Below where Alex hovered in the sky was carnage. What was once a thriving planet was now nothing more than a lifeless rock flying through space. Mountain ranges which once rose thousands of meters above the sea were now nothing more than piles of rubble. Just minutes ago, forests thick with trees and home to countless species of animals and beasts thrived, but now all that was left was ash. The water forms lakes and oceans were gone leaving creators with the charred remains of the strongest of the sea beasts. Still this planet fared better than the other planets caught up in the battle, it had not been reduced to chunks of debris.
The only source of life on the planet's surface was a man on the verge of death. Lying near motionless in a crater formed by the impact of his body, Darius was taking his last few breaths.
Looking down on this scene Alex wondered how it had come to this. Darius used to be one of his closest friends. They had known eachother since they were mortals. The two would often compete in duels, and would race the other to see who could reach the next stage of cultivation first. Sure they had their fights throughout the years, rarely would it come to blows through. More often than not they would just yell at each other until an elder of their sect stepped in and made one of them apologize to the other. This had changed throughout the years though, as they both climbed through the realms of cultivation they slowly grew apart. While once, resources had been plentiful for both of them, the higher they climbed the more scarce treasures got. What had once been friendly competition between the two of them eventually shifted to serious fights over resources.
Alex really shouldn’t be surprised that it had come to this. It had been nearly 4000 years since he could have called Darius a friend. He had tried to keep a line of communication between the two of them. If they could not be friends they could at least not fight. When they both reached the Demigod Realms and gathered followers the two groups were kept separate. The few times their followers ran into each other it was cordial, some may even have called it friendly. But like all peace this didn’t last. Soon the two groups found themselves at war, a war that would last for generations.
That brings us to today, what will be considered in the history books as the conclusion to the first multiversal war. Alex had won, it was not an easy fight, and there were still a few people on Darius’s side that could put up a resistance, but Alex knew they weren’t a true threat, he was about to ascend to the next realm after all, a new realm never before touched by anyone throughout the history of the multiverse.
This new realm is why Alex was willing to go this far. Alex sighed, He was saddened by the death of his old friend, but the feeling was nothing in the face of the great power he would soon wield. Darius’s death was a necessary one, not only to stop his forces from getting in Alex’s way but also for his core, Alex closed his eyes, “you were a good friend, a good rival, I will not let your life be lost in the pages of history, I will not let your death be in vain, your death will be the catalyst of a new age” .
Both Alex and Darius had spent the last thousand years hunting for a treasure to allow them to ascend. Standing at the peak of the Creation God realm they knew that the right treasure would push them over the edge. But no such treasure had appeared. Entire galaxies had been turned upside down in search of something, anything, that could grant them more power but nothing could be found.
The typical way of advancing to another realm was through the use of a treasure from the realm above your own. These treasures could form naturally or be created by someone in a higher realm. Before this bottleneck there had always been some treasure of a higher realm to find. Even before a sentient creature ascended to the Creation God realms there had been beasts and objects throughout the Heavenly realms with the necessary cultivation level. However, nothing, in the entirety of the multiverse, had made it to a higher realm. At first Alex had considered that no higher realm existed, that he had already reached the peak and any attempt to grasp higher was a futile endeavor. He never gave up though, he could feel the calling of some greater potential, demanding he keep reaching for more power, he knew he was not yet at the apex and he would not be satisfied until he stood at the zenith of the multiverse.
This seemingly endless hunt continued year after year, decade after decade, century after century, until one day he felt it. A slight change in his core, some greater power was beginning to take shape the the center of his being. Alex knew what this meant as he had felt this before. This was the sign of having one foot into a larger realm. This revelation not only confirmed the existence of a higher realm but also told Alex exactly what he had to do to advance to it. All he would need was a little bit more of this power. It wouldn’t form within him like the small amount he already had, he would need to find some external source containing this power to kickstart his ascension into the next realm. But there was a problem, he had spent the last millenia searching for just such a treasure and had found nothing. No beast core, no celestial object, or planetary core he could use. He had already known he would need some outside source of this power, that wasn’t what this breakthrough let him know.
Alex and Darius had always been matched in cultivation, their breakthroughs had often been only minutes apart from each other. One time in the Celestial Origin realm the two had broken through so close together that they had to find a time cultivator to let them know who achieved it first. It had been Darius, Alex lost some rare spirit fruit from that bet. Alex knew that if he had stepped into the next realm Darius would soon too, if he had not already, and while he didn’t like it, he knew that the only way he could advance was with the core of his once friend.
Even with this knowledge Alex did not immediately seek out Darius, even after all their fighting, he didn’t want to kill his old friend. They had grown up together, played together, cultivated together, there had to be another way, there was always another way, never in his long years of life had Alex ever run into a situation with only one solution, you just sometimes had to look hard for an alternative.
Darius however, did not feel the same. It had not even been a week after his advancement that Darius showed up. Alex didn’t want to believe he was there to fight. Even though they were no longer friends they still talked on occasion. When things started to get out of hand between their followers and disciples the two would often meet to come to a compromise. They never hated each other, they hadn’t even truly fought with each other, but Alex knew why he was here, you don’t know someone your entire life without learning how to read them. Darius was here for a fight and it would be to the death.
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The fight was a long and brutal one, nothing but death and destruction was left in the path of their battle. All life throughout an entire solar system could be extinguished by a single missed attack. Entire galaxies had become collateral damage, being able to do nothing more than watch and hope a stray attack didn’t come their way.
It was now all over, below Alex, Darius was taking his last breaths, Alex was not in much better shape, but he would live. Darius was a Creation God who had helped shape the multiverse, an individual countless people worshiped and who many thought to be invincible, was now dead. His empire would soon crumble, the weaker Creation Gods who served under him would try and hold it together, but it would inevitably devolve into a power struggle that will likely last for centuries tearing apart the empire in the process, even if one of them comes out on top they will be ruling over a husk of the empires former glory. Alex looked down at his friend's corpse, his face was not one of anger or rage, there was no fear in his eyes, he looked at peace, like he had accepted his fate and was content with the life he had lived. Alex briefly considered just leaving and not taking Darius’s core, but that wouldn’t be right. They both knew what would happen at the end of this fight and they both put all they had into it. It would be disrespectful to abandon his body on this dead planet, a waste of a life. So he descended down to claim the core that would allow him to ascend, and in the memory of his old friend he would keep ascending, beyond the next realm, he would keep growing until his final breath.
He took the core and without hesitation began absorbing its power. At first the power flowed in slowly, when absorbing a core it was important to test your body's reaction to its energy. You needed to adapt how you absorbed and integrated the new chi in order to gain the most from the core. Alex took it all in, eyes closed, muscles relaxed, he slowly increased the flow of chi through each of his meridians. Within a few minutes the chi flow had gone from a slow drip to a rushing torrent, more and more chi entered Alex’s body but he held firm. He had done this countless times before, and he knew the hard part had yet to start. While an amateur may blindly grab at a cores chi an expert like Alex knew a better way. The densest and most potent chi a core had to offer was in the center, when ascending a realm you would often use a core made up entirely of chi from the realm above your own, but this was not necessary, for most advancements only a small bit of the chi needed to be from the higher realm. These cores were often used in the higher realms when the difference in chi potency was much greater than that of the lower realms. Best practice for these cores was to mix the higher realm chi with the lower realm chi to give you an easier time incorporating it into your core, while also reducing the strain on the body. Alex had one of these cores and that was exactly what he was going to do. Using his control over chi, Alex drilled a hole to the center of the core and started to slowly pull from the new chi.
As soon as the first streams containing the new chi arrived at his body he tensed up. A burning sensation flared up in all his meridians. He hadn’t felt this much pain in centuries, it was like someone had lava and begun pumping it through his meridians. The pain was so great Alex began to doubt if he would be able to endure it long enough to advance to the next realm. He immediately shoved that thought to the back of his head, he could do this, had to do this, once you began absorbing a core it couldn’t be stopped. Sure you could throw the core away and seal off your meridians but the second you did the core would lose stability and collapse, possibly killing you in the ensuing explosion. Besides that Alex wasn’t confident there would be another core that would allow him to ascend, no other Creation God had even reached the peak stage of the Creation God realm, much less taken a step into the realm above. Not to mention it would mean that his friend had died in vain, if Alex failed here, if he died here, both of them would be forgotten, just two more foolish gods who got in over their heads. No, he would not allow it, through sheer force of will Alex pushed the pain out of his mind and doubled down on absorbing the core. Then the new chi hit his inner world.
Alex had felt pain before, a lot of pain, you don’t live as long as he did without experiencing some truly awful pain, however, in this moment all the pain he had felt before paled in comparison to what he was feeling now. His inner world was being forced through a massive change and he did not like it. Things were being twisted in ways nothing was meant to be twisted, his carefully crafted planets of chi were to be pulverized, rebuilt, and pulverized again and he felt it everytime like it was happening to every nerve individually. This was beyond physical pain, beyond mental pain, beyond even soul pain, Alex hadn’t just found a new realm of power but also a new realm of pain. For most this pain would have caused them to die, their brains would have given out having not even found release through blacking out. But Alex was not most people, he gritted his teeth and through another much stronger force of will pushed the pain away, clearing his head to focus on his one and only task, advancing to the realm.
Seven days later he ascended. A power like he had never felt before coursed through his veins. This is what he lived for this rush that came with advancement. In this moment he felt all the pain from those hellish seven days was worth it. Nothing beats the feeling of advancing to another realm. He now stood at the pinnacle of the multiverse, there was no one alive who could hope to challenge him. Only a genius could jump realms in combat, and that was only if the person you were fighting was not also a genius, because of this it got harder and harder to jump realms the farther you went down the cultivation paths. As a peak Creation God it would take nearly one thousand peak True God's working in unison to pose a serious threat to him, even then he could likely escape, he was a peak genius after all, it was doubtful anyone alive could match his battle prowess. That is all to say, now that he was at least a realm above all others in the multiverse no one could beat him in a fight. Because of this, despite his injuries, the new realm gave him a sense of safety even out in the open. So Alex sat down to consolidate his new powers and find out what this new realm was all about.
Alex was not alive the last time a new realm was reached. Even as a child there were hundreds if not thousands of Creation Gods roaming the multiverse, many having reached the peak of their realm. There were however records from those who first discovered new realms. Realms were not named by cultivators, even with the innumerable languages and planets that believed themselves alone in the universe, the names for each realm were the same across the multiverse. Those who had ascended to new realms recorded how they felt the name of their new realm, like it was whispered to them from the multiverse itself. As far as Alex knew the multiverse was not sentient and had no will but he had heard its voice before. It called him to seek power, to grow, it whispered to him truths about concepts and natures, and today it told him the name of his new realm, God King. He thought it fit his new realm nicely. He now had the power to rule over cultivators, even those in the Creation God realm, as an absolute monarch, He couldn’t wait for the next realm, maybe he would be a God Emperor, with enough power to rule over the multiverse as a whole, beyond that maybe he will discover other multiverses and he would gain enough power to rule over those as well. With these exciting thoughts swirling around his head, Alex tore space, and headed out into the multiverse to seek more power.
That had all happened 200,000 years ago, and Alex was still a God King, and by this point he knew that he had reached the peak. There were no more realms to ascend to, not even another stage in his current realm. He stood at the absolute peak of the multiverse, above even all the other God Kings that had ascended after himself, and with all this power, with the multiverse in the palm of his hand Alex only had one thought on his mind, “I’m bored, soooo bored”.