Chapter 19: The Horrifying Truth

In the dim, crumbling remains of an abandoned gym, a figure sat hunched over a chaos of wires and monitors. The faint flicker of faulty fluorescent lights cast erratic shadows across the space, amplifying the air of unease. The young man wearing a disheveled lab coat was none other than Oz, the notorious Otherworlder. His blood-red eyes glowed with an unsettling intensity, and a manic grin split his face as he exuded an aura of gleeful chaos.

Oz spun around on a creaky, revolving chair, humming an offbeat tune while the machinery around him whirred, clicked, and occasionally sparked. With a theatrical flourish, he summoned a lollipop from nowhere, unwrapped it with a flick of his wrist, and shoved it into his mouth, savoring it like a mischievous child.

"Ah, man, I got caught…" he mused aloud, his voice lilting with mock disappointment. “Someone doesn’t want me to tell the third truth~!”

He abruptly leapt from the chair, swiping a hand at the nearest camera mounted before him. The camera toppled to the ground with a sharp clatter. Oz crouched down, staring into the lens with a wild glint in his eyes, then slapped it aside with enough force to send it skidding across the cracked gym floor.

“Don’t ignore me!” he yelled, storming over to the camera and stomping on it, each blow accompanied by a childlike tantrum. His laughter reverberated through the empty space, bouncing off the gym’s broken walls and peeling ceilings.

The destruction didn’t end there. Oz began thrashing the equipment around him with unchecked fervor. Monitors shattered under his fists, wires tore as he ripped them out with glee, and sparks flew like fireworks as machinery collapsed under his assault. With every strike, he unleashed a bolt of crackling purple lightning from his hand.

The gym was filled with the electric hum of his unique skill: Data Scramble. It was an arcane ability he had learned in another world, one specifically designed to obliterate machinery-based life forms. Its true effectiveness came when the targeted object was already physically destroyed, amplifying its devastating impact.

Against humans, Data Scramble could cause disorienting effects—dizziness, nausea, or even a complete shutdown of motor functions if used with precision. On rare occasions, it left its victims in a vegetative state. Against technology, however, its power was absolute.

Each burst of purple lightning surged through the wreckage, frying circuits, distorting code, and obliterating any chance of recovery. The gym now reeked of burnt plastic and scorched metal, transformed into a playground for Oz's rampant destruction.

With every step, Oz’s maniacal laughter grew louder, drowning out the hiss and crackle of dying machinery. "Let them try to stop me!" he shouted, his voice laced with a mix of triumph and madness. "I’ll find another way to tell my truths… You can’t keep Oz quiet forever!"

The oh-so-precious supers were definitely closing in on him. Oz’s blood-red eyes narrowed as he calculated his next moves, twirling the lollipop in his mouth like a chess piece. He couldn’t make a full jump to another world—not yet. His [Gate] skill was still on cooldown, and long-distance jumps were out of the question. But [Blink]? That was a different story. If things got dicey, he could manage a quick escape.

Not that he planned on running anytime soon. He still had business to finish here.

Without hesitation, Oz activated [Blink]. In a flash of violet light, he disappeared from the ruined gym floor and reappeared one level above. The faint hum of his skill lingered in the air as he took a deep breath, or rather, mimicked the act of breathing—force of habit, perhaps. With a snap of his fingers, he pulled in the ambient light, illuminating the room around him.

The space was cold and sterile, a perfect void of normalcy. No windows, no doors, no visible exits—just blank walls and a sense of eerie containment. Ventilation? Nonexistent. But Oz didn’t care. His [Otherworldly Physique] ensured he didn’t need trivial things like air or sustenance. The passive effect multiplied his [Body] stat by two, rendering him immune to curses, diseases, suffocation, and even most harmful skills.

To call Oz strong would’ve been laughable. He wasn’t just strong—he was a monster. A walking, talking anomaly.

He stretched his arms lazily, cracking his neck with a sharp pop. His mind flitted through memories of the countless worlds he had survived since his youth, each more harrowing than the last. Every jump, every battle, every betrayal had forged him into something inhuman. Strength? Resilience? Those were understatements.

Still, Oz felt no pride in his monstrous capabilities. Instead, there was only his insatiable drive to unearth secrets, to shatter illusions, to rip apart the lies of every world he touched. This one was no different.

He smirked to himself, twirling the lollipop again.

So why was he doing all of this?

To spite the government? For abandoning him in hostile, alien worlds when he was just a weak, insignificant junior cadet? To vent his wrath at the system?

To satisfy his ego?

Yes.

The answer was yes to all of it.

On the surface, his motivations might’ve seemed petty, childish even. But to Oz, they were everything.

He hadn’t always been the unhinged maniac the world saw now. Once, Oz had been a bright-eyed ‘Superhero’ cadet brimming with hope and dreams. Not in this world, though. No, not this Earth. He was from another world—another time—a place that no longer existed. His homeworld had been abandoned, discarded like so many others in the grand, convoluted game of survival.

The result? This Earth. This “Main World.”

Oz clenched his fists as his thoughts burned with rage. He knew enough to understand the horrifying truth. This Earth wasn’t just another world in the vast multiverse—it was the world. The one the true rulers of the Greater Universe had chosen to preserve at the cost of countless others. His homeworld. Countless other abandoned worlds. All left to rot, consumed by entropy, just so this one could survive.

It was a cruel, complicated affair. Even Oz, for all his knowledge and experience, knew only fragments of the truth. But what little he did know?

It was damning.

And he knew that knowledge was enough to force the true rulers of this Earth—the hidden puppet masters, the architects of its survival—to act against him. To silence him.

That was fine. Let them come.

A twisted grin spread across Oz’s face as he leaned back in his chair, twirling a strand of his disheveled hair. They think this world is worth protecting? he thought. Then let’s see how far they’ll go to keep their precious lies intact.

This Earth—the "Main World"—was built on the corpses of a thousand forsaken worlds. And Oz was going to make sure everyone knew it.

Oz set up his equipment with meticulous care, his red eyes gleaming with both determination and madness. As he powered up his stolen gear, he slipped into an anonymous account to monitor the fallout from his earlier broadcast. As expected, the reactions flooded in, dismissing him as a lunatic. His warnings were labeled conspiracy theories, his truths reduced to the ramblings of a deranged outcast.

It didn’t matter. This was just the beginning—the prelude to something far greater. The first truth he had revealed, that the timeline was broken, had been left deliberately vague. Not because Oz didn’t know, but because explaining it to these fools would be like trying to teach calculus to infants. They simply lacked the perspective to understand.

The Infinite Worlds were divided into two: the Lesser Universe and the Greater Universe. The former, often called the Perceived World, was the Earth the people of this reality believed to be singular and sacrosanct. The Greater Universe, however, was a vast expanse of countless other realities—alien worlds not in outer space, but from infinite dimensions. The multiverse wasn’t a theory. It was real. And it was a battlefield.

Oz’s Earth was the first to realize this when it stumbled upon the secret of time travel. The initial successes had been monumental—opening pathways to alternate realities, taking their resources, and exploiting them to elevate their civilization to dizzying heights. For a time, Earth thrived as a scavenger of infinite possibilities. The other realities, ignorant of the theft, became nothing more than unwitting donors to Earth’s prosperity.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

But such exploitation could only remain unnoticed for so long.

Eventually, some of these realities—the ones Oz called the Cannibalized Worlds—began to fight back. Yet, they always lost. Earth was ruthless, its people savages who would cannibalize their own if it meant survival.

Then came the inevitable fall.

The Earth that started it all, was the first to lose.

Ironic.

And.

Every Earth that followed and rose to power eventually succumbed to another Earth. Predictable. Civilizations toppled, one after the other, in an endless cycle of conquest and collapse. And with every iteration, the stakes grew higher. The Earths, weary of constant strife, devised a solution—a plan to consolidate their power and enforce order across the multiverse.

This was the genesis of the singular [Government] system. A hidden force shrouded behind layers of bureaucracy, hero-worship, city-states, and the laws it imposed, this system systematically elevated those deemed useful while exploiting those who weren’t. It was an empire built on secrets, oppression, and blood—an empire that now ruled over this Earth and countless others.

And Oz?

He was a fragment of the fallout. A relic of a world that had been consumed, discarded, and forgotten. A survivor who had clawed his way back into relevance, armed with forbidden knowledge and a burning desire to set everything ablaze.

And then came the second truth… alien life…

Mapping the multiverse wasn’t just a theoretical dream—it had been done. Oz had done it. The [Government] had perfected it. The Infinite Worlds were no longer an unknowable expanse but a mapped, cataloged playground.

The alien races? Oh, they were as real as the Infinite Worlds themselves. It had been inevitable that, as the [Government] delved deeper into alternate realities, they’d stumble upon civilizations wildly different from humanity. Worlds of eternal darkness, parasitic fungi, sentient dinosaurs—it was all there. And alongside these strange lands came the inevitable discovery of intelligent species.

Some looked humanoid, like elves with pointed ears. Others were more alien—amorphous blobs, sentient plagues, even self-aware machines. The variety was endless.

At first, the [Government] tried to play it smart. They extended olive branches, opened diplomatic channels, and negotiated treaties. But human greed always found a way to ruin things. Diplomacy was just a stepping stone to exploitation. Resources were taken, worlds destabilized, and civilizations betrayed.

It didn’t take long for the other races to notice. Those with technology approaching humanity’s level—or surpassing it—rose up in defiance. Admittedly, no one could surpass humanity forever. And Earth was forever. Wars erupted. The multiverse became a battleground.

Surprisingly—or not—humanity proved itself to be overwhelmingly xenophobic. Despite the technological marvels of the Greater Universe, humans clung to their distrust of anything “other.” Oz found the irony amusing. “And people thought elves were the insufferable ones,” he mused with a sly grin spreading across his face.

Not that he could complain too much about elves. A memory flickered through his mind—of warm smiles, gentle voices, and the embrace of an elven wife or two he had once called his own.

“Oh, sheesh... memories,” Oz muttered, the grin softening into something wistful. “They always make my heart tickle.”

What use was there in plundering other worlds with multiverse technology when the universe itself was unimaginably vast? If humanity's advancements were so impressive, they could have simply tapped into the resources of other stars or planets. Harvest energy from distant suns, mine asteroids for rare minerals, or terraform lifeless worlds into oases. The possibilities were endless, weren’t they?

But Oz knew better. The real prize wasn’t just raw materials. The ultimate resource was far more valuable, far more irreplaceable—people. The vast potential of individuals, their ingenuity, their will, their knowledge. Imagine technologies that had been lost to history, achievements forgotten by time, or even discoveries that never existed in a particular timeline but flourished in another. That was the allure of the multiverse: untapped brilliance, infinite possibility.

Oz had pondered the sheer vastness of existence many times. Earth had spent countless centuries searching the stars for intelligent life, yearning for contact, perhaps out of curiosity or an unspoken need to prove they weren’t alone. For millennia, they sought competition or solace in the strange. And for just as long, they found nothing. Nothing to match them, no alien life as intelligent as themselves… or better than them.

Some theorized that humanity’s reach was too small, that the alien civilizations were too advanced, too far removed to even notice Earth’s clumsy attempts. But Oz knew the truth.

The truth was more bizarre, almost cruel in its simplicity. Nearly every Lesser Universe, every alternate world, had only a single planet capable of housing Souls. It was as if some invisible hand guided the creation of these worlds, carefully crafting them, ensuring that intelligent life remained confined to one cradle per reality.

Oz scoffed at the thought. An invisible hand? A divine architect? The idea would have amused him if it weren’t so ridiculous. He didn’t believe in gods or pantheons. To him, the notion of a deity was an excuse—a hollow answer to fill the void of understanding. Whatever force worked to shape the Infinite Worlds, it wasn’t divine. It was something far colder, far more methodical.

Then, what about the [System]?

Oz leaned back, smirking to himself as he considered the grand deception. The [System], that miraculous phenomenon which granted the Gifted their powers, was nothing more than a carefully constructed lie. People saw it as a divine blessing, proof that they were chosen for greatness. They believed it came from some higher purpose as if it was a cosmic acknowledgment of their worth.

What a joke.

The third truth Oz failed to reveal earlier gnawed at the edges of his thoughts. He hadn't held back out of fear—no, it was because the truth was so damning, so incomprehensible, that most people would refuse to believe it.

It was because people were afraid… Whoever who had so conveniently disconnected him with that timing didn’t want to let him speak of the truth.

What people called [Dungeons] were never meant to exist.

Originally, they were known as [Pathways], intricate portals connecting Earth to abandoned worlds across the multiverse. These pathways had been humanity's lifeline during the era of multiverse exploration, allowing them to plunder other realities and cement their dominance. But then, catastrophe struck—a disaster so massive it rewrote the rules of the Infinite Worlds.

Through one such [Pathway], two distinct worlds became magnetized to each other, drawn together by a force no one had anticipated. And then it happened—two entire planets collided, shattering into a heap of cosmic dust in the void.

The aftermath was catastrophic.

The collision unleashed waves of [Dungeon Calls], tearing rifts into reality across countless Earths. These events left entire regions consumed by chaotic pockets of mutated terrain and monsters. The [Government] realized that the [Pathways] were to blame. They had destabilized the fragile balance between worlds. The solution was as cold as it was ingenious: repurpose the [Pathways] as anchors to prevent further collisions.

But there was a side effect.

By anchoring worlds, the debris and fragments of the destroyed realities were left to fester. These remnants carried resentment, the lingering malice of the countless lost lives and shattered Souls. Like vengeful spirits, they refused to dissipate. Over time, these fragmented worlds would manifest as [Dungeons], complete with their own warped ecosystems, strange physics, and dangerous entities.

And so, the [Dungeons] became a grim reality.

But where did the [System] come into play? How did a game-like interface granting immense power to individuals emerge from this chaos?

The answer was disturbingly simple.

The [System] was born from the [Dungeons].

When scientists delved into the nature of the [Dungeons], they discovered something extraordinary: the existence of [Souls]. These were not just echoes of the dead but raw, malleable energy—fuel for creation and destruction alike. The [Government] seized upon this discovery and crafted what Oz considered the most terrifying weapon ever devised. The [System], an artificial construct designed to harness the power of these [Souls], was implanted into individuals deemed “Gifted.”

To the Gifted, the [System] felt like destiny calling. To the [Government], it was simply bureaucracy. Every skill, every level-up, every quest was a cold, calculated manipulation to maintain control over reality’s most volatile resource.

Oz couldn’t help but laugh at the irony.

To those who felt the [System] made them special, chosen, or destined for greatness, the truth was far more disgusting. Their powers weren’t a sign of their worth. They were tools for a systematized exploitation of the multiverse, designed by those who viewed people as nothing more than pawns in their cosmic game.

But Oz? He was different.

He’d stolen his [System]. Tweaked it. Made it his own.

While the [Government] sought to mold him into another cog in their machine, Oz had repurposed their creation for his rebellion. If the [System] was their greatest weapon, he’d turn it into the tool of their undoing.

Disgusting? Yes. But it was also poetic in a sense it would be there very creattion that would bring their destruction. Oz would make sure of that.

Ever heard of Scientology?

Oz smirked to himself as the thought surfaced. A religion centered around self-knowledge and spiritual fulfillment, attained through “grades” of enlightenment. Striving, climbing, perfecting yourself. It all sounded noble enough on paper. But peel back the layers, and you’d find it was nothing more than a system of devotion to a constructed ideal.

And didn’t that sound eerily familiar?

The [System] was no different.

Do stuff. Level up. Get stats. Learn skills. Level up more. Become stronger. Feel fulfilled. And before you knew it, you’d start worshipping numbers—numbers that controlled your life, dictated your worth, and defined your success. A cycle of manipulation masquerading as progress.

So disgusting.

Oz rolled his eyes as his fingers danced across the keyboard. He summoned a glowing interface on his computer, his skill [Dungeon Connect] forming intricate lines of code that flowed like veins of molten light. The [System] wasn’t just numbers to him—it was a tool, one he could shape and wield against its creators.

The screen flickered as the connection solidified. He leaned back in his chair, a lollipop hanging lazily from his lips. Phase Two was ready to begin.

And what was Phase Two?

Nothing too dramatic. Just a series of Dungeon Outbreaks.

The idea made him chuckle. Outbreaks were rare phenomena where [Dungeons] would spill their chaotic contents into the real world. Monsters, curses, and unstable energies would wreak havoc. Normally, such events were contained quickly by the Gifted and their precious [System].

But this time, there would be no containment.

Oz didn’t need grand armies or world-shattering skills to make his point. All he needed was chaos. Chaos, pure and unfiltered, to remind the world of what they had tried to bury. Let the [Government] and their compliant Gifted scramble to clean up the mess. Let them drown in the fruits of their lies.

After all, he wasn’t here to play by their rules.

He was here to break them.