Chapter 793: The Eternal Conundrum
Suddenly, the doors to the hall swung inward, and in walked a woman clad in a long black gown, her messy black hair shimmering with countless sparkling dots, like stars scattered across the night sky.
As a side note, every one of those shining specks in her hair was an actual star.
Anyway, like all existences who had reached a sufficiently high Existence Realm, she possessed a stunning appearance, flawlessly sculpted features, and wore an expression of sheer exhaustion.
Just like her twin already seated at the table, she, Julio, the Eternal of Death and Darkness, had special eyes, a visual effect of her Conceptual Authority.
Her pupils were shaped like stars.
The moment she entered, Akasha lifted his head from the book he’d been reading and narrowed his eyes.
"You’re late, Julio."
"Dude, relax. What’s the big deal about being a little late? These meetings are just a formality anyway, and we’re all very busy."
She reached her throne and dropped into it with a heavy sigh, grumbling to herself all the way.
"A stupid Lich reached Ultimate and thought he could rule the entire Multiverse, so I had to deal with an outbreak of Undead Beasts of the END across 725 Universes.
I’ve only just managed to patch things up, and now I need to monitor the situation to make sure no complications arise later on."
After finishing, Julio lifted her gaze toward Akasha, one eyebrow raised.
"And you, didn’t someone just try to destroy the Fourth Multiverse’s Akashic Records about..."
She paused, held up her fingers to count, then continued.
"...125 hours ago? Why does my database still have a record of their existence?"
In other words, why are they not dead yet?
"It’s far more efficient to subdue them and put them to work for billions of years than to kill them outright," Akasha replied, snapping his book shut.
"It also functions as a fitting punishment. Forcing them to work with the very thing they tried to destroy."
"That doesn’t sound efficient to me," Julio countered.
"They’d be full of resentment and would likely slack off or even attempt to sabotage the system, resulting in poor output. It’s far more effective to eliminate them permanently and move on."
At that remark, Roland, who had just finished apprehending the defaulters, turned his attention to her and spoke with a sigh.
"Julio, permanently eliminating the source of every problem isn’t always the best answer. That very mindset is what came back to bite you during the Zanerth Universe’s Immortal Anomaly incident."
His words drew surprised looks from half the Eternals in the room, a mix of disbelief and admiration on their faces at how casually he brought up a topic most considered taboo in Julio’s presence.
Unsurprisingly, Julio’s tired expression became one of cold fury as she turned to Roland with a glare.
"Can you NOT remind me of Jamie FUCKING Westley?"
"I wasn’t reminding you of Westley. I was just saying it’s about time you reconsidered your approach. Be a little more flexible, and things would run a lot smoother for you," Roland replied calmly, completely unfazed by her death glare, and that calm demeanour only seemed to irritate her further.
"You’re not going to tell me how to do my job," Julio snapped. "You do things your way, and I’ll handle mine my way, which, might I add, has resulted in far fewer complications than whatever it is you’re suggesting."
Just as Roland was about to counter, Ranus, still playing his Monopoly game, cut in.
"You have to admit, he does have a point, Julio."
"What?" Her gaze snapped to him, voice still cold, but Ranus wasn’t bothered.
"Your handling of the Westley situation was poor," he said flatly. "Because of that, the Eternals, as a Cosmic Power, are not allied with the individual who wields the Fourth Strongest Rule Breaker, a sword capable of allowing a lower-dimensional existence to completely kill a higher-dimensional one.
Did I mention that Westley also has several other triple-digit Rule Breakers in that pocket universe of his?
Not to mention the sheer amount of Influence he now holds across the Cosmos..."
At that, Roland glanced toward Ranus and spoke.
"It does irk me to admit it, but in certain parts of the Cosmos, Westley holds more influence than we do."
Ranus gave a small nod of agreement, rolling his virtual dice as he continued.
"In some regions of the Cosmos that don’t even know we exist, he does.
And I can name five separate occasions where that Influence could have saved us millions of years of work, if we had been allied with him."
Finally, Ranus looked up from the tablet and met Julio’s gaze.
"Unfortunately, his first impression of us involved being reduced to dust—three times.
If not for my intervention and the fact that Angela Cathedral hates the Aggressors just as much as she hates us, Azi Dhaka and Thizdona would have already snatched him up.
And I’m sure you can imagine just how catastrophically that would’ve ended in our last battle with them."
Not only did he wield a sword powerful enough to threaten beings on their level despite the overwhelming difference in power, but his personal strength was unparalleled within his own Existence Realm.
If he hadn’t been preoccupied with his own problems in Zanerth and had chosen to side with the Aggressors, the Eternals would’ve suffered far heavier losses in that battle, and he would’ve been perfectly fine, because nothing done to him could have killed him.
He wasn’t called the Immortal Anomaly for no reason.
"I’ve said too much and now it’s starting to sound like a lecture. Just take a moment to actually consider Roland’s words and tweak your system a little.
You may be dealing with fewer issues overall, but the few you do have are far more severe than the hundreds of minor problems you’d be juggling if you were just a bit more flexible.
As the humans say, just because I don’t like you doesn’t mean we can’t do business.
You could try taking a page from Akasha, put the defaulters to work, slap collars on their necks. It’d lighten your workload, and you wouldn’t be walking around looking like the first marathon runner right before they dropped dead."
As he finished speaking, he shut off his tablet and set it down on the table, properly sitting upright as he cut Akasha off just as he was about to speak.
"Hold on, we can talk about this later, once those who aren’t involved have left."
He then turned toward the sleeping woman beside him, reaching out to tap her as he spoke.
"Raya, nap time is ov—!"
*BAM!!
The woman he was trying to wake suddenly jerked upright, her knees slamming into the underside of the table as she sat up, looking around with wide eyes.
"Did you just—?!"
She froze mid-sentence the moment she caught sight of the confused looks on the faces around her, quickly realising that no one else had noticed what she did.
When she turned to Ranus with a bit of hope, hoping at least he might have sensed it, she was met only with his equally puzzled expression, and knew, then, that not even he had seen it.
"What’s wrong?" Ranus asked, concern clear in his voice. But she wasn’t listening anymore.
’None of them noticed... then why did I?
Is it because I’m a shell of THEIR...’
The thought dissolved before it finished, and without saying a word, she stood abruptly, created a door before her, and, ignoring the surprised calls of the other Eternals, stepped through and vanished from Elo Katra.
◇ ◇ ◇
Her ’door’ led her directly into the Origin Multiverse, specifically, into the domain of someone who, by all accounts, should have been her greatest enemy.
The Progenitor Titan and Aggressor of Creation, Hyperion.
But setting aside the question of how she had direct access to Hyperion’s Universe, the Titan Universe of the Origin Multiverse, she hadn’t come for Hyperion. She was here for someone else, someone who would likely be within Hyperion’s domain.
And mere moments after she arrived, the First Progenitor, who had just been accused of shifting the Time Axis of the Cosmos, stepped in through a spatial gate, both of them arriving almost simultaneously before a very perplexed Hyperion.
"...did we have something scheduled?"
The man’s eyes, molten gold like his hair, held visible confusion. But before the First Progenitor could utter a word, the Eternal of Creation spoke up.
"You..." she began, eyes fixed on the First Progenitor.
"Did you do something...?"
"..."
Silence momentarily reigned.
Then, as the First Progenitor pieced together the reason behind her question, their eyes slowly narrowed, and for the first time in over a trillion years, both the Aggressor and the Eternal of Creation witnessed the sight of the ever-composed First Progenitor displaying a negative emotion.
ANGER.
"For the love of Balance, why the fuck do you all assume I’m responsible every time something happens?!
I haven’t done a damn thing since I blocked the Cosmos’ S.O.S messages! NOTHING, alright? NOT. A. THING!
Go track down whoever actually messed with the time axis and leave me the fuck alone!"
With that outburst, the First Progenitor turned and stepped back through the same gate they had entered from, leaving the other two standing there, stunned.
Not only had the First Progenitor just admitted to being the one who blocked the Prophecies that predated Arthur’s birth, but even more alarming was how they referred to those Prophecies as S.O.S messages.
S.O.S messages were only ever sent when there was real danger.
’Why would the Cosmos be trying to send out S.O.S messages about the birth of a Progenitor?’
But the only one who knew the answer to that had already stormed out of the Origin Multiverse in a rare display of anger, and so, no one could answer that question.
◇ ◇ ◇
They reappeared in the dark void that stretched endlessly across the infinite Outerverse, the region of the Cosmos that existed outside all multiverses, and cast their gaze downward at the vast expanse of stacked dimensions and universes that was the Origin Multiverse.
"Tsk... just what kind of troublemaker do they take me for? I only just recovered from that stunt I pulled, and they seriously believe I’d be capable of pulling off something on that scale again?"
The Prophecies—no, the S.O.S messages of the Cosmos itself—sent out to warn every existence across every universe, were not the kind of thing anyone could tamper with.
Especially not the First Progenitor, an Envoy of Balance, whose actions in ’taking a side’ had nearly triggered a cosmic recursion.
Sighing and calming down a bit, the First Progenitor considered all the possibilities and reached a conclusion.
There was someone out there, someone capable of doing such a thing, whether knowingly or unknowingly, and without facing any real consequences for it.
They had already done it twice, at that, and they would do it again in the future.
’However, checking on them now would basically expose their existence to THOSE two. And that’s something that absolutely cannot be allowed.’
Even so—
Turning their gaze toward the Numbered Multiverses, the First Progenitor asked internally,
’Just what the hell are you doing, "Last"?’
