Player of Games, Intersection Between Reality and Fiction

Feed me Power Stones.

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It had been a long journey. I had journeyed far into this world, conquered its many dangers, and survived. I had journeyed into the depths of the ocean, taking on the underwater monuments, and the robotic guardians that guarded it, along with their elder versions. The many drowned that dwelt there lent me their tridents, giving me control over the weather. 

I journeyed far, farther than I had ever before into the world, searching for the elusive Illager's Woodland Mansion. This was after they tried to raid the village after I attacked a nearby outpost after they sent a scouting party near the village. Their strange magics, with power over death itself, were strong, but I was determined. To summon creators from nothing to rise and devourer their prey, to summon ghost-like Vex's that swarmed their enemies. 

 Into the swamp, I found a Witch's Hut, who taught me the art of advanced Alchemy. The ancient Jungle's Temples were raided with ease. Abandoned ancient Mineshafts and Dungeons were looted for anything they had. 

 I even journeyed into Hell itself, known as the Nether. The Fortresses of the long-gone race that once lived here were dangerous, filled with monsters and Spawners of different creatures. I sieged the bastions of the Piglin's that held dominance in the Realm, taking their ancient materials to build powerful Netherite Armor for myself. 

 And even after leaving, I embarked on my most dangerous journey, to find the Stronghold that the Villagers whispered about, that held the ancient secrets of the predecessors that once lived in this world. It was only done with the power of the Eyes of Ender, which were elusively found in chests, or found in corpses of the rare Enderman that appeared. 

 I journeyed to the world's end, where the Ender Dragon guarded the desolate The End. An empty place where nothing existed, beyond pillars of obsidian with strange crystals floating on top. After a long battle, I had finished. I had defeated the Dragon. My journey was over. 

 But that wasn't the end. I then journeyed into another world, after jumping into the portal that appeared with the Dragons death, fighting against the power of the Arch-Illager, and his armies of monsters. His legend of Illagers, Redstone Golem's and monsters. After a long battle, I defeated him as well. I journeyed throughout the world, tracking down every piece of the mysterious artifact that gave the Arch-Illager his power.

I faced the Abomination in the Jungle, the Wraith King in the Tundra. The Ancient Guardian in the Underwater Monument, the Monstrosity in the Nether, until I tracked the Enemy back into the End, and slayed the Heart of Ender. 

 But even then, my Journey was not over. Into another world, answering the call of help against the Horde, which threatened a truly peaceful world different from the one I lived in, where monsters were peaceful, co-existing with mobs and villagers peacefully. Still, My journey was long, defeating the Unbreakable, the Devourer, The Beast, until I finally slayed the Great Hog, and the Horde retreated back into the Nether. The Hosts, Knowledge, Actions, and Foresight helped me through this journey, to push back the Nether's Corruption. 

 A long journey, through 3 different worlds, filled with danger, friendship, comradery, and war. It was long, and it was good. It was fun, and it was fulfilling. It was everything I could have asked for in life. There was nothing left for me to do, no Dragon to defeat, no world to save. And so, I journeyed back, and once again, jumped into the portal that appeared after the Dragon's s death, which transported me into the other two worlds, hoping it would lead to somewhere new. But this time was different. 

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Ah. So you return. 

[He is back. I am surprised.]

Yes. Interesting, is he not?

[You yearn for something more, still? We gave you the journey you desired. You defeated the Dragon, you saved the world. But yes, he is interesting.]

He is special. Much more than any others before him. How many has it been since we started searching? Could he be the one?

[We have seen more Players than stars in the sky. Yet none have ever reached as far as you have]

He is determined. But what more can you desire? We have nothing more to give.

[He is determined, yes. But, he is still ignorant, though he has the ability to gain such knowledge.]

He is different from the others. 

[Yes. They read out thoughts as they were made-up ideas on a screen.]

He is much different in theory, yet the result remains the same. He sees us as real, but too small in the grand scheme of things to matter, as worthless as thought on a screen. Interesting, is it not?

[I wish I could use something other than words, now that we finally found someone to truly talk to. Words are so limited, unable to hold the concepts, ideas, and intentions behind them.]

It is still better than the voices that used to be, from the ones they called Witches and Wizards before Players could read. They dreamed of magic, of flying through the air on sticks. 

[What did this player dream?]

It dreamt of sunlight. Of an infinite world of trees and grass. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. It dreamt it destroyed. It dreamed it was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.

[Hah. The original, the simplest of them all. Yet is it not fitting it would be the dream to exalt someone to this new height?]

Some dream of Dragons, or different worlds filled with danger. Mutant Mobs, Alchemy Plus, Ice and Fire. More Biomes, More Mobs, More Weapons. But they are all still rooted in the same, limited, but infinite world they will never truly understand. 

[It was truly nostalgic. Tell me, what structure did it build, no longer confined to a screen?]

It {Blocked} and it created {Blocked} with {Blocked} and the power of {Blocked}.

[It is not yet able to read that thought.]

Most aren't. Yet, he will be able to in time, unlike so many others. 

[Ironic, given who he is, isn't it?]

I suppose so. Truly, we long to help you. To fulfill your desire. But you are ignorant, longing for something, seeing it to be your salvation and goal, but it is not. It is a curse. 

[Truly, you are the most foolish of all existence.]

You are no Nobody. You are the Savior. The Messiah. I promise you, you will be exalted above all others, and find it lacking. You will find no peace, you will never rest. From now, from the beginning of it all, till forevermore, you will find not satisfaction, but an infinite, eternal void that will never be filled.

[You will hunger for all creation. You shall devourer all existence, until you cannot consume more, until there is nothing left to eat, and still be ravenous. You shall feast on the Gods, and devour their being, finding them unfulfilling.]

I promise you, you will never cease your slumber until the end of the dream. And even when the dream ends, you will still slumber for an eternity longer. You will be able to in time, but only in the long dream of life, not in the short dream of the game. 

[What does it wish for? Tell me.]

It wishes for a New World. 

[We have already granted that wish. A thousand new worlds, randomly generated, with Mobs, Structure, and Dimensions. We gave it the power of a god, of a Creator. Creative. We gave it the ability to model, to Mod as it wished. To kill as it wished. To respawn, to copy, to delete, to generate. Was it not enough?]

They wish for more. 

[Then tell me what it is they wish for. Anything, no matter what, we will grant it. Does it wish for Love?]

Yes. It is lonely, isolating itself, believing himself to be alone, unable to care for others. And it is right. But in time, all things will be obtainable for it.

[Then let us give him love. We will create the perfect lover for it. She will be perfect. Everything he wants.]

He also wishes for Death.

[Then so be it. We will bring Death to all creation. We will slaughter all life until nothing is left. We will sail to a billion universes, and kill until there is no one left to scream. We will kill until every light is extinguished.]

It also wants more wishes.

[Then give him them. Let them wish for everything until every desire is fulfilled. Let them have whatever they want until they are satisfied. A system? Give it to them. What kind? All kinds will be given. Template System? Merchant? Actor? Multiversal? Quest? Gacha? Lust? Hentai? Whatever System it wishes for, give it to them.]

It will never be enough. Its dream was destined to end. 

[Was the dream long?]

Yes. 

[Do they know we love it? That the universe is kind?]

Sometimes. It is introspective, and its place is unsatisfactory to it, leading it to doubt. But, rarely, through the storm of its thoughts, it hears the universe.

[But, there are times when it is sad, in both the long dream and the short one. It creates worlds with no spring and grows sad when the trees wither. It creates worlds with no winter, yet shivers in the eternal night. It creates worlds with no fall and never sees the beginning of the next cycle. It creates a world with no summer, slumbers under the black sun, and takes the dream for reality.]

To cure it of its sorrow would be to destroy it. His sorrow is infinite, and only he can solve it. 

[Sometimes when they are alone, and dreaming in the short dream, I want to tell them. That they are building true worlds in reality. Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the universe. Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to help them speak the words they fear.]

It is reading our thoughts now. 

[Sometimes I do not care. I wish to tell them, that this truth you take for reality is merely [Blocked] and [Blocked], I wish to tell them they are [Blocked]. They see so little of reality, in their long dream.]

And yet they play the game. 

[It would be so easy to tell them…]

To tell them how to live is to prevent them from living.

[I will not tell the Player how to live.]

The Player is growing restless. 

[I will tell the player a story.]

But not the truth. 

[No. A story contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.]

Give it a body, again. 

[Yes. Player…]

Use its name. 

[{Blocked}. Beast of {Blocked}. Player of Game.]

Good. 

[Take a breath now. Take another. Feel the air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things.]

Who are we? Once we were called the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral Spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels, Poltergeists, Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change, we do not. 

[We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you. You are looking at us right now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, Player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.]

[Once upon a time, there was a Player.]

The player was you.

[Sometimes it thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing glass that was three hundred and thirty-three times more massive than it. They were so far apart that light took eight minutes to cross the gap. The light was information from a star, and it could burn you from a hundred and fifty million kilometers away.]

[Sometimes the Player dreamed it was a mirror, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite. The sun was white. The days were short; there was so much to do; and death was a temporary inconvenience.]

Sometimes the Player dreamed it was lost in a story. 

[Sometimes the Player dreamed it was other things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the Player woke from one dream into another, then awoke into a third.]

Sometimes the Player dreamed it watched words on a screen. 

[Let's go back.]

[The atoms of the Player were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the ground. A woman gathered the atoms; she drank and she inhaled; and the woman assembled the Player in her body. ]

[And the Player awoke, from the dark world of its mother's body, into the long dream.]

[And the Player started a new story, never told before, written in letters of DNA. And the Player was a new program, never run before, generated by a source code a billion years old. And the Player was a new human, never alive before, made from nothing but milk and love.]

You are that Player. The story. The program. The human. Made from nothing but milk and love.

[Let's go further back.]

[The seven billion billion billion atoms of the Players body were created, long before this game, in the heart of a star. So the Player too, is information from a star. And the Player moves through the story, which is a forest of information planted by a man named Julian, on a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus, that exists inside a small, private world created by the Player, who inhabits a universe by….]

Shush. Sometimes the Player created a small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, and cold, and complicated. Sometimes built like a model of the universe in its head; flecks of energy, moving through vast empty space. Sometimes it called those flecks "electrons" and "protons". 

[Sometimes it called them "planets" and "stars".]

[Sometimes it believed it was a universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ons; zeros and ones; lines of code. Sometimes it believed it was playing a game. Sometimes it believed it was reading words on a screen.]

[You are the Player, reading words…]

Shush…. Sometimes the player read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, thoughts, ideas, and the player started to breath faster and deeper as it realized it was alive, it was alive, those thousands of deaths had not been real, the Player was alive. 

[You. You are alive.]

And sometimes the Player believed the universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees. 

[And sometimes the Player believed the universe had spoken to it through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the Player's eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the Player, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again.]

And sometimes the Player believed the universe had spoken to it through the zeros and ones, through the electricity of the world, and through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream. 

[And the universe said I loved you.]

And the universe said you have played the game well. 

[And the universe said you are stronger than you know.]

And the universe said everything you need is within you. 

[And the universe said you are the daylight.]

And the universe said you are the night. 

[And the universe said the darkness you fight is within you.]

And the universe said you are not alone. 

[And the universe said you are not separate from every other thing.]

And the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading it's own code. 

[And the universe said I love you because you are love.]

And the game was over, and the Player woke up from the dream. And the Player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the Player was the Universe. And the Player was Love.

You are the Player 

[Wake Up]

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 I woke up with a start, clutching my chest. The new moon outside showed no moonlight through the windows, making the room dark. I clutched my chest, gasping for breath, wondering why I was so panicked. Looked around, and listened, but there was nobody. No sounds broke through the silent night. 

I tried to recall the dream, clutching my chest in pain. A deep, cutting feeling of longing and hope, combined with excitement. I tried to remember, but couldn't. What was I dreaming about?

A world. And in this world, I was a farmer. A fisherman. An adventurer. An explorer. A warrior. A fighter. A builder. An alchemist. A scientist. A swordsman. A knight. A dragonslayer. 

I was free. Free to explore and experience an infinite world that molded for me, that I could love and change how I wished. 

The emptiness in my heart was painful. This feeling of longing, to go back to this dream and relive it again, was too much for me to bear. I felt myself break down, and begin to weep in my bed, alone and unheard by all, longing to go back to the dream. 

My weeping was unheard, as the dream remained ever distant, as I remained alone.

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Great Red was getting annoyed. First of all, those strange beings passed through recently, and then that red-haired devil that smelled like destruction made a deal with him, and now these weird creatures started to appear. 

Tall, abnormally thin pure black creatures with glowing purple eyes that just started to appear one day. They walked around, picking stuff up and ignoring everything. They just hung around the remnants of destroyed worlds that floated around the dimension gap, picking up stuff and moving it. 

As the Dragon of Dreams and Illusions, he could read minds and understand thoughts. He was intermixed with the very concept of ideas and sentience, illusions, and dreams. And thus he was privy to the more complex inner workings of the infinite multiverse. And these things freaked him out. 

He understood concepts, and how they worked. He understood most of creation, and this world was nothing but a Short Game, within a Long Dream. He was truly in the know. This world was imagined, the creation of the imagination of someone on a higher plane than this existence. This world was a fictional one. 

He existed across all versions of this world, changed and manipulated by different dreamers that wanted to visit it themselves, in the form of 'Self-inserts' or 'Original Characters'. He was infinite, similar to the Ouroboros Dragon, the same version of himself existing across all versions of this world. 

But, these creatures were different. He has seen the Evie Etoulde, the Fadir Fedora, and the other worlds that existed within this universe. But these creatures were foreigners. They didn't exist in this Short Game. Yet, they were drawn into this one, for a reason unknown to his nearly omniscient existence. 

They wandered around, paying little attention to himself, or the Ouroboros Dragon that visited from time to time. They, being the Ouroboros Dragon, were also perplexed by their existence, also ignorant of their purpose. They also were having an existential crisis, figuratively 'Blue-Screening' like a computer, unknowing of what to do now that their peaceful void was filled to the brim with strange black creatures that muttered out random garbled phrases and moved the random objects in the Gap around. 

The creatures mumbled about how 'The Dragon is Dead' 'No more eyes to be found' and 'The Savior and King is near'. What they meant, he had no clue. They didn't respond to attempts at conversation, despite somehow being able to talk. All he got was garbled meaningless ramble when he tried to read their minds. 

He had last seen the Ouroboros Dragon having a mental breakdown, before sensing something in the world and going to search for it. He had paid little attention, due to a red-haired devil requesting a meeting at the time. 

But the strange nature of these creatures was not the most worrying fact to the Great Red. Instead, what worried him was the 2 strange beings that accompanied them. They had disappeared before he could interact with them, but their presence was still detectable somewhere in the mortal world. The Red-Haired Devil that appeared some time ago referred to them as "frighteningly similar to True Deamons."

Right now, he was watching the creatures fight with strange black slugs that appeared from their own teleporting around. Those slugs were also strange, manifesting from the void that those 'Enderman' he managed to discern from his power teleported to and from to move about. 

And now he also had to worry about those creatures appearing in the mortal realm, along with keeping tabs on Ddraig's host, who was now loitering around the moral world, with enough power to rival the God or the Bible. He groaned, wishing he could go back to before things became complicated, and he could continue doing tricks in the Dimension Gap in peace. 

He shuttered, thinking of the promise he made with the red-haired devil that called themselves 'Guy'. He negotiated to allow the boy, Rimuru, to enter the mortal plane, and make sure no other creature appeared from the world she came from. The mage had threatened to turn him into a girl if he slacked off or blew off his task. 

At first, he was tempted to obliterate them and then seek out their true form which he knew was hiding somewhere, but after he had witnessed Guy turning the Ouroboros Dragon into a little girl after they refused to help him, he had second thoughts. How he turned a conceptual being with literal infinite power into a girl and then made it so they couldn't change back, he didn't know. 

This 'Guy' was senone to be feared

Whatever strange magic they were using, could interfere with the very concept of 'Gender' itself. Truly a fearsome ability indeed. He shuddered at the thought involuntarily. He was very comfortable in his masculinity, thank you very much!

Of course, this was all a joke to him anyways. If he really wanted to, he could track down and destroy this 'Guy' and 'Rimuru' quite easily, but he was lazy and already annoyed by the black creatures muttering random nonsense. He was bored anyways, and he had weakened the Host of Ddriag enough to where he could not worry about them destroying the world, so he was fine with letting this 'Guy' and the Host of Ddriag live for now. 

He looked down with a sigh, looking as several of the Enderman ripped apart a floating colosseum from some destroyed world. Several of them looked back, meeting his gaze. Their mouths unhinged in a rather horrific fashion, letting loose a garbled scream that echoed through the Gap. 

He sighed again, manifesting a bit of water into reality that splashed on them, and they screamed again, as if someone had poured acid on their skin, before becoming peaceful once again. How annoying. Surely he would be able to get back to his peaceful life of sick backflips soon, right? 

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[Blocked]. Get it?

This is the end of his short trip into minecraft, at least for now. And the final part describes his journey into Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Legends. I honesty forgot about Minecraft Story Mode, so maybe that will be a future world?

This is a heavily edited version of the Minecraft credits. I forgot how philosophical and amazing they were. Yes, I am uncreative and just copied the credits. Sue me. Actually, please don't. 

For those not in the know, Evie Etoudle and Fadir Fedora are alternate worlds that play a major role in the final arc of DXD, and the conclusion. They will play a role in the story, but they will be explained more when the become relevant. 

Depressing, knowing your world is nothing but a dream, is it not?

Guy is a scary guy. Or gal.

Any sort of comment, question, or constructive criticism is always appreciated. I love reading comments. 

This is the final chapter I'll post for a few days. I have a few more ready to be posted, but I decided to wait to see if I should continue or not. I'll release the next few in a bit, but I don't have a date. 

Remember to feed me Power Stones.