Chapter nineteen: a perfect world
As the wave of translucent energy spread out from the stabilizer and washed over the painted world, Caelum felt the change almost instantly.
It wasn't loud or dramatic, but Caelum could feel through the stabilizer that something inside the world had started to move.
Time is flowing now.
He didn't need confirmation, he could feel it in the rhythm of everything. "It doesn't feel like a static world model anymore."
Caelum stared at the stabilizer for a few moments longer, then slowly stepped back. He rubbed his eyes and let out a breath.
"Well… now what's left is."
He turned around and walked back toward the bronze table where all his notes were spread out. Diagrams, pages full of scribbles, calculations, and messy ideas half-crossed out, all of it was still there.
His fingers brushed over the paper as he glanced down at the next few pages of rough plans. They were far from finished, but there was a path now.
"Now," he said quietly, picking up his pen and tapping it on the edge of the table, "I just have to follow the same pattern and run the rest of the rules through the stabilizer."
After racking his brain for all these hours, he figured out that using the world stabilizer to perfect all the abstract rules would be the best move.
"At first, i thought i would only use it to expand the world areas as a proxy but.." He stared at the stabilizer again, then down at his plans
'This was only the first step, but it was the most important one, to pave up the path for further ideas.' caelum's mind was never at rest while inside the painting, He pulled the chair out and sat down, already flipping open the next notebook.
With time now flowing, the world had the movements of an actual world. The rest, though tedious, would fall into place one by one.
There was still a lot of work to do, to make the world a habitable place for any kind of living creatures.
----------
------
Caelum had no idea how much time had passed since he came inside the painting.
Even though time now moved inside the small world below, the white room, and the vast silent space beyond it remained untouched.
It was still frozen, untouched by seconds or minutes, it was too much for caelum to try and implement rules on the entire space.
There was no change in the light or temperature.
But judging by how drained he felt and how much he'd written down, he guessed it had to have been several hours. Maybe more.
He leaned back, rubbed his face, and muttered, "And I thought I'd be able to go back before night today."
The stabilizer still pulsed softly in front of him, the core of everything he'd made. On the table behind him, dozens of pages lay scattered in a mess of diagrams, formulas, and little notes scribbled in the margins.
After implementing the flow of time, caelum started to work on the other rules. And over the hours, he had drafted all the minimal rules the world would need to become a proper and habitable replica.
'It's nothing too complex, but it's nothing flimsy either.' caelum pondered.
He was holding the quill in one hand and a notebook in the other, its spine cracked open and pages scribbled with layers of ink—Caelum narrowed his eyes at the notes and gave a small, crooked smile.
"Everything should be ready after this."
The diagrams laid out a surprisingly clean system for day and night, done without creating an actual sun or moon. He didn't have the luxury of painting giant celestial bodies and babysitting their movement. Instead, he built a layered sky system that could simulate light and shadow cycles as if it were real.
"humm, a fake sun, fake moon and fake sky... as long as it works, it should be alright?" he muttered with a wry grin.
Lifting the quill, he pointed it toward the stabilizer again. At first nothing happened, but then it began to hum, the surface rippling as if it were alive. It shook lightly then more violently as it started to reconfigure itself.
Caelum took a few steps back as he keeping his eyes on it.
"It's Redefinition For the third time...and if this works." Caelum started feeling the weight of willpower drain on his body.
Because this time, it wasn't just one rule instead it was all of them. Sky simulation, temperature regulation, gravity calibration, even wind behavior. Everything was built into this cycle.
After a moment, the shaking stopped. Then the familiar waves spread out, three soft pulses of translucent light spreading across the unseen boundaries of the world below. Each pulse represented a completed rule, slowly implemented and embedded through the world stabilizer.
Caelum let out a slow breath and leaned forward with his hands on his knees. His posture slumped, and a tired laugh escaped his lips.
"Yeah... I'm definitely starting to feel the toll even more now."
The notebook in his hand was still open, pages full of everything he had just installed.
"With this, it should be... almost a perfect replica of Earth."
He turned, walked back to the long table and dropped the notebook onto the pile. He slumped into the chair, arms limp at his sides as he stared up at the ceiling that didn't change. The ceiling of a room untouched by time.
"A fake sky working like a real one... yeah, it'll be suitable for living beings to habit it now" he thought.
Inside the white room, Caelum never felt hunger or thirst, Nor real physical fatigue.
Because his body wasn't moving through time, so it didn't register physical needs. But somehow the drain on his willpower still hit hard. Mental strain didn't seem to be bound by the concept of time or rules.
He stared blankly at the stabilizer a bit longer, then closed his eyes.
"Somehow I still get tired... even though nothing here ages," he muttered.
He focused his will and willed himself out. The white room quickly faded, and the still air around him melted into reality.
A second later, he was back in his dim apartment. Everything hit him at once, the faint hum of the night, the tick of the wall clock and the cool air brushing his skin.
'It's dark outside.' He blinked and turned on the lights with a sigh.
The clock read 11:02 PM.
"Damn," he muttered, stretching his arms up before letting them fall. His stomach didn't growl as his body had been in stasis. But his mind still overworked and drained, felt like someone had run a marathon inside his skull.
He set the quill down on his bedroom table and collapsed onto the bed without bothering to change.
His eyes felt heavy.
"Maybe... when I go back tomorrow," he thought out loud, "the world will be completely indistinguishable from reality."
Sleep started to pull him under. His limbs felt distant, and his mind started to drift off.
And just before he passed out, a final thought echoed through his head:
'Will I be able to learn more about my illness, if I understand how life works from the inside out? If I understand the structure of itself...?'
And then without even knowing, he was asleep.
-------
---
Caelum slept through the night with saliva drooling down his mouth but soon, the cold woke him up before the morning sun did.
Caelum ketp his eyes closed and pulled the blanket tighter around himself for a bit longer before sighing and sitting up.
"Grrrr, what's with wrong my sleep?" His room was quiet and comfortable, the kind of comfort only early morning carried. "If i keep waking up early like this, I'll definitely have insomnia soon."
Caelum took out his annoyance first before rubbing his arms as he got out of bed, Pale light crept in through the edges of the curtains.
He walked out of the room muttering something under his breath about not bothering to fix the insulation again.
After brushing his teeth and splashing cold water on his face, he shook off the remnants of sleep. After feeling like he was fully awake, he went straight to his room and reached for the quill.
Coming down to the dining table, he manifested a steaming plate of seafood on the table. With a flick of his wrist and a quick stroke in the air, Salmon, grilled octopus and a few buttered scallops landed on the table.
He didn't hold back at all, the aroma alone making him forget the cold entirely. With a thud He sat down and dug in without ceremony, his mind already racing ahead while his body kept up with the meal.
After the plate was clean and the dishes washed, Caelum didn't waste another second. He turned on heel to his bedroom again and willed himself into the painting.
In an instant, the room vanished and the world reformed. His body slowly reformed inside the familiar white room, soundless and endless as always.
when his feet touched the floor, he could feel the eerie and impossible lightness. Like his body didn't have any of the restrictions, his bones and muscles were no longer part of a normal equation as mortality didn't exist here.
He didn't think about it too long. He placed the quill down gently on the long table and moved quickly to the world stabilizer, his pace eager.
As he stepped closer with his breath caught just slightly. The core of the world stabilizer shimmered faintly, light flowing in soft patterns across its surface.
'It feels gentler and rhythmic than yesterday.' He poured a strand of willpower into it as he pondered, just enough to take a look inside.
And what he saw made his eyes widen.
"As I thought," he said under his breath, a smile forming slowly on his face.
The entire miniature world shimmered inside the stabilizer like a living model. Clouds moved, Light rolled gently across the land, newly formed rivers ran in proper motion, trees swayed under wind systems he hadn't manually placed but were forming on their own.
'All because of the rules i had written.' caelum couldn't keep his excitement in control anymore.
"Every rule," he said quietly, almost reverently, "is perfectly in sync with the world."
There was no fragmentation or instability, the sky cycled between brightness and a little dimness in a gentle transition, like the turn of a real day.
His smile deepened, and Caelum forgot all the exhaustion from the day before.
He stepped back slowly with eyes still locked on the stabilizer, and exhaled.
"The sky doesn't feel like a crude flicker, its more like a natural phenomenon now." Severing his connection with the world stabilizer he moved away. "Finally it's done."
The world was ready now, governed under the rules stretched out by the world stabilizer, it was ready to be inhabited.
[ Author's note: there have been no new chapters recently, because of irl problems but there will be daily updates from now. Look forward as we are entering the main part of the story soon.]