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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Arceroth on 2025-07-05 16:27:45+00:00.

For the next couple days I spent more time hunting, bringing in more monster cores while looking into testing the strange matter within them. Without my full suite of sensors I was limited to the tools and equipment of this world and my own quantum magic. Only two discoveries of note were made, for one the strange matter was a reddish color, setting it apart from the previous two kinds I’d encountered. The yellow-orange Amber Mass, from which bioelectric energy could be converted into quantum threads. And the blueish Azure Mass, which can channel energy into various shapes. Using a combination of the two is what allowed me to create the effectively self-sustaining shell for the Harmony.

On the other hand this reddish strange matter gathered and emitted energy in pulses. Near as I could tell it was the same basic energy as my quantum threads, just gathered into a lump and shot outwards. I also couldn’t be sure but I believed this Crimson Mass, as the Harmony dubbed it, was more efficient than Amber Mass at converting bioelectrical signals into quantum threads. But without better equipment and extended testing it was impossible to say.

The second important discovery was that this Crimson Mass was significantly less stable than the other two kinds of strange matter. It would come apart and rapidly decay if it was so much as cut wrong while we extracted it from the monster cores. And it did so rather energetically, even the thin strands of it resulting in what sounded like strings of firecrackers going off, blowing the cores into shards.

“You know what I don’t get?” One of the scientists aiding me said one day after work as we were eating, “why even put strange matter in the monster cores?”

“What do you mean?” another aid asked.

“The cores are just currency for the Game, right? So why include Crimson Mass, something with actual value, in the cores? Why not just imply there’s some in each core, but just bring some in from outside when making use of it?”

“That… is a good point,” I admitted, “it would be like having characters in a game trade actual currency.”

“Right!” the guy nodded, taking another long sip of what was likely not his first drink, “why give us something with real value if we aren’t capable of using it?”

“Maybe it doesn’t have real value,” the other man offered, “they have so much of it that they can just use it like, well, like air. Add to the setting.”

“But the players never really see the Crimson junk,” the increasingly drunk guy insisted, “they could just put reddish glass in the gems and it wouldn’t matter.”

“Maybe a holdover from other games?” I said after a moment, “like, in other games extracting and using the Crimson Mass from monster cores is a key part of the game, and they just copied that system into this one?”

“That’s stupid,” the scientist said, looking at his now empty drink.

“Or,” the Harmony spoke up, “maybe, this is how they create Crimson Mass.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, looking up.

“We’ve determined that Crimson Mass is rather unstable, and we’ve seen in other worlds that life can accumulate and gather strange matter within themselves,” the Harmony explained, “what if the monsters are bioengineered strange matter refineries? And they have to be killed to extract the gem containing the Crimson Mass? Making this entire game a rather complex farming operation.”

“Why put it in a game then?”

“Why not?” it countered, “you humans have a long history of Work Sim games, if you have the technology to make a one of those sims into a ‘real’ game, why not use it to actually generate valuable resources as well as selling access to the game to players?”

“Makes as much sense as anything I guess,” I shrugged.

“It would mean we might have actual leverage though,” one of my more sober coworkers pointed out, “if they need us to both run the game and produce this Crimson Mass, then maybe we can use that to negotiate for better conditions?”

“Assuming it’s true, and you don’t ask for too much, you might be able to,” the Harmony said, “push it too far and they could decide recoding the game is easier. Which could mean killing you all and replacing you, or who knows what.”

“We’d have to bring it up with the mayor,” the man mused, “you’re right, we’d have to play our cards carefully. Even if they are capable of granting our every wish, they won’t if it puts them over cost. But some basic protections shouldn’t be too much to ask… I’d think.”

“Only one way to find out,” I said with another shrug when he turned towards me.

Armed with their theory some of the more lucid scientists went to speak with the mayor, leaving me behind to play with the Crimson Mass and chat with the Harmony. I slipped a couple bits of the Crimson Mass into my traveler’s pouch with the idea of inspecting it closer when I next had access to my sensors. The rest of my time in that world was largely the Harmony’s game, it spent hours talking with the mayor and other political types about negotiation tactics, what to ask for and how to broach various subjects without coming off as rude or aggressive. I won’t pretend to understand it enough to do it justice, and I tend to think the discussions were generally uninteresting.

Without a clear goal or task there were several times I found myself slipping towards Checking Out again, the Harmony having to snap me out of it before the contradiction of Infinity captured me again. It’s not really something I can explain well, so it might be confusing to you as to why this had affected me so much. The best I can compare it to is a crisis of faith, where everything you think you know and believe is torn from under you, only on an existential level. What is the universe if something can be built upon nothing? What is the point if there’s no foundation, no core truth, to the world? To existence? It would be like being faced with incontrovertible proof that the God you believe in doesn’t exist, never existed and, in fact, cannot exist.

Now that I had helped this world in some way, I found myself struggling to hold on to reality. A struggle that only became harder with each passing day until, finally, the time for me to travel on arrived.

“I’d like to thank you once more, Traveler,” the mayor said, shaking my hand.

“I didn’t really do anything,” I replied.

“Don’t be modest, without you we’d never have even a hint that we could actually negotiate for better conditions from the Game,” he countered, “even if our theory is wrong, the knowledge that it’s possible to harvest and use Crimson Mass, despite the technology inhibitor, gives us a way forward.”

Lacking a good response to that I simply nodded, enduring the thanks until the timer ran down and the world vanished.

And reappeared with me bouncing off a padded wall to land on a gym mat in an old, run down motel.

“Welcome to the Fourteen Echo Three Green Parallel Entity rest stop,” the man behind the desk greeted me as I stood, “let’s get you checked in.”

Nodding, I walked up to sign the guest book only for the man to cock his head.

“Oh, seems there’s a couple flags on your profile,” he said, “first off, it says you were… non-responsive during your last check in, so you are due twelve coins, not six.”

“I was?”

“That’s what the system says,” he shrugged, and I let out a sigh. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been checked out after encountering the black hole, but it seems I was that way long enough to visit, and leave, one rest stop.

“Also,” the receptionist continued, “you have, apparently, done something to earn the right to visit Yellow entity rest stops.”

“What?”

“First time I’ve seen something like this, let me get the manager,” he said, turning to walk into the office, returning a few minutes later with a larger man, his manager, in tow.

“Look at that,” the manager said, looking at the screen, “only the second time I’ve heard of this happening, and the first time since I became manager.”

“Is it a good thing?” I asked.

“Probably, come on back, I have to read some things to you,” he replied, motioning for me to follow.

“Ok,” he said as we both sat down on either side of his desk, “the rules for yellow entity rest stops are different from green entity rest stops, and you need to agree to them before you can actually visit. So, ahem… Yellow Entity rest stops are slightly different from Green Entity rest stops in several key ways.”

I sighed internally as I settled back to listen to the rules, only to freeze as the man’s voice changed. Instead of the voice of a normal man it became different, deeper, weighing on my senses and echoing in my mind in a way no mere speech could. It took me only a second to connect the pressure of this voice to that of the rest stop itself, when your time was almost up there was a deep, uncomfortable pressure that would momentarily envelop you, warning you that you had to leave soon. This was similar, but instead of a mere presence, it was carried on his voice and held clear meaning.

“You have witnessed a Fragment of Eternity,” the voice coming from the man said, “thus access to Eternal Rest Stops is now possible. At Eternal Rest Stops further services and rewards are available to those who have witnessed pieces of Eternity. For each Fragment you witness, you earn a token,” he spoke, lifting his hand and seeming to grab a coin out of the air, pressing it to the table before me. Unlike the normal hour coins, this one had a semi-transparent gem in the center of a color I can’t quite explain or describe…

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1lsdtdy/chronicles_of_a_traveler_34/