I remember a saying before that… bane of all intelligent being is boredom and I wholeheartedly agree at this moment.
How long has it been?
A minute? An hour? A day? A week? A month? Years?
Who can say…
For all I know, the space stretched before me was an endless sea of darkness, vast and absolute. No horizon. No end. Only the void.
Here, the very notion of time had no meaning. All I could do was breathe out another weary sigh, lost in my own thoughts.
"Hey. I know you're there. Answer my questions, will you?" I called out to the all-knowing voice lodged in my mind who is also my sole companion since my rebirth.
< Order acknowledged. >
< Order cannot be executed. Conflict detected with prior directive. >
< Revoke the standing order to 'shut the fuck up'? >
I said that did I?
I scratch my non-existent head with my equally non-existent fingers which is all just my mental image of my current self.
Previously, I was agitated and frustrated due to my death and sudden rebirth. Upon hearing this all-knowing voice in my head, I unconsciously snapped at it. Thinking I got reincarnated and got a System.
Why did I snap at my System, you ask?
We all know that in 9 out of 10 Systems. 9 of them are unreliable or a liability just to turn their Host's life into entertainment for a higher being.
"Right… Revoke it." I ordered with a poorly maintained dignity befitting an Outer God.
< Order acknowledged. >
< Prior directive rescinded. >
< Restoring response functions. >
< Answer: The concept of time does not apply to your existence. Your existence reside outside the boundaries of the temporal axis. >
"That explanation sounds… reasonable, I guess."
To be honest, if I can't manage something this basic, then I'd be a disgrace of an Outer God. Since with my limited understanding, Outer Gods are beings that exist beyond the concepts of a physical world and dimensions in a higher realm beyond existence.
"Anyway—what is this place? And how do I leave it? I just want to get back to Earth, hole up like a hermit, and finally binge all the games, anime, and novels I never had time for when I was alive."
< Answer: Current location confirmed: precipice of reality's boundary, transitional zone to higher metaphysical strata. >
< Answer: Return to Earth is not possible.>
I blinked. Not really shocked or anything. Rather, I was more worried that my dream of wasting eternity on backlogged entertainment died a sudden, unceremonious death.
I'm a procrastinating lazy bum?
Well, I'm an Outer God now and I can do whatever the fuck I want without need to worry about consequences.
"…So you're telling me even all the games I bought on Steam during sales don't exist anymore?"
The silence that followed was somehow worse than the revelation.
Somehow, I felt like pinching my brow but I have neither a hand or brow to pinch.
Just as I wallowed in my despair of having no entertainment, the voice in my head dropped something quite important.
"Hold on. Innate ability?"
After muttering this sentence a few times, I felt like slapping my thigh!
"Yes! I am now an Outer God! I should have the power to easily conjure up anything I want right?"
"Good!"
"Good, good!"
"Tell me, how should I master this innate ability of mine!" I demanded excitedly.
I suddenly interjected before it could answer my question.
"No. Actually, explain what my power is first."
< Answer: Similar to omnipotence and omnipresence, but not the true form of either. >
< Term: Omni-Existence Matrix — the core framework through which an Outer God projects both power and presence. >
< Rather than merely being everywhere or controlling everything, you are the reality and its ruler, able to impose your own laws beyond your reality externally upon other lesser realities. >
Digesting the information took some time as I broke it down piece by piece bec:ause I am that slow. But once it clicked, I was beyond ecstatic.
"What are you waiting for! Tell me how to master my power!" I demanded, unable to hide the excitement.
< Answer Assistance unavailable. Innate ability is instinctive and must be realized by the self. Comparable reference: a newborn requires no teaching to breathe. >
Hearing this, my excitement instantly deflated. But I did not give up that easily.
I imagine closing my eyes and extending my newly acquired, otherworldly senses inwardly as my instinct told.
Inside me stretched something vast, a self-contained world—or perhaps even a universe—easily molded with the faintest flicker of thought. Here, within this inner dominion, I was sovereign, almighty, the undisputed god presiding over all.
And yet…
While this internal realm bent effortlessly to my will, extending that same power outward was another matter entirely. It felt unnatural, as though a human were trying to breathe through gills—clumsy, awkward, absurd. No matter how I strained, the process was graceless, like attempting to sprint without first learning how to walk.
A gnawing thought crept in: Had I skipped a step? Something vital, something fundamental?
"A little help, please?"
At last, I surrendered and sought the counsel of the ever-present voice within.
"Concept?" I echoed, the word heavy on my tongue.
The explanation stirred something within me, deep and primal, as if an instinct long asleep had begun to rouse.
At those words, my inner reality convulsed. What was once static became restless, shifting and reforming, dissolving and reappearing in endless permutations. The formless now hinted at infinite possibility.
Then it came—an overwhelming flood of information. A deluge that battered my mind like unrelenting tsunamis. It was not mere knowledge, but revelation. A mortal brushing against godhood, tasting the raw enlightenment of heaven itself.
Rather than pain, it felt more in my head, or rather, my soul became bloated by the weight of the concept birthed within me.
Yet, this process also evolved my soul. Elevating my mortal consciousness and molded it into a transcendent existence that is an Outer God.
Time passed into a slow grinding crawl. But each passing moment, my understanding of my power increased rapidly until I heard a loud resounding crack like the sound of a cracking eggshell when something hatched.
Then.
BOOM!
The space around me exploded and the all-encompassing darkness finally gave way to a paradoxical space.
At first glance, it looks like an ocean without water, stretching endlessly in every direction.
The "surface" ripples with impossible colors — hues that do not exist in any spectrum, shifting between brilliance and void, as though the fabric of perception itself is being torn and re-stitched every moment.
Above, countless fractured skies shimmer and collapse. One moment you see a thousand suns spiraling into themselves, the next, an endless black canopy veined with silver threads like cracks in a mirror.
Far away, or perhaps right in front of you, rise towers of shifting geometry — structures that should not stand, folding into themselves like reflections in broken glass. They stretch both infinitely upward and downward, vanishing into themselves, their shapes never holding steady long enough to be fully understood.
There are currents of light drifting across the void, but they move like rivers flowing in every direction, spilling and recoiling, sometimes solidifying into figures. Faces, eyes, hands — not real, but impressions, as if the void itself is trying to imitate what mortals call form, failing, and reshaping again.
The "ground," if you call it that, feels liquid-solid, like walking on glass that ripples beneath your steps. Each step echoes not as sound but as vibrations in existence itself, creating ripples that stretch infinitely outward, bending the scenery with every movement.
And always, in the distance, there is a hum.
Not sound, not silence. A resonance. Like the afterimage of a note struck on a cosmic instrument, vibrating not in your ears but in your very being. That is the heartbeat of this place — the pulse of concepts, the breathing of the Outer Gods.
Here, nothing is stable. Nothing is fixed. And yet, everything feels… eternal.
Looking at this sight before my eyes…
"Yeah, definitely not my kind of place." I muttered dryly as I saw several 'kins' casting their curious glance at their newborn kin.
Without hesitation, I drifted across the boundless dimension beyond time and space, until I arrived before a fragile, translucent bubble floating in this endless kaleidoscopic sea.
Compared to my being, it was small, delicate. And yet, the moment I peered inside, I could sense this tiny sphere contained an entire omniverse.
Within the bubble stretched a dark expanse like an inverted night sky, its surface rippling with the shimmer of countless lights. This was not a void of nothingness, but the Sea of Quanta — a fathomless ocean of possibilities, where entire realities ebbed and flowed like fragile sparks upon the tide. Its waters were endless, black yet shimmering, each ripple carrying echoes of fractured timelines and abandoned worlds. Some motes of light glowed steadily, clinging to existence. Others flickered erratically, already crumbling back into the abyss.
And there, at the center of it all, stood a singular tree as if crafted using the cosmos — the Imaginary Tree.
Its trunk gleamed transparent and crystalline, a pillar of eternity rising from the abyss like a lone island in a storm. Through its veins pulsed a golden luminescence, steady and patient, as though it were the heartbeat of all creation. Its branches spiraled infinitely, fractal upon fractal, branching beyond comprehension. Upon each bough rested countless leaves — fragile, radiant, alive.
Every leaf was a world.
Every flicker is a universe.
Some leaves shone brightly, brimming with vibrant possibility. Others had begun to wither, curling into themselves before detaching, drifting downward into the hungry embrace of the Sea of Quanta. Once submerged, they dissolved completely, leaving behind no trace that they had ever existed at all.
It was beautiful. It was fragile. It was eternal.
And all of it — the seas, the leaves, the worlds, the cycles of growth and decay — existed within this single bubble, floating precariously in the endless void where I now resided.
"Found it!" I exclaimed in excitement.
"Why bother playing the game when I can experience the real deal?"
But as I extended my presence toward the bubble, the voice inside my mind sharply interrupted me.
< To put it simply: the moment your true body enters this reality, it would immediately collapse. >
Well, I sort of understand the warning. But… I remember 128 bit is already cutting edge in the modern world. Isn't the 1024 bit quite an overkill for a comparison?
"Alright then." I just accept it and decide not to argue about a boring and meaningless topic.
"Anyway, since I cannot enter this bubble with my real form."
"Is there another way to enter? Like projecting just my consciousness or creating a puppet like my… cough… mother did?"
But, I am more interested in the latter method. Because to reincarnate means to begin from the very start and would take time which I had no patience for.
"So… the summoning method. How should I do it?"
That final phrase snagged in my mind, sharp and chilling.
"Consume…? Devour?"
As someone who had read more novels than I could count, the idea of an Outer God wasn't foreign. They were always painted as looming antagonists—things that arrived late in the story to be confronted by the heroes. And yet here I was, on the verge of becoming one.
"Do I really have to turn into some destroyer of worlds, like those antagonists I read about?"
A long pause followed as I took in the words of the voice before I mentally exhaled the turbid thoughts and made my mind.
"Hah, so what? Not like I'm planning to do it anyway." I shrug those dark thoughts from my mind and replace them with excitement.
"Anyway, enough delay! Isekai! Here I come!" I said as my mind locked on to a certain prayer that echoes across time and space.
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