Cipher floated above the planet.
Below him, the world lay in ruins. Cities crumbled. Continents scarred. Countless lives lost.
He opened his arms wide.
The world began repairing itself.
Buildings rose from rubble. Cracks in the earth sealed shut. Fires extinguished. Oceans calmed. Even those who had been killed - their bodies reformed, their souls returned, their eyes opening in confusion as life flooded back into them.
He looked down at his hands.
So this is the true form of the cheat system, he thought.
Absolute Source... what is that?
He knew for certain it wasn't the Eternal Flame. After reaching the Creation Realm, his consciousness had expanded so dramatically that he had achieved something close to omniscience.
He turned his gaze toward space.
His perception extended outward - past the moon, past Mars, past the solar system entirely.
He sensed something. Someone.
Zhu Que, was it?
…
Maya stood opposite Amélie.
Amélie looked around her.
Not that there was anything to look at.
Not light. Not darkness. No... nothing.
She lifted her book. The pages were blank.
She stared at Maya, who lay casually on the nothingness as if it were a bed.
"What is this place?" Amélie asked.
Maya didn't even open her eyes. "We'll be here a while. I suggest you get comfortable and conserve your energy if you want to survive."
Amélie felt her third eye flicker.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Then it disappeared completely.
She also began feeling a strange force she had never experienced before - something was attacking her very existence. She mobilized her energy to regenerate, but felt it dissipate the moment she gathered it.
"This..."
Maya remained calm.
This was her last resort. She had used her strongest ability at maximum output, throwing both of them outside of time.
But she had miscalculated.
All 3,000 Daos seemed to affect each other in some way. Throwing them outside of time had thrown them outside of all 3,000 concepts that make up the chaos.
Now they existed at the border between existence and nonexistence - the place where all concepts were birthed.
At least, that was her theory.
The raw power of the concepts here was so immense that she felt as though she could cease to exist at any moment.
She glanced at Amélie and smiled.
In this place, one needed all the power they could muster just to maintain their existence. Without concepts like life, death, space, or time, one had to use their own power to recreate those concepts - or at least form a framework upon which they could exist.
Maya was well-versed in time. From that foundation, she could construct something capable of sustaining herself.
But Amélie? She wasn't anything special. She just relied on the book.
Now that they were outside all concepts, the book was practically useless - unless she could somehow recreate the concept the book relied upon.
In other words...
This was already in the bag.
1 day later.
Maya observed Amélie.
She seemed to be holding on.
Hmph. Let's see how long you can last.
10 days later.
She still held on.
She seemed to be using some form of barrier concept.
Maya raised an eyebrow. She supposed she had underestimated her a little.
Even so, it didn't matter. There was no way Amélie could hold on for long - especially considering she was spending most of her time trying to decipher the book.
Without deep knowledge of her own concept, there was no way she could reactivate it.
She was just decreasing her remaining time.
100 days later.
Amélie's form flickered occasionally now. Her barrier was weakening.
1 year later.
Amélie had stopped trying to read the book. She sat motionless, conserving every scrap of energy.
5 years later.
Her body had become translucent. She was fading.
10 years later.
Maya's own condition had begun deteriorating. Maintaining existence here was exhausting, even for her.
100 years later.
Both of them looked like ghosts - barely visible, barely real.
1,000 years later.
Maya had long since stopped keeping track of Amélie. She focused entirely on her own survival, weaving time around herself like a cocoon.
1 million years later.
The nothingness around them had begun to change. Concepts flickered in and out of existence - born and destroyed in the same instant.
1 billion years later.
Maya felt herself unraveling. She had to reconstruct her existence constantly, using her understanding of time as the foundation.
Amélie was barely a wisp now.
1 trillion years later.
Maya's form was little more than a golden-red ember floating in the void.
She had stopped feeling time long ago.
Several trillion years later.
Amélie finally ceased to exist.
There was no dramatic end. No final words. She simply... wasn't anymore.
The book floated toward Maya.
She felt her energy return a little.
Finally.
It had been quite a long time.
Sadly, she had taken so long that even the chaos itself had ceased to exist. There was nowhere to go back to.
Even so, her understanding of time had deepened immensely.
And she hadn't been idle all this time.
She had been using her grasp of time to decode the vibrations formed by the creation and destruction of concepts around her. She had learned to deconstruct other Daos and remake them.
She touched the book.
A golden-reddish glow wrapped around her and the artifact.
Using all her remaining power, she activated a new technique she had formed over the eons.
This should allow me to hijack - well, more like hitch a ride on - the concept creation process.
If I latch onto time, I should be able to find the chaos even if it doesn't exist anymore.
After all, it existed at some point.
And in this area - which I've decided to call the Absolute Source - time has no meaning.
To the Absolute Source, whether the chaos exists or not doesn't matter.
As long as I have great recollection of the place, I should be able to latch onto it when I pass by.
The only problem was that she had deteriorated too much.
Well, no matter.
She hardcoded everything she knew of the chaos onto herself. Using the book to rewrite her entire being for her sole mission.
Her mission...
What was it again?
…
A golden-red wisp drifted through the river of time.
It was destroyed when time reached its end.
It was reborn when time was recreated from the Absolute Source.
This continued.
Again.
And again.
And again.
For an unknown amount of cycles.
Until finally, one day, 3,000 concepts formed just right - entangling together in perfect harmony.
The chaos was born.