Etranger

Continuation of Appendix 3>

“What about sages?” Biyeon asked.

“I guess you could call them entities that were created and placed in this world by the Creator to allow the continued operation of the world. They’re the most powerful and wise gangsters around. They’re like the OS in your time, like UNIX or Windows. They utilize resources to squash bugs and maintain balance in the system. They’re also responsible for the protection and recovery of the entire planet’s operation. You can see them as hard-working high-level managers of a large conglomerate. They’re very conservative. They’re also not allowed to go against any of the world’s rules. That’s why their creativity sucks,” Namjoon explained.

“What about you guys?”

“We’re like beta testers. We’re the worst things that the Creator could find to stress test the system,” Namjoon said with a chuckle.

“Then what about humans?”

“Users. They purchase things, read them, admire them, vacillate on their necessity, and other acts that mainly center around consumption. If they’re happy, they also leave nice comments. If they don’t like something, they just leave. If humans disappear, the Creator is left with nothing. Furthermore, humans are the only beings that can become someone like the Creator through Awakening. Something like one becoming another Buddha.”

“Then Satan? The Original Beings?”

“Well… Satan was the first human that the Creator ever created… so Satan was probably created in the Creator’s image.”

“Then what about us two?” Biyeon asked.

“I don’t know… you’re both still human. I guess you two are on a path to becoming other Creators? I’m not certain myself.”

“Are you telling us that you’re still unsure what humans are? Do you know anything about A-Pian (Apian)?” San asked.

“We may… or we may not…” Ogi said as he tilted his head to one side with an expression that conveyed his uncomfortableness.

“Is this also something that you guys don’t want to tell us?”

“It’s not a difficult question. We’re just not allowed to speak about it. The contract we made with the Creator is very strict. All four of us Outsiders need to agree in order to speak about that subject…”

Ogi looked at the other three Outsider members. He was asking for their approval. One member gave his approval while the other two shook their heads.

“I guess we can’t talk about it yet. Sorry. It’s a sensitive subject among us, and we do need to maintain secrecy. Please understand.”

“If it’s inconvenient, then forget it. But does Apian really exist? Can’t you tell us that much?” Biyeon pressed on.

“It existed and will exist once more,” Miri answered. She was one of the two who had shaken their heads against spilling everything.

“Then, you’re saying that it doesn’t exist right now?” Biyeon asked as she turned to look at Miri. Miri frowned.

“I’m not sure if you felt wronged when I stated against telling you both everything, but I’m being very cautious. Truthfully, I’m not sure if you two will become the Creator’s enemy or partner. Even if you guys fell into the camp of being the Creator’s partners, you guys can’t keep a secret in your current state, right?”

“It seems to be a very important and strategic location that can’t be released to the public. However, we need to visit that place. It’s the only place that can provide an answer to why we were summoned to this place,” San answered.

“We can’t disclose the details, but we can explain the conceptual points. Apian is the place where new beginnings start. The ‘A’ in Apian has two diametrically opposed meanings. A place that is not Pian. Another meaning is that it is the central Pian amongst all Pians. It was spoken about in many legends and folklore in Episode 285. I hope that provided you both with a hint.”

“Eden?” Biyeon asked.

Miri nodded her head in the affirmative.

“Moreover, consider the beginning point of many civilizations… a large boat and flood, a city destroyed by a meteor. Find the commonality,” Miri stated as she looked at San and Biyeon. Miri seemed to be awaiting their reaction. San and Biyeon fell into thought. However, the information that Miri provided them didn’t seem to surprise the two.

“It’s as we expected,” Biyeon muttered as she looked towards San.

“As you said before, Apian is probably the reset place where everything is brought back to a certain point,” San responded.

“The large boat related to Noah’s Ark, the meteorite is alluding to Sodom and Gomora, and Eden was the focal point that created and sent off all these beings into the wider world.”

“Then why were we told to find Apian?”

“I think Apian is not a physical place but an action, like building the ark. Building Apian means that the apocalypse is about to come. Whether it be through water or fire, the apocalypse will ravage the land and create a blank template for another species to develop.”

After finishing her sentence, Biyeon turned to look at Miri.

“And once a contract is established, the system is reset. You Outsiders probably already prepared your own Noah’s Ark and collected the genetic material necessary to re-create life, right? Am I roughly correct?” Biyeon concluded.

The other three members outside of Miri didn’t say a word. Miri couldn’t help but show an exasperated expression. It seemed that Biyeon had hit the hammer on the nail’s head.

“Now… the last question that we want to ask before we leave. How many stages of acceleration are there? Can you tell us the conceptual framework of acceleration?” San stated as he looked at Ogi. The Outsiders were the ones who discovered Awakening. Thus, it was natural that San would ask this question.

“Since you guys have accelerated to such a high level, you both probably already know the conceptual framework, right? You probably know much better than we do,” Ogi answered.

“We’re only certain that it has something to do with how many different consciouses we can hold at the same time. But we’re unsure about the details or the reasons why this is,” Biyeon explained.

“You’ve already got the gist of it. You’ve reached a similar conclusion to our own research conclusions. We see ‘acceleration’ as the human mind’s ability to control and utilize multiple dimensions. It’s the conceptual world conversing with the material world. We call that conversation ‘resonance’.”

“The mind conversing with the physical body?”

“As with all physical states of being, the human mind and body usually stay at the lowest energy expending level. However, when one gets into a dangerous situation, those energy levels spike. Most people can’t properly control and balance out the next level of power that comes out from this sudden spike, but someone who can properly control this spike can better utilize their physical body and mind. It’s extreme focus and concentration. When the mind and physical body become in tune to concentrate energy. That’s the 1st Stage of Acceleration. There have been many occasions where humans have reached this level. However, most people live their whole life without experiencing this even once. That’s why they know of the possibility but don’t believe in it.”

“Then what’s the 2nd Stage of Acceleration?”

“One who has mastered the 1st Stage of Acceleration can then master one’s mind and awaken it. That’s the 2nd Stage of Acceleration. All the senses in one’s body become heightened. One becomes aware of these changes. That’s why one’s physical body hurts so much at this stage.”

“…”

“However, if one can get past the pain and control one’s upgraded physical body, then one can utilize the fruits of the 2nd Stage of Acceleration. This stage of acceleration often becomes realized in those who fight in wars and battles. Aren’t there many battle tales where one person suddenly decimates a whole bunch of opponents? The weird thing is that those from Episode 285 don’t have too much trouble reaching this second stage. Each Episode’s humans had a certain given balance that seemed inherent to them.”

“Hmm… I guess I’m following. So, what’s the 3rd Stage of Acceleration?”

Appendix 4> The advent of dragons – Separation from the Original Beings’ path 

Dragon species. Sages: the humanoid subjects used by dragons to act upon the world.

Dragons were the strongest species that could set foot upon the earth and were the most powerful among beings that possessed a physical body. Thus, the dragons were known as the ultimate weapon.

The Creator gave the dragons the responsibility to protect the planet from asteroids and meteors that could enter the atmosphere and inflict damage on the system. The dragons were also responsible for protecting the planet from outside influences.

Funnily enough, the dragons were also given the order to allow mutations to flourish and to control any dangerous mutations that may arise. This was how the dragons became the essential operators of the Creator’s world. The dragons had always been successful in carrying out their responsibilities. 

However, there were two cases when this wasn’t so. It was regarding the dragon’s response to humans and gods. There were many challenges in carrying out the dragon’s responsibilities when it came to these two entities, and the actions that the dragons took weren’t all successful. Though the Creator was not fully satisfied with the dragon’s work, he allowed them to continue carrying out their tasks.

The wise dragons interpreted gods as parasitic existences rather than as viruses. They interpreted humans as a sort of cancer since humans seemed to grow in number exponentially and had very unpredictable reactions to stimuli. Thus, the dragons decided to restrict human numbers while living in cooperation with the gods.

For the Creator, the dragons had made a decision based purely on the logic that he or she could not find fault with. The Creator also understood that if the dragons continued to limit humans, the Creator’s own existence may also suffer. The problem arose when the dragons slowly started gaining their own ego and sought to become independent from the Creator.

[The details and specifications of dragons]

Based on their biological makeup, the dragons were less like natural organisms and more like biomechanical structures. They were made of nano-sized carbon, aluminum, and other elements that were common to high-tech tools. Dragons were intelligent bio-mechanic/automata. Their individual bodies were formed of clusters of independent organisms that were connected in a largely free association relationship. The Creator had made the dragons into a hybrid of three different biological species.

The first was as a biological, living system. The dragons could live for ten thousand years and create energy from within themselves. This system would only bring out its full energy if the dragon happened to fall in danger or had to undergo some difficult process. Although each dragon had a slightly different biological system, usually, the systems would be active for three hundred years before hibernating for one hundred years. During the three-hundred-year active period, the different parts of the dragon would awaken at different times. This was why the dragons needed their own lair.

The second unique system the dragons possessed was a high-energy producing system. If the biological system was needed to maintain life, this high-energy system was needed to take extreme physical activity and for fighting. This was why the dragon species grew to be so large; they needed a large internal space to convert and store large amounts of energy and to convert them at a moment’s notice. Some dragons that were very active only grew to about fifty meters in length while the dragons who gave up on moving around grew up to five hundred meters long.

Moreover, the energy that the dragons stored and used were based on electricity and light, which was also why dragons used laser and light-based communication technology. For precise control over this power system and their body, the dragons had to balance and synthesize their biological components with the active electricity (high energy) producing system. This was also the reason why many dragons kept high energy density stones and crystals in their lair, as they could externally store some of their high energy.

Additionally, the dragons possessed a Dragon Heart. The Dragon Heart operated on a nuclear scheme; thus, it could also produce high energy as part of the high-energy producing system. The dragons utilized these high energy sources to create substantial offensive weapons. They could concentrate separate lasers to create a plasma-based attack, use highly pressurized gasses that could be released or exploded to launch projectiles, and even utilize atomic attacks that would wreak havoc on the particle level. Each dragon specialized in a specific type of attack, but all dragons possessed the essential component detailed above. Once the central system needed the high-energy producing system to react, it could.

The weapon of choice for most dragons was Dragon Breath, which was based on nuclear reactions. A single Dragon Breath had the power to incinerate entire towns of half a million people. Outside of Dragon Breath, the dragons also developed their own unique attacks and passed those techniques down to following generations. Over thousands of years, the dragons would evolve their bodies to specialize in specific attack styles and prepare over five thousand different types of attacks and materials, such as bombs.

Humans would later call these magic weapons, so all dragons were seen as beings that could utilize magic. This was also the reason why the earlier dragons who served the Creator had engraved the legends of magic and fantasy into the human world. 

The third component of the dragon, and the most important, was a dragon’s constantly evolving intelligence structure. This structure allowed dragons to conveniently transfer all their knowledge to the next generation without loss. This ability was what led dragons to become the most powerful and wise beings on the planet. 

Thus, the dragon’s true body was an intelligent system and various independent systems that worked together within a biological framework. To maintain safety for this system, the dragons decide early on to limit their movement. Though they were incredibly powerful beings, they focused this power on defense as time went on.

Something that the dragons needed to resolve was that they needed to develop the software to go along with their mighty power. In essence, because of their development, the dragons did not possess the most up-to-date information of the constantly evolving world, as they could not move around and collect data. 

Dragons were not a species that could create without input. They didn’t possess the process to develop internally. They needed an outside source for inspiration and guidance. Thus, every dragon had to spend nearly sixty percent of its life just learning the basics of socialization and imbue their experience upon other beings that could move around the world as their eyes, ear, and other senses.

At first, the dragons had used large dinosaurs, but they later found that the human form was the only one that could survive and move in many different situations. The Creator had thus given dragons a reptilian body but the ability to procreate and create using their various hybrid systems.

In other words, the hardware and software would work together to create clones within the dragon that could be expelled out of a dragon’s body but still be considered a part of the main body. This system successfully operated for many tens of thousands of years. This revolutionary breakthrough allowed mobile entities to carry out missions in the wider physical world on behalf of the main body dragon in a docking type arrangement, wherein the entities occasionally docked and relayed information to the main dragon body. Those mobile existences came to be known as Sages.

Sage could not only utilize the knowledge base that was gathered by dragons for many tens of thousands of years, but they could also share information amongst each other as clones that were essentially all parts of a single entity. Moreover, these sages were able to enter human society and gain high positions, thus allowing dragons to reduce the time to familiarize and socialize themselves to human society. Thus, sages played an important part in gathering information and analyzing it to expect certain actions and to take informed actions.

This was how sages became the most powerful ‘humanoid’ existences within human society. In some situations, the sages would outwardly show their connection to the dragon species or even partner with their main body dragon to oversee and operate entire empires. Moreover, with all the gathered info on human Awakener development and skills, sages could quickly develop many attack mechanisms, which was why they were widely known as the most powerful warriors amongst the humans. When these special beings became too old to operate properly, the sages would go into the mountains to never be seen again. This was why they were given the name sages, for their wisdom in knowing when to let go and to return to nature.

Though the sages and dragons put together were an unstoppable force, they did not do damage on the planet. From the beginning, they were programmed to not have many of the vices that other beings possessed, such as overindulgent qualities of power, possession, and sex. This level of control was why sages and dragons looked down upon humans, who were self-destructive and always blind to their own downfall.

However…

At a certain point, the dragons, through their collection of data and socialization process in the human world, had developed an ego and desire that hadn’t been programmed within them. It was like the central mean theorem, if the dragons lived long enough amidst humans, they would take on some human qualities. 

This was what caused the most dangerous problem on the planet.

ETRANGER

THE ONE