Understanding gravity was much simpler for Max once he broke his preconceived notion about gravity that it was an attractive force.
Max had believed that gravity was a force inherent to any object having mass and that it was always attractive in nature.
A small ball looking object could have the same gravitational force like that of a planet if it had enough mass inside of it, however, while these laws held true in the rest of the universe, they did not hold true for the chaos realm.
Here gravity was not only an attractive force, but rather could attract, repel and have no interaction with matter at all.
The trajectory of the stone that Max threw was dependent on how the gravity acted on that stone at that particular instance, yet in this plane gravity was shifting constantly, but his visible surroundings were not.
He was surrounded by the same rocks, the same terrain, and he was sure there was no air resistance acting in his surroundings since he used [ Wind Manipulation ] to bring it to zero, yet each throw he made had a different outcome meaning the force of gravity acted differently on the stone every passing second.
He had a rough idea as to why it was happening, however, his hypothesis was only confirmed when he began to try earth manipulation on his environment as he realised that the mass of every grain of sand in this plane was constantly changing.
Even a grain of sand could feel as heavy as a boulder to manipulate, whereas he could create entire hollow mountains as if trying to create a small slope.
His earth manipulation powers ran awry in this plane and it was through that process of manipulating ' mass ' and speaking the language of Earth as taught to him by Goddess Dharti that he realised the true nature of gravity.
Much like time, gravity was also a tool for manipulation.
At a fundamental level it could still be manipulated with mana, as every object having mass had a corresponding gravity attached to it, but to manipulate it at a higher level one needed to use divine essence.
If used correctly, one could make a pebble have the mass of a planet and distort the gravitational field around them, and could also use the same pebble and tweak the laws of gravity in a way that it repelled instead of attracting, creating more chaos.
When he had this epiphany, Max found himself surrounded by another golden rune that formed out of nowhere and upon touching it the rune shattered and Max immediately felt his blood pressure returning back to normal.
Afraid, he walked a few steps and found that he could walk normally again as the force of gravity had been normalised in the small pocket of space in his surroundings as a simple throw of a rock went in a parabola curve attracted to the surface before entering a spacial tear and teleporting to only god knew where.
Nonetheless, Max had successfully understood the law of gravity which was a big success for him.
Upon looking at the clock in his ship, he had taken roughly two days worth of time to arrive at this conclusion, but whether or not it was absolute time or not Max was not sure.
" Alright, onto space then " Max mused with excitement as with trembling steps he began walking in a straight line until a spatial disturbance brought him to another corner of the plane where the laws of space, gravity and time were once again in complete chaos.
There Max realised something new, that once he re-examined his knowledge of time and gravity and then worked on it some more, he was able to activate both the runes of gravity and time and stabilise that particular pocket of space before being sucked into yet another tear and being teleported into a new corner.
With every teleportation, Max realised that stabilising a particular realm became more and more difficult for him as he had to constantly build on his existing knowledge and think beyond his current understanding to trigger new set of runes.
This meant that if Max continued at this rate and did not master space soon, he would be forced to live within a particular pocket of the chaos realm until he forcefully progressed.
However, if he did master space before perfecting the other two laws and bringing balance to the entire realm, he would probably not get a SSS evaluation.I think you should take a look at
It could take him centuries to perfectly master the laws of gravity and time and bring the entire realm under his influence, and while time in the real universe might not flow as fast, he could lose his sanity in the process.
This trial was not only a test of his comprehension, it was also going to be a test of his resolve.
His body was really much older than it looked after he had already spent decades inside the time chamber.
If he spent decades here too and returned without becoming a god, he would head back home a truly old mortal.
He needed to weigh his choices very carefully from here on out, as he could either focus on mastering space and getting the hell out of this place the first opportunity he got
Or he could try and bring the whole realm under his control bit by bit and potentially spend decades in the process only for the goal of getting a SSS rating.
' You know the right answer in your heart boy, you know better than to take the easy way out.
Yes you can lose everything.
Yes you can lose your sanity.
But you know that being SSS is the correct way to move forward, so don't chicken out now.
I'm still here with you, together we will make it through- ' Drax said in Max's mind as he helped stabilise Max's fickle state of mind.
Only someone seriously insane would ever try to bring an entire realm under his influence without even knowing if he could achieve it within his lifetime or not.
Everytime he stabilised a portion of the laws, the next challenge was sure to be even more difficult, sure to take exponentially more time.
Yet Max, knowing full well the dangers of the path, still chose to walk on it. Only because of the promise he made to himself when he had reincarnated that he would live his life to the fullest.
The trial was going to take a long time for him to complete, yet, for Max becoming a god and living for thousands of years was only ever going to be worth it, if he was going to become the best version of himself possible.
Rather than living an eternity in what if?
Max chose to die chasing the goal of having no regrets.
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/// A/N - Chapter 9/10, almost done ///