Remembering what had happened the last time it had approached a kaiser dragon, the core knew that it had to be more careful with its next approach.

From what it had been able to learn, all dragons were highly territorial, which the core could completely understand. Unfortunately, so long as the core was not in its own territory, it could not take action or communicate.

However, much had changed since the core’s first attempt, starting with the fact that its perception and mana had passively enveloped entire planets, some of which were homes to kaiser dragons. All that the core had done had been to make a point of not directly observing the kaiser dragons, as the creatures seemed to be capable of sensing the core’s attention.

Fortunately, the recent advent of auras had given the core a way to project its power without actually claiming a place, and it did not take long for it to find a way to communicate through a projected aura.

Instead of approaching the kaiser dragon it had first encountered, the core went to one that it knew had been inactive for a long, long time. This dragon had no offspring that the core could find, and the planet it lived on lacked even legends concerning dragons. Furthermore, there were no spatial connections to or from the planet to indicate that the kaiser dragon had any eldar dragons serving it.

The beast lay coiled up at the core of the planet, sleeping in the heat of that location. Judging by the peaceful state of the surface of the planet, as well as the size of the dragon, the core believed that the creature must have been sleeping for centuries, if not millenia.

The core had already passively claimed the entire planet, while only indirectly observing the sole dragon that lived there.

The core released a small pulse of energy. It had examined the connection that had formed between itself and Burt’s mind, and had developed a method for duplicating that connection.

The core felt that the safest way to reach out to the dragon was to inform the beast of its presence with the pulse of energy, and then reach out with the mental connection, but stop just short of finalizing the connection. That seemed like a way of requesting communication, without being too intrusive, which had seemed to be what had offended the last kaiser dragon the core had tried to speak with.

The pulse reached the dragon. While there was no movement to indicate any reaction from the creature, the core’s extended offer of communication was instantly seized, and it suddenly found itself connected with a mind that far surpassed any other it had ever sensed.

There was a weight of countless ages behind the mind, as well as a patience that seemed content to watch oceans dry up and continents move, if it proved necessary.

This dragon was somehow older than the world that surrounded it. Even before the core received any thoughts from the beast, it had gleaned a tremendous amount of information, due purely to all that was seeping away from the creature.

This was undoubtedly the most powerful entity that the core had ever encountered.

“Hmmm? What art thou? Ne'r ere hast we encountered such a scattered mind. Thou art yet a child, yet owe immense power… thou art not a creature at all, yet how ist that possible?”

Leaning on its experience from communicating with Burt, the core shared a snippet of its self-identity. Glimpses of its worlds, dungeons, and creatures were transmitted, but then, something that the core had never before encountered occurred. The connection that it had created with the kaiser dragon’s mind was reinforced, transforming from a small stream into a raging river. At that same moment, the core’s mind was invaded, and its knowledge was read. Nothing was taken, but even so, the core had never felt so violated in its entire existence.

Before everything about the core was seen by the dragon, the core succeeded in reversing the change to the connection, protecting its mind from further unwanted invasion.

The dragon was forced out, but the core encountered defenses more robust than any of its dungeons. The beast’s mind was enveloped in multiple layers of some sort of mental shield, which prevented the core from grasping any thought that the dragon did not willingly share.

The core’s outrage was shared with the dragon, even as it started replicating and improving upon the mental defenses that it was actively probing in the dragon’s mind.

“Hehehe. Thou art young and lacking experience, being offended by such a simple test that thou hast failed. Still, thou art a fascinating entity. Artificial, yet naturally formed. Unliving, yet giving birth to endless life. Greedy, yet sharing so much that thou hath improved life across dozens of astral spheres. We hath sensed thy greed for all of existence, yet hast not the summon to contest thy claims. We witnessed the birth of stars and the deaths of galaxies. We hast sated our greed, yet not our curiosity.

“Thy lacking years grant thee ambitions which we want. We hast attained power and knowledge that few hast equaled. All we still summon is to be freed of the bonds of boredom.”

The weight of the ages pressed down on the core, stronger than ever before. With that weight, the dragon shared the agony of never ending monotony and boredom. The creature was immortal, for all intents and purposes, yet was tortured by that same condition. The dragon sought no further progress. Their ambitions had burned out, leaving not even ashes behind.

The beast had slept through millenia just to escape their fate. Each awakening saw the dragon simply checking to see if anything new had appeared, and after being disappointed, they returned to their slumber.

The core also understood that the dragon was sharing their experiences as a warning to the core so that it would be aware of what the future held for it. How often could a truly new event occur in the universe? How many surprises could there be for beings that were older than stars?

The core considered its prospects for some time, contemplating what its future might hold.

…

Seconds later, the core was ready to continue.

The core did not seek knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It lacked many of the emotions that biological creatures possessed, for good or ill. The core was essentially incapable of boredom, as it did not perceive pleasure. There was simply its desire to increase its hoard of treasure, and then protect that from any and all thieves.

In some ways, the core was the most complex mind in existence, capable of unconsciously monitoring all activities on hundreds of planets, and that number was only growing.

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In other ways, the core was as simple as an insect, bound to its base instincts that it either could not break free of, or simply lacked the desire to do so. It had its goals, and if those goals were met perfectly and it took possession of the entire universe, well, it would simply look for another.

An existential crisis that had crippled one of the oldest and powerful kaiser dragons to ever live barely warranted more than a few seconds’ thought from the core.

In fact, the core spent most of that time considering how it should potentially prepare other creatures for immortality. Gods, like the core, were not biological beings, and thus were not entirely subject to the burden of boredom.

Given the difference between various beings that belonged to the core, it realized that not all creatures would be a good match for immortality, and just the same as it had learned how to dull trauma and weaken psychological damage that sapients suffered in its dungeons, it would likely need to find a way to mentally prepare mortals and selectively choose which ones would be allowed to pursue endless lives.

The dragon felt disappointed by the core’s reaction, as the ancient beast felt that the core was being hasty and impatient, not understanding the fundamental differences between their mentality.

Unfortunately, the dragon’s countless years of monotony and boredom prevented them from recognizing that something truly new and unique was before them. The beast was jaded, and the core’s seemingly flippant response made the dragon feel as though their agony was being disregarded and made light of its age and experience.

Frustrated and offended, the dragon simply cut the telepathic connection. A single snort from their nostrils released a surge of heat and the pressure of the dragon’s presence as it attempted to push the core away.

Not seeing the point in trying to press the issue, the core retracted its direct attention from the dragon.

After all, while the beast had been feeling frustrated, the core had been surreptitiously forming a second mental connection to the dragon, bypassing their various mental shields and defenses, and quietly rifling through the beast’s eons of memories, and even leaving a small trace behind, should the core ever want to re-access the dragon’s mind.

While the dragon’s mastery of Concepts were inferior the core’s own, the core had never observed the death of a star or the birth of a planet. It had not been in existence for nearly long enough to have had such experiences.

However, the kaiser dragon had been passively surrounded and even permeated by the core’s presence and mana, so while the creature had been distracted, the core had been able to take advantage of its energy that was already in the dragon to form a secret connection.

It was impossible for the core to retrieve all of the ancient dragon’s memories, but it still was able to pull more memories from the beast than it had ever acquired in a single go.

As the core reviewed what it had obtained, it learned that the kaiser dragon had been in the planet for far, far longer than it had expected.

In fact, the dragon had been there before the planet. It had found a warm nebula with a burgeoning star forming, and had curled up in the accretion disc to take a nap.

That nap had not lasted centuries or millenia, but for tens of millions of years. Bit by bit, dust, rock, ice, and meteorites had gathered over the dragon’s sleeping form, slowly forming the planet.

After that, the beast had awoken a handful of times, but had simply gone back to sleep again.

During the time of one nap, the planet had cooled and oceans had formed.

During another, plant life and microbial creatures had appeared and started to proliferate.

After another nap, the dragon had awoken to find the oceans teeming with life, and creatures starting to migrate onto land.

It was only shortly after that awakening that the dragon had been woken by the core’s nudge.

The planet was habitable, but there had not been any sapient life before the core had started moving some elves and orcs to the planet, seeding it with higher life forms and greatly accelerating the natural progress.

Throughout all of this, the dragon had slept, as all of these events had already been observed multiple times before. As far as the dragon was concerned, there was nothing new to be seen, regardless of which sun they might be under at the time.

As far as the dragon was concerned, there were only a few constants in the universe: everything was simply repeating; everything was slowly degrading; and based on the previous two premises, the universe was slowly dying.

From the memories the core had stolen, it appeared that the dragon’s perception was quite accurate. The universe was degrading. Things did happen in a repetitive cycle. It truly did appear that the universe was dying.

Blackholes were stealing matter from the universe, and while energy could not be destroyed, it could be made unusable, and that was consistently happening.

The core was rather taken aback, as this cycle of degradation did not seem to be anything that it could fight against or resist. Was the slow, relentless destruction of the universe going to steal everything from the core?

The core took a figurative step back and started observing everything within its perception as a whole. This was something that it had never done before. At most, it had observed an entire planet as a single unit, but never its entire domain.

It focused on the larger picture, compiling all that had happened throughout its area of perception over the course of its entire existence.

While slight, it could indeed see that there was a slight, slight bit of degradation.

Orbits were decaying.

The molecules within living organisms that recorded their entire physical, biological being decayed the tiniest bit each time that cells divided.

Stars consumed their usable elements to produce energy, and while this produced new substances that gave birth to planets, this meant that there were constantly and consistently fewer stars in existence.

The universe was indeed dying a slow death, time and space gradually and ever so slowly failing.

It was at that moment that the core’s mastery of the Concepts of time and space reached a new level, and its further insights unlocked access to the Concept of entropy.

The moment it gained access to the Concept, the core’s perception and understanding of the entire universe underwent a transformation.

It could not only observe the degradation of the universe, it could influence that process and draw power from it.

At this moment, the core understood that, with this new Concept, it could halt or even reverse the constant degradation of the universe, at least within the bounds of its influence.

With this, stars could continue to be born. Blackholes could be undone and harvested. Unusable energy could be transformed and reintroduced into the cycle, perpetuating the cycle, pushing back the slow decay of reality.

If the core’s mastery of this Concept reached a high enough level, it was convinced it would eventually be able to strengthen the universe beyond its former peak.

It might even be able to surpass that, by pulling matter or energy from other realms, such as the elemental planes.

This was the defining moment that demonstrated the difference from the core and other beings. The ancient kaiser dragon may have seen the same truth as the core, but while the core received enlightenment and had comprehended a new Concept, the dragon had only seen the futility of existence.

One saw inevitable death, the other saw a fate to be fought and overcome, even if it meant rewriting the laws of the universe itself.

Entropy was the death of the universe and all of existence, and thus the Concept of entropy was the final and ultimate Concept. It was the end of existence, but by mastering it, entropy could be reversed, not only prolonging its existence, but strengthening it beyond anything before.

Mana might be a miraculous energy, but it was still subject to the laws of the universe. The only way to overcome those laws was to master them and subdue them.

Even if it had only touched the final threshold, the core knew that it would do just that. All it needed was time.