"What is happening? Is it because of my clones?" Sunny thought, his consciousness reeling from the violent feedback.
The entire Realm of Advancement, his newly claimed territory, was screaming.
With a single mental command, he called his twelve clones back through the portal, pulling them from the threshold of the Arena of Epiphany an instant before reality tore itself apart.
The temporal distortions, the spatial ruptures, the very fabric of the realm, which had been stretched to its breaking point, snapped back into stabilization.
"Nexus! What happened?!" Sunny's asked mentally through the connection between them.
"Master…" Nexus's reply was a pained, shaky thought, a mental whimper from a being who had just experienced an intense migraine.
"The moment your… your other selves… set foot in the arena, the Law of Time shattered. It… it went mad. The accelerated time I was maintaining began to run uncontrollably. In some sectors of the realm, time accelerated to a million times. In others, it stopped completely. In one, Master, it even began to run in reverse. I felt the realm… dying."
Nexus, the living soul of the realm, had felt every tremor. "I tried to regain control, to force the Law back into its proper channel. But my will only made it worse. It was like trying to patch a tsunami with a leaf. The moment your other selves retreated, and only then, was I able to calm the storm."
After ensuring Nexus was stabilizing the realm, Sunny sat back on his throne, his mind reeling with the possible cause of this phenomenon.
The chaotic event had been a failure, but it was also a crucial, invaluable piece of information.
He could, of course, simply ask Adam. The ancient God would likely know the answer, would have some wisdom from a billion years of existence to share.
But Sunny was not a child. He was an Emperor. He would not run to his elder for the solution to every puzzle he finds.
He was a being with SS-Grade Divine Comprehension and S-Grade Wisdom.
He would uncover this mystery himself, and in doing so, perhaps this struggle was the very foundation his own Time Affinity needed to break through to the next grade.
His mind, now amplified by all the talents and the divine buff he casted upon himself, which gave him a perfect feel for his own territory, raced.
He processed the variables, running countless simulations in a matter of seconds. And in just five minutes, he landed on a hypothesis. It was a paradox. A paradox of power.
"The time-law I wove over the arena was a product of my SS-Grade Time Affinity," he mused. "But my clones… they are me. They are Gods too.The law of time was not strong enough to force the body of a God to flow with the accelerated speed of the time. The moment the clones stepped inside, reality rejected the logic, and the law tore itself apart."
He was not sure, but the theory felt correct. And there was only one way to be certain. He needed to test it.
Sunny waved his hand. A small, self-contained subspace, a pocket dimension of only a few acres, materialized in front of him.
He poured his will into it, weaving the same law of accelerated time, setting the time flow similar to his other territory; century in eight hours. "Now," he commanded one of his clones, "go."
The clone stepped into the pocket dimension. Instantly, the fabric of the tiny universe shrieked.
The law of time crackled, flickered, and shattered, just as it had in the arena. The clone, a Godly being, was too heavy for the SS-Grade law to bear.
"So, I was right," Sunny growled in frustration. He tried again. This time, as the clone stepped in, Sunny forced the law to hold.
He poured his own will and a torrent of his faith into the subspace, his consciousness becoming the pillar that manually supported the collapsing subspace.
It worked. The law stabilized. The acceleration time held, even with the clone inside.
But it was a terrible, useless solution. It required his full attention. He couldn't move. He couldn't think of anything else. He couldn't even observe his other clones.
He was a babysitter, trapped in a single, mind-numbingly boring task.
"What's your problem…" he said, letting the subspace collapse in frustration. This test meant that to make his clones train, he would either have to do nothing else but watch them, or sacrifice one of his precious clones to do the same, dull job.
He briefly considered creating a new demigod, a "Demigod of Temporal Stability," but he knew it was a foolish thought. Nexus, the demigod of the realm, had been unable to control a sub-law within it. Even Nova wouldn't be of help here as she wasn't even a God, thus she can't maintain the time flow like him.
'Adam's Soul Splitting talent would be a blessing right now,' he thought, a flicker of envy in his mind. 'I could just tear off a piece of my soul and assign it the task permanently.'
He sat back on his throne, frustrated. He tried another test. He set the time flow to a slower speed; one day outside for a century inside, a 36,500x acceleration.
The clone entered. The law crackled, it sparked, it violently disrupted, but it held… barely.
"I need to reduce it even more?" he grumbled. He thought back. 'Adam chose to slow down our God space. It is 10,000x slower than the outside world, maybe that's the amount a law of SS-Grade can hold'
He set the flow to 10,000x and had the clone enter.
This time, the law held. It was perfect. Stable and absolute. The Godly presence of the clone did not disrupt the temporal flow.
So, that was the limit. An SS-Grade law could only support a divine being at 10,000x acceleration.
"But this is counter-productive!" he snarled, doing the basic math. Why have twelve clones training at a 10,000x speed when he could have eleven training at a 100,000x speed, with one clone sacrificed to maintain the temporal lock?
The output of comprehension and progress would be nearly ten times greater. It was the only logical choice.
But the thought of sacrificing one of his precious clones to be a a time flow maintainer would be a waste. As the more minds tried to comprehend the easier it is to comprehend.
And then, as his mind, amplified by Children of Wisdom, churned on the problem, a new, brilliant idea struck. A thought so perfect, that he almost laughed aloud.
He couldn't create a demigod to do the job. A demigod was a conscious, independent being. But what about an artifact?
An artifact was just a tool. It had no will. It only had a function.
He could manifest an artifact, an SS-Grade "Time Stabilizer."
It's sole and eternal purpose to channel his divine power and maintain the time-lock. It would be the perfect, tireless babysitter, allowing all twelve of his clones to train at the maximum possible speed, freeing him up completely.
But as the complex blueprints of the artifact formed in his mind, a new, crushing reality set in.
To manifest an artifact of this complexity would take hours. Hours of his full attention.
And in the real multiverse, the one outside his territory, the demon gods were on the hunt. The lifeforms, the people, were dying right now.
Time wasn't a luxury he could afford to waste.
Sunny closed his eyes, his mind running countless simulations. He needed the artifact now. He couldn't spend hours building it.
A crazy idea began to form in his mind.
A grin spread across his face, hidden behind his cosmic mask. He had found a solution.
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