Chapter 163: The failed World

Twelve sat comfortably next to Evin, with part of her consciousness superimposing upon the boy. 

She witnessed the latter spend about four and a half days in the failed World unconsciously. At first, he was obtaining information, witnessing the birth of the Instruments of Death and then seeing the Soul Tree bloom. But, he was caught by a corrupted soul, with the other trying to take over his soul and ultimately failing. 

Evin's soul was much too powerful to be absorbed by some random corrupted soul.

But instead of getting damaged by due to the failure and being destroyed, the soul desperately tried to find a common ground with Evin's soul and merge. Even though Evin's soul was strong, it was too inexperienced, so it could only follow the other's lead.

From what her mother told her, there were countless methods for two souls to merge and all of them were random so Twelve wasn't sure exactly which of it was happening to the two. But she knew that whatever it was, it would last between a day and a week. 

This was a rather unexpected and a bit of an undesirable turn of events, but Twelve was confident in her ability to solve whatever problem that may appear in Evin after the merge finishes. She wasn't the Authority of Time for nothing.

Thus, Twelve had Four put up a protective barrier around Evin, so the other souls that came from the Soul Tree wouldn't interrupt the process. 

Since almost five days passed at this point, Twelve was expecting the other to wake up soon.

Although Evin's soul spent a long time in Four's World, in the main world, only 72 minutes had passed. Time flowed very differently in the World Evin was stuck in, with about a hundred minutes in the World, equaling to a single minute in the main World. 

Thus nothing much had changed outside.

The super-imposer that tried to attack Twelve was still outside the barrier, sitting in a meditating position. Twelve didn't plan to shoo away the man, and thankfully, the man didn't seem inclined to make a fuss out of this event. Twelve was prepared to ask Kal, or Kena to intervene for her, but it didn't seem needed for the time being.

As Twelve kept an eye on Evin's state, she was also delving through her memories on the side, digging up anything related to Fourth Joke's failed World. Most of them were in the forms of stories that her mother told her.

"Technically, the World isn't a complete failure as it didn't just break down or outright disfunction like the countless other ones. The problem that this particular World faces lies in other things," a recording of her mother's soothing voice played out inside Twelve's head and a calming sensation appeared on her face. 

"In my original plan, Fourth Joke's World was supposed to be a kind of World of Death originally, which kind of explains the decay and the generally gloomy atmosphere. Since the World was very special to myself, I poured a lot of my efforts to create the perfect World of Death, pushing the limits of her imagination and shoving the purest Death energy I could muster into it"

"But that turned out to be a failure, since anyone and everything that entered or resided in the World… just died. A living being's soul would be ground down and wither under the effects of the almost unholy amount of Death energy, while any kind of object that appeared in the World would turn into pale white ash. After only a few days the test started, the entirety of the World became a landscape of said white ash…" The Empress voice continued. 

"I then decided that there should be something that keeps the visitors and the things of the World alive and functioning. I reset the World of Death, but this time I added a few extra features"

"First: When a mage enters the World of Death, they wouldn't be entering a preexisting World of Death. They would be turning a copy of a small area of the main World around them into a new, mini-World of Death. This was because I realized that even with something to hold back the Death energy, it would still end up corroding and taking over the entire World sooner or later"

"Anyways, next: A Soul Tree would spawn nearby. These gigantic trees would constantly pour out a certain type of Soul energy into the atmosphere of the World of Death, keeping the residents' souls invigorated and 'not quite dead'. It also had the ability to keep the objects inside functioning to a degree as well"

"I thought that this would be enough to make the World usable for mages, but it still faced problems. Like oil and water, Soul energy and Death energy couldn't quite coexist or merge together. So, in the end, the World could only be described as a 'world filled with Soul energy in an otherwise dead environment'. Inside the World, a mage was able to absorb soul energy, but those would be accompanied by death energy that would slowly but surely kill the mage" 

"There was also the issue of the Instruments of Death (as I like to call them) that appeared out of nowhere and started rampaging inside the World," the voice finished narrating and chuckled.

A slight smile appeared on Twelve's face as she heard this chuckle.

"I really didn't know where these things came from so I was quite shocked to see a new form of life appear suddenly. If one was unfamiliar with Death energy and tried to make contact with these things, they would immediately wither down and turn to dust. Obviously, I was fine, but most others would probably have a bad time with these things"

"Facing so many problems, I tried my best to resolve all of them, I really did. I added methods to filter out the Death energy, made it so that the Soul Tree repelled the Instruments of Death to a certain degree, tried to slow down the corrosion of the World a bit… but the resources and effort I had to use to keep the World working was too much to justify letting mages use it in a wider scale. And besides, in some cases, Death magic can be a bit too overwhelming, so at this point, I just gave up on the idea of the World of Death and focused on developing the World of Souls," The Empress said and continued on a tangent about the story of Seventh Joke. 

This was an unrelated story so Twelve didn't bother digging through her memories for details about that. Though, she did know that it eventually branched off into the final versions of the World of Emotions and the World of Thoughts. 

"Ahem, anyway, I did not completely get rid of the failed World of Death, since I still wanted to use it to try out some other things I had in mind. Perhaps I could have only a set number of mages access it; or turn into a trial of some sorts, filled with soul-related creatures. Since at that point, I was also trying to create a World that was made for keeping various creatures and monsters inside it" 

"I think I named it the World of Summoning or something, right? Your sister, Second Joke's World… which faced the problem of keeping all the monsters alive and fed…"

Hearing that, Twelve glanced at the girl who was dressed in a simple, white clothing, with a pondering gaze.

Shaking her head, Twelve focused on her mother's voice.