" We did it eh Ozzy, we conquered this pocket as well, you and me we are brothers for life! " Max's voice echoed through the boundless void of the Chaos Realm.
Drax, who understood that Ozzy was a small rock that Max had grown attached to, was the only one who realised that Max's mental state was deteriorating at a very fast pace and that his master was tethering on the edge between sanity and insanity.
Max was almost constantly using his brain to its fullest, he had done such deep thinking constantly for the past few years that now his brain muscles literally hurt from overexertion.
He had successfully stabilised pocket number 420, a staggering number of pockets yet there seemed to be no end in sight.
On one end he was determined to see it through, on the other Drax was beginning to question if he could see it through.
Max's voice bore the unmistakable imprint of exhaustion, the toll of his relentless struggle against the ever-changing laws of the realm.
His mind was teetering on the brink of insanity, his sanity stretched thin, much like a worn-out thread on the verge of snapping.
As Max rested amidst the stability he had created, his mind cast back to the time he had spent in the Chaos Realm. It felt like decades had slipped by since he had been thrust into this labyrinth of unpredictable laws. Every passing moment seemed to stretch into hours, days morphing into months, and years seemingly flowing like centuries. His progress, which initially had been swift, had slowed to a crawl in recent years. From stabilising multiple pockets a day, he was now struggling to bring one pocket under his control every three to four months.
Max had aged, both mentally and physically. The youthful vigour he once carried had faded, replaced by a weary wisdom that only comes from decades of relentless trials and tribulations. His once vibrant hair had turned grey, and his muscular body had grown lean, showing signs of an age he hadn't truly lived yet. The once-energetic young man was now an old, tired warrior, battling not just the chaos realm but his own wavering sanity.
" Good job Max, if you want to freshen up we can have a spar in the mirror world " Drax suggested but Max shot him down.
" I don't wanna fight grandpa, I'm gonna celebrate with Ozzy, we are going to play catch " Max said as he began tossing a small rock and catching it again and again, feeling happy that with the stable laws of gravity he was falling right back in his palms.
In a happy throw, he lifted the rock a bit too high and it was sucked into a spacial portal and lost to the chaos realm as the loss of his imaginary rock friend devastated Max who used Agni-Astra's divine attack in frustration, blowing his entire surrounding up in flames.
" OZZY NO! "
Max's attack was useless as it was sucked into several spacial pockets and wiped clean, yet when he saw the pattern of how his attack was being sucked, he suddenly had a rare moment of epiphany as his whole body began to tremble.
" It's all connected, it's all connected, mother**** They are the same! " Max said as he struggled to his feet and began waving his hands like a madman.
Max's fatigue weighed heavy upon him as his old body could no longer support the burden of using divine attacks, but despite the discomfort Max began writing furiously on the sand below.
The laws of the Chaos Realm, of gravity, time, and space, were not disparate entities. They were interwoven in an intricate dance of chaos, each influencing the others, converging and diverging in unpredictable patterns.
This epiphany, however, did not bring the comfort of understanding. Rather, it unveiled a new layer of complexity, a twist in the labyrinthine enigma he was striving to unravel.
Max's mind, already strained to its limits, struggled to encompass this new reality. He was trying to tune three instruments at once, each one affecting the tone of the others, creating a discordant symphony of confusion. The implications of this were devastating. Each tweak in the gravity of a pocket disrupted the flow of time, warping the fabric of space along with it. The gravity, the pull of existence, stretched and compressed space, accelerating and decelerating time in unpredictable ways.
These insights did not come easily. Max's sanity was stretched thin, his mind teetering on the brink of madness. He existed in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance, his logic and intuition pulling him in different directions. Every theorem he crafted, every hypothesis he formed, dissolved into a puddle of contradictions. Every success he achieved came with a caveat of a new paradox.
With this new understanding, instead of breaking the shining runes of gravity and time this time to travel to a new pocket, Max tried to merge the two different shining runes into one as he pushed them towards each other using wind manipulation.
It was a ludicrous attempt, an act of sheer desperation. Every fiber of his being screamed against it, a warning bell echoing in the silent expanse of the realm. Yet, in that moment of insanity, he felt a strange sense of clarity.
As he pushed the two runes towards each other, he noticed a ripple effect. Time started racing, and space began to warp erratically. It was a spectacle of utter pandemonium, a sight so terrifying yet so enlightening.
That was when it hit him. The three laws were interconnected, each one a puppet master, and a puppet at the same time.
They were not just rules governing the chaos realm; they were the chaos realm. This was not a revelation of joy but one of fear and understanding. He was not dealing with separate entities; he was facing an intricately entwined puzzle.
In his race for godhood, he had overlooked the most basic tenet: In chaos, as in everything else, there is a pattern, a logic.
It was an intricate dance of cosmic forces, a ballet of chaos. The gravity, time, and space were the dancers, each influencing the rhythm of the others, each creating ripples that were felt by the other two.
The revelation shattered his perception, forcing him to rethink his approach. The way forward was not through conquering each law individually, but by understanding their symphony, their intertwined dance. He had to become a conductor of this cosmic orchestra, harmonising the discordant notes into a symphony of stability.
The path was treacherous, laden with uncertainty and unpredictability. His sanity hung by a thread, swaying in the tempest of chaos. But Max was not ready to succumb yet.
For the first time in decades he felt like he could figure out the whole puzzle in one go and he was willing to risk it all to make that a reality.
—-----
/// A/N - Chapter 10/10 and that's a wrap.
Thank You everyone for contributing to this mass release event-
It's days like there where I realise how blessed I am to have amazing fans like you all who support my work so consistently.
Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did ///
Updat𝓮d from freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.co(m)