Experimenting with [Temporal Replication], new discovery

Xander, after doing his daily routine upon returning from school, as well as reading and setting up the trap, headed to the laboratory and stayed for a total of 2 hours outside of the lab.

This was to wait until it was dinner time while being productive. Xander had stayed for a total of 197 years inside the laboratory. He took this time to digest his experiences today, as well as catch up on the wide set of data he had harvested from the Galactic Empire.

Although it was saved in his smartwatch as well as the System's own database, it was still different from actually knowing the information rather than searching it on the spot. After all, his enemies won't let him search his database in the middle of a fight.

In those 197 years, he digested his experience in the field today in less than 2 months; the remaining years and months were focused on reading research papers, books, and journals relating to magic research, magitech research, and scientific research.

Of course, he only allotted 12 hours a day to read these things; the remaining hours were focused on tending the small garden where he was growing common plants, and visiting the small, but growing mountain. There were more and more minerals appearing, of different shapes and sizes, and functions.

The mountain itself continues to increase in mass as well as produce its own weak, gravitation and electromagnetic field. The minerals' formation was still not completely understood by Xander; is it really due to the interaction of earth/metal elements and other elements in various concentrated degrees, or simply random based on time, temperature, pressure, and physical concentration?

The different plants growing in the laboratory were originally indigenous to that of Eteria, which can grow fruits. Due to the long period that they had been in the garden, they were able to produce hybrids and descendants that were quite unique from their ancestors.

As the plants have been here for 9,500 years, they have gained increased spirituality and elemental energy inside, but no indication of sprite formation or sentience can be seen for now.

After all, when he broke through to Master-9 and fixed "Eden", he also checked the situation of the laboratory, and reinforced its ordered system. The size of the laboratory was technically a 1 light-year by 1 light-year, by 1 light-year cube.

He headed to the open-air laboratory set up where he usually mixed and played around chemicals he had created through [Material Transformation].

Material transformation basically takes advantage of the elemental interrelationship present in the universe and the time element. It is the accelerated process of shifting from one element to another. Turning metal into water? Possible. Turning air into a piece of non-living wood? It's possible, just proceed with speeding up time.

Of course, as a nested pocket dimension, it is not stable to create another field within that is slower than the current speed of the pocket dimension.

This is because from his experience of destroying the previous garden; the presence of the ruins being compressed was the initiator of the runic creature's invasion upon the ordered system of that pocket space. It caused instability in the origin elements, meaning a problem within the structured order, allowing the runic structure to take advantage of it. After all, it did not have strong self-correcting capabilities as it is ultimately still reliant to the universe's ordered system.

In fact, he could have released the runic writing into the main universe and let the ordered system destroy it; the price to pay, however, was the complete destruction of the planet as well as his power, as it is possible the ordered system to recognize him as the cause of the effect.

Currently, he was focused on another question: Can life that requires germination be temporally replicated? During replication, can he modify the capability or the seed's function?

Currently, his powers over space-time allowed temporal replication of things that didn't contain a soul.

However, this doesn't seem to apply to higher-grade, unique materials, like the Seed of Life.

[Temporal Replication]: Capable of creating an identical copy of any non-living or non-sentient living target. The range size of replication is up to a radius of a light-year. No limit on the number of copies produced. Lasts permanently even if the spell is canceled once the copy is completed. Does not require to be in contact, but the intrinsic and extrinsic properties must be completely understood before successful replication.

The main experiment he did in the 197 years inside the laboratory was the Seed of Life. He wanted to find out if he could replicate it using [Temporal Replication], as well as Transform the Seed into another kind of seed if the first one succeeds.

The seed of life that he was using was the ones created by his spell, [Ragnarok]. The other materials he planned to experiment on came from the [Second Life] VR dimension, and after understanding the process of material and data conversion, he reversed the digitalization of most goods.

The seed of life had condensed properties of origin elements, as well as power that contained hints of creation, chaos, and space-time.

From his initial tests with the seed, utilizing a drop of its extract (a maximum of 81 drops are contained in every seed) is enough to allow someone at the brink of death to completely recover and even improve their talent in elemental sensing and controlling, allowing them to have a skyrocketing career in the field of mages.

Three drops were sufficient for one to perfect their Mundane-level bodies; 10 drops were sufficient to allow one to reach the Legendary-level body of strength and magic talent; 50 drops were enough to improve one's domain, and utilizing the whole seed allowed one to completely reconstruct their bodies and mind space, improving their talent and power output immensely by improvement of magic and elemental energy compatibility.

However, there were obvious downsides to it, as what Xander had seen in the selected test subjects.

Most of the test subjects that did not use more than 10 drops were fine.

Past 10 drops, or those that used the whole seed, there were invisible, fine lines that appeared in their life essence dolls and mind spaces, connecting to their magic seeds, magic spells, and magic carats, as well as their domains.

These lines extended infinitely beyond the space-time axis of his perceived area, existing within the empty areas between space, hidden and unknown to where it is connected. Even Xander could not see through the end, as if space was existing in a different area; every attempt to approach it returns him to his own position.

Of course, Xander was not satisfied with this and unleashed his currently full dominance over space-time, forcefully breaking the rule in the surrounding space.

It was at that point, he finally realized that the space he was following the thread through was a recursive, multi-dimensional spatial axis. This meant the directionality of the thread is not in one direction that he is approaching from, but rather it exists in all directions including the direction he is coming from.

The only way to reach the final point without the power of space is simultaneously travel to all possible directions and angles and travel uniformly; meaning the moment one of the clones or avatars are 1 step faster or just a yoctometer (0.0000000000000000000001 cm) different, the whole space resets unknowingly, making the whole process repeat again after a period of time.

The end of the space led him into a spatial dimension that seemed to have no rhyme or reason, where everything was distorted yet ordered, where only elements could be seen as far as he could detect, without any living thing or matter within. Not even magic energy existed, only elements.

Highly condensed, very loose, ordered, chaotic, small, large, existing as energy, as a wave, as a particle, as an idea, as a reality, as something fictional; whatever you can think of to describe the elements, they were there.

However, before he could get a clearer view, an overwhelming force expelled him, forcing his consciousness to slam through several hundreds of spatial dimensions before reaching his body.

At that moment, various wonders and horrors passed through his vision like a moving film as his consciousness punctured through hundreds of dimensions, each one hauntingly beautiful or vastly different from the material dimension.

All of this happened within the few seconds he decided to explore the threads.

And immediately, the bodies of those connected to the threads rapidly withered and turned into dust, including the threads.

However, the life essence dolls did not vanish, or were absorbed, but he could see them dissolved back into the LEO dimension.

…silence. There was nothing around Xander that was moving or rustling or causing a sound, producing an eerie effect if someone had just witnessed the bodies of creatures suddenly turn to dust without warning.

"What the hell was that?" Xander muttered to himself.

He was not afraid of the power behind the strings; he could sense with his space control that the distance he had traveled was far beyond the distance of the known universe.

However, in just a glimpse, he was easily pushed back into his body without resistance.

"…the universe's consciousness? Or maybe something similar to it?"

In the end, Xander simply remained silent and began to continue further experimentation on replicating the seed of life without the spell's aid.

Replicating the seed's power, failed.

Replicating the seed husk, successful, but different from the current composition. This indicated the power or something else changed the husk's structure.

Replicating the root cells and similar stem cells, failed.

Replicating the biological structure, failed.

Replicating the entire seed, failed.

Sadly, all attempts to temporal replication of the seed completely failed, so he had no choice but to wait for another two weeks before entering Eden and getting a seed from the Tree of Life that has matured long enough.

Oh right, he also had that Garland Tree seed. According to those auctioneers, it takes too long to grow them. I wonder how big it had also gotten?

This was according to his calculation for the tree's reproductive stage to be achieved by the young tree.

However, a problem continues to bug him: Does it reproduce asexually or does it need another Tree of Life to produce fruits?

He then headed to Eden.

The travel was quite smooth, and he appeared high up in the sky. He had a bird's eye view of the whole garden. Numerous, tall buildings with a height of 2 kilometers could be seen on the surface, indicating the distributed libraries all over the garden. Some were hidden in cave systems underground, some were placed in the dark, deep waters, some were floating high up in the sky as well.

Around them, life bloomed; sprites and magic beasts alike entered and exited the library, coming out as a learned person. No one was restricted from entering. No one can monopolize any of the libraries.

He then moved to where the Tree of Life was growing. A day had already passed, and it has been nearly 175,000 years inside this space. Life was blooming all over Eden.

There, he saw some magic beasts, as well as some sprites, fighting with one another. There were other magic beasts and sprites that were looking at the group fighting, some of them cheering, while the others were yawning, bored.

As he moved out and about, coming closer to the tree, more and more sprites and magic beasts could be seen, talking, laughing, crying with one another. When he finally reached the center of the Tree, he saw how large it was. It was already 2 kilometers in height, and the width of the tree was around 300 meters. The roots extended in all directions, reaching a distance of 300 kilometers. Currently, there are no fruits produced, nor flowers present in the lusciously green canopy. He was in awe to see that the small leaves were several times bigger than his current size.

When he looked further up at the tree, he almost couldn't contain his laughter.

On one of the tree's large branches, Sam and Pan were hanging around, with Pan continuously trying to bite the small branches, causing it to retaliate by slapping him silly. Sam on the other hand, tried to help but was also quickly bound by the Tree before being waved around and around. Upon seeing this scenario, he wasn't worried that the tree was acting like a sentient being; it was after all, acting based on the defensive mechanisms the plant has.

It basically treats the two as annoying pests to be stopped, probably due to Pan attempting to take a bite of its roots or branches, most likely. However, it is still bound to me. The moment it recognized my existence in space, it started to sway, its leaves hitting one another created a melodious sound to echo in the surrounding area, echoing throughout the garden space.

Anyone who was nearby paused and looked around in surprise. Everyone proceeded to the base of the tree as fast as they could. They had heard the ancestors tell them that every 175,000 years there would be a grand meeting, where they could take a glimpse of who their creator was.