The path ahead of me was tedious and arduous. When we talked about recovery for my first step of journeying into this new world, for now, until reaching my safe zone, it was only a temporary measure.
The means I had were many, considering just how much I'd learned in that span of a few minutes in this outside world—but quite the number of eons inside my mindscape.
Yes, eons. With the sacrifice made by my variants, from the very first to appear to the last of countless beings, I had all their knowledge, experiences, and much, much more information of the inner and proper workings of existence as a whole drilled into me. Everything they had was crammed into the last bits of their souls, safeguarded with the help of Codex and some other beings who, to be honest, I wish not to even think of. Such beings were beyond my reach, so for now, I would withhold my thanks until the right time arrived.
All in all, the spectral forms I saw in that horrifying version of my mindscape were actually the last shreds of my variant selves. The reason why they were disappearing? Simple—since their purpose was to die without regrets while also passing along what they had saved up for me, both or even other purposes they all had were met, and after doing such self-sacrifice, they simply ceased to exist, in a similar manner to how their homes, the variant timelines they were from, also ceased to be.
Now, a passing thought as I started following down one of the dark alleys of the slums of this great city I was in: since these were great beings even more than my weak self, why wouldn't they simply come together and take over the current me? All they simply needed to do was wipe my soul clean by absorbing its essence, and then they'd become the new original Ryan. This one question bothered me to the point where even after delving into the countless bits of information at my fingertips, I could not get an answer at all. Even one of the possible answers was because Codex was also with us the entire time, watching and observing. To that end, I simply asked him the why, and I got:
"Aaah, I understand your dilemma, my lord. It's actually quite simple... because they got tired of it all..." he said in a disheartened manner.
"What do you mean by that?" I asked curiously as I continued down the winding path while heading specifically to the south from where my old shack was.
The narrow alleyway I traversed was barely wide enough for two people to pass shoulder to shoulder. Grimy walls rose on either side, their surfaces a palimpsest of crude graffiti, mold patterns, and what looked like bloodstains in places. The ground beneath my feet squished unpleasantly—a mixture of mud, refuse, and substances I preferred not to identify. The stench was overwhelming, a miasma of rot and waste that seemed to cling to my skin like an oily film.
Ahead and above, the city of Koladar loomed like a mechanical deity—indifferent to the suffering at its feet. Spires of impossible heights punctured the dawn sky, their surfaces catching the early sunlight and fragmenting it into prisms that danced across the lower structures. Floating platforms drifted between the towers like mechanical clouds, ferrying the privileged from one lofty domain to another, never having to acknowledge the squalor below.
Since I needed to leave the city, doing so from one of the main entrances was almost impossible due to the security there. That, and the guards wouldn't let a scrawny, starving-looking guy like me loose into the wild alone.
The contrast between where I stood and the gleaming metropolis in the distance was stark and deliberate. The architecture itself seemed designed to reinforce the social stratification—the higher you went, the cleaner, more orderly, and more beautiful everything became. Here at the bottom, the buildings were haphazard, crumbling structures that seemed to defy gravity through sheer stubbornness rather than sound engineering. Makeshift additions had been grafted onto original structures, creating a chaotic jumble that resembled a three-dimensional maze more than planned habitation.
"By tired, I meant that they had lived fulfilling lives, in their own way," Codex explained as he guided me through the alleyways and turning points with a green marker that only I could see hovering a few feet before me. I followed it carefully, trying not to come across anyone since I simply wanted to disappear silently from the city.
"As disheartening as it is that they lost their very homes, they all knew who caused it and who to blame. They all already had their revenge for the mistakes and errors caused by the greedy beings who caused the issue from back then. And even after all that, after going through their tireless journey of corrections, penance, vengeance, and all of it, it still did not change anything."
A rat scurried across my path, its oily fur glistening in the dim light filtering down from above. It stopped briefly to assess me with beady, intelligent eyes before continuing on its way—another survivor in this ecosystem of deprivation. Somewhere nearby, a baby wailed, its cry quickly muffled as if the mother feared drawing attention. The sound of distant machinery—the heartbeat of the city—provided a constant backdrop, a reminder of the industry that sustained this metropolis but whose benefits rarely trickled down to where I was.
"They were simple mirrors of the original," Codex continued. "Though they were with their own consciousness, personalities, and everything else, it was that one last thing, one last factor that made it hollow. Irregardless of their deviation towards good, evil, or simply being neutral, they all understood one simple fact..."
I ducked beneath a low-hanging tangle of cables that connected the ramshackle structures. Water dripped from somewhere above, splashing onto my shoulder—not clean rain but condensation from the climate control systems that serviced the upper levels. Even the city's waste was hierarchical.
"And what's that?" I asked, now even more curious.
The green marker led me down a steep incline where the alley floor had collapsed partially, revealing a sublevel beneath—another layer of the slums, even more desperate than the one above. The air grew thicker here, harder to breathe, laden with spores and chemicals and the exhalations of too many bodies packed too closely together.
"That they were not whole," Codex replied. "Even if they decided to band together and absorb you, ideally erasing you as the original's existence, the fact that they are still not the original won't change and will continue being labeled as an anomaly that should be erased but won't."
I skirted around a group of huddled figures sharing something from a small container—some kind of drug or sustenance, it wasn't clear which, and perhaps the distinction was meaningless down here. They barely glanced up as I passed, their eyes hollow, their movements lethargic. The city had already judged them irrelevant, and they had accepted that verdict.
"Should any of them have done so, they would continue existing, yes, but at the cost of their actual freedom. Since the very timeline they originate from was wiped out, and only the original timeline could continue on existing into perpetuity, they would not even be able to enter and live a life inside it. In short, they'd have all the power but be caged by their very existence... such a fate, even to beings like themselves, was simply worse than death," Codex completed.
Honestly, I still wasn't buying it. The doubt in my mind still existed.
The green marker led me through a section where the alley widened slightly, revealing a small, impromptu market. Despite the early hour, traders were already setting up stalls, displaying goods that would be considered garbage anywhere else—reclaimed tech with dubious functionality, clothing patches with enough fabric left for mending, food that looked suspiciously like industrial byproducts reprocessed into something allegedly edible. A woman with cybernetic augmentations clearly salvaged from a scrap heap watched me with the calculating eye of someone who could spot desperation and knew how to price it.
"Wait, from what you're saying, you speak as if they wanted to do so..." I suddenly realized and mentioned this.
"Yes, the majority of them, after understanding what was at stake, truly did want to take over you as the original. To that end, they sought the only person/being who could give them the knowledge of how to do so..." Codex replied.
"They came to you..." I finished in realization.
The marker turned sharply, leading me down a side passage I would have missed otherwise—a gap between buildings barely wide enough to slip through sideways. I sucked in my breath and edged through, feeling the rough surfaces scrape against my back and chest. The passage twisted unexpectedly, revealing a small courtyard open to the sky—a rare patch of open space in this compressed world. In one corner, a small shrine had been erected to some deity I didn't recognize, adorned with wilted flowers and burned-down incense sticks. Even here, in the depths of despair, some form of faith persisted.
"Indeed. At that time, however, even while still being known by a select few, I was in the possession of a group of primordial beings, the Nova Gods, who resided inside the original timeline and were doing their best to not let it deteriorate even further with my help," Codex continued. "Even though some misunderstandings had happened here and there, everything was solved, and your variants who'd come seeking information conversed with me, and I simply showed and explained the cold, hard truth as is."
The marker led me across the courtyard, past the shrine, and through another narrow opening. This one descended, steps worn smooth by countless feet over what must have been centuries leading down to what once might have been a sewer system but had since been repurposed as another layer of habitation. The smell here was nearly unbearable—human waste, stagnant water, mold, and decay all competing for dominance in my nostrils.
"They, of course, did not believe me and tried, but in the end, they failed. And after trying more than a couple of eons to hold everything together as the original you and failing every single time, they finally gave up. Even those against the idea tried and still failed, living in a shackled life that they did not want to go back into."
The underground passage twisted and turned, illuminated sporadically by jury-rigged light sources—bioluminescent fungi cultivated deliberately, chemical reactions contained in transparent vessels, the occasional electrical light sputtering on unreliable power. Inhabitants of this underworld watched me pass with suspicious eyes, their forms huddled in alcoves once meant for maintenance access, now serving as homes.
"Wait, doesn't that mean...?" I came into another realization, and a horrifying one at that.
"Yes, my lord, this is not the first time you have 'died and resurrected.' To be exact, you've gone through this roughly 31,132,539,139,148,204..." Codex revealed.
I stopped dead in my tracks, the number echoing in my head like a death knell. Over thirty-one quadrillion times. My variants had put me through this ordeal—death, confusion, reclamation of identity—over thirty-one quadrillion times…
"Why, those sons of bitches!!!!" I exclaimed in shock and utter rage and fury. To think I died and died over again just to be a fucking lab rat!
My voice echoed off the tunnel walls, magnified by the enclosed space. A family who had made their home in a side chamber quickly drew a threadbare curtain across their entrance, a mother pulling her wide-eyed children away from the potential danger of my outburst. A man with a makeshift weapon—something between a club and a spear—emerged from the shadows, evaluating whether I was a threat.
"Do calm down, my lord. Such actions were not without costs. For every try they did, it was at the cost of the death of a random variant timeline. Sometimes even other variants of you actually died, and even though they were prepared, still faced the inevitable," Codex tried to console.
"Like hell that helps!!!" I shouted, not caring who heard me now. "No wonder!!! Aarrrrghhhh!! No fucking wonder that none of them brought it up!!! Fuck... fuck... fuckk... I bet they're all laughing at me from their graves for this offense!"
I was seething at such blatant actions, my rage nearly blinding me to my surroundings. The man with the weapon took a step closer, his face a mask of concern and calculation. Others in the tunnel began to stir, drawn by the commotion of a clearly unhinged individual shouting at nothing.
Noticing this, I forced myself to lower my voice and quickened my pace. The marker I had been following turned grey and changed into another direction while easing on its color, guiding me away from the small crowd that had begun to gather.
Seriously, the thought of this not only being a cliché reincarnation or even a transmigration but it being a regression as well? What the fuck was this?
I hurried now, no longer taking in my surroundings with the same attention to detail. The tunnel opened into a larger chamber that appeared to be some kind of communal space—a few tables constructed from salvaged materials, a cooking area with a pot of something unidentifiable bubbling over a chemical fire, a wall covered in crude notices and advertisements written in a script I recognized but found difficult to parse in my agitated state.
Along the way, I was fuming and fuming as I kept cursing my variant selves over and over again. The audacity of it all! To use me, the original, as some kind of cosmic guinea pig, dying and being reborn in an endless cycle while they worked on their "solution." It was a violation beyond anything I could have imagined, and the rage threatened to consume me from within.
The marker led me through the communal space and down another passage, this one sloping upward. After several minutes of climbing, I began to feel a fresh breeze—not clean exactly, but less stagnant than the air in the tunnels below. The passage narrowed, then widened again, and suddenly I found myself in what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse or factory floor.
Massive machines, their purpose long forgotten, stood like the skeletal remains of ancient beasts. Sunlight filtered through broken windows high above, casting long shadows across the debris-strewn floor. The space was vast, echoing with the distant drips of water and the occasional scurry of small creatures. At the far end, barely visible in the half-light, stood what appeared to be the outer wall of the city itself—a massive barrier of composite materials designed to keep the wilderness out and the population in.
Despite my anger and rage, I still arrived at a wall breach I had discovered with my soul sense and with the help of Codex. It was cleverly hidden—a section of the wall that appeared solid from a distance but, upon closer inspection, revealed a slight discoloration where the material had been cut and replaced with a movable panel.
"Let's fucking get out of here. I will come back to sort out what my half was going through here later on," I said in an annoyed tone as I examined the hidden trap door.
The panel was heavy but moved on well-maintained hinges—someone used this exit regularly, though for what purpose, I could only guess. Smuggling, perhaps, or clandestine meetings with outsiders. Whatever the case, it served my purpose now.
With a final glance back at the city that had housed my reincarnated self, I slipped through the opening and found myself on the other side of Koladar's massive wall. The landscape that greeted me was a stark contrast to the urban density I'd just left—rolling plains of pale yellow-green vegetation stretched to the horizon, interrupted occasionally by copses of strange, twisted trees with iridescent bark. The air was different here—fresher, carrying scents of unfamiliar flora and hints of distant bodies of water.
Codex's marker floated ahead, pointing north toward where The Groove Canopy would be found. I took a deep breath of the outside air, feeling it fill my lungs with something cleaner than I'd experienced since awakening in this world.
The rage still simmered within me, a volatile energy that demanded release. But for now, I would channel it into movement, into putting distance between myself and this city, into learning to control this new body and the immense power that supposedly resided within me.
The trap door closed behind me with a soft click, erasing any evidence of my passage. With determined steps, I began to walk away from the great ducal city of Koladar, my mind still reeling from the revelation of my countless deaths and resurrections, my heart hardened by the betrayal of my own variants.
I was Ryan Vorigan, the original, the undivided soul. And I was done being anyone's experiment.