Theo wasn’t completely sure of what happened after the intense flash of pain. He was shrouded in complete darkness, at a glance strangely similar to before, yet completely different. If before it felt like the world became a black void, now it was as if he was incapable of sensing anything, completely trapped within his very own mind. He felt claustrophobic, and his mind seemed to dull with each consecutive thought, like he was slowly disappearing from the world.

Although he thought that he might have died back when the calamity hit Earth, now he just wanted to laugh at his previous self. He didn’t want to make pointless assumptions again, but this time he truly felt like this might be the end of his road. Unlike previously, however, he didn’t want to die, it seemed as though he got to truly experience what being alive meant just a moment ago, and it ended, just like that.

The feeling of exhaustion grew stronger, as he lamented his fate. This whole experience was an endless emotional roller coaster, and he was tired of it.

How good would it be if he was a protagonist instead? While on earth he used to read a lot of novels, foolishly keeping a shred of hope in the back of his mind, that maybe, just maybe this was his pilot chapter, a prologue if you will, and that all the suffering will eventually pay off.

Yet it did not.

At that moment, unknown to our protagonist, the energy around him appeared to move in an unusual pattern, not just the energy absorbed through endless siphoning and the energy making its way to the center of the enormous vortex, but also all the energy and matter outside the vortex’s scope. The movement of energy imitating Theo’s emotions and thoughts in inexplicable ways.

‘I didn’t get summed by a god telling me he made a mistake and granting me overpowered abilities as compensation, hell, I couldn’t even use my own misfortune to my advantage. Taking advantage of going back in time and winning a lottery? The winning number just conveniently changes.’

The energy kept churning faster and faster, its movements and shape somewhat giving the impression of a constantly moving and extremely complicated mechanism. Yet Theo’s mind still dulled as if begging him to fall asleep.

‘Well, you never know, maybe I will get reincarnated as a crippled young master destined to reach the peak of the martial world.’ Theo thought in a self-deprecating tone. ‘I might even get a broken system with an annoying personality in the shape of a fairy. But that’s all very cliché, maybe something more original would be better?’

At that point, Theos mind couldn’t hold on anymore, slowly falling towards unconsciousness, but the movement of energy was anything but slow, nor did it show any sign of stopping.

The wonderful magical construct created around and inside of Theo moved in incredible ways, strange patterns and angles that didn’t even seem to exist. Even the greatest of minds wouldn’t be able to appreciate it in its full glory, let alone understand it. It appeared to exist in countless dimensions at once, and defy the laws of time and space, working on its own rules and breaking all others.

It flickered between numerous different colors at once, some not perceivable to most of existence and some that didn’t even exist up until this point.

It was safe to say that all life was already wiped from existence. If they didn’t die from the process of a world entering a new epoch, they were now a part of the energy that made up the wonderful magical construct.

The process of continuous suction of energy continued, although the vortex was no more, the magical construct more than made up for it. As more and more energy integrated itself into the construct, it changed on a fundamental level.

Its size couldn’t even be described, not because it was too big or too small, but because size wasn’t something that could ever define it. It could eclipse the whole world, yet also hide inside of an atom.

Eventually, its scope exceeded that of the now devoured world, entering the chaotic and lawless land. That land was the foundation of the world’s expansion, every new epoch installing law and order into the chaotic space, making it a part of a greater whole.

Yet the construct didn’t seem to care for the energy’s chaotic properties, greedily absorbing it just the same. The authority of this process exceeded even that of the law of time, thus its duration couldn’t be appropriately gauged.

The absorption of chaotic energy continued for nearly an eternity, clearing out an area so large even a world trillions of times bigger than the previous couldn’t fill in.

Eventually, the construction seemed satisfied with the amount of energy, yet it wasn’t finished. Its endless improvement, evolution, and refinement continued for even longer than it previously took to absorb the energy, only stopping when it reached perfection, unable to improve by even a fraction.

The finished product was something never before seen, more perfect than sentience and more useful than energy. It couldn’t be put in any classification, yet it could fulfill any role.

With the completion of its goals, the construct, if it could even still be called that, returned to its place of origin and the reason for its creation, to Theo.

Entering his energy-based body, it started to fuse with his very being, becoming one with him. One would imagine that a person wouldn’t be capable of housing the power of something so law deifying. But there was a reason that that person could trigger the creation of something so magnificent, a reason he could survive through its creation, and a reason why he was the only being capable of housing it.

The whole process could be described as anticlimactic, to say the least. It was just a clump of energy, although high in quality and very organized, entering a clump of white energy, which was Theo’s body.

It entered his core, producing a frequency that would give one an impression of happiness. Happiness of becoming one with something greater than itself and fulfilling its purpose.

Then, there was nothing. There was no sound, there was no energy, there was no substance, there was only the unconscious body of Theo, laying in the middle of absolute emptiness.

Actually, there was something, well, at least a potential of something, and that was the concept of a world.

Although the world was destroyed, completely absorbed along with any soul that has yet to die, the concept of it and the reason for its constant evolution were still there. The massive amount of information that build up the world at every start of the new epoch remained, along with all the souls that died before the creation of the construction, which was an insignificant number in comparison to the souls that never even got the chance to experience the epoch, patiently waiting in the reincarnation cycle.

It was unknown if the construction wasn’t able to tap into the concept of the world and the reincarnation cycle, or if it had no need to, but it didn’t matter now.

With the help of the massive amount of energy Theo’s body gave of, a new era began. The world that was already giant previously expanded to a whole new level.

What allowed this expansion wasn’t just Theo’s energy, but also the vast amount of space freed up by the consumption of chaotic energy, allowing for an uninhibited increase in size.

Thus, a new epoch began, an epoch unlike any other before. The already ridiculous length of time a normal epoch lasted tremendously increased.

With the end of that epoch came another, then yet another, and after that countless more.

But the entity at the center of all that never moved, unconscious and refining all the excess energy along with further integration of the miraculous construction.

After countless more epochs, the moment long-awaited by no one in particular finally happened.

Theo awoke.