High Artificer, Ch 35: Forging the Human Domain

Four shining worlds hung in the Void. 

They were spinning gems in the Deep Wild, far beyond the reach of the settled galaxy. 

Each of them was a shimmering blue mixed with the light and dark greens of forests that covered  the lands, interrupted here and there by towering mountain ranges, and they were filled with vigorous elemental energy that was so dense it formed liquid droplets in the atmosphere.

Each of the worlds was pristine, full of life and mana. 

This was a lucky find. 

At the center of the system, shining like a golden heart, was a powerful yellow sun that flooded the area with waves of energy. It was the source of life for everything here. 

The worlds had no developed races, but even if people had known about them, they wouldn’t have dared to settle here. This region was dangerous, frequently disrupted by beasts and home to powerful chaos winds. 

It was surprising that these worlds hadn’t been taken as a home by passing Void beasts, since the area wasn’t far from three different groups of them, but the sun had a fierceness that kept them from staying for long.

For his purposes, it was perfect.

The sun was young and the planets were full of life that could support humanity. Their rocky mantles even had essence stores embedded in them, thanks to the intensity of the chaos winds here.

His avatars had discovered this system in the Deep Wild a couple of weeks ago while he was Evolving, but they’d left it for him. They’d already moved a few other worlds, but these were special because he needed to move the whole thing.

Sun, worlds, and all.

Moving the planets was one thing, but moving the sun as well...that would take some effort. 

At the time none of his avatars had been upgraded to the Sixth Evolution, so they only had a fraction of his strength. 

It was the ideal choice, however, since the sun here was what infused these planets with life. If he placed them near a different star, it would disrupt their equilibrium and unsettle the elemental essence.

For some worlds, that wasn’t a problem, since the stars he had chosen in the settled galaxy were powerful and full of energy, but this system was unique.

The star and the four planets were linked in a natural celestial formation, one that was naturally balanced and infused with energy. As a result, the worlds were more flush with life and the grade of their essence and mana stones was higher, as were the elemental flows.

Removing any one of them would break it.

These would be ideal planets for humanity to grow stronger, especially if they followed elemental paths. Even without that focus, the mana and essence here were five times higher than on a regular world.

Even if humans couldn’t use essence directly, he had some ideas for how its presence could help to make them stronger. 

With his grasp of primal chaos, the difference between experience and essence was less problematic than before. He thought he might be able to find a path forward where humanity could absorb essence passively, like Void beasts did. 

If it worked, it would help them to reinforce their constitutions and their levels and make it easier for them to reach the Seventh Evolution.

With the threat of invasion a real possibility, he wasn’t going to do things by halves.

He studied the solar system for a while, examining the sun and planets from every angle, and then he breathed in the chaos winds.

His height changed, swiftly increasing until he stood taller than the sun at the center of the system. Space flowed easily around him, untouched by his presence. It was one of the innate abilities of the Titans to not disturb the Void, no matter their size. 

The worlds looked like true gemstones now compared to him. 

Then his hand stretched out across the system, surrounded by a sheen of silver energy. Dimensional waves flowed out from his grasp, swiftly covering the entire area. A wall of starlight moved around the distant edges, covering everything in a massive sphere.

The edge of the wall near him was connected to his hands.

Normally, when a Titan moved a world, they had two options. He could physically pick it up and then walk through the Void with it, or he could surround it with energy like this and move it onto the astral paths, constantly bending space around it until it was where he wanted it to go.

That was with a single planet. 

Even for the Titans, moving a sun was much more difficult. They were dense with essence and mass, as well as enormous amounts of elemental energy. Plus the astral paths connected the stars, effectively using two stars as end points to create a dimensional channel, and pulling another star along them was contradictory. 

It could be done if the star they were moving was smaller than the two endpoints, but it wasn’t easy. Every step was a struggle to haul it along. Usually, if they wanted to move a star, they were left with moving it physically through the Void.

It was a troublesome task.

They’d done it a few times throughout history, sometimes to correct the position of stars in their territory to make sure they didn’t collide, and other times to create a condition where essence was denser and natural treasures could appear more easily, but it wasn’t common.

A Titan could walk swiftly through the Void, but carrying a sun was difficult. It required some abilities to confine it, like condensing it into a crystal sphere first. Then it was simpler. 

There were some artifacts that could help with that, including the Path of Stars, but Sam had chosen another method, one that even the Titans didn’t normally have access to.

Dimensional displacement.

He was surrounding the entire solar system in a dimensional barrier and moving it into an independent realm. It was something that perhaps only he could do, since it combined his abilities with dimensional realms and as a Titan.

Asenya might be able to seal a solar system inside a dimensional realm, but moving it would be almost impossible for her.

That required the Strength of the Celestial, the ability he’d gained at 100,000 Strength as a full Titan. As he let the dimensional energy continue to surround the solar system, he glanced at the description.

Strength of the Celestial:

You are a Lord of the Void. Your shoulders hold up the vault of stars and your hands resonate with its energy. No object born of the Void can resist your grasp. 

You now have the innate ability to move the celestial bodies of the Void, from worlds to stars, that would otherwise be beyond your strength. 

Build the world you want to see.

No barrier can stand against a Titan.

When attacking, your Strength applies the force of all your attributes to shatter opposing barriers. If a barrier does not fall on the first strike, your blows begin to resonate with the Void, gaining additional force that scales with each strike.

The second part of the ability let him break through any barrier, but he only needed the first right now.

When the entire solar system was covered in the dimensional barrier, he began to separate it from the primary dimension, slowly pulling it away into a realm of its own. 

The theory wasn’t that different from the realm he’d made for his Titan Hall. It was just on a much larger scale.

He kept the process slow as the chaos winds poured into the area where the system had been, letting their presence slowly replace what had been there. Normally, the winds were slowed by the sun and the gravity of the worlds, but now they began to howl with wild force as they flowed in uninhibited.

When the system was completely separated, the sun and the worlds had turned ethereal. They looked like a ghostly overlay on top of reality. They could still be seen, but they were illusions projected across the dimension that showed the places where they had been.

Then he began the next step. 

A twist of his hand caused the dimensional barrier to harden until it resembled a wall of silvery crystal that further separated it from the main realm. 

Then it began to shrink at an incredible speed.

Dark space stretched out at the edges of the realm as space slowly filled in with distant stars and the colors of the chaos winds.

It wasn’t long until it was finished and the entire solar system floated above Sam’s hand. 

It looked like a silver crystal sphere with the sun and planets contained inside, along with all the other material that was part of the system. 

A tiny, perfect version. 

The sun continued to burn, the worlds spun in their orbits, and meteors and comets continued to shoot through space. The only place where something was different was the dimensional wall. When a meteor crashed into it, it exploded into rubble that was consumed by silver flames. 

The energy from the material dissipated into the air and then fused into the dimensional wall.

It was a miniature version of what it had been before, a projection of the dimensional realm he’d created for the system. The image acted as an anchor that kept it linked to the material realm and it let him monitor it to make sure the elemental balance wasn’t disrupted.

The weight of the dimension in his hand felt a little heavy, like holding a dense stone of the same size, but that was all. Weight and pressure didn’t mean much to him, since his body was supported by the Void and Primal Chaos.

His fingers closed around the sphere and then his size shifted back to his usual height, which he preferred to walk the Void. 

One of the effects of reaching the Sixth Star was that his natural height as a Titan had reached 15,000 feet, about three times what it had been at the Fifth Star, and that was the size where he now felt the most comfortable. 

He turned until he was looking in the direction of the new human region and a silver portal spun open in the air in front of him.

He looked back over his shoulder to where the solar system had been and where now there was only empty space. A silver rune ignited in his hand, its form twining with a thread of primal chaos, and he tossed it toward where the sun had once been.

An explosion of energy ignited in the Void, swiftly expanding as it turned into a blazing disk of stellar energy and gas that was laden with elemental energy. 

It was hot and full of potential.

It wasn’t that large yet, just a few miles across, but it was already drawing in all the energy of the chaos winds around it and its size was steadily increasing. 

Before long, it would be as large as the system that had been here, and then a new sun and worlds would condense. It would take a little while, but it would replace what he’d borrowed with something new.

He gave the area a nod and then he stepped through the portal.

When he reappeared, it was in the region he’d chosen for the human domain.

If everything was flattened onto a two-dimensional map, this area was in the northwestern section of the settled galaxy, bordered by the Great Divide to the west and an old Titan region to the south, and filled with plentiful resources. 

The Winged Fury homeworld was much farther to the north, almost a full quarter of the galaxy away, but the distance to Council in a straight line was closer, about half of that. 

Council was located in the central region, but it was slightly toward the west.

Aster Fall was almost directly west and halfway into the Deep Wild, but it was closer to this region than it was to a lot of others.

It was a roughly spherical region with a flat base where it met the border of the Titan region and another flat edge where it ran into the Great Divide.

Beyond the rich resources, it had a lot going for it in terms of location. It was centrally located, the stars were young, and the chaos winds were slightly stronger than normal for the settled half of the galaxy.

It was a good place.

The only reason no one had claimed it before was the lack of stars and habitable worlds. The younger races didn’t have the ability to move worlds like Titans did, and even if they could have managed it for one, the effort needed made it implausible.

Moving a sun was even more out of the question.

There were half a dozen solar systems off to the east and north with settled worlds, and another dozen in the Borderland that weren’t too far away, but that was from Sam’s perspective. 

Most people would find this region expansive and empty.

It took starlight almost fifty years to travel here from the closest star, and the border to the Great Divide was ten times farther away. Even for someone at Level 600, it would take at least that many years to travel the distance. 

A Sixth Evolution Truth and the proper speed enchantments on a traveling artifact could let someone reach close to the speed of light if they built up to it, but for anyone under that level, it would be much longer.

Council was seven thousand light years away, while Aster Fall was over two hundred thousand.

That sort of distance was why the Titans had created a teleportation network to link the galaxy together.

Sam studied the area as he considered the best alignment for the new solar system. This was the center of the region, but he wanted to make sure it got the most benefit from the passing chaos winds. 

The natural formation of the sun and the four planets needed it in order to keep producing elemental essence. The chaos winds were quieter here, but he was going to open up some elemental gates to help fuel it, similar to what Aster Fall had.

Lines of silver light flared across the region, stretching out in a vast web as he held up the solar system and tilted it from side to side. Silver threads of spatial energy shifted each time he moved it, until they eventually began to chime in harmony with each movement.

When it was fully aligned with the local energy, he let the sphere drift away from his hand.

The solar system floated into the center of the space and paused there, while Sam turned his attention to the underlying planes.

A wave of his hand created a portal to an endless realm of Fire. Others followed for Water, Wind, Lightning, Earth, Wood, and Metal. The edges of each portal burned with silver stars, which anchored the openings and kept them contained.

The elemental planes underpinned the material dimension in the Void, part of the structure of existence that had formed during creation. These portals were gates to seven of the main ones.

They would help to fuel the rise of humanity.

Silver flames burned along the edges of the rifts as he moved them to different locations around the solar system until the energies balanced against one another. The pressure of the various gates would help to keep them aligned here, like seven nodes in a massive dimensional realm.

Dimensional energy warped along their edges as he locked them into place, and then a torrent of elemental force began to pour out from each one, flooding the local space. 

The density of the elements swiftly began to rise. As it roared through the area, it turned into local chaos winds.

He shifted the solar system again until it aligned with all seven gates and anchored it in place by binding its gravitational signature to this location in the dimension. 

Then he let it expand.

The sphere grew swiftly, stretching larger moment by moment, until it was once again a massive solar system with the sun at the center and the four planets orbiting it.

He made a few tweaks to make sure that the orbits of the planets aligned with the energy from the gates, since that would drive the production of elemental resources. There would also be the rise and fall of elemental tides, like magical seasons, which could give rise to interesting events, but the planar gates were balanced well enough that it wouldn’t cause trouble.

It would just be something unique for the people who lived here.

When everything was set, he began shifting the system back into the material dimension. The ethereal quality swiftly began to fade away as the material of the system appeared for real. 

The sun flared with energy, igniting everything within its space like kindling thrown into a bonfire, and the chaos winds thundered around the worlds, making them tremble in their orbits as they adjusted to the new pressure.

But within moments, everything settled into its course.

The tidal waves of the chaos winds crashed against the sun’s energy, fueling it at the same time as they saturated the worlds, and the sun’s radiance stretched out, bathing the worlds in its light the same as it had before.

The natural formation was still working, which made him nod in satisfaction.

Worlds like these were hard to come across. 

This would be the center of the new human domain, a blessed realm for the study of the elements and crafting.

He spent a little while longer adding some protections and wards, including linking the seven elemental gates into a defensive array. That way, if anything dangerous threatened to destroy the worlds or the system, it would get more than it bargained for.

Even if the Three Demons and a pack of Vos’Rekan showed up, they wouldn’t get far here.

Then he reached out to the Heart of the Void.

Streams of primal chaos appeared and began to circle his body. They devoured the energy from the planar gates and the chaos winds, as well as the fierce light of the sun, until it looked like there was nothing but a sphere of black space around him filled with shimmering silver grey streams.

He gathered up a handful of primal chaos, which weighed more heavily in his hand than the entire solar system had, and raised it to his lips.

With a gentle breath, he exhaled.

A shimmering dust of chaos flew across the system, covering everything in sight. 

It fused into things and was gone.

New things would be born on the worlds soon, from elementals and new ores to different forms of life, including herbs and beasts. It would all be formed from primal chaos and the elements, so it would be raw and powerful. 

With each generation, it would refine itself as it improved. Some of it might be dangerous, but some would be beneficial, new things that had never been seen before.

The humans who decided to live here could figure it out.

With that, he turned away and created a new silver portal.

This would be the heart of the human domain, but he still had more worlds and solar systems to find. Once all of them were in place, he could start linking them together with teleportation gates and Evolutionary nodes.

Then he'd get started on the more sweeping ideas he had to help them grow stronger. 

There was a lot to do.