Rupegia

Chapter 177: A New Dimension – Part 3

We might be forced to bring our workshop here from the castle back home. It's almost inevitable that we'll be forced to face an army of pseudo-orcs, and even with the Sky Landers' help, we're going to be extremely outnumbered. Having numerous Field Guns and rifles would give us a ridiculous force multiplier that even the She-Hulk on our side wouldn't be able to match.

Kellogs' war-crimes-cloud is too vulnerable to monster mages fucking things up, so it isn't the be-all and end-all weapon we thought it could be. Even with magical healing, someone using a tornado to chuck the cloud of death back towards our men would be devastating, exactly the kind of thing the Dungeon Master could do…

Though what if we made breathing masks?

But back to the Dungeon Master, there's clearly some sort of intelligence manipulating the dungeon, so we have to treat the monsters as if they're as dangerous and cunning as humanoids. There won't be any "dungeon mercy" letting us plow through the levels unchallenged, and we already know that the mage we killed was using the equivalent of a camera to send images back to his superiors.

But right now, we need to actually be able to walk forward in the 4D room, so there's still some time before we need to rush the tech upgrade.

And I decide to join Alcander in there. He was rather quiet during the meeting, and it's obvious to me that he feels like his pride as a Space mage has been hurt a bit since he's been unable to unravel the magic behind the new level. Well, it is quite a puzzling room, so I understand his bafflement.

In fact, it's so puzzling that I can't drop the feeling that there's something I'm "missing" about it, aside from the obvious extra dimension. I guess I'm developing a similar intuition as that of Prince Hekeman's, but, as Hana once eloquently said, "man, this fucking thing fucks with my brain."

I focus on a pillar of dark stone, then close my right eye and memorize the double image I see. After a long moment, as it's actually pretty damn hard to form a concrete memory of this room, I switch eyes and then lean a bit to the left to view it from the same position as the left eye when it was open.

What I see seems to be the exact same with each eye, but when I'm moving my head, the pillar changes continuously.

"We aren't seeing the whole picture…" I mumble as it slowly begins to dawn on me. Then I become distracted for a second as I realize that even sounds seem weird here. "Our extra sight isn't the actual extra dimension."

"What did you say, Your Highness?" Alcander asks from beside me, still with his eyes closed.

I almost slap my head, as it was obvious from the beginning, but it didn't "click" until now. "The 'extra' image we see isn't the fourth dimension; it's just a slice of it. Imagine a statue cut horizontally into slices as thin as paper, and then you're given two slices and told to figure out what the statue looks like from just them."

He suddenly opens his eyes and turns to me, but that disorients him a bit, so he begins to sway. He isn't going to let this stop him from grasping the truth, so he grits his teeth and flexes his whole body to keep himself steady.

"Why are we even seeing the 'extra' image, then?" Alissa's foxy voice casually echoes in my head.

I have no idea, but I guess it's better than feeding hundreds of "slices" into our minds, all at the same time.

Then Alcander very gently lowers his head in respect. "I feel like I finally understand it, Your Highness, thank you."

"You're welcome?" I blurt out in confusion.

Then he raises his right hand and utters a quick chant, "Bend and curve; balloon, shrink, grow, and deflate. I shape distances like a molder with clay, I play with them like a child's toy, and I alter them like an enchanter's alloy. Obey my will, and [Warp Space]!"

And the reality ahead of us wobbles and wavers, and then something happens to it, but my mind goes blank trying to understand what.

"I… I think I got it! I got a hold of the fourth dimension!" he shouts, his hand and voice trembling in elation.

I can sense his spell, but I can't grasp where it is, which means that I can't interrupt it, and that's a bit of a frightening concept.

But I don't let that get in the way of progress as I praise and request, "That's actually quite impressive. Can you try to 'remove' or 'reduce' it to make this area more bearable?"

"I can certainly attempt to do so, Your Highness," he eagerly answers.

And I feel him do something, but I just can't find the words to describe it, though the more he does it, the less blurry it becomes in my mind, so it's definitely helping me… open my "third eye"? Then I feel that my "extra vision" is starting to shift.

So now it's my turn to shout excitedly, "It's doing something!"

"Yes, I am!" he proudly replies, but he's closed his eyes again.

"No, I mean my vision; the overlapping images are changing!" I quickly explain.

But that makes him hesitate. "I dare not open my eyes and lose this, Your Highness."

So I attempt to pat his shoulder in reassurance, but I can't find the way to get my hand there, so I just nod and hum, "That's fine; you're helping me 'see.'"

The girls are also getting curious, so I open the [Gate] for them to join us, but Lina and Roxanne prefer to stay behind, still traumatized.

"This feels weird and annoying," Aoi immediately complains, vocalizing the wives' opinion of how not being able to "touch" Alcander's spell makes them feel.

Indeed, it's so frustrating that Hana even reaches her hand forward, trying to physically touch whatever it is that Alcander is doing.

Then I notice that the "extra vision" is becoming increasingly fainter.

"Oh, you're actually doing it!" I blurt out in surprise.

And that strokes his ego, so he proudly exclaims as he puffs up his chest, "Yes, yes, Your Highness! I'm doing 'it'!"

But then we hear a rumble, and the room starts to shake.

Uh…

"Wolfy, his spell is touching the stone in the room," Lina wisely points out.

But I'm so distracted that it takes me a couple of seconds to understand what she means, and then I desperately shout to Alcander, "Wait, wait, you're trying to turn four-dee matter into three-dee matter; that's like compressing a solid cube into a sheet of paper!"

Then he freezes, and the rumbling stops. "Oh, hold on… let me adjust the borders of the spell so that it doesn't touch anything solid. That should be enough, correct?"

I shrug. "I guess so. It's still going to increase the air pressure, so I'll summon an elemental-wife to deal with that."

"I need to get my staff…" he quietly remarks and lifts his left hand, but it's like he has Huntington's and can't move correctly, making it really hard to use the [Item Box] window and pull his staff out, so he gives up after a moment and clicks his tongue in frustration. It does take a lot more effort to do magic without staves and other magic-enhancing items, so it's understandable.

He still manages to modify the area the spell covers, it just takes a long moment, and then he continues "shrinking" the fourth dimension. The extra vision fades away faster now that there isn't solid matter resisting Alcander's spell, and we all eagerly await him completing his work. But then we all jump in surprise at the same time when his spell suddenly becomes "touchable."

"There, I'm done," he calmly states, very satisfied with himself.

There's still some "extra vision" going on, but it's only in effect for the walls, floor, and ceiling, so we can at least look at ourselves, but the important thing is that we can now actually move without going insane, though the floor is still wonky and weird to step on. It felt very claustrophobic not being able to move even a limb, so this small degree of freedom is very refreshing.

Alissa takes dainty steps while staring at her feet, while Hana and Aoi (with Gify riding her) are bolder and explore the room, and Yunia and Ciel prefer to stay in place while they observe things. As for me, the first things I inspect are the holes to try and find out where they lead.

There don't seem to be any windows or doors here, at least not from this angle, so I'm worried about something small crawling in here with us without us noticing. If monster insects are already a horribly disgusting thing, imagine if you couldn't even fight them as they attacked you from a dimension you couldn't perceive.

Then I get a feeling that we're missing people, so I summon the golems here because they're being shy.

"We're even less able to adapt to this environment than Master Lina," Ted promptly begins explaining herself.

"Therefore, we don't wish to get in the way," Suzy completes, and Jarn nods for them.

"We just like your company," Ciel amiably remarks and grabs Ted, then presses her against her massive chest, though she's wearing armor, so there's no softness.

"Very well; this duty, we're able to perform," Jarn declares and grabs Yunia's hand, to her surprise. "I shall comfort my Superior as I believe I can emotionally support her the most."

That's actually so narcissistic in a way that only an elf could be.

"Master Lina isn't here; therefore, Master Alissa is the one most in need of my cuteness," Suzy follows up and hovers in front of her chosen, asking to be hugged.

"Thank you," my fox replies and promptly does just that.

Anyway, the floor feels like stepping onto glitched, sharp gravel. You get conflicting sensations about what exactly is under your feet, and even then, the tiles are jagged because the room was deliberately designed to be as confusing as possible. And not only that, but the floor, the walls, and the ceiling are also all at different angles, so the room's shape is like the most warped box one could ever imagine.

At least the holes lead nowhere, so there's no way that anything can get inside without breaking the dark stone blocks that make up everything. So I summon a spirit elemental and tell it to explore outside, but it actually has so much trouble moving through 4D that it gets stuck in the wall.

Oh, well, it might eventually get through.

So we turn our attention to Alcander's spell, which seems to be the best way to stimulate our third eye. But it's the whole "your mind goes blank if you look at something you weren't supposed to" all over again, so there isn't much to do other than brute-forcing it.

And now that there's a more "tangible" goal, Hana is able to use her specialty: brute force. Technically, her affinity for this room is very low, but she makes up for it and more with her stupidly high "Willpower."

"HNGH…!" she takes a big fat… no, I'm not going to say this about one of the wives; it's too crass. But the fact that she's straining herself so much is concerning.

"You'll pull a muscle," I cautiously warn her.

"She'll what?" Alissa reflexively questions the unknown phrase.

"Pull a muscle. Never heard of it?" I repeat, and the golems immediately download the information from my memories so that they can build a whole Wikipedia page of explanations for her.

"Oh, you mean tear a muscle?" Ciel hums, instantly dashing the golems' hopes, which makes her feel bad, so I reassure her that the golems don't mind.

"Anyway, yeah. She's straining so much she'll hurt herself," I worriedly point out.

"I like the pain!" Hana shouts with a fearsome grin, and… yeah, might as well just let her do what she wants and then use [Pain Conversion].

So I shrug.

But she really is making progress; it's just that it's so mind-fucky that not even through [Bind] are we unable to understand things. Also, what we're attempting to do isn't just "memorize the room"; we're trying to truly see in 4D.

It isn't that difficult to memorize the room. It's like you have a statue of a cow that gradually morphs into the shape of an eagle as you move along the fourth dimension, so you just need to memorize the two extreme shapes. The difficulty is in seeing the whole thing at once and also in how to actually move in this new dimension, but Hana's focusing solely on the former.

Aoi then becomes distracted as she focuses on a pillar, which only appears if you look at it funny. She and Lina have the second-best affinity for this room, but one of them has been traumatized by it, so it falls on Aoi to explore for both of them.

And since we have so many different perspectives on a problem that's all about seeing things from a new angle, why not join all of our minds through [Bind]?

"This feels like the perfect opportunity for it, yes," Ciel happily agrees.

"It'll likely make things faster," Yunia points out, very much not into spending a whole day inside a nausea-inducing room, be it 4D or not.

"I'm always open to more Gestalt time," Alissa remarks and grabs my clawed hand, eager for some mind-melding intimacy.

And the rest of the wives casually hum in agreement.

Alright, Gestalt, enga-…!

"Your Highness, the mages we requested from Prince Hekeman have arrived," a Companion relays to Roxanne.

Ciel takes over her body to politely instruct, "Do they have their own Space mage? Ours is busy, so they'll need their own to come and go as they please, and they'll also need to wear boots, for the floor is very sharp and unpleasant for bare feet. Also, the rest of us are busy trying to understand the extra dimension, so we won't be able to introduce them to it."

And the sudden change in demeanor makes the Companion's mind hang for a second. But then she shakes her head to dispel her confusion and politely replies, "Very well."

Ahem, let's try this again.

Gestalt, engage!

Of course, because Hana is under a humongous strain, it affects us too when I connect everyone. But because she's doing the heavy lifting, it frees our minds to take in and process all the information.

And at last, I truly see.

A 3D axis is normally represented by three arrows of different colors, each at 90º angles from the others. Two arrows make a plane, and three make a corner of a cube. But where would the fourth arrow go? Nowhere and everywhere.

But that's not really important because my point is that Alcander's spell is "suppressing" that fourth arrow, shrinking it down to zero, exactly as if you squished a cube until it was a piece of paper. But in this case, it's a 4D cube squished until it's in 3D. It's quite the beautifully-constructed spell, and the "3D cube" looks so elegantly "perfect" that it's mesmerizing in a way that's difficult to explain, just like everything else about this room.

But even that isn't important as our minds are still far from 100% load, so I look away from it and focus on the 4D wall before us.

Like the example of being given two paper-thin slices of a statue, we now have twelve pairs of eyes, each giving us a slice (the ten wives (the golems included), minus two that aren't present, plus three elementals (earth, light, and spirit) and Gify). And that gives me an idea.

A group of Chimera mages suddenly enters the room, just in time to witness a feat of magic… and cheating.

I summon a dozen little birds and feed their vision into our minds. I can't add their brains to increase our processing power, but that's unnecessary, as we still haven't reached 100% load.

More, more!

So I strain my mana organ and summon 20 more.

AND AT LAST, I TRULY, TRULY SEE!

What a beautifully warped room. Only a sadistic and deranged mind could come up with this horribly confusing design! It's so fucking messed up that it's like staring at a violent and hateful abstract painting that touches your heart, somehow.

It's art!

"Are they alright?" Alissa hears a Chimera mage whisper to Alcander.

The olive-skinned imperial dares to slightly open his eyes and take a glance at us, but he promptly closes them again and diplomatically replies, "I-… I think so. Pay no heed to the royals; they're merely marveled at the outlandishness of this room."

We certainly are!

"Wolfy, the wall, please," Alissa kindly requests.

Hm? Oh, yeah.

If she didn't say anything, I could've spent long minutes appreciating every detail of this room, but I think our minds would give out before then.

So I extend my hand forward and cast [Earth Wall], but then I immediately freeze as the sensation of casting a spell in 4D is… exquisite. It's like playing with putty, but on steroids… or maybe cocaine, or meth? There's just so much more to do, and it feels so stimulating to touch the 4D matter, though it's a fairly thick and hard putty, so my excitement takes a small hit.

But the wall eventually falls to my touch as I open it with [Earth Wall], revealing that we're at the center of an uncomfortably bright 4D Gothic cathedral that dwarfs even our castle in Escanso. Even with our enhanced vision, it takes us a long minute to actually process everything we're seeing, and the more we do, the more it looks like an endless number of Penrose staircases.

Then our eyes are overwhelmed not only by the brightness and the… complexity of the cathedral but also by its vibrant colors, as every last surface has some sort of paint and decoration. Whereas the spiral fortress was drab and depressing, this is flamboyant to the extreme.

Then I notice that everyone but us is groaning and averting their gazes in pain, so I promptly close off the wall again, and a Chimera mage pukes, making us feel a bit bad.

And then I undo the Gestalt, and we're hit by a wave of exhaustion.

"Our work here is done," I mumble and grab my forehead as a headache flares. Thankfully, it takes more than this to un-pad my claws, so I don't cut my skin into ribbons.

"Coffee time!" Roxanne cheers inside my soul space, and I even see her form jump with joy. She isn't afflicted with a headache as she didn't physically see the cathedral, so she decides it's her job to cheer us up, and I do love how cheerful she always is.

"Chocolate time," Ciel quietly hums internally, feeling like a headache is enough justification to gorge herself on sweets.

Tea and cookies time.

"Pussy destroying time because I fucking need it," Hana growls hungrily and sweeps me off the floor.

We can do both.