Lao stepped in first, and the others soon followed. The interior of the city hall was strangely bare, but there was the potential for so much more. There was no furnishing, save for a few austere looking desks and tables, but the place was built with a grand idea in mind, with vast hallways and large staircases. There were three floors to the building, and the bottom floor was dominated by a meeting hall, with what looked like thousands of chairs inside it. It looked far larger than the building was on the outside, and it seemed that some spatial magic was a play here.
“Jeffrey? What’s going on here,” Sam asked. He knew what was going on, but he wanted some clarification.
“If you buy things from the System, it will implement changes to them to make it fit into the grand scheme of a city. It had to match the number of seats to the number of members in the faction, but it did so in a way that it did not take up too much space.”
“Huh. So by the System, do you mean the thing that gives us the stat sheets, or the creature that is in control of our universe? What was it called? Oh yeah, the System Overseer.”
“No, a System Overseer is, um, the best analogy would be an admin on an online site. They manage the working of the System, but they are not the System itself.”
Sam nodded, and then realized that this seemed like it could be the answer to why the System Overseer had not discovered his quest, despite it being given by the System.
“Ok. Just be clear, do the Overseers have full purview over the System?”
Jeffrey shrugged, and shook his head.
“I have no idea. Things like that are not something that people like us would know. Perhaps the Creator Kings would, but nobody below them.”
“Who are the Creator Kings?” Almost everyone, save for Sam, said in unison. Jeffrey sighed. It seemed that a lot of talking was in order.
“I’m starting to get tired of being a personal encyclopedia of the System, but whatever. Come with me and I will give you a full rundown of Multiversal history. You too Sam, this is something that I don’t think you know.”
The others all followed Jeffrey, but Rax peeled off the group a few minutes later, smelling something interesting. They entered a room to the side of the hallway, a small office that was perfect for such things. Jeffrey walked around the room, looking for something, and when he found a small box connected to what looked like a projector with a wire, he smiled.
“Ah, there’s one of these. Good. Now, I am not a professional historian, so this will be an extremely bastardized version of the true history, but I will tell you the basics.” Jeffrey turned around and Sam could faintly hear him whisper something that sounded suspiciously like “At least all of that wasted time in school is paying off.”
Jeffrey placed his hand on the box, and an image appeared on the screen. It was of a not unpleasant looking alien, laying on a bed in a state of undress. Eduardo cleared his throat, and Jeffrey turned bright red.
“Shit! Sorry about that, these kinds of projectors display the thoughts of those using them. I was, ahem, having a moment there.”
The display changed to a picture of utter darkness.
“In the time before time, the primal darkness of the void, there was nothing. Then a spark of creation appeared amidst the yawning abyss.” A small mote of light blossomed in the darkness, and exploded outwards in a storm of raw power.
Sam made a face,and Jeffrey scowled.
“Ok, fine, this is not how I would normally talk. It's just that I remember a lecture on this subject, and I am trying to channel my instructor.”
“Oh, no. It’s better this way, it was just surprising, that’s all,” Sam explained.
Jeffrey laughed and continued to speak.
“Suddenly, there was light. Out of the infinite abyss, there was suddenly matter. Nothing could be discerned at that point, but over the next few nanoseconds, two entities emerged. The Dao and the System. The Dao was a force of chaos, a creature that encapsulated everything that ever is, was, or will ever be. The System was a being of pure order, the polar opposite of the Dao. Such forces could never coexist, and the Boundless Expanse was created through their struggles. Their influence was since weakened, and nobody has seen the true power of either entity since then. The only reason that we even know this much is because of the System providing us with that information. However, the System eventually prevailed over the Dao, and that force was subsumed into the System, turned into one of the most important parts of it. Through the Dao, cultivators can touch on the esoteric concepts of the universe, and thus gain great power.”
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The image on the projector changed again, this time showing a large array of identical spheres that all glowed with the colors of the rainbow.
“As the nascent expanse of existence came into being, the Dao got to work, seeding new universes and multiverses with the templates of its nature. Thus the Dao Annals were created.”
George raised his hand to speak, but Jeffrey ignored him. The large man pouted and lowered his hand.
“The further away from the center of Creation that a discrete dimensional space was, the more slowly it developed. That is why the Multiverse that we are in is considered weak by other multiverses further up the Boundless Expanse. That is technically just a rumor, as out of Multiverse contact is vanishingly rare, but it is most likely true. Anyway, this is all ancient history, so I suppose that I should get onto the relevant stuff.”
An image of a man standing on the prow of a pure white ship, sailing through the darkness of the void, appeared on the screen
“When our Multiverse was first explored, it was by a race of highly advanced psionics, led by a man called Altari. They took to the Astral Plane in boats wrought out of their own power and exotic elements, and there they found the System. They took to it like a fish to water, and soon they had made contact with other universes. First came the Nalvani, then the Fushani, and then the Teruvarians. As the Multiverse grew, the first of the gods emerged, who was none other than Altari. More and more factions grew out of the fertile fields of the untapped Astral Plane, and thus began the period known as the Age of Myth. Legends rose and fell, god-like entities were slain by true gods, and the first maps of the Multiverse were made.”
A picture of a crudely drawn map appeared that looked almost like a cave painting, so old was it.
“This is one of the ancient relics of the Age of Myth, the first map of the Multiverse. It is one of the many disseminated pieces of information that the System likes to throw to people, like us, on the edge of the Multiverse, like coins to a pauper. Not that there is any coinage system in use any more.”
Jeffrey took on a wistful look, and then shook his head.
“Anyway. As the various races began to explore the Multiverse, the Age of Myth vanished into the deep past, and a new age of enlightenment and discovery began. The Age of Exploration.”
The projector screen shifted to an image of a vast city floating in the void, filled with billions of cartographers, furiously mapping out something.
“The worldship of Kranak Varn was one of the chief agents of this new change. It was not a powerful military group, but it had many allies, chief among them Altari. By then, Altari had his eyes set on the title of Multiversal King, and he needed maps for this. Kranak Varn was the greatest source of information in the known multiverse then, but it has since been lost to the ages, and with it invaluable stockpiles of research.”
The projector shifted yet again, this time to images of demagogues addressing armies that numbered in the tens of trillions of soldiers.
“Not all was peaceful however, and murmurs of discontent started to ring across the Multiverse. The races of the Multiverse were becoming restless, and there was no leader. Without a ruler, the Multiverse was nothing more than a state of anarchy. These massive armies clashed on the outskirts of universes, around places of great cosmic import, and even in the void itself. Reality tore as the most powerful of beings surfaced and they wrought havoc through their actions. Multiple universes were consigned to an eternity of nothingness by the backlash of the conflict between the Daos of higher level cultivators, and the interiors of universes were devastated by the conflict of untold numbers of soldiers.”
Pictures of the burnt out husks of planets and strange exotic clumps of matter that were the remnants of universes flashed by on the screen.
“Over time, the damage accumulated to a point that was untenable, and all of the Multiverse was in danger from the conflict. The strongest factions started to band together into conglomerations of allied kingdoms, until eventually the clumping reached the point where all of the forces in the Multiverse were split between two different factions, each espousing different aspects of the Dao. The Creator Kings, and the Lords of Destruction. The Creator Kings were led by Altari, and the Lords by a powerful demonic hybrid named Zalthrak the Scourge. In one final apocalyptic battle, the two factions determined the future of the Multiverse. Almost half of the Multiverse was leveled by this clash, and out of the morass of particles floating in the cosmic sea, Altari emerged victorious. Using his newfound power as the strongest being in the Multiverse, he rebuilt the shattered Multiverse from scratch, with the help of his 98 strongest companions. Thus Altari gained his title of Altari the Progenitor.”
An image of Altari, striding out of a warped region of space and creating a new universe flashed by, and then pictures of the other Creator Kings showed up, all of them aiding him in his venture.
“The defeat of his greatest rival was enough to allow Altari to reach the pinnacle of A Rank, where he remains to this day. As the conflict cooled, and order was restored to reality, a new peace was formed, one wrought of fear of the Creator Kings. The final, and current, age began, the Age of Expansion. The Multiverse endlessly integrates new universes, in a cycle of consumption like no other. More and more are found every year, and the rate is only speeding up.”
The screen went black, and everyone started clapping as they realized that the speech was over. Jeffrey took a bow and left the projector, returning to the group.
“Now that you are all sufficiently educated, why don’t we get to work?” Jeffrey said, looking a bit peeved.
“Sure,” Sam said, noting that Jeffrey was a bit annoyed at having to explain all of that stuff to them. Sam could have just bought some information crystals about the subject, or surfed the Interweb, but there was something about having a living person talk to you that made the information stick.