For the last hour, I had been stuck in my room, staring at the door and waiting to see if we were dead yet. It was a unique brand of torture—sending a Golden Boy clone off to meet his brother, the emperor, while at the same time we both sat helplessly at home. Powerless to do really anything. I decided I was going to demolish an apple in the hopes that it would somehow calm me down while Ronan was mentally pacing a trench through the back of our shared skull.
Then, without warning, my chest lurched.
It wasn't a heart attack. It felt like someone had hooked a firehose of liquid ozone directly to the Inventory and turned the valve to 'obliterate.' A massive, terrifying weight slammed into the inventory void, expanding the space inside me with a groan that rattled my teeth.
I dropped the apple. "What the hell was that?"
'I... I'm not sure,' Ronan murmured, his pacing stopping abruptly.
The sensation faded as quickly as it had arrived, leaving a metallic taste in my mouth like I'd been chewing on a lightning bolt. I stood there, hand on my sternum, heart hammering against my ribs, waiting for the other shoe to drop or for my chest to simply explode.
It took another ten minutes of agonising silence before the signal finally came.
POP.
It was distant, like a bubble bursting three streets away. The Ronan-Clone had dispelled himself.
"Ronan?" I whispered to the empty room. "Talk to me, buddy! Are we packing a go-bag?"
'We're in the clear,' Ronan's voice echoed in the cathedral of our shared mind. 'For now.'
"Thank fuck for that! That is fantastic news!" I did a little jig and quickly added, "The hit we took earlier?"
'White Mana,' Ronan replied, his mental voice sounding unusually weary. 'Absolute Authority. Vaelos tested me.'
"Ahh yeah, how did that go?"
'He poured an ocean of power into the clone so I opened a micro-portal on the palm and fed the energy to the Inventory. It drank it all. If in wasn't for the inventory, we would be in a lot of trouble right about now.'
"You fed a god's power to our little storage locker?" I let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. "That is terrifying. And I love it. So… Did you get us some gold?"
'No. Obviously, I refused his hand-outs.'
"You what?"
'Don't worry, I negotiated a charter for the Jagged Peaks instead. 60/40 split to the Empire.'
I groaned, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. "You refused free money. Of course you did."
'The hand-outs were a test. Accepting anything would have been a red flag for him'
"Yeah, yeah, fine. We have a mining permit and a scary handshake. What about the Emperor? Is he one of the good guys now?"
'No. It seems he clings to Valentine.'
"The inquisitor…"
'My guess is that Valentine's mind is like a filter. Vaelos reads the Pontiff's mind and somehow finds silence. Or at least, ordered calm. He told me Valentine is the only one who offers him hope. He relies on him to keep the walls standing.'
"So the 'Great Embrace' Valentine is preaching..."
'It could be a soft takeover, assuming Valentine is "The Hunger" we were warned about.' Ronan finished the thought. 'He wouldn't need to siege the capital if he could just convince the Emperor to open the gates. Valentine is feeding Vaelos's despair. He is offering a cure for the noise—silencing the world so the Emperor can finally sleep.'
"Great," I groaned, flopping back onto the mattress. "So the most powerful entity on the continent is being groomed by the being sent to end the world. And we can't just kill Valentine, can we?"
'Assuming we even had enough power, if we did attack Valentine, we would be attacking the Emperor's sanity,' Ronan confirmed grimly. 'Vaelos will defend him with the power of a sun. We're trapped, Murphy. We have to save the boy to stop the monster.'
"Fine," I sighed, staring at the ceiling. "We save the terrifying child-god. But if he tries to bleach my soul again, I'm letting the pedo, I mean Pontiff, have him."
With the existential crisis regarding the Emperor momentarily filed under "Tomorrow's Problems," I turned my attention to our greatest asset: The Inventory.
I reached out with my mind, expecting the familiar, weightless sensation of the void—a dark, infinite spreadsheet where I kept my stolen cheese and spare swords. Instead, I felt… resistance.
It didn't feel broken. It felt full.
I did a quick mental inventory check to make sure the sudden pressure hadn't crushed my assets. A conceptual list scrolled through my mind:
Some laundry going in and out at the moment. Some workshop equipment, Inscription tools Academy books and stationery The "Dirty Tricks" bin: Slime Acid, smoke bombs, flour, caltrops. Weapons and armour. A few gold coins. Various useless magical items Stasis-preserved food (various). An awesome Jester costume. The Bulk Storage: A literal river, tons of sand, and a pile of iron filings. The "Bio-Hazard" Zone: Mountains of grime, dirt, debris, and... various human wastes extracted from cleaning thousands of different fabrics.
It was all there. But the empty space between the piles? That felt dense. Heavy.
'It gorged itself,' Ronan noted, his mental voice echoing my own suspicion. 'When you grounded the Emperor's White Mana, you didn't just vent it. You fed it to the void.'
"Great," I muttered. "I've given my storage unit a balanced diet of absolute authority. I need to see what's going on there."
We couldn't actually see inside the Inventory. It wasn't a room; it was a mental concept. I just knew what was there, like knowing you have a coin in your pocket without looking. But the sheer tactile weight of it now suggested that "concept" had upgraded to "reality."
I didn't have a camera drone, but I had the next best thing: a disposable head with eyes.
I raised a hand and pushed mana into the circuit. A Murphy-Clone coalesced in the centre of the room, looking bored before he'd even fully formed. He stretched his neck, looked at me, and sighed.
"Why hast thou summoned me?" the clone asked, his voice a perfect, apathy-drenched copy of mine. Of course, he knew what I knew and thus knew exactly why the plan was.
"Yeah, funny, now stick your head in here," I ordered.
The air lightly shimmered on my midsection as the clone approached. "If I die," the clone muttered, "tell mamma her boy was a hero!"
"Noted. Go."
He leaned forward and shoved his head into the portal, looking like an ostrich burying itself in the ground.
He stayed there for ten seconds. His shoulders tensed. Then he stiffened, pulled his head out with a gasp, and looked at me with wide, terrified eyes.
"Well?" I asked.
He didn't answer. He slapped me in the face—hard—and dispelled himself.
POP.
The memory hit me instantly.
It wasn't the usual dark void. My mind was flooded with white.
I am looking down. There is a floor. Not a cloud, not nothingness—a floor. Infinite, seamless white stone, smooth as polished marble, stretching out in every direction forever.
I look up. There is no sun. The sky is a roaring, turbulent ocean of indigo energy. It looks like a storm caught in freeze-frame, rolling and churning but silent. It radiates a cold, clinical white light that casts no shadows.
I look around. It looks like a museum after an earthquake. My collection—the swords, the gold coins, books, the stolen pastries—is scattered across the white stone in piles. They aren't rotting or rusting. They are frozen in stasis, just sitting there on the impossible ground.
I try to take a breath.
Nothing.
My lungs seize. There is no air. It is a vacuum. I am suffocating in paradise.
The memory ended as the clone's consciousness merged back with mine after he or I slapped me in the face.
I blinked, orienting myself back in the dim light of the dormitory.
"Ronan," I whispered, projecting the image of the white wasteland into our shared mind. "That's not just a storage cupboard anymore."
'No,' Ronan replied, his curiosity piqued. 'That is a world.'
"A dead world, though. No atmosphere, for the moment." I added.
I scrambled off the bed and threw open the dormitory window. I activated the Art, opening a portal the size of a dinner plate on my chest, and turned myself into a human vacuum cleaner. I stood there basking in it for ten minutes, sucking the cool evening air into the void until I felt the pressure inside stabilise.
"Better," I muttered, wiping the drool from my mouth. "Now we should be able to breathe in there. Maybe…"
'If it has ground,' Ronan said, his voice tightening with that specific brand of intellectual obsession he usually reserved for ancient sword techniques, 'then we can stand on it.'
"Hold up big boy! It's a pocket dimension, not a holiday destination," I argued, though I was already mentally calculating every new option this might give us. "Just because there's a floor doesn't mean there's gravity. Or heat. I could step through there and instantly turn into a freeze-dried husk."
'That is why we send another volunteer,' Ronan countered.
"Volunteer coming up!" I said as I summoned a tiny Murphy-Clone. Why tiny? Well, because they were cute and it would be easier to fit through the hole I was about to make for him.
He looked at me, then at the spot where the previous clone had vanished, and raised an eyebrow. "Am I coming back, father?"
I opened the portal on my back this time and bent over so he could jump inside.
"Sure you are, big fella," I lied. "Now be a good boy and check out the physics in here for your old man." I said as I pointed at my back.
With a running start the clone shouted "Gay" as he disappeared into my ass.
I grabbed the edge of the table to stop myself from hitting the floor.
The moment his heels cleared the threshold, my knees buckled. It wasn't a mana drain; it was purely physical. A wave of exhaustion slammed into me, sucking the wind from my lungs.
"Ow," I wheezed, clutching my chest. "That... was heavy."
'The Inventory accepts dead matter freely. But a Living Spark? The system charges a tax to let it cross the event horizon. It feels like thirty percent of your total stamina just evaporated.' Ronan said in my mind.
"Note to self," I gasped, straightening up with effort. "Do not become a bus service."
Then, we waited.
And waited.
One minute passed. Then two.
"He's taking his time," I muttered, checking the clock on the wall. "Either he's dead, or he's found a very comfortable chair."
Three minutes passed. Then—POP.
The memory hit me. It wasn't the split-second static of a death. It was a clear, high-fidelity recording.
I am standing on the white stone. It is solid. I stomp my foot. A satisfying, heavy thud. Gravity is normal—standard 1G if I had to guess. It feels... anchored.
I take a breath. The air is dense, cool, and tastes of the night air the Original just sucked in through the window earlier. It's breathable.
I look around. The gold coins and swords are sitting in piles where they fell. Everything is stable.
I reach out with my mind—the same way the Original controls the Inventory from the outside. I focus on a single gold coin buried at the bottom of a sack.
It obeys instantly. It doesn't just fly; it glides. It floats up, spinning slowly, responding to the micro-movements of my thought. I lift a sword next. Then a chair. Then a thousand grains of sand.
I realise that in here, I have absolute tactile telekinesis. I can manipulate matter with zero latency. I seem to have perfect microscopic spatial awareness of every single item. I could thread a needle from across the room using only my mind. In here, I am God of the inanimate.
I check my internal clock. Three minutes have passed.
I look for the exit. There is no portal. No door. Just the white horizon.
"Right," I say to the empty world. "One-way trip. Note to self, do not go into inventory with the original body.
I kneel and pull the plug on my own mana supply.
The memory integrated, and I rubbed my temples, processing the data.
"Well," I said, a mix of relief and disappointment washing over me. "Good news: We can breathe, walk, and I have the telekinetic precision of a watchmaker inside that space. Bad news: It's real-time. No DBZ Hyperbolic Time Chamber. If I spend an hour in there, I lose an hour out here."
"We would need to double check," I muttered. "But the items still seem to be in Stasis. Even though the Clone experienced time linearly."
'Selective Stasis?' Ronan mused. 'The void freezes matter, but a Living Spark—or a consciousness—forces time to flow around it.'
"Maybe. No door back out though…" Then, a darker, more opportunistic thought struck me. I looked down at my own chest, tapping the sternum where the portal manifested.
"Ronan," I whispered. "Since I can vary the size of the portal based on the size of the body opening it..."
'I know that look,' Ronan warned.
"Can I trap a person? Specifically, a person I don't like?"
I imagined it: The ultimate trap. I summon a massive Murphy-Clone—fifty feet tall. He falls on a bad guy, opens a portal the size of a carriage, and envelops the enemy in a bear hug that sends them straight into the White Void. Then we simply remove the air. Bob's your uncle.
'In theory, the mechanics hold,' Ronan mused, though his tone was sceptical. 'But considering the stamina drain you just felt from a toddler... hugging an assassin into oblivion might kill you before it kills him. We should verify the limits.'
"Science time," I agreed.
I decided to start small. "Let's make a tiny one. Action-figure size."
I focused my mana, visualizing a six-inch Murphy. I pushed the energy out, compressing the construct.
SQUELCH.
The mana coalesced for a fraction of a second, then violently destabilised. The construct didn't even fully form; it just ruptured in a spray of loose mana and half-formed water before dispelling itself with a wet pop.
"Gross," I muttered, wiping a speck of mana-residue off my cheek. "What happened?"
'Density limit,' Ronan diagnosed instantly. 'Remember, Murphy, the Conservation of Mass. You are trying to squeeze eighty kilograms of biological matter into a six-inch vessel. The pressure is too high. The bone structure imploded instantly.'
"Wait," I frowned, spotting a loophole. "When you summon your armour, that separates the weight, right? But you can take the armour off. So why can't I make a tiny, light-weight clone—say, five kilos—and just give him a seventy-five kilo rock to hold? That satisfies the mass requirement, doesn't it?"
'Nice try,' Ronan scoffed. 'But I already tried something similar a few days ago. The Art does not ask for eighty kilograms of "stuff." It requires a minimum of 80% of the original mass to be allocated to the "vessel." The Living Spark needs a minimum amount of complex biological medium to anchor itself. If you try to download a human consciousness into a five-kilogram body, you will burn out the mana pathways in a microsecond.It is the precise reason children cannot form a Core until they possess the physical volume to sustain the load.'
"So it isn't luggage," I summarised, rubbing my temples. "It's the engine block. I have a twenty percent buffer for accessories, but the chassis mandates at least sixty-four kilos of meat. If I shrink that much mass..."
'You increase the density beyond the structural integrity of the bone.'
"And we get soup," I finished, gesturing to the sad puddle of water soaking into the floorboards. "Right. Physics is a killjoy. But if the mass is constant, the volume is negotiable up to the breaking point."
I wiped the mental whiteboard clean and grabbed a fresh piece of chalk.
"Let's find the breaking point."