Fillan had tears in his eyes as he watched his dearest and deepest desire fade away.
As the scene before him gradually reached its conclusion, a sudden influx of information entered Fillan’s mind.
The eighteen engravings on the door burned themselves into his psyche before unraveling into a language he understood.
It read: “I, Katesthio, am truly unique in the world, possessing near infinite might and the ability to found and transcend a universe. I lie here not due to weakness, but acceptance. Acceptance that there is always something greater than yourself, no matter how much you try to ignore it.”
‘Me! That someone greater could have been born if you didn’t decide to screw me over! I. Am. So. Upset—’
Before he could finish his worthless thoughts of lost grandeur, the final engraving suddenly appeared “before” him.
The intricate, and scarily accurate, engraving of Katesthio began to, just like the words, unravel.
Yet, rather than turning into words he could understand, they turned into bizarre, irregular, and seemingly uncontrollable threads flailing across his imagination. Whatever they “touched” would slowly be absorbed by them. Whether they be memories, thoughts or impulses, they were all consumed at a rapid pace.
“What the hell?” he tried to think, only for it to be devoured.
With every instant that passed, more and more of what made Fillan himself was disappearing.
First was his niche knowledge and comprehensions within magic and laws, the followed his understanding of the world, then his relations, until only a few vestiges of himself remained.
His personality was still the same, yet everything that personality was founded upon was gone, potentially forever; devoured by these threads stemming from an ancient powerhouse.
Steadily, the remaining truly vigorous, nearly cemented memories he was left with were encroached upon.
His hometown, his father, his own name.
This left an empty husk carrying a lost soul, without direction or knowledge; forever lost in nothingness. The only thing it could remember was one single fact: it was in a time-loop.
The threads, however, appeared unsatisfied with doing a job half-done.
With unmistakable precision, all at once, every thread lunged towards the memory, the very core of Fillan.
It appeared, however, that the memory was too big to be devoured in a short amount of time. Whilst everything else merely needed a second or two at most, this time it took the cumulative effort of thousands of threads thirty minutes to consume less than half of the memory.
And what they did manage to absorb were not really related to the core of the memory, but rather abstract or just outright wrong theories of what the time-loop was; it was devouring the worthless thoughts Fillan had about the time-loop, not anything significant.
However, time is insurmountable, and after a sufficient persistence, the threads reached what they were truly looking for.
With eagerness and glee, the threads began their final feast. With gluttonous devouring they slurped it up like yesterday’s soup.
Just two minutes later, the threads succeeded.
With insane coordination, the threads began to weave themselves into fifteen individual rope-like creations.
Despite being weaved by finger-sized threads—the size they grew to after devouring Fillan’s memories—the ropes they combinedly formed were no thicker than a strand of hair.
If Fillan could comprehend what was happening to himself, he'd probably become catatonic just from seeing the blatant ignoring of all logic the threads were exhibiting. There were no spells or techniques used, it truly just appeared like the ropes were weaved by barely visible threads.
Despite being a universe of countless marvels, everyone knew that if laws or their functions are not manipulated, that reality had certain unbreakable rules not even the mightiest of experts could break. For example, a solid cannot be combined with another solid into a smaller solid.
As such, even in this occult situation, the ropes’ creation might surpass the proceedings general weirdness.
Anyway, the fifteen ropes whose lengths were obvious, yet somehow indeterminate, as if they passed through different parts of space, began to tangle themselves.
One rope would be tied with five other ones for certain areas, nine in others, sometimes it would be alone for a stretch of time, before being tied to another rope. This insurmountably incomprehensible entanglement continued for hours.
After certain knots were tied, the ropes would appear unsatisfied and undo their work, before starting again. It was unknown what they wanted to form, but it must be something pretty significant for them to obsess so compulsively over it.
Time continued to pass like river water, until suddenly, four years later, the ropes which had been continuously squirming, instantly became still; they settled into their final form
The rainbow-colored threads spent nearly half a decade to create themselves into a masterpiece of art, much like Katesthio did for his engraving, only much slower due to the lacking material.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Stood in the center of Fillan’s imagination stood a towering creature of shocking proportion.
It consisted of two halves, much like Katesthio himself, but also different.
The bottom was octopoid, with each of the eight tentacles standing upright in the air, matching the height of the figure's arms. Most of them were empty, but three were holding different art pieces of varying complexity, and frankly, quality.
One was half-way broken, like a shattered vase hastily reconfigured. Another was beautiful, but still crude and brutish. The final one, however, was like the most beautiful image one can imagine. Its every line—rope—was immaculately placed, bringing out countless images depending on from where you look at it.
Mysteriously, they all looked wildly similar to the “divine” engravings you’d see on Fillan’s soul.
Looking past the tentacles standing like seaweed, you’d see a human figure with four arms, each carefully surrounding a marble-looking amalgamation.
Unlike Katesthio, this figure did not have wings nor seven eyes, but rather a second figure emerging from his back, and three eyes.
The three eyes were closed for simplistic reasons, but there was a sinister feel to the one placed between the figure’s perfect brows.
The figure emerging from his back was in the shape of a human, but lacked every distinctive feature of one.
There was no nose, mouth, eyes, ears or hair, only a head, torso, arms, and legs. The figure's right arm was bizarre however. It looked like it suffered from severe gangrene, as the entirety of it was pure black, a stark contrast to the otherwise rainbow-colored art-work.
If you looked closely, you could also barely make out veiny rope-protrusions on the surface of the figure.
To say the shape of this creature was grotesque would be an understatement, yet the colors and intricate design would dazzle anyone who ever laid their eyes on it. There was a certain beauty in the contrast between shape, color and detail.
However, just as this seemed like it would be Fillan’s fate, at least until a potential reset, the color of the ropes constituting the figure began to fluctuate.
Whether it be the black or rainbow colored ropes, they all slowly shifted towards a white color, before suddenly morphing into a radiant silver color stained with specs of both gold and purple, perceivably rotating with different patterns. One clockwise, the other counterclockwise.
The purple was predominant in the back-figure, while the gold was thickest in the main body, each forming their own systemic rotations.
With a terrible fluctuation that shook not only Fillan’s imagination, but also the time-frozen world around him, the familiar image of a giant silver river appeared unbeknownst to anyone.
Almost as if in apprehension, the river slowly inched closer to where Fillan’s “lifeless” body stood, before attempting to pull him into it. Yet no matter how it seethed or surged, wiggled or twisted, Fillan remained untouched by its waters.
With no other options left, the river attempted to enter Fillan’s body instead.
With mysterious movements, one half of the viewable river of time disappeared from view, before sharply shooting out from empty space like a needle, ready to penetrate Fillan’s innocent chest.
“Pierce!”
The river went right through his chest, but only a few drops remained within him. The drops, mystifyingly, disappeared from the physical realm, and appeared before the silver Katesthio-esq figure.
As if drawn towards the silver radiance, the drops quickly assimilated with the ropes.
However, in doing so, it appeared a great taboo had been committed. A terrible and ancient power erupted from every single fiber of the universe’s being, before quickly—at a speed millions of times faster than light—gathering around the transgressor.
The pressure from the power emerging from a single cubic meter of space was enough to erase a mortal from existence, which also means that no matter what manner of creature provokes this power, no matter how powerful it is, it will have to face the might of an infinite universe.
It’s unknown if there is anyone capable of such a thing in Fillan’s universe, but one thing is for damn certain, Little Fillan Strand is not one of them.
Just the pressure coming from a hundred cubic meters of space would turn him to unrecognizable dust, much less the countless vigintillion cubic meters worth of pressure that hit him instantaneously.
Which of course means that Fillan died, again.
…
Fillan opened his eyes to a massive floating sphere floating in front of him.
Too dazed to even care about the chilling sensation spreading across his body, Fillan almost screamed out in fear.
If not for his immense sense of shame and self pride, he would have done so.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” he thought with instability. “What the fuck just happened? What kind of nightmare was that?”
Fillan began to shiver uncontrollably, much to the derision of the overseer.
Little did he know Fillan not only experienced being devoured by mysterious threads, but also being the very threads.
Despite Fillan’s memories being fully engulfed they had mysteriously returned along with a recollection of the entire ordeal, as well as unfamiliar notions and knowledge.
In a few seconds he had to fully process and assimilate with over four years of information spurred by both body and mind, but mostly the ropes forming their figure.
The reasoning behind everything they formed, their uses and more consumed his little brain. Worst yet, or truly the best, was the enormous ocean of information related to the workings of devouring, creation, and cultivation; a mysterious cultivation technique centered around destruction and reconstruction: Katesthio’s Reimagination.
Katesthio’s Reimagination was not necessarily a cultivation technique, but the effects and functions of both are identical. It is like a massive encyclopedia of Katesthio’s experiences, thoughts, and comprehensions.
It’s something that should have been unique only to the innate Katesthio, so even if it entered someone’s hands the worth would have been minimal, but that was not the case with Fillan, due to his physique.
Despite there being no instructions or even clear main path, Fillan could make great deductions from all the information he was being force-fed.
“I guess I got what I wanted, somehow…?” he wondered uncertainty in the short respite where the information he received was more general. “I might not have the cultivation of Katesthio, but the cultivation technique is more than good enough.”
As usual, exactly ten seconds after the chilly sensation invades Fillan’s body, the measuring orb sent out to rays of light, one for him and one for the grumpy overseer.
Fillan, who was too caught up in digesting the actual millions of years worth of cultivation knowledge didn’t even bother to attempt looking at what it said, but simply nudged a circuit of his to launch a spell that could store outside information for him.
The problem with his current situation was the fact that all of this information appeared like old memories resurfacing, not something being sent to him from a divine entity. As such there was nothing he could do to remedy the situation.
The old man, oblivious to Fillan’s occupied mind, didn’t have any worries about announcing his results though.
“Cultivation: Qi Gathering, talent: Origin World. Body Tempering: Inept, talent: Blood Engraving. Magical talent: Solid fire aptitude, solid psychic aptitude, robust lightning aptitude, resilient…soul-blood aptitude, resilient time…aptitude, ……broken origin attribute—what the fuck?”