“Crack!”
The sound of shattering echoed from Samuels body, bringing with it a great tremble to the fabric of reality surrounding him. A cacophony of truth emerged, allowing his mind to seethe into the details of the universe. Laws he knew of, like space and time, and others he didn’t like passion and superiority, all showed themselves in their purest forms to Samuel, as if competing to see which he would pick. But Samuel didn’t pick. He would get them all!
Barely being able to stand, Mike was shocked at the development he was witnessing before him.
“How can it be working this well!? Even the personalized laws created by man and beasts are prostrating themselves in front of him! What kind of monster is this kid, or rather what kind of monster will he become if he succeeds in his endeavor. I hope his dantian was condensed enough to support the strain it will have to bear under all these different laws, lest it implodes. With my current strength I would be unable to save him from certain death if that was to happen. Please let everything work out. Please!”
Imagine having thousands upon thousands of families talking to you at the same time, wishing for you to understand their struggles and problems, waiting for you to help them, that was essentially what Samuel was experiencing now. He didn’t want to help just one of the families or a few of them, however, he wanted to help all of them. Both his physical body and mind were being strained to the absolute maximum as all the laws present in the universe surged into his body, towards where he was guiding them, which was a galaxy-like cluster of golden, silver, red and some gray grains filling the space where his dantian used to be. Without knowing if everyone’s cores shattered the same way, he started to fuse the two wildly different things. What was weird about the fusion, however, was the fact that there were an equal number of grains as there were laws, with all of them having a pull on one specific one. For example, in the center was the biggest grain and it was drawing the law of time towards it, while at the edge was a grain pulling on the law of coloring. It was almost as if there was no way his cultivation path would ever permit not reaching perfection, building itself to fulfill its goal. Samuel didn’t even need to know what the best for him was, as his body would do it naturally. What confused him however was the fact that the mind is supposed to control the body, so how come it can act by itself without him being any the wiser? Realizing this was a question for a more appropriate time, he focused on the sensations he felt from the fusion of grains and laws.
Time continued to pass and soon all the grains had fused with a specific law. The instant that happened, a gray barrier that stuck directly onto Samuel’s skin formed around him. The barrier was, as usual, an unassuming dark-gray color with seemingly nothing special about it. What was unique about this barrier was that not only did it stick directly onto Samuel’s skin, but it also didn’t let him pass out this time around. He was fully lucid, wondering what was going on, as supposedly, the difficult part was over. Why would he have to be awake for the next part? This didn’t fit the script at all!
Before he could continue down Asking Stupid Questions Lane, a terrible pain came from the newly formed third eye between his brows. The pain was in the form of intense throbbing, giving him the weird sensation of looking at the Sun. The Sun? He wasn’t looking at anything, why would he be experiencing such a sensation. The pain, however, did not decrease in the slightest, rather amplifying many folds every passing moment.
“What is this hideousness!? It doesn’t have a special effect and brings such pain upon breaking through! This must be a curse placed upon me by that Sanguilan thing! Damn! How do I close my eye when I can’t control it?”
As he was feeling mind power being devoured by the eye and the pain it was bringing him, he started receiving intermittent flashing images that, to him, had no coherence nor any meaning. Simple images of standalone words, light or even items, which did not emit any form of sense, filled his mind, before his body started to spasm heavily. His body started vibrating at a frequency that, had it not been for the barrier surrounding him, might have caused him to slip through the dimension he was in. The frequency was so odd, so bizarre and so vile it caused Mike, who was watching, to bleed from the eyes before passing out.
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The images which carried no meaning to Samuel, were affecting his subconscious’s actions, having it forcefully alter his newly formed Universal Strand. Akin to a teacher detecting fallacies in their students, his subconscious against his best efforts, started to destroy certain grain-law fusions, while it had others fuse into something different. The pain of this was still nothing compared to which he was being transmitted from his third eye.
“What...is…this?”
Upon struggling this coherent thought out of his shambled mind, the image of a giant, potentially infinite dark expanse, surrounded by boring dark-gray, imprinted itself in his mind, causing it to shatter.
His vibrations, his altering of the Universal Strand, the flashing images, all ceased to exist instantly. They were no more, and never would they be. Something that is non-existent, can never become existent. What was left was a battered body, surrounded by a cracking, withering barrier, which seemed to emit a feeling of sadness from its archaic presence. The body was completely still, except for the mouth, which was moving incessantly.
“The truth, the truth, the truth, the truth…” He continued to utter the same thing over and over again, seemingly never going to stop. What he had seen seemed to be something so profound it left his mind in the state of a recently shattered vase. Some pieces were still touching, while others were too small to even be salvaged. And just like a shattered vase, even if some miracle were to happen, his mind would never be the same.
“Are you kidding me? I wasted my whole day watching this shit just for him to not even be able to stomach an imitation of an image flashed before him. What a joke! I knew I should have chosen better! I even went on to help him on his path and he still failed, this is so embarrassing. Luckily, no one will ever be able to know about it. When the next guy eventually succeeds, I will merely tell him he is the first of his kind, my first experiment. Well, not in those words, lest he becomes angry with me or something. Shame though, his comprehension of time was amongst the top three on Earth, with the other two being despicable people I refuse to bestow power onto. I guess I will have to choose a different law next time. Should I end Samuel’s misery here, or should I let him get by on his own. Maybe he will be able to recover slightly and live a proper life, if not, Mike will probably kill him out of mercy. Yeah, that sounds better than me just killing him. He doesn’t deserve to be healed after that performance. Alright, bye Samuel!”
“The truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, the trut, the tru, the, the cr, the Creator!”
The image of a person entered the mind of Samuel, all the connecting shattered pieces collectively struggling to think about this one image. The image was that of a man, completely covered in black clothes, showing no skin except for that on his face where he was wearing a common black blindfold. The man was standing, doing nothing, but it was true. The truest thing to exist, so true in fact, it should not be able to exist in a place such as the Balamier Universe, yet here it was. Suddenly, half of infinity started to tremble in pure reverence and fear. Fear of the repercussions this discovery might have, and reverence for the figure in it. The fear was reasonable, seeing as not even a few instants later, it all dissipated. This half of infinity was not there anymore. The Balamier Universe and all the others present in it, all vanished without a trace.
Seated inside a common living room, leisurely watching his phone, the mysterious Creator suddenly became surprised and had his recently forgotten annoyance reawakened.
“How can this just happen without me being the cause? Now I must rewind all of this to find the cause, and because I can’t act freely down there, I would have to alter the very origin of the cause, creating such a hassle. Oh no. What? Samuel, is the cause? What the hell is going on here, how can someone with a shattered mind possibly do this? What a sly bastard. Now I must revive him, but boy, I sure won’t make it easy on him this time. Little shit, let’s see what will happen to you if I don’t interfere, huh!”’
What was gone, was suddenly back. What had happened, suddenly had not. For the Balamier Universe, 17,000 years had reverted, while others had greater or lesser changes depending on many factors. Time was not the matter here though. The matter was the fact that a once seamless story was being rewritten, with a lot more hurdles than originally intended.
“Where am I?”