In his brief moment, before rejecting his first bond, O’rianex, Kile remembered two very long hands molding and twisting a massive rock into a tree. “That shit was mesmerizing! Disregarding that would be a disgrace to that bond.” He decides and counts this as his second bond opened thus far.
Compared to what he witnessed now, those visuals were a zillion times better. Now he stood in a never-ending room of light. In short, plain and pathetic. Able to move omnidirectional, Kile couldn’t distinguish right from left. He tried flipping upside down to at least differentiate up from down. Yet he couldn’t tell the difference—either the room turned along with him or his sense of balance had been nullified.
Soft white: the theme. Inner peace: the lure.
The celestial bed in the first round had nothing over this room. One would never succumb to boredom, fall asleep, or have the urge to leave this room. The lure would forever keep you alive, while the theme would forever keep you occupied.
“No visual effects needed.” Kile took a step back quickly, realizing that it was pointless. “This room is zillion times scarier than the first.”
[Selected bond: Enoris.]
[Willed to live by the true force of creation, Enoris ranks among the top 100 species to ever reach Omni status. It is a light-based entity that has no physical form or shape, created by pure intent to live and create. Enoris was born immortal and as a light-forms, it reigns supreme over other weaker illumine creatures. Creation might be its forte, but in the multiverse, the Enoris are feared for their destructive powers as well. Follow its will as it shall light up your path to immortality and sovereignty. A bond with an omnipotent being is the shortcut to reach godhood. With light affinity as an added bonus, one experiences high vitality boosts, blessings to add percentiles over your stats, and first pickings to the Aureř class.]
After deducing a few things from his first bond description, not wanting to jump into any premature assumptions, Kile decides to exit and read a few more bonds to build a concrete hunch. He willed to exit, which prompted another system message to pop open and block his exit.
[Trace amounts of light affinity deducted. Combine with another light-based bond and affinity to get triple the bonuses, stat gains, ability boosts, and quick mastery of light affinity…]
Kile closed the message halfway and exited the bond. “Desperate message… you’re making it too easy.” He sighs.
Next, Kile entered a bond called Imoye. With a simple theory of what the system wanted him to do, he picked this bond by going against his instincts, inner feelings, and the gravitation pull of the system. Basically, Kile went as far as possible, heading away from the light orb until he reached Imoye. A bond the system planned to hide from Kile, or so he thought.
Space around Kile shifted into a void with dancing letters that changed by the second. Some symbols he recognized as numbers similar to ancient Greek, Roman, Sanskrit, and Hebrew. These symbols morphed into several other markings Kile had never seen in his life.
At the end of the display, Kile had one word to describe this bond.
Useless.
Kile sighs again after reading the bond. This bond governed the identity of the god of knowledge, in the literal sense. Knowledge somehow took form and transcended into a living being. Entity with consciousness, but which didn’t have a physical form. There were many reasons to decline this bond.
“Knowledge without wisdom is just dumb.” He summarises and moves on to other bonds.
After exiting a couple more bonds, he gets a distinct feeling that he could step and cross over into the fourth stage. He dismissed the idea without a second thought, not knowing if we would be able to come back.
“To summarize: every mother fucker wants my free will.” Kile throws his imaginary body backward. By now, he understood how to manipulate his ethereal body with his mind. Sticking to what he knew, he moved it more or not, like a human, except for the fun stuff. After all, if you could fly, kick, and teleport to places, why walk?
“Power for soul,” Kile takes a mental note of all the points he collected so far. “They promise immortality or a safe paradise… But even deities need followers. Why is the question here?” Kile gazed at the million bonds like stars and wondered. “To either conquer more worlds or keep what they have? Slaves…? Hmm…”
═─┈─{═1═}─┈─═
Kile flips over his stomach and peers at the bonds below him. “My gut says there might be a bigger reason.” His eyes linger over the Enoris bond. “Sure, there are many ways to manipulate someone, yet even deities can’t up and take someone’s free will. Right? But that’s not the interesting part by far.” He summons his system’s screen. “There is someone keeping the Omni gods at bay.”
Kile fiddles with the system screens, switching from one screen to another. “One theory is that they all made this.” He points at the system screen. “Together? For what? Peace?” He wondered. “Another theory is that someone higher at the top is forcing 100 omni beings to behave… The first is more plausible. One being shouldn’t have such devastating power or can’t…” Kile places his imaginary hand against the system screen, leaning against it. “Now! How do I join you?” He taps the screen. With no sound or response from the system, he gets disappointed.
Grit is the key to success. Focused on finding the source behind the system screen, Kile wasted a day opening every bond. From the second day, he concentrated on nothing but this singular task of finding the source. Which meant he lost track of time. However, He didn’t care if an eon passed by—it might have already passed by before he woke up from his slumber.
Funny how victory makes you overlook the struggle as well as the things you had to sacrifice through the journey. The imaginary body didn’t need any rest, while the brain never really sleeps. Eternal Slumber was a fitting title. During the Four countable months Kile spent here, he was certain that one could slumber into eternity. Not caring about if he missed out on his adolescence, Kile went back to his overpowered concentration.
“It is what it is.” He shrugged his doubts aside.
Over extreme and singular concentration, Kile detected tiny chains flicker into his vision. Similar to the chains he witnessed back on Earth when he was alive—He very much so believed to be dead. If anything happened and he woke up from his eternal slumber, he would be a reincarnated person. A superhero name would have to wait if he does live through this main trail.
With an overpowered brain that controlled an imaginary body, Kile already knighted himself a hero: Two things he wanted to experience. After he self-appointed himself as a king, and knighted himself to be the strongest hero of his realm: all with a surreal visual he now had access to, Kile didn’t just think but believed that he was the strongest.
Flickers became clear. Imagination became reality. Kile willed the chains to be real as he approached. He imagined the sense of holding a real chain as his hands held the ethereal one. He instinctually knew that trying to feel it would be a wrong move.
“Jus…t tug,” Kile told himself.
Time became irrelevant. Kile didn’t mind being stuck in an eternal slumber. He had but one goal: he had to find everything about these chains. They held and connected everything together. “Get one and the rest will follow.” He was sure.
These weren’t like the ones back on earth. They created an intricate web of chains, each chain connected with a bond or another chain. “Learn. Later wield.” Kile set this as his top goal. In his new upcoming reality, these chains would either reign supreme or be the foundation for every aspect that turned supreme. Kile believed this with his entire being.
From pulling himself over the chains, he learned to tug the chains closer to him. After all, in this realm, everything existed without mass, and in the land of imagination, he ruled supreme. Maybe Tetsu might give him a decent competition, but he would win.
Surely.
Step: Kile takes a step away as he pulls on the bonds while stepping into the next stage.
In a distant land, two voices argue behind the scenes. Their voices couldn’t reach the fields, but their eyes saw it all.
[Alert! System breach between barriers.]
“Common! Didn’t we just solve one problem?”
“This one is much bigger, sir.” The scout stuttered.
“What the Woolf do you mean?”
[Alert! System interface protocol is being overwritten.]
[System failure occurred.]
[Integration failure occurred.]
[Alert! Code breach.]
“Sir!”
“Next time you stutter, I am going to chew you up like a bone kid.” The manager warns him.
The scout had his eyes fixated on a separate system screen. Among his four eyes, he chose one he liked the least. He knew he would lose it soon, so he used it to peer at his manager to reveal the worst news possible. There still lay the problem of stuttering. If he did stutter, he would lose his head instead of his eye.
The scout thought fast before the manager changed his expression to deliver bad news. Repeating the message several times in his head, hoping this might help him overcome his stutter once he spoke, the scout stuttered.
“This… one.” The scout points at the screen, his finger threatening to come loose. “This one—is an… omni-level problem, sir.”
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