Acedia POV:

Finally, I was left alone once more.

This always happen when I try to not bother anymore, although this time it was surprisingly quick.

Whenever I go or want to go into this vegetable-like state – or stasis, I prefer to call it – I always get bothered.

If I fall asleep, I will get woken up by nightmares.

If I don’t fall asleep and simply allow time to pass, I will get bothered by others, for example, in this case, Emily, or Lillian before her, or my wife before that, or the People of Sloth even before that.

This has repeated itself so many times, I’ve lost track of it.

It seems like the world doesn’t want me to rest easy.

This time, it was a surprisingly short amount of time.

Barely three weeks had passed and I was already disturbed by an Emily determined  to…. Whatever it was she came here for.

It takes between 30 million years – the absolute minimum I had before – up to 500 million years – the longest I had ever gone by unbothered.

But most of the time, it takes about fifty to a hundred million years before I wake up.

Now that I think about it, hasn’t this sped up recently?

Before I was bothered by those that eventually became the People of Sloth, some 70 million years had passed since I went into stasis.

A rather normal amount of time.

Then, the time between the People of Sloth and my wife was about 150.000 years, an incredibly short time in comparison, but since I always kept an eye out to watch over the Sloths, so I didn’t really consider myself truly in stasis and thus wasn’t bothered by the time.

After this, I went in stasis for real, yet it only lasted about 20 million years now that I think about it.

The forty-something years between Lillian and Emily was not spend in stasis, but simply relaxing and biding my time until it was time to visit her again.

Then, I went into stasis and even immediately went to sleep, which I normally put off for a long time.

This time it lasted for 10 million years, even shorter than before but, since I immediately went to sleep, which, once again, I never do, I wasn’t bothered by it.

And now it was a mere three weeks, which makes me doubt I actually truly entered stasis.

All in all, aside from the time when I froze the world and went into stasis, I have a convenient excuse for waking up early.

But honestly, even if I have an excuse for every one of these early awakenings since the People of Sloth, it is still strange that I consistently had these short breaks and also having an excuse for every single one of them.

It could be coincidence, but I have lived far too long to believe in coincidence.

Everything is a culmination of a variety of factors, whether they be intently manipulated to make something happen, or simply banded together unconsciously to bring forth an event that could be named as ‘coincidence’, but is actually not.

To me, who has consistently seen patterns and cycles in every single thing that has happened so far, it seems like something is trying to make everything look like an ‘exception’ or ‘coincidence’, supported by logic, to hide this trend of early awakenings.

It seems like the world or perhaps God is trying to keep me awake.

Even I think I sound paranoid.

But for now, this is simply speculation on my part and I am determined to not bother figuring it out.

Because if I do, I simply get dragged into its pace and I definitely do not want that.

For now, let me simply lie still and try to break the record of not caring for 500 million years.

I simply laid back, stared at the ceiling and allowed my consciousness to simply drift into the void of apathy.

But, within an hour, I was, astonishingly, bothered once again.

Twice on one day and even within the same hour?

I don’t know whether to be impressed or annoyed.

Of course, my brain, once awoken, conjured up a convenient excuse for this time as well:

Emily came to bother me about something, I didn’t want to know and now something is happening again.

Again, another early awakening supported by logic to make the ongoing trend look like a ‘coincidence’, conveniently hiding whatever is going on behind the scenes.

How annoying.

How impressive.

From high, high up in the sky, millions of kilometres away, a ship floated around in the vast, supposed ‘emptiness’ of space.

From that ship, large enough to house a couple hundred thousand people, a laser I had never seen before was fired and with the speed of light, quickly descending onto this world.

Despite its enormous power and usage of Energy, it seemed like a precision weapon, able to target a single thing and completely obliterate it.

Although I had never seen one before, I knew this laser without going particularly deep inside its Energy.

Many, many times in civilizations long past they had ideas concerning a weapon like this, a concentrated beam of Energy made by a device that gathers the Energy floating around freely in the vacuum of space.

I’ve seen schematics and read thousands of book about the processes involved to build such a device and how to control it, but never had I actually witnessed such a thing.

Whenever a society reached such a height in technological knowledge to think of such a thing, it would always collapse many years, if not centuries, before being able to even construct a prototype, let alone build a fully functional one.

Never had it been any different, until now.

This meant that, whoever built this was the most advanced civilizations ever since the existence of the universe.

At least, as far as I knew, since there is no way I could know every civilization that has ever existed.

But still, even if it was not the first civilization to reach such a stage, it was certainly extremely rare, since I have known more civilizations than one could count in a lifetime.

Who could’ve done this?

How could this civilization have succeeded where others have failed?

Is there someone special behind this?

Another Immortal?

Perhaps even God?

Or was this simply made possible by a very successful society?

My head spun at all the questions begging to be answered, but just before it overwhelmed me and swept my away from my primary purpose, I caught myself.

I steadied myself and my mind turned calm once more.

Before I noticed, I was being swept in another plot or ‘coincidence’ that drew me away from my stasis.

It’s almost frightening how much I was tempted to simply give in to my curiosity.

But, I do not want this to happen.

No matter who was behind the construction of this device and no matter who was actually behind this plot to keep me out of stasis: I do not care and should not care.

If I did, I would do exactly what they, whoever they were, want.

I just want to wait; return to my stasis and wait for the end to come.

Even though I know I will be forced to wake once more and suffer again and again, as is the cycle, I’m still determined to try.

Or, rather than determined to try, I simply do not care and do not want to care about everything, even if it is only temporarily.

But, at least for now, let’s wait a little before trying to enter my semi-conscious state.

Since this place is comfortable – perhaps even the most comfortable place amongst many I’ve tried – let’s clear out the annoyances first before going back to bed.

In the meantime, I felt that a barrier had been erected, but I immediately noticed it was not enough.

Also, even within the palace, the world had turned into a powerful and bright shade of crimson.

The beam was rapidly going down towards the palace, but it didn’t matter.

I placed myself in the network of Energy and easily tapped into the currently active Energy streams, both that of the barrier, as well as the deathray.

Whenever I was in a state such as this, I do not need to activate the Energy in order to enter its network or to use the Energy.

I simply willed it, and I was connected.

I simply willed it, and the Energy, whether active or freely floating around unused, obeyed me.

With a simple thought of my emotionally-vacant mind the active Energy dispersed and deactivated, returning to their inactive state.

The world returned to its previous state and, through the window, the colourless light shone down once more.

I gathered a bunch of Energy into a bridge, activated it and created a portal behind the entourage of Emily.

I stepped through it and saw the backs of Emily, Damien and Anna with Damien and Anna looking around restlessly, not knowing what to do, and Emily breathing heavily.

Apparently, she is not yet used to quick and immediate use of Energy, leaving her exhausted by the turn of events.

To the sides of the road there stood rows of servants, impassively looking at what was going one without moving so much as a muscle and without betraying any emotion hidden behind their masks, as if they were dolls lining the road without purpose.

In the centre of the stage stood eleven man wearing experimental body-armour, though they might not be experimental anymore, without a clue what was happening around them.

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The ten with the helmets on formed a rough circle, though keeping enough space between them, while readying their weapons – five with Energized firearms and five with large sledgehammers made out of metal and equally infused with Energy – while in the middle of them stood a bald man with a white-gold earring.

The man was busy shouting something to Emily, but as soon as he spotted me standing behind her he stopped and looked at me in surprise.

“Oh, Lord! A demon disguising as he human, what has the world come to!”

The zealot shouted while pointing at me, making everyone – aside from the doll-like Gold-masks – turn around and look at me.

Anna and Damien were unsure of what to do.

Emily had a small and tired smile as she saw me, but in her eyes I could see doubt and insecurity.

The ten men looked at me, aiming and pointing their weapons towards me instead of the Gold-masks lining the road.

The zealot’s eyes were filled with fear and covered with fury as he spotted me.

For a couple of seconds, nothing happened while everyone was eyeing me and I was eyeing everyone else, but I broke the silence with the only question I had.

I walked past Emily, Damien and Anna and, as soon as I arrived at the circle, the fear of the envoys, including the bald man, seemed to increase exponentially, allowing me to pass unhindered.

I stood in front of the zealot and asked: “Does anyone know you’re here?”

My voice was casual, but it carried a weight and pressure unbecoming of the manner of speech, seemingly echoing off of the air and silencing the wind itself in awe.

With every step I took, I had seen the bald man’s fury being replaced with fear and now, with me standing in front of him and asking a question he broke out in cold sweat and a face twisted with anxiety.

It didn’t matter what he answered, he was dead either way.

“Y-you, a Demon, dare to inquire about our Lord’s and His Apostles k-knowledge! Preposterous!”

He tried his best to sound strong and determined, but compared to his earlier outbursts, it sounded pathetic.

Clearly this man was not yet broken, but needed a small push into the right direction.

But then, instead of pushing the man to confess, I decided something that would make all my problems obsolete.

I expended the Energy-link with the world to encompass it in its entirety, reaching far, far outward into space until it covered the ship floating millions of kilometres away.

I invaded the ships Energy engine, shield and weaponry and even the Energy locked inside all matter, be it solid, liquid or air, was now under my control.

With a single thought, I deactivated shields, weapons and engines of the machine.

“Contact your ship.” I commanded.

The bald man wanted to retort, but he was swept away by the tone of my voice and obeyed.

His left earring turned blue as he spoke.

“Fleet-Commander Albarion speaking, what is the ships status!”

He said, voice filled with fear and a hint of curiosity.

“Commander! All ship functions are down! I repeat, all….”

Before the ship’s captain could finish speaking I activated all matter-locked Energy.

All matter, be it neutron, proton, electron, photon, graviton or everything else for that matter is made possible by Energy.

Over the hundreds of billions of years of the world’s existence, the Energy had been slowly multiplying itself and the space – also made out of Energy – expanded because of this process.

Unfortunately, existence, although so large it is basically infinite, is not actually infinite, there was a point it couldn’t expand anymore and so another way needed to be found.

Since then, every part of Energy that comes into existence, I shoved to onto the grid of Energy, which is called space, and forms into matter.

So, everything in the universe, be it tangible matter or the space itself, is made out of Energy and is thus, if I so wish, owned by me.

So, I simply activated the Energy locked inside the ship’s matter and gave it one simple order: convert.

By my orders, every single particle split apart and destroyed itself, allowing it to turn into the pure Energy it once was.

It is comparable to a nuclear bomb, splitting atoms and converting matter into ‘normal’ energy, and by all accounts, converting a space-ship capable of housing hundreds of thousands into normal energy, it would create an enormous blast.

But what I did was something slightly different.

I converted everything into true Energy.

Even the normal energy like warmth or electricity is converted.

The effect is devastating.

The reason why nobody –  once again, as far as I know – has ever reached the Energy-beam stage of science, is because this discovery always come first.

A bomb able to deconstruct all of existence itself into Energy, overburdening reality with an excessive amount of Energy.

What happens when such a bomb is detonated was now visible for all to see.

The captain of the ship had stopped talking and out of nowhere, a mortifying thunderous crack was heard.

Everyone, even the doll-like Gold-masks, turned their face to the sky and was awed by the sight.

The ship was quickly converting into Energy and was now a bright purple star, about half as large as the sun; purple being the true colour of Energy.

As of now, this is simply an incredible amount of Energy at one place, allowing it to turn visible to the human eye.

But that’s it, it’s still just Energy.

Definitely not able to, in one blow, obliterate a galaxy-colonizing civilization.

What happens next, is the part that could only be found out if one has experienced it before; it is not something the scientists of previous civilizations who invented these kinds of bombs could have ever known beforehand.

The giant purple orb, casting its light upon the world, visibly began to vibrate more intensely by the second until it tore everything apart, including itself.

It began as a small, black dot in the middle of it, but it expanded at an alarming rate.

It was something akin to a black hole, swallowing light and making a dent into the fabric of space, but this one is much, much more extreme.

Instead of denting the fabric of space and the grid of Energy spanning reality, this black hole was prove that the grid was punctured.

Now, the grid of space was not able to keep all that existed upon it safe and allowed for everything to be destroyed.

All things present in its vicinity was being swallowed into the puncture, destroying everything that went into it, including Energy itself.

With every passing second, the hole expanded until it swallowed the sun, the stars and eventually entire galaxies.

Absolute annihilation for all, that is what it does.

Once, I even created one and threw myself in.

A very, very bad decision in hindsight, but I hoped it would kill me and end my suffering.

It tore everything apart and even destroyed my soul completely, not just once, but over and over again.

Unfortunately, since my soul and Energy are connected, I was formed over and over again just slightly father away from the hole, until it ended.

The hole only disappears when the excess Energy has been eliminated.

Of course, I had no intention to dive into this madness once more, so I quickly created a bubble around the entire city, except for the envoys.

Using these, I teleported us away before the hole could swallow us.

Unlike the use of bridges and portals, this one was a lot less stable, meaning the destination was much less secure.

But, travelling along the infinite grid of Energy, we reached another planet on which I placed the city.

I looked up in the sky and could still see the hole swallowing the stars around it and pulling the stars from further and further away.

Then, suddenly, the giant black hole disappeared and the stars still being dragged by the remaining pull of the hole, filled up the empty place left behind.

Aside from the now different arrangement of constellations, it seemed as if nothing ever happened.

Where we were now, it was midnight and the cold wind blew in my face.

I took only last look at Emily, Damien and Anna and saw them looking at me with feelings too complicated to express.

I said nothing and created a bridge towards my room, placing myself in the soft comfort of my bed.

With this, nothing should happen anymore.

Those who sent the envoys must surely be dead, or at the very least, be unable to bother me ever again.

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I hope you liked this bit of world-building and fake-scientific explanation behind Energy.

I also hope that it was understandable and, if not, please ask questions, since I (or the occasional passerby) will try to explain it.

Also, asking these kinds of questions will help me understand what I need to do better next time, so please, do not hold back and rampage as much as you want =)

I hope you enjoyed this chapter and hope to see you next time!