As always, the core immediately started testing its new Concept. Unfortunately, it immediately realized that this Concept was far more subtle in usage than anything it had acquired before.

Entropy was the slow death of the universe. There was nothing fast or sudden about its workings, and if the core wanted to fully master the Concept, then it would need to work at a similar speed.

This was not observing the cycle of life where creatures were born, matured, and died within a few decades, but observation on the scale of watching stars and planets be born, mature and die.

As patient as the core was, this was too slow for it to be able to accept.

However, how was it supposed to master a Concept that functioned on such a timescale? Accelerating time for everything within the core’s perception would effectively speed up time for the core itself, which would force the core to experience that time as if it was passing normally, which would defeat the purpose of doing so.

Entropy was also something that acted on the scale of galaxies and the universe as a whole, which made observing it on the small scale of a single dungeon or planet of extremely limited benefit.

Fortunately, the core had already received a hint of how to proceed.

There were multiple kaiser dragons on or in the planets that were within the core’s area of control, and if the core had already been able to infiltrate the mind of an ancient kaiser dragon while technically the dragon’s peer, then this new Concept should elevate the core to a level that it could act a bit more freely without alerting the ancient beasts.

Sure enough, so long as the core was cautious, the ancient dragon, phoenixes, and other creatures that had reached what was considered the peak of the universe could all be pulled under the core’s influence, and with that, it could access their minds and memories, instead of waiting for the immortal creatures to die.

While the core could only imagine the amount of power and memories it would receive from the death of a creature at the level of a kaiser dragon, bringing about such a beast’s death would be extremely troublesome.

How would one even go about killing a creature that stood above entities like the gods? Not even the core itself had an answer for that question.

Fortunately, the core could still make progress by tapping into the creatures’ minds and memories.

Focusing on a single target at a time, the core started to harvest the exhaustive experiences of multiple ancient creatures.

Again and again, the core saw planets form and planets die. It saw nebulas give birth to stars, and once—only once—it caught a glimpse of a very, very distant star exploding, instead of slowly dying.

That star had been investigated by the phoenix which had caught the explosion, and it found that a point of nothing had been actively devouring everything.

The beast had only barely escaped, and the core understood that the bird had witnessed the birth of the phenomena that it had already encountered once in the past.

These blackholes were essentially devouring the universe itself, stripping away matter and energy on a scale that seemed to accelerate entropy itself.

Another discovery the core made was that everything in the universe seemed to be moving apart.

In particular, one dragon had traveled between galaxies soon after it had mastered the Concept of space, and after a rather lengthy stretch of time, had returned back. The return trip had been noticeably longer, which indicated that the galaxies were moving apart.

This led the core to believe that entropy would either see the universe eventually spread so far out that stars would not even be able to form, due matter being spread so far apart that gravity would lack the strength to bring things back together, or the universe would form multiple blackholes that might even collapse onto each other, effectively collapsing the universe.

The more memories the core absorbed with observations of the universe, the greater its understanding of the Concept of entropy, though it still struggled to find a manner of applying that understanding.

How did knowing how the universe was failing grant the core any new abilities?

The only answer the core could seem to find was that it would need to test out how well it could work against the Concept it had comprehended, which was the opposite of how all of the other Concepts had worked.

Without any better ideas, the core returned to the blackhole that it had first found. This time, while mana and other bits and pieces of the core’s essence were ripped away, the core found that it was able to move closer and closer to the origin of the phenomena.

Bit by bit, the core stretched closer. If it had not been strengthened and gained access to so much mana and influence, the core would likely have been sucked dry by its efforts.

Eventually, it reached the threshold. There was a point in space, past which the core could not sense anything. As soon as anything moved past this point that seemed like the end of the universe itself, it seemed to vanish.

Wary, hesitant, and feeling something that was closer to fear than anything the core had ever experienced before, it stretched out and pushed through that event horizon.

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That moment was both the most anticlimactic and the most important of the core’s existence. Due to the core possessing mastery of every Concept there was, including the previously unknown Concept of entropy, not even the blackhole could overwhelm the core. There was a bit of struggle, but the core was able to retain its awareness and perception.

Entering the blackhole was not the expected struggle and battle for existence, but more akin to entering a sturdy cabin to escape from the blizzard outside. By entering, the core became safe from the danger outside.

It was also at this moment that was one of the most important in the core’s existence, as at this moment, the core was both present in the outside universe, and within a blackhole where time as a concept and a Concept had ceased to exist.

The core may have mastered the Concepts of time and space, but the blackhole was somehow an absence of those Concepts in a way that would have shredded any biological mind that tried to directly perceive it.

That was the moment that the core fully mastered all Concepts. This was not the partial mastery that it had enjoyed before, but full, unfiltered mastery. While there would always be more for the core to learn regarding how to use its Concepts, at this moment, the universe held no further secrets from the core.

At this moment, the core understood how it could harvest blackholes, harnessing the entropy they contained, as well as the trapped matter and energy.

It saw how the Concepts of time and space could be wielded with surgical precision to achieve the perfect balance in the universe to prevent it from overspreading, or being crushed back in on itself.

It understood how to not only manipulate the Concepts of the universe, but how to use them to adjust or even create laws that would regulate the universe, much like how myriad versions of its system regulated activities in dungeons and across entire planets.

With this, the core would become the master of the entire universe. In fact, it even saw how to go beyond anything it had done in the past with sharing its Concepts with its subordinate creatures, to instead seal away and block all access to specific Concepts, which would lead to all kinds of interesting planets in the future. However, this also meant that the core could lock away the Concept of entropy so that no other would ever gain access to it. None would ever rise up to rival the core.

Finally, it had a way to ensure that its treasure would be safe and secure from all threats.

***

Things accelerated greatly for the core. With the ability to harvest matter, energy, and mana from blackholes, its domain started to spread more and more quickly.

Powered by the Concept of entropy, the core spread across the universe by utilizing the Concept of space. It stopped bothering to only target planets, and instead spread its influence to everything. It was determined that it would control the universe, and nothing was going to stop it.

From star systems, the core spread across the entire galaxy.

From one galaxy, it crossed a vast stretch of space to reach another, where it repeated the process.

In hidden layers of space, more and more sub-cores started to appear, which allowed the core to continue to spread its influence. The only time any creature noticed any change was when and if the core decided to introduce a system to a particular planet, or when it created another dungeon or tower.

Each conquered region further accelerated the process, and each harvested blackhole allowed for a single, massive increase in scope.

Interestingly enough, after the first galaxy was fully conquered, the core started to understand personally the repetition that every ancient creature ended up observing.

Not only did history repeat itself, the fact of the matter was that there was a most efficient form for life to take, and so, without outside influence, most lifeforms followed what appeared to be a basic template. Most planets showed similar varieties of plants and animals, with the local environment introducing the greatest variations.

Mana did allow for more variation, but even that was limited. Fortunately, that simply meant that the core could introduce more and more varieties of creatures to the universe.

Time passed, and eventually, the core was making the final push to reach the bounds of the universe. While normally, simply reaching the bounds of the universe would extend them further, which meant that the universe would grow indefinitely to allow continuous exploration, the Concepts that the core had mastered elevated it beyond such limitations.

It reached the nearest limit of the universe, as the core had not started anywhere close to the center of the universe, and then continued to expand along the boundary.

Oddly enough, as the core continued along the edge of the universe, it did not find it to be a sphere, but somehow flat.

Once more than half of the entire universe belonged to the core, the last bit finished even faster.

The moment that the last portion of the multi-dimensional flat space was enveloped by the core’s presence, there was a distinct snap that occurred, and that led to something highly unexpected.

Throughout the course of its existence, the core had never been able to find what happened to the central seed of a soul after a creature died. While the core had been able to harvest memories and energy from the departed, the true essence of the individual had never been something the core could touch.

The exact instant that the core possessed the universe, its previous helplessness changed. By perceiving the entire universe, and in some aspects, having the universe itself as its body, the core was able to perceive what had always been missing from its perception: the cycle of saṃsāra.

Seeing this cycle, the core finally understood why it was unable to touch or influence the primary seed at the foundation of souls; they were not actually a part of the universe, but outside of it and merely influencing it. The cycle of saṃsāra did not fall under the Concept of entropy, or any other Concepts. Instead, it seemed as though the souls’ cycle was in the universe, yet somehow running parallel to it.

Souls had been fed into the universe, without ever truly becoming a part of it. What the core harvested from the departed were what the souls had accumulated while existing in the universe, and it was simply stripped away when they were disconnected and returned to saṃsāra. After that, the cycle repeated, and the souls returned.

The core could not influence the true souls because while they were not part of the universe, the core was. They existed on two separate levels of reality, and were unable to cross to the others’ side.

The core was fascinated by the cycle of saṃsāra that it was observing, so much that it failed to notice another development: resonance.

There was a resonance that the core was feeling from somewhere else, and it resonated with several Concepts and other core aspects of reality that formed the foundation of the universe.

Something out there, beyond the universe, was similar enough to the universe that the two were resonating with each other.