Space, the final frontier.

  Or, it had been before the universe imploded and everything ceased to exist.

  Standing next to the railing surrounding the arena floor of the Colosseum, Rory let out a deep sigh.

  "This time. This time for sure,"

  For three months, Rory had been stuck on the same stage of the trial, but he was hellbent on succeeding this time.

  "Alright, here goes nothing,"

  Confirming the prompt the second it flickered into existence, Rory found himself floating in space.

  Stage one.

  Together with what he'd learned from collaborating with Apostolos, they had cleared the first stage of the trial in only three weeks. It was barely a speed bump as he zipped toward the star, feeling for the opposing forces. The first trial was about understanding gravity and its counterpart, dark energy. It was only upon grasping the forces that one gained the ability within the trial to manipulate the two, like a god shaping his creations.

  Accelerating time within the trial, something he'd discovered he could do on his third attempt, the black tendrils representing the magical side of dark energy began to pull at the star, yet with a flick of his hand, Rory cut the force off, increasing the gravitational strength of the neutron star. Having cleared this stage before, Rory knew not to overly increase the strength of gravity lest the neutron star collapse into a black hole. Once it was clear the star would no longer fall to the pulling force of cosmic dark energy, the scene shifted.

  Stage two.

  In the next stage, Rory felt he 'shrunk,' existing not as a physical body but as a conceptual bystander or observer. There, directly before him, several…. things were held in stasis. Unable to comprehend things of such a minuscule scale, his mind viewed them like orbs of strange matter.

  Held in stasis, nothing was currently happening, but Rory knew the moment he turned the stasis off, he'd instantly fail the stage.

  It had taken him a month before he realized that, but once he had, between himself and Apostolos, Rory had figured out what he was observing, something he had smacked himself in irritation for not realizing sooner.

  After all, if the first stage were about comprehending gravity and its opposition, the second stage would revolve around another cosmic force, Strong force.

  It had been oddly unbalancing to realize he existed on a subatomic scale, but that was magic for you.

  Once he understood the stage, it had only taken Rory two weeks longer to pass it. Using his magical perceptions, he'd noted the distance between the particles and adjusted them to be perfectly balanced, neither drifting apart nor colliding. It was more gut feeling than science, but it worked, so that was all that mattered.

  Unfortunately, balancing the particles wasn't all that was needed for the stage. Still, fortunately, Rory had already had an idea of what was required, his senses telling him that the balanced particles still weren't as they needed to be. Rather than balancing them against one another in a sort of equilibrium of distance, he'd needed to adjust the particles so they wouldn't decay, an application of what he assumed was Weak Force, though of the 'forces' it was the one Rory understood least, only recalling the name and the general 'idea' of what it was about.

  Thankfully, the trial was focused on concepts and magic rather than math and hard science. Having an idea of what he was being tested on had allowed him to sense the instability within the 'model' before him, and he'd quickly resolved it without ever needing to bust out a single calculator.

  Which was helpful, given he didn't have a calculator.

  Clearing the first and second stages of the Trial of Space took three months between all the necessary attempts. That understanding led current-day Rory to breeze through the second stage just as quickly as the first, balancing the distance between the 'particles' and then the 'particles' themselves in seconds.

  The scene changed once more as Rory found himself in a static-y soup.

  Stage three.

  Stage three was the easiest for Rory to understand of the first three stages. Considering stage one had been gravity and dark energy, stage two was Strong force and Weak Force; Rory instantly knew what the third stage would be by the first time he'd encountered it: dedicated to electromagnetism.

  Knowing what the stage would pertain to, it had only taken Rory two weeks to clear it. Objects, some in motion, others entirely still, were charged to repel and attract based on their electrical charge, and only once they'd all been matched, paired, and handled did the stage change.

  Within seconds of appearing on the third stage, Rory was already on his way.

  Stage Four.

  It was the first 'interesting' stage. The first three had been little more than classes on understanding the base physical forces of the universe, the same sort of forces that had existed in their old universe. Stage four took those lessons and said, 'Alright, now do something.'

  What that something was turned out to be balancing an entire solar system from scratch. First, one had to consider the smallest of the forces, Strong and Weak Force, and ensure that the tapestry created didn't fold before anything could even be painted across it. Only once he'd felt as if the empty space was settled did he begin by plopping in an oversized star, like he was some creator god. From there, he started placing planets, stars, asteroid belts, and many other celestial objects until all that remained was assessing the completed system and checking for any irregularities.

  As easy as Rory made it sound, it had taken nearly as long as the first three stages combined before Rory cleared it his first time. Balancing such fundamental forces on a grand scale had been dizzying and intricate, even with the expanded senses and abilities the trial granted.

  Having cleared it before, it was far less difficult, and while it 'took' several years of effort, they were fake years that existed only within the trial itself. Observing his work—ten years it had taken in the trial to balance every force perfectly—Rory nodded to himself as suddenly he began to crash down toward one of the planets like a falling star.

  Stage five.

  Crashing upon a barren planet, Rory immediately glanced upward as something else crashed alongside him. Stepping out from a crater stood a majestic lion with a mane of furiously burning stardust.

  Within the Trial, Rory didn't have access to his ability to examine things as he would in reality, so Rory had no way of knowing if the monster had a different given name than what he'd referred to it as.

  As it was, Rory had come to refer to the monster as a Celestial Lion, and man, was it not a friendly creature.

  As soon as the creature stepped out from the crater, Rory went on the offense. Not with any of his regular armaments or capabilities, no. Instead, he warped space, a chain reaction of explosions detonating against the monster as the strong force keeping atoms separated disappeared and nuclear explosions took their place.

  Stages one through three were academic lessons, and stage four was applying those lessons to a grand model. Stage five?

  Stage five was bending those lessons learned into weapons against an overpowering foe.

  If being bombarded by nuclear explosions phased the Celestial Lion, it didn't show it, shrugging off the force of hundreds of detonated nukes like a morning shower. Stepping forward, it appeared in front of Rory as if physical space was naught but a suggestion. Reacting, Rory manipulated gravity and dark energy, gravity anchoring the creature as dark energy repelled them once more. Surrounding the creature, a cloud of electrical charge appeared before detonating, and a moment later, the space in which the lion stood began to break down from weak force decay.

  Roaring, the lion restabilized space and nullified the charged particle cloud surrounding it as it pawed the ground, and far beneath their feet, a tectonic plate shattered.

  Frowning, Rory lunged forward, his fist crashing into the lion's face as the cosmic forces bent to aid his efforts. A punch with the force of a thousand nuclear bombs exploded against the lion's mane.

  Rory subconsciously pondered just what scale the battle they fought was akin to. Was this the stage of a tier-fifteen battleground? Tier-twenty? One hundred?

  Rory had no context aside from the fact that it was an order of several magnitudes beyond anything he could do in the real world.

  Still, such thoughts were a distraction, so Rory set about clashing with the lion without a single thought but defeating the lion before it could destroy all his work.

  Their battle raged for years until, with only three planets remaining in his carefully crafted solar system, Rory stared down at the Celestial Lion's defeated corpse. It had been a brutal fight, as it was every time he faced the fifth stage of the trial, and no number of attempts made it any easier; there was no 'trick' to win easily, just grit, determination, and creativity in the ways he could utilize his understanding of the fundamental forces of the universe.

  Exhaling once, Rory saw the fabric of space shattering around him, drawing inward as he became incorporeal, a metaphysical observer once more.

  Stage six.

  If the first five stages were dedicated to comprehending, modeling, and using the fundamental physical forces of the universe, then the next few revolved around the metaphysical forces.

  Smaller than even the smallest physical particle, Rory existed within a primordial soup, waiting.

  Waiting for what?

  Noticing one, Rory 'snatched' something as it zipped by faster than could be comprehended, only possible through the shenanigans that the trial allowed a mere tier-six to perform.

  That's one.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  What floated within his zone of influence was something his mind couldn't comprehend, a mote of energy. Thus, his mind didn't even bother, observing it as a flickering spark rather than whatever it really was. While its appearance was impossible to parse to the physical mind, it didn't take a genius to recognize what he'd caught, the unmistakable energy that was Pneuma.

  Smiling, or mentally smiling, given he didn't physically exist within this stage, Rory continued to snatch the flickering sparks whenever they zipped by. Once he'd captured several dozen, Rory metaphorically nodded to himself, content with the volume. Imagining as if he were knitting a piece of cloth together, the erratic and random movements of the barely constrained sparks begin to gain a semblance of order, of a pattern that he couldn't understand yet he instinctively knew existed.

  A change in Pneuma state.

  The sixth stage of the trial was about manipulating Pneuma to comprehend how it existed and the 'states' it could be shaped and molded into. The first 'state' was little more than its natural form, entirely unconnected sparks of potential, of change and energy that flowed and moved randomly, the latent background energy that seemed to exist everywhere. The second state, grade two Pneuma, was analogous to uncontained gas, existing 'together' but not within actual proximity. It was the primary Pneuma type he interacted with within their camp, their Pneuma Crushers binding the erratic grade one Pneuma into the more potent grade two.

  But that wasn't all there was to the sixth stage of the trial.

  Taking the connected but still distant sparks, Rory imagined himself 'reeling' them in like fish on a line, the sparks forced closer and closer. The closer the sparks were pulled inward, the more they resisted, like particles with equivalent electromagnetic charges.

  Resisting, Rory continued to draw the sparks closer and closer. He'd once slipped up in a prior attempt at the sixth stage, which had resulted in the Pneuma escaping and his instant failure.

  Understanding what a lapse would result in, Rory also drew his area of influence tight, matching the proximity of the energetic sparks. Once the sparks were brought within a tenth of their original distance, Rory felt them 'settle.' It wasn't by much; they'd still readily escape, but it was stable so long as he didn't actively disperse them.

  Grade three.

  Grade three Pneuma was what he'd used to ignite the Stellar Forge, the first form of Pneuma to physically manifest to the naked eye. Calling it gas was the closest analogy Rory had. Thus, he'd given grade three Pneuma the pseudonym of Gaseous Pneuma to match its gas-like appearance.

  Still, the stage hadn't been cleared; two more states were left to conquer.

  Following the trend of physical matter, Rory knew the next 'state' would be liquid Pneuma, something he'd never seen in reality. For some time, he had thought he had, as he'd mistaken the liquid surrounding the Essence Spire as liquid Pneuma, but after some time, he'd adjusted his assumption. It wasn't liquid Pneuma; it was simply liquid with Pneuma instilled within. His misunderstanding had only been cleared up thanks to the damp dew seasons; the dew that covered everything was nearly identical to the liquid surrounding the essence spire, just without the signature sense of Pneuma within. It was that observation that had led him to consider that the liquid was perhaps not Pneuma. It wasn't water either; water didn't exist in this universe, but it was the next best thing, like a fizzy and tangy equivalent.

  Letting his wandering thoughts fade before he attempted the next state change of the gathered Pneuma, Rory considered what he'd learned in the past of attempting this stage of the trial. Unlike in the real world, where matter became less energetic as it moved from gas to liquid to a solid, it was the reverse with Pneuma. Trying to emulate the same physical changes that gas went through as it became a liquid would only result in failure, the mental assumptions resulting in the bleed-off of energy from the contained Pneuma.

  Therefore, doing his best not to let those thoughts interfere with what he was about to do, Rory once more tightened his area of influence. Rather than simply 'reeling' in the sparks closer, Rory imagined himself twisting and spinning the sparks like rotating stars, the speed of their spins aiding the 'reeling in' of their connections in a way that was impossible to overcome through sheer brute force. The dozens of spinning sparks began to draw closer and closer, reeling in their connecting tethers until they were no more than a breath apart from one another.

  Rory could feel the raw potential, the Pneuma magnitudes more energized now than even as gaseous Pneuma; if he could access this in the real world, even a tiny amount could abundantly power their settlement as it stood.

  One more step.

  As potent as the grade four pneuma was—liquid Pneuma if he were to see it in the real world—it wasn't the final step he could take. There was one more step, a level greater than every prior combined.

  It was also the steepest step to climb. It had taken Rory a month and a half of trial and error before he reached the point where he could comfortably succeed.

  Once more, drawing on the connecting threads that wove between the spinning sparks, Rory imagined himself reaching within the core of each individual ember before hauling as hard as he could. Instantly, each and every spark exploded with power, taking every bit of his control and focus to contain the power within his area of influence. While the sparks had exploded outwards in an outrageous display of power, the connections held firm. From those, Rory began to draw the nebula of explosive Pneuma into a rotating spiral. With painstaking concentration, Rory didn't let a single iota of energy escape, weaving the former individual sparks into a single cohesive tapestry. Deep in his concentration, Rory lost track of his perception of time, his world entirely dedicated to weaving the energy together, until at last, what remained within his area of influence was what looked like a swirling spiral, a miniature galaxy smaller than even the subatomic particles that built an atom.

  Mentally sighing and relaxing, Rory had a moment to observe the final evolved state of Pneuma. Unlike solid matter, solid by nature of rigid bonds and lowered energy state, solid Pneuma was solid due to the individual motes of energy being woven into a single cohesive whole.

  Rory was immensely intrigued by the concept and desperately wished to make it a reality one day, but they weren't even close to refining gaseous Pneuma into liquid Pneuma, much less solid Pneuma.

  Still, a success was a success, and within moments, Rory felt the world breaking apart around him as he moved past the sixth stage of the trial.

  Stage seven.

  It was the second to last stage he'd managed to comfortably clear and the stage he'd cleared the fastest of the second half of the trial.

  Once more, in his physical body, Rory stood between four human-sized crystals within a white void. Each crystal felt like it carried a distinct aura of space, albeit with different focuses. The first crystal carried the feel of the emptiness of space, the second carried the coldness of space, the third carried the heat of the cosmic fires, and the fourth and final crystal carried the abundance of space. They were equals and opposites, and within moments of first attempting the Trial, Rory recognized the intent of the stage as similar to the fourth stage of the entire trial; he was meant to take the spatial-themed auras and weave them into a balanced singularity. Ultimately, it proved to be simple trial and error, finding the perfect ratio of each aspect as they became a singular aura. This far more complex aura represented the totality of space. Once he'd finally expended the entirety of the reserved Pneuma within each crystal and woven a singular spatial aura, it had exploded outward as the white void turned into an endless expanse of void.

  Rory repeated the process, and within an hour, he had passed the seventh stage and was on the final stage that he could comfortably clear.

  Stage eight.

  With his physical body disappearing, Rory found himself nothing more than a speck of energy, a floating orange light that sparkled and flared directly in front of a mirror that reflected his current image back.

  The eighth stage was a bit of a mind-bender because it required him to be in two places simultaneously. Had it not been for his developing ability to split his mind into two entirely idiosyncratic threads of thought, Rory likely would have found the eighth stage an impossible roadblock.

  But he had developed the capability, so when he found himself once more as a spark of energy confronted with a reflection of himself, Rory willed his mind into both images, suddenly occupying two identical mirrors that existed at once. Once occupying both spaces, Rory needed to direct both energy forms to converge upon their side of the mirror before swapping their places in space, twisting their local dimensions to tunnel through reality.

  It would have appeared to an observer as if nothing had changed, with both floating sparks still in the same spot. They wouldn't see that Rory had successfully inverted their locations, passing through the spatial lock the mirror represented.

  It's a bit like quantum entanglement…. I think, at least. What I know, though, is that I didn't go to college to study physics.

  Mentally releasing a held breath, Rory prepared himself for what was next as reality once more broke apart. He soon found himself floating in space, a common thread of the trial.

  It's almost like it's called the Trial of Space.

  Floating in space, Rory muttered to himself as he flexed his hand.

  "Stage nine, my familiar foe."

  He had been stuck in stage nine for three months now. By all accounts, he would likely be stuck for another few months at a minimum, but Rory believed in the age-old adage that diamonds were made under pressure.

  A.K.A, with no time left before the Siege Wave, that he would have a breakthrough.

  The issue was that there was no indication of what he was supposed to do. He was floating in space, with no stars or planets to place, asteroids to position, auras to balance, or Pneuma to weave, nada, just the endless expanse of space. No matter what he tried to do, no matter what he tried to build, nothing seemed to work. He couldn't even feel the familiar forces of Pneuma, background or concentrated; neither seemed to exist.

  What am I missing?

  Rory frowned, thinking in any direction and potential avenue he could conceive, yet no matter how he thought it through or what he tried to bring into reality, nothing seemed to fit or work.

  Unlike other stages of the trial, the ninth stage only failed once he gave up, so running through several options he'd tried in the past, Rory set to work.

  First, Rory slowly seeded a star, drawing specks of gas and dust from the endless expanse and accelerating time so that millions and billions of years passed in the blink of an eye, a nebula forming before collapsing into a star. Continuing his work, Rory shaped and created other celestial objects, planets, asteroids, and cosmic dust, yet nothing felt right.

  Alright, I already expected that.

  With a wave of his hand, the solar system he'd built suddenly repeated hundreds, thousands, millions, and billions of times until he observed an entire galaxy.

  Still not right.

  Expanding the scale again, rather than a galaxy, soon there was an entire universe of energy and matter, life and death.

  And still, it wasn't right.

  What am I missing?

  Detached from the flow of time, Rory observed as stars were born and died, entire solar systems with them, even entire galaxies fading into nothingness. Still, nothing felt right.

  No matter what I make, it falls short. Why?

  The only thing he could seem to glean was that, for whatever reason, he couldn't feel the familiarity of Pneuma or magic. It was all as it used to be, an odd peculiarity that-

  Wait… Why am I doing all of this again?

  The entire point of the trial was that Rory wanted the Null Window.

  And what is the null window?

  A shard of their former universe splintered into a singular pane of exotic space within their new universe.

  Meaning?

  Grinning ear to ear, Rory reached toward the forces of creation he'd studied within the first few trial stages and inverted them as physics did the rest. Strong force erased, gravity magnified, dark energy inverted, and every oppositely charged particle activated simultaneously, as the entire universe he'd made vanished in the blink of an eye, existence wiped away like an old TV blinking off.

  A chill passed through Rory, a sensation of déjà vu as he experienced it from the view of an outside observer.

  It was almost beat for beat, exactly what their old universe had experienced in its final moment.

  Not only had everything he'd created vanished, but even the vast, endless space had collapsed, leaving Rory staring at a singularity of infinite potential.

  Reaching toward the speck, Rory began to draw from it, not with the physical forces or laws of the universe, but with the metaphysical. From the infinite potential, he spun up sparks of Pneuma, and from those sparks, he began to refine them until the speck of infinite potential had been turned into a speck of infinite Pneuma, a solid mass. Stretching it outward, Rory felt himself applying everything he'd learned, the individual iotas of power being woven together while simultaneously appearing in multiple spatial dimensions at once, each speck capable of being formed into numerous different aural aspects that flavored the Pneuma with an endless array of concepts.

  Struck by the act of his art, for that's what it had become, an art rather than a science, Rory stretched and expanded the solid mass, thinning it out and setting hard edges until an infinite amount of time and no time at all, a single pane remained in front of him.

  The Null Window.

  I… I think I did it.

  Acting on instinct, Rory approached the pane, peering through it as if it were a window, only to be confronted with the image of the arena where that trial was held.

  Oh. Oh…….

  Taking a deep breath and praying he was correct, Rory gulped once as he mentally prepared himself to do something that was likely extremely stupid and stepped through the pane.

  Feeling the rush of reality warping around him, Rory caught himself as his balance fluttered, barely catching himself from sprawling out on the ground.

  He was back inside the Colosseum, standing next to the Null Pane he'd stepped through inside the arena proper.

  "Stage nine, clear," Rory whispered under his breath, a smile spreading across his face.

  He'd done it.

  Still feeling rather proud of his success, only moments later, a different feeling replaced the pride, every hair standing on end as he slowly turned around.

  There, prowling out from the Null Window, emerged a lion with a mane the color of an aurora borealis.

  "Aw, shit."

  He'd forgotten.

  He'd still had one more stage to go, and more than anything, a key point about the fights within the Colosseum.

  Lions had often been a favorite opponent.

  enjoy when authors take the time to lay the groundwork of how their universe functions, and by tying in a lot of 'classical' physics understandings, I view it as a way of making the magical elements stand out more. The other aspect is that Rory comes from a slightly different version of our Earth, a relatively near-future Earth with a universe brimming with alien life and advanced tech. Rory, therefore, often likens many things to sci-fi-styled elements. Still, I wanted to clarify that I'm not suddenly pulling a 180-direction change and turning the story into some sci-fi series with some fantasy elements. At its core, this is STILL a fantasy LitRPG that will occasionally involve some sci-fi concepts or themes alongside actual physics.