Chapter forty two: a supernatural illness
"Heh." A dry laugh slipped out, as Caelum stared at the empty bottle. The glass in his hand felt light and useless.
"How long has it been…" he thought out loud, pushing himself up from the floor. He slowly walked out of the room.
Papers, tools, and old notes covered every inch of the place. His room looked worse than ever . It wasn't that he didn't care about the mess, he just didn't have the energy to do any cleaning.
For the past month, he hadn't done anything else but research. Without proper meals or proper sleep, just endless research and experiments. Every waking moment was spent trying to find a cure for his illness.
And after all that, what was the result? Nothing. All of his ways and experiments failed without question.
He reached the washbasin and splashed cold water on his face. It felt freezing, but at least it gave him a stimulus to wake up a little.
He stared at his reflection. His beard had grown out, his eyes looked dead.
"Tsk. I should shave first," he said, rubbing his jaw.
He looked like someone who had aged years in a month.
After shaving and cleaning up, Caelum made breakfast with the quill, ate his fill, then rushed back to his room.
"Well..this doesn't even look like my room anymore. Ugh, I'll clean it later." He looked around, feeling a bit of disgust.
After taking a quick look, he sat cross-legged on the floor, going over everything he had done in the past month.
Right after returning from Dharti, Caelum had thrown himself into making medicine. Yes, creating it. He used the quill to define cures into existence.
Although he hadn't done that before, that was because he was scared. He worried something would go wrong with medicines made that way.
But that was when he didn't know the quill well. Now he was confident, as long as he had willpower, he could make anything real.
So he started creating every kind of medicine he could think of.
Of course, the medicines he made weren't like the ones found on Earth. He was already sure, hundred percent sure. That there was no cure for his illness anywhere on earth.
So, the ones he created with the quill were things that had never existed before.
Caelum first tried to imagine complex medicines and defined them to have no side effects. He was careful at first, but after a while, he realized this approach wouldn't work.
So he became a bit bold with his creations. He began creating everything he could think of, pills, tonics, even injections, all of which had a variety of effects without any side-effects. He didn't stop to think if it was too much.
But still, nothing worked.
No, that wasn't right. It's not that they didn't work, they did. Some of those medicines were absurd. For caelum had imagined and created medecines like: one that could cure every illness or erase every impurity from the body. And they worked exactly as he defined them.
Each time, his body felt lighter and Stronger. Even the minor pains and impurities disappeared, But the black mass stayed where it was.
That cursed thing clung to his heart, it remained untouched by everything he tried.
"But now, I think I know why…" Caelum's face showed a mix of clarity and confusion. "This illness, it's not a normal one at all. Maybe it's not even an 'illness' at all?"
He automatically looked towards the quill. The faint shimmer on its feather was like a majestic glow.
"Actually, I should've realized this from the start," he laughed helplessly. "The doctors said it was a new kind of illness. But then, why did they act like it was nothing special? Why was there no reaction at all?"
Now that He thought back. Every time he asked questions, they dodged the questions skillfully. Every time he tried to make a fuss, they totally ignored him.
"If a new and deadly disease was discovered, shouldn't there have been chaos? Normally it should have been 'a lot of reports, research, and people trying to find out more' " He clenched his fists.
"But no, there was nothing? Even if i assume a deadly 'illness' like mine couldn't alert the whole country. Shouldn't there be at least some research to help me cure it? But i did not hear even a word about it anywhere."
It was too strange, and bizzare.
"No… it's not just the doctors." Caelum's face twisted as he kept thinking. "Even if, even if my family never cared about me, they still should've reacted a bit. Why did they look so calm when they heard? Without even a hint of surprise."
He pressed his fingers against his temple, trying to piece it together. The more he thought about it, the more strange his life felt.
"A brand new illness that no one has seen before," he stood up, pacing across the room. "But somehow, no one paid much attention to it."
His chest ached as he thought deeper. "An illness that can't be cured, not even by perfect cures made with the quill."
"And the strangest part is…" His hand moved to his heart. ""Why couldn't the quill recreate it? It can create anything if I have enough willpower. But when i created the humans of dharti, the illness wasn't recreated."
He sat down again, closing his eyes to Calm down.
They reason for caelum's uneasy mind was simple, he created the humans in Dharti for the purpose of studying them, to find a cure through them. Caelum was very much afraid before, afraid to directly create any 'cure' using the quill, what if something went wrong?
That is why he created the humans, and defined them to be exactly like him.
Ofcourse their outer apperance will be different, but their inner biological-structure should have been the same, so why? Why was the quill unable to recreate his 'illness' within those humans? Was the quill not as powerful as he thought? Or did he not have enough willpower to recreate the illness?.
"Nevertheless, everything leads to the same point. This 'illness' isn't ordinary, and it's damm powerful. And if something as supernatural as the quill can exist, then maybe this thing inside me is supernatural as well."
Caelum pressed his palm against his chest, thinking. "In fact, I can't shake the vauge feeling that the quill and this illness are somehow connected."
Caelum couldn't help but sigh. "Whatever it is, i think my only chance at getting rid of it is, through the quill. And since my willpower keeps growing each time I have a breakthrough… maybe if I reach high enough threshold, I can affect this damned thing with the quill."
With that thought, Caelum gripped the quill and stepped into the painting world.
He appeared in the white room high above Dharti, the same endless space that floated in the painting, looking down on dharti. Clearing his mind, he spoke to himself, "The only way to reach a higher level is to push myself harder, fully utilising the quill to it's limit everyday."
He walked toward the world stabilizer, passing the long table at the room's center.
"By now, at least a thousand years must've passed down there… maybe more," he said to himself.
For the past month, he hadn't paid much attention to Dharti. He only came here now and then to feed willpower into the stabilizer. I handled the rest on its own, expanding the world and it's rules on its own. Caelum didn't need to interfere with anything at all.
Standing before the stabilizer, he thought, "After all this time, Dharti's land must be massive now… maybe as large as a city, or even more."
He sent another surge of willpower into it quickly. The stabilizer pulsed with light, starting it's daily expansion of the world, and in the next instant, Caelum vanished from the white room.
He reappeared high in the skies above Dharti.
----
Caelum moved swiftly through the sky, gliding over plains, rivers, and forests until the outlines of a vast prehistoric city came into view.
"They've built proper structures already," he watched from above. "They've even formed a working society? Huh."
A small smile bloomed on his face. For all the strange reasons he had made them, seeing the people of Dharti grow and organize themselves felt… good.
After flying for some time, he slowed near a familiar stretch of green.
"This forest has also grown a lot thicker," saying so, caelum quietly hovered above the trees.
It was the Sersikar Forest, the wild and dense forest. Now unrecognizable to even caelum. It was the largest forest in Dharti, and easily the most dangerous.
"Now, where did I place it…?" Caelum kept moving forward, scanning the forest below with sharp eyes.
Ofcourse, he wasn't here to admire the scenery. The reason he came here was that, somewhere in this vast green expanse was the small experimental ecosystem he had created long ago. That micro ecosystem was a test and a starting point for unnatural creatures.
After about half an hour of flying, Caelum spotted a stretch of land dazzling with color. "There it is."
He descended quickly and landed among the flowers, the air was thick with their scent.
"IA thousand years… and this place turned into a sea of flowers, huh." This sight of petals of every hue swaying as far as his eyes could see, it was so beautiful it made even Caelum laugh widely.
This area was deep within the Sersikar Forest, and yet it felt like another world entirely.
A faint hum filled the air
"buzz-"
Countless tiny insects moved over the blossoms. Some of the insects had invisible wings, while some had wings that glimmered faintly when the light caught them. They fed on the energy the flowers produced, completing the cycle caelum had designed.
Yes, this was the same micro ecosystem he had built a month ago, or by Dharti's time, a thousand years in the past.
The flowers absorbed sunlight and moonlight, turning both into raw energy. The insects drew that energy in, their wings faded from sight as a result. And then…
Gulp!
Caelum watched as a flock of small birds swooped down, snapping up the insects whose wings had turned invisible. In seconds, they scattered again into the sky.
That's how the cycle was complete. Flowers feeding insects, insects feeding birds. Each part of the system sustained the next, exactly as Caelum had designed.
"Now not just the flowers," he scanned the air and trees, "even the insects and birds have multiplied to a astonishing level."
He quickly tightened his grip on the quill. "Alright then… it's time to expand this micro ecosystem into a proper one."
Lifting the quill, he poured willpower, drawing a clean stroke through the air.
As the tip cut through space, every insect in sight began to shimmer, their bodies glowed with a faint white light.