Retract my Zone.
Isaac, knowing the risk, retracted his Thaumitonic Field with full intent.
He finally let his nagging thought prevail.
To use a TM, I should fully understand it.
A Topological Matrix works by taking the Out-Threaded Thaumitonic field and binding it against my body, whereas other Out-Threading projects it outward as a shield or zone. The field is a grid of small Anchor Cells laid over target tissue like muscle and joints, with each cell held in place by its own winding number. The grid raises what the body can survive, whether that is output or impact.
2 seconds.
Consider all factors:
Boundary Conditions of Every Matrix:
∂Ω of Construct = ∂Ω(t) + ξ ∼ ħ / √(2 mΘ gₜ nΘ)
Ψ-site decoherence suppression (each of the two anchor sites)
Local Γₔ → Local Γₔ · e^−γΨₙ
Switch Latency
τ of Switch ≈ Λₛ / Γₜ
Hah… Alright…
My TRC score was κ = 0.668 while Δ-Matrixes opened at 0.75, putting me eight hundredths short.
In this crucial moment, the adrenaline hit harder than ever before.
I only need 0.75 in one place. The harmonic mean is fixed at 0.820, so 0.75 over 0.820 is 0.915. My factor is 0.815. The exponent is 0.205 now and has to be 0.089. My excess decoherence has to fall to 0.436 of what it is, making more than half of it gone.
The Ψ layer multiplies Γ by e^(−γΨₙ). Set that to 0.436, take the log, and γΨₙ is 0.83.
The crowd's voices thinned to a hum. His body felt that same lightness, as if someone had loosened the floor from under.
Zero point eight three of what? Γₜ goes as e^(−E_t/K_t). That is Arrhenius, so K_t behaves like thermal energy. At 310 K, k_BT is 26.7 meV, and 0.83 of that is 22 meV. It is less than one thermal quantum of extra barrier. Call a saturated anchor one K_t, so γ is 1, and Ψₙ is 0.83. That is high for the PFC… If I don't focus, I'm gone.
Lock in… Quick!
My Γ was 0.143, so τ_c was 7.0 seconds, exactly where the ζ-Test Matrix died. If I cut it to 0.0624, then τ_c is 16.
Does it close?
Nuclear spins in a rigid cluster, Fisher's Posner molecules, 10⁵ seconds, so Γ_min is 10⁻⁵. Then Γ_ref is 0.143 over 0.2046, which is 0.70. κ is 0.820 times e^(−0.0624 over 0.70), so 0.820 times 0.915. 0.750.
Okay good… It does.
The edges of the arena began to recede. The walls drew back and a window opened in the middle of his skull, and he was still standing in it. He could feel his feet. Far out in the wide dark sky beyond the window, something small and bright looked back at him.
Switching now… 1 second.
Τ of Switch is Λₛ over Γₜ, and the sleeping site sits at 0.143. Sprint officials call anything under a tenth of a second a false start. If my switch takes 0.1s, it can't be a reaction, so it has to be anticipation. That makes Λₛ 0.0143. I lost 1.4% in transit, κ dips 0.011, and the margin is 0.03… Argh shit… Fine, the lattice breaks past three Λₛ, 4.3% deformation.
The cell shape. It's a flat array, so the cells have to tile the plane. Two-fold, three, four, six, and five can't. Two are Σ-simple. Three is fragile. Six is the ζ lattice, and I can't pay for it. So four.
Think… Imagine… Square cells.
Reference first. One SU(2)ₜ phase for everything.
Like acupuncture points on a body, he built it; he felt the sting deep within his head. The cells came one at a time over the anchors at his forehead, each wound four times and set a hair's breadth off the skin, spaced wide so none crowded the next.
PFC up. Ψₙ to 0.83.
His head went quiet, a sign for the final steps.
Thalamus. Same as everything above. I don't need to lift both. Whichever loses, loses it all at once with no warning. So please, register yourself… Now re-solve against the moving boundary; when I turn… the lattice follows.
C'mon… C'mon… Wo—
0 seconds, a majority of the steam disappeared.
A boulder was hurled at Isaac.
Holy s—
Blast.
The Fire-Concordee followed up its master, hell-bent on harming the hiding Isaac.
Seeing as there was no indication of Isaac being hit at all from the barrage of attacks thrown into the smokescreen, Zadial decided to waste a fair share of his mental capacity in hurling one huge AOE boulder that would be shredded to bits by way of exploding using his Fire-Concordee's thermal energy.
After the rain of rock and flames.
Isaac still stood there.
.
.
.
… Something's off…
That maneuver shouldn't have been possible—not at his current abilities. The speed, the precision... the timing. My boulder was timed perfectly for his inability to react, masked in the last remnants of his steam.
And yet—he reacted???
No. Did he react?
Could he have anticipated it?
The arena's viewing returned to normal; all else was cleared out, letting Zadial peer through to see the aftermath of what he helped create.
But where was he?
In the place Isaac should have stood, there was no one there.
Shit! Where did he go?
Zadial whipped his head around while commanding the two remaining Concordees to search the area around him, all of them back to back as they slowly stepped forward.
What was he trying to achieve in the steam smokescreen?
I know he has already put up his Shielding, so could he be setting a trap instead?
What kind of trap could a Wind Wave Binder set up?
He should also know that a vacuum pocket trick won't work on my Shielding.
So what the hell?! What is he pla—
A Page floated down from the sky.
Huh?
Out of pure curiosity, Zadial reached out and caught the empty paper.
He turned it around, inspected it further, and found nothing.
Why did this suddenly appear?
He really tried his best to find the source and the subject.
It was a tiring and pointless endeavor; Zadial felt drowsy.
Blink.
A boulder was fired.
Isaac was in the same spot. Zadial looked down at the arm holding the non-existent paper.
What the hell?
Blink.
It was present, and the Isaac in front of him was unfurling, fluttering into innumerable Pages. On those very papers that scattered in the wind were sentences and paragraphs that were oh so unfathomably rich in information.
Not one syllable could have been read.
Blink.
Everything's back to normal.
Isaac was slowly walking towards Zadial as his Nature Concordee and Fire Concordee continued their onslaught.
What sort of Clause Construct could Isaac use to disrupt his senses? Is it even possible to do so with Wind Noësis? He knew himself that it would be impossible for him to be hallucinating due to a lack of oxygen; he had his Shielding activated after all.
Blink.
So what was this?
Why was the Isaac Mun in front of him turning back into a book being opened and scattered?
Why was Isaac transforming at every blink of Zadial's eyes?
Blink.
Because there was one thing different about the incoming Isaac.
He was so casually dodging the attacks thrown by Zadial from the very start, yet right now it seemed as though the attacks were sentient, deliberately avoiding Isaac. It was as if Isaac was a magnet and the attacks were being repelled.
Impossible… Was that what he was after the entire time?
Blink.
Back to paper in his hand.
Neither; it was too generous a description.
In simpler terms, Isaac so minutely avoided each and every attack that was being thrown at him, adjusting his body for the heightened onslaught down to the millimetre of movement.
Blink.
He finally figured it out…
He finally figured it out.
Blink.
It was as if time reversed.
The approaching Isaac was now in the initial position before Zadial went on with his deductive monologue. Zadial eventually got the opportunity to raise his guard fully and retract his Concordees back to his side.
With the threat imminent and understood, Zadial would likely— surely- have to go all out. This was the first time he had seen a duelist suddenly awaken their Matrix mid-duel. Drawing from past experiences, with the sole exception of one incomprehensibly talented combatant, 2 of his 3 losses were due to the skill gap between a TM-activated and a TM-unactivated combatant.
If Isaac truly had unlocked his Topological Matrix, there need not be reason to hesitate or hold back. He knew full well that what was going on were the bombastic effects following the activation of a Topological Matrix.
Anzhelika's was on the relatively simple side, eyes being multilayered in depth and segmentations that bled green motion where he turned, while having extensions of garments made of pure white, draping into the same effect swirling around her.
On a side note, now that he thought about it, it was still quite bombastic. The effects of Topological Matrix displaying itself in various individuals were still an unknown anomaly in the field of Thaumitonic Physics.
Do higher-dimensional Thaumitons have consciousness and prostrate themselves according to the user's summation of lived life?
That was the current theory at the time. It's impossible to say.
Yet, through all that, there was a boy whose Topological Matrix was not limited to their own body, but to the subjective world of those in witness of it. A Topological Matrix of this caliber, of mental reality manipulation, existed.
And of course, the First Anomaly was the wielder.
By all counts of conscious effort to inflict harm:
Zadial was ready.
No matter the Topological Matrix… I trust in the me that trained for these kinds of fighters.
Still... What?
What's going on… Why aren't the Pages blowing away?
Was it the world that froze?
The Isaac who had been slowly dissolving into Pages in front of Zadial froze.
Numbers and equations slowly began writing themselves on the frozen, scattered Pages.
Some that he knew himself.
There existed SU(2)ₜ Structure constants from their own Gauge Theory:
111, 112, 113, 121, 122; +1, −1, −1, +1, +1, −1…
There exists the Fibonacci Sequence:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5…
There exists a binary:
01011001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01010011 01100011 01110010 01100101 01110111 01100101 01100100…
There were even the numbers of Pi:
3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9…
So on so forth.
Till there were sequences of words he didn't know of:
𝜿, 𝜿 is n, 𝜿 is 𝛼-hyper-mahlo, 𝜿 is greatly Mahlo, 𝜿-Mahlo…
Mahlo Cardinals.
111, 246, 3621, 413107, 5409847176870…
BB function.
And sequences that did not exist in this world:
I, II, III, IV, V…
Roman Numerals.
What is all this…
An innate fear rose inside of Zadial's heart.
It is primordial, beyond embryonic, more than eldritch, antediluvian, more so passé.
It is anything BUT regular fear.
What are those numbers— infinities swirling around him?
Those Pages in the air shot out myriads of equations, cardinals, numbers that bound the kneeling feral Isaac, anchors against his limbs binding him to the ground. He was rushing to escape those very Pages he had turned into. Seeing as there was no way mere numbers could hold him back, the Pages multiplied endlessly.
All that was in Zadial's vision turned to white.
Alas, with a final blink.
Isaac stood across Zadial, a vast, spiralling nebula of his QCD colors, interwoven with boundless drifting mathematical infinities and sequence twists coiled around him recursively.
Isaac's eyes were wide open; this time, pupils vanished, replaced with pitch darkness similar to Caelum's that swirled into a green black hole.
The End is indistinguishable from The Beginning.
On September 18th, 2024, the third First-Year had successfully developed and utilized a Topological Matrix following their TRC test.
He who is named.
Isaac Mun.
Zadial received the last Page that strayed from Isaac's body.
It was very clear words:
| Chapter 74: Topological Matrix. The End of a Duel. |