บท 1: The Koreans were right!

My life has been on a downward spiral out of control, but I've got no one but myself to blame, I mean I have some childhood trauma, but who doesn't? and once you reach a certain age you need to start owning your mess and fight to fix your stuff, but..*sighhhhh* It's not that easy! I'm having what I can only assume to be either depression or the embodiment of the sin of sloth. I've got no motivation to fix my life even if I know how to... Not that I know, just saying, ok?... I do love myself enough not to consider suicide, or is it laziness about killing myself?, well for sure I do not want to cause my parents and siblings pain, so maybe I can say that it's because of that. Well, the point is that I'm stably depressed, yes that's my state!

But then this happened! Portals, rifts, or space wounds (Ha! I like that one!), whatever you want to call them, everywhere, different monsters start crossing, the military shows up... and at least our weapons are effective! That's something, imagine the clusterfuck if that wasn't the case! The world almost collapsed but we held on! Well not me, I'm too stably depressed to actively secure my safety but I got lucky. When things started to calm down we discovered that the rifts were connected to other galaxies, that we were being invaded, and that that was the first wave...Shit!

Time moves on, and the whole world unites, who would have thought that humanity could achieve world peace through a declaration of war on other civilizations, a common enemy? Not me and certainly not everybody else!

After enlisting about 100% of the men's population in the world above the age of 15 feminism officially is banned!... My rights!!!... a moment of silence for equality...The expeditions start! And as you guessed it hehehehehehhe! I'm above the age of 15. Well... all I can tell you is that it was hell! So much death! So much gore I thought I was in a Quentin Tarantino movie, I have no idea how and why I am still alive, Hahhh... The good(?) thing is that my stable depression leveled up! Now it is max level, but I have found a purpose, the purpose of killing alien invaders... Hey! It's something, at least. After about a 10-year expedition I was able to return home to visit my family for about 1 month... yeah don't complain this is the apocalypse, people have no rights.

I visited home and after a month of decompression, I was back to the frying pan... Honestly, why haven't I killed myself?... No, no, no, no, NO! I've got to protect my home! Things are finally normalizing back on Earth! I've got to protect my family, my friends, my planet! YES!! This is about more than me, if I don't want to live for myself I will live for my people, as a wise, bald, and muscular man once said -"You don't turn your back on the family."

Hey! At least I've got my comics, that really was what's kept me sane(?) until now. Every time I come back from the battlefield I read my comics and imagine myself as the phoenix host setting fire to these fucking galaxies! YEAH!!!!! FIRE TO THE HEATHENS!!!.....Ufffff! I needed that out.

5 more years on the battlefield and that's when it happened, people started to develop "Abilities", guys thinking faster than computers, bulletproof, stronger, faster... It started small and natural at first, just upgrades to your natural capabilities, no flying, no shooting lasers.

But that was all the advantage that we needed, like berserkers we fought! and fought! and fought! And executed the biggest genocide of the universe, there was no peace talking, no surrendering, no prisoners, just annihilation! And then... we were back home, finally back home.

I've never cried so much since then! Seeing my now old man and mother, my sisters made it worth it! And through all of that, I finally was able to declare that I was stably normal(?), a little bit of PTSD of course, but that's just the new flu for us war veterans...

Turns out that the exposure to the environment of the aliens' home galaxies was the reason for our powers. My power was one of the first ones to develop some type of metaphysical property, whatever I killed empowered my soul, and that allowed me to see the world with different filters, think faster, smarter, react faster, and slightly enhance my body.

By the end of the war, I could levitate some small objects, and listen to some whispers which I later discovered were thoughts, my eyes could see a spectrum never before seen, or discovered before. I was better than before, that's for sure!

1 year after the war, we, my family and I, were celebrating the anniversary of the end of the war and my successful recovery from PTSD, I am proud to declare that I'm a stable normal(?) human(?) with no more mental disorders. Humanity has advanced greatly as is expected of a post-war society.

The government is now united, global wide; and crime is at an all-time low never seen before. Life is good! Though recently there have been some reports of some veterans found as husks in their homes, no one knew the reason behind it, but is concerning enough.

4 months later I found the reason, turns out a power developed that allowed a crazy and traumatized soldier to absorb other's abilities, a friend of his with the power to recognize abilities was the one that informed the higher-ups, during the war his power was used on the critically wounded so that their power could be used on the efforts on the front, no problem there; but his friend died and after using his power on him he was left deeply traumatized, later on, it was discovered that when the powers are not willingly shared a husk of a human is left instead of a normal corpse. There was a worldwide manhunt but he was never found.

3 months after that I found the bastard in my house holding my family hostage. Apparently, he can't strengthen the abilities after absorbing them so he wants me to detonate some warheads that he set around the whole continent taking advantage of his conveniently stolen powers, empower me, and then absorb my power to elevate himself as the new benevolent god of humanity... His words, not mine.

*Sighhhh*-… My family or my life was never a problem, but my family against the life of everyone on the continent and birthing a "new god"; left to fuck up the world, is a different matter.

He saw my hesitation and shot my mother... and within my despair and the agony of my sisters and father I discovered a third option, my life and his with the whole continent.

Maybe I was not so stable at that moment, but I would rather die with him than my family with us, and there was no path for the survival of my family at the moment, I could tell he was stronger than me, that bastard made sure of that.

So the plan was simple I blow up everyone on the continent and when I power up I kill the bastard, later I'll surrender myself and I'll be executed. At last, I hope that my family is later on not implicated in my disgrace.

The problem was that when I detonated the warheads killing more than 1 billion people, my soul and ability overloaded, my body blew up and my soul was left absorbing everything, yeah... everything... the bastard... the floor... the ceiling... the air... the space...

...

... my family...

...

... the continent... the world... the solar system... the Milky Way...

I couldn't stop it, all I could do was observe and ingrain the memory in my perfected soul memory.

I couldn't feel much because without a body my soul didn't know how to "feel", I could "see" because that was one of the first abilities my soul displayed, the ability to "see".

I couldn't scream because without a body my soul didn't know how to "talk", god knows how much I needed to scream, well, if there was a god, so I telepathically shouted. Not that there was anyone left to hear me.

In my desperation, I tried to hold the space with my telekinesis but I couldn't, not even with my body intact I could have held space, so I tried to use my willpower to keep the universe together, to stop absorbing.

To no avail, as one might have imagined; and then, then there was 'THE VOID', not the void of space that you normally find outside of your planet, but the void of existence.

And my soul tried to absorb that shit. Never have I ever nor will I ever feel that pain. Like being sliced into atoms while being kept forcefully alive and feeling every atom in your newly atomized body while it reconstructs, maybe I shouldn't call it pain, maybe it was a combination of sensory overload and pain. But even in that state, all I could hope for was my death, as it was only fair after being responsible for the destruction of my universe.

Time passed... time? Well, you see there's no time if it doesn't exist, so...mmmm 'something' similar to time passed and I woke up, or more like became aware.

My new shape was a perfectly well-rounded 'void' mass, Doesn't make sense right? A mass of nothing? well, a sphere... mmm... maybe not because there's no space in the void so I can't have a shape, I guess the correct expression is that I perceived myself as a sphere of the void, in which what's inside the boundaries of the sphere was mine, my soul... void soul? or soul of the void?

So much time?... so much "something" has gone that I feel like I'm losing myself, yet my "newly" empowered soul manages to keep my "core" self intact every time "I" wake up.

It took me a long period of "something" to process the death of my everything and then the death of my universe, and an even longer period of "something" to try to move on with my amortal "life", another period of "something" to learn how to "move" in the void.

After three long, long periods of "something" I found the first resident of the void, they(?) were not friendly, they had no soul and even though mine was weird, normal, and paradoxical they wanted my soul.

So I run(?) as far(?) as I could. It took me five "something" to finally escape.

I began to formulate ways of attacking, hiding, and protecting myself from the void creatures. I created my "Void breath" which expelled some of my void in my soul and that I discovered was harmful to the creatures, I created shielding resembling scales with my void hardened on the exterior of my soul, and I created a "mist" from my void that hid my soul in THE VOID, the mist acted like a poison to soulless creatures, not very effective, but effective enough to hide me.

After the pass of some "something" I hunted my first creature, which eventually reformed itself, proving my pointless endeavor; but it helped me pass the "something".

It was funny capturing the creatures and then riding them into the sunset, of course, the imaginary sunset.

Sometimes I would force them to be my progeny(?) and I would raise them until college or until they turn ungrateful. At least I forced the creatures to act this way, I always wondered about how I would do as a father.

Sometimes I would gather them and then manipulate the energy of the void to create a battlefield like the one in the Lord of The Rings on the final battle, where the good guys were surrounded by the bad guys, the eye of Sauron in the background, the volcano next to it.

I played Aragorn and fought them, the void creatures, my playmates, until I had to escape because I gathered too many.

Yeah, I eventually discovered how to manipulate what I call the Void Energy, which funnily enough encapsulates all forms of energy, that I knew of and that I didn't, you could use it to create things but I never figured out how to create a universal barrier in order to create my own universe, since the things I created eventually dispersed due to the influence of The Void, I think that within a universal barrier maybe they would not disperse but I would never know.

Eventually, I discovered the other universes, or multiverses in some cases, and I was thrilled, happy, excited, and desperate for some soul interaction, yeah I didn't care if it was an alien invader or a tree, I realized then how lonely I've been, as if my progeny(?), the void creatures I forced to play the role, never mentioned it.

The problem was that the void creatures were actively attacking the multiversal barrier so a war was being held against the residents of said multiverse. If I wanted to go in I couldn't do so looking like a scaled blob of void, so I settled for a dragon of void. Because who wouldn't like a dragon, dragons are cool, and I personally would be more afraid of a universal-size person than a universal-size dragon; maybe I'm not completely sane anymore, who would've thought?

I had no luck, as soon as I "killed" the void creatures and tried to get near the locals, to communicate, an ancestor-looking old guy started to bleed from everywhere and then sacrificed his life to send a weird attack that speared my exterior shape but that my soul staved off until it ceased to exist. Later after some trial and error, I figured out that my presence exerted pressure on the surroundings, which is most likely interpreted as hostility.

Again after a long training arc in order to control my presence, I came back to said multiverse to try again to establish relations, but turns out that longer than I planned had passed since I got just in time to see the end of that multiverse.

Well...

Well... What about my possible friends? What about my loneliness?

...

Well, there's no other choice but to look for another, and always stay positive, that's my motto, expect good things but be prepared for the ending of your universe at the hands of a power-hungry psychopath with designs of grandeur and godhood!

A positive outlook keeps the doctor away! But what would I not give to talk to a doctor now? *sighhhhhh*... Ok! Let's look for another multiverse!

...

*A period of "Something" way longer than before.*

I found it! And it is beautiful! Shining and ever-changing! Shining ever-shifting! Shining!

This is my opportunity, it's my time to shine!!!

So I thought carefully about it, and this is similar to like when you are looking for a house, if you've got no job, no money, and no value you can't afford a house; and I currently have none of that so the least I can do is to look presentable, formal, amazing; I mean I look like a badass dragon made of void, I can't be more badass than that but I lack a pinch of formality, so I crafted myself a red void necktie, HAHAHAHAHA! Now there's no way to fail!

"*cough* *cough*"

While I was laughing like a madman I was approached by an old man who apparently had been observing me for a while, imagine my surprise and embarrassment at that, I shouted like a girl- KYAAAA- and almost fried the guy with my void breath. -Ughh what a way to make a first impression.

Though now that I look at this old man more attentively I'm sure this guy can wipe his multiversal barrier using me as a cleaning rag. At least based on the shine of his soul, Is that even an acceptable qualifier of power level? I guess I should introduce myself first.

"...Ahem!.. Hello There!"

"..."

"...Star Wars?"

"ehmmmmm... I guess? It was a few decades since the last Star Wars movie came out before the galactic war on my universe, so I'm not up to date with the trend, I also spent some time(?)... ummm I guess a few eons on The Void so I didn't even think that there was anybody alive that new about star wars."

"Ahhh, well, that's because all the multiverses' time is synchronized in a very loose way, at least the time(?) that you spend in the void doesn't reflect correctly on any multiverse, so maybe it was a second ago in 'multiversal time' that you left your universe, so you should be able to go back just in time...hahahah!"- Not gonna lie, it's been so long since I last talk that maybe my sense of humor hasn't restarted, that last pun was not exactly funny.

"There's a tiny problem with that... there is no more universe of mine to return to."

"hahaha...ha...I'm sorry"

"It's ok, you didn't know, but if you really are sorry, you could give me a place to crash for the rest of my life!" It sounds like an equivalent exchange to me.

"...Right... first, Can you explain what happened in your home Universe?"

"... Right... ehmmm... sure but wait until the end before you judge please..."- I don't think telling him about how I ended my home is a good starter, but if he declines my residential visa then I will just roam The Void for a few more eons, I'm sure nothing bad would happen, I can't get crazier than I already am... Right?

-A few hours(?) later-

"I understand... Is there a chance of that happening again? The overload?"

"No, when my soul absorbed the void it broke something and I think my soul decided to give up on that ability in order to stop absorbing The Void."

"Can you show me your soul? I can't see it since it's protected by your...void scales?"

Well if this guy wanted me dead he could do it regardless of my scales or not, that's what the shine of his soul is telling me...

"Sure"- I said allowing him to appreciate all of my roundness.

"...mmmmm yes, you are right, your soul purged the absorption capability in order to prevent the dissipation of your soul... There shouldn't be any problems with you working for me on my multiverse but first, Can you show me the lowest level of void breath that you can use?"

"Sure.."

It was hard but I let out the smallest void breath possible at the moment for me.

"OK no problem with it, just that unless you want to destroy a planet never use it within an atmosphere, you will have to create a vacuum before using your breath unless you want to create an implosion the moment space fixes the wound left behind by your breath...and I'm going to have someone show you how to restrain your presence around mortals, this way you don't kill anyone unintended."

"Don't use your creation within the multiversal barrier, it will cause a lot of problems for you, use it outside and then bring inside what you create, outside is fine but not inside. Lastly, I will give you a body, well is more like a mass of creation or reality, in which you'll place your soul and it will then adapt to your soul giving you the best body possible for you. Some training will be needed after that but everything should work out"

"Thank you so much! But what about my mist?"

"That will give you some protection against conceptual attacks"

"What do you mean?"

"Well once you have a body the "mist" will become something like an always active aura that will protect you from energy or conceptual attacks, like for example if you are attacked by Death then you'll be able to stave off some of the attacks before you need to get out of the way, so it's more like a resistance but not immunity."

"Great! Let's do this then!"- Ha! Take a look at my professionalism, instead of throwing myself at him and worshipping the "floor" where he stands, asking for his hand in marriage while calling him Aniki, I acted like a proper dragon, because that's how grateful I am to him for giving me a home.

"Hahahaha! Welcome to your new home then!"

That's how I came to my new home, without knowing that my comics, the ones that helped me during my most difficult times, were based on this multiverse.

{A/N:

Chapter rewritten on 12/9/2023.}