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I was born into a land of plenty. A perfect world of love and life and light. Then I broke it.

Did I lose myself, or did I just change? I remember the person that I used to be. I was naive, I was young, I was someone else? I struggle with connecting who I was then, with who I am now. There is an un-interrupted line, a continuous flow, a narrative that started with that person and forged them to become who I am today. The strangest thing, perhaps, is that I still feel that person is me, even after so many choices made, so many branches down the path of life. I don’t wonder what the me-that-was would think about the person I have become. I know. They would detest their future. They would throw themselves from a cliff, if they knew. I wonder, at what point in that journey through life, could the me-that-was learn what the future was to hold, and understand why. Understand that it was necessary, that it was really the only way.

I wonder what happened, what event or memory or experience that became the seed that grew into the Plan. So many experiences have shaped me. At what point did it become inevitable? Did it ever become inevitable? Is it now? Could I have taken a different path? Can I still?

No. There is no other path. If they knew, they would hate me, if they could comprehend the scope of the Plan. Nobody else would understand, but then that is a consequence of choices that I have made. Because, to understand, you need experience. And if there is something that I regret (truthfully, there are many regrets), it is that the Plan does not allow for anyone else to build the experiences that they would need to understand its need. Only I. And I need to be both executor of the plan, and its conscience. As the only one who understands it, I need to anchor the goal in the memories of when I still felt as others do. Emotions that are long since foreign to me, except as artifacts of the journey I have taken. I know what anger is. I know what fear is. I know what love is. Even as I no longer feel it. The all consuming essence, filling my being as I stride into battle once again.

Tendrils of power, raising up from all the worlds, fueling me. Me. The champion. Of this Universe.

First though, I had to make some… changes, to the order of the world. I can still remember the feeling of shame as I took a dagger to the canvas to the most beautiful work of art ever created, and ripped it open in what probably appeared as an act of wanton destruction. The system that the ancients built was intended to withstand all tests of time, but in any great endeavour there is a thread that–when pulled–will unravel the whole tapestry. And I found that thread.

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You might think that removing magic from the world would be a difficult task. Well, you would be quite right. It took me decades to work out a feasible plan, and then a millennia to prepare. The actual execution was comparably fast.

First, you need to understand the arrogance of the ancients. You might consider it a goal both laudable and generous, to give humanity the new structure of magic. Where powers were once reserved for those who studied and worked their entire lives to achieve the enlightenment of Cultivation, their project opened the door to the Heavens for everyone. No longer, the endless cycles of cultivation with no guarantee of success, now this “System” would, at the small, small cost of changing the fundamental building blocks of evolution, grant everyone special skills and magic power.

I wonder often, how they considered the implications of their little project. The societal impact alone was an earthquake, a shift in the trajectory of history that made everything that had happened before irrelevant. The fabric of everything was altered so suddenly and significantly that society had to rewrite its laws and customs overnight.

I started with one village, just as an experiment. It was a remote village, only visited by Pattern Masters once each year. It took them a surprisingly long time to realise that something was wrong, and by then my hypothesis was proven. Even without exposure to the Pattern of the System, people would leave behind essence crystals when they died.

Hypothesis proven, I planned for the next phase. Which would last for generations. Looking back, the act of separating the Collector’s Guild from the sects was an accidental stroke of genius.

That first batch of Essence Crystals they collected was enough to win me my first War. And from there, it simply continued. I should not have been surprised at the ease with which I conquered my enemies. At the time the sects discovered what I was doing, it was too late.

Cultivators are like weeds. You think you have cleared a patch, and they pop back up. Within a few decades, I had wiped out all but the most powerful sects.

Except for one last sect, hiding somewhere in the depths of a mountain so tall it defied the Heavens. Biding their time.