I struggled up onto my hands.

My body felt like every sinew and pore had been stretched thin and then rubber-banded back to shape. And yet, every breath felt a little easier than before somehow.

The clapping finished.

"Very impressive," the hermaphroditic voice stated; the echo of ancient malevolence was still there. "You killed and consumed a child, an infant who we thought we were sending to an easy meal."

I knew all too well who the voice belonged to. Regardless, I wasn't going to feel bad for killing a baby demon who had tried, very persistently, to possess me.

"Where--" I started to say, before my question was quickly answered, but not in the way I'd expected.

When I raised my head to look to the owner of the eldritch, canted speech, I saw only James' face.

He sat in a simple chair, but gave it all the regality of a throne with his overwhelming presence.

[The Corruptor]

There was no class information that came with the simple textbox. No HP populated. No levels were listed. Nothing.

Was this thing beyond those concepts or just so far beyond me that the World Spirit didn't bother telling me?

"I'm getting tired of this shit," I said, referring to the face stealing.

I took in a deep breath and forced myself to stand.

"Come now," the Corruptor said and a single finger on its hand tapped downward against one of its chair's armrests.

I was instantly brought back to my knees and then forced to fall nearly to my face.

I wasn't just sprawled across the ground as before, I was firmly prostrated as before a king, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Without even trying, I somehow knew my glowing and faceless body wouldn't obey my commands--even if I had attempted to stand back up.

I realized that the thing had made me fall in a way so that, if I strained my eyes up from where my head was forced to bow, I could still just barely see its full face--James' face.

"I've got more than one question," I forced out.

The Corruptor didn't seem bothered at all that I was hiding the primal terror that was even now screaming inside my mind.

I couldn't let it matter to me, either; I could deal with my own fear--things didn't stop needing to be done just because you were scared shitless.

"We have many answers, world-walker," the Corruptor revealed.

World walker? If it knew that, then.

"So, you were watching that thing dig through my head?" I grunted; having your astral form rigidly locked into an unmoving position was surprisingly uncomfortable. "Great."

"We see through many eyes. Our own and those that pledge themselves to us," it replied.

"That's not going to happen here," I said.

I'd die before becoming just another face this thing could wear.

"Is this about killing me or something worse?" I challenged the being as much as my screaming mortal instincts would allow.

The souless eyes dug into my own. "We don't know yet. There are possibilities."

I found myself scoffing a cruel laugh. "I'm not going to beg. I've had a shit day and I've already died for my convictions once--and in a life that had things far more precious to me."

"Yes," the thing hissed in what looked like contemplation. "You've touched the Far Ranges. Rare is that among mortals; how terribly sad that you are once more clad in the prison of a child's flesh."

"That was my choice," I said. "At least the best one I had."

"We don't speak of your new body's age," it said. "In the grand scheme of cosmic progression you've done perhaps worse than simply die and stagnate like almost every other soul is fated to."

It continued. "Yes, you've done far worse; you've reverted to the chrysalis stage of a being: that of it living on the second layer of the prime material."

If this was the second, then what was the first?

"Does any of this have a point?" I asked.

"Many," it replied, seemingly entirely unperturbed by my anger.

"There is perhaps one thing that interests us," it added. "We could not see you for what you were until we peered into your mind to place your cure. Now that we do see, we begin to glimpse uses for you."

"Cure?" I asked incredulously. "You can't possibly mean the thing you shoved inside my head? Which is just another problem: how can you say you held up your deal with James? That man gave everything and you lied."

"We did not lie to ourselves," the thing said. "He is now us. He saw and sees."

"Yes," it hissed, instantly it appeared just as angry as myself. "He sees that he sacrificed his life for a man masquerading as a child."

Stolen novel; please report.

Despite knowing it was futile, I raged in my mind for my back to lift itself so I could punch this thing in the face. Didn't work at all, but I tried all the same; for all my struggle, my body remained firmly put in all but a stasis state.

The Corruptor slowly calmed itself and loosened its tightening grip on its chair's armrest, before leaning back to a more refined way of sitting once more.

"Due to its nature, the curse that touched your body and soul was not something that could be cured through the direct application of my magic," it answered.

"To be infiltrated by one immune to such powerful, yet insidiously targeted, disease was the only means by which I could relieve you of your sickness as was agreed. To stem the affliction, your body needed to be inhabited by a soul that was not, or at a minimum not entirely, that of the man or elf that the rot was designed to convert," it continued.

"And now it has," it finished its explanation as if its twisted solution to my sickness had been obvious.

My anger was abated, however, not by agreement with its logic, but instead a bit of regret in response to the almost out of place emotion the Corruptor was displaying--and what I feared it might mean.

"Do not lament. Our feelings that come from James are mixed," it admitted. "As our knowledge has now been shared with him, the part of us that is him now knows much of the nature of a soul. And, your mere decades amount to you being little more than a newborn to us regardless."

"Though the feelings of a new addition to ourselves are, we admit, always fresh for a time," it slowly revealed with another squint of its gaze. "You were our child and we sacrificed ourselves to ourselves to save you."

It breathed a breath of what could almost be seen as annoyance. "Yet, in the end, you were just one of many sired from those that make us and, ultimately, insignificant all the same."

I could almost see a flash of concealed and conflicted emotion behind its very deeply unnatural eyes.

"I don't know how I'm supposed to react to something like you," I admitted. "You're not natural. Just looking at you feels wrong and like you shouldn't exist. Hearing the random shit you're saying just makes it worse."

It was the truest and rawest statement that I could conjure. No matter how angry I was about being forced to relive my life, the discomfort and primal desire to flee would not stop raging in my paralyzed form.

"You can do whatever you want to me," I added. "I will never let you do to me what you did to him."

"We don't doubt that," it said. "We have seen your value of selfish self-determination."

"Fear not, child. We do not begrudge you this," it promised.

"There are countless souls still left to show the Truth. Equally countless cycles of life and rebirth remain to claim you from among the rest. This one life you now have, though your second, we will not need to value over others at this specific moment in time," the entity went on.

A chill ran down my spine. This Corruptor, whatever it was, sounded as if it had some grand plan to slowly subsume everything.

What kind of fate was that for the end of us all: to become a part of this amalgamation of... exactly how many people had it eaten and doomed to live on into eternity within itself? And to what ends?

"So," I said and tried to push away the cosmic terror of the thought. "Why am I still trapped in my own head and how long do you plan to visit?"

Perhaps taking mercy on me, though I doubted it, the thing followed my change of topic.

"A merited, though short-sighted, concern," it replied and raised its hand, which I now realized had familiar painted nails, up.

The Corruptor flicked its wrist and suddenly, from among the infinite white, truly countless bubbles of what appeared to be worlds formed. I could see myself and others I both did and did not recognize among them.

"Existence walks a narrow tightrope of existing as any one thing at all. All of us do," it started to continue.

"Infinities reach to greater breadths than even the weak word itself, wrongly thought to be grand by mortals and the naïve among gods alike, can encompass," the Corruptor explained in a tone that grew momentarily more masculine and deep, though which was still ringed with feminine candor.

"We, alone with a few others, walk between every reality and frame of awareness as one physical manifestation. This is a great strength, for it gives us much freedom. Yet, it also means there is but one continuity of ourselves to accomplish our Sublime Idea," it said.

Was that what it called its goals? More than a little melodramatic, unless it had some deeper meaning behind the wording, perhaps?

"Whereas there are 'infinite' versions of you, all who will strive to varying degrees to accomplish the ultimate realization of what Fate has decided is your own granted work. This is your meaning to have been given life across the Great Expanse of the many-paths of branching creation," it detailed.

So, if I believed anything this demonic god was saying then the theory of infinite timelines was true?

Neat, I guess, but continuing forward with what the Goddess had told me, there were also different universes with many layers of divine bureaucracy.

I'd have to unpack all this later when I wasn't having a lunchtime conversation with a being called something as malignant and doubtable as The Corruptor.

The creature dropped its hand and shifted its head to perhaps better take the sight of me in.

"In many of these worlds, there are mortals who can aid us to accomplish our Sublime Idea," it explained.

"I have peered into your possibilities even as we have parlayed. You may be to us of great aid in this particular timeline," the demon continued. "Providing causality is properly aligned by our intervention and the luck of probable fate."

Whatever amounted to my heart in this mindscape was pounding to new heights; it was almost like it would burst at any moment and impossibly end all of this.

I took a deep breath. This fear wasn't my own. I could feel that by this point; this was animalistic and deeply rooted aversion, but I could control it.

"I'm still not going to help you," I said. "It's out of the question. I'm not power hungry. I'm not whatever you are and in no world could we ever want the same things."

The Corruptor chuckled; the sound was disgustingly charming and high-pitched. "Oh, world-walker, you know little of what worlds there are."

"Regardless, there are possibilities where you are essential to us," as it spoke the many bubble realities shifted and, perhaps, became lesser in number--though a lesser version of infinity was still beyond my comprehension; I did feel some sort of change in their alignment, however.

"What are you planning on doing?" I asked slowly; my whitened, astral hair finally slipped to almost obscure my vision of the monster entirely.

"We will put you where we most want you," it said. "Causality will either favor us or not and it remains to be seen whether this is the world, or layer of time, in which you matter to our ends. Though the chance must be honored for the sake of our immediate needs."

"So, you're going to play with time and toss me somewhere you think will eventually domino effect into you getting something you want?" I tried to make sure I was getting all this straight.

"Precisely, though your body's current age is insufficient," it said with a growing disdain at my candor. "And this conversation nears the end of where it will be beneficial towards pushing things along the streams of time to our benefit"

"It is Fate for you to finally join the world properly," it said with finality.

"We will not take your entire childhood. Though only slightly in your favor, our newest addition's sensibilities compels us against this," it promised. "The age of ten should suffice for you to operate independently in the world and to reach our goals for us."

"You're going to age me up?" I asked. "I don't get a say?"

A look of annoyance passed over its face, like it was insulted I had questioned its mercy in only stealing ten years of my new life and hijacking my agency for its own ends.

I suddenly felt myself incapable of speaking another word--and, as far as I could tell, it hadn't even moved a finger this time to cause its will to fall over me completely.

"We already have. Now you must merely wake up."

[The Pilgrim class has been fully unlocked.]

[The Fiend class has been fully unlocked.]

[You have ascended to level 4.]

[Check your Character Sheet to assess your current level progress.]