He… was right. None of this really mattered.

I found myself wandering a lot, After maybe the tenth reality. There really was nothing of note in any of these places, they varied, but they all had me in a position where I was surrounded by people, people who liked me, who looked to me. We were always doing well, the food was good, the weather was better. In some, I had power, in others I had nothing but a family.

I guess it all depended on my mental state when Lechoslaw sent me back in. With every world I walked, a single second passed in mine. Every second Noah spent entombing me in denser masses of flesh, I grew mentally weaker, not because of my surroundings, but because of the constant mental resistance I had built up, I forced myself to stay alert, to remember my rage.

Like I said, I began to wander. I hardly ever encountered anything supernatural, it was mainly people going about their daily lives. Rather than interfere with people’s lives, like I had done in the first world I was ‘given’, I didn’t want a repeat of what happened with Grey.

In my bodies that didn’t have any powers, I’d continue down desert roads and mountain hikes until my legs collapsed.

The person wearing Shamrock would always find me. Not always before I died, but it was always when I was alone, isolated from everything else. I’d say half my time was spent on my own, or trying to further distance myself from living things.

I never felt lonely, but I was always cold. I was always thinking about that face Clover had made while all of this was happening.

How she turned away from me. It was reminiscent of when I had escaped Sym’s torture, how she was more concerned with Ae’s safety than mine. I understood it at the time, I was hardy the top priority, she was physically a normal human, there was a level of urgency that trumped me. It would be a lie, however, if I said that was the reason Clover left me.

Clover left, because Ae is more important to her than me, that’s just a fact. I’m just another target for her enemies to aim at, a person she can have dialogue with, I’m a pet. What does she really think about Sam? She bought me that phone, though to her it was cheap enough.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that when she moved, a good number of her friends stopped talking to her all together. The thing about moving is that everybody at your destination already has friends, they couldn’t give much of a damn. The only people who would talk to her are other people who need friends.

Someone like me, someone who is desperate for something to fill a space in their life, something to keep away the cold.

I’ve realised that, I am weak willed.

I reread all of my posts, and I think that although the… repressed feelings made me quick to accept Clover / Saoirse as friends, it was mainly due to me being as desperate as I was- as I am- to feel like a person. For a world like any of these.

If he would just hit me, throw a boulder at me, shoot me, kill me for Christ’s sake, I’d have been able to cope, but all of these friendly faces, the comforting atmosphere, it sucks the life from me.

Every time I got out of the first few worlds, I’d punch through Noah just a little bit harder, just a little bit farther, just enough that I could trick myself into thinking that I’d only need to be here for five more seconds, two more lives, until I got close enough to get a hit off on his jaw, knock him out, something.

Then, on the sixth world, Noah had flattened back out, undoing any work I’d struggled for months to make. It became twice as hard to move.

I settled into apathy, and continued to wander through my fantasy worlds.

I went to Paris in one, I’d have felt bad about using that Me’s credit card, if I didn’t slowly come to agree with Lech’s statement.

In the face of infinity, all of this is pointless, isn’t it?

There exist exact copies of these worlds, including ones where I never invaded them. So why does it matter whether or not I do whatever I want? I need to somehow fend off the emotional response Lech is trying to force on me. I have to run away, as far as possible.

France probably isn’t anything like this in real life. Each world is ever so slightly stained as I travel through them, I think it was some kind of response to me becoming tired of my perfect surroundings, for one thing, I wouldn’t describe the sky as golden near the tail end of my time here, silver would give a better idea.

I found a few alleys that smelt like piss, especially in Paris.

Slowly, slowly, slowly. It’s like a single leech sucking you dry, whilst injecting you with ecstasy. You begin to prefer life with it, you enjoy the complacency.

I played dead between world seven and sixteen, I told myself there was a chance of them believing it, Limorilow had said that it was more likely that I don’t come back.

But it didn’t work. If I had been thinking straight, I would have considered that him knowing that I could ‘cheat’ my way out of each world, would mean that I could do it indefinitely.

He didn’t stop ‘giving me the world’ because I had told him that I was in the first one for weeks, proving that it was effective in terms of wearing me down.

He knew that it was working just fine, if not better with my ability stopping me from getting trapped in here forever. I was weak to him, an attack on my mind that couldn’t be blocked by my SP2.

…

I was sitting at a campfire.

I’d been in this world for… long enough to grow a beard. It wasn’t too impressive, and it was only as big as it was due to this Me’s superior physique.

I was alone, so the woman wearing Shamrock showed up.

They usually didn’t say anything, they’d just take off the mask and I’d be back home.

But this time it didn’t.

I waited. I looked around to see if anybody was nearby, but we truly were alone.

I asked, “What are you waiting for? Aren’t you going to send me back?”

She shushed me, and raised his hand.

At first, I thought they were pointing at something, I checked the line of trees to their side, nothing.

I got up to ask properly.

“What. What do you want from me?”

The hand was raised so I could see.

A small snail trailed across the index finger, going towards the tip.

“This species can lay approximately one hundred eggs at a time. Half, if not all of them die or aren’t fertilised properly. Imagine how many hundreds are never born. Imagine how many are. And for what? Five years, maybe two. Is that a life? Does such a worthless creature, that can hardly go beyond a mile within its lifetime… Could it have a soul? It doesn’t matter. Because they were born. They were born. Do you think other snails would grieve? If you were to drop this one over the fire?”

The arm stretched out farther. If it was a normal human, a normal fabric costume, they would have burned.

But it didn’t.

“The truth of the matter it that it doesn’t matter. Because the truth is, this snail will die anyway. Every inch it gained, worthless. Forever and always.”

I plucked it by the shell and tossed it in.

“There. No more eyes. Can we go?”

They stood up, and despite me being taller than my real body, I realised that I might as well be dangling over the fire.

“No.”

The arm reached deeper into the fire, into the red heart of the wood. Squeezed between its fingers was a charred shell, some sort of ooze leaking from it.

“Sometimes, a snail will go inside of its shell. But after a while it will come back out, and start moving again.”

I expected it to. But it didn’t.

“Aren’t you supposed to be doing something?” She asked.

I was confused by the question, “You’re the one keeping us here.”

“You’re the one who’s supposed to fight.”

I was getting fed up with this cryptic act, “What do you think I’ve been doing! I’ve been resisting his attacks the best I can! You’re supposed to pull me out!”

“You’re supposed to fight. Against everything that is. Even the pointlessness of a snail. The absence of worth, the will of your enemy. You must not change. But you have begun to. Your environment, your architypes, they are corrupting your purpose. Bear your fucking teeth, and bend him to your will. It doesn’t have to be a minute from now, it doesn’t have to be ten years from now, not even one hundred. Go beyond the mile.”

She held the snail out in front of her, before cracking open the shell. I don’t think I was confused or disgusted, but that’s the sort of face I made, as she stripped the goo from it and slurped it up.

Tossing the remains to the ground, they looked at me, grabbing the mask, “When in France, do as the French men do.”

I didn’t have long to think on that statement before I was flung back to reality. That was when I decided to fight back again. Not because I entirely understood what she was saying to me, but because she made me mad.

For a single second, I was allowed to push back against the crushing mass, as Lech finished reciting the words.

I awoke on a throne in a world of violence.

All I did there was fight, a manifestation of my feelings in that second.

When I got back, I kept pushing, until I was sent away. The process repeated, as months and seconds passed by, I kept trying, remained stalwart, gaining inches, being pushed back miles.

Eventually, I incorporated my pain into the process. I screamed. As loud as I physically could. After reflecting, I thought about the other time I refrained from keeping quiet, against Isaac. Feoli had been covering her ears from a good distance away, so maybe there was actually something I could exploit from this technique.

Every loop added to my roar, the frustration that I was now festering with, I promised not to let it fall back into sorrow.

…

Until one loop I will never forget.

The previous loop I had managed to get a hand out of Noah, and after thinking about my next move for a week, I was sent back to my world.

I thrust my other fist into the gap, and pried it away. By this point I had a near exact idea of when Lech would complete his sentence, so I knew I would be sent away after peeking my head out.

That’s when I wasn’t.

My mind was on fire, thoughts blazed through my mind, why, how long, what?

I never got the chance to focus on it, as I was finally able to leap out of the flesh pit, and I could finally see the end of this long hell.

My shoe smashed the floor, as I thrust myself from it at my top speed, even if I didn’t hit him with my fist, this would definitely knock the air out of him.

I unconsciously counted the passage of my extra few seconds, thinking there was no way that this could be it, that I was going to be sent away for one more time.

Until it landed, my left hook smashed him in the face, crunching him as he collapsed to the floor.

I grabbed him by his bloody mouth while he was on the floor, screaming louder than ever, not at him, not at his deaf helpers, but at the world.

I won. I beat you, you bastard, I’m free! I can do whatever I want! Nothing controls me! This is real! This is everything! I can go back to my life! I can go back to-

Then the take away from all of this hit me.

What am I trying to get back to?

What was I doing with my life before now?

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I turned to look at the room around me, thinking it a little strange that Noah hadn’t tried to restrict me at any point.

I glared at the room around me, the lights, the tv, the walls, the ceiling.

It was clean.

Not totally, but it was more prestine than it had been when I saw it three weeks ago.

I broke my resolve, grin fading, and I nearly crushed my head between my hands, as I began to scream for an altogether different reason than my success.

If you haven’t caught on, there was nothing wrong with Lechoslaw’s incantation.

I really had been sent to another world. A world that made me the happiest I could be, given my current mental condition. A world where I was able to win. There was a crushing feeling that I was just being paranoid, that there was no way that was true, not after all I’ve been through.

I jumped out of the window behind Lech and began to wander aimlessly, just for a week, I thought, just to make sure.

I didn’t go far, settling myself in the mountains, occasionally getting food from the shop with the money in my bank account.

I spent days up there. I didn’t count how many. I stopped counting after this one loop.

The last number I had was from around the 30th loop, around five months’ time.

I woke up one morning, cold and wet, to see myself, looming over me.

…

When I got back to my world, the opposite happened.

Noah not only forced me back down, closed the gap, but his power had grown, and he was now crushing me, doing damage.

Nothing of note for a time.

There was one instance before the final world that stuck with me.

This was the moment I realised that the man in front of me was not the same as Grey in any shape or form.

I had actually managed to force my head out of a gap, I thought about what I would do with that position for a week.

I could spit something at him, that might work. After thinking about it, I realised it wouldn’t, not unless it was something hard, and all I’d have in my mouth in that moment would be my tongue, saliva, and teeth.

I had set my mind on not getting out of this by harming myself in a permanent way early on, I played with the idea of ripping my ears off so that I couldn’t hear him, but went against it, as there was no guarantee that it’d stop his ability.

I have no clue how Noah cut off Clover’s hearing, so I’m not going to be able to replicate it.

Besides, spitting my tongue didn’t seem like it’d hurt anyone much.

So, I spoke to him. And it worked.

Leaping back to my reality, I shouted the only thing I knew about him.

“WHAT WOULD TANYA THINK, HUH?”

He stopped just short of finishing his mantra.

I became excited, forcing a hand out as my head was half sucked back under the skin. I tried to find a way to leg myself up out of the hole, but I couldn’t get it.

He didn’t respond right away.

There was just a slight twinge of surprise in his face.

He had been looking at me, but eventually broke his gaze.

For some reason I focused on the crown tattoo under his left eye.

Seconds, what had been months to me, passed by as he remained wordless.

I finally clawed my other arm out and pulled my neck out fully.

Maybe that’s just what he was waiting for, me to get a good view.

His eyes curved ever so slightly, his brow turned up, his lips raised, their corners stretched like the bones beneath his skin were playing him like a puppet.

Lechoslaw Limorilow smiled.

“Who cares? She died fifteen years ago. Life is for the living, ‘hero’. That, is why I’m trying to give you the world.”

When I came to my new reality, I wasn’t even disappointed with the result. At least now I knew without a shadow of a doubt, I was fighting a monster.

I was fighting the Mountain.

…

I was disappointed with my escape though, but I did escape eventually, for what it’s worth.

Well, that’s a poor choice of words…

I’m guessing we were just over a minute by then, but once more, I’d made it back to reality once more. I’d gotten over another period of depression, so I was coming out screaming. The idea this time was to rip my way through Noah, the method I’d used on Feoli’s monster in our first fight. I knew it would take something like a minute for me to tear my way to the outside, so I was planning on going halfway, making enough room to throw a good punch.

If I was lucky, it’d only be another year.

At first, I believed I had crossed into another bait reality, when seconds started to pass me by, I thought for sure it was.

Then the flesh fell back, went limp.

I came out of it feral, foaming at the mouth. I was close to smashing Lech’s smug face in, I would have, if I thought it’d matter.

“I’ve changed my mind.”

I didn’t say anything, I just brought my brow down further.

“I’ve been thinking… Now isn’t a good time to induct you into the Mountain. We’ll be leaving. Me, Noah, and Pugal. We’ll be in town for one more night, then we’ll move on.”

“YEAH RIGHT! LIKE ANYBODY WOULD GO BACK AFTER ALL OF THAT! YOU’RE PRACTICALLY TORTURING ME! LIKE I’D BELIEVE FOR A SECOND THAT YOU JUST NATURALLY CAME TO THAT CONCLUSION, THAT THIS ISN’T ANOTHER SICK, TWISTED JOKE.”

His smile faded, “I’m quite impulsive. I’m a vagabond. I wander aimlessly. Besides, we really haven’t been here long, little over a minute, I think? That’s plenty of time for me to decide I was wrong.”

My eyes twitched as I struggled not to smash his head in.

“I think you’ve gotten the point anyway. This? This Universe? It is Pointless. There is no chief god with a plan, there is only a scattered selection of wills to bend to. Whether it’s a Machine God, a Glass God, or…”

He looked at both Noah, then to Clover.

Clover. I ignored whatever he was implying, focusing on her.

This was the first time I’d actually looked at her in nearly a year. It’s embarrassing to admit, but she was probably the only thing that looked just as good in this world as she did in the ‘given worlds’.

She had turned away, her shoulder length hair falling in front of her eyes from my angle. All I could see was her stiffened lip and nose.

I looked back at Lech, my head a little cooler.

Another thing I could see, realising it was there was like seeing someone you don’t like outside of school, an unpleasant surprise. Asking yourself if it’s really them, trying to know what to do once you realise it is.

This was real.

I knew it was, because my SP2 was flaring up, telling me how I could use it, telling me to use it.

I didn’t.

I don’t think I will from now on.

I knew this was me; when I looked down at my hands, my wrists nobbled, at least in comparison to my other bodies.

I looked up to him, “Why.”

He turned his head, “No. If anyone deserves answers, it’s me. What is your secondary ability?”

I gulped, my jaw tremoring.

He glared into me, as if he was looking for it.

“I’d tell you my origin, but you know enough already. I will confirm, and this is knowledge that would prove harmful to me should you tell Clover, or any one for that matter, though if my suspicions are rightfully placed, I have information about you that would prove more than harmful. I’ll let you wonder what that is. Yes. I serve the Dark Gods. Specifically, Irminsul, the Multiversal God. Active support of their trio is forbidden under the Mountain. It’s a conflict of loyalty, so they say, other Gods are seen as regressive by our standards, but I serve both faithfully. With a name as sinister as the Dark Gods, you might think them malevolent… No. They are nihilistic. They embody concepts of entropy, negativity, and-”

He stopped himself, muttering, “I’ll explain that later… Tell me the truth.”

I shook my head, “I’m not telling you jack s-shit.”

He nodded, “Right, act tough. Put on a mask. Lie. They might like that. I won’t claim to know them well enough. All I know is that they are the opposite of this, of existence. They are what isn’t real. If this world is Pointless, then they are meaningful.”

He looked down at my feet.

“Please. Tell me you know about June.”

I shook my head and answered, “I’ve no clue who that is, and I don’t-”

Then something really screwy happened.

He laughed.

It went on for a few seconds, but it brought shivers through my entire body.

“Ask her, ask Clover what happens in June. I understand her intentions fully now .I’m done here. I’ve interferred enough. There are actual preparations to be made.” He waved and Noah sloughed off his excess skin. Then they walked out the door, which was still wide open from when I’d started all of this.

As he was passing by, he looked at me, and thought for a second.

“I give you the world.”

…

That one.

Was different.

…

That will be what I finish this post with.

When I came back to, I looked him in the eyes. I think my open mouth betrayed my true feelings.

I told him, “I- It makes no difference to me. I’m gonna find you and kick your ass, got that?”

He replied, “Because that’s what heroes do, right? They continue a cycle of misfortune to no end?”

Then he left.

I turned back around to see her. She had taken there leave as her queue to get up and talk to me.

She pulled something from her ears and looked up to me, teary eyed.

I removed any emotion from my face.

“I- I’m sorry. I tried to warn you. I told you things were getting heated, I-I texted your shitty phone… I never wanted any of this to happen to you Rocky…” She actually hiccupped a little.

I turned my body to face her. “That guy you fucked dropped it in the ocean. I’ll have to get a new one.” I tried to pull the emotion from my voice. If I hadn’t, she’d have heard my anger.

I knew why she was doing this, crying, it was probably the ‘lucky’ option or something, it had the best chance of getting me to forgive her.

For one line, I failed to hide my contempt.

“How was your movie.”

She looked up to me, at a loss for words.

I asked her, “Tell me what happens in June.”

She seemed shocked by my question.

“J-June?”

“Lech said something about it.”

She bit a nail wincing in pain.

We eventually left the building, she was afraid of me carrying her home in my current state, so we walked.

Passing by the irritating street lights and smell of shit on the air.

“June… is a hangover.”

I hadn’t encountered this phenomenon when I was in Irminsul, “What?” And frankley, I didn’t have the strength to care about whatever cosmological event was occuring next.

“It’s… It’s a blank space. Nobody can remember what happens during that month. I’ve heard first worlders can remember stuff that happens, but obviously none of that involves us. Something… Something big always happens. A ton of people die, Units and Second worlders, numbering in the dozens. That’s one of the main reasons the Unit population is so low…”

I didn’t care. Not really.

“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner? Come to think of it, you never mentioned the existence of monsters that hunt people like us down. It’s strange, isn’t it? You just happen to leave me out of the loop on things that’ll destroy me, but you’re fine opening up about your own problems, or how down bad you are for a one-night stand.”

She stuttered, “I-I’m- I said I was sorry-”

I mocked her slightly, “Oh? I completely forgot. You said a two-syllable word and that excuses any of this? No, it excuses all of this. You know, I’ve saved your life twice now? I never even told you about the first time, because I found out right after that the reason you told me not to talk to the Internationals was so there would be no legal records of me as a Unit, so that I was a guest in your territory! You killed me for fuck’s sake! You piece of shit! Am I even a person to you? Am I? Or am I just another laughable pest? Tell me I’m fucking road kill, say it to my face!”

It was disgusting. Not just her behaviour before now, nor mine, I’m talking about my body. My palms were so sweaty, my breathe was hot, my mask suffocated my face.

She had her head cupped in her eyes, more so in frustration than sadness.

The street light overhead blinked.

“Ignorance is bliss.” She at last said, wiping her eyes red, “That’s where the saying comes from. June. The less you know about it the better. There’s a chance that you won’t be ‘‘accepted’’ into it. That you’ll be over looked as irrelevant. The more divorced you are from monsters, organisations, gods, the better. If- You weren’t joining the Mountain anytime soon, then you needed some kind of insurance. You had five months to get used to your powers, figure yourself out… that’s not enough for June. It wasn’t enough…”

She crouched down. And hid her eyes again.

“I don’t want to lose…”

After a while, I said, “I’ve met over sixty Clovers.” I crouched down, and pulled her into me.

I told myself I wouldn’t pity her. I’m the one being fucked with. I’m the one who spent a year away from my home.

But still.

We defy logic. The material. In search for something better. Warmer. Brighter.

Now I know where that is.

“I can’t leave you, I’ve got nowhere else to go. I don’t respect organisations like the Internationals, or your Mountain, and I really don’t feel like moving to Russia for work. I’m here to stay. You’re the one with an option, you’re the one with a home, friends, family. Now you have two. You can do away with either. This mask is all I have. I can’t go on without it. Now that I’ve got it back, I’m stronger than ever.”

I hated myself for liking this. That this would probably the peak of my week.

“Let me take you home. I won’t drop you. I’ve got some places I want to go.

She nodded and I carried her off.

…

Where did I go?

After being gone for a year, you might think I’d like to see my mum or my granny.

I went to the mountains.

Saoirse texted Sam, I didn’t answer.

I sat up there for a few seconds, reflecting on everything I’d been through.

Just as loud, if not louder than in the hotel, I screamed.

I wailed and clawed at the dirt, smashing it, I undid my restraints so I could hit it harder, harder.

I found boulders while I was fumbling around in the dark; granite and limestone. I smashed the smaller ones.

I beat my head at the thought of what I’d seen in the final world.

…

At first it was simply a dark void. I felt around, there was nothing.

The ground I was standing on was some kind of petrified wood.

While I was stumbling around, I realised that there was a drop, as I nearly slipped off the curved surface I was on. Peering over, there was only more darkness. Further investigation showed that the part I was standing on was cylindrical in shape.

I travelled down in a straight line along the ‘branch’ for an indiscernible amount of time.

Until I bumped into a wall.

Taking a step back, I realised that it was an even greater cylinder, that stretched up and down beyond sight.

I’d say it illuminated itself, but that’s not right, it was still dark, it was the dark.

It just tried to give me an understanding of the scale of the thing.

“I. Am Irminsul. Welcome back.”

“I understand your mundane questions, little seed, but I shan’t answer them all, lest you be here forever. I am the multiverse. Everything you heard about me and my siblings is true, there was not one time that I lied to you. But…”

“I wasn’t entirely honest either.” I turned to the new voice behind me. It was Grey. He was alive.

Another voice came out, Hand-Made’s, “I’m infinite. I have no boundaries, I have no definable features, I know every truth about your world, every person, animal, bacteria, alien, werewolf, atom, star, it’s just floating around in the back of my head.”

It was the woman holding a baby next, “So when I see you fumbling about at school, or playing dress up, I think to myself, what if this little speck had just the right number of endorphins at this exact moment? Well maybe he would have asked that girl in his art class out. They might’ve dated for a while, had some fun, and it’d have some interesting consequences in the future, or even the past. I’d have to make changes to the big bang to allow for it to make sense, in order for it to be true to reality.”

Then I heard a legion of Clover’s from the ground below me, “Everyone needs a hobby. And I mean everyone. J-on has taken interest in that little speck. My elder brother is a sadist. What would I say my hobby is? If I’m being specific, perhaps too specific, I’d say it’s writing fanfiction. We watch your world. Not all of us, just the twenty-seven that are closest. Some of us like it, some of us don’t. I find it interesting, taking requests from mortals like you. They were fun while they lasted, but you stopped them."

The whole thing began to talk.

If I had ears or a brain, they’d have been disintegrated. But I was simply the idea of a mind in that moment.

“You liked them. You really liked it. More than the original. There was no way for you to strip yourself from them, and yes, it really was as simple as refusing it, saying ‘no I don’t want to play’. You cheated. I become the world. I live through the eyes of the animals, the minds of the people, and the Universe itself. But when I wasn’t looking, you ruined it. You shut it down the second I took my eye away from you.”

“It’s safe to say, whatever you did, it destroyed those universes. Those infinite worlds simply ceased to be. If you had just gone the normal way out, then they would have kept living, believing they were real. But you just had to waken me.”

“To ease your fragile conscience, there’s a chance they weren’t. Maybe my work doesn’t count because its unnatural, because I’m a Dark God playing with human emotions like fictional characters. After all there is only one world.”

“One world. My siblings and I are the antithesis to everything. We are the negative, the entropy, the- multiverse? What does that have to do with non-existence? I’m everything that is not. I’m the breakfast you skipped, the girlfriend you never had, the world where the sky is gold and good. I am everything but your world. Technically speaking, those people weren’t real. Their feelings don’t matter. They are dead.”

“I’m the actions that have not, and will not be taken. I am everything that isn’t. I am not the world”

“There is only one world. And everything beyond, and below.”

…

When the sun finally came up, it was dull.

There were no vibrant colours growing from it, it was just a circle set against a dull grey sky. The world is a heap of dirt with sharp green flowers, some soggy bits and the occasional sheep.

And I am an unattractive pale faced, bony, short, weak, little man.

After some time, I shifted my focus over to the crater of destruction I’d torn up, the large boulders left in my wake. I lifted a large piece of granite. I struggled, but only a little.

It was a five-by-five-by-five-foot stone with two flat surfaces, making it easy to balance.

I placed it precariously on my backside and got down onto the tips of my toes, and the palms of my hands.

“One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Six… s-Seven…”

I began to feel my muscles burn with a fraction of the heat from my will around the 40th push up.