No matter how fast and free a fish can move at the bottom of the water, it has no meaning to the sky, the atmosphere, or the boundless universe beyond. What could Belial at that time really do, fold space or cross time. It was hard to say, because he had not truly taken that step yet, so those realms were only guesses to him, or simply something his current understanding could not describe at all.
Now he finally understood why, in the original work, Void facing the projection of Great Sea Cucumber could only take a one sided beating. Even if it was successfully driven back, it could not be counted as a true victory. That was a difference at the fundamental level, where those on the bottom floor could never reach the higher floors no matter how hard they stretched, while those on higher floors striking downwards was far too easy.
There was also something else he had to do, which was to prepare a battlefield for future fights. It was the thing he was currently making from scraps, because only after expanding to this level did he realize how fragile the thing behind him was. If he did not create a relatively safe battlefield to bear possible aftershocks, one slip could wipe everything out.
"The answer is that it is fragile like a mirror. When I saw the truth, it really startled me. So I had been living in a bubble like place all along?" "No wonder the rules there always felt strange and never solid. So it turns out it was something like a projection."
In that single glance, Belial briefly saw the nearby World. He could not see it clearly because the light era there was too bright, but he could tell that the entire World was a super massive aggregation of Holy Light. It was somewhat like an ultra enlarged version of his own Translation Pocket, just with far more users and scene maps inside.
As for the source of the projection, it was of course the Sun hanging in the sky. No wonder he had always felt something was off about that thing, since he had basked in the Sun for so long without feeling any radiation at all. That made his mood rather complicated for a moment.
Only now did he realize that the radiation he had been exposed to before was fake. He had even thought that the rules composing the Sun here were different from the universe he knew, like being unsuited to the environment, so he had never thought of directly going into the Sun to sleep. This was nothing like the universe he understood.
If this were compared to a game, then there should have been a long stretch of side quests and map running with text collection in between, gradually piecing together the truth of the broken Shard. But because Belial speedran it with cheats, he never noticed any of this. The so called World was like something barely glued together, still holding the shape of a container but fundamentally broken, with the original intact vase already shattered all over the ground.
Where were the Shard fragments. They were still scattered everywhere, and waiting for them to naturally repair would probably take countless billions of years, so Belial quietly picked them up and began repairing things himself. Yes, he was trying to repair a universe, treating it as basic practice for mastering cosmic Laws later, and also because he needed a sturdier battlefield.
If he wanted to ascend dimensions later and then come back down to play, a solid universe as a foundation was indispensable. With the current bubble, he was afraid he would poke it open with just a bit of force. However, repairing up to now, even as he slowly became more Proficient, the efficiency was still not impressive.
Hammering it piece by piece by hand, he could not even repair a single light year. If he really wanted to fix it on the scale of a universe, he did not know how many years it would take. The retribution for boasting back then had arrived, saying he could cosplay that old slacker who worked six days and rested one, only to find himself actually doing that job now and realizing how hard it was.
Inside Belial's body, it was as if an invisible giant hammer was swinging. Each strike burst out sparks like stellar light, and what formed this hammer were the four fundamental forces that laid the foundation of the universe. What he was forging was indeed the basic thing called a universe, and as raw material, energy was being continuously produced by a near planetary scale g particle source, hammered on an assembly line into the most basic matter, produced bit by bit at the level of fundamental particles.
This was not simple. The matter produced could only be temporarily stored under ultra high gravity to barely maintain its form, otherwise it would quickly decompose back into energy through mass energy reactions and trigger an explosion far beyond the Tsar Bomba. Then the accident happened as expected, as a slight fluctuation in gravity caused the already unstable matter to explode again, and Belial could only shake his head, already used to it.
"As expected, it still does not work. With my current control, I am not enough to directly form stable matter, and the pressure environment I can provide is still insufficient." "If I keep clumsily repairing like this, even fixing it to the scale of my previous life's observable universe would take who knows how many years."
On top of that, the universe was still expanding. If he really repaired it manually and provided the driving force for that expansion, it meant he would never be able to get off work. Truly a top tier workhorse. To avoid becoming a workhorse with endless overtime, he had to find another path.
After thinking it over, Belial turned back to look at the pile of universe Shard fragments he was using as raw materials. Calling them fragments was really just a massive aggregation of chaotic Laws rules, basically the loot drops from old familiar enemies he had beaten before, the Gold Coins they exploded into. Then he looked again at the fragile World and realized that he did not actually need to do everything by hand, since this universe could still be repaired if he just provided some assistance on top of its foundation.
With a new idea, Belial quickly hammered out a new plan. He could create a prototype, then let that prototype naturally develop and expand, which was simply letting the universe expand on its own so the existing rules would slowly mend themselves. In this process, all the power needed for expansion would be compressed into a tiny point and detonated at a critical moment to make the universe expand, which was basically copying old homework.
Never mind it, as long as it worked. However, this plan required a point with nearly infinite density and infinitely small volume to contain all the energy, matter, and universe Shard fragments needed for expansion, compressing and fusing them endlessly inside before detonating them. The process was like a Big Bang, but the problem was where he would get that much energy.
This was not something a g particle perpetual engine could produce in a short time. If he accumulated it slowly to that level, he would have ascended long ago. He also needed to compress such massive energy into a single point, but how exactly was that point to be created, and how was it to be detonated.
If he relied purely on force to compress it into that point, the amount of force required would literally be infinite. Even with g particles, that only meant infinite energy production, but energy itself still had to exist as a finite quantity. The energy required to compress that point transcended the limits of finiteness, an infinity that could only exist in theory, making this approach even less practical than continuing to haul bricks bit by bit.
At least the former was practically feasible, while the latter was pure imagination. Although his grasp of cosmic principles told Belial it could work, when it came to actual hands on operation, there was not even a chance to try. Faced with endless brick hauling and hand crafting a Big Bang, he thought it over and decided to do both at the same time, since their progress could run in parallel without interfering.
"I can first give World a protective membrane, to prevent it from being smashed by battle aftershocks later, and also to keep it from being shattered by the impact of a Big Bang." "And if my plan actually succeeds, this membrane can also act as an umbrella during cosmic expansion, automatically dissipating once the universe grows to a certain scale." "By the way, I wonder if the radish girls can give me some help. I will send the plan over and see if there is any response."
A signal shot out from the center of the vortex and automatically connected to the nanomachines deployed within World. After receiving this unusual information, Bella immediately pulled it up to read. "It is information from Belial. Uh, this is a plan?"
"What plan. Can you analyze it? Let me see." "Wait a moment, I will translate it."