A Soldier’s Life: The Dimensional Space Explained

I am writing tonight's chapter, but a few people are confused about dimensional space. Below is the explanation I wrote a year ago. I will answer questions and edit the explanations to try to clarify. For writing purposes, I am trying to avoid 'hard' numbers, preferring approximations that are close to the world mechanics.

A Soldier’s Life: The Dimensional Space Explained

This is how the dimensional space spell form evolved in the writing.  It should explain everything—hopefully.

The MC has a 98 (it is 101 at chapter 335) space affinity, and he used it to create the spell form for a dimensional pocket spell form on his aether core.  Think of a person’s aether core like a football (soccer football), each patch on it represents a person’s different affinity.  The amount of space to imprint a spell form is based on the attribute score.  You can only imprint one spell form for each affinity. 

With his ridiculous 98 space affinity, the minor spell created a massive space, a cube that was ten feet to the side.  It takes the MC two relative aether to materialize the cube that only he can see with the objects inside it.  A part of that cube has to be touching his body.  This means, with his hand outstretched, the cube can reach, at most, 12 feet from his body (using his fingertip as the extreme edge of the cube).  He can ‘adjust’ the cube to move it to access any object by his hand.  In other words, if he took the arm off an attacker holding a sword at the far end of the cube, he could make that arm and sword appear in his hand (gross, I know).  Also this act would bottom out his aether, so it would not be immediate (see explanation below).

Now, Mage Castile showed him he did not need to open the cube to pull an object out.  This requires a lot less aether and just relies on moving the mass of the object.  It is also easier than making the cube appear, going into the space, and selecting something. 

So, the amount of mass transfer into the space is related.  But if the MC opens the dimensional space and selects a mental shape of the object he wants to be moved and that has a greater mass than he has aether for, the space will close, taking the object with it.  He did this when he took the large stone cylinder into his space.  He bottoms out his aether whenever the object exceeds his capable mass based on his aether.  He can also only select one mental shape at a time. 

Moving living creatures into his space involves overcoming the person’s/monster’s aether resistance.  Aether resistance is like magic resistance.  The MC’s dimensional space has a relative power of 98—ridiculously strong.  It does not mean the target needs a 99 in aether resistance to resist.  That is still being discussed in my head (there are a lot of conversations going on in there), but the latest chapter of Patreon hinted at least 30 points higher to resist.  So anyone with 69 could resist him, with scores below 69 they would need some training (i.e. mages have a better chance to resist).  If, for instance, he had tried to kill the storm giant, he would have failed as the storm giant’s aether resistance was higher than 69.  Now we just need to hope the MC does not try his spell form on a dragon and think he is going to succeed.

If the MC faces aether resistance to moving a person or part of a person, it will always bottom out his aether in the act of moving between his space.  This was to nerf his ability, a one-shot kill possible, but he would have to wait until his aether was restored to go again.  Now, when he tries to move two different people/monsters at the same time, they multiply their aether resistance together to resist him.  That was why it was so difficult to move the two rats together.  This is another nerf, so he can not kill multiple people at once, by say, creating a thin plan and decapitating a group of people.

Inside the dimensional space, time does not pass, and there is no gravity.  So he can put items in any open space.  Objects can not occupy the same space.  By expanding aether, he can move objects around in the space.   

HOW LONG TO RECHARGE? (added 1/29/25)

In book 1, it was over two hours, but with his gains in the channeling attribute and the ring of channeling, it is now down to under 20 minutes. Now, this does not mean he cannot take objects out of the space earlier than 20 minutes, as the kill effect requires a minimum of 2 aether points, but Castile showed him in book 1 that he could retrieve objects without actually opening the space.

MAGIC POWER/AFFINITIES VS PHYSICAL/MENTAL ATTRIBUTES:

Physical and Mental attributes are on a logarithmic scale

Magical attributes and Magic Affinities are on an exponential scale, doubling in power every 10 points

WHEN HE BOTTOMS OUT HIS AETHER

His slow aging spell form and his mind fortress are turned off and need to be reset

THIS IS ALL SUBJECT TO EDIT BUT IT IS WHERE I AM AT NOW