Wreathed in a crimson glow, Alex looked with a frown at two floating cubes in front of him. One had a prominent vermilion hue that both melded together with the surrounding crimson yet maintained its contrast, easily distinguishable, while the other had a faint blue emanating from its core as the crimson glow bathed its surface, further suppressing the already weak blue light within.
"What do you think? Will it be sufficient with this?" Alex asked.
"I can't be sure because the limits aren't completely defined," Wanda said, shaking her head as her breath tickled his ear. She was currently stuck to his back like a koala with her arms and legs wrapped around his torso. "In the first place, the second cube barely has any of its original essence remaining. The raw material is useful, but that's all. The combined energy within the Pandemonium Cube and this half-broken Cosmic Cube won't be enough."
"Yeah…" Alex nodded, frowning. "Fucking schemers. Everything was going so smoothly before. If only I'd gotten my hands on the fully working cube…"
"Why do you even want to make it into a collar?" She asked. "When you activated all six stones back then, I sensed that it was quite inefficient. We should go with a gauntlet or something to enhance the synergy when using the stones."
Unlike the rest, Wanda's connection with Alex was two-way. Just as she was his host, he had a connection to her through the Source of Chaos. When Kobik's ambush had wiped him off the face of this reality, Wanda still felt a faint hint of his presence, just as he did for her. That was the only reason that Alex's version of Witches' Road was still standing alongside the multiple planets around it. After all, unlike the last time something similar happened, Wanda was currently strong enough to affect things on a cosmic scale with a casual activation of her powers, let alone what she might do if she truly went berserk.
"I was thinking," she said. "If we use these cubes to make a sort of gauntlet to amplify the stones and make them complement your powers, it would be far better. It might even help you enhance the time dilation factor for Gaia even further. After all, time is the one thing that you are most limited on."
"I need something that makes a qualitative difference," Alex said. "More time would certainly help, but with Gaia itself compromised, my efforts might even give my enemies more time to prepare. For them to remain hidden even after I've significantly heightened Gaia's monitoring means that they have special means to bypass it."
"So will you give up on Gaia?" She asked with a frown. "You've worked so hard to bring all those planets together."
"Of course I'm not giving up on them," Alex said as his expression grew cold. "Since I can't locate them, I'll simply force them out into the open with a planetary purge."
"I expected as much," Wanda whispered, not affected by Alex's declaration in the slightest. "You're going to use Earth-Z as a means to kill most of the population, aren't you?"
"My original plan was to use the new Abominations as a source of external pressure to unite every country under a single banner, but now… Yes, it will have to be a planetary purge."
"So who is going to make that qualitative difference for you? You probably have someone quite strong in mind if you are giving up on a tool for the Infinity Stones," Wanda said as a hint of annoyance crept into her tone. "After all, I'm sure you're planning to use that collar on a woman."
"Feeling possessive, are we?" Alex smiled, squeezing her thigh.
"A little…" she seemed to be sulking.
"I'm still torn between a few options," he said. "But the collar needs to be foolproof if it's going to work for any single one of them. Since you aren't confident with just two cubes, I'll get you something else that also works on a similar scale, preferably another Cosmic Cube, but locating anything close to it is going to be quite troublesome. Can't we use the Infinity Stones?"
"Are you willing to destroy them?" She asked. "It will have to be decomposed completely. We should use the power of the stones to forge the collar instead of using them as actual raw materials."
"That sounds like the right move," Alex nodded. "On the other hand, how is the progress of the Source of Chaos? We have spread it quite widely across the planet, so your Faith feedback should have become somewhat substantial by now, no?"
"It's not bad," she said. "But I don't have a way to accurately quantify its progress yet. Hell, I don't even know how it works. I know what to do and how to do it, but its inner mechanisms, I have no clue about. It's not easy learning something even Chthon was ignorant about."
"I've been thinking of that, actually," Alex said. "We can quantify it based on limits. Right now, how many practitioners of Chaos Magic can your source support?"
"It's not that simple; some people use more magic, some use less, some have greater talent and need less energy to do larger things…the list goes on. It's hard to put a number on it."
"I have a plan to support that as well," Alex said. "I am going to create an incremental progression-based power system for those that pull Chaos energy from your Source. That will both promote greater faith and help us quantify things."
"I don't follow," she said. "Is it complex? If it is, you can just go ahead with it…"
"Don't be a lazy ass. You will be the one implementing this system in the first place," Alex said. "And it's not that complex. At its base, the Source of Chaos requires people to have faith in its existence. The more emotional and devout that faith, the better the feedback that strengthens it. I will subtly pivot the Witches' Road to a Theocratic system that works in tandem with the current system of missions and merit. Based on a person's faith in the Source of Chaos, their Chaos Authority can be upgraded to allow them to have access to a larger energy pool."
"That might just work very well," Wanda nodded. "So how do we quantify it?"
"Right now, every new member gets a certain base authority for free, right? That can simply be the base level. The second level is when a person is self-sustaining, such that their feedback is equivalent to their consumption."
"But they are two different things," Wanda said. "Their feedback strengthens the Source of Chaos. Oversimplified, the greater the feedback, the higher the maximum possible energy output gets. And that's a permanent increment. If she loses faith, it won't affect the core, simply slow down its further growth. This person's energy requirements, on the other hand, are fluctuating. How do we equate the two things?"
"It doesn't need to be equivalent. We just need a threshold. We can designate any point as that threshold. Say, their faith has provided the core with enough enhancement that you can now support another newcomer running their full output."
"I guess that could work," Wanda nodded.
"That's just an example; we can refine the system further. But this way, we have a tangible way to quantify how many people your Source can support at any given time. So let's try to quantify things again. Consider newcomers that only get the minimum possible access to Chaos energy from the core—say enough to cast a single simple item conjuring spell. How many newcomers can the current Source of Chaos support if every single one of them casts a spell at the same time?"
Wanda went silent at his words, seeming deep in her thoughts as she closed her eyes with a focused expression. In reality, she was examining the Source of Chaos to analyze its capacities.
It was only minutes later that she opened her eyes again, letting out a slightly tired breath.
"Roughly a hundred million people," she said. "That's the most we can handle. Leaving some margin for my use as well, I'd say ten million is a safe bet so that we can handle any overhead without any problems."
"That's all?" Alex frowned. "The Chaos Dimension supported trillions of life forms, all sustained by the Source of Chaos. You got almost a third of it…"
"Yeah, but most of them were self-sustaining—truly self-sustaining," Wanda said. "Humans need to pull energy generated by the Source of Chaos. Native life forms of the Chaos Dimension could produce their own as long as they were connected to it. Plus, a lot of the Source was consumed in transferring its authority over to me."
"How interesting," Alex said. "We can designate this self-sustaining system as the third stage. Where we introduce a special organ into the witch or wizard's body that can generate Chaos energy by burning calories."
"That could be done," Wanda nodded.
"A hundred million, though. That's quite a lot considering we barely have a few hundred thousand under our wing. I think we can push to bring another planet under our wing. What do you say?"
"Whatever you want, Alex," Wanda said. "Not like I have to do anything here anyway. How about we watch a movie after this?"
"Anything particular in mind?" Alex asked.
"Anything works," she said, shrugging. "Long as you're beside me."
"It's usually my job to say such cheesy things."
…
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/addyctive