Chapter 2 - First days

I wake up with a clear mind. I look outside and see the rising sun. I sigh, “I made too many mistakes yesterday.” I made eye contact with the old lady. I let her see into my eyes and she could have peered into my unstable soul. I wasn’t aware enough. Who would have thought, that I would be careless. The years of reigning over the multiverse sure dulled my vigilance. It didn’t help, that I just merged souls. The eyes are the gateway to ones mind. They transmit insane amount of information that is largely unprocessed, allowing attacks or mental probes to go directly into one’s soul. The most important part of the soul, consciousness is located in the brain. The brains are just the control center that receive information from the souls to control the body. That is why non magicals cannot understand the brains. Technology required to monitor souls is rare even in the most technologically advanced universes (if there are no magic sensors involved), where they could even conjure things from literal void. As they say in Matt’s world, “Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic”.

Enough about this. I take a deep breath as I prepare for the worst possibility. I shout “System” in my head. Nothing happened. Relief surges through me. I try to use a few hundred different words to bring up the cursed creations of the god-like beings, including the secret word only existences above gods can use. It is a way to quickly find out if a lower being (in this case a god) is interfering with an individual. No results. I smile faintly. “Good…”. Systems are a really bad thing. It is true, that they can bring their host extreme power, but there is a cost. When they reach the end of their potential as a system wielder, there are two fates. If the creator takes interest in the host, they can become their absolutely loyal minions. But this is far better compared to the second outcome that happens in the absolute majority of cases. The creator of the system retracts all of the individual’s power, including the power they spent their blood and tears earning. A single system creator can create billions of systems and spread them across countless worlds. Even if only one in a million succeeds, there are still 1000 people who far outweigh the investment. So why doesn’t everyone have a system? Well there were attempts to do the exact thing in some worlds, but the resources are limited. Why spend millions of times more energy on a single world, if in the end, you will only get 100 fold the value compared to a single individual. Systems are only used by the entities with power equal to a god. They are not often used by more powerful creatures. The reason behind this is that the system's main function is to gain understanding of the universe. The understanding is transferred to the creator and forms principles and in some rare cases even essences. So what are these terms? The understanding of the universe is split into 5 categories of rules. (I will be using the power of time as an example)

1. Understanding of time - knowing all of the effects of time and being able to slightly change it by either accelerating or decelerating it.

2. Principle of time - understanding why time flows, why isn’t it still. Being able to pause time in an area, or making it flow millions of times faster. Storing rings don’t actually pause time. They just use mana to forcefully suppress the chemical and nuclear reactions. That is why they can’t hold turbid mana that is not far inferior to their grade.

3. Aspect of time - gaining almost complete understanding of time. You can form separated timeflow dimensions, unaffected by the outside world

4. Law of time - time bends to your will and flows as you will it to. Your only opponent can be someone with equal understanding of time.

After understanding the rules of the universe, you can gain knowledge of related aspects. For example; mastering the law of time will give you the knowledge of the aspect of space. Some require understanding of others to progress, while some have a cap. For example, the highest you can reach with gravity is Principle of gravity. Gravity is not a force in itself, but only a geometric property of space-time, thus even though you can manipulate it using principles, it would be meaningless when you grow stronger. On top of that, even someone who has the understanding of space can block any and all gravitational principles. This is because space is a law far closer to the origin of existence than to gravity. It is the same with fire, heat and temperature. Fire is only a segment of heat which is in turn a segment of temperature. But while heat is necessary in order to master temperature, gravity isn’t necessary to master space. It helps, but is far from required. In case of fire, heat and temperature, fire is just one way to generate heat. You can gain understanding of heat without fire, however that would be more difficult. If your understanding of heat is extremely based on fire, your heat related abilities will instinctively become weaker without any oxygen. In short, your interpretation of the law will give it weaknesses. If you convince yourself that fire needs physical fuel, you won’t be able to create powerful flames. And if you convince yourself that mana is the fuel of your power, you will not be able to create everlasting flames, which are fueled by the universe itself. They can only be put out by suppressing all things related to fire by using an unimaginable amount of mana, with a higher level rule, or an opposing rule in higher quantity.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

AN: Sorry for the info dump : P I just find exploring the topic interesting. End of author note.

The next couple of days are uneventful. The old witch is absent. Apparently there will be some sort of a festival in a few more days. I will be dragged there, since it is something the whole magic community of Britain is participating in. And yes, I learned the language. It wasn’t too difficult, even with the injuries of my soul. Matt’s memories laid the foundations and after hearing hundreds of conversations, I could decipher the rest. I started by analysing the most passionately spoken word, which could be either child, baby or birth. After that was deciphered, I started plugging in the words I already knew and after concentrating on the generated intent from the words, I could understand the terms used. Repeat on an endless amount of conversations based on a single topic and voila, you gain proficiency in the language.

So the place I was born in was named Britain. It existed in Matt’s previous world and given that Matt is most likely an observer, I should be in a fictional universe.Now the only question left is what type of world did I enter. Was it a close copy of the original story? Or was it a distant parallel world that is barely able to hold itself together. It would determine how much I should meddle. If it was a direct copy, I would be immediately suppressed by the world’s and even by the universe’s will, which would be troublesome to resist, so I could only quietly amass strength. On the other hand if it was a distant parallel world, my existence alone could derail the whole plot.

The days passed, with not a second I wasn’t being watched. My parents were paying way too close attention to me to be able to circulate gathered mana. But I somehow doubted they could notice, but it still wasn’t worth the risk. Sigh… I can only cultivate while the others are asleep. I thought as I gathered mana.

The next day, I could feel the stability of my soul increase. There wereseveral reasons behind it. The first was time; all wounds heal with time. Besides that, I was both cultivating and resolidifying my soul. So now it wasn’t as frail as before.

It was time for the countrywide celebration, I thought as I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.

When I regained my focus, I felt strange. I looked around and saw that I was in a small space, filled with plastic and metal. There were transparent materials serving as windows and I could see the flashing scenery from inside. I was in my biological mother’s arms. She held me gently. I suddenly remembered the name of this thing. It was a car. According to the label behind the car, it was a toyota sprinter trueno AE86. From Matt’s memories it should have been released in 1984 but it was only the year 1981. Strange.

You might ask… why didn’t we just use a magical way of transport to our location? Well it’s because the magic transport network was overbooked. In any case, the car was brand new and this was a perfect opportunity to take it for a test drive. This model of the car apparently had some special importance to Matt, but I couldn’t care less. However, due to that fact, I got a clue as to the technological period and judging from the suspension of the car, or lack thereof and a combination of various factors, I judged the technology to be somewhere around the middle stages of tier 2 technology. How is technology ranked? It was by the power it displayed. A tier 2 technological civilization could easily kill a rank 2 mage. However, just a rank 3 mage could, with sufficient preparations, easily withstand any nuclear bomb this world had developed, thus putting it the 2nd tier technologically. It was about a century away from developing widespread nuclear fusion - the mark of the peak of a rank 2 civilization.

After what turned out to be an hour of travel, we stopped in the outskirts of a small town. My biological parents decided to take a break. They brought some food from an extended pouch and we ate. Or at least I tried to grab the food until I remembered what babies do to stay saturated. I cursed at my current inability to reason while under intense thinking, but my mother just laughed and got ready to feed me.

After the break we continued our travels.

After 15 minutes, we finally saw a great crowd. It was time for the event to start. Soon a loud voice spread through the area, announcing the start of the event.