Interlude: [Alexanders] WAH ! (Patreon)

This one cipher is...as you expected.

6

66

666

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"I have become death, destroyer of worlds."

--J Robert Oppenheimer, branch member of the Saintsworths Clan.

Hello there. Good morning.

Here we always fought about many things when speaking within the conglomerate, the phrase you found before this document was one of those things. Someone thought that line was something epic, the perfect phrase to say at the moment. But me? I always thought was a corny line to say after creating such a wonderful invention, but why?

Well for starters. Are you sure that this man said the phrase after the first explosion? Where you there? Because I was. And while most people would say that the creator of the atomic bomb allegedly said that after the first successful detonation was made. And I knew the guy, he was a drama queen, so I have no doubt about if he said it or not.

But to elaborate further on it more for your benefit... Unless you lived under a rock or in another universe (neither are good excuses by the way). I'm Alexanders Saintsworth you may know me as the CEO of the biggest conglomerate in the world. The owner of the earth you walk on (As in the planet), the last boss according to some activist groups I keep on retainer to make sure all the crazies are in one spot, or. In case you are smarter than the rest. As your boss.

Not your direct boss, but as the guy who makes sure you have enough money to pay in the grocery store that I ultimately own too.

Like, really. Why can't you all peasants just admit that all the money will end up in my pockets so it's meaningless how you try to use it. Anyway, bread and circus I guess.

But I wasn't always like this, no. Like you I was born poor, well, actually I was worse than you. You were born into a world that has me paving your way to greatness. I was born in the 1900’s, which was hell.

And if that wasn't bad enough I was born into a cult, as the son of some bigshot or something, that was bad because to prove his faith he needed me to suffer. So of course he sold me to slavery, if I was his son I was supposed to show greatness and escape or thrive, if I wasn't then I was supposed to repent in the slave camps for pretending to be his son. Crazy right?

There weren't any win scenarios for me, now... There are several biographies of me going around, some talk about how I was rich from birth, and some claim I helped do the C-section on my own mother from inside her belly saving her life, my life, and the doctor's life (That one is good comedy, would read it again).

But here is the truth... Listen closely because I ain't going to say it twice. I'm... not a very intelligent person.

There I said it, I know intelligence when I see it, and I usually hire those intelligent people on the spot. And some people say I'm the second coming of whoever deity they pray to. I'm not.

I am aware of how smart I am compared to the average man. And I'm smart, you would need to be blind to not see it. I know that I'm talented in some fields. But really... if you had my lifespan then you too could climb to the spot I hold right now. Because at the end of the day, if you have the know-how of a fifty-year-old, the experience of a fifty-year-old, and the body of a twenty-year-old. There is just no way that you would be average.

If having the body of someone less than half your age and you are still in a dead-end job? Well at that point you deserve it.

But how? How did I end like this? Well, it started with the biggest (Second biggest) secret you will ever hear about me. Now what could be more interesting than finding that I who here has been chosen, acclaimed, and in a nutshell is known to be allegedly the smartest man on Terra Invicta claiming that I'm not intelligent? Easy.

I'm not a lucky person.

Now before you riot and tell me to stop bullshitting you, here is the truth of the matter. You may say I'm lucky. But let me ask you this.

Would a lucky person be born to a cultist family?

Would a lucky person be sold into slavery?

Would a lucky person be part of human experimentation?

If you answer any of those with a Yes, then you, my friend. Are insane.

And before you ask, those three things? They happened to me. One would be bad luck, two would be funny, but all three are like having reality punch you in the face, throw you on the floor, kick you, and then spit at your face.

All the while your girlfriend looks at you and then breaks with you, and afterward she runs away with reality and just throws salt into the wound.

But what did I get from my suffering? Well... I got a body that didn't seem to age at the normal speed...

And what I thought was schizophrenia, you see. The first thing I noticed after this event (The one where they experimented on me) was that I could see a purple-haired Roman girl running around. How did I know she was Roman? Well, she was dressed in a toga...

And that was it, she seemed to speak in a weird gibberish language that my mind somehow translated to any language I was thinking in at the moment. So who could blame me for thinking I was hallucinating.

And...Oh right, I could also see some weird blue screens and red screens flying around bickering with each other, at the time we didn't have computer screens nor holopads. So I thought they were glass screens with words in them. Silly me.

But that was about it, schizophrenia and hallucinations, that is what I got from that event that scarred me for life.

Now, there may be someone that says "But Alexanders, you got a body that was at the peak from it!" And to those I would answer, "I TRAINED THIS BODY MYSELF!"

All that I got after that experiment came from my own effort, I made myself valuable to the clan by excelling with pure effort. While the others raved about their loyalty to our esteemed clan, I worked my ass off studying and making sure my body was at its absolute peak. And while at the time I didn't know that my body was that much different from the rest, I did notice that while I could endure more strain... I also recovered faster than those around me, so staying in good form wasn't as hard for me. Giving me more time to study, making sure I didn't get sick as often and when I did get sick or wounded, I could recover faster.

And let me tell you, as a CEO if I find out that one of my employees is healthier and more efficient than the others, and also is smarter than the others... I will make sure they can climb as fast as possible while they aren't liable to cause me trouble. Part of the reason I can hold most of the world in my hands is the fact that I don't mind spreading my fortune around as much as other billionaires.

At the end of the day all returns to me, what does it matter if I need to pay a few millions to this guy? He will probably die in five years from OD anyway. So when they offered me to climb, I climbed the ladder.

From guinea pig to assistant, from assistant to scientist, from scientist to researcher, from researcher to manager researcher, then to head of a lab. Then one thing led to the other and then before I was even forty years old I was in a shareholder meeting, surrounded by old men and women. And still looking no older than twenty.

I still liked to pretend that I was in shape because of a good diet and exercise. And not because of that god damned experiment I got done on me when I was fourteen years old.

From there it took me another twenty years to climb higher on the ladder till I was close enough to be decision-making within the Saintsworths Clan, now... some may claim that I got to that spot by the use of well-placed decisions that made the clan flourish, that I was at the right spot and at the right time and that with me at the helm the clan didn't make a single mistake...

And they would be wrong, you remember the purple-haired girl that only I could see? Well, it was around these times that I found out that she...wasn't a hallucination, but something worse, the girl had weird powers. And not the fun weird that you find at a party in the middle of an island, not the fun weird where you pay two billion and go to a debauchery weekend in the middle of the ocean.

No, weird in the way that some words here a few pokes there and she could make someone disappear from the face of the world, and no one remembered them. Their achievements were gone from history, and everyone acted as if nothing happened.

At one meeting I was trying to convince a major shareholder who was also a general that going to war with half the world was a stupid idea, the purple-girl got annoyed at the projected death count and just said "[Disappear]", then did not only she disappears, but the general also disappears.

We lost two hours of meeting but no one else at the meeting found a problem with that, their brain just reconfigured itself to justify that loss of time. And I did try to point it out to them, to convince them that we had a missing story.

Did it work? Nope, not a single time.

So you think the Saintsworths clan managed to dodge mistakes? Oh no, we didn't. It's just that with me at the helm the clan would always have a face, so we wouldn't get wiped out by the sneeze of the purple-haired girl (It happened once). So they thought I was the reason, so they made me the head. At first, I was to be a figurehead. But when you are the only one to survive...

Well, it is very VERY hard to not solidify your position. And when I noticed I wasn't getting any older... well, the year 2000 (100 years after my birth) was a very good date to go wild.

So after making sure my power was indisputable and that the purple girl had wasted her power and was away in god knows where (I may have attempted to create a scenario where half the world would turn to ashes if she didn't disappear someone annoying me). I started my brilliant plan.

Now here is a second example of why I say that while I may be smart, I'm not intelligent.

For me a smart person is someone who can solve a problem at the moment, someone who acts quickly and with decisions. Someone like me, who is a person that lives in the moment.

An Intelligent person is someone who can see a problem coming five days into the future, account for it, and solve it. The kind of people I pay to make sure everything goes well.

Why does this distinction matter? If a smart man and an intelligent man have to walk the same amount of distance.

The smart man will see an open field and run all the way through, fixing any problem as they go.

The intelligent man will see an open field, think about the kind of problems that can occur, plan for them, and then and only then will he move forward.

If something hard comes in the path, the smart man may need time to solve it. But the intelligent one will solve it in seconds, if the problem is small then the time both will take to finish this travel may be the same.

But if the problem is big, the intelligent man while taking extra time, in the end, will make it to the end...And the smart man...well he may not.

In the year 2,000, I made a smart decision... After finding a weird geode crystal in the vaults of the clan that gave radiation. I started a laboratory to experiment with it. I didn't question why no one else did it before, nor did I think something bad might come from it.

I found a possible energy source and a possible leap in technology, so I started doing all kinds of experiments with this. Does it work as fuel? Shove it into a rocket and try to make a spaceship.

Does it affect space? Well, I always wanted teleporters.

Does it work as an energy source? Those spaceships may need batteries, actually, my phone also needs batteries.

Does it work as a computer? Well, who could tell, I need a new holopad...

Is there a field of technology that needs all of these? Yes? Well, it seems we are making weapons then!

From cellphones to spaceships, from teleporters to weaponry, from cold weapons to firearms... From stationary to autonomous... From mechanical to biological. We made them all!

All using this weird ass purple crystal. In hindsight, I should have noticed the problem, even when I bought a bioweapon facility and adapted their technology with our crystal tech. Even when the bioweapon seemed to move faster than predicted...

And I should probably not only make a monitoring system to keep in check the weird energy flares we detected, and when at the ten-year mark this isn't slowing down...I should have noticed how closely similar my monitoring system looked to the blue screens and red screens I saw almost 100 years ago on the day they experimented on me.

When one of our bioweapon samples started to show a more humanoid form I should have noticed the problems, instead, I was intrigued by it. Again, an intelligent man may have done things differently, but I only found a new amusing thing to spend time on. So I studied it, and when it tried to appeal to the human emotions of the lesser ones around I was more and more intrigued. I obliged it, and let it do its thing.

The P4 sample engineered a marvelous creation, playing with the emotions of those around it. Making them feel as if it was human. As if it wasn't playing with their emotions, I found that the test sample was interesting enough and I paid it a visit.

It took me a few years to prepare everything, but in the end, I decided on a symbolic date for the experiment. One hundred and twenty years after my birth. On the eve of my 120 birthday, I went foolishly towards that weapon that seemed to play with humans as a cat played with the mouse and asked her how she did it.

I found an explanation scarily similar to what I inferred the purple girl did, but this wasn't the purple girl, and instead was a man-made bioweapon made from crystal shavings. The same silicon sample that had been used in the experiment they did on me.

So in theory I should be able to do the same right? Now again we return to the analogy of smart vs intelligent.

An intelligent man would make a case study, check the variables, and account for them.

I'm not an intelligent man...

So on September 14 of the year 2020 at 4:44 in the morning, I made my first contact with the energy that you may call [Mana]. And it was also the day the end of the world started.

Happy birthday to me.

You see, I may not be the most intelligent man... I am aware that I'm also not the smartest man. All of that propaganda (because that is what it is, at the end of the day) of me being the second, third, and fourth coming of whatever deity you believe in... It's slightly exaggerated. Am I better than my peers? Only because those that think they are my [Peers] are in reality around 50 to 100 years younger than me. So I have an unfair advantage in experience and practice above them.

Don't get me wrong, I did train my ass off to get this experience, but thinking you can stand at the same level as me is a pipe dream for most of them, so when I say that something will work it is not because I have the smarts or the intelligence to know the answer to all, but mostly because half the ideas the people think are things I have either seen already or tested already in another laboratory.

So you see, I am somewhat prideful of being right most of the time. So when I think of something, I do using years upon years of experience and know-how of the things around me. Am I the best programmer in the world? You bet your ass that I'm, I either contributed or outright wrote half the programming languages there are around.

Am I among the best engineers? Of course I am, half the manuals and tools you use are things I contributed by making dumb mistakes 80 years ago.

I'm a multitalented person, someone who has several degrees in multiple areas, and at the same time, thanks to years of study I have a very sturdy [Mind Palace], a place crafted within my mind where most of these experiences are saved and always available.

So there is a rarity when someone I plan to do goes wrong, since I have made many mistakes across my life I usually get a feel for when something is wrong, there are only so many ways you can reinvent the wheel, and all of that.

So when I found the weird energy this girl, subject P4 spoke, and managed to connect to it... I may have been a little cocky.

P4 said that she connected herself to that energy and using that she was manipulating everyone around, so I tried to do as she said "[Obey my orders, and CONNECT.]" I didn't know why I spoke those words, nor how my words had been laced with that energy that one day we would call [Mana].

But these words held power, and they obeyed my [Will]. The energy within my body connected to P4, and then from there, it jumped towards the Geode in the safe, the same one we had been studying.

At the moment I connected to P4 I was ecstatic, when that connection jumped towards the geode I was confused... When in turn this thread started sinking into the core of the planet I was confused.

And when this energy arrived there... I knew that something was very wrong, but at this moment I didn't have any mastery over this energy, so I could only stare with my mind's eye at how it started to react.

It was, funnily enough, a very mundane reaction, one that I had seen and studied plenty enough. My energy laced with the energy from the geode and P4 arrived at the core, where it reacted with the energy already. Making the combination of the four energies and when it couldn't fuse properly, it started to achieve critical mass since they couldn't interact properly.

The energy within the core managed to take in the energy of P4 and the geode, but mine couldn't fuse properly, instead, it made the energy within the core turn more and more unstable. That made the energy within the core start absorbing materials and energy around the core to try and force the fusion of my energy with the others around the core.

Now why was this a problem? Any guesses?

Well, what is near the core of a planet?

If you aren't lucky, you may find the core of your planet surrounded by Ice or rock, if you are especially unlucky, you have spires and an empty space. If you are lucky and your planet can sustain life, then more than likely the core of your planet is an incredibly dense spinning metal sphere(Since we do need gravity) surrounded by molten lava, with some extra heavy metals sprinkled here and there.

And when these energies within the core of our world start to consume those things? Well...

Without a dense core to sustain the gravity, we end with gravity quakes in some of the most unfortunate cities, which is why some places ended up dealing with G3 to G5 gravity levels, while others ended with G-1 to G-6.

My condolences. Without the hot lava to help thermoregulate the planet, we ended with an unstable atmosphere, you may think that there wouldn't be much of a problem. Who needs lava right? That only makes the planet hot anyway.

Wrong.

The molten core helps make the geomagnetic cover that protects the planet from UV rays and all kinds of nasty waves from our Sun. No molten core? No protection.

It also helps to regulate the temperature. So that was why we ended with frozen desert and melted icecaps (Those poor penguins).

Now, if we had seen this coming we may had time to solve the issue. But... This happened all at once, everywhere. So within the span of five years, we had lost most of the world population and those that survived did so because, within the first year, a part of the Saintsworths conglomerate started selling bunkers. That part of it made a killing...Or would have if we hadn't taken control of it and started evacuating all of those we could into those things.

At the same time, I had redirected most of the weapons division and genetic divisions to work into spaceships to try and evacuate those that couldn't fit into the bunkers, and while we had some degree of success (Getting a spot in the surface of the planet if you aren't doing your work does wonders to motivation), we found a second problem in these endeavors.

For some reason, all planets with any degree of intelligent life were hostile to us.

Not the "We are predators so of course we want to take a bite" hostile, more of the "WE WILL MURDER ALL OF YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN" hostile. From cute little rodents that we knew for a fact couldn't eat meat without dying to predators that would waste more energy trying to kill and digest us.

Hell, on one planet the fricking whales would jump out of the water into our coastal bases, even if it would kill them. It was a mess, and those planets that held no life did so because they were too toxic or radioactive for long-term survival. And worst of all, even if we tried to terraform them... We had no evidence that the new life that started there wouldn't be hostile to us. We didn't know why they acted like that, even if I had some suspicions.

I had something the rest didn't, or most didn't at least. I could feel this new energy that was causing all of our problems, and the hostile planets all had some degree of it. Either way, I sincerely ditched all of the space program to a less important part of the conglomerate and took back the top scientists that were working on it, we had a problem to solve.

What we found after focusing back on Terra Invicta was...that most of the P-series subjects that we had around had reacted in one or another way to this ambient energy, and found a few ways to detect it besides "I can feel the energy around!" that some of the members of the lab had.

Twelve years after the end of the world started and we had to admit to reality, this weird ambient energy got called [Mana], as a wink to all of those fictions about magic and such things, the thing that helped direct and started all of this, however, was a new language. One that seemed to work using knowledge outside our control, trying to tame or understand it was too hard, so using it to find the name we ended with [Idea].

A very bad way to refer to it, whose [Idea] this was? I didn't know, but if I had to guess was someone who was very bad at naming things. And finally, the core within our planet, care to guess what [Idea] called it?

[The Core].

See what I mean?

Either way, we studied the rules this energy seemed to follow, we studied the language to try and find a way to use it, we studied all of it, the relation between the three. Why P4 and I could use it more easily, why the other P-series seemed to develop weird abilities, why some of the members of my staff seemed to develop what they liked to call [Superpowers]... All of it.

And what did we find?

First, the planet seemed to be what one could call alive. It thrived on this energy we called mana.

Second, we as a species of this planet seemed to form a symbiotic relationship with the planet, we produced a small degree of this energy, and absorbing the energy the planet sent outwards seemed to help us generate more and in turn, this energy was sent back.

Third, the purple girl seemed to have access to another type of energy besides [Mana] and [Idea], since I hadn't been able to reproduce what she did, and all we knew about [Mana] seemed to imply that what she did wasn't possible.

Fourth, the planet was expending more [Mana] than we were producing.

Fifth, all the planets that were hostile to us had a [Core] and [Mana].

Sixth, all the planets that weren't hostile to us didn't have either, even if we found evidence of a [Core] having existed at some point in time.

Seventh, not having a [Core] in the planet meant the planet was dead, all our studies seemed to imply that terraforming one of such planets held less than 4% chance of success.

Eight, having a [Core] but not having mana meant the planet had died and the chances of a successful terraforming dropped to a number that was pitifully low and didn't even deserve to be stated.

Nine, our planet would run out of [Mana] at the speed it was going.

And finally, Ten. If our planet ran out of [Mana]...our planet would die, and we as a species...may not survive, since as stated, we seemed to form some kind of symbiotic relationship with the planet from the moment we got bathed in its [Mana].

So, what does this mean in layman's terms? Well, it means that we are screwed beyond what it's humanly possible to solve!

And while most of those under my banner ended up depressed (And a few decided that walking on the wasted surface of our planet was the smart decision), some of us took this as a way of scratching some of the plans we had in mind. We couldn't find a way to replenish the [Mana] within the core in time.

We couldn't find a way to survive on another planet with the time this planet had left, and we definitely wouldn't find a way for other planets to accept us as their inhabitants.

So what was the main problem we had? That's right! [Time]

So of course the next step was to find ourselves some extra [Time] to solve these problems, so barely twelve years after this started going straight to hell... We started to find a way to solve our problem with [Time].

Now, time is something no one can deal with, it's a force of nature and while we can observe its passage, we can't interact with it, not in our reality anyway. We can affect it if we use enough gravitational forces, we can even send stuff into the future!

But that doesn't give us extra time, so what is the solution we used?

We don't try to travel back in time, that doesn't work. It isn't feasible under any law we understand, we could theoretically travel back in time using a wormhole... But only to the moment said wormhole was created, so say... We made one during the year 2000. Then we could use that to travel to that point in time (In theory).

And while the Saintsworths Clan had many things...Conveniently placed wormholes in certain moments in time isn't one of these things. So if we can't travel through time...We turn to the second-best thing!

This wonderful language [Idea], could bring metaphysical concepts into reality, so using that my plan was to tamper with [Time]. IF we can't travel using time, we will travel using [Time]. Easy enough to understand? No. Well, it worked for me so who cares what you think hahahahahahahaha.

It barely took me thirty years, all my underlings (Friends), and all the life on this planet to make it work.

All the alternative planes failed, and all the spaceships we sent to outer worlds with seed ships ended up destroyed when they traveled close to inhabited planets or didn't listen to the warning and decided to settle on planets with wildlife. There was even one that flew straight at the sun for some reason, was it cultist? Probably, but either way, almost all human life had been dead at this point in time.

Not all life mind you, most of the P-series subjects survived in one way or another, the little buggers were resilient if nothing else. I hadn't seen the purple girl in years at this point in time, actually, after the apocalypse started I hadn't seen her either. Not that it mattered since she wouldn't change anything. If she had disappeared as before then she would pop up at some point or another, not that I would be around.

I wasn't what you could call an [Human] at this point in time, more than half my body had been swapped out by bioengineered parts, either created by one of the P-series subjects or by myself, all so I could survive in this goddamned planet that was dying on me. The energies of this world no longer spread on the planet and most were redirected to me. All thanks to the P-series subjects that had been spread on the surface of the world.

All so I could have enough energy to make what I was going to do. Not a single P-series subject had taken humanoid form, besides P4 at least. This one took a humanoid form, and while I didn't know how it looked to the other members of my team, but to me this P-series subject looked like a silver android, with no human face. No skin, nothing but a silver body that mimicked the human force.

Eversoul (The bleeding heart) referred to it as female, god knows why. Was it because I got emotional in my last moments on this [Time]? Had the bugger grown on me with the years of solitude? I don't know.

But maybe I was just lonely, maybe I just wanted to speak with someone after so many years of failure after failure. Can you blame me? If you are someone who lived in Terra Invicta, then you should. I for one do. Every minute, every hour, every day, EVERY GODFORSAKEN YEAR.

So yeah, was it a mistake? Perhaps, but P4 stood with me through it all, and I kind of needed its help, so a reward was in order.

Maybe my choice of words was cringe, but I said "With this, we are brother and sister. I became who I was when this goddamned crystal got suffused into my body...And while your [AI Core] was made out of it, your body never had more than needed...Well, say Hi to past Alexanders." And with those words, I suffused P4's core with as much as the energy I could hold and then more.

My energy? Into the stupid [Core] within P4.

The crystal motes within my body from that awful drug that made sure I would survive to this day? Into the stupid [Core].

Life-force? Oh yeah, that was a thing. We found it by accident when one of the suicidal members of our group walked to the outside, funny thing. He ran out of life-force before his vital went off. Gave us a scare on the medical wing.

What was I saying? Oh right. Life-force. You know it, INTO THE GODDAMNED CORE.

My mind? Myself? My... [Soul]?

All very valid questions, but at this moment in time I didn't know how to quantify these things. So what did I do?

The Intelligent thing would have been to continue studying all possible variables before doing anything.

The Smart thing would have been to seek how my body was reacting to what I was doing.

What did I do?

I shoved everything that I could into the stupid [Core] of P4. Was that smart? No. Was that Intelligent? No. Did I do it anyway? Of course, I did.

Why? You see, I didn't want to delay it more, tomorrow was my birthday, and I had more important things to do than prepare for the end of the world.

So on September 13th, 2050, all the energy on this planet was shoved into a singularity. I was conscious for a few extra seconds after P4 burst into a flash of light that obliterated everything. I saw the planet crack and heard the scream of an untold number of [Souls] as all of them were pulled towards the implosion of our [Homeworld].

And as if nothing had happened...I saw the marvels as time seemed to rewind itself, the planet's destruction got played backward, all the time while hearing the screaming voice of the purple-haired girl. First raw screams, then sobbing, crying.

She was there, at the [Core] of the world, hugging a cracked gem within her hands, doing her best effort to prevent it from cracking further, crying blood.

And as if nothing had happened I felt my consciousness snap back into my body. In front of me, P4 stood with her small little arm on the side, this wasn't one of my smartest choices of words. If he was being honest there were more things I could have said.

Instead, I just asked what I already knew, the world would cascade back into oblivion, probably faster if what I saw was to be trusted, the purple girl had been trying to prevent the destruction too.

So after hitting my head against a wall one too many times, I did what I had decided to do, first, take P4...no Alexandra. It took barely any effort to direct the hidden Nanites in this coat to create the ID.

What? You thought I would walk into the den of a bioweapon unarmed? I may be an idiot, but I'm not dumb enough to do that. It barely took any effort to change her appearance to something that resembled what people around seemed to perceive, Alexa had gotten very good with her manipulation of her appearance in the future. And after [Linking] her to me, her appearance took one that was similar to what she would look if she was my...

She got introduced as my sister, I may owe the thing a favor or two, but no way in hell I was adopting her as a daughter. So a sister she was, and that was final.

What followed after was... both harder and easier, make everyone start working into a machine that could [Time] lock the planet? Easier than expected, I did pay well my employees.

Pretend that you don't hear them calling you nuts? That, funnily enough was harder to do. Not like they could actually do anything about it, the technology I was spitting was at least 30 years ahead of what they used, and within the conglomerate, we usually used technology at least 50 years ahead of the populace.

So I was spitting technology almost 80 years ahead of everyone else, so yeah. Not many things they could do, if to this we add that I could casually teleport people to random planets...Yeah, no one wants to cross the crazy megalomaniac boss that pays very well.

Besides, they would find out about the imminent destruction within ten years anyway.

There was a time I sincerely thought that.

It took barely two years for the first effects to start showing up, at least I had started making the stupid bunkers on day one, so we somehow managed to salvage almost twice as many people as before.

We only lost 5 billion people instead of 10 billion people on the first gravity quake yay...

Okay, that wasn't as bad, the problem, the actual problem came three years later. I found the root of the problems, and no. It wasn't the fact that I poked the planet with my [Mana].

The problem, the actual problem came from the purple girl, Alexa, me, and the [Core]. We were connected, I knew I was connected to the purple girl since I was the only one seeing her.

Alexa got connected to me the day of the cataclysm, and then that connection got stronger when I used her as a vessel to travel back in time. Problem is... My connection to purple girl went straight to the [Core], my [Mana] seemed to be changing and so, the mana on Alexa was changing too.

This wasn't good because our [Mana] was intrinsically different from the one of the purple girl, and in turn, it was different from the one at the [Core]. So this was making a negative reaction within the [Core], this meant that the planet was sick since it wanted to assimilate our mana, but that only made it hurt. That in turn made it spill more mana to try and balance our existence with that of the other humans around.

But my mere presence seemed to change how the mana of people around me behaved, as evidenced by how the people around me were harder to be affected by purple girl. Not all of them mind you, the people that didn't spend too much time with me were okay. But those that stood around? They were harder to affect by purple girl.

So what does this mean? Ready for another list?

One, my [Mana] changed the people around me, the closer they were the more they changed.

Two, Alexa was more attuned to me than to the purple crystal.

Three, the purple girl couldn't affect me or those who had been too affected by my mana.

Four, my mana wasn't compatible with the crystal at the core of the planet for...god knows what reason. Did I tamper with it too much? Maybe.

Five, I was connected to the purple girl, and through that connection to the [Core].

Six, the [Core] wanted to normalize my mana but couldn't, either because I was too changed or because I wasn't supposed to be around (Like those boxes had said before during the experiment that gave me access to mana)

Seven, to solve this, the world was spilling more mana than it was generating, to try and dissolve my mana by association.

Eight, that wasn't working.

Nine, the [Core] was dying from doing this.

Ten, I couldn't stop this, I needed more time.

In a nutshell...We were screwed. Again.

The world's cascade only got worse and barely 10 years after my return to the past we were at the same point where almost all of humanity had been wiped out.

The problem was still that we did not have enough time, also that by 2030 most of humanity had been wiped out and the survivors were only the people within the labs I had manned to deal with this… and the fact that these people didn’t have troubles with the fact that they didn’t remember any other human face outside these walls. How did that even work?

So while we did our best effort to try and solve this conundrum, in the end, it was obvious that it was all going to hell, even with our best efforts, so we tried to work a way to monitor this problem and find a viable solution. It wasn't my proudest moment, but taking inspiration from the stupid boxes flying around bickering I modeled my monitoring system after them. It seemed like a good idea at the moment!

Prepared with that information I practiced as much as possible, at the return to the past I would need to create the program in a rush using [Mana] and inject it into the gateway that would have just formed to the core of the planet.

It took me almost three years to get that ready besides the extra two years to make the monitoring thing. It was a very bare system, it just had modules to communicate with the Saintsworths server and help us check how it was progressing.

And on the eve of the travel after making sure we had all the information needed, saying our goodbyes to the few survivors (At this point the staff had been reduced to the other two head scientists and myself & Alexa), so we started the process again. I was too comfortable with myself, I admit it. Thought everything would go well, that we would achieve another safe travel. That this time would be the last time.

I was wrong.

What happened was that my presence, my mana, and the information I held… Everything that was me had become too [Heavy]. My full weight crashed into the [Core] that was Alexa, and she bursted like a balloon.

Even at the end of the world, I had kept with my training, I had even become faster than ever, but this was one of those moments where I was too stunned to even react, my hand opened and closed feeling the remains of the crystal shards on my hand.

Around me were remains of Alexa’s body, an arm here, a leg there… The bleeding heart that was Eversoul held Alexa’s head in her arms while she was bleeding away, a metal piece was stuck on his chest, probably one of the hidden weapons that Alexa liked to keep.

The woman was crying as she held the decapitated head of the bioweapon that she had taken as her adoptive daughter.

The other presence in this place was that woman’s best friend, Vivian. Who was nursing her own wounds while grabbing a first aid kit and walking toward Eversoul, the cold beauty was present in her face and mannerisms. But her hands were trembling as she worked trying to apply pressure to wounds that would not stop bleeding. It didn’t help the fact that Eversoul was too busy trying to soothe the decapitated head of my sister.

“Did you know this could happen?” Was the question Eversoul pointed my way.

“Miriam, don’t bother with him, we need to stop the bleeding.” All the while Vivian Kellet didn’t even pay attention to me. Usually, I would say that hurt my pride, but this wasn’t one of those.

“I…We knew that our bodies in this time and space may suffer some decay or be destroyed. We had taken that into consideration when doing the math for this.” Had been my answer, while I was trying to reform the [Core] that had remained of Alexa on my hand.

Was my body wounded? I honestly don’t know, at this point in time, I was dressed using what was closer to a skin-tight body armor under my clothes. So I probably wasn’t.

“Then she made it to the past? She is safe right?” Miriam Eversoul asked, her skin was pale, and under her was a pool of blood, she didn’t have enough strength to hold the head of Alexa anymore.

“No, she did not make it. If she had her core would have remained stable and turned into ash as the travel finished. And I wouldn’t be here either.” Had been my answer as Vivian Kellet glared at me.

“Thank you for the honesty… And I hope you burn in hell for doing this to us all.” Were the passing words of the bleeding heart that was Miriam Eversoul, a woman that had no reason to be working for me, an activist that believed she could eliminate the wars and hunger in the world.

The woman who adopted a bioweapon as her daughter and tried her best to make her [Human].

“Effective immediately I quit.” Vivian Kellet, the woman who worked for me under the promise that I would help her gain a better understanding of her own emotions.

April fourteen 2035.

The day Alexandra Saintsworths died.

The day Miriam Eversoul, mother to Alexa, died hugging the remains of the daughter she didn’t manage to turn human.

The last time I saw Vivian Kellet, did she kill herself? Did she go to the surface of the world?

I do not know, but it was the last time I saw the woman, she probably continued working in another part of the labs, trying to either resurrect her friend and her daughter… Or trying to find a way to kill me.

I had too much work to worry about what it was, so I didn’t worry and focused my effort on trying to make this work. So that is what I did, continue to try and understand what failed, and continue to try and repair…To heal my sister.

It took me another five years to decide this was a fruitless effort, I did recover all the fragments from the crystal that had been part of Alexa’s body. And used mostly the remains of the crystal geode for my experiments. But never managed to travel back in time again. At the end of my experiments, all I had were two crystal gems around the size of a baseball ball each.

By my estimates, I would need one the size of the original crystal geode to travel back in time. And with the way the surface of the planet was…It just wasn’t feasible, the only one that could maybe help me was someone that I hadn’t seen in years. There was no evidence of Kellet at the building, not of her leaving, not of her anywhere after that day.

I…was alone.

What followed were years of attempts to study what I could while I waited for the end of the world, attempts to perfect my monitoring system…

Attempts to make heads or tails of what had gone wrong…

I managed to solve most of the questions I had by 2080, not that it mattered at this point. My program was ready even. And while the atmosphere of the planet had disappeared, and the only remains of civilization was a small bunker room in the deepest parts of the planet where I had moved to live in… It was meaningless.

My body had changed much since that day almost 80 years ago, it was quite interesting, and had Eversoul stayed around she would have gotten very good information since her focus was genetics. I had adapted to the environment, in ways that shouldn’t be possible.

My heart had been replaced by a [Core] similar to the one that Alexa had, my body was sturdier than ever, and my skin was replaced by a scale mail that protected me not only from radiation but from blunt and sharp objects. My eyes could control the amount of light that got into them and had a secondary transparent eyelid that could be used underwater. My hands had sharp nails that could destroy and tear anything that was on my way, but somehow retained the dexterity as if nothing, and the cherry atop this was on my back, I gained a pair of wings that would let me traverse even the most treacherous place… It was annoying the fact that I got a tail too, but that one helped stabilize my flight and was an extra appendage to use.

The activist would get a kick out of this, “Alexanders the greediest human in the world turns into a dragon.” they would say.

Man, I missed human contact so much that I wouldn’t mind them, but on the eve of the year 2100 with nothing more to do, I took the last step I could. As the last surviving human on this cursed planet. I went and took the remaining crystal core from Alexa and fused it into me.

This thing had been attempting to do the travel all these years, I suspected that this was the reason Alexa’s body had been destroyed like that, so maybe if we finished the attempt it would fulfill the travel?

Perhaps I could see my sister one last time?

And what better day to attempt that on my birthday.

September 14th the year 2100, I fully attuned myself to this dragon-like body and to the remains of Alexa.

It was also the same day I managed to recreate the body of my sister on this dead planet. And it didn’t even take that much effort! A win overall.

Oh right, it was the day I died. Well, you win some, you lose some.

What? How am I writing this if I died in a gruesome explosion?

Well, that is a very interesting thing, you see… I didn’t explode, or not my body. I could still think, my body (The human one) was there on the floor grabbing Alexa’s hand. The planet was still spiraling towards death, and yet…

I was also… [Here].

Looking down on the planet, my body is still that of an adult dragon. Other entities eyeing me and the planet down, and then there was [Time]. I could peer into the past, and see what had happened, and how.

I could see myself on my 14th birthday being experimented on. I could see myself when I started this end of the world… I could even see myself being engulfed in the singularity when the planet broke down into a black hole in the year 2150.

And I could see how my actions could affect the planet and the world below.

So I did just that, the first thing I did was turn to the system I had created as [Human] to monitorize, the question was…when could I put this thing. I could use the moment this all started, but as far as I could tell. That wouldn’t give as much information, so I used the second-best place. The time I got infused with the crystal.

And sure enough, it took like a glove, and the monitoring even started working overtime to solve all that it could, the plan of this was simple enough, take control over the distribution of [Mana] and make sure it doesn’t waste more than needed.

Now, the problem was that as soon as it started to take root the [Core] detected it and fought it back, it wasn’t fast enough to kick me out, but it managed to take hold of it faster than I would like, so in turn that mean that I hadn’t managed to take all of it.

In the end, I got only 99.9999% of control over it. Missing this meant that my control would crumble and the world would still end, but at least I should have had more time this time!

Or the version of me that was living there, man. Let me tell you, seeing yourself making mistake after mistake when the world is about to end is annoying, at least I managed to insert into his thick skull the key to access our program early on. And while seeing my other self stress over the number going down had its own advantages….

In the end, it hadn’t been enough, and then there was the problem of the entities that lived within the program, one had been made by me to monitor the thing. And while it saw my past self as an annoying variable… And seemed to be way more paternal than it should be towards Alexa.

The other one was more dangerous, it was outright hostile to us and wanted nothing more than to kill all that was us. In the end that one even managed to perceive me, the true creator, and bared its fangs towards me, and while Alexa and my human side tried to help…

Yeah, that one may have managed to wound me beyond what it was survivable, so I was going to die… Again. This would be what, the third? Fourth? Fifth? I lost count.

To be honest I didn’t expect it to stick this one time either, and had left preparations for my work to continue after, and while meeting the god of reincarnation was interesting (She was hot gothic girlfriend material)... What she told me wasn’t.

“I will offer you reincarnation in another world, all I ask of you is for you to repair the [Core] on that planet. We will grant you all the tools needed to achieve this, we only ask that you fix the problems one of your clansmate made.” She said, all the while looking down at me with her perfectly shaped breasts, wide enough waist to hold, and those fluttering eyes….

I HAD BEEN ALONE FOR GOD KNOWS HOW MUCH, I CAN LEER AT SOMEONE THAT MADE A BODY TO MY TASTE OKAY! SHE CRAFTER THAT BODY TO SUIT MY TASTES!!!

And yes, I do know that entity crafted it to entice me, even after death I was someone who achieved what some may call [Godhood].

“I refuse.” I may have (or not) laughed while saying that, “I am someone who rose to the very top by sheer effort. I will not be made to deal with the problems others made, be it clansmen or not.”

“You would defy me? The one that holds the reins of your future?” The thing asked as its body morphed once more, this time it looked like my human form.

“Either wipe my memory and ask again, or send me back. I have work to do.” Was the last thing I remember saying to that thing.

Why was that the last thing? Well, I may have been overconfident in myself… Just a little, because the next thing I saw was my human body, Alexa’s body. And the laboratory I had worked so many years ago.

And this weird feeling that something was wrong, I had lost some memories, mostly of my time as an entity that transcended human understanding, but it was understandable. How could I even fathom understanding what an entity that was so much more than a [Human] knew, even if the said entity was me.

So using the remaining mastery I had over [Mana] I scanned my body for anomalies.

“MOTHERF#CKER!” And that entity sure took my advice, because I had a few parts missing in me, or to be precise. I only had [Me] remaining.

I had found ways to feel the [Soul] and I didn’t have one of those. I had ways to feel the [Mind] and while I had one, it was decaying fast without a [Soul] to latch onto. And while it seemed as if I had a [Body], this was a simulacrum of a body made of [Mana], like Alexa’s body.

So I was stuck in the simulacrum of Terra Invicta, in a simulacrum of my body. With no soul… And while the [Soul] was overrated, I did need one if I wanted to ascend again. I was checkmated.

The first thing I did was take Alexa’s body and stick it in a test tube with a mana battery to keep her stable, then sit and stare at it while thinking of ways to solve this. Had a [Human] be around I could probably overwrite their soul, no way a [Human] could withstand a [Dragon]. And this wasn’t mere pride speaking, it was [Reality].

The problem is this wasn’t the real [Terra Invicta], it was in the same coordinates, the same reality, the same plane. But the planet had been destroyed centuries ago and no human of this planet survived. So I was stuck, maybe it had been a bad idea to mock the thing that ruled reincarnation…

My salvation arrived on its own in the end though, in the way of a woman that had visited me so many years ago that I had forgotten, Catherine Saintsworths. With a man whose presence threatened to destroy the simulacrum of the planet, we lived on.

And while that was interesting on its own, the problem that Catherine had was more interesting, she was pregnant and the amount of mana in her body threatened to terminate the life within. The man at the side was the reason why, but she somehow managed to create a pseudo-body made of mana to try and bring the pregnancy to term.

The solution was easy enough, I had it already even. My [System] was made to manage the mana of a planet, managing the mana of a baby was easy enough, so I offered something in exchange to save that baby.

It was pretense of course I needed to install the [System] in the baby more than Catherine needed my help, this was my ticket out. I just needed to sneak what little remained of Alexa inside of the system and when they arrived on the other side to jump to a new body.

I needed an AI to manage the system, so I used a template of myself…Or that had been the plan, the stupid system pulled me in leaving only a vestige of myself on the outside to explain, and the connection was being terminated soon enough.

What I found on the other side when the girl was birth was… Interestingly, I had listened to the explanation about [Soulscape] Catherine gave since I would need to take it into consideration, but waking up in the ruined city of Aquila had been more than I could deal with.

So using the material around me I built a secondary place to dwell, this was probably a reflection of myself more than of the baby girl, and it wouldn’t do to cause trauma to the girl that was helping me revive Alexa. We would leave this place soon enough so I could work better in a more simplistic laboratory instead of the reminder of my greatest faults.

Elizabeth Starbright turned five years and that made all hell break loose, somehow my [System] detected a threat to its integrity and awoke the powers sleeping within the soul of the girl to deal with that threat. The girl had an affinity toward [Shadows].

And so my system made use of it, the pressure her father gave almost crushed it to oblivion and I suspect the only reason we didn’t get obliterated was because he feared for his daughter's safety. More study was needed.

Elizabeth turned eleven years old.

And I managed to revive Alexa, or the closest thing I could, we didn’t manage to leave this [Soulscape], and the shadow city below hadn’t left. I suspect that the shadow powers of the girl are keeping it in place somehow, why or for what? I do not know.

The [System] seems to keep us tied to this girl’s soul, so neither I nor Alexa could leave completely, Alexa had gotten most of the remaining [Mana] from Terra Invicta, so her powers were closer to what I had on my prime.

And speaking of that, I had made several simulacrums of myself to manage this place, my main body was resting while we waited for an opportunity to leave and reincarnate ourselves, while other lesser bodies stayed outside and managed everything.

At some point, my main body had turned to the same age as Alexa, but well, if we were going to start a new one, starting as a five-year-old was better than fifty.

Elizabeth was turning seventeen.

I found out why I hadn’t been able to leave this place, when Elizabeth was doing some weird trial by fire from her school that had stressed her soul so much that Elizabeth sank deep within the [Soulscape].

And a new entity took that chance to follow her, they ended up near my main body. I was half expecting either Elizabeth or that new entity to take this chance and kill me.

My simulacrum thought the same since he cleaved this part out when he felt Catherine’s magic trying to separate Elizabeth’s soul from her body. So my simulacrum helped.

It was at the moment when Elizabeth’s soul was released and I noticed how not only the ruined city of Aquila, but also myself followed Elizabeth that I noticed why I had been stuck here. Insight is 20/20 after all.

Elizabeth’s Soul…Had names carved upon it, hundreds, thousands, billions…The last one was one I had written while crying tears of blood.

Alexandra Saintsworths, the cutest sister of them all.

Elizabeth’s soul was my former soul… Elizabeth Starbright was my soul reincarnated in a new world. And she was sorely lacking in strength and power if what I was seeing was to be believed.

I had some ways to sneak into the system that was built upon this world, it was made using the same [System] I installed into Elizabeth. And she would need all the help I could give.

I never feared death, I died too many times already, both figuratively, physically, metaphysically, emotionally… I had lived a long life. Way longer than I had any right. The years I spent as a [God] had been wiped, but I knew that I had ascended at some point, even if no evidence was around.

I felt bad for Alexa since she seemed to have been shunted into a pocket dimension, but she had Terra Invicta’s power to help her, so she would be fine. She was my sister.

But Elizabeth?

Well, she would need some help, was I getting sentimental? Was I using this as a chance to perhaps find a way to atone? YOU BETCHA I’M!

But I didn’t need to atone, I didn’t need to help her. I chose to do both of them anyway. I have been called many times, some I deserved, some I didn't. But I did my best to try and leave a better world than what I found... I failed miserably at that, but maybe this time it would be different...

Elizabeth had many things I didn't have, parents who loved her and would sacrifice themselves before they sacrificed their daughter. Friends that looked after her, people that cared for her...

So yes, I would help her. I will help her. This will be my farewell letter, this version of me will cease to exist. I will turn myself into nutrients to nurture Elizabeth's Soul.

I will awaken the legacy within my [Blood], within this cursed and forsaken lineage made with the blood of a thousand innocent... The power I earned after everything in my [World] died and was used to try and help me save it... I will pass it on to someone who perhaps will have a better time doing well.

She will [Inherit] my wish, Elizabeth Starbright will be the shining star of hope for this new era.

So if you reading this, if you are one of those souls that reincarnated from Terra Invicta…

I’m sorry, and I hope life treats you better than it ever did to me.

And if you ever see Alexa around, give her some mangoes, the girl loves them for some reason.

And if you ever see me around… Well… Don’t mind me too much. I’m just a little guy doing his best.

Alexanders Saintsworth, Nascent Dragon God, Saintsworth’s Conglomerate CEO, Brother of the cutest little girl in all the multiverses explored.

The man who did his best to try and save the world...And failed.

The man who sincerely hopes those who follow after him have an easier life.

The Dragon of Calamity.