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A certain man floated above the clouds, lying sideways in the air in a slightly lazy posture, as if he were lying on a sofa or several pillows, his hand supporting his head.
The green-haired person's gaze was directed downward, almost looking to observers as if he were just staring at the clouds below.
"What exactly is he doing now?" He spoke in a melodic voice.
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Avan sat at the bottom of the lake, enveloped in a midnight-black bubble of pure celestial mana, staring at the object in front of him, not 30 centimeters away. The bubble contained air and shielded him from the masses of water around and above him, especially the thundering masses of water cascading down from the waterfall.
The dungeon core floated in front of him, a few inches above the bottom of the lake, looking inconspicuous were it not for the golden and silver lines that testified to the celestial mana inherent in all dungeon cores.
A few pulsating veins of a blood-red hue complemented the perfectly round sphere, confirming the main element of the dungeon and why it was all about blood magic.
*Should I really dare...?* Avan asked himself inwardly for the hundredth time in the last minutes since his arrival down here. He remembered very clearly the two times he had touched dungeon cores or fragments of them, like in the very first temple he had encountered on Eos and later the tower dungeon in Haipu as a slave. The former had been forced upon him by his dungeon class, and the latter had given him odd memories and a connection that shouldn't have been there, he was more than sure.
The very fact that he was a dungeon, but so much more than that, was evidence of a flaw in the system that not even Akkalon could explain. *At least I think so...*
*If I touch this sphere here, and something happens again... what exactly does that tell me? My dungeon class itself also had a vague designation that I can get stronger by reaching other dungeon cores, but everything is so vague and unclear...*
Indecisively, he thought about the past, and about the fact that his team mates and the other former prisoners were waiting for him at the other end of the lake, and that they had not yet left the danger zone. *Get a grip, Avan... I'm here now anyway, and I was going to find out, wasn't I?*
Before he could ponder or think about leaving without doing anything, Avan reached out and placed his hand on the incredibly flawless and smooth surface.
Nothing happened, and Avan exhaled a little relieved but also disappointed, unconsciously holding his breath because he expected to be drawn into a vision or something else again.
The hand lightly stroked the surface of the sphere, and Avan traced the veins of gold, silver, and blood-red with his fingers as he mindlessly stared at the dungeon core. Suddenly, he felt something awaken inside him. and he reacted! An ability came forward, at first unconsciously, and without Avan having activated it himself.
[Origin of Runes] pulsated in his field of vision, and unknown runes formed in his field of vision in front of him, directly above his outstretched hand! Runes that Avan had never seen before, but which seemed to trigger a familiar feeling in him. A feeling of home, and of justice. Of security, but also brimming with a deep knowledge that he could not actually have.
The runes continued to form and flow into one another, almost as if several lines of an unknown language were opening up before him, letter by letter, word by word, and sentence by sentence written out of nothing. *Are runes nothing more than a language?!* came Avan's inner question as he reacted with fascination and for some reason not fear or surprise, just curiosity. Something inside him told him that this was right. That it belonged to him, like his limbs, and breathing to survive.
His arm remained outstretched, but his stroking of the surface of the dungeon core was stopped, for fear that if he moved it would all fizzle out and he would break or disrupt whatever was going on.
The runes now seemed to have finished what they had wanted to write down in this strange magical language, and Avan saw before him, floating above his arm, a one meter by one meter area of rune sentences, but not in two dimensions, but in three dimensions! The runes had overlapped, had continued to write between the words and letters in smaller runes, contained whole sentences in words. And not only from the front, but also when Avan turned his head slightly, the runes changed and depending on the angle of view, he could recognize other written words from runes!
Between the lines were more rune combinations, from left to right, right to left, top to bottom, and bottom to top.
How Avan knew from which directions it was written? [Origin of Runes] pulsed inside him, and he just KNEW it.
And when the last rune, the last letter in this strange yet familiar script was perfectly completed with a final stroke of caligraphy, the entire construct pulsated. It began to glow, and rapidly increased in intensity, while gradually it soon shone so brightly that Avan had to close his eyes to avoid being blinded.
And suddenly everything went black for Avan.
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I was floating in a dark nothing. An endless vastness, endless, and yet finite. For me, everything was infinitely far and yet so close, because I could reach everything at any time and be where I wanted.
After all, all this was ME.
And I existed, but alone. Over countless time spans, which I had never considered important enough to count, I had simply existed and thought alone here. A thought spanned such a long period of time, was so complex and multi-layered that time flowed past me, but never touched me.
I existed IN time and not FOR time. I was not time, but I coexisted with it. It was like a constant companion for me, even if it was a silent and yet furious companion without equal.
At a certain point in time, I came back to the surface of my consciousness out of one of my countless long and so complex strands of thoughts, and I had an idea.
Wouldn't it be exciting to do more? To develop myself further? To give structure to my being, to redefine myself?
These were my superficial thoughts, immeasurably profound and never comprehensible to anyone else.
So I got started. With my will, "things" came into being. Objects in my body. Because my body encompassed EVERYTHING.
Oddly shaped objects, tiny in my eyes. I experimented, and soon I had various, countless, these pobjects for me in the black nothing of my own floating, which all had the potential to develop independently. I had let my ideals of beauty, aesthetics and all my ideas flow into all these objects. And all tied together with potential for MORE. Potential for growth, for development.
And I was satisfied with my creations. Even... Happy! Emotions welled up in me, although I had never felt anything like that before. Whether these came from my creations and influenced me as well? Life sprouted, developed, fought for survival, and died. A cycle arose.
I observed other indefinable periods of time, what my creations did. What my objects were producing, and how life was evolving. Knowledge was passed on, and lost. Objects created by me disappeared, and emerged again, from the potential of the objects that were once torn out of existence.
Countless colors were created by themselves, and all my infinite objects flew through my existence, and I enjoyed it!
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
But something was missing when I saw many of my creations colliding with each other. A structure, set, guidelines. Laws of existence, of origin. Laws of ME.
And so I started the next project, created paths, laws according to which all matter and antimatter in my existence had to submit, had to adhere to the rules. I created further, much smaller, but also much larger, objects. I put them into certain constellations and created whole collections of these. Some glittered, some radiated and blazed, others were still and frozen.
I christened my first objects [planets], and by adding the [laws of origin], I bound them together in an incredibly elaborate principle. Into different individual areas, completely separated from each other. I added [stars], [suns] and gave meanings and instructions to all my creations. And christened these collections as one [universe] each. Several of these collections resulted in a [dimension] for me.
Satisfied with my work over the last spans of time, my only companion, I watched fascinated as everything now moved on its own and in fixed trajectories. The developments of living beings, whole peoples, came and went. An endless cycle.
After further observations over a long period of time, I noticed the next error that needed to be corrected. My planets and whole dimensions brought forth new life on their own, but when this went out, everything in it was lost.
And so I created something new. I called it [soul], and planted it in every new creature that was not lifeless. A soul would remain after the extinction of a living being and reappear in a newborn living being somewhere else. Memories and everything were lost, but I gave the soul the potential to be more. Sometimes to retain memories, sometimes to become stronger in a new birth. A [soul] also got potential, and could develop.
I kept observing, looking at all the creations that had come about indirectly or directly through my work, and how everything was evolving. I took each [soul] personally to put it into the next being. But I soon noticed more mistakes. Sometimes there were souls that could not be reborn immediately because there was no capacity. Sometimes there were no souls, and new creatures and beings came into being without them.
So I created another level. Something above and beyond the reach of all my other creations. A flow of souls. Fresh souls were automatically flushed in and lined up one after the other in this river, while those who had been there first were reborn and the other souls moved forward. But did I really feel like taking care of these permanent reincarnations myself? No!
So a system was created, a part of my consciousness that was split off, and I created a language of the highest order. The [language of origin]. I gave this system all rights and ideas to supervise the order and to carry out my wishes, and to use the language created by me for the further creation.
And so I relaxed and could watch how this part of me, this system created by me, penetrated my creations and decided for itself what was right and wrong, where it had to intervene, and what was allowed where. And it created, according to my will and desire, another set in the origin. The right to free will.
Every living being should have the right to decide for itself, as long as it wanted to do so and did not give up the right of its own accord. Of course, this did not override the other laws of any existence of my creations, but I wanted to observe and be entertained, and if I always knew what would happen, I would quickly get bored. But if every creature and every living being made decisions on its own? CHAOS and ORDER. Pure pleasure for me, because everywhere I looked, new and unexpected things happened.
And so other endless times passed, and I watched, fevered, laughed and cried, and had fun and entertainment.
But even this became boring at some point.
My creatures, which I observed at every point in their short lives, fascinated me. They fought and went through life, knowing it was final. And made the best of it.
What would it be like to lead such a life? I could not understand it. To master these challenges, to grow, to die.
Suddenly I made a decision... I wanted to know. I wanted to feel, sense and experience it for myself!
I split off a part of myself, my active consciousness. I created a soul for myself, which I could inhabit until the body died. As soon as this died, I would return, so was the plan.
But to give myself surprises and hurdles on the way, I interwove parts of my existence in these small objects, which had originated everywhere on all my planets in all dimensions, when I wanted to let living beings develop by themselves.
I tied knowledge, power, memories to these little objects, and would be able to collect them with my mortal body if I ever got around to it. A kind of journey and development, a challenge to myself to become myself again and connect with my main consciousness.
As a last task, before I could go into the adventure, I gave certain instructions to my other part, the administrative system. What it should do in the infinite different cases, if this or that occurred. What it was allowed to do and what it was supposed to do.
And then i plunged into my new soul, and let the active consciousness be born into the mortal world!
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Avan took a frightened, panicked breath, holding his aching head with both hands!
He frantically scanned his body, and only when he was one hundred percent convinced that he was himself, and not this INFINITE being, which he had just seen, felt and even been himself, did his heartbeat slowly calm down again and his breathing calm down.
*Holy fucking shit! What the bloody hell and abyss of all hells was that?!* he cursed inwardly, his consciousness still trying to process everything he had just experienced. *That was not a vision! I fucking experienced it all in my own body!* he continued, cursing in disbelief.
Avan was woozy, had a massive headache, and knew that he could not process even a tiny fraction of what he had just experienced. Only the superficial part that could be described and seen, that he could feel. But the infinite part behind it? That was impossible for Avan to grasp or even think about!
So Avan lay on the bottom of the lake, legs outstretched and even lying on his back and massaging his head. The air in his created bubble soon ran out and the air was already getting thinner and harder to breathe, so he could not stay down here long to process what he had experienced. *Besides, the others are still waiting for me...*
Tired and mentally exhausted as he had never been before in his life, Avan stood up trembling and took the first step towards the shore. When he was able to walk somewhat steadily and had walked a few meters, always pushing the water away from him through his celestial bubble as he walked, he only now discovered a flashing message in his field of vision.
Sighing, and not in the least surprised, he stared at the ominous message while scratching his chin and continuing to put one foot in front of the other.
[The will of the origin - 42/?]
[Part of the origin.]
Effect: Not yet known
Avan was perplexed as he read the messages. On the one hand, he had expected that [The will of the origin] would get more parts, but that it was now sitting directly on the number 42 only added to the confusion. *As if the system had done this on purpose, and the number that was always equated as a joke with the meaning of life 42 had just been chosen at random?* Avan was quite sure, and felt it instinctively, that this was no coincidence and that the system was giving him a hint here. Something he urgently needed to think about in a quiet minute after the escape.... And the new thing, [part of the origin], was also a mystery. Avan stopped himself about the context of being a "part" of the origin, the incomprehensible being of the whole existence, which he had glimpsed in his vision.
Sighing and shaking his head, he marched on, meanwhile mentally somewhat recovered and almost no longer shaky on his feet.
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