SYSTEM ASCENSION

It wasn’t pain.

Pain belonged to living things.

This was the absence of the rules that allowed pain to exist.

At first, the body disappears.

Flesh forgets it is flesh. Bones forget they were ever meant to hold weight. Blood loses the idea of flowing.

Then the mind follows.

Thoughts stop having beginnings and endings. A memory becomes the future. Tomorrow becomes childhood. A thousand years pass between two heartbeats, yet the heartbeat never arrives.

Stand in a place where "before" and "after" have never existed.

Seeing everything and nothing.

Ageing and dying.

Reserving and repeating and reliving and regressing and nothing, but everything.

Eventually becomes a meaningless word.

There is no body.

No death.

Because death requires someone to die.

Instead, an observer to every possibility at once.

There is no distance.

There is no location.

There is no "somewhere."

You are simply aware.

And awareness becomes unbearable—not because there is too much to see, but because there is nothing left that cannot be seen.

You see civilizations rise from dust.

You see them before they existed.

You see their first language being spoken.

You see the last word of that language before its first word is ever created.

You watch oceans form.

You watch them evaporate.

You watch the planet before the ocean existed.

You watch the planet after it has ceased to exist.

Then you look closer.

There are billions of worlds.

Then trillions.

Worlds where humanity never appeared.

Worlds where humanity conquered the stars.

Worlds where you were never born.

Worlds where you were born as someone else.

Worlds where you became a king.

A murderer.

A saint.

A stranger.

A corpse.

A god.

A forgotten child.

Every possibility exists.

Not one after another.

All at once.

You begin to understand why the Void has no beginning.

Beginning implies something came before it.

But there is no before.

There is only existence—

and everything that could have existed.

Then even that distinction disappears.

You see cause and effect collapse into one another.

The rain falls because the ground is wet.

The ground is wet because the rain fell.

The tree exists because the seed grew.

The seed exists because the tree existed.

Every cause becomes its own consequence.

Every consequence becomes its own cause.

There is no first event.

There never was.

And suddenly, you understand something terrifying.

The universe was never moving forward.

It was only revealing itself.

Every moment that ever existed is still happening.

Every moment that will exist is already happening.

Every moment that could have existed is happening somewhere beyond the boundary of possibility.

Past.

Present.

Future.

They were never separate things.

They were merely different ways a limited mind understood the same infinite existence.

Then your mind expands again.

You can look toward yesterday.

You can look toward tomorrow.

You can look toward a future that will never happen.

You can look toward a past that never happened.

And all of them are equally real.

You reach for one.

You touch another.

You remember both.

Then you realize your hand never moved.

Because movement requires distance.

Distance requires space.

Space requires separation.

And there is no separation here.

There is only everything.

Then comes the strangest part.

You begin seeing yourself.

Not one self.

Every self.

The child you were.

The person you became.

The person you could have become.

The person you almost became.

The person who made every different choice.

The person who never made any choice.

Millions of versions.

Billions.

More than numbers can describe.

You watch them live.

You watch them die.

You watch them make the same mistake.

You watch them avoid it.

You watch one version save a world.

Another destroy one.

Another simply sit beneath a tree and grow old without ever knowing any of this existed.

And slowly, you understand.

None of them is the original.

Because there was never an original.

There was only possibility.

And possibility has no identity.

You age.

You regress.

You repeat.

You relive.

You forget.

You remember forgetting.

You forget that you remembered.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Not because time loops.

Because every version of time is happening simultaneously.

Eventually, even "again" becomes meaningless.

There is no repetition.

There is only existence seen from different directions.

Then something changes.

You stop watching.

You become aware that something has been watching you.

The Void.

Not a creature.

Not a god.

Not a consciousness.

Something older than the distinction between consciousness and nothingness.

And you finally understand why it is called the Void.

Not because it contains nothing.

Because it contains everything without belonging to any of it.

The Void does not consume.

It does not destroy.

It does not erase.

It simply removes the boundaries that allow one thing to remain separate from another.

Life becomes death.

Death becomes birth.

Beginning becomes ending.

Ending becomes beginning.

Memory becomes prophecy.

Prophecy becomes memory.

You become the observer.

The observed.

The observation.

And then even those words disappear.

There is no body.

No name.

No purpose.

There is only the rhythm.

A pulse without a heart.

A beat without time.

A beginning without an origin.

An ending without conclusion.

And somewhere within that endless rhythm, something that was once you understood the final truth:

The Void was never taking you into itself.

You have always been part of it.

You simply hadn’t remembered.

Then even that thought disappears.

And the rhythm continues.

[Name: Elias Morail]

[Age: 17]

[Height: 6’6]

[Weight: 100kg]

[Species: Mortal?]

[Occupation: S rank raider]

[Status: Chosen/Sector seven sole survivor]

[Ability: Creation]

[Number of mission: 09/10]

CORE STATS

[Strength: 41/50]

[Agility: 49/50]

[Vitality: ???/50]

[Endurance: 30/50]

[Will power: 40/50]

[Luck: 15/50]

[Stamina: 50/50]

[Talent grade: S]

[System update!]

[Number of mission: 10/10]

[Chosen> Upholder]

[Reevaluation in progress...]

[00:03]

[00:02]

[00:01]

[Re-evaluation complete]

[Ability unlocked!]

[Ability: Void]

[Description: The void is not absence, but a truth too vast for the mortal tongue]

[Xp unlocked]

[Description: Used to upgrade the void]

[Armory unlocked!]

[Name: Elias Morail]

[Age: 17]

[Height: 6’7]

[Weight: 100kg]

[Species: Halfling][Description: A Qud and a human]

[Occupation: S rank raider]

[Status: Upholder/Sector seven sole survivor]

[Ability: Creation]

[System ability: Void]

[Level:01]

[Xp: 0/100]

[Skill: void erase]

CORE STATS

[Strength: 41/100]

[Agility: 49/100]

[Vitality: ???/100]

[Endurance: 30/100]

[Will power: 40/100]

[Luck: 15/100]

[Talent grade: S]

COMBAT STATS

[HP: 40/100]

[Stamina: 50/100]

"..."

The world pulled before his eyes. The sun rose in the west and set on the east. Waters left the ground and returned to the sky. Trees returned to being plants. Structures diminished systematically and his eyes opened in a cold place.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

He blinked.

"Move them!"

As his eyes adjusted to the scene, he became aware of his condition. Strapped in a way too absurd for even a criminal, he laid on the sand. He was gagged, chained and even blindfolded, although it didn’t stop him from seeing.

People were being dragged along, but he seemed to be the only unmoving one.

"This is a jackpot!" A man grinned.

Someone came closer and tugged the chain strapped to him, but another one interrupted.

"Don’t touch that one! Except you want to end up like this ones were taking in."

The person let go of the chain, and asked.

"Why? He’s just a child."

The one who had warned him laughed. "Just a child? He murdered everyone here, including his own mother. That thing is a killing machine."

Elias blinked again.

He recognised this scene. Barely.

"Hmph!"

They flinched.

"Shit. He’s awake!"

His hand scraped against the sand, finger digging into dirt. He tried to force himself up, but a kick to the side, sending him sliding several feet away.

"Why did you do that?!" One panicked.

"Shut up!" The one who had kicked him yelled. "It’s a bigger problem if he stands up."

He twitched as the newfound pain shot through the side of his rib. The chain clang heavily cutting off his air flow.

"Urgh! Aah..."

He blinked again, and then realised that he had been kicked into a pile of bodies. Dead bodies precisely. They felt cold against his skin.

He turned his head and met eye to eye with a lady. She was dead, but her gaze was firm. Recognition flashed his eyes and memories flashed his head.

*"Good morning, young master."*

"Eiisa?"

He raised his head. Another one lay dead.

*"I have prepared your clothes, young master!"*

"... Rita..."

He continued to look at all of them. His personal maidens. His bodyguards. The random mercenary had only spoken to once. They were his people. Furthermore, he had killed them with his own hands.

The place the people were being transported into was a huge camp, and from that camp, he could see someone approaching.

A man, face hidden under the darkness of the night, holding a little girl. The girl held a little teddy bear, mouth widened into a grin.

The people bowed to greet him, and he regarded the boy with clinical detachment.

"This is him?"

"Yes sir," someone stepped forward. "He was the one who killed everyone here."

The man looked around, then back at the boy.

"Bring me the tester."

The device had already been prepared. Someone came forward and handed it over to him. He let go of the little girl, and crouched before the boy.

Elias instinctively tried to move, but the man grabbed him by the hair and yanked him back.

"Urgh! Let me go!"

The man held the device against his neck. Two needle spout of it and pierced into his neck. The device chimed and began reading.

Silence followed for a moment, broken only by the device. The chiming soon got louder and the readings got faster. More people held their breaths. Eventually, the beeping got so loud that the man had to pull it out of his neck.

"Urgh!"

"He’s an S rank." The man stood up and handed the tester over to his assistant. Then he wiped his hand with a piece of cloth and threw it down.

"What should we do with the corpses sir?"

"Even dead, they still give off energy. Like I suspect, the Black-eyed are built differently. Take them to my lab for further testing."

"Yes sir!"

"As for the boy," he glanced at Elias, eyes filled with disdain. "Take him to the pit. He needs a little bit of a lesson."

Two men came closer. They grabbed the chain and began to pull him away. His eyes remained on the man for a moment before his gaze brushed to one of the bodies dragged away.

A woman. Veil off. Skin cold.

His eyes widened.

’Mother?’

"HMMP! MMM!"

They yanked the chain harder, further away from his mother’s corpse. He could only reach blindly till they got to the edge of the pit and tossed him in.

While he had expected to hit the ground, some bindings shot out of the wall and went around his body, suspending him in the air.

It went around his neck, face, waist, leg and hands. Whenever he yanked it, it’ll grow tighter.

"You shouldn’t do that," a voice muttered.

He raised his head, and saw another person there beside him.

"It gets really tight if you try," she chuckled softly. "You could break your bones."

He stopped struggling.

"That’s good enough." She tilted her head.

"You must be new here. Stubborn children face this."

"..."

"I feel like you can see me even with those bindings around your face."

"..."

"I guess you can." She shifted slightly.

"I’m Yvon...ten. Call me ten."

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