The problems I faced right now were two in nature: my body—ideally my physical representation in the material world—as well as my core, the source of my cultivated energy and what would power any and all spells, skills, techniques, powers, and gifts I'd have. Both were weak, underdeveloped, and most importantly... malleable.
From the plan I had in mind, my variant selves had truly given me a god-sent opportunity.
I sat cross-legged in the center of the crystal-lined cavern, watching as the light from the formations I'd cast earlier refracted through the translucent stones embedded in the walls. Each crystal pulsed with a gentle rhythm that almost matched my own heartbeat—almost, but not quite. The dissonance was subtle, like two musicians playing the same piece at slightly different tempos, creating an eerie harmony that seemed to vibrate the very air around me.
The aegis barrier I'd erected shimmered with power, casting the entire cavern in a golden-purple hue that danced across the smooth, polished stone beneath me. The droplets from the ceiling continued their slow, measured fall into the pool before me, each ripple expanding outward in perfect concentric circles that moved with unnatural slowness due to the time dilation effect.
Previously, when I had mentioned that I would quite literally die in order to get stronger, it wasn't a fluke. The idea itself was outrageous, born from desperation and audacity in equal measure. But with the research done by my variants, my procedures and time consumption were quite literally cut in half.
"Do you truly understand what you're about to attempt, my lord?" Codex's voice resonated within my mind, a mixture of concern and anticipation coloring his tone.
I closed my eyes, focusing on the endless reservoir of knowledge my variants had left me. "I do."
Since I was facing strong, impossible, and nonessential beings, I needed to be stronger, more impossible—bordering on absurdity—and lastly, a monster in the making. To this end, I needed to achieve two things: I needed to destroy my body and core, and with pure and sheer luck as I rode waves of pain beyond anything in existence, I needed to form my mana reactor core, as well as my 'quantum physique.'
These two concepts were, funnily enough, ideas that my variant selves had stumbled upon once they simply got 'curious' in the world where I, the original, had spawned before its collapse in the forgotten future.
"They were amazed, to say the least," I murmured, a small smile playing on my lips as memories that weren't quite mine flickered through my consciousness. "Humans with no access to any form of the ever-present conceptual energies such as mana were able to progress and develop to the point of starting to conquer small parts of their very galaxy."
My fingers traced idly through the air, drawing complex patterns that left faint luminous trails. Each pattern represented a formula, a concept, a building block for what I was about to attempt.
"And upon going through the history of the very Earth I came from, they came to realize that the answer to their problems was quite literally in front of them."
The problem was simple: since I'd start out weak, I couldn't stay that way for more than a decade. I needed to reach a certain level of strength that would keep me completely hidden from the Proteras as they continued scouring the multiverse for Codex and, ideally, for me—who was bound to him as he was to me.
Any conventional means my variants could think of would simply break the very balance of what they were trying to help me achieve. But upon coming across the concepts of science and its finer details, their minds were blown away.
Sure, science existed in quite a number of universes across the multiverse, and even larger in comparison with the exponential number of multiverses and their variants. But the way Earth, my previous home, applied it to advance was unique, simply because the humans there did not overcomplicate things. Their science was direct as it was effective.
The crystals lining the cavern walls seemed to brighten in response to my thoughts, as if the very concept of scientific advancement excited them. The pool at the center of the cavern rippled without any droplet falling, responding to the energies beginning to gather around me.
And with this, my variants came up with a simple solution: once I established the base and roots of my body—creating a physique from scratch that even Codex had no knowledge of—and created a core whose power rivaled the very suns that were present across outer space at its conception and exponentially increased later on, I'd practically be unstoppable and unkillable.
With that in mind, I was taken to the basics of nuclear science that existed back on Earth. Not that I had paid much attention to them, but any nerd or geek who dabbled in their own fantasies had heard or learned one or two things.
The procedure was as follows:
For my core, I needed to develop it in neither the normal nor the abnormal way that any being in existence did. The ranks for any being, whether they were the smallest of mortals to the mightiest of gods and similar beings, were well established in this cosmic hierarchy.
For mortals, it ranged from the weakest, an F rank, to E, D, C, B, A, S, EX, and finally, Demigod. For immortals, it was then divided into tiers from 0 to 9, where 0 was only a recently ascended demigod into the subsequent higher plane, and 9 was a being who was ready to ascend into godhood. For divinities, it was also tiered: low, middle, high, greater, and lastly, omni.
Thoughts on anything above would encroach on the interests of those hunting me, so I'd stop there.
My variants, however, saw the flaw in this hierarchy. Should I follow this conventional path, the effort-to-reward ratio in gaining strength would remain within the bounds of these endgame bosses who were out for my end. Since I not only needed to survive, keeping my life intact, I couldn't simply spend my entire existence running and not being able to live the chance I now had.
The pool's surface began to ripple more intensely, the water starting to glow with an inner light that shifted between blues and purples. The crystals on the walls pulsed in response, their light synchronizing with the pool's illumination.
To that end, I needed my core to develop similarly to conventional methods, but its inner workings would embody concepts obtained from Earth—specifically, the concepts of nuclear energy and how it's ideally an infinite form of generatable power.
Like the humans of Earth, everyone else in existence always had an energy issue where it was never enough to begin with. With the formation of my mana reactor core, I would be solving multiple issues at once.
But of course, forming this was impossible, crazy, and would lead to instantaneous death since the reactivity would be a hundred—no, thousands of times more volatile than the simple processes that humans on Earth were doing.
Instead of using simple metallic elements, I would be dealing with one of the basic building blocks of energy and existence—mana itself. But not any ordinary or normal mana: a higher quality and tier of mana called primordial mana.
Why such a type of mana? Simple: because it was the only one that could handle the strain and stretching of fusion and fission.
"But here's the catch," I said aloud, my voice echoing off the cavern walls. "In the process of splitting apart primordial mana and later merging it again and again in an endless fusion-fission reaction, nothing conventional would be able to contain such reactivity, and I would simply explode from within."
It was here that my body would come in. Just as I was building my core, I needed to also reconstruct my body, defining it once more with concepts obtained from my previous home: matter and antimatter.
"My lord, these... these ideas are quite ingenious... improbable and difficult, but definitely creative..." Codex commented as he followed my thought process. "I wonder why they did not tell me... ah, wait... now I see."
They did not inform Codex of their discovery to prevent the chance of him and I not being able to bond together, thus safeguarding a sure-fire way for me to become a monster of my own making.
"And aside from what you're thinking, my lord, without me, you wouldn't even be able to access primordial mana," Codex explained. His presence in my mind felt like a cool breeze against my increasingly heated thoughts. "It's a form of energy that cannot exist in these lower parts of existence, simply because it's too volatile and concentrated. Think of the current rich mana environment we are in as a diluted, three-times version of primordial mana."
The crystals pulsed more intensely now, some beginning to emit high-pitched tones that resonated with each other, creating a discordant yet strangely harmonious melody.
"Should you use such mana here, you'd probably break Gaia in half from a simple swing of a sword infused with it—and that's if you could find a weapon strong enough to contain such mana," he continued, his tone a mixture of warning and awe.
"Well, either way, it's a dangerous and exciting venture," I said as I considered the complete procedure to its very end.
"Let's get started then," I declared, straightening my posture and squaring my shoulders. "Codex, I need you to create and maintain the formation that will keep my soul in one place. Having it drift away is not ideal despite us having the Aegis barrier protecting and giving us enough time to work."
The air around me thickened, charged with anticipation and potential. The light from the crystals dimmed slightly, as if holding their breath.
"As you're running the formation, introduce primordial mana in short bursts as I try to control it and initiate the formation of my core and body," I instructed, my voice steady despite the trepidation building within me. "Also, don't forget to take control of the Aegis barrier."
I exited my mindscape, my vision settling on the barrier that surrounded me in this 'cultivation abode' made for me. The Aegis of Stone and Veil glowed with power, its runic inscriptions pulsing with steady rhythm.
'I just hope it will hold till I'm done,' I thought as I focused on the new multicolored, shifting, archaic, and frankly terrifying circular magical formation that formed beneath me.
When it did, a feeling of weightlessness suddenly enveloped me as I felt disjointed from something I could not pinpoint. It was as if my very essence was being gently pulled away from my physical form, creating a dissociation that was both exhilarating and deeply unsettling.
The formation beneath me was a work of art in its complexity—concentric circles within circles, each one inscribed with runes and symbols from languages long forgotten or yet to be discovered. The spaces between these circles were filled with flowing script that seemed to move of its own accord, rearranging itself in response to unseen stimuli. At the very center, directly beneath where I sat, was a single glyph that pulsed with a deep, crimson light that somehow managed to appear both liquid and solid simultaneously.
"Are you ready, my lord? I can begin injecting the primordial mana when needed," Codex informed me inside my head, his voice carrying a weight of solemnity that I'd never heard before.
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the charged air of the cavern. The smell of ozone was stronger now, mixed with something else—something ancient and powerful that tickled the back of my throat and made my hair stand on end.
"Do it," I said resolutely, bracing myself for what was to come.
At first, the space underneath the archaic formation simply trembled for a while. Space trembling? That was a first.
But who knew it would be a precursor to one of the most painful moments in my life?
The trembling intensified, the very fabric of reality around me beginning to warp and distort like heat waves above hot asphalt. The crystals in the walls emitted high-pitched whines that built in intensity until they were almost unbearable, their light fluctuating wildly between blinding brightness and near darkness.
Then, without warning, the space itself tore apart in slits like wounds in reality's skin. Through these tears, some weird-looking energy appeared—not quite liquid, not quite gas, but something in between, with a viscosity that defied physical laws. It was beautiful in its impossibility—a swirling, prismatic substance that contained every color imaginable and some that should not exist.
Catching me off guard, it shot at me, entering directly from my solar plexus and bringing with it a host of pain because right after...
I simply burst apart like a balloon filled with water.
The explosion was both physical and metaphysical, my body disintegrating into particles too small to see while my consciousness expanded outward in a terrifying moment of both absolute freedom and absolute vulnerability. I was everywhere and nowhere, aware of every atom in the cavern yet unable to interact with any of them.
In that moment between existence and non-existence, I understood what it meant to die. Not the permanent death that awaited at the end of a natural lifespan, but the transitional death that served as a bridge between states of being.
And this was just the beginning—my very first 'death' in what would be a long, excruciating process of destruction and rebirth.
But as my consciousness began to reform, drawing the scattered particles of my essence back toward the center of the formation, I felt something new taking shape within me—the first embryonic stirrings of what would become my mana reactor core.
The path ahead would be paved with pain beyond imagining, but the reward... the reward would be worth every moment of agony.
For in the crucible of my repeated deaths, a god would be forged.