Life didn't get easier, even in another world

160 Universal Matter

The first few files were the easiest to understand, but the more he read, the more complicated they got.

For Kairen, who got to know about the existence of mana and other powers only a few months ago and had zero academic knowledge about these subjects, these data were even harder to understand.

Kairen could get that the research was mostly about the origin of unique skills.

The unique skills were all linked to one’s soul. Apart from mana and aura that were directly extracted from spirit, the other powers were also said to reside in one’s soul.

The question was, how? How were all these powers linked to the soul? Where did they come from? What makes one have power that the others don’t? Why can’t you have two powers at the same time?

And the most important part, what was ‘soul’ and what was it made of?

That was how the research started.

There were a lot of theories about the soul from the old times up until now. Some said the soul was a gift given to us by god. Some said the soul was our true being. Some called it the essence of existence.

But the things here were completely different from all of those theories.

.....

‘Universal Matter?’

They regarded the soul as the Universal Matter, saying that it was what a soul was made up from.

‘So what is this Universal Matter? Any explanations?’

There were actually a lot of explanations about it but Kairen couldn’t understand them. They were just too much for him.

‘The powers are originated from the universe...?’

After reading a little bit longer, Kairen reached the parts where he understood almost nothing from them, so he skipped those parts and started reading another series of files.

‘The side effects and after-effects...’

There were another bunch of files related to those two subjects.

Side effects were the harmful effects of constantly using your power and draining your energy more than your body’s tolerance. It would lead to some health issues that would be worse the more you recklessly used your power. The thing that Kairen experienced in The Frozen Ocean was the side effects of using his power a lot.

After effects were the result of one using their power more than the power’s limit. If your power was limited to opening portals big enough to transport only two men, and you forcefully created a portal big enough to transport a huge house, then you would suffer from the action’s after-effects.

After effects differed from person to person and were permanent most of the time, unlike side effects that one could recover from if they were not too severe.

‘The after-effects appear because the power is used beyond the soul’s capacity of containing the Universal Matter?’

According to the research, if one forcefully exhausted the Universal Matter of their soul, their soul would be damaged. That damage was the thing people called the after-effects. While on the other hand, side effects appeared when the soul was shaken a little bit.

Dropping that file, Kairen opened another series of files. This time, they were related to monsters. After that was another research related to the Universal Matter and its connection to monsters, and then there was another one about the connection between monsters and unique skills.

Kairen read them one by one and tilted his head.

‘Okay, but what do these stuff have to do with weapons?’

The only way to find that out was to continue reading this hard-to-understand stuff. With a sigh, Kairen opened another file and kept reading it.

Just like that, Kairen spent hours reading those data. It was already night but he didn’t stop reading as the things were getting more and more interesting the more he read. And in the end, he could understand why Glenn gave this USB to him.

The research about unique powers went from only searching for the origin of powers to the monsters and then to the Universal Matter. In these researches done about 50 years ago, the thing called the universal matter was said to be the center of everything.

The soul was made up of Universal Matter, which connected it to the universe. As a result, it was believed that the powers that people can use are actually the elements of the universe that were accessible to people through the universal matter in their souls.

On the other hand, monsters were said to be created from the collide between all these essential elements of the universe with each other. The scientists called that the Atypical Matter, Atypical in short.

It was only a theory and nothing about it was proved, or could be proved, but it was really interesting. Kairen was amazed that the scientists of 50 years ago could have such ideas.

Then, from that point on, the research was mostly focused on that Atypical Matter. How it was created, how it lead to the creation of monsters, and how could they control it.

‘Man I thought they had no idea what the monsters were made of? Seems like they just didn’t let the people know about it...’

And after a little bit of time, they solely focused on handling the Atypical Matter. They weren’t still sure if their theory was right and they couldn’t even get a glimpse of what they called the Atypical Matter for them to make sure they were doing the right thing, but those scientists did their best to reproduce it in the labs.

And they were successful. They could produce the Atypical Matter after doing countless research on monsters and unique powers for years.

Although the Atypical Matter created by the scientists in the lab was far weaker than the natural ones, they still could reach what they wanted.

But the research didn’t end there. The scientists were after something else. They wanted to use that artificial Atypical Matter made by them for a specific purpose. And they found only one way to do that, by forcefully compressing it.

And like that, after years of research and effort, they could finally achieve their goals. ????????????r????????????. ????o????

That was... to create weapons with the Atypical matter.

“....”

Kairen looked at the data that he didn’t understand at all with a serious face. He had actually reached the end of the files. It seemed like the data and results about the weapons were categorized on another page so Kairen finally closed that page.

After looking at the icons on the main page while deeply frowning, Kairen took a deep breath and clicked on the third one.

Once again, a bunch of files filled the screen. Kairen opened the first one without any hesitation and started to read through it.

‘Huge destruction...’

That was the power of weapons created from the Atypical Matter.

‘Complete annihilation...’

The power to eliminate everything.

The C.A.D project was a success. The military and government finally had the most powerful weapon that they wanted in their hands.

But there was something wrong in there.

‘Why is there nothing after this?’

The data, the research results, the production of the weapons, all ended in one day.

‘Did something happen? Did they stop the project?’

No matter how much Kairen searched, there was nothing to find out after a specific date.

Creak

Kairen flinched after hearing the sound of the door opening and took his eyes off of the screen to look at the door.

“Oh? You still haven’t left?”

Kairen looked at Glenn’s tired face with a blank look for a second, then pointed at the screen with his finger.

“Hey, what happened to this thing after this date?”

Glenn raised one of his brows and walked over to Kairen.

“You’ve already read them all? I thought you would understand nothing from all those data.”

“I... understood nothing... but I could get the whole idea somehow... However, everything ended here.”

Glenn looked at the date with a bitter smile on his lips and then nodded.

“That’s right. Everything ended that day.”

Kairen raised his head and looked up at Glenn. Seeing him, Glenn shrugged.

“Something went wrong. Apparently, they had trouble handling that matter, and it went out of control one day... and the whole project was destroyed... You know what I mean. Complete annihilation.”

Kairen frowned.

“Do you mean... the weapons couldn’t hold the power of the Atypical matter and exploded by themselves?”

“That’s right. They couldn’t hold the power. No one knows how it started, but the whole building, the researchers, most of the data, and all of the weapons exploded one day.”

“.....”

All of those weapons exploded?

Kairen couldn’t imagine the huge destruction that it had caused.

“That’s right. The explosion led to huge destruction. Hopefully, the building was built in a remote place, but still, it left so many casualties... There were a few villages that turned to nothing after the explosion and even some cities that were hundreds of kilometers away from the building received some damage...”

“What happened to the weapons?”

Glenn shook his head.

“They are gone. No matter how much the government tried afterward, they couldn’t recreate the same thing.”

Kairen looked at the screen again with a serious face.

“But looks like some other people ‘could’ recreate it after all...”

Glenn sighed and nodded with a bitter face.

“That is... true...”

.....