force behind my strike into the real world. I've included everything in my swing at that whenever I used it with my golf club. I am curious if I could limit Invisible Strike to the head of the golf club instead of using it on the whole club. To check whether my theory was correct, I set up a target in the form of two water bottles laid on top of an office table. The test was simple. I'll only swing my golf club, and if my hypothesis was correct, it should only hit the water bottle on the back while ignoring the water bottle on the front. That was the experiment.

The result was a success. It's not just a success; it was a resounding success that gave me more options for my repertoire. When I swung my golf club, I just thought of applying Invisible Strike at the hollow head of the golf club and accurately hit the second bottle that was a few inches behind the first bottle on the forefront. Even when the handle of my golf club passed through the colorless figure of the bottle on the front, it wasn't affected by the force of my swing, while the second bottle behind it, which was passed by the head of the golf club I swung, flew in the air after the tip of it touched its image.

It wasn't a useless experiment either because it let me discover the fact that limiting the application of Invisible Strike to specific parts of my weapon would decrease the mana cost it drained from me. Unlike the usual Invisible Strike, which I applied to the whole golf club, this limited version, which only applies the effect to the head of the club, only needed a tenth of the mana cost. If I ever ran low on mana, and there were no mana batteries in my hand somehow, I could use this to prolong my stay within the Faded World!

It only needed a bit of concentration. Whenever I needed to do something specific with my power, I had to actively think that I wanted this to happen just for my power to do it. If I didn't specify, it would indiscriminately apply it to everything I was carrying. Calling them by names actually helped me concentrate easier on their effects than just trying to brute force it through my intent and thoughts alone.

I decided to call this technique Ghost Strike. The limited version of Invisible Strike.

I stopped my experiment and then recovered the mana I spent with the monster cores after I jumped back to the real world. I was done experimenting with the Faded World for now. I wanted to learn what else I could do with my power itself, and I felt having full mana capacity was needed if I was going to mess with my powers again. I don't want a repeat of my attempt when I tried jumping into an actual alternate world!

It knocked me out when I tried that!

I don't plan on trying to jump into another alternate dimension without having at least enough mana to stay in an empty mirror world for a whole day. I already tried jumping into an identical world like my own, and it cost so much I briefly managed to stay before being knocked out. I couldn't possibly hop into another dimension that was completely different from my reality. If it was even possible, then I am sure it would be more costly than just jumping into the peaceful version of my original world.

No, I want to try something else. I already confirmed that I could jump into actual alternate dimensions. What if I limit myself to certain places then?

My first actual hop into an alternate dimension, I just hopped into an entire world that, even if it was identical to my real world, was still different because that version was a world where the apocalypse didn't happen. I assume that kind of timeline divergence became a factor as to why the mana cost was so huge. Though if that was the case, I got curious. Why does the cost of entering an identical version of my world without any living beings in it cost less when it has the same kind of difference as this reality? I can't just call an empty alternate world the same as my real world because the difference compared to this one is that the empty mirror world lacked every living being in it!

It's literally devoid of life!

I have a theory. What if jumping into an empty mirror world was the default expression of my power? There was precedent in that. The first time I used my power, it took me to an empty alternate dimension. It also happened whenever I just thought of using my power without specifying what I actually wanted to do with it. I always end up in a version of this world that was devoid of life!

The mana I needed only increased when I started specifying whatever I wanted to do with my powers. So this theory felt more likely to be the truth.

Really, it was all conjecture that was most likely the truth. I don't know. My powers didn't give me any user manual for this. I can only just make theories of my own!

Anyway, with this thought in mind, I decided to try this idea. Instead of just wishing to enter a world where the apocalypse didn't happen, I would specifically wish to enter a world that was still the same as this one, with the only difference being that there would be a bottle of cola on top of the table that I was looking at right now.

A brief flicker in my vision occurred along with a sensation of weightlessness and a strange force that was pulling me forward. At the same time, I felt a tiny bit of my mana leaving my body. It was a slight amount more than the usual mana I used when first entering an empty alternate dimension. After that, the usual feeling of my mana being slowly drained could be felt within my body.

I blinked for a moment as I looked around before quickly focusing on the bottle that suddenly appeared on top of the table. The deafening silence in my surroundings told me that this was the same empty alternate dimension that I usually jumped into, but this time there was a large bottle of a familiar brand of cola in front of me. I reached out to it, grasped it in my hands, and then silently hopped back to the starting point while feeling the cold texture of the plastic bottle in my palm.

I came back. Along with my return was the bottle of cola that I just manifested in an alternate world.

I succeeded...

"... Oh god, it worked!"

This... this changed a lot of things!