Chapter 593: Domain of the Dreamer

A/N: Happy Birthday to Dragonborn Saga. The Novel is 3 years old. (since 1/6/2018)

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In a way, Jon displayed an omnipotent power when it came to handling the central Demi-Reality inside his Domain. He can basically shift reality to unknown limits.

If it is just that, then it wouldn't be a problem but he can Save and Recall many shapes of the Demi-Reality if he just wishes for it. He can make it into the Garden Island or he can make it exactly look like a Modern City.

More to that, he can keep using those two forms at the same time. Also, if he stored an item or a living organism from reality in one of them then changed the appearance of the Demi-Reality then recalled the previous one, that item or living organism will still be there.

But the question still stands, is that place an illusion or is it a reality?

Jon had no answer even though he is the one in control and so he asked Nurina who is still more experienced than him. However, she didn't answer.

She kept looking at the city he fabricated and just spoke one sentence.

"Let me in."

"Hm?"

"Let me inside that Demi-Reality."

It wasn't something unusual to request, he was planning on letting her explore it anyway. Still, he brazenly walked to her and held her up from her waist before stepping over the rail and carrying her with him in one arm.

Just as he jumped in, it felt as if they were falling through the clouds as their vision became cloudy. Once they passed the cloud, they were falling towards the city down there in free-fall speed.

Jon merely used a bit of power and before they reached the building's level, their falling speed got reduced greatly and Nurina could see her reflection on the glass-like buildings as she was being carried by Jon all the way down to the wide clean ground.

This was totally another level from what she could even think about. She looked at the sky above and saw a normal-looking sky with no trace left of the Domain. There was heat to the sun and it felt rather comfortable as the warm breeze went by.

An illusion?

No, none of this feels like an illusion. Magicka could be felt through the entire place but the structure of this place was really well made. As she said, that's an entire realm.

"I need to know more? What else can you do?" She asked.

"I am not limited to anything, really." He said and started to move his staff nonchalantly.

As he did so, the clouds of the sky above started moving at a frightening speed giving a mild shock to Nurina who later realized that Jon was going fast-forward in time. Instantly, day became night.

"Hmmm." She narrowed her eyes and started thinking but Jon wasn't done yet.

He hit the ground with his staff and without even moving any Magicka from within him, reality was bent to his will and many things started to form.

At first, plain white silhouettes of various shapes appeared. They had a network of vertical and horizontal lines outlining their basic forms before being completely covered with a surface that started to gain color.

People… not just one or two… Jon just populated the whole city with people.

They were coming, going, speaking, laughing, driving metal carriages, and shouting through small glass slates. The sudden change overwhelmed Nurina and made her look around herself like crazy as the city lights made everything look as clear at night as it is at day.

Jon then raised his hand and the entire city… no, the entire time stopped across the realm.

"This is not me doing anything, to be honest. I just told the Domain to generate these images of people based on information in my head." Jon said.

"I think… I think I get it more." She said before asking, "How did you give it such a functionality?"

"I used the Binary Enchanting to give the Domain an ability to Calculate Inputs and Outputs. That however was just a very basic functionality that was the foundation to this Demi-Reality. On top of it, I laid a set of normal instructions that guide the outpost of the base enchantment and process it into different results by a series of interlocking nodes of spells. The last part was to store and display the result and here we are. I just give an order, the Domain functions as I want and displays it in this Demi-Reality."

"So it is not completely an illusion." Nurina clapped her head, "Not for the most part since in some way, it exists on a sensual level."

"But aren't illusions are the things that only exist on a sensual level with no real self whatsoever." He refuted.

"Hmmm…" Nurina started thinking, "What you say sounds like a paradox? Is it enough for reality to be sensual or should it be completely fabricated out of matter?"

"Logically, it is the second choice but…" Jon started thinking, "… it can also be a matter of perspective."

"Indeed." She nodded, "Imagine yourself a God."

"I hate that way of thinking."

"Fine, imagine yourself an Original Spirit. One day, you used your powers and created a world. To you, is this world less real than whatever your origin is?" She raised a point.

"But these are two different matters. God or those Original Spirits give life through souls. Once a life is born, it is independent and free until it returns to its creator."

Suddenly a thought erupted in Nurina's head and she linked all the missing mysteries Jon wasn't able to comprehend.

Of course he wasn't able to comprehend. Actually, he is preventing himself from comprehending because if he did, he wouldn't be able to maintain this thing.

"So, Jon…" Nurina spoke slowly, "You were right. The Soul is given to form Life. Sometimes, Artificial Souls like those of the Daedra can create similar effects to the Souls of the Living… and so does Simple Artificial Souls based on simple ideas."

"And?"

"Think about it. You were thinking about whether this Demi-Reality is something real or an illusion. The answer is neither." She pointed at him with a smile, "Boy, you're an enigma even though you always fail to realize it."

"So you understood something?" He asked.

She laughed and nodded.

"You will love this." She said and continued as she walked around the wide pavement looking around at the people which were created by this Realm, "The smaller the scale, the more complicated the mechanism. Yours is ingeniously simple even though you can't fathom its brilliance. Do you remember what you called it just now? This place."

"A… A Demi-Reality."

"Yes, not exactly an Illusion even though it is not completely real. It is a Fabricated Reality, an Artificial Reality… or…"

Jon's face twitched as he spoke the next words.

"A Virtual Reality."

"That's the word. A complete Virtual Reality which completely duplicates the information you process in your Subconscious and releases a World… of Ideas… of Thoughts." She said.

"I don't get it." Jon shook his head, "It sounds logical but that's just the basics. I fabricated an entire reality from my thoughts and…"

"You turned it into a Dream." Nurina pointed.

"A Dream…" Jon realized the meaning but the Mental Barrier he placed upon himself still continues.

"Ah!" Nurina held her head, "Your Dream is composed of ideas that exist through your consciousness. It is all Real but you are the one who makes it like that and it solely depends on you! Ah! BRILLIANT! How can you be awesome and sit so stupid at the same time?"

Nurina could no longer contain herself as if she was both happy and frustrated. She then walked towards one of the people Jon fabricated. The person was a female who held a strange gadget which she pointed towards other people who were smiling towards it. Nurina held the camera thing, threw it off, and then slapped the woman.

"Jon."

Just that word was enough to cause an incredible change. Jon instantly was overwhelmed by the feeling and watched as the camerawoman suddenly turned towards Nurina, her brown eyes immediately turned blue, and then started to glitch.

The glitching didn't last a second before the camerawoman completely vanished.

It vanished from this reality but suddenly, it appeared in Jon's head.

"Fuck!" He shouted.

He understood it all at once.

That glitching just now, it was some sort of Zero-Sum.

The camerawoman, who is part of this virtual reality, realized that she is in fact an idea from Jon's head. Something that strayed off by the process of creation and was placed here as an application of what he thought to be an illusion. That woman was just an idea all along and its source is Jon.

Just like anything else in this world.

Information.

Jon would just think and the information would leak from his brain and take form as he said once. In other words, everything here is a part of him.

"So… what do we call the elusive ideas that leak from one's head and dance around without the need of their creator's will?" Nurina asked.

"Dreams." Jon replied.

"And what does that make you, Jon?" She asked again.

"A Dreamer." He replied.

His reply was enough for the entire Virtual Reality characters which populated this place to suddenly glitch and disappear at once.

The whole wide population, which Jon use to fill this city with, is now gone. Only he remained to hold his head alongside the grinning Nurina.

"The Dreamer must never be aware that he is dreaming, else the Dream shall end." She said, announcing that she solved the entire mystery.

Once the master, always the master.

Jon sat on a bench as he rested his aching head and massaged his temples.

"This is so ridiculous." He said.

"Hands down, you may have just surpassed every Mysticism Wizard we know off." Nurina sat beside him, "You may also be the first Mage in existence to experience the state of the Godhead and return to tell the tale."

Jon was holding his head from an agonizing strike of headache.

Just now, he was in a state of an Overmind controlling every character in this Virtual Reality with his Subconscious and he didn't even realize it even once until Nurina slapped it into him. More importantly, the ideas which formed those characters and personalities were also unaware that they are part of Jon so once they realized it, they instantly glitched.

Why?

Because these ideas realized who they are and what is their origin which resulted in them returning to the Overmind.

"Godhead, huh?" Jon sighed.

"Indeed. The Dreamer of our World." Nurina nodded as she watched the beautiful city with Jon.

"So, if we are aware of the Dreamer, why don't we glitch off the face of reality as well?" Jon asked.

"Nice question. Well, the answer would be that I most certainly don't know but there is an obvious clue in how the Dwemer disappeared from the world. Let's say that when the Dwemer zero-summed, they did so because they connected themselves entirely to the Numidium and reached the higher awareness almost endangering the Dream and the Dreamer that make our reality."

"So?"

"I can say that our World is much more stable than this Virtual Reality you created. Even if you realize the Dream, you won't get zero-summed until you start acting against that Dream or endanger it. Part of this reason is due to our psychology. We may know that something is real but deep down, we still can't fathom or believe that we are mere aberrations in a dream. Let's say that the Dreamer doesn't care as well."

Jon laughed as he heard Nurina's explanation.

"You sure I was supposed to graduate as an Apprentice?" He asked.

"Quit bitching." She smiled, "Now, recreate those people again."

Jon massaged his eyes with his fingers and held the bridge of his nose.

"I can't." He said.

"Huh?"

"You just caused an apocalypse in my head, remember? You made all those characters glitch. I need to have enough mental energy to do this again."

"Welp… my bad." Nurina smiled, acting a little bit cute.

Jon looked at her with a cringe before her cute act grew stiff.

"Did you just think why is that 200 years old hag like me acting all cute, right?"

"Nope."

"I can read it, you know… it's all over your face."

Nurina started pinching Jon's ear and hitting his shoulder mercilessly while he was fighting her off before out of nowhere, the other Four Sins artifacts appeared in front of where Jon and Nurina were.

"Those are…"

"Oh, it is good they are here." Jon shook off Nurina and commanded his Artifacts to reform.

Greed turned into the coat he always wears, Wrath reformed itself into a skeleton warrior wearing a samurai bone armor, Gluttony turned into a red scarf and flew around Jon's collar, and finally Lust took the form of the naked and stunning woman, Venus.

Nurina started coldly at Venus.

"Cover up." Jon said before Nurina does something to Lust which caused a set of winter clothes to appear on Venus who was obviously bothered by the fact.

"Hmmm." Jon thought for a while before coming up with an idea, "Maybe we can recreate people in the realm again."

"How so?" Nurina asked.

"While the weakest of my Sins in terms of combat, Lust has Venus which is a very independent personality with her own ideas. She was once a Nedic maid that lived in the First Era before surrendering her soul for eternity to Sanguine. I won her from him but before her death, her soul entered Lust rather than returning to Aetherius."

"Interesting!" Nurina said, "What can she do then?"

"Watch this." Jon laughed, "Lust, I want you to temporarily merge yourself into this Virtual Reality and pilot all the roles I give you."

Venus smiled towards Nurina and phased out of her clothes before bowing to Jon and fading into thin air. Before Nurina even got to rage, multiple characters started to emerge as if they came back from glitching or something.

Nurina and Jon looked at the place around them as the world was being refilled with characters. Jon smiled and allowed the flow of people to flow as he snapped his fingers.

"So?" Nurina seemed not understanding what Jon did differently from the other time.

"Venus is an incredible actress so she has the capacity to play a full city by herself. On top of that, she is the Sin with the most indivisibility from me and can think independently so she doesn't think that she is a part of me. This means you can't make them glitch through using me again." He said.

"But they are still her?"

"Well, let's say that I added a little bit of censorship on what they can and can't hear."

Nurina laughed and looked around the lively modern city.

"This little Amaranth of yours. It may be actually worth a shot." She said as she finally submitted to the beauty of the city.

"Well, you can do whatever you want." Jon said and stood off the bench, "If you want to get out, overload your surroundings with Magicka and you will find yourself outside."

"Where are you going?" She asked.

"I'll bring the others." He replied with a smile, "I think my Domain's completion is worth celebrating."

As he left in a pillar of light heading towards the sky, Nurina put on a large grin of pride. Her apprentice has surpassed her in almost 10 years only.

But now! There was that thing which caught her eye once she arrived in this city. Not too far behind the bench she was sitting on, Nurina could see a glass display with one crazy-looking black dress.

She walked towards the display and saw her reflection on the dress that suited her tastes pretty much. She looked around and saw some of the domain characters going in and out of the shop with a fancy name on top of it.

She may have always given Jon lists for things to buy but now, he delivered her an entire city with bizarre and exotic items. How in Oblivion can she refuse?

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