“No more proto-spaces,” she realised. “Direct magical manifestation.”
“There will most likely still be proto-spaces forming for the more powerful manifestations,” Dawn said. “Lower-rank monsters, essences, and awakening stones will start manifesting directly, however. Once that begins, there will be no way to prevent the magic they bring with them from accelerating the rise in magical density even further.”
“I’m not following much of this,” Erika said. “From what I understand, though, you’re saying our world is going to be more magical? Is that bad?”
“It’s bad,” Jason said.
“Monsters randomly appearing in the streets,” Farrah said. “The societies of your world are not prepared for that.”
“That’s not even the real problem,” Jason said. “Worlds aren’t built to handle extreme changes in magical density. The dimensional membrane—that’s the inbisible… inbisivle… the thing you can’t see that keeps the magic out. If that goes sploot, the whole planet gets washed away like a sandcastle when the tide comes in.”
“Wait,” Erika said. “You’re saying the planet is going to be destroyed?”
“If we don’t find a way to stop the magic coming in,” Jason said. “If we can trust what this lady is saying. I think she might not be real.”
“How long until that happens?” Erika asked.
“It's hard to be certain,” Dawn said. “The World-Phoenix reinforced the dimensional membrane of your universe billions of years ago, which is how your world has endured thus far without overt effects. So long as the Network continues to intercept what proto-spaces they can, direct manifestation will begin in roughly a decade. The breaking down of the dimensional membrane will start causing weather effects at some point after that. Minor, at first, but conditions will escalate. Half a century from now, the geological effects will begin. The dimensional membrane will lose integrity entirely at around the two-hundred-and-fifty-year mark, but your planet will be uninhabitable for at least a century before that.”
“So, monsters on the streets in ten years,” Jason said. “Then it ramps up into a constant sequence of disaster movies and no more people in a century and a half.”
“Assuming nothing intervenes to move the clock one way or another,” Dawn said.
“What about that power your boss gave me?” Jason asked. “That stabilised physical realities, right?”
“That might work for a proto-space, Mr Asano. It won’t work for an entire planet.”
“Is it just the planet, or a whole universe thing?”
“Fortunately, the effects are localised,” Dawn said. “The likelihood of a chain reaction affecting the universe at large is very small.”
“Very small isn’t nothing,” Jason said. “We’re totally going to save the universe, which will totally get me some action. I’ll be all ‘hey, ladies, I’m the guy who saved the universe,’ and they’ll be all ‘that sounds like hot nonsense, but you’re way better looking than Kaito, so let’s make out.’ Then I’ll be all ‘I can’t do that; I respect women,’ and they’ll be all ‘it’s totally our choice.’ Since I’m all about female agency, I have to go along with it at that point because it’s the feminist thing to do, so we’ll go the supermarket and buy all the whipped cream…”
“Moving on from that grotesquery,” Farrah said. “You mentioned a link between worlds. Are we to assume that the link is both the cause and solution to the problem?”
“Yes,” Dawn said. “The link is predicated on the history of your two universes and the connection they have always shared. Allow me to explain. Your two universes, like all universes, were created from a seed, what you might know as a singularity. These seeds are created by the Builder.”
“Hold on,” Jason said. “I had a fistfight with the guy who created the universe?”
“What?” Erika asked.
“The Builder you know is not the Builder who created your universe. The original Builder was sanctioned by the other great astral beings for treating your two universes as an experiment.”
“There’s a lot to unpack there,” Jason said. “Let’s start with what sanctioned means.”
“I don’t know,” Dawn said. “All I know is that for all intents and purposes, the old Builder is gone. A new one was then chosen from amongst mortals.”
“You’re saying the mortal used to be some guy?” Jason asked. “Who did they pick?”
“I don’t know,” Dawn told him. “I believe there was some controversy amongst the great astral beings, but there are many things to which even their highest servants are not privy.”
“What was that about treating our world as an experiment?” Erika asked. “I’m not sure I can express the degree to which I don’t like the sound of that.”
“The Builder’s role is to create universe seeds,” Dawn said. “Each one new and unique, which had been the case until your two universes. What the old Builder did was to not just create identical seeds, but to create them by reproducing elements of existing worlds. This does not literally translate to specific elements of those other worlds appearing in yours, but the potential is there. Think of it as having those elements built into the DNA of the universe. They may express themselves or they may not. If and when they do, it may be in very disparate ways. This is especially true given that one of the worlds was given a more rigid dimensional membrane, which is why your world has less magic than Pallimustus.”
“Are you saying we weren’t even the proper experiment?” Jason asked. “We were the control?
“What’s DNA?” Farrah asked.
“It’s kind of like the magic matrix in your body,” Jason said. “Except instead of magic, it’s goop that gives you eyebeams when you fall in a vat of toxic waste.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Farrah said.
“People always say to that to me. And they keep telling me my name. I meet someone and they’re all ‘you’re Jason Asano.’ It’s like I’m a soap opera character that was presumed dead and then came back with amnesia and was played by a different actor.”
“It’s totally like that,” Erika said, laughing. “That makes a super amount of sense.”
Dawn ran a hand over her face.
“What it means,” she said, “is that the intrinsic elements that make up your world share certain traits inherited from other worlds. Take elves, for example. They have existed longer than either of your worlds, yet they appeared natively in both. In Pallimustus, they evolved into one of the world’s natural, intelligent species, while on Earth, they appeared in the form of myth and legend. This is true for many things.”