[MA] 371. What is a Universe? (Patreon)

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[Chapters this week: 2/4 (1 of which is a late chapter)

Late chapters: 4

Next chapter: Tomorrow (Thursday)]

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The Allseeing looked at the dragon and said, "The latest research confirms what we already know: you can't hone another person's willpower if you 'sneakily' reveal information in a manner they are supposed to understand, regardless of how cryptic you make it sound."

The lizard snorted. Unlike what happened during his talk to the boy, she didn't allow the move to tear Space apart.

"He wouldn't trust me if I was too forthcoming and helpful," the abyssal dragon explained.

She couldn't begin to understand why an A-rank would care about anyone trusting them. She could follow the logic but not get the need for external validation and goodwill from specks of atoms. Even an A-rank as weak as the dragon had lived too long to care about the feelings of people who came and went like dust in the wind.

Still, she didn't pursue the topic. She had wasted enough time here. "You got what you wanted. Give me the truth."

The Hopeless Wanderer took his sweet time before asking, "Will you really let him live?"

"I said I would. That is enough for you. Don't forget I can pry the information from your soul if you keep resisting me."

In fact, she would've already done so if it weren't for the Primordial Bridge. They were highly protective of their prisoners, which was often the main reason anyone surrendered instead of fighting to the death. Although she wouldn't be directly punished for meddling with one of their chained pets, she valued her good neighbor relationship with them—to a point. If the Wanderer remained silent, the warden holding his chain would report the dragon had double-crossed her. That would smooth things out.

The lizard sighed again. "I always thought my former sworn brother valued me as much as I did him, but recent events proved otherwise. I don't know whether the information I have is accurate or he lied to me."

She had lived for a long time but was getting impatient. Her entire self trembled. To be so close to the truth yet find it encased in the shadows of the Abyss was antagonistic to her Revealing Light. Finding out how long she had been fooled only made it worse.

Her Edict demanded answers, and she would have it today. She would be the judge of whether the "Immortal Emperor" had lied. That was her specialty.

"This is your last chance," she informed the creature who was tempting her to ravage through his soul. As an A-rank, he would likely not survive the experience. High-ranking beings were even more of an inseparable whole than Shen's True Self made him. "Speak. Now."

He had the gall to sigh yet again, but he did speak at long last. "As far as I know, the Immortal Emperor doesn't want to destroy the Alliance. But he knew the boy was special. SpecOps called it Chaosbringer, but the Emperor said Shen is an Unraveler."

She wanted to know the Immortal Emperor's plans for the Alliance, not about Shen. Yet, her Edict let her know sharing knowledge with the dragon now would help her shed a brighter Light on the matter.

So, she said, "Chaosbringers, as their name suggests, always bring chaos to the Alliance. They upset all order in the most unpredictable and bloody way possible."

The lizard chuckled. "The Emperor didn't tell me much, which made this Chaosbringing business so interesting to me when SpecOps mentioned it. But he did say Shen's existence is like an antibody sent by Reality when its limited awareness lets it notice things are taking a turn for the worse. If the Alliance was the issue when the last Unraveler was born, that's an Alliance problem, not Reality's. Aren't you the Alliance's peak investigator? Investigate. See who your Chaosbringer killed—and what they intended to do. I bet he would've brought many worse changes to the Alliance than the Chaosbringer did."

Before he suggested it, she had already checked everything pertaining to the only Chaosbringer to have ever accomplished something in the Alliance, at least after her Guardian System was implemented. She combed through the system's logs, even breaking seals requested by S-ranks. Any requester still alive would get a notification about the breach because she had to make the Guardian System somewhat fair, but not enough that she had to ask permission instead of forgiveness.

It was still her system.

What she found made her look deeper—at the Chaosbringers who were properly disposed of before they did too much. There was too little to be known about anything before the system, but the latest Chaosbringer had openly denounced a name right before they fell: Dusk Horizon. A name a pesky C-rank from a tiny corner of the multiverse had no business knowing. There were no records of how they had learned that name.

She looked even deeper.

She pushed mana reserves meant to combat the Void Tide into having her system assist her with widespread analysis. She linked her mind to it, putting the entire thing under heavy stress.

In the end, all signs pointed at a few signs of Dusk Horizon, under disguise and in a place where her system wasn't present, having a meeting with a Primordial.

What remained of her survival instincts screamed at her to stop snooping, but she was Revealing Light.

She needed to continue.

A moment later, she saw other signs and concluded that Dusk Horizon had been commanded by the Primordials to hasten the Sector's fall. Discontinuity had triggered it but was clean as far as she could tell. The system had barely detected a Deepphase Whisper sent by Discontinuity to Dusk Horizon mid-battle, saying he had returned to the Alliance because his eternal companion had died and his other friends insisted. The Allseeing had no doubt the Primordials had killed the companion for that specific reason. Discontinuity's return had been planned for since the Primordials approached Dusk Horizon.

The System Administrator almost found it amusing how fitting the Title she had given Discontinuity ended up being: the End of All Things.

She kept following the clues and concluded other things. The timing of Discontinuity's return roughly matched the latest Primordial Maiden's Anointment. Supposedly, the Primordials hadn't even had a Maiden back then. Yet, they had prepared for her ascension.

Evidently, a Primordial Purge wasn't only a punishment tool.

The Primordials only called for one when the Alliance's morals and ethics fell below a certain threshold, but it was also a celebration or rite of passage when a new Voice entered their Choir.

Alas, the System Administrator was missing puzzle pieces. Shen had failed to stop Dusk Horizon and could do nothing about the still-going Calamity. Even if Discontinuity indeed won, she doubted the Primordials wouldn't call a Purge on the Alliance.

Had Reality messed up and sent the boy too late? The previous Chaosbringer had also failed to kill Dusk Horizon, after all. Maybe Reality was just bad at it.

The truth came after he followed the tread of the law demanding every Chaosbringer be killed at B-rank. It hadn't been created by an S-rank. It had been mandated by the Primordial Bridge.

The ploy unraveled before her: the last Chaosbringer and Shen hadn't come to fight Dusk Horizon. They and Shen were Reality's attempt to get rid of the Primordials behind the S-rank.

She turned her eyes to the cthulhu. If a SpecOps agent knew Shen was a Chaosbringer, so did the Bridges' A-ranks hounds. When discussing it with the Hopeless Wanderer, the agent claimed Shen would die before reaching B-rank anyway because of his Absolute Horizon, and the Bridge had given Shen the exclusive ability.

They had set him up from the start; the Hopeless Wanderer's attempt to save the boy wouldn't matter.

Still, despite the cthulhus being good hunting dogs, that sounded excessive. What she knew of them suggested they were reluctant dogs, not that proactive.

"Why support your masters?" she asked.

She used her Edict of the Revealing Light to speak straight into the being's mind with the very Laws of Light that Reality was made of. Meanwhile, the dragon was still rambling about how Unravelers were actually good for everyone.

She continued, "You fought them in the past. You claimed that tightly controlling the Choir of Voices was the same as putting the multiverse into a deep sleep-like trance. You called it the Nightmare of Eons. You were enslaved when you lost. Why assist your evil capturers with such ploys?"

The cthulhu looked deep into her eyes and replied, "Who said Reality can only deploy one Unraveler at a time?" Its voice was male and smooth.

She was the Allseeing; thus she had Titled herself. She who wielded the Revealing Light. So, it had been a very, very, very long time since she had last been surprised, much less shocked.

Yet, she couldn't stop her astonishment this time.

So, they had controlled the Alliance's records and findings where her system couldn't see. They had made it look like Chaosbringers always appeared alone and after long periods of time. Who knew how many others they had found and got rid of to keep the façade? Or even kept hidden and trained even now?

Shen was an unfortunate sacrifice for the greater good. The Primordial Maiden had found him, and he had survived her Whisper. She would come for him again, and he would die. So, they had hastened his death to make it look like they were protecting the Primordials. To create the illusion that no Chaosbringers would be around during this Purge.

The great question was, "Why let me know now?" she asked.

The cthulhu could've stopped the dragon from saying anything. He could've ordered her not to investigate. She would have anyway, which would mark her a traitor. He had only watched as she pursued the truth.

"The Usurpers will learn of our schemes and kill us," the cthulhu replied. "The dragons are on our side. This one is weak and ignorant, but his former friend isn't. That is the answer you were seeking: the Immortal Emperor seeks to destroy the Alliance, as we do. We, as most races that survived the Choir War, will try again this time. We'll win or be erased. Join us or die without ever having the chance to live free of the Void menace."

"There is no such thing," she replied. "The Void always comes."

"Nothingness comes to all that is, yet not as fast as it does to the Alliance. How many universes have you invaded with mostly pristine Nodes? How long did they last until the Void appeared?"

"That's my point," she said unamusedly. "We've been Marked. The Void pursues us. Every S-rank knows that."

"No," the cthulhu replied. "There are no marks, not in the way you think of it. The Void doesn't care. Strong Guardians struggle the most to understand that; the higher your rank, the more challenging it is to comprehend something can simply not be. You are the Revealing Light, part of the Axioms of Light that define existence through Reality; your existence almost cannot even think of not being, and it gives you bias.

"The Void doesn't mind success, failure, or delay. It neither needs nor desires anything. It doesn't even exist; how can the absence of everything mark or pursue targets?

"The Void Overmind is a subproduct of universes getting too close to their definitive end. It's the intermingling of Reality with what it's becoming: nothingness. Reality infects nothingness and gives birth to the Void menace as you know it. It's a way to help everyone inside. You can fight against the Void that attacks you. You can escape it. Reality provides the strong with a warning of impending doom and a chance to flee. But why would Reality do it for healthy universes? For universes that haven't crumbled so much? Why share the same Void Overmind with different universes?"

She wasn't interested in being led around like a child. She had long passed her age of philosophical debates about the Void.

"Get to the point," she demanded.

"Ruin comes to all. Even if you slow a Node or Subnode's crumbling, it cannot be stopped or reversed. You can only close Tears and delay the end; there is no fixing a Voided Subnode or Node. Nothing can fix them because they weren't created to be eternal. Reality doesn't want anything to exist forever, for whatever reason. As far as anyone knows, Reality itself is eternal, evidently, but not its individual universes. Universes are as subject to Change as everything else. They also cease to be after enough Time passes.

"That leads us to the question: what is a universe? What defines it? The Aspects and Expressions it's made of. The Aspects and Expressions themselves are also conceptually eternal, but not when made manifest as a universe. Much like Nodes and Subnodes, they aren't meant to exist forever. In fact, the Nodes and Subnodes are but a representation of all that exists in a set region of each universe, of that universe's state of deterioration. If it's crumbling, so is everything inside. It has reached the end of its purposed existence.

"What would happen if you swapped a half-destroyed Subnode with a brand new one from another universe? Corruption. Infection. Its short remaining existence would contaminate the new universe. Something similar happens when the Alliance hops into a new universe. That hastens the end because something it brings with it is meant to have long been destroyed. The universe's pillars, its Nodes and Subnodes, suffer the extra strain of the new addition that should no longer exist."

The creature paused, and the System Administrator became even less amused. She genuinely hated being treated like a student. Alas, she couldn't invade the mind of an A-rank of the Primordial Bridge without consequences.

So, she replied, "That proves my point. We're marked, though, as you said, differently from how I thought. We're made of Aspects and Expressions as anything else. Whenever we go, we make the universe fall faster. For all intents and purposes, the Void pursues us."

"Wrong. Universes are meant to end, but only after such a long time span that we might as well also see it as eternal. Trillions of Standard years. Quadrillions. Longer. Has any S-rank ever lived that long? Has any artifact the Alliance brought with it to a new universe existed for so long? Only one thing has been around for longer than the Alliance has. A gift. They call it the Primordial Gift."

She was surprised for the second time that day. "Mana."

"Precisely. The Alliance teaches every newcomer race that the Primordials are so strong they only fight the Void Spawn in deep phase space. You are entirely correct. They are so strong that they can stop their galaxy from eroding, thus unnaturally forcing the Primordial Galaxy to be eternal. However, even that strength can't pierce too deep into phase space. The moment they enter any layer of phase space, it begins to crumble around them. The deepest ones are so unstable that the Void is immediately made manifest."

The Allseeing shook her head. "You're contradicting yourself. Primordials don't use mana. Has every Primordial lived longer than universes, enough to bring immediate entropy with them?"

"They bring something even worse than mana within them. Cultivators face tribulations, but mana-wielders don't. The tribulations don't simply not happen. They are redirected and harvested for purposes not wholly known to me beyond honing their Voices somehow. Tribulations are a higher-order existence than mana, and each Primordial has experienced the tribulations of at least a few universes where the Alliance has been.

"Some call the Alliance the Primordials' garden, and the Bridge their guarding dogs. They have no idea how accurate that is. You're all being cultivated like plants. The redirected tribulations are like picking the fruits you give. And once in a while, the owners come for a destructive stroll, the Purges.

"We believe that adding a Voice to the Choir comes at a cost, and it must be paid either in blood or by decreasing the people in the Primordial Galaxy for a period. Or both.

"Their ruse about Purging corruption serves to decrease resistance in those times, but not only from the Alliance. Every Unraveler we trained becomes single-mindedly focused on destroying the Primordials after they learn the truth. It cripples their Path in some ways but also makes them grow faster.

"We can't invade the Primordial Galaxy and win if the Usurpers are all there; that's how we lost last time. But they'll be vulnerable out here. The strongest of our older generations have concluded this Purge will be our best shot for the next immeasurable amount of time. They have waited, and now they'll act.

"So, tell me, Revealing Light: will you join us, or will you be a fugitive for your entire life, owned by those who see you as cabbage?"

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[A/N: These chapters have been big on the exposition side, but we're done now. I said we would tie loose ends. We have just done so.

Now, we move the plot.]

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