(Authors Note: This chapter takes place at the end of Chapter 42 of Pandora)
Adam woke up feeling that something was wrong, something was really wrong. He dropped mental focus into his Mindspace and found that a significant number of his links to the copies of Thor embedded within each Replicant of Pandora located throughout the Universes within the SYSTEM were trying to contact him. He dialed back his memory until he found the first request for contact and allowed the link to that Replicant to be established.
Adam hadn’t contacted the embedded Thors, even when he noticed them at the Forge of Creation, because Thor had become part of his daughter. Yes, Thor was technically a copy of himself that the SYSTEM had taken, but when Thor had returned, he’d become part of his daughter's unique psychic makeup. Adam didn’t want to intrude on that. That the copies of Thor within the Replicants of his daughter were using their resonance with him to establish and request a connection, that multiple versions of himself within her replicants were doing so could only mean that there was a problem of some kind.
Adam established the connection and was flooded with recent memories of Pandora's experiences. The Replicant of his daughter, whom he connected with, was in North America, visiting a bakery in Maplewood, New Jersey when the world ended. Suddenly, a sheet of darkness raced toward her, and then her body reverted to its chaotic nature and was left floating in a vast emptiness. It almost seemed like a scene from Crisis on Infinite Earth when Antimatter, except instead of a sheet of white, it had been a sheet of darkness.
Adam accelerated his Mindspace to its maximum speed. Doing so slowed the passage of time outside of Mindspace considerably. Effectively, for every single second that passed outside of his Mindspace, one billion Ma (Mega Anum or megaanum) would pass. Now that he had a “little” time, he went to work.
Adam started by bringing up memories from the first Replicant of Pandora he’d linked to and ran through those memories up through the present. Everything. Absolutely everything around the replicant had been whipped out. Also, there hadn’t been an energy release of any kind. Everything had just ceased to exist. Once the barrier of energy had passed, Pandora had reverted to an amorphous ball of chaotic energy and was now floating in nothing. Whatever the wave had been, it had deleted or negated every particle of energy anywhere near the replicants body.
Adam was about to begin reviewing the other Thors when he turned his attention to the Universe Pandora was in and watched as she stepped through a portal into a form of Chaos higher than that which he was familiar with. In a split second, he made contact with the Thor within Pandora’s mind and received an update on what had happened. Before either could reach out and talk, though, the portal closed, and she was gone.
It seemed that a being named Xavier had brought Pandora into the realm of Primordial Chaos, where she would be safe until he figured out how to stop what was happening. Also, who was Relure? His anger had caused this. How? How could one being create something that was wiping Universes from existence? He quickly checked on Adaline and found that the Universe she was in was unaffected by whatever was doing this. The process of deletion had started in those Universes that were furthest away from what the SYSTEM considered its center, which Ironically was centered near Entropy.
While each Universe was technically infinite, within the Multiverse, each Universe held a specific place within a three-dimensional tapestry. The Universe’s closest to the SYSTEM’s origin point was not the furthest away from the wave of energy that was destroying everything,
While the structure of the multiverse wasn’t a sphere, it was easier to think of it that way. The origin point of the SYSTEM was located within that sphere, and for simplicity, since the sphere was infinite, Adam just thought of the SYSTEM’s Origin point as the center. The energy wave originated outside of the known SYSTEM universes and was destroying everything as it swept through the multiverse. Whether it was fate or luck, the universe Adaline was in was on the opposite side of the SYSTEM from the origin point of the Energy wave.
` One positive thing: it seemed that the replicants of Pandora were not being destroyed while everything else was. In fact, it seemed like any chaos that happened to be within those universes was migrating into her as each replicant floated in nothing. Everything else, though. Everything else was being erased from existence. Luckily, they hadn’t tried moving to other locations yet, which is what allowed Adam to get a feeling for how the wave was propagating across the sphere of the multiverse that the SYSTEM occupied.
Adam had the knowledge of countless lives and the knowledge of various scientists across thousands of professions and races. He could recall all of their memories, theories, and postulations. None of them hinted at something that could wipe out an entire Multiverse. Well, except for the Crisis on Infinite Earth story, or if someone went back and reset the Timeline, which would undo any branching timelines. Both of which he was familiar with and had nothing to do with his current situation, as far as he could tell.
Even his Font of Knowledge Perk gave him no hints as to how to attack this issue. He could sit in his Mindscape and wonder what he was going to do, or he could try to do something about it. Adam chose to act. The first thing he did was accelerate the temporal rate immediately around his body. He chose not to mess with time generally because of the negative attention it brought his way, as well as the possible negative Karmic Luck it could generate. If a god of time was offended this time, though, it wouldn’t really matter, would it? Why? Because they wouldn’t be around long enough to be offended, would they?
Still, he decided to be careful about how he messed with time. He didn’t want to go too fast, but he needed to be able to move, so he set his temporal acceleration at 20 to 1. For every twenty seconds that passed, one second would pass around him. The cost in mana was extreme at 1.00E+20 per Combat Turn, but his Mana Regeneration could handle it. Hopefully, he would be fast enough to make it to the Forge of Creation before the energy wave reached the SYSTEM Origin point.
With the Temporal acceleration active, Adam left his Mindscape and opened a portal to Entropy, which felt like it took forever. Instead of waiting for 20 turns in his accelerated time, Adam adjusted his temporal speed and skipped forward until the portal was open before him. Adam stepped onto the street of Entropy at his accelerated speed and noticed that while people were moving much slower than himself, they seemed to be agitated. Adam put them out of his mind and utilized Chaos Step to enter the Forge of Creation.
Adam appeared on the opposite side of the room from the entrance. While the singularity at the center of the Forge of Creation normally appeared as a sphere of black, which warped light around it, this time, a throbbing red aura emanated from the sphere, which Adam knew shouldn’t be possible.
Adam moved to one of the empty interfaces and connected to it.
Welcome to the Forge of Creation.
Adam activated Technomancer and linked with the interface. Luckily, the interface allowed him to continue reacting at his personal temporal rate, which allowed him to move much more quickly than the energy wave. With a thought, he sent a query into the interface.
Define Relure.
The response from the interface was immediate.
Relure, Original. Being that predates the first Iteration.
Adam was about to send his next query when everything changed. He would never know if he had willfully caused what happened next or if what happened next was just a coincidence. It was both the influence of another Original, his Karmic Luck and Luck. With a Karmic Luck of 810 million, a Luck of 3.01E+22, and a link through Technomancy to the Forge of Creation, The Original, Xavier, made a push through Pandora, who was right next to him.
Adam felt the Tantur, the Thor that the SYSTEM had taken and then returned to Pandora, establish a link with him just as every Thor within each Replicant Pandora did. What Adam had not understood until that moment was that the Energy wave destroying everything wasn’t just a wave of negative energy. It was Relure.
Adam discovered this when the wave washed over a number of replicants that had just connected to him, the Forge of Creation and The SYSTEM. It was also the moment Adam connected with a being whose mind had been lost to red-hot rage and anguish. Adam did not detect any thoughts within that rage. No, the only thing he detected was a desire to destroy everyone and everything.
Through his link to the Forge of Creation, Adam learned about the previous iterations. The Third iteration was the first time Relure lost control when his wife was killed by a group of Gods who had found a way to do what everyone at the time had thought impossible: kill an Original. They had found a way to collect power that might rival the originals, and his wife was the target. Entropy had been but a shadow of its current size, with only the Originals residing within. There had only been 23 survivors of that disaster. The 21 Primary Originals, those that seemed to be born of each magic, The Warden and Ember, Relure’s daughter. The SYSTEM had not been created until later. It had been a very long time before the 4th Iteration had begun.
While helpful, none of the information the Forge shared helped Adam at the moment, though his mind and the memories it could call upon worked the issue faster than any other being could have. Even so, he still had no idea what to do until his connection to Pandora, and thereby into Primordial Chaos, formed a link and a resonance that was anathema to Relure.
SYSTEM WAR….
A SYSTEM Window with red text tried to appear and looked to be issuing a SYSTEM Warning. It was immediately cut off, and the prompt window soon disappeared. Adam was surprised when a mental link was formed with something. He traced the intrusion and found that it originated from the replicants of Pandora that were in contact with the Energy wave. Through those links, he felt the rage pause as the mind underneath the rage emerged.
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“What is this? A mind? No three minds are interlinked across multiple universes. No, wait, there is another mind, and the SYSTEM is also here. What is this?” The mentality asked.
Adam felt the mind focus the energy and attack the replicants as the universe they were in disappeared around each of them. Then, the links began to vanish—first one, then two, then four, and so on. While the replicant energy waves had already passed over remained intact, those that Relure concentrated on were wiped from existence when he focused on them. Adam watched through the link as each copy of Pandora fought to remain but ultimately failed in the face of Relure’s power.
Adam quickly pulled up one of the Replicant’s Status Screens and noted that her primary attributes were above 200,000 but far less than his own. He also noted that while the replicant was being destroyed, there seemed to be a corresponding loss of energy from the wave of destruction. Adam checked the replicant's logs and watched the process when the next replicant was attacked.
Instead of attacking the replicant's hit points, mana, or Psychic Energy, the energy destroyed the replicant's attributes. Intuitively, or maybe it was because of his perk Font of Knowledge, he realized that if Relure was a being of Anti or Null energy, he must be expending that energy in a focused way, which meant that if he was destroying attributes, he must be using his own attributes to do so which would require a sacrifice on his part. With that understanding, Adam had an idea.
***
Relure could not believe the audacity of the being trying to stop him. A girl had created clones of herself and placed them within all the Universes around the SYSTEM. He hadn’t noticed them as his presence washed through the Multiverse, but he noticed them now. As he reached out, he noticed that those copies of this woman had survived. They were the only thing that survived, but the copies of her were still there.
Someone had killed his daughter! None would survive. What no one, save possibly another Original, could know was that while it appeared that the energy wave that had spread through the multiverse passed through everything, leaving nothing in its wake. That wasn’t exactly true. The edge of the energy wave was just the outer barrier of his entire being. As matter and energy were broken down, it was added to his makeup, which was everything within the sphere of energy. Technically, the clones of the woman he had detected were floating within him.
With a thought, Relure focused on one of the clones and attempted to invade her mind. After a moment, the link was established, and he felt himself drawn in and spread out among more clones than he had expected. During that moment, the energy wave ceased its progression and began to disappear as it was drawn into each replicant of Pandora. The being that was Relure attempted to force his will upon Pandora to destroy her by negating her. Unfortunately for him, Chaos was an amalgamation of everything. Each replicant of Pandora was a copy of her and created from the very substance that created him. As the null energy that was Relure focused on Pandora, the chaos within her shifted to its polar opposite, and a war of negation began.
Unknown to Relure, both the original Pandora, Caspa, Thor, and Adam watched through their link with Pandora’s Replicant as Relure focused his will and modified his attack so that it negated her attributes. The Chaos within her adjusted again. While it couldn’t prevent the attack, it forced Relure to focus his energy and negate one of his attributes for every attribute he destroyed. Adam noticed the chaos with the replicant adjusting as it attacked and began doing the same to Relure. Relure could destroy Pandora’s Replicants, but there would be a cost.
Unfortunately for Relure, Adam was not known for his patience with homicidal, well, anything, and he reacted. Every single Replicant of Pandora was suddenly within the body of Relure. Relure had felt the portals open as 4.04E+44 Replicants of Pandora stepped into his body. In addition to the fact that such an event shouldn’t be possible, Relure was surprised when the attack he’d just levied on one of the Replicants was returned from all of them. In a single moment, 8.93426E+50 of his attributes were erased from existence.
Relure was old; he was quite old, and the action he’d just undertaken to avenge the death of his daughter during the 3rd Iteration netted him an increase in his base attributes that would have shocked the other Originals. When they measured their class levels in the thousands, he measured them in the millions. He’d destroyed and absorbed the Multiverse during the 3rd Iteration. Doing so had occupied his mind for the next five iterations. He’d finally come back to himself after his daughter found him. He'd been caught in a mental loop of his own making. He’d had his revenge. The “Gods” that had killed his wife had been utterly destroyed. His only regret was that he couldn’t destroy them again.
Unknown to him, his wife had been pregnant with the spark of Ember within her. When they’d killed her, she’d used the last of her energy to ensure that her baby was born and rapidly grew to a point where she could take care of herself. She’d also sent the child into a world teeming with life and a sentient species. She’d chosen her form and set her free. Relure had known none of us until he’d been contacted. The Warden of Entropy had recognized her, and while he didn’t know where he’d disappeared to, he had made sure that Ember had been well cared for during each Iteration and brought back to Entropy to ride out each multiversal collapse. It was the only reason Relure hadn’t targeted Entropy; well, that and the other Originals could be a complete pain in the ass if he targeted them. Of course, it looked like it wouldn’t have mattered because he could garner from the memories of the clone he was linked to that the clones original was the person who had destroyed his daughter.
***
Even as Relure concluded that the target of his anger was the being who created the clones from another entity, The SYSTEM decided that Relure was a danger to existence for itself and almost every other entity and that now would be the perfect time to act. The SYSTEM had existed since the 4th Iteration when a decision was made by the remaining Originals that there should be a referee of sorts to look over some of the Universes within the Multiverse. Since the universe was infinite, there should still be room for the random creation that Chaos required, while there could also be an ordered existence, which Order required.
The unfortunate truth of Infinity, by definition, you could never reach it. If there were an infinite number of widgets, to say that the number was more than 100 and more than a million would both be accurate. That’s why, when Relure began the ending of the 9th Iteration, The SYSTEM sent out a quest to all non-Primary universes, directing all the Gods and Goddesses of those realms to prepare to fight for their lives.
As for the Gods and Goddesses within each Prime Universe, a different message was sent out. That message promised that efforts would be made to ensure their continued existence into the 10th Iteration. How did the SYSTEM plan accomplish this? Adamantadine.
***
Adam was flooded with SYSTEM Notifications as he watched Relure attempt to take over Pandora’s Replicant until he retaliated by bringing all of her other replicants into the fray. Even so, Adam was a bit surprised when Relure handled the attacks by 4.04E+44 Replicants in short order. What was even more surprising was when portals from all over the multiverse opened, and gods, angels, and demons of every shape and size teleported in and continued the attack.
Through his link to the Forge of Creation, Adam could tell that the SYSTEM was bringing in anyone and anything that could help. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a fight. It was more of a sacrifice. Why would so many creatures sacrifice themselves like this? Because it sure looked like each and every creature that attacked Relure ceased to exist. After a moment Adam realized that The SYSTEM was utilizing his connection to the Forge of Creation and taking advantage of his ability Perfect Memory.
Every single creature was being added to the list of creatures that Adam had absorbed and archived. He hadn’t noticed because he didn’t consciously access that information unless there was a need. He just let his mind do its own thing and left it the hell alone. The attacks continued for what felt like days if not weeks. The first to be destroyed was the Replicants, followed by any non-God that joined the fray, and then the Gods. Adam couldn’t tell how many attributes Relure had lost, but after a week, he could tell that the attack was having the desired effect. That’s when the other twenty originals and The Warden joined the fight. Unlike his replicants or the other Gods, the Originals did not fight until they disappeared. Each released energy typical to that which they controlled and then disappeared.
“It’s Not Enough!” a voice Adam had never heard before said.
Adam watched as a portal opened where Pandora was and a flood of energy burst through to him as she stepped through and then away into a portal that led to Adaline. The entity known as Xavier was nowhere to be seen, but Adam was quite sure that the chaos flooding him and Pandora’s transfer to the safety of her mother’s universe was his doing. Adam put that to the back of his mind, stepped up to the portal, and allowed the Primordial Chaos to flood into and through him as he directed it toward Relure.
Adam would not have been enough to end the threat that Relure posed. Primordial Chaos, though, allowed Adam’s sacrifice to have an effect that was more than 100 times effective. For every attribute that he sacrificed to annihilate Relure’s attributes, Adam lost one, while Relure lost between one thousand and one million. There was no absolute, as there could never be when Primordial Chaos was involved. Even So, Adam continued to sacrifice his Attributes evenly. He could tell that his efforts were now having an effect as the Forge of Creation noted that the energy barrier that was the edge of Relure’s influence began receding back towards its origin point.
Still, Adam didn’t think Relure was going to give up, and Adam did not want to sacrifice everything when a plan formed in his mind. Through his link to Thor, he knew that Pandora had absorbed Relure’s daughter’s Animae and all of his friends and family. Adam was connected to the Forge of Creation and The SYSTEM. With a thought, Adam activated Shape Reality to pull all of the Animae from Pandora and give each back the bodies they’d had prior to their destruction. As for Embers Animae, a portal opened before him, and an orb of ugly red energy floated into Adam’s outstretched hand.
Adam made sure to broadcast with his mind that what he held was the Animae of Relure’s daughter and tossed it through the portal into the Sea of Primordial Chaos. As he’d expected, the sphere of energy that was Relure vanished, and a man appeared before Adam who didn’t give him a second glance and dove through the portal into the Sea of Primordial Chaos after the animae of his daughter. Adam closed the portal and sighed; he’d done it!
Adam’s celebration was cut short as the link between the SYSTEM and the Forge of Creation was activated by The SYSTEM. Through the link, Adam could tell that something had changed at a fundamental level as the number of Universes that were available had reduced considerably. That’s not what concerned him. What concerned him was that his attributes had been reduced to just over one million each, which, while respectable, was nothing compared to the power the SYSTEM could bring to bear. As Adam thought back, The SYSTEM had not sacrificed anything to attack Relure so that it might outpower every other entity in the known multiverse.
Before Adam could resist, The SYSTEM took control of the link between the Forge of Creation, The SYSTEM, and himself. Adam felt the link between himself and Pandora shatter as the SYSTEM linked with his mind, and the memories stored there were accessed as both his Shape Reality and Establish Reality skills were accessed. His ideas and thoughts about what the SYSTEM should be, how it might function, and how to establish an ongoing or perpetual existence for souls while getting rid or permanently incorporating the Animae into a soul, as well as all the fictional content he ran across on the subject of cultivation, character grown and the various “Systems” authors came up with were accessed as The SYSTEM and the Forge of Creation went to work.
Adam had no idea how long the process took or where he was. Once the process started, his frame of reference retreated to his Mindspace, where he could do pretty much whatever he wanted except affect whatever the SYSTEM had begun. He was both a conduit for the changes the SYSTEM was making and also the database the SYSTEM was pulling information from to replace everything that had been lost in the fight against Relure.
The SYSTEM allowed him to check on Adaline, Pandora, and the rest of the family and friends. Pandora and everyone else had suddenly appeared on the floor in Adaline’s Throne room, after which, like every other Universe within the SYSTEM, they’d been frozen while the SYSTEM instituted the changes it was making. Adam was still immune to temporal magic due to his Adamantium Dragon heritage and would have to wait this out. Since he didn’t have control of his body and wouldn’t for the foreseeable future, Adam created a lakeside villa within his Mindspace to sit back and relax.
Adam kept an eye on the data being routed out of his mind and watched as the SYSTEM began the 10th Iteration without destroying everyone and everything else first. He wasn’t happy with the SYSTEM for using him like a disk drive, but it looked like the SYSTEM had gone out of its way to protect Adaline, the world she resided in, as well as the rest of his family and friends.
Adam tried to follow along with his notifications but found that the notification system was suspended while the changes were being made.
SYSTEM Message: All Notifications and Status Screen Access have been suspended until the SYSTEM is overhauled.
Please Wait