38 37th Move | The Dominos Start Falling

AN: The Storm is here.

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Meanwhile, Intergalactic Space.

Shaper-class ships are my workhorses for any large-scale stellar manipulation project on the size of a moon or larger. They are shaped somewhat like a human's finger, and if placed in the bottom of the Mariana trench, their tips would peak out of the water.

These Shapers exercise brute force control over invisible Dark Energy and Dark Matter as a form of macro-gravity manipulation to move moons out of orbit. Unlike the Simurgh, these Shapers don't have anywhere near the level of precision with gravity manipulation since they're meant to move celestial objects.

I had originally made them be able to use hard light, but since hard light is restricted immensely by mass-energy equivalence, it's really inefficient.

There are also unique Shapers, designed to manipulate extreme stellar objects like White Dwarfs, Neutron Stars, or black holes. These are modified to contain a full Starbreaker Engine.

Currently, there are thousands of these unique Shapers are present within the radius of a single light minute of my position, all of which are integral to preventing the object in front of me from collapsing into a black hole: a long tubular structure that contains about 8 Neutron Stars' worth of mass.

I stood on the bridge of one of these vessels, a holographic projection of the structure in front of me since it's near invisible to the naked eye if one tries to view it using the windows.

Length-wise, the tubular structure is a bit shorter than the moon Titan in my old World.

I'm going to need it to be longer if I'm to perform the time travel experiment.

According to existing theories like Supercausality which supplanted Relativity since it describes things moving faster than light, time isn't what it seems. Relativity states that time is relative, that is, there is no absolute time while Supercausality states the exact opposite. The maths seems to point toward Supercausality, but I'll need to perform some tests to see whether the Theory of Supercausality is right or not.

And this can be done by creating a Closed Timelike Curve.

Seeing how the neutrons have been molded, I then ordered a new Neutron Star to get transported here with [Technopathy].

A second later, the Neutron Star came into existence with a burst of electromagnetic radiation and intense gravitational waves, traveling through hyperspace from the next star system over.

Several hundred Shapers that were on stand-by mode turned their attention onto the newly appeared Neutron Star and took hold of it, containing its gravitational influence with a dense shell of Dark Energy.

Then, a spot the size of multiple city blocks lit up in an area situated around the lower section of the Shapers and shot out a cherry red Starbreaker beam that was carving valleys half a hundred meters deep into the shell of the Neutron Star, shaping and molding it into the next piece of this Tipler's Cylinder.

Seeing dozens of these cherry red coherent gravity lasers reminded me of how I gave Milim a miniature one powered by magicules.

There is no way I'm giving Milim a full Starbreaker Engine. Not only is it huge, but it's also highly dangerous and it doesn't belong in the hands of a child.

(Forget giving a baby a gun, this is giving a baby a gun that can annihilate a star)

As one of the Starbreaker beams passed over the valley made by a previous passage by another beam, there was a sudden overwhelming flash of light.

The interior of a Neutron Star kept within the shell of iron was packed to the brim with mostly neutrons and a few other lighter particles like protons and electrons alongside more exotic ones like Hyperons and Quark Matter.

I saw how the contents held within the shell of crystalized iron were spilling forth like whites from a cracked egg. A lot of exotic particles rapidly decayed into radiation as the condition from which they were born no longer exists in the vacuum of space.

The hyper-dense guts of the Neutron Star were stirring, and with it, the local skein of spacetime itself was rippling in response.

The inner contents of a Neutron Star taught me some fascinating things about atoms under extreme conditions. For one, it confirmed [Biology]'s belief that the condition underneath the outermost layer of a Superfluid mixture of protons and neutrons and a crust of iron was able to sustain an extreme form of life.

Because of the extreme condition, this hypothetical form of life uses the Strong Nuclear Force as a mediator instead of the Electromagnetic Force. If they exist, these lifeforms will probably be the smallest organism in the universe, smaller than even viruses since they're made out of subatomic particles.

The lids of my eyes dropped in an expression of loneliness, these forms of life likely won't exist. After encountering so many lifeless habitable worlds, I come to the realization that the whole universe doesn't seem to trend toward complexity.

This makes any life that I do find extremely precious, to the point that I created a subdirectory of the Von Neumann Probes to protect any and all worlds with evidence of life on them.

The universe is already lonely enough as it is, there's no need to make it lonelier.

It was around the 36th planet that I marked down for preservation that I realize I'd become one of those ancient super-advanced precursor civilizations in your typical Space Opera. Encouraging biodiversity in the cosmos that'll eventually lead to humanity's rise.

I don't know how I feel about it.

<<Through the [Soul Corridor] with the individual known as Rimuru Tempest, you have gained the Unique Skill [Great Sage]>>

"What?"

My eerily perfect voice echoed inside the pressurized bridge of this Shaper.

I froze in shock at what the Voice of the World is telling me before I'm once again bathed in the same feeling I once had when I first acquired [Technopathy].

What is happening? I wondered as every one of my specialties is confused as well.

It was that same emotionless voice that came from Rimuru when we both freed Veldora!

"Hah?! What? What the hell? [Great Sage]?"

Pressing a small red button on the hologram, I set the Shapers on autopilot to continue hold and carve the Neutron Star.

Through [Technopathy], I reached across many many thousands of lightyears and felt the continued existence of that katana I gave him.

Feeling the monomolecular blade made me remember how I mostly gave it to him as a toy; because that's exactly what it is, a toy in the same vein as a toy sword in my old World.

'Rimuru.'

I then called out to him through the connection between the two of us, that [Soul Corridor] which I rarely used because of what [Psychology] called a 'personal prejudice against anything science cannot explain'.

I flinched when instead of that crispy clear connection even through intergalactic distances, all I received was static.

That's strange. I felt unsettled but not too worried. Whatever is happening can't be too bad since there aren't any feelings in my gut.

'Rimuru speak up,'

Still only static.

With a single wave of my hand, bits and pieces of the floor underneath my feet came up like sand in a sandstorm. Those particles of a stable superheavy isotope of titanium came together in my left hand and formed a communicator capable of interfacing with the Universal Tachyonic Communication Web.

The Universal Tachyonic Communication Web, or the UTC for short, is a web of trillions of relay stations spread across a distance of 12 billion lightyears from end to end. These relay stations use Tachyons, superluminal particles as described by the Theory of Supercausality, to broadcast vast amounts of data wirelessly. The UTC makes communication over intergalactic clusters about as complicated as calling someone from Washington while you're in New York.

Because Tachyons could not slow down to light speed any more than a baryon can speed up to that of a photon, these relay stations require a Warp Bubble to slow down directed low-energy (and thus very fast) Tachyons to a level that the other systems can read the transported information. The principle behind these relay stations is that since Alcubierre Drives can accelerate massive particles like baryons to superluminal speed, so too can it slow down Tachyons.

It is what allowed me to first discover them, after all.

"Shizue"

Static.

That was when I started to actually panic. Spreading out my right hand, I conjured up several holographic control panels about satellites orbiting a light hour away from my home planet. A single tap was all that was required for the satellites to direct their hyper-definition cameras toward the world.

An interesting thing that occurs when you move faster than light is that you can witness the same event as many times as you'd like. This is due to how when we view things we're actually viewing photons, if we travel to the future path of this photon again, we can observe the same event again.

So using this, I created a vast network of these satellites to give me limited postcognition. Most of these are stationed on the edge of stellar space, but I can move them with a Subspace Diver closer to my home world.

As the image was rendering, I tried to open a Doorway to where the katana was situated.

Doormaker did not obey and instead gave me an error message.

"Emergency Override Code: X6LQ9S0, Door me!"

Doormaker did not respond and still repeated the error message.

My eyes narrowed. I know for a fact that if I had remained a human, I would be sweating right now in stress and anxiety.

Just what the hell is happening?

I then pulled up a holographic panel and typed in the correct Overdrive Code. The only time that Doormaker would fail even with Override would mean that something is intentionally blocking spatial travel. So in order to forcibly enter the area, I'll have to divert additional power and overlock the Fold System—

PAIN!

"Ahhh..." My voice quieted into a scream too high-pitched for me to hear.

I fell to the floor in utter agony. The pain was so raw, so brutal, so coarse that it wasn't like any pain I'd ever felt. It eclipsed all of them.

PAIN!

I couldn't think. I felt very tired. I felt myself being unraveled by the pain. It was all-encompassing.

"AAAAAAAHHHHH!" My voice returned as my high-pitched scream lowered to a level that my ears can register. I smashed my head against the floor of this bridge, and I could finally think clearly a bit.

In any normal situation, I would be spinning in dizziness, but that 'dizziness' is crystal clear compared to how clouded my mind was due to the onslaught of pain.

Using this moment of clarity, I saw next to my right eye a tiny holographic panel displaying information about my current body.

It was all fine. There wasn't anything wrong with my body.

Before I could ask 'Why am I in such pain', the same gut-wrenching agony came roaring back like a super tsunami, washing away all my conscious thoughts akin to a flash flood.

PAIN

The sheer pain that swallowed all thoughts made the armor I'm wearing feel like it was made out of molten lava. Instinctively, I began removing it, whether it was by bloodying my finger and tearing my nails in trying to rip it off or by rubbing very harshly against the walls of this place or really anything. The only thing on my mind was just to remove everything.

PAIN

*BANG*

I slammed my head into the station floor as hard as possible, the pain still present. The sheer agony I felt in the current moment seemed as if the conceptual manifestation of pain itself crystallized into every cell of my Perfect Homunculus Body. If someone told me this was hell I'd believe them.

"ARRRRRGH!"

Why didn't I add an emergency ejection button for this?!

My hands bled. Even then I tried my absolute hardest with no regard for my own flesh in removing everything covering my body. All I could think, all I could focus on in this sea of boiling pain was just remove, remove, remove remove remove removeremoveremoveremoveREMOVEREMOVEREMOVE———!

My mind suddenly cleared. As abruptly as it came, the pain subsided.

"Ha... ha... ha..." Taking a few deep breaths, I moved to massage my forehead only to hiss in pain as I realized how most of my nails were gone, with only a tiny silver jutting out of the root. The next thing that came into my mind was how the tips of my fingers had intense friction burns, probably because of how hard and fast I tried to remove the armor I wore.

I stared at my bloodied hands, which were slowly healing.

A Perfect Homunculus physiology is much stronger than your average baseline human's, so how much force was I exerting that I harmed myself?

An out-of-body experience dominated my mind as if I had just gotten off the world's largest rollercoaster. I found myself staring aimlessly at those steadily healing fingers

It took several seconds before I finally got up. Reactively, I looked around me and saw how there were chunks and pieces of the armor I wore scattered like a bomb had just gone off.

Using [Technopathy], I telekinetically picked up those tiny pieces and reassembled them, repairing my armor in less than ten seconds.

What the actual hell was that? I gulped, my fingers still shaking slightly from phantom sensations of pain that covered my body.

Seeing how Rimuru didn't reply, I opted to talk to Veldora, the only other person who I have a [Soul Corridor] with.

'Veldora' I called out to the True Dragon currently residing in the Citadel.

'—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—'

I instantly shut off the connection. If it was an actual sound, I think my ears would be bleeding.

Taking several more deep breaths, I closed my eyes and mentally prepared myself for what was coming next.

I opened the [Soul Corridor] again and was blasted by that ungodly loud mental scream. In turn, I mentally screamed back, 'VELDORA, IT'S FINE NOW THE PAIN SHOULD HAVE SUBSIDED!'

'AAAA— hmm? Huh, you're right Scientia, it has subsided!'

'Do you know what the hell that pain was?'

'I don't know. And where's Rimuru? You'd think that he'll speak up after he stopped experiencing that strange pain.

Wait, RIMURU!

'Talk to you later Veldora!'

I cut off the channel without waiting to hear a response. Then I confirmed the Overdrive process for Doormaker to forcefully connect two points in spacetime.

This was a new feature I added after the situation with Ramiris and that THING.

Involuntarily, I shuddered when I recalled my contact with that THING. The feeling of dying trillions of times felt came back like the pain from a reopened wound.

Reality beside me shattered like glass, revealing the pitch blackness as dark as the surface of a black hole. It was like the maw of a great void had just opened up to swallow me whole. This is what happens when Doormaker is overclocked; in order to force two points in the geodesic skein of space-time to connect despite interference, it forgoes the usual 'door' and discretion in favor of a massive portal several times the size of my own body— brute-forcing two points to connect in the form of a rift in reality.

Walking through the crack in Realspace, I was greeted by the sight of a rolling green field. Even if it technically is winter, the areas around Ingrassia rarely plunge below the low 10s Celcius.

"Rimuru—"

I stopped.

[Silenced Emotion: 50%]

A silver woman split in two. If it was flesh and blood, I'd have automatically assumed heavy machinery was used.

My mouth hung open at the sight of Shizue's destroyed War Chassis. I stared at the wreckage in eery quietness, not speaking a single word as if I were a detective at the scene of a crime.

I couldn't speak. [Inspired Inventor] was scrambling to try and come up with an explanation that somehow, Static Matter was destroyed in such a manner. The only way it's comedy up with right now was an event horizon.

The numbness I feel quickly turned into shock and horror when the corner of my eyes caught sight of a blue puddle.

"R... Rimuru?" I called out, my voice was empty of its usual passive confidence.

It was only when I started walking toward it that I realized someone else is watching me.

I don't pay attention to them.

I'm recognizing some horrible similarities between this and... that.

I fell on my knees just next to the puddle, my shaking hands touching the puddle to confirm that yes, it is Rimuru's body.

[Silenced Emotion: 95%]

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'Hey, Rimuru, after the visit to Ingrassia do you want to go to space?'

He looked shocked at my proposal before a smile that you just can't help but want to protect blossomed on his face.

Nodding happily, I had a few chuckles as I watched him act like a kid.

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[Silenced Emotion: 96%]

"So you are Scientia?" A cold voice spoke to me. I ignored them.

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I was drinking that night, at a bar that one of these goblins had set up. Numerous empty glasses are in front of me yet I remain sober.

"Another one, bartender!" I yelled out to a particularly well-dressed male goblin who then poured me another shot.

Just as I was about to gulp it down, a hand suddenly stopped mine in its track. Treading up its arms to the face, I saw Rimuru sitting on the chair next to me in his human form. [Language] spoke up saying that his body is currently expressing a classical sign of worry.

Part of my mind also noted how he seemed to choose the Shizue form over the elf assassin he had first devoured.

"I think that's enough," Rimuru stated as he took the glass from my hand and placed it far away from me, "what's wrong?"

My lips thinned. His worried tone was like a missile that broke through all my defenses.

So I sighed and scratched my head, internally debating whether to tell him or not before shrugging and saying 'fuck it'.

It was a completely out-of-character act for me.

"I messed up."

Rimuru seemed taken aback by how blunt I responded. Either because of his Japanese sensibility not being used to my Western bluntness or he's now even more worried, wondering just what I had messed up on to cause me to be so down.

"What did you mess up on?" Rimuru asked as he morphed back into his slime form.

A large blue blob now covered the top of the barstool.

"It's about a contract, I tried to violate a geas and it backfired immensely." I took one of the empty glasses and examined it, hoping to see at least some alcohol left.

I gently traced my throat with my other hand.

"And you thought drowning it out with booze is a good way to deal with it?"

There was perplexion in his voice.

Seeing the glass had none, I sighed once more and leaned back, "In my past life, whenever a business deal falls through or is unsuccessful, I would often drink the night away. Then I would wake up tomorrow morning with a massive hangover and request a day off, which is always granted by the way, before returning the next day to work with a solution. My manager was very accommodating because I always get results."

Rimuru recoiled in surprise at my explanation, "Really?"

"Yes, I had originally started drinking back in my late teens after my sister—" I cut myself off, and pushed back the memory, "—point is, whenever I encounter a massive failure, I would drink until I fall over. Then, once I wake up, I will face the problem head-on. But I can't solve this problem. The amount of effort I sunk into recruiting them is a lot, and now they're gone because apparently, I had violated a sacrosanct tradition."

I awaited his judgment, yet none came as he instead looked at me with understanding in his eyes.

"Look, so you lied about your race, and so what? Personally, I can't really relate, but I can at least understand how difficult it must be to be a member of the most hated race out there. After all, I was once classmates with a Korean. I can understand hate and the fear of being left out; being an otaku really doesn't give you too many friends."

It felt nice to be understood.

I turned my seat to fully face him, before leaning in to hug the blue blob, causing said blob to squeak out a sound of surprise.

[Psychology] noted how alcohol has this placebo effect on me where it reduces my inhibition but I just drown it out when I nuzzled against the soft waterbed-like living pillow, my mind lost itself after a long day and sighed in comfort.

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[Silenced Emotion: 97%]

"What? Not going to say anything?" The harshness in her voice increased, yet I nonetheless ignored it as if I was in my own world.

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The cabin, though small, has this homey feel to it.

The interlocked design is still sturdy despite logically speaking, the house should fall after a strong breeze.

I sat and look outward from the edge of the deck of the cabin, before turning and looking up at the beautiful stars.

Stretching from north to south was a river made out of thousands of stars. It was a trail amidst a sea of blackness.

I've stared at this for a while now, and I could spot none of the constellations I'm familiar with, proving that I've truly reincarnated into another universe.

[Silenced Emotion: 20%]

It's a bit hard to accept that I've reincarnated, that I must leave behind my old life.

I didn't have too many friends in my old World, so oftentimes, as I lay restlessly on the bed at night, the light from the city shining through my window, I wondered, just how many people would cry if I died tomorrow. Would my mother or father cry? I would hope so. Would my sister cry? I... don't know.

Would they still cry if they knew I still live, but now in a new life in another World? Would they be happy that I'm alive or sad that I'm no longer by their side?

I thought about these questions as I reached up to try and touch those stars.

Little Kathy, even if we no longer talk after that event, I should still apologize as I'll no longer be there for you. But, my investments should still allow you and our parents to live relatively carefree about money.

[Silenced Emotion: 60%]

I felt an overwhelming sense of grief before it is silenced.

"So, what's your old name?" Rimuru asked as he bounced toward me, my legs continued to dangle off the ledge.

I brought up one of my legs so that the tip of my feet hung off the ledge. My two hands came together at the kneecap to bind that leg and prevent it from dropping.

I turned to face the other reincarnator, and spoke in a tone of thinly concealed mistrust and wariness; "why do you want to know?"

Even if we're both reincarnator, I'm still a bit distrusting and wary of the slime who can probably overpower and consume me easily.

Trust is a luxury in this situation. I don't have that luxury as everything I had known was stripped away. What's more, being eaten sounds like something that should only happen in fairy tales, and no longer in real life.

I don't want to be eaten.

"Just basic curiosity, you know? I'll go first: as you know, I'm someone from Japan who was stabbed to death when I was walking with my coworkers, though that coworker was showing off his fiance to me."

He sounded bitter.

"My old name was Satoru Mikami, but my new one is Rimuru Tempest! By the way, I hope this isn't too personal, but what time did you die?"

His words ignited a spark of curiosity deep within me, like an instinctual craving for knowledge.

"2019, July 16th. You?"

"Me too."

My eyes widen as Rimuru confirmed it. Occam's Razor suggests we both come from the same World, but with the multiverse, you never know how similar two Worlds can be. Though at least, it appears that if you die on the same day you get reincarnated at the same time and place.

Strange, perhaps time is isotropic in all Worlds?

"How did you die?" Rimuru blurted out before panicking, "I mean if you don't want to tell me that's totally fine!"

I gave a look of suspicion to Rimuru, before replying.

"I was stabbed. In the back—" I dropped my leg and shifted my body so that the area where the stab wound should've been is facing the slime. Touching the area, I found that yes, it was still smooth as if that stab had been a bad dream, "right there."

Yet I know it is no dream.

Rimuru looked at the area I was tapping and nodded.

"The person who stabbed me was some random." He then chuckled morbidly, "Y'know, I always dreamed of going out gloriously. Doing something that would be memorable like stopping a plane jacking, pushing a schoolgirl out of the path of a speeding car— those kinds of things. But I died never even having a girlfriend— I was 37 by the way!"

Rimuru spoke wistfully while turning to look at the stars, those words caused me to look at him in a new light. A friendlier light.

"What was your job in your past life?"

"Oh I worked for a major general contractor firm, you may have heard of it, it's pretty popular," the slime bragged with smugness oozing off of him in droves, "they're called Yamato Corporation."

His smugness died down once he saw the blank look I'm giving him, "Oh come on, don't tell me you don't know one of the largest construction companies in Japan?!"

I gave him a sheepish smile, "Well, I do know the motorcycle company, Yamaha." I offered. The sheepish smile transformed into a sly one, "I worked as an Assistant VP of a somewhat large firm, you may have heard of it, it's somewhat popular," I saw a blush on Rimuru's cheeks as I continued, "They're called Walmart."

A cheeky grin formed on my face as he deflated into a puddle, his insides probably dying of embarrassment.

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[Silenced Emotion: 98%]

"I offer you a chance at speaking your last words and all I receive is silence? So be it," I saw a flash of metal in my peripherals, "since the only crime you have is enslaving my teacher and nothing else, I'll grant you a quick and painless death. The same gift I gave to that slime. It would only be fair."

[Silenced Emotion: 99%]

There was a cold rage that steadily filled every cell of my body. Due to how high [Silenced Emotion] is toggled at, I'm still able to think clearly instead of flying into a blind rage and ordering a saturation bombardment via exotic particles of the entire planet.

Raising an eye to glance at the woman who had killed Rimuru and Shizue if the condition of her body is any indication, my gaze was lifeless as [Psychology] and [Biology] dissected her entire personality and history with all but a single glance.

"..."

Had this been my old life, before I reincarnated, I think this woman would've been one I'd like to marry. [Psychology] and [Biology] told me she was strong, a bit pragmatic, and very standoffish: everything that would've been almost a mirror of myself. She would be an excellent conversationist, as both of us try to pick each other's brains and test each other's ideas.

When I looked at her, the remaining part of my body never moved a single bit as if it was frozen in time. My eyeballs then drink in her physical form; her violet eyes, a supermodel-worthy face, short black hair, and bangs that sweep over her right eye.

She hid the fact that she had flinched when I glanced at her very well.

Within that single moment of doubt, countless strings made from the kinks in spacetime manifested themselves from my left fingertips. These thin strings that reflected no light wrapped themselves around the woman before binding her around her neck, stomach, and all of her limbs.

Before the woman had even blinked, those spacetime strings hoisted her up in the air in a spread-eagle posture.

"Grk!"

The woman struggled fruitlessly against the black strings, with the latter not budging even a bit.

Pointless endeavor. These strings are made from spacetime itself, and according to [Spacetime Engineering], they SHOULD be unbreakable by anything other than a black hole or that THING.

Because of their nature, the strings used space itself as a pulley.

"Feel a fraction of the pain you caused me."

With a single casual move as if I was about to grasp the steering wheel of a car, I closed all of my fingers except my middle one.

There was a wet sound of tearing flesh and pulled cartilage.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

She let out a blood-curdling scream as all of her limbs were promptly torn right off. The wound oozed blood, but the bones were still intact, as four limbs broke off at the joint area.

Having an in-depth knowledge of biology and history allowed me to know that in my old World, four-limbed dismemberment was a method of execution reserved for the likes of traitors. Usually, this is done by horses, with a rope tied to each of the victim's limbs, four horses would start to pull and cause the joints of the hips and shoulders to dislocate. Typically, the muscles that covered the bones are strong enough that they can't really be torn off, so the actual dismembering part is done with a blade.

However, my Strings Implant aren't limited to the power provided by horses, thus they ripped this woman's limbs right out of her sockets like they were limbs on a wooden doll.

I stared at the gruesome and macabre display of the woman as she finally stopped screaming, having passed out from shock.

Any normal human would puke right now, but I'm paying more attention to how the wounds from the hips were bleeding far more than the shoulder.

Ah, that's right, it's because of those arteries.

The woman floated there in the air, the strings that bound her stomach and neck were still present.

Based on how much blood was coming out, I estimate that she'll die of trauma and blood loss in less than a minute.

No... that's not good enough. The cold fury still rages inside me like a hurricane, demanding to make the woman suffer more, to demand the country where she's from be glassed from orbit. To immolate every single citizen of Ruberios in nuclear fire.

So I approached her. Placing a hand on some of the wounds on her hip, the woman's blood dyed my hand a very pretty shade of red.

I closed those wounds with a type of cauterization. By transmuting the air around the woman's wounds into certain elements and compounds, I can create tiny exothermic chemical reactions to cauterize the wounds. With [Biology] and [First Aid] guiding [Unlimited Alchemy], I made sure the woman wouldn't die of shock.

After that was done, I took a few steps back and focused on the woman's clothing. Most of it was dyed red, but from what little remained I could tell she was a high-ranking member of the Western Holy Church.

My head slumped forward, much of my face covered by shadows, and only around the chin area does the sunlight shines through. The only thing one can see within that shadow is two glowing red orbs.

An aura of utter cold, freezing rage radiated from me like Chornobyl right after the accident in 1986, my teeth slowly grind themselves together as every monster within a mile radius started to run away.

Red veins blossomed from within my chest.

Finally, like a dormant volcano that hasn't blown in centuries, I exploded.

"RRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" I screamed to the high heavens as [Unlimited Alchemy] transmuted the world around me, Rimuru's puddle, Shizue's corpse, and the unconscious woman all were unaffected.

Dirt turned into iron, black iron turned into yellow sulfur, yellow sulfur into slivery holmium, silvery holmium into solid oxygen, and solid oxygen into dark tungsten.

I cycled through every single element of the periodic table with an atomic number below that of Fermium.

The transmutation would continue had I not been alerted by [Biology] of how the woman would die from acute arsenic poisoning. So I returned the world to its original stage.

Lowering the limbless cripple next to me, I squatted and gripped her jaw using my right hand.

A Saint's physiology is truly fascinating. Being given a front-row seat to the apparent evolution of being humans, I saw how this Saint in particular possessed some qualities found in Spiritual Lifeforms while retaining a lot of the human ones.

The woman was completely unresponsive, so I then started carefully transmuting the extra arsenic in her bloodstream into a complex protein that her cells could use to repair themselves.

[Unlimited Alchemy], better known by its more common name: [Ultimate Alchemy] is just that, the ultimate form of alchemy. This form of alchemy is named so for it is capable of permanently altering the composition of the world so long as the law of equivalent exchange is followed. Basically, unlike normal alchemy whose transmuted matter turns back into its original element, [Unlimited Alchemy]'s doesn't. This magic also allows me to manipulate souls as easily as one manipulates clay, but previously I've never really used this aspect since I never had to.

Technology has made [Unlimited Alchemy] mostly obsolete. The magic's transmutation speed is slow compared to massive nuclear fusion and fission furnaces that can churn out millions of tons of transmuted elements every minute and its ability to affect spirits isn't something I usually use.

But that's no longer the case, isn't it?

I could feel part of myself die at the fact that Rimuru was gone.

After making sure at least 50% of the complex protein was dissolved in her body, I manipulate a bit of her brain with the aid of [Biology] to get her to wake up.

Her eyes snapped wide awake. They then darted all over the place but stopped when she saw me and sharpened. By the twitch of her body, I could tell if she still had her limbs, this woman would instantly be on my throat right now.

It took a few more seconds for her to realize why she was not moving.

My lips formed the shape of a cruel crescent moon, "Truthfully, I don't hate people. I don't even hate the one who stabbed me— of course, if I see them again I'll knock their lights out but true, unadulterated, unequivocal hatred?"

My eyes gained a faraway look in them. The memory of a particular teen came to the forefront of my mind.

"The closest I have for that is that teen who did the unspeakable. But I felt nothing but disdain for him, and I made sure society feel disdain for him as well." I then gripped her throat hard enough that all the woman could get out was a quiet squeak.

Red lines crawled down my arms as I used [Unlimited Alchemy] to transmute the carbon dioxide inside her lungs back into oxygen. This way, she wouldn't suffocate or pass out again.

"But you, oh you, you, you, you, you, YOU pathetic, pitiful insignificant dolt. I care not for your name. You are someone who has my true and complete hatred." There was a gleam of madness in my eyes, my body shaking as I spoke, "There are so many things I'd like to do to you but first!"

My right hand reached out to my side. The red veins that covered the arm like vines on an old and decrepit building pulsed before more lines of crimson crawled from my chest.

Very quickly, there were enough red veins on my right arm that it almost looked like it was made out of the stuff.

I reached out. My presence fills this isolated space that sits on the fabric of spacetime. My consciousness expanded, leaving my body as I reached out and plucked every particle of Essence in this place.

The woman's eyes displayed naked confusion as a spark grew in the palm of my right hand. The brightness of that spark grew exponentially alongside it, forming something that visually looked like a miniature star that outshone the sun above.

Rimuru's Essence condensed.

Essence is the 'quarks' of the Soul and Spiritual Lifeforms like spirits. It is the building block that starts to break down after a person's death, diffusing into the surroundings like how after death, a bacteria's body breaks down and diffuses into the environment. Although, testing involving Lesser Spirits made me realize that Essence actually dissipates somewhere else, a place that I called: the Metaphysical Plane.

I call this phenomenon: Spiritual Decay, named so for how similar it is to nuclear decay.

Rimuru's Essence hasn't dissipated yet because of an isolation barrier that permeates this area.

The visit to the Dwelling of Spirits gave me new insights into how the Universe works. It was a radically new approach, so much so that I had to scrap my previous models to create a new theoretical framework for how the Universe works.

It has some issues, and the maths still needs some work but the just of it is this:

There is a greater multiverse. Based on Arcueid's words, it seemed this greater multiverse contains every mathematically conceivable structure of physics. Something or someone, perhaps an unimaginably advanced alien race or perhaps God, built a wall of pure entropy around a small branch of the multiverse— it simply has to be since intelligence is a must when it comes to the design of this wall.

Whoever this entity is, they placed a wall around infinity and locked us out of the greater multiverse like animals in a zoo.

A central finite curve of limited possibility.

This radical new theory postulates the Metaphysical Plane, or as the people of this World would call the Spirit World, is the space between these individual universes that are nested in the wall of entropy. Souls travel there after they die to get reincarnated, it's how I appeared here after my untimely death.

The new theoretical model also places Spiritrons as a type of force carrier like Gluons. There are limits to the new theory, chief among them is how it can't yet explain magicules since they behave similarly to virtual particles wherein they pop in and out of Realspace but they have a tangible effect on the Calabi-Yau Manifolds.

Of course, there are ways to slow down a soul's dissipation into the Metaphysical Plane, one of which is the magical barrier that surrounds this place.

I frown at the appearance of only Rimuru's Essence, as I can't seem to gather Shizue's.

Almost as if it didn't exist.

Immediately flaring my [Technopathy], I found it pinged within the pocket of the woman underneath me.

This bitch thought she could steal one of my employees? My maniac grin widen even further at the ridiculous thought, "Oh the things I am going to do with you..."

As the employer, it is my obligation to ensure my employee's safety is well-cared for. A happy employee is one that would follow you to the ends of the earth and will work much harder, so I strive to make my employee happy and content, whether it's through bonuses or benefits.

I made sure the woman watched as I took out Shizue's Soul Orb. Then, I opened a Doorway right beside me to a very special place: Narnia, a super prison designed to contain the likes of Veldora.

Since normal stasis doesn't really affect purely spiritual beings, I was a bit stuck on a non-magical solution of containing a Spirit. So I opted for a workaround using the Theory of Relativity.

The largest black hole I can find is an ultramassive one around three billion light years away. This ultramassive black hole contains approximately a tenth of an average galaxy's worth of mass and it's got a diameter long enough to contain over half a dozen solar systems.

Since being near a black hole's event horizon causes time to stretch according to Relativity, I built a special facility that orbits just above the event horizon of this ultramassive black hole. The time dilation one would experience when they're on that facility is extreme enough that one year of external time equals four minutes of internal time.

Truthfully I could probably achieve the same time dilation by just accelerating an individual to near-light speed, but the black hole is more there for a failsafe in case someone actually managed to escape Narnia.

Obviously, there are several caveats that make transportation of prisoners difficult, namely how fast the station is orbiting the singularity— you can't just stand still in the orbit of a black hole and not expect to fall into the event horizon, that's like expecting the International Space Station to remain there in space even if it stopped moving. Therefore, if I were to teleport her in without factoring in the velocity, this woman would smash into the walls at near the speed of light.

So instead of directly teleporting into Narnia as I normally would with someone strong like Veldora, I opted to place this woman in a sublight transport and had it accelerate to the same speed as that super prison, docking it with it.

I threw the woman unceremoniously into the Doorway, leaving me alone with Shizue's Soul Orb and the remains of Rimuru's Essence.

For the first time, I actively sought out a magical solution by placing all five charges for the day into [Magic] in hopes of it giving me a spell that can cheat death.

<Notice, resurrection using Essence is impossible.>

I felt my mouth form into a scowl.

'Shut up, I am someone who redefines what is and is not possible!'

Being the very building block of the Soul, it is theoretically possible to build a machine that can remake Rimuru into exactly how he was before. However, the problem comes with the potential for mistakes. Like trying to reconstruct a brain, misplacing a single neuron will result in a completely different person from the one you knew before, and so is the same for Essence— even if the personality and the ego are the same, they are fundamentally a different person.

If I want to bring Rimuru back from the spiritual equivalent of coming into contact with a Monopole, I'll need to carefully rebuild his Soul Essence by Essence in a painstaking process that I don't have a technological solution to. Not even [Unlimited Alchemy] has the precision required to rebuild a soul from its most basic component.

This is like trying to remake a wooden log exactly how it was before it was burned using leftover ash.

I stood silently amidst the field, my eyes closed with Shizue and Rimuru's broken Soul within my hands. If anyone were to see me now they would think I'm either meditating while standing upright or I'm focusing on trying to remember something.

I am someone who is known to perform miracles every day with the ease of someone blinking, I refuse to think of death as permanent.

I will rebuild Rimuru using his Essence.

Through [Technopathy], I established a connection with the finished Matrioshka Brain to help me solve this problem.

[Magic] is giving me useless crap I don't need. No, I don't need to know how to cast a fireball the size of a Moon, no, I don't need to know the perfected form of Gravity Collapse— what I need is a spell that can reconstruct the Essence exactly how it was before the soul was shattered!

[Temporal Engineering] was about to speak up before being shot down by [Soul] who spoke of the acausal nature of the spirit.

According to the Theory of Supercausality, any time travel will follow the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle. This means that the universe will limit the free will of those who travel to the past in order to prevent any Grandfather's Paradox shenanigans.

After the ten-minute mark was when I started to panic a bit. The longest time that my specialties have refused to give me an answer was six minutes, and that's mainly because [Temporal Engineering] has only two charges when I asked it to build me a Closed Timelike Curve weapon.

After half a year, I have around 900 charges, this shouldn't be happening!

I grit my teeth and tried to wring all the answers from my specialties.

"Grr!" I growled out while biting my tongue, careful to not squeeze the spark of Essence and Shizue's orb too hard.

Do not fail me when I need you the most, [Inspired Inventor]!

Well damn, [Great Sage] gave me an answer before [Inspired Inventor]?

'What is the way?'

So... the hero or the dark lord? Frodo or Sauron?

I chuckled a bit. This sounds terrifyingly similar to your Tolkien novel, so perhaps Tolkien was a reincarnator? His Lord of the Rings has some of the best world-building in all of fiction, after all, and what better way to create a fictional world than basing it off another one?

But that's just food for thoughts later.

'How does it work?'

My eyes widened at the information given to me. So the Voice of the World has a certain degree of sentience? That a Hero or a Demon Lord is powerful enough that their very birth bends how physics and metaphysics work? Like the birth of a black hole? And that we can implement our own laws?

There's definitely something more to consciousness then. I can safely say it's no longer an emergent property of self-replicating chemistries.

I was in awe of the explanation. A part of my mind made a memo to update the Endbringer Initiative to better deal with the Ten Great Demon Lords.

'How do I become a True Hero?'

So, like, one of those 'Shonen' Japanese comics that Veldora likes so much, I noted. Placing a hand over my chin, I then asked another question.

'I assume I don't have a Hero Egg?'

<Correct, however, due to your nature as a !(%¿~-·}, you have the qualification to gain a Hero Egg>

I winced a little bit at the garbled words [Great Sage] had said, part of me wondering just why is Perfect Homunculus such a hard thing for it to say.

'What about Demon Lords?'

"..."

I paused at the part about killing so many humans. My mind reflected on how such a low number of casualties is common in modern conflicts but that's because of many people fighting each other, not a single individual racking up so much blood on their hands.

The single greatest mass murderer is probably the one who pressed the drop button on Little Boy, who killed around 140,000 people. If the indirect number is taken into account, then dictators and conquerors in history push the number into the millions.

Finally, I asked the question.

'How many human souls do I need to ascend to a Demon Lord?'

<Calculating... for the individual known as Scientia Tempest to ascend to Awaken Demon Lord status, they would need a grand total of 450,000 souls>

My body became completely still at the number given to me by [Great Sage] as if I had been turned into a statue.

Holy shit. 450,000— 450 thousand— almost half a million souls. That is the price for Rimuru's resurrection. That number is on the lower end of estimation for how many people Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile Mariam had killed during his reign as the leader of Ethiopia between 1974 and 1991.

"Ah..." My shoulders slumped, "it seems that I would need to become a monster on par with the worst that the World has to offer."

The thing is, unlike many hateful and bigoted people in my old World, I have the compacity to make that death count into reality, with ease. Just one single fusion torch attached to a 100-meter-wide asteroid is enough to annihilate a city of millions like Lura.

'Why so many?'

I bit my lips hard enough to draw blood.

There's an uneasiness in my stomach. The uneasiness was like a flood that washed away the flames of anger I had for that woman.

I felt myself standing at the entrance to my old university, a little over a decade ago, where two paths lay before me.

Either I try to fulfill the vague willpower requirement, all the while Rimuru's Essence continues to break down and become a True Hero, or I go the faster path and kill half a million people and become a Demon Lord.

Essentially, either follow a quest but you're not given the instructions, or become a mass murderer.

Fuck

I... I... I don't want to become a mass murderer. I don't want my name to be placed alongside the likes of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, or Adolf Hitler. But at the same time, I don't know if I can fulfill the requirements for becoming a True Hero before Rimuru is lost to me forever.

_____________________________________________

AN: I wonder what paths would Scientia follow?

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" indeed.

See if you guys got the Rick and Morty and Marvel What IF reference in this chapter.

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