Chapter twenty eight: Connection
tak—tak—tak.
A steady rhythm echoed through the white room, filling the silence like a ticking clock
Caelum tapped the edge of the bronze table with a soft rhythm, his were eyes distant as he was lost in thought.
His eyes drifted to the pen in his hand, with a flick, he made it spin once between his fingers before lowering it to the open book in front of him.
"At this current stage," he muttered, scratching down a few words on the book, "I don't think adding a powerful predator to the food chain would do any good…" he let out his thoughts in his usual voice low.
His words trailed off halfway through, as he clicked his tongue and glanced at the pages, already filled with diagrams of different shapes.
The diagrams were fluid, clean lines born of the simple pen in his hand. Several unfamiliar creatures took shape across the parchment, each sprawled out across the page with a note beside it, looking nothing like the creatures that already existed inside Dharti.
'I thought this would be a good time to introduce new lifeforms into Dharti, but....'
He scratched the back of his head frustrated, and let out a slow sigh.
After giving the prehistoric humans the a way to defend themselves against the lions, he had immediately turned his attention to the world's ecology—how to deepen it and expand it.
Caelum wanted to make it feel less like a scattered simulation and more like a living and evolving place.
"But the balance is delicate." His voice sounded quite loenly in the white room.
'If I make a bit stronger predators than the lions, the human's wont be able to adapt to the situation properly and get wiped. If they are weaker than both, they'll just end up in a similar situation as the cows and sheeps.'
The pacing of his tapping picked up as his thoughts churned through every possibility.
"Ahh… should I start from the base of the food chain instead?" he said aloud, his tapping stopped as he sat up straighter.
"Yes! I'm looking at this wrong," it was as if he had a sudden burst of idea, caelum had a blissful expression. " I don't need to start at the top or the middle of the food chain…"
"That's it. Starting from the ground up is the way." He nodded to himself, "If I create a few unnatural plants or insects, they'll slowly ripple outward. They'll affect the animals that feed on them, and they will affect the predators."
It was the long game, but it was stable enough.
With a renewed sense of direction, Caelum tore the page he had just written, crumpled it, and tossed it aside.
He dipped the pen again and began anew.
"Phase One," he wrote at the top. "Substructural Ecology."
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Caelum leaned over the bronze table, finishing a few sketches of unseen insect and plants.
Sketches that defined the beginnings of a new ecosystem. Small, efficient creatures that would one day burrow into the soil of Dharti, crawl across its bark, flutter under its moon.
"It's almost as if im back to square one, experimenting with small creations." Caelum whispered to himself, fully immersed in creating a substructure ecology.
"Hmm?" The movements of his jands stopped mid-stroke, and his expression changed, a sudden and firm memory snapped back into place, like being pulled from one thought into another without warning.
His eyes moved to the quill resting quietly nearby.
"It's already been so long... I didn't even realise." His voice was quiet so quite, it was nothing more than a murmur, he glanced at the tool lying motionless on the bronze surface.
"It's been more than five months already, ha?" A dull tightness pressed against his throat, as a response to his sudden change in emotions.
'The first time I tried to change the definition of a living organism, wasn't it the burning butterfly ?' It was his first real step in redefining life, it was back when he was still stuck, and waiting for a breakthrough in his willpower.
'It would feel like a waste,' he thought, 'if I didn't make it part of Dharti's ecosystem.'
The image of a blue winged butterfly came back clearly—the small and delicate wings with fire threading through its wings. Little harmless flames that danced with amber, it was the first creature caelum had redefined into a unnatural form.
With that thought, he flipped to a new page and began adjusting the original design, sketching out the fiery wings again with smoother lines and added details.
Small vents along the veins, layered patterns along the trailing edge of the wings that could hold and regulate heat.
"Haaaa…" a deel sigh escaped him after a few Minutes passed.
He stood up and stretched, then grabbed the notebook with one hand and the quill with the other. He glanced around the white room briefly, "Let's increase your size a bit first."
Without wasting any time, he poured willpower into the quill and made a smooth stroke in the air.
The entire white room trembled. Like the ripple, a translucent wave of energy wrapped around the boundaries of the space, bending it as the space expanded in every direction seamlessly. The walls streched and expanded so rapidly, it was impossible for naked eyes to keep up.
Caelum's gaze followed the new scale of the room with a satisfying look, "This should be enough space for new furniture."
His eyes flicked to the world stabilizer sitting silently in one corner, still humming like an ancient heartbeat. He turned away from it and walked to the opposite side of the room.
As he reached the opposite corner of the room, caelum poured willpower into the quill again and made another firm stroke.
This tims Two large glass tubes and a wide metal table materialized on the floor.
"I should observe the behavior of the insects here first," Caelum said in a tone that seemd unsure, "before I let them roam free in Dharti."
He made another stroke with the quill instantly, as several small test tubes materialized in a neatly arranged line along the table's edge.
"This much size should be enough for testing substances or smaller plants, maybe?" he mumbled, doubting himself even as he observed the layout.
Caelum frowned slightly as another thought struck him, "But then again… would some unnatural plants really affect the world as much as unnatural animals?"
The questions spilled out of him, one after another, as he scratched his temple.
With the weight of too many thoughts tangled together, there was a note of curiosity in his voice now, but also fatigue and tiredness that came from thinking too far in too many directions.
And just then—
"Ughh!?"
The sound left him involuntarily as a sharp sensation tore through his chest, like a punch made of pressure itself. He clutched his ribs, staggering back with eyes wide.
"What is this—Ahgh!"
His body tensed, his knees buckled, and he dropped the notebook and quill without caring.
An immense weight pushed down on him, but it wasn't physical—an internal pressure like his very soul was swelling too fast,
But the heavy pressure that bore down like invisible weight stacked onto his frame, wasn't unfamiliar to him.
'This…'
His mind raced back to a memory, when that not-so-old sensation came back to him like lightning in reverse.
"My willpower… it's a breakthrough?"
His voices was a barely audible, the sheer effort it took to speak under the pressure was immense.
A warm sensation was now pulsing through his core, sweat sliding down his temple. Caelum's Eyes clamped shut as his body strained against the pressure.
He staggered backward, trying to stay upright, but his legs trembled violently. His breath came in shallow bursts.
'This feels more intense than the first time,' he thought, holding onto his clarity. ' It's way too much....violent.'
Caelum's thoughts suddenly blurred,Then—SWOOS!
A sudden burst of translucent energy exploded from his chest, as if a second skin of light had cracked open. It spread outward in every direction, distorting the air in the white room and rippling through the room like a shockwave.
The long bronze table, the world stabilizer and every other thing inside the white room trambled, Caelum's body floated slightly above the floor, like it was suspended by an unseen force.
And even then, his grip on consciousness never slipped. His fingers curled as if trying to hold onto something.
---
Seconds went by, Then a few minutes passed by. The translucent energy bursting out of caelum slowly faded, dying off as Caelum hovered for a bit longer, suspended like a leaf at the edge of a breeze.
As soon as his feet touched the pure white floor again, he felt has senses coming back.
"Pheww..." He let out a long breath, his eyes still closed.
When he finally snapped open his eyes, there was a dull ache behind them—like they'd been squeezed shut for hours.
"I was this close to death," he muttered, pressing a hand to his chest, trying to confirm that his heart was still beating."It wasn't even physical pressure... more like a weight inside my head?"
His thoughts caught up quickly to the situation. 'That sudden burst of my willpower, it wasn't the same as the first time i broke through...'
"But why would my willpower suddenly breakthrough?" he said, frowning. "I didn't feel anything beforehand."
He stood still in daze, settling his thoughts as his gaze dropped, scanning the area in front of him.
Almost instantly, his eyes caught the notebook on the floor, it was lying open on the white floor. Caelum bent his knees slightly and reached for it.
But just as his fingers touched the cover—
"…Huh?"
A strange sensation flickered through his senses, He turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing as they landed on the object just a foot away.
"The quill?" he said aloud, slowly standing with the notebook in hand, his voice carried a hint of confusion.
It was the same quill, the same object that changed his life, the one he had used for months. The same blue feather and prefect curve but...
"I can feel it…" he whispered. " I can feel It's presence."
His thoughts tried to organize themselves, but before they could fall into place, another wave of questions came crashing in.
'It's like... It's almost like there is a connection between me and the quill now?'