The Dark Rabbit Origins

Prologue : The Chrono Codex.

Prologue : The Chrono Codex.

Creating a new world was always a very painful process, even for Malicor, who is immortal, very strong, and tough. He made a face as realities broke apart and were put back together around him. The very fabric of existence was stretching and twisting to fit his will. This was the pain of creating the universe.

When the chaos finally stopped, Malicor opened his eyes and looked upon the new world he had created with scrutiny. At the centre of the universe, a bright blue sun was at the centre of a huge, spiralling field of shining megastructures and iridescent energy strands. He let himself feel proud for a moment at how perfect and beautiful his Arcadian city was.

Of course, the style was just a picture of the universe's bright beginnings. Left to the unpredictable currents of entropy, his children would eventually disintegrate into a rough, chaotic wasteland, mirroring the primordial worlds that preceded them. No, Malicor knew that he had to give Arcadia the gift of intelligent care in order to keep it constantly changing and truly transcendental.

With a single pulse of thought, he brought the first Arcadian architects into existence. Lapi's elite group represented the gestalt intelligence of the universe. As Malicor gazed at their beautiful, biomechanical bodies, his breath caught in his mouth. There was a big symbiosis of computation and feeling where analytical and biogenic neural matrices worked together with perpetual motion artefacts. They were his most important works, and he saw in them the promise of Arcadia's unrestricted development.

Valrin, the first ancestor, stepped forward. "What is thy bidding, Architect Supreme?" His tone of voice matched the pulsing cerebellum threads that moved across his obsidian shell in patterns of scintillating refractions.

Malicor waved his arm across the vast view of the universe and said, "Behold the Genesis Forge—an empyrium reality crafted as the ideal Renaissance nexus." "You and your wise family members will be in charge of its constant change into grander realms." Let your many-talented genius change the rules of existence itself until all limits are nothing more than steps on the way to culmination."

Valrin's three-part visors sparkled with eldritch knowledge. "We shall honour this sacred covenant to its transcendental conclusion." Immediately after he bowed low, the other Lapi did the same, showing respect.

Once the religious builders were in place, Malicor could finally focus on getting Arcadia's ethos structure ready for the metaphysical peak that would make it last forever. He focused his cosmic awareness like a laser cutting through a solid block of crystal, and he looked into the strange matter encryption that made up the universe's basic code.

He found it: the hyperdimensional integration seed that all space-time domains grew from. It was buried in primordial lines of time-nulled numerical arrays that described the paradoxic splitting of all possible realities. He shivered as he realised that messing with this sub-matrix could ruin the whole cosmic handwriting. But he had no choice if he wanted to make his ultimate dream for Arcadia come true.

With a shaky focus, he started unwinding the protogenic algorithm, figuring out the recursive cosmic mnemonics, and adding new Game Civility parameters to get around the entropic limits of reality. With the careful touch of a grandmaster, he weaved in quantum temporal markers and protected unnecessary data with layers of thought-locked codices until he had made a stable continuum from Arcadia's base cypher that let...

the Codex Chrono. It gave Malicor dizziness just to think about the cryptographic DNA of this supreme artefact. This was the huge wall that separated all the possible worlds of existence. It was a hyperspatial data core that could change any part of universal continuity, even changing the history of the multiverse in the past. Being in charge of such totemic power made the architect both happy and sick at the same time.

He took a deep breath in and out before pulling the codex's resonance encryption from the Crucible and making its huge structure visible. The artefact appeared in front of him as a spectral azurhyte metal cyclopean obelisk whose shape inherently pushed his understanding of Euclidean dimensions. Feverish chronometric runes covered its smooth surface, dancing in a hypnotic, vibrant code that made Malicor feel sick with fear.

He focused his will to start the Codex's hyper-encryption lockdown mode, and a cold trill of clarity made him even more determined. We never intended the Chrono Codex to be a tool for godly power or human victory. It was a backup plan to preserve Arcadia in case something went wrong.