Divine and fae bolts of lightning, and explosive ethereal mist, struck my body. I weathered the blows and responded in kind. My true-body lurched, bounced, and staggered like a rowboat in a stormy sea, or a drunk buffeted by the wind. I cast spells that warped the very fabric of space and time, and rejected the very concept of being, in an effort to kill my foes by any and all means. The chaotic sea grew turbulent as our powers clashed, but since everything didn’t stop for me, and I wasn't the one to collapse first, I can roughly say that I won in the end...and they lost. Their corpses and the shreds of their spirits going to a good cause.

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There’s something supremely unpleasant about having all your ducks in a row only to have some random fox, weasel, or wolf come and mess it all up. I closed my eyes in frustration and exhaustion. Counting for as long as I needed to count, to keep myself from blowing up at the entire multiverse. A few days...or months...or years, had passed since the strange impromptu war with the immortals. Jack and I were still recovering.

In my case, I just needed time. My idle-clicker system might be no more, but its reality-altering code now made up my core-body. Though I was now beyond worrying about the things called potential and talent, I was still constantly growing, constantly evolving. Constantly growing along the axes of breadth, depth, and height. This, plus the influence of my Empty-Archive’s countless stories, assured that any cracks and fractures on my spirit and body would quickly be restored and compensated for.

Jack, on the other hand, hadn’t been so fortunate. Emulating the rise of a multiversal, super-civilization, wasn’t a small thing. Jack had essentially divided and twisted her consciousness and essence into countless shapes, and then fanatically filled those twisted parts of herself with power from the chaotic sea. It was a crazy maneuver, akin to a normal person doing the kind of insane yoga that could leave them paralyzed and then trying to lift an entire, running, nuclear power plant, while they were still tied up into knots. It was only natural that there’d be a backlash, a price to be paid for doing something so insane.

...Of course, I understand why she did it. Who’d have expected a billion gods, devils, dragons, and fae to suddenly pop out and start fighting us? It was a frustrating and humbling experience. A reminder that we might be stronger than most mortals but we still had to be wary of our fellow immortals. Anyway, now I’ve spent the last...unknowably stretch of time, helping my poor wife recuperate.

First, we’d had to gather all the dark citizens of the dark civilization. Then I had to help Jack break those errant pieces of herself down so that they’d remember that they were a part of her, and not actual beings. Don’t feel bad, they were bound to come undone in a few months anyway...or rather, a lot of the ones we’d caught had already died of “old age” by the time Jack and I had gathered them back.

All of them decayed into fadelings within days. Also, a majority of the fragments of Jack came back on their own, drawn to the whole by an awareness that there was something bigger than they were always meant to be a part of. With quite a few of the fragments that avoided returning to Jack, instead of wandering over to me, for some reason.

Then I had to feed Jack’s hungry darkness with as much essence as I could because even if we’d had to do so. Which meant going elsewhere in the chaotic sea, and gathering the materials and energy of the spheres and shards there. Fortunately, the damned flies that kept bothering me proved themselves useful by building their nests close enough for me to ransack. Tearing into their hives like a bear seeking honey. My nothingness cleaving aside the walls of divine, infernal, and fae energy with increasing ease, as I repeated my raids.

While I was looking after Jack, occasionally a few of the annoying foreign immortals would show up to either spy on us, or meddle. Which was fine, flesh and spirits of immortals made for a good medicinal supplement for my beloved. Though sometimes, they’d come in such numbers that it’d be like we’d run into a wasp nest. Thankfully, instead of simply being stung to death like a normal person, I could turn myself into a churning ball of semi-figurative smoke and fire. Culling and killing the annoying critters before feeding them to Jack.

In total, I ended up having to hunt down and process somewhere in the ballpark of 300 billion spheres, and even more, shards, to get Jack back into a state that could be called alive and sane. Before then, she was just sort of this hungry ghost made of formless shadow...and she kept trying to eat me...This actually kind of helped because it meant that she didn’t wander off and get swallowed up by the endless beige-black darkness that surrounded us. Also, I had a lot of essence and material to spare, in my body. So, it made a great way to assure stayed put and she kept convalescing, instead of having her wandering about willy-nilly, agitating her injuries.

Now after all our efforts, Jack was finally somewhat okay. She wasn’t conscious yet, but she was properly alive...Properly in one piece. She was going to be okay. I could finally breathe in relief. In a way, this whole experience was a kind of blessing. Cultivating the paths of magic and technology through trillions of minds, and across trillions of lives would likely bring my wife great returns. The only problem was that she’d probably need to re-cultivate a bit to return to her peak. She was still an immortal, but she’d lost a fair bit of her former power and mass thanks to her injuries and despite my best efforts she had some recovery that she’d still need to do on her own.

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Dragons weren’t ordinarily shy creatures, but every group will have individuals who veer from the norm. Every rule has its exceptions. Kian of the Greenscales was one such exception. Introverted, introspective, and highly cautious, if it weren’t for her ties to this universe’s foremost nation of Dragon, she probably would have become the kind of hermit dragon that lived all alone in isolated lakes and mountain tops that no one and nothing ever visited.

After the rout in the chaotic sea, where the dragons were able to thoroughly spank the two audacious pantheons that had dared to try and kidnap their kingdom’s younger generation for use as mounts and materials, there’d been a lot of work that needed doing. The lost hatchlings had to be returned to their parents. The pantheon’s surviving combatants needed to be ransomed back to their respective heavens, hells, and wonderlands. The Shattered World’s Dragon Kingdom had needed to rebuild and bolster its defenses, so something like this could never happen again.

However, Kian hadn’t forgotten why her Shattered World Dragon-Kingdom was able to win that battle. She hadn’t forgotten the two strange entities that had surprisingly chosen to pair up with the dragons to push back the gods, devils, and fae of the Shattered-Star Pantheon and Lost Moon Pantheon. Thus, she’d been looking for them all this time. Ordering her people to keep their eyes and ears open for any sign of the two strange entities.

She’d been a little alarmed to hear of how the beings were doing. Though that alarm quickly faded as her people continued observing. The two pantheons had apparently kept a grudge and had been harassing the two alien immortals this whole time. A decision that had only resulted in further losses for the pantheons.

Who says hyper-intelligence equals greater smarts? Who says age equals wisdom? There was clearly neither smarts nor wisdom on display here, if this was how the two pantheons chose to waste their talents. Or maybe it was just a case of bureaucracy tripping the pantheon’s leadership up, so that vital information failed to fall into the hands of those who needed it.

In either case, the gods and devils who’d failed when gathered into two great armies, were failing yet again, as individual fighters, and small hunting parties. The deities and devils that showed up to bother the two unknown entities died quickly and were swallowed up. It was a frightening thing to watch High-Gods, Fae-Royalty, and Arch-Devils die like insects, but it made Kian more sure about her next move.