This time John was prepared fully for the chaos realm, his body itself was timeless and contaminated by it in the first place, he didn't even need to control his immortality in order to stop shifting constantly from youth to old man. He remained the same.
"It would seem I am immune to its effects now."
John had a tier three flight spell.
He was able to navigate the chaos realm quite easily. Well, he had no idea where he was going. But being able to control his movements made this far different then when he was at the mercy of the realm before.
He saw a a green door covered in roots.
He ignored it and continued to fly through the chaos realm. He prepared himself mentally for an entity to find him like last time. He looked forward to a proper fight now.
He found something weird.
There was a road in the chaos realm.
It was near the 'bottom' by all metrics, space was weird here.
The road branched out and had staircases leading up to doors.
"Somebodies been here before? Who would be able to survive the the time fluctuations though?"
John immediately had his guard up.
"That's right, this chaotic space has all manners of creatures in it. Someone eternal is a requirement to explore it. This must be left by someone mapping out this realm."
John ignored this road, and continued to fly deeper into the realm.
He saw an obsidian door...
He ignored this.
He was looking for that entity that had tried to capture him before. He wanted to show it his growth and subjugate it, possibly make it work for him.
But he was unable to find it. He was in no rush. He had fun looking at the various doors. Initially when he first came to this realm, it appeared like space, but now it had doors everywhere.
Something had changed for him.
"Perhaps it changes based on the persons comprehension?"
As soon as he had this thought the doors vanished.
He had unknowingly flew into the domain of that entity.
It was made of white text with stars for eyes.
It reached for him.
A magic barrier pulsed and shattered.
"Fair enough, a tier three spell is too weak!"
Luckily during the centuries he had spent in that world he had experimented and created new spells.
"Absolute Barrier!"
He casted a tier 6 spell using half of his energy.
A transparent sphere covered his body.
The entity started trying to break through this, but it was unable to.
"Much more effective!"
John needed to be careful... if he used all of his energy. This could turn ugly.
"Blackhole!"
A tier five spell.
A blackhole appeared in the center of the entity.
The blackhole shattered though!
"Hmm... I don't have enough energy to do a tier 7 attack... what a pity."
The entity kept attacking his barrier.
"You fool! My barrier is absolute, don't even waste your effort."
The entity didn't seem to understand and kept repeatedly attacking.
"It would seem I'm not as strong as I thought. I can't even deal with this entity."
John expanded his absolute barrier dispersing it and causing the entity to shoot away.
He then began to fly away at rapid speeds!
He then had a wonderful idea.
He could teleport, it was a tier 5 spell.
"What happens if I try to teleport?"
He first needed to anchor himself to a location and choose where to go.
He waited until his mana had recharged.
He tried to teleport a few meters from his location.
He felt his consciousness ache as a wormhole formed.
He was sucked in and tossed around like a rag doll.
He was stuck in this wormhole for a few years unable to break free.
Eventually the wormhole took on the form of a door as his view of the chaos realm shifted back and the doors reappeared.
"What the fuck?"
"Let's not do that again. Something is seriously wrong with teleportation in this realm."
He looked at the door that had formed in front of him.
It was made from himself?
It was made of his bones and had his skull embedded in the door.
The eyes lacked that blue glow though.
John had initially been ignoring doors to find that entity, but he found he was no match for it with his current system. But this door had him curious... the green door with roots and the obsidian door didn't draw him in as much as this one.
"Why is my face on the door?"
He opened the door and saw a hallway.
It was blood red.
"I feel like this a trap..."
He ignored his instincts and walked into the hallway.
The door closed behind him. He expected the door to vanish completely, but it didn't surprisingly. He walked along with his hand on the walls. Eventually he made it to the end of the hallway, it felt like it stretched forever. He had walked for years.
"This is weird."
He had dealt with strangeness before and the supernatural.
But this had him scared for some reason.
It was a weird feeling he had never felt before. But this feeling was also awakening something in him, he was quite excited. Thinking he had found something interesting. Not much in life interested him anymore, something like what he was experiencing in itself was worth kingdoms.
He reached the end of the bloody hall and saw two giant doors.
He pushed these doors open and saw a red carpet with gold trims, leading to a throne. The throne was made of gold. He slowly walked up to the throne and inspected it. Checking the front and back. The back of it had a blue cube rotating.
He then did something that just felt right.
He sat upon the throne.
The room vanished, he remained on the throne, but millions of lights went past his body.
Screens started to pop up around him.
This was similar to when he had that ring and had a connection with that pocket dimension that also served as transportation.
He saw multiple galaxies zoom in and out.
He stretched out his fingers and found that he could control the panning and zoom in to where he wanted to go.
"Who the hell designed this!?"
He felt like he had goosebumps and he didn't even have skin!
He shifted through multiple galaxies. Then he accidentally zoomed out, he saw the universe as a sphere. What was interesting was that there were multiple sphere besides it and it followed this pattern as he further zoomed out.
He was becoming a little dizzy.
"The multiverse? I can freely explore the multiverse!"
John was a little confused... he had no idea how to navigate and choose the location properly. The throne itself was a supreme artifact. Of a far higher grade then that ring he had once used.
He zoomed into one of the universes, zoomed into a galaxy, searched various solar systems. He stood up in excitement and awe, but this was a mistake.
The moment he stood up the throne disappeared and he was left alone floating in space.
He couldn't help but be happy that he was undead.
Because this thing ditched him in a random universe! Well... one with human life as he had seen from the screens.
He bashed his head.
"Why did I stand up, Urghhh... I'm an idiot."
"Now I'm stranded in space..."
John used flight and looked into space.
He was very far away from any celestial bodies.
Flying would take years...
But he could also teleport.
He spent years flying and teleporting in the direction he had memorized in that instant of seeing the galaxy. He hoped his memory was correct, or he may forever be stranded in space.
He eventually saw a planet.
"YES!"
He teleported into its atmosphere and slowly flew down.
When he got down to the ground he began to kiss it with his skull repeatedly.
"I'm back on land! Thank myself!"
John couldn't help but want to sit on that throne again. He had a theory that he would be able to find it by teleporting while in the chaos realm, creating a wormhole and going for a ride for a few years.
He still wondered who designed that door... but then he thought about it. Did it necessarily have a creator? There were infinite doors, perhaps some law was creating them and he had created that space by teleporting.
This was just a theory though, he had no idea how it truly worked.
He wish he did though!
If you could create your own doors, couldn't you explore the multiverse as easy as breathing?
Whoever successfully mapped out and understood that chaotic space would be damn near omnipotent.
John was quite well lived... he had grown used to flexibly using his powers and spells.
So he effortlessly found civilization and soul searched its citizens.
He then created a fake identity.
"John Destinatus!"
"It's good to be back."
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
He had multiple illusion spells stacked on himself, some he even created himself.
He looked nothing like a lich on the outside.
This world had something he had been looking for... it had a supernatural power system!
"Muhahahhahahha!"
The people on the train looked at him with weird looks.
"Sorry."
He was on the internet.
He didn't expect to run into a world with sufficiently advanced technology.
This world had the internet.
He was easily able to search through news and see that this world had heroes.
Instead of stages, there was a class system.
You had SS, S, A, B, C, D, E, and F.
There wasn't much room for improvement in terms of jumping classes. People in this world 'awakened' powers at 16. They would then become a certain grade of super and attain a random power.
This determined their potential.
You also had people that never awakened or awakened later in life. These people were called duds.
There were all sorts of powers, some more useful then others.
Some people specialized in repair.
Others in cleaning.
Some in producing technology.
The internet actually wasn't the result of servers and clients.
It was controlled by someone with a hivemind ability. They maintained the biological servers.
John was excited at first at the prospect of awakening an ability.
But the more research he did, the more he found it unlikely for him to be able to do it.
It seemed to be a special characteristic of the humans in this world.
He wasn't a human from this world. While there were drugs that were expensive that could forcefully awaken him. These drugs wouldn't work on him. His biology was completely different.
Unless...
Unless he removed the contamination of the chaos realm from himself. Then used his immortality to recover. This would've been impossible for him in the past. But while he was stuck in space he had been absorbing more memories of that supreme being.
John used magic to trick some rich and powerful people into investing in his company.
He started a company called 'Operation Awake'.
The goal on the outside was to produce drugs for awakening.
But his actual goal was to try to understand the contamination on his body.
He had scientist study his bones on a atomic level.
He actually found rune like patterns on the bone at the atomic level.
He used a laser to manually remove these runes.
He then felt it... he could feel a connection with his finger!
He obviously didn't remove the contamination on his entire body as it was convenient for traveling the chaos realm and spaces inhospitable for humans. He wouldn't give that up.
But another body reformed from the broken off finger.
"It is a success!"
"You are named 'Test Subject 0'."
He then pinched his fingers as test subject zero.
Blood flowed creating another body.
"Test Subject 1!"
He repeated this until he had fifty test subjects.
He bought large supplies of awakening fluid.
Injecting them into the test subjects.
He was able to awaken abilities!
The bulk of the awakened abilities were completely useless.
He had those bodies killed and cremated.
Over the years in this world he had thousands awakened.
He was looking for a particular ability.
He wanted a body capable of opening up a portal to the chaos realm.
If he could control such an ability, wouldn't that be pretty awesome?
Sadly the odds were against him. No matter how many times he had abilities awakened, he never got the ability to open up a portal to the chaos realm. The closest thing he got was an S class ability to open portals.
"Trash!"
John could naturally mimic most of these abilities using spells or by making new spells, so he considered the current project to be failing.
He decided that this wouldn't work, he couldn't just hope for RNGesus to swoop in and give him everything he wanted. He had to work for it.
So he actually contributed research to society. He began to study awakening by itself and the influences of it.
He found that someone's outlook on life and their experiences as a child 5% of the time can have something to do with their ability.
They weren't sure if this was pure randomness. But John held onto this notion. He had a particle accelerator built. He would control his test subjects from childhood having them observe simulations of particles colliding.
Microscopic blackholes.
Have them study portals...
He got results. 10% of his test subjects after this treatment got spatial abilities. This was fine, he was making progress!
He studied art for around a decade and became an animator.
He animated his experiences in the chaos realm and fed it to the test subjects as children.
After five decades of attempts.
He produced one test subject capable of opening up a portal to the chaos realm!
This was huge!
He immediately separated this test subject from the others, treating the others as defective garbage. These were all him after all, he had no qualms about treating himself as trash after all.
The ones with useless abilities were cremated and he gave the test subject with the chaos ability a name.
"You are The Realm Guardian!"
John did other test on the other subjects. He wanted to see if they kept their abilities after losing their human forms. The abilities obviously weren't tied to the soul as they all shared the same soul.
He found that they lost their powers once their brain structure deteriorated.
He had found the source of the awakening powers! This was a huge step for humanity, he didn't give this information back to society though as it could cause quite a bit of chaos.
"Wait a second! Isn't that how I initially awakened the ability to see and manipulate soul? It was likely through a change in my brain structure."
John was very happy with this discovery.
He made a blue print of the realm guardian and tested making other bodies with the same brain structure.
It was another success! He could now guarantee that he could open up a portal to the chaos realm.
He just couldn't do it with his undead body.
But those were pointless details, the point was, he did it!
One of the test subjects had awakened immortality.
It was not as flexible as his immortality, but he figured he'd use it to test the chaos realm.
So he had it jump into a portal just to see what happened.
It remained unaffected by the time fluctuations.
"Interesting... so the real requirement to exploring this space initially is immortality."
He was able to use spells from any body.
He immediately began to fly.
"Now time for the real test."
He tried teleporting... the test subject immediately was sucked into a wormhole.
John casually continued research in various directions while waiting for the outcome patiently.
The wormhole eventually turned into a door.
It was made of bones and had his skull on the door.
"Interesting! So that's how it is..."
He opened up the door and saw a red hallway.
He walked in this time full of confidence.
After walking for a year the hallway turned green.
"This isn't right..."
He saw a wooden door with a green orb as the door knob in front of him.
He opened it up and found a floor like stars.
He walked into the room and the door closed.
He was surrounded by stars.
But the floor was solid, with stars as the background.
"Alright..."
He was now less confident.
"What is this?"
He saw a crystal ball on a podium in the middle of the room.
It was floating.
The test subject touched it.
Time froze. This wasn't just for the test subject. This froze time across the multiverse. Even the world of cultivation was frozen. But all of the bodies of John were able to move in this frozen time!
"What the hell!"
He then saw an entirely separate dimension. He saw a blackhole with a infinity symbol on it covered in a red shield.
"My soul?"
The red shield cracked slightly. He saw a white light jump from the crystal ball traveling up his hand into went into his head. He then saw in that separate dimension the red shield was changed into a white one.
An hourglass imprint formed on the shield.
Now his soul looked like a blackhole with an hourglass imprinted on it, with an infinity symbol in the center, covered with a white shield.
He felt an extreme level of confusion.
He let go of the crystal ball and time itself began to rewind. But his soul stayed the same. The test subject traced its steps walking out of the room and into a green hallway. It then walked backwards... as it was doing this, every body was rewinding. But John remained aware of this.
"This!... This is beyond tier 7 magic!"
John recognized this slightly from the supreme beings memories. While it was a supreme being, it was admittedly a lousy one. A strong supreme being would never be put into such a crap situation.
What John was experiencing was comprehension of a law!
The law of time.
He watched with anticipation as he rewound over a year of progress in all of his bodies and found the test subject before it even jumped into the portal.
John was filled with ecstasy, his very first law! Time! This was perfect for him, but laws were different from systems of power. They were more powerful for sure, but harder to grasp and progress in.
He had no idea what percentage of the law he had comprehended.
It could be 1% or 0.0001%.
In order to become a supreme being, one needed 100% comprehension of a law. You needed to make a body made from the law. John never thought he would even begin to comprehend laws as he had lived for hundreds of years and hadn't had any insights.
But he supposed that a few centuries was nothing in comparison to a lifespan of millions of years.
He had infinite time theoretically, but did he really? Eventually the sun would die. Everything will die with enough time, even if he doesn't. He'll eventually live a life worse then death. But that is the cost of immortality. He relished in it, he knew his future. But now the path forward had been cracked open.
If he could control time, couldn't he undo the heat death of the universe? Couldn't he go to whenever he wanted? Hell, he could even bring back Leo!
Time was such a huge concept to comprehend. Who knew his little experiment in the chaos realm would lead to this. But he was also a little confused.
"What exactly created that room? What happened to the throne room?"
What John didn't know was that the throne rejected the test subjects body. It was due to the contamination on his body and the runes at the atomic level that allowed him into the room. What he had accessed was just an auxiliary room.
It wasn't even the only room like that! There were many laws stored in various rooms. These were casual insights of a proper supreme being. One that had comprehended multiple laws. It was their inheritance... left for those worthy to access them.
The supreme being John consumed earlier was a low level one at best. There are various levels of supreme beings. You had rank 7, 8 and 9. The one John consumed was only rank 7 and hadn't even learned how to exist without soul. This was an uncommon technique after all.
There was indeed a person that acquired a mysterious consciousness and artifact and was able to exist without a soul. But this was beyond legendary. Such existences could be considered rank 10 and they were more then omnipotent. They were completely unfathomable.
Don't even try to compare John to such an existence. He still had a far way to go. There were various levels to destiny.
You had no destiny.
Normal Destiny.
Extraordinary Destiny.
Flawless Destiny.
Perfect Destiny.
Eternal Destiny.
Paradoxical Destiny.
Complete Destiny.
Cursed Destiny.
Mysterious Destiny.
John had no idea about destiny currently. His destiny itself was only at the eternal level. As for what that meant? It meant paths to the eternal would open up to him. You could say it was his seizure that was caused by this destiny. Or you could say it was the seizure that changed his destiny.
Either way that was a turning point for his destiny.
He wasn't ordinary.
But he also was less unique then you would think.
There were many in the vast multiverse with eternal destiny.
But the number of people with mysterious destiny can be counted on one hand.
The system John chose wasn't rank 7 level even at stage 7.
He could be considered a rank 4 if you had to estimate his strength. It was an entirely different system after all.
John decided to further explore by doing the same thing again.
He had the immortal test subject walk into the chaos realm.
Teleport and fall into a wormhole.
Then open up the door that formed from it.
Then walk for over a year in the red hallway.
Again, it turned green.
He saw a wooden door with a green orb door knob. The test subject opened it and walked in. But things were different. The floating crystal ball was gone. John hadn't realized it yet, but the ball that contained the law of time was merged with his soul already. He wouldn't get any further benefits from this test.
He didn't give up, the potential benefits were too juicy.
He sent in another test subject that never awakened any powers. But he made sure to keep the other test subject meditating in that room where he initially he found the crystal ball.
As soon as he entered the chaos realm he began to rapidly age. John had to control his age as he constantly fluctuated from and old man to a youth.
He repeated the steps of teleporting and going through that special door. He found himself at a red hallway again. He walked in this hallway for a year, then it turned blue. He saw a metal door. He opened it up and saw metal beams leading to the center room. The place looked like the skeleton of a skyscraper in the middle of the night.
In the middle of the room there was another crystal ball floating.
"You can't be serious! No way... this is too good! I'm too lucky!"
John began to laugh.
He hadn't felt this much happiness in awhile.
He then frowned. Because the first room that now lacked a crystal ball, where he had kept the other test subject began to shake. The stars all around dimmed and then a secret compartment opened.
"Hmm... only someone would could control multiple bodies would be able to access this area. Just what is hidden here?"
He saw a ring on a podium.
It was a storage ring. He picked it up and put it on his finger, it shifted and resized itself fitting his finger perfectly.
He could feel an empty space inside a few cubic meters in space.
"A storage ring!"
John didn't have any storage spells...
There was a slight issue though. He now needed to get this ring back to himself. After walking to the door he realized that the ring also had authority in this space. He was able to walk through the closed door as if it didn't exist. He found himself in a green hallway. He walked forward as it turned red. He kept walking until he reached the door with his skull on it. He opened it and found himself in the chaos realm.
"Damn..."
"It's a lost cause... unless..."
John then had an idea. He had already spent over five decades in this world. He had pretty much had a great harvest from this world. Even if his influence didn't shape the world like it did in the world that became a magic world due to Leo.
"Perhaps it is time to go! I'll also get a storage ring!"
He would still be leaving the realm guardian in this world. So he wouldn't be entirely disconnected. He had it open up a portal. He walked into the chaos realm.
He also had the test subject with the ring step into the skull door. Then wait at the entrance for a few years while he entered a wormhole and waited for it to become the door.
He walked in and saw the test subject. It bowed and presented the ring to him. He put it on and kept the test subject at the entrance as he went on a long walk through the hallway.
John made sure to store a few fingers from the test subject in his storage ring so that he could make copies in future worlds. Even if the technology wasn't advanced enough to remove the contamination.
He eventually made it to two doors.
He opened these up and found the throne room.
"Interesting!"
John sat at the throne as if it was made for him. He was prepared this time as millions of lights flashed by him and screens popped up all over the place.
He waved his hands and zoomed out until he saw the multiverse.
The throne looked as if it was traveling to where he wanted it to go.
He began to rapidly search through information.
John decided he wanted to try a universe with a magic matrix over it. That way he could try to get to rank seven. Then become a proper supreme being.
This did have some downsides, since he couldn't take the magic matrix with him when he left. But if he managed to get to rank 7, he could have his spells powered with laws.
He had his throne appear in the middle of a town.
He leaned his skull on his face as he didn't even hide his skeletal form.
John was frankly tired of being low key, he also had a lot of confidence in his abilities. He may not win against those weird entities in the chaos realm. But humans? Mages?
Just who the hell could stop him!?
He was mainly doing this just relieve his boredom.
"I am John Destinatus. The origin of magic, I have been summoned to this world by the devil emperor. Bow before the supreme one!"
John lied and made up a story. Technically, he was the origin of magic. Just not in this world!
He decided to have a bit of fun.
He stood up from the throne as it disappeared.
A few minutes later a group of people had surrounded him.
They were pointing at him and whispering.
John then saw a person flying towards him. The person stopped while hovering above him. He flew up to meet him.
"Hello! I am the creator of magic. Allow me to soul search you and everything will be alright!"
"Who do you think you are fooling Lich? I'm a rank 2 wizard and-"
John used blackhole and the man was sucked into it.
"Well, that was boring. Do you guys have someone stronger?"
The crowd began to shake their heads frantically.
John was then trapped in a formation made by ten rank 1 wizards.
"Monster, you will know death. This is a holy array, it is quite effective at erasing undead!"
John was covered in white light.
But he wasn't a normal undead. It just tickled.
"Impossible!"
"Either way, you are trapped now. Once back-up arrives you'll-"
John teleported out of the formation.
"What were you saying?"
"..."
All of a sudden John collapsed to the ground. He held his hand holding himself up from the ground.
"What's going on?"
John was being attacked by the world will! The world will in the other worlds he had went to were dormant or nonexistent. But in the wizard world, it was very much conscious.
Chains began to wrap around his soul.
It squeezed his soul.
He immediately without hesitation pulled out a finger and formed another copy of himself.
The mages looked at him in confusion.
"What sort of puppet technique is he using?"
He opened up a portal to the chaos realm and jumped in quickly.
The chains on his soul disappeared.
"That was dangerous..."
"I suppose I need to not use my spells... otherwise the world will will attack me for using an incompatible system."
John teleported again and followed the steps needed to get to his throne room. Once he sat down he felt much better.
He looked at the world he had just been in.
"This is a bit tricky."
He tried to think of ways around the world will.
"I suppose I'll have learn the magic of that world. I've had my fun already."
John realized this was necessary if he wished to become a supreme being in the future.