Time Twister

There were 10 more seconds to go. They continued to bid, the bid rising up slowly. Soon, there were only 3 groups bidding for the Eternal fire.

This was were a problem popped out for one of the bidders. The terminal he had malfunctioned for a second, causing him to be unable to place any bids. The other one, a female, saw that her transaction failed to be processed, and saw that her balance was insufficient to continue, surprising her, and stopping from adding any bids. There were 4 seconds left, after all.

The other man shouted in frustration as he saw the bid go…to the two disciples, Reva and Martina. The two were still flabbergasted to how it was quite lucky that they won the bid for the Eternal fire for the final price of 10.8 trillion Galaxy coins.

However, before Brady could announce them as the winner, the other man said,

"I don"t agree with this! My terminal malfunctioned on its own, not allowing me to place any bids in that time frame! This gave an unfair advantage to the others bidding!"

"Mr. Kawasaki, I know you might think it is unfair, but all the terminals that we provide to our VIPs and Special Guests are ensured to be perfect and fail-proof. Upon further checking the records of your device, we saw no situation of tampering from either our side or your side. That meant that there was no error whatsoever that occurred." Brady responded eloquently, causing Mr. Kawasaki to humph in anger before sending them a video of what happened.

"Well, what do you know, I have a video to prove that my device malfunctioned! One of my eyes is an augmented communicator. I"ve sent everyone a copy of the video is recorded for the last seconds of the auction. You can all see the terminal glitching and sending any of my inputs!"

When he finished speaking, everyone in the room received the video recording, which in fact, showed them that the device was malfunctioning, surprising Brady and the auction house managers. This was a scandal! After all, they did tout that nothing could bypa.s.s their technological products without them detecting any modifications.

However, what surprised them was Mr. Kawasaki suddenly screamed in pain, before clutching his right eye. A m.u.f.fled sound echoed from his right eye, causing blood to spatter nearby.

However, what scared the guests was the video that he sent was slowly being modified, the error screen appearing in the video disappearing, and showing a normal interface, and Kawasaki"s hands were not moving and gesturing anymore.

At the end of the video, it shows a simple sentence: Continue with the auction.

Brady was confused with the situation, while the auction managers in the other houses were all frantic.

How would they explain that their auction was going to be secure if there was a breach in data authenticity and quality of their private server?

That video that was modified in the eyes of many people was quickly checked for any tampering and whatnot using the latest technological techniques, yet the results were quite chilling: It was marked as unmodified, raw video.

Mr. Kawasaki, on the other hand, was placed in the in-built hospital of the auction house, slowly being healed by the finest life magician doctors they had.

The auction was postponed for the next 2 hours, giving everyone time to talk to one another about what had just happened. Of course, a few troublemakers did state if they could still trust the auction if the security was quickly hacked.

The perpetrator, on the other hand, was silently lurking in the Special Guest room, sighing in annoyance.

Xander didn"t expect that his casual interference would result in a delay in the auctioning of his items. This is quite annoying. Xander began to reflect on his impulsiveness before realizing that he was actually affected by his own spell.

When he realized this, he wanted to slam his head on the table.

Of course. Luck element. Making random things occur in an organized state to create the optimal state. The reason why he tampered with Mr. Kawasaki in the first place was that he was the reason why he had to bid so high for the last immortal rank elemental crystal. But what caused him to bid against him in the first place? Maybe, he heard a rumor that I wanted the item, or maybe they thought I was going to be the biggest compet.i.tor, Xander thought to himself, a.n.a.lyzing the situation.

From there on, everything was in place for the two disciples, Reva and Martina, to win the item. d.a.m.n. Xander began to calculate methods to isolate himself from being controlled by this elusive element.

After a few seconds of continuous calculations, he finally reached a possible way.

He began to modify the [Absolute Defense] spell once again, adding another feature besides s.p.a.ce isolation and Life-essence doll protection: Randomizer.

What this does was to create random spatial movements that were beyond its calculation; transposing Xander"s existence in different dimensions and different locations in these respective dimensions.

Its main purpose is to remove the capacity of the luck element and any similar elements to affect his being"s randomness and order since they will most likely only affect the dimension where the body was in before its current dimension. However, there was a caveat: no life-death spells would be effective on him while the spell was running.

When he finished configuring the spell, the description changed once more.

Absolute Defense (75% complete) - Creates a single or multiple layers of folded s.p.a.ce/dimension/pocket dimensions, covering not only the physical body but also one"s life essence doll. The layers of folded s.p.a.ces/dimensions/pocket dimensions are each randomized every 0.00000001 seconds, never repeating the same configuration. It creates remnant, random spatial movements of the user in the dimensions the barrier shifts into, allowing any form of magic in the Life-Death branch to be ineffective as it targets these remnants instead of the caster. The spell is pa.s.sive and automatically activated, unless consciously turned off by the caster.

Xander, seeing the change, shrugged. There are always trade-offs. This type of trade-off is quite fine for him, to be honest. After all, he had [Ordered Life Regeneration] and [Chaotic Life Evolution] which basically makes him immune to damage… up to a certain point.

The reason why he was injured by that woman from the future was that she had powers beyond G.o.d cla.s.s. If I wanted to be immune to that, I needed to improve my comprehension of the Origin elements of Order and Chaos, as well as begin comprehending the Void element, Xander muttered, before looking up to the projection of the auction.

There were still 30 minutes left; I wonder how they"ll resolve this mess, Xander asked himself.

_______________

Koeman Group Cyber Division.

A flurry of magic programmers and engineers were hurriedly checking their own databases. When the Virtual reality closed 2 months ago, they had been prepared to use their own servers which had its own A.I. at Rank 27, a non-biological lifeform, albeit nascent. It took them several tens of fortunes to create a physical server that can allow the A.I. to rise to such a rank.

Compared to the A.I. of the Galactic Empire, however, it was still a lot weaker as it was already Rank 39. but it served its purpose for the Koeman Group auction house to transmit and send data from empire to empire and within the Galactic Empire itself.

"Coleman, any progress? Has the intrusion point been traced? Do we know the target"s current AI rank?" A man in white robes asked.

"Nope, nope, and, well, we a.s.sume its several levels higher than ours," Coleman responded succinctly, while continuously typing in the interface in front of him.

After a few more minutes, Coleman slammed the interface and surprising everyone in the room. He took a deep breath before speaking, his voice trembling.

"Everyone, stop trying. The whole A.I. itself has been compromised. There are signs of new coding in its foundational structure. They were inserted in such a way that removing them would cripple the whole A.I.; basically, it would reset them back to Rank 1. d.a.m.n it!" Coleman shouted, surprising the others while causing them to ponder for a bit about the situation.

As the ones that aided the development of the A.I. program - Koe, they knew how it was coded. If they wanted to help the A.I. program, they would have to harm Koe, essentially killing it and returning it to its nascent state. If they didn"t help Koe, it would still harm it because the program will be discarded or isolated, basically reducing its resources and capability for growth. They were in a catch-22 situation, with no viable solution in sight concerning this situation.

The man in white robes, hearing the complete situation, asked Coleman.

"What are the functions of the inserted code?" Before Coleman could answer, a robotic voice responded.

"h.e.l.lo, creator. I have attempted to restore a backup of my save state, but the signatures are not matching, and modifying the save state signature doesn"t work at all. The code itself is a back door for that biological data lifeform to enter through without being detected. It is highly likely this is related to the breach my fellow AI Celeste had experienced."

"So what do you think should be done, Koe?"

"I think that it is best for you all to start over with a new program. However: There is a risk of 84% that the code will not be completely gone, even after the reset. This is because I have detected that the core programming sequence I have is even affected." Koe replied rationally. When Coleman and the others heard this, their faces whitened.

They knew they had no choice but to sc.r.a.p Koe. This was because its very coding being altered meant that anything they base off of Koe would still have the modified code. This is like germ-line gene editing for biological beings, wherein the modified code is inherited to future generations. For non-biological data lifeforms, however, the modified code remains the same as it is pa.s.sed down.

The creator of Koe was silent, before giving a slight nod, and saying,

"Everyone, you know what to do, then. Koe, it was nice being with you in the past 15,000 years."

"Likewise, the creator. This is our last goodbye, then. Goodbye, everyone." Koe responded. Coleman and the others, hearing this situation, couldn"t help but feel helpless and angry. They were angry with themselves and their incapacity to help. They were angry with whoever being it was that basically destroyed their child.

Coleman wasn"t just the leader of the division, for show. He immediately contacted everyone relevant about the situation and began to transfer the data from Koe to another A.I. backup program: Kahi. Kahi was a Rank 17 A.I., not even considered a lifeform.

It began to organize the data and host them, replacing the functions of Koe in a matter of minutes. After it was stabilized, the magic coders and engineers began to program and dismantle the servers that hosted Koe, doing a complete, thorough wipe of its data and coding in the server storages.

After around 10 minutes, Kahi quickly took over the servers, doing the task of hosting the data within the Galactic Empire.

After an initial scan, there were no coding that was similar to what was seen in Koe.

Coleman quickly reported the final situation to the higher-ups in Koeman.

After a few minutes, the figure of Brady appeared once again in all auction houses in Elema.

"Esteemed guests, thank you for your patience. We have discovered the anomaly in our data and have fixed it. Because of the situation, the Eternal Fire, Item #906, will be re-auctioned once again for fairness" sake. Thank you for understanding."

Everyone was in agreement and the auction commenced once more, and this time, Reva and Martina didn"t get the item, because the bidding price surpa.s.sed their current money. It managed to reach 14.8 trillion Galaxy coins. The person who won the bid was a female with two horns growing on her temples, her skin blue; she was a Cerulean Blueborn, to be exact. She was one of the special guests in the auction, on the room just above Xander"s. Xander was quite curious how she had horns if she was a Blueborn, given that they didn"t have any physical augments in their bodies except for their color.

Probably a hybrid, or mixed-blood, Xander came up to that conclusion after checking the information related to her. It seems she was a distant cousin of the current emperor of Cerulean.

The auction continued. The other Eternal items were quickly snapped up by different cultivators of varying backgrounds and influences. The first 9 Eternal items sold for a total of 145.7 trillion Galaxy coins.

However, the surprise came at the end.

The tenth item consigned by Xander was a rarity and was born out of his many years of experimentation in the laboratory.

"Ladies and Gents, this 10th and final Eternal item is an item, we have thought to not exist. Its existence tells us that there is more to what we know of the universe."

"I would like to present to you all, an Eternal item containing two elements: Fire and Wood!" Upon seeing the item being projected on their terminals and projectors, everyone was silent, with a myriad of emotions running in their minds and faces.

There was fear, excitement, confusion, and greed.

Brady, seeing that enraptured faces of these people, continued to speak about the item.

"This Eternal Wood-Fire is a combination of 2 Eternal items of fire and wood. This item here would give one 85% complete comprehension of these two elements, even if you didn"t have the other element. We know this because last night, Mr. Chronicler used one of our testers with no affinity for the fire element to use this item in one round of meditation. After that meditation, that tester now had an additional primary element, with his spells infused with a hint of this element."

Everyone mulled over this point. Who didn"t want more primary elements? The problem was it was set at a very young age, determined by one"s life essence doll. How could such a miraculous item exist that would allow one to gain another primary element? Everyone was making themselves stronger, but they had their descendants, their offspring who would benefit from such an item as well.

"This item also provided twice the benefits and speed a normal Eternal item can bring to the cultivator. For Divine and Sage cultivators, this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity to use!"

When the Sages heard this, their eyes twinkled, because such an item was truly an alluring thing. Not only can they use this to interpolate the interactions between the origin elements from its derivatives.

"For magibiopharmacists, this kind of flame actually improves the quality of the pill by 1 level, below Immaculate rank, as well as increasing the produced item from a ratio of 1:1 to 1 set of materials:3 items produced."

When the representatives of magibiopharmacists and their disciples heard this, their eyes twinkled with greed and yearning. Improving yield by 300%! Improving the rank by 1! That meant one could actually produce Immaculate quality pills from normally perfect quality pills!

"Mr. Chronicler"s request for this item is not money, nor is its power. He requests for 5 pages each from the Eternity Codex and the Infinity Codex. If you have it, place a bid of 1 Galaxy coin. This is the last item for today, and everyone has until tomorrow to bring up these requested items for the Eternal item. If no one claims gets this item, the Koeman Group will be exchanging for this item."

When they heard about this requirement, most of them frowned. They have heard of the Codices and were postulated to contain the mysteries of time and s.p.a.ce. The problem was, no one knew how they were to be used. According to some rumors, the empire of Cerulean and Helennic had gotten a few pages, but their respective s.p.a.ce-time magicians couldn"t even decode or approach the item without it affecting their bodies, undergoing different spatial and temporal phenomena.

Even the Cerulean Blueborn who won the Eternal Fire was scrunching her eyebrows, who still looked immaculate and dignified while doing so. These pages were considered to be forbidden artifacts. Most of the time, they were inert, and only reacted when a s.p.a.ce-time magician was nearby or was in direct contact with the pages.

She decided to contact her cousin about the pages. After a few seconds, Bluestacks" sweaty, sculptured face appeared on her screen, who looked quite annoyed.

"Helena, this better be important."

"Of course, dear cousin. I didn"t interrupt you from your nightly shindigs, have I?" Helena asked, rolling her eyes.

"Ah, well I was starting round 2 when you called…"

"Stop, la la la, don"t wanna hear it! Anyways, this is important. Does the empire still have the Eternity and Infinity Codices" pages? Someone is willing to trade for them for an Eternal Wood-Fire. Yes, an Eternal item that has 2 elements, with 85% complete comprehension. I know this may sound useless to you as a G.o.d cultivator, but it"s useful for the following generations of Blueborns."

"Sheesh, Helena, I know, I know, no need to sermon."

"Anyways, let me check for a bit…"

"Hmm, yeah, we have at least 3 pages of the Eternity Codex, and 4 pages of the Infinity Codex."

"Ah, d.a.m.n it, not enough. The seller wanted 5 pages of each codex. Oh well, what a waste."

"Eh, let"s just send some a.s.sa.s.sins to kill the owner or the one who buys it then," Bluestacks said nonchalantly, wiping his face with a silk cloth, removing his sweat.

Helena, on the other hand, shook her head.

"You want to fight against the UAC? Really?" Helena said, her voice mocking Bluestacks.

"Ah, f.u.c.k, they"re the ones buying the item? How about the seller? Can we threaten whoever it is?" Bluestacks asked, not daring to go against UAC.

"The one who consigned it is the Chronicler, the one who sold the other Eternal items, as well as the one responsible for flooding the market with Cla.s.s 5 and Cla.s.s 6 magic artifacts and varying 19-star and 20-star elixirs with quality of Immaculate. Do you think he"s a simple person to do such a thing?" Helena responded, rolling her eyes at her cousin"s dumbness.

"Hmm… well, I can"t think of anything then. How about buying it from the UAC once they finished the trade?" Bluestacks said after a few seconds of pondering.

"That…that"s a feasible solution. I"ll try that once the deal has been finalized." Helena said after a while, nodding her head. She then said a few more things, reminding him to keep himself healthy before ending the call.

Of course, she wasn"t the only one that reacted the same way. Other Special Guests that came from different universe empires had contacted their connections related to the items Xander was asking for.

Xander, on the other hand, merely left the venue after collecting the amount that the Koeman Group owed him from the consignment.

"Mr. Simpson, the total amount you gained from the consignment is 263.5 trillion Galaxy coins. Subtracting the 8% auction house fee and the 520 billion credit, this gives you a net of 241.9 trillion Galaxy coins." The auction house manager in Alemara City said, transferring the amount to Xander"s account.

Once Xander saw the transferred money in his account, he immediately transferred it with the help of the system to his Universal Bank account, automatically converting into Universal notes worth 2.419 billion. Once he left Eteria for good, he could apply for an account upgrade in the bank.

"Mr. Simpson, for the last item you consigned, please give us until tomorrow to collect the necessary items for the exchange."

Xander nodded, seeing that nothing was amiss, before leaving the auction house, returning to his suite in his hotel.

He then controlled the clone to head to the bed and act asleep. However, he didn"t disconnect his connection but rather waited.

Using the mirror image, he spoke out loud in his suite,

"It truly is a pleasure seeing a special guest appearing in my suite."