Xyrin Empire

Chapter 456: Chapter 456: The End of the World

The situation of the World Fragment was more complex than we had imagined.

The probe released earlier had already reached the edge of this fractured world, and this morning, Shadow City sent back the processed detection data, just as initially predicted. The volume of the World Fragment was limited to this unnamed city and a relatively small area outside the city. Within the city limits, the fragment largely remained stable, but in the border areas, near the world’s end, there was always severe fluctuation. There, the level of information chaos increased by nearly twenty times for every meter extended outward, and the entropy value surged to the limit required to maintain world stability within less than half a kilometer, where matter and energy beyond that cloudy boundary immediately lost stability, turning into a dense soup in a pot of heat death. According to the fuzzy description provided by the probe, this World Fragment appeared like a mass whose density dramatically decreased from inside to outside—its urban interior being a stable solid, the suburban areas outside were a turbulent yet still tangible liquid, and further out, the border areas were chaotic gas clusters… and beyond that was the end.

This bizarre phenomenon ignited intense research interest in Taville, yet completely invalidated a relatively simple world model previously conjectured by us (well, actually by Big Sister and Sandora).

In our original conception, the World Fragment was supposed to be an information assembly endowed with a self-explanatory capability, encapsulated by a shell similar to a World Barrier. This model was named a “self-enclosed” world, wherein its information was bound due to the collision of two worlds resulting in some leakage, thus affecting our real world. In such a case, merely triggering a slight Void Shock in the Void Plane could have separated the two worlds, thereby interrupting the Law pollution. But now, what was initially conceived as a closed world had become open, and the pollution of Law changed from an injection mode to a diffusing mode…

Confused? Okay, let’s put it simpler. What’s more difficult—pulling a needle out of your arm or having that needle break into iron filings mixed into the flesh, then having to pick out each grain?

Sandora used that example to make me understand what she meant by “diffusing Law pollution.”

The worst-case scenario at the moment was that the two worlds hadn’t actually collided materially; they were still each drifting in two infinitely close yet infinitely distant points within the Endless Void. Meanwhile, the World Fragment, now losing the bindings of the World Barrier, was evaporating. The data it emitted evaporated in the form of super-macro waves (a fortified version of the world information projection—compared to the latter, the super-macro waves were like a proud fiber-optic cable standing before dial-up connections), irradiating any world in the void with similar information characteristics, including—the Earth Plane.

Since there’s no concept of distance in the void, all “proximity” and “distancing” are based on the degree of similarity of the World Laws. This radiation has inevitably contaminated every plane similar to Earth in the Endless Void, even if the “distance” between them was vast enough to exhaust both Asida and Asidora to the point of vomiting blood.

This dreadful guess was soon confirmed. The Imperial Task Force stationed in the Magic Prohibition World sent back reports of anomalous events occurring worldwide, originally thought to be activities caused by mages or superpower users. However, once we envisioned the scenario of “widespread pollution” to Shadow Base, Sandora commanded those task forces to reanalyze every anomaly in the Magic Prohibition World. It was proven that aside from 10% of events related to mages or superpower users, nearly 90% of the anomalous events could likely be attributed to contamination from the World Fragment.

Tsuruya and Lola also reported anomalies happening within Academy City and the British Puritan Forces that morning. These large-scale and worrying anomalies, as well as their eerie characteristics undetectable by ordinary people, made the two girls (uh… let’s just say Lola is forever seventeen) quite uneasy. Moreover, given the unique power structure of the Magic Prohibition World, the widespread anomalous phenomena could at any moment reignite conflicts between mages and superpower users, relations only having recently eased. Currently, Lola and Aresta Skeleton Walker, now our servant, have been ordered to pacify the warriors under their respective forces. Tsuruya was also helping; due to her exposed identity as an “Alien Envoy” during the Star Attack, she presently holds considerable influence in Academy City, even implicitly surpassing a group of LEVEL5s. As a gathering place for a large number of superpower users, rumors of world anomalies had already been circulating in Academy City. And Zuotian Tsuruya, being a student herself, stepping up to reassure the public was obviously much more effective than Aresta—honestly, I hadn’t expected that energetic girl, who always went to watch mermaids in Shadow City, could play such a significant role.