The moment he felt he was being transported through the portal, Rob covered himself with steel, getting ready for an unpleasant experience. However, just a few seconds later he was already flying out from it only to crash into something tough. The sudden obstacle tried to groan with displeasure and anger, instantly pushing Robert into action. Turning around and seeing the Imp underneath him, Rob started to punch, cracking the demon’s skull in no time. Only after that did he raise his head and get a proper look at the surroundings.
He appeared to be in some kind of cathedral. Or, precisely speaking, ruins of it. The high ceiling, easily comparable with a five-story building, was barely visible through the hazy air. The walls had few traces of what could be described as grand paintings at some point, but now they were almost erased by the time itself and partly covered with the familiar red mold. Turning around and noticing the very same portal floating above an odd altar, Robert continued his observation. The several noticeable holes in the former ceremonial place opened a view of a red sky and a huge black sun with a flaming orange halo around.
How could it be? The black can’t emanate the light.
This thought was completely amiss, taking into account the whole situation, which he got by his own stupidity and emotional outburst. Hadn’t he hit the corpse; he wouldn’t have appeared here. However, Robert couldn’t reverse the time, so didn’t see any reason to focus on blaming himself as the problem of survival took a priority. No matter how clumsy an idiot he was, he had to be alive to curse himself.
I hope Riley can deal with the portal. She looked like a tomboy, a real fighter… As for me, let’s check the place.
Standing up and making a first step, he felt an odd feeling. The suddenness of it made him stumble. Trying to keep his body straight, Robert made a few deep breaths, before continuing his way of the ruins. The sensation, on the other hand, wasn’t disappearing, slowly rising in strength. At first, he thought it was a pull from Wepwakor, but after concentrating on it felt more akin to his energy fueling. Not exactly the same, but quite similar. As if it was mixing with his connection with Aether, nourishing him simultaneously from both inside and outside. It was strange and disturbing. And it was growing with insane speed, so by the point when he had reached the exit of the devasted cathedral, it was already barely tolerable. However, the hellish scenery threw Robert into a panic mode in a mere second, after looking in front of him.
Shit! Pull me out, pull me out!
Rob ignored a burning forest not far from the ruins, the black mountains with a huge castle on top, or the enormous flaming tornado above it. He wasn’t interested in red mold that covered most of the black ground, or the creepy dried trees with branches that moved like being alive. Even the giant figure of a monster, which looked like a horrible hybrid of octopus and goat, and who was approaching the castle, seemed a background image to Robert. No, all his attention was on a real horde of demons that were gathered around a cathedral, numbering in hundreds at least. An odd transparent barrier was holding them out, alas barely, as they slowly pushed through it, while groaning with rage.
Immediately stepping back in fear of being noticed, Robert tried to focus on the pull, but the sharp pain dropped him to his knees. This time he couldn’t keep the scream, sending a hollowing shout across the surroundings. The answers from the demons followed in a moment, but he wasn't in a state to hear anything. Looking at his pale body started to gain a reddish tone, Rob reminded himself the John’s advice to stay away from the portal so as not to be tainted. Apparently, his stunt with kick had brought him right inside of a toxic pool instead of meeting with its vapor.
Pull me out!
He didn’t know how long it took him to activate the transportation. Robert only knew that the whirlwind had pulled him a moment before a huge half-scorpion and half-humanoid had pierced him with a stinger on his tail. His state of mind made him act on an instinct, conjuring a steel capsule around himself, while his body was struggling with a hellish influence. Rob felt like he was burning from the inside. Every single centimeter of his skin was itching, begging to be scratched. However, neither he could, nor he would move, as any motion brought an awful pain, almost threatening to tear him apart. What was worse, Robert wasn’t getting better, despite his increased level of regeneration and inhuman nature.
The whole traveling went in this suffering, where he completely lost track of time, fighting for his own life. Slowly, through the hazy mist that covered his mind, Rob managed to grasp the hellish energy. To feel it. To grab it with his will. The attempt to expel it failed again and again before he got the idea to use it as fuel to his steel ability. That partly helped, as the damage from the unstable whirlwind demanded the constant recreation of his protection. Still, a noticeable portion of this devastating mana seeped inside his body and soul without a way to expulse it.
Robert was almost done when the portal threw him out. His half-conscious mind only managed to register it when he saw another abomination right in front of him. Acting on the impulse, he sent all the remaining demonic energy into the huge maul, before making a hit. The inertia from the interdimensional traveling, his own strength, and the weight of the giant weapon made the strike really devastating, crushing the unknown creature into a pulp. Not stopping on that, Robert landed on his feet and continued to hit again and again.
Fucking broken portal! Can’t you drop me in the right place at once?
Releasing all his emotions together with hostile mana, Rob stroked around a dozen more times before his mind finally started to register the surroundings. The first thing he noticed was limited damage to the abomination or the ground under it. The former still didn’t show any signs of fighting back, while the stone surface of the latter had got a small dent when Robert missed one of the hits. That wasn’t the expected result of his powerful hits with enormous maul… unless the stone was quite tough. And Rob happened to see such an example only once.
Pausing for a moment, he raised his eyes and saw the starry sky with multi-color shiny dots. However, this time this fake screen was half broken and missed around half of its surface, finally opening a view literally behind the scenes. The landscape of the destroyed megapolis, which was still burning in many places, was spread up to the horizon. Robert could barely see any movement on the devastated streets, which in most cases were melted beyond recognition.
What the fuck is happening?
Stepping back in an attempt to process everything, Robert heard a loud and sincere laugh from behind. Hastily turning around, he saw a tall man in futuristic armor, whose exposed face was widely grinning. Having blonde mustaches, odd grey eyes, and an ordinary face, he was fully covered in metal. Rob couldn’t even see if the man was bald or not. What he could feel was the level of threat emanating from the unknown. There was not a single of anxiety, only an expression of surprise as if he had suddenly heard a funny joke out of nowhere.
“Just wow! I was expecting a joker from the sleeve. Some super-secret weapon. Or the last reserved item with dangerous consequences. But not this… Wait. Boy, are you Transcendent? Ha-ha-ha, that is getting even better,” laughing loudly, the man was barely holding.
“Hello, sir. Can I ask what is going on?” Distancing from the long creature and an odd man, Robert asked with caution.
“I will explain in a moment, but first – do you have any obligation to this one?”
“I don’t even know what this thing is,” Rob shook his head, glancing at the terrible mixture of slime, spider, and human that caused not fear but disgust.
“You must know them as Wepwakor. Okay,” nodding to himself, the man raised his hand and pointed to the creature. The moment later, before the revelation got struck into Rob’s mind, the arm twisted and started to turn into a weapon with a huge barrel. The blue glowing light produced a small ball right in front of it, quickly charging it with more energy. The next second it fired, creating a beam that not only erased the fake God from the exitance but made a hole inside the tough stoney surface before proceeding further to the ground only to make a deep tunnel. There was no heat, no shockwave, no aftermath outside the beam. But the sheer destructiveness was so huge, making anything Robert saw previously as a fluffy toy.
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“What. The. Fuck!”
“Oh, you must be a newbie. Understandable. Took me a lot to get acquainted with the whole realm things,” the man nodded with a knowing look, “Do you need help? You don’t look good.”
At this point, Robert decided simply to follow the flow. Not he couldn’t do anything to the man, who managed to kill Wepwakor and created a hole in the material, which Rob himself barely could scratch.
“Would appreciate it. And yes, I am new. My soul was caught by… this thing. He somehow cloned my body, resurrected me, and used another soul to give me more strength. The latter appeared to be a CONNECTION,” stretching the word, Robert continued to explain, “which later gave me an ability to almost break free from the control. This summoning must have ended the existence of my slave collar.”
“Nice. Stand still for a moment,” smiled the man, before approaching and turning his other hand into a strange device with a needle, which he immediately pushed into Rob’s arm before the latter reacted, “Don’t be scared. This an analyzer. I need your data to produce a healing stim. Yep, got it… Hm, an interesting body you’ve got there,” grunting, the man pointed his palm into the ground, disintegrating it and sucking the material into himself. Simultaneously, the analyzer got a few additions, getting much bigger in the process.
“I need a matter for creation and, while I can create anything, the energy and volume loss are huge, luckily for you, the CONNECTION can grant a good channel to compensate for it,” the unknown smiled, injecting the stimulator into Robert’s shoulder. The wave of pleasant heat washed over his body, finally lessening the strain that he was constantly feeling but failed to notice until it was gone.
“Thank you… Don’t know how to call you.”
“You can call me Mana-Fueled Cyborg Ruler of Endless Sky. My communication ability most likely will mess up my name by translating it directly... Just address me as Cyborg. Not that it matters as we have several minutes before the first nuclear missiles would land here. And I need to warn you that they sent everything they got to this spot. Like a whole arsenal. So, if you have questions, ask. But I can’t tell you anything about the ENTITY. Like every accessible Transcendent, I’ve met it only once,” the man warned, before smiling again as if this was his usual expression.
There were hundreds of questions in Rob’s mind, but the information about the mass destruction weapons made him shove away most of them. He wanted to ask details about how he had become a real cyborg, and how he could convert mana into energy. Robert wished to know where he could get such a body. However, he was sure that there wasn’t a simple solution that he could use himself as if each Transcendent was unique, and so were their ways to power.
Robert wanted to know more about this connection to Aether and did Cyborg met other Transcendents. Was there any commonplace for them? Any special realm? Or was it just a random occasion, like this time? He had so many questions, but instead, Rob stopped on two. Maybe they were not the most useful, but he never thought about himself as a genius. Because he wasn’t in the slightest. Moreover, the first one directly affected his chance of survival, while the second could satisfy his curiosity.
“How do I travel between realms? Can you tell me about the situation with Wepwakor?”
“Oh, it’s easy. Focus on connection with Entity and will to travel, inwardly imagining the wished parameters of the realm. It’s not 100% accurate. It’s almost impossible to return to previous realms. And there would be a delay between travels, based on the situation inside the realm as Entity doesn’t want us to escape at first signs of danger. But overall, it is random. It can easily include a hidden requirement for some kind of achievement, or just teleport you right away. Good question,” once again grinned the man.
Okay, no common place of meeting. No chance to meet Beth. The randomness of traveling under wished conditions. Got it.
Robert tried to keep his calm, but the breakup, despite all his efforts, appeared to be painful. He really didn’t spend enough time with the girl. He knew that his decision to walk away and jump into a suicide mission was the result of his emotions. It was their first serious quarrel, but he failed to solve it, simply running away from the problem. Obviously, it was his first attempt to get into serious relationships, so he could make mistakes. Unfortunately, it appeared to be irreversible. And only now, at this very moment, he finally understood it, mentally putting a final point in their story.
Farewell, Beth. I think I loved you.
“Wepwakor… This is actually a funny story. I traveled between realms and somehow a weak soul eater managed to sneak in, hiding inside my own soul, but not able to do anything. At that point, I was trying to get more mana control, as tech is good, but sometimes magic can create really crazy things. So, this asshole just fed off of my kills, getting stronger and stronger. Then it attempted to absorb mine, but I already knew a thing about the soul, but not enough to kill it immediately. The fucker ran away, getting the same Transcendent state as we have. At some point, it appeared in this world. I think it was around fifty cycles ago from research.”
“Cycles like a year? So long?” Robert asked, returning to the topic from his memories.
“Yeah. It got inside some hikikomori nerd, fusing itself with the boy to hide from me. Then it started to rise to power in the current realm. With an ability to absorb, store, and control souls, it soon created a real network of puppets. Luckily, its primitive basic form prevented it from getting the powers of the souls directly, instead turning into a mass controller and manipulator. That was the reason why it died so easily,” the man shrugged.
That explains the System, Tiers with Stats, etc, but not other things.
“Wait, how did he do everything else?”
“Boy, if you are the ruler of a world with infinite power, have knowledge about other realms, have access to it, can control any opposition, scientist, and anything else, and had so many years for research, it is not that hard. Wepwakor had created a real system in an attempt to acquire more power. They invented a machine to catch the souls of diseases in other dimensions through its personal connection to the Entity. Absorbing some, they put others in prepared and modified bodies of clones and sent them away to gather even more souls. Or at least they wanted as I think you were from their first batch according to the data I gathered. They had a quite miserable rate of success, so gripped to any successful one. Having the ability to control souls, they obviously could merge them together. With a cloned body and such a soul, no one from such puppets would live for long, but they had no real choice. At least 80% of the current population of this world was under fucker’s direct control. They needed to feed themselves.”
“Why didn’t Wepwakor just travel to another realm?”
“I don’t know… Not that I care. Maybe they didn’t want to start from scratch. Or was too afraid to get into worse and more dangerous conditions. Or any other reason. I don’t care. I came to clean my own mess and kill the fucker who thought they could exploit me. I did it. The end,” the man smiled with pride.
The funniest part is that Wepwakor basically made me Transcendent himself, giving the soul of that rodent. Of course, the seed from the giant lizard helped too, but the starting point was the connection. Dumb luck in my case. I guess it saved me from being dead as this summoning pull might lead to the death fight without a chance of survival. Oh, maybe they would have eaten me straightaway to restore energy. Or… Whatever. I am alive and need to think about the next realm.
“Why are you helping me?”
“Because I can. I don’t think we will meet ever again, and I am not a psycho murderer who kills each person I meet on a whim. All the help consisted of only answering a few questions and a single stim – basically nothing… Sometimes I did more for random hobos. Much more… Yeah, there was a funny story about the rise of the Greatest King in one realm, who started as a beggar. The guy got only a primitive brain implant with some basic info that I paid him for a bottle of local beer… Okay, boy, you have one minute before the place is gone. May the obstacles on your way shatter under your mighty steps!”
Showing his bright and wide smile, the figure of Cyborg turned monochrome for a second, losing all colors, except black and white, only to completely vanish without a trace a moment later. Looking at the empty spot, Robert nodded in appreciation before raising his head. The blue sky that was visible through the gaps in the screen was partly covered with smoke. The whole enormous city was still burning, but the following destruction would be much bigger. Apocalyptic-like.
Still, Rob wasn’t hurrying, calmly observing his surroundings. Surprisingly, his heart was calm, despite knowing that his next step would be the first one that he decided by himself. Or maybe that was the exact reason. Therefore, when the bright flash had covered the damaged platform and blasted it into nothingness, Robert was already gone. The shockwave together with enormous heat had erased every single sign of what had happened on the spot. The next explosions shook the ground, continuing to hammer the surface until the whole planet started to tremble from the powerful external force. The broken continental shield had shifted, sending masses of ground and water into motion, resulting in the end of the current world, which wiped out all life. Only in several thousand years, another Transcendent would bring new species with him inside a pocket dimension, restarting everything again. The life will always emerge no matter what.