Year 333 Post-Collision – Seven Months Post-Rebirth
Learning to speak with a goddess of hunger as your teacher was exactly as fucked up as it sounded.
The Leviathan didn't teach him language the way human parents did—no baby talk, no gentle repetition of "mama" and "dada," no cute pointing at objects and naming them. She taught him the way she taught everything else: by dropping concepts directly into his brain and seeing if he survived the download.
"Words are claims," she said on the first day of language lessons. "When you name a thing, you assert relationship with it. When you speak your own name, you declare yourself to reality. This is why names have power here. This is why you refuse to give yours."
Sunny floated in the pocket dimension, his six-month-old body still small and soft despite the density of his bones, and tried to process that.
So if I tell someone my real name—
"You give them a vector to your essence," the Leviathan confirmed. "In this world, true names are contracts written in identity. The strong can use them to bind, command, or erase. You are correct to hoard yours."
Then how do I talk to people without—
"You give them a false name. Which you have already done. 'Sunny' is... adequate." She tilted her head, her form flickering. "It means nothing. It claims nothing. It is a sound you allow others to use while keeping your true self sealed. This is wisdom."
[ARCHIVE NOTATION]
[USER'S REAL NAME: Rajah (Meaning: King)]
[USER'S FALSE NAME: Sunny (Meaning: Warm, Bright, Absolutely Not King)]
[POWER DIFFERENTIAL: Significant]
[RECOMMENDATION: Never Tell Anyone The Real One]
[SERIOUSLY]
[YOUR MOM NAMED YOU "KING" AND YOU'RE IN A WORLD WHERE NAMES ARE MAGIC]
[THAT'S A RECIPE FOR SOMEONE TRYING TO CONTROL YOU]
I know! That's why I'm not telling anyone!
"Good," the Leviathan said. "Now. First word."
She leaned forward, and her presence pressed against him—not painful, just there, unavoidable.
"Speak: Mine."
Sunny's baby mouth tried to form the sound. What came out was more like "Mmmaaa—"
"No." The pressure increased slightly. "Not the sound. The concept. Mine. Possession. Claim. The word that means 'this belongs to me and I will not release it.' Say it."
He tried again. "Mmm—nnn—"
"Intent first. Sound second. You are not a human learning to mimic noises. You are a claimed thing learning to claim in return. Mean it, then speak it."
Sunny focused. Thought about being claimed. About the sigil burned into his chest. About belonging to something vast and hungry and his.
About how she'd said "you are mine" and meant it.
About wanting to say it back.
"M-mine."
It came out garbled, wrong, baby-voiced. But it came out.
The Leviathan's smile was sharp and approving.
"Better. Again."
They spent six hours on that one word. By the end, Sunny could say "mine" clearly enough that the Archive registered it as a declaration rather than just sound.
[LINGUISTIC ENTRY RECORDED]
[WORD: Mine (Claimed)]
[RANK: F]
[EFFECT: When spoken with intent, creates minor acknowledgment in local reality]
[TRANSLATION: People Will Feel Like You Mean It]
[UTILITY: Mostly Psychological]
[CONTINUITY DEBT: 8.21%]
The Leviathan taught him seventeen words over the next month.
Not seventeen useful words like "help" or "food" or "please stop drowning me."
Seventeen power words:
Mine. Yours. Stay. Go. Hold. Break. Want. Need. Give. Take. Strong. Weak. Deep. High. True. False. No.
Every word was a concept before it was a sound. Every word had to be meant before it could be spoken. And every word, once learned, became something that reality listened to just a little bit more than random noise.
By seven months old, Sunny could string together two-word sentences that functioned like baby-tier commands:
"Stay. Mine." = Don't take this from me.
"Go. Now." = Leave immediately.
"Want. That." = I am claiming interest in this object.
It was the weirdest fucking language acquisition process imaginable, and it worked.
[LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT: Accelerated]
[VOCABULARY: 17 Words (All Power-Coded)]
[GRAMMAR: Nonexistent]
[EFFECTIVENESS: Surprisingly High]
[USER CAN NOW COMMUNICATE BASIC DEMANDS]
[USER STILL SOUNDS LIKE CAVEMAN]
[THIS Is Fine]
The First Synthesis Attempt
It was during his eighth month that Sunny decided to try something incredibly stupid.
He'd been thinking about it for weeks. The Archive had recorded his modified Abyssal Density entry—the hunger-aspect version that let him generate his own gravitational stability. That was one real, working entry from this world, currently sitting at E- rank.
But he also had the Media Catalog. Ten thousand hours of fictional concepts, historical fragments, half-remembered game mechanics, and surface-level knowledge from his past life. All of it ranked F- or worse. All of it probably useless.
But the Archive had mentioned "synthesis potential" when he'd unlocked the ability to modify entries.
What if I could combine them?
[ARCHIVE RESPONSE]
[Oh No]
[You're Going To Try Something Dumb]
[I Can Feel It]
What if I took a concept from my world and tried to merge it with the Abyssal Density fragment? Just to see what happens?
[ARCHIVE ANALYSIS]
[POSSIBILITY: 23%]
[SURVIVAL RATE: 71%]
[PAIN LEVEL: Yes]
[CONTINUITY DEBT INCREASE: Significant]
[RECOMMENDATION: Don't]
[PREDICTION: You're Going To Do It Anyway]
Sunny floated in the training space while the Leviathan was... wherever she went when she wasn't actively drowning him. He'd learned she didn't stay manifested all the time—sometimes she dispersed into the abyss itself, becoming the pressure instead of the person. She'd said he'd earned some "unsupervised practice time" after learning his seventeen words.
This seemed like the perfect time to experiment.
Okay Archive. Pull up the Media Catalog. I want something defensive. Something about... weight. Gravity. Bearing down. Something that synergizes with what I already have.
[SEARCHING: "Defensive Concepts Related To Gravity/Weight/Pressure"]
[RESULTS: 247]
[FILTERING FOR: Simplest Possible Option]
[TOP MATCH: "Iron Body" Technique (Generic Cultivation Novel #47)]
[DESCRIPTION: User Makes Body Heavy And Dense To Resist Damage]
[YOUR CURRENT MEMORY OF THIS: "Something about chi and iron, probably?"]
[ESTIMATED MANIFESTATION QUALITY: F-]
[ESTIMATED COMPATIBILITY WITH ABYSSAL DENSITY: 67%]
[PROCEED? Y/N]
Yes.
[USER CONFIRMED]
[ATTEMPTING SYNTHESIS: Abyssal Density (Hunger Aspect) + Iron Body Concept (F-)]
[THIS IS Going To Suck]
The Archive pulled the memory forward—Sunny remembered reading some translated web novel at 3 AM, skimming through cultivation chapters where the protagonist learned to "temper his body like iron" or whatever. He'd barely paid attention. The prose was purple, the translation was rough, and he'd mostly been reading it because he was procrastinating on his own music.
But the concept was there: make body heavy, make body dense, make body resistant.
That was basically what he already had with Abyssal Density.
So merging them should be easy, right?
[ARCHIVE: Wrong]
[INITIATING FORCED SYNTHESIS]
Pain.
Not the sharp pain of injury. The wrong pain of incompatibility. Like trying to force two magnets together the wrong way, except the magnets were laws of reality and his body was the space between them.
The Abyssal Density fragment—his stolen, modified, hunger-driven E- rank entry—rejected the Iron Body concept. They were too different. One was a real law from this world, refined through survival and theft. The other was a fictional idea from a badly-translated novel, F- rank trash with no grounding in this reality's physics.
They didn't want to merge.
Sunny made them anyway.
[SYNTHESIS FORCED]
[COMPATIBILITY: 34% (Insufficient)]
[ATTEMPTING ANYWAY]
[REASON: User Is Stubborn And Stupid]
His bones started to heat up. Not from outside. From inside. The Abyssal Density was trying to become the Iron Body concept, trying to add "tempered like iron" to "compressed by hunger," and reality was arguing that those things didn't go together.
His infant body started convulsing. Blood vessels burst in his eyes. His skin turned red, then purple.
[ALERT: CONTINUITY DEBT SPIKING]
[8.21% → 12.4%]
[SYNTHESIS FAILING]
[USER WILL SUFFER SEVERE DAMAGE IN: 5 Seconds]
[ABORT? Y/N]
No—just—make it WORK—
[FINE]
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: Reducing Synthesis Scope]
[NEW GOAL: Don't Merge Completely, Just Connect]
[Creating Bridge Entry Instead Of Full Fusion]
The pain shifted. Instead of trying to make the two concepts become one thing, the Archive created a tiny link between them. A bridge. A connection that said "these concepts can talk to each other but don't have to be the same thing."
The Abyssal Density fragment stayed E- rank.
The Iron Body concept stayed F-.
But now there was a thread between them—a pathway that said "when one activates, the other can echo it slightly."
[SYNTHESIS RESULT: Partial Success]
[NEW ENTRY CREATED: Iron Echo (Bridge Concept)]
[RANK: F]
[EFFECT: When Abyssal Density activates, user can choose to add "hardening" property]
[DURATION: 0.8 Seconds]
[STRENGTH INCREASE: 3%]
[DESCRIPTION: Your Body Gets Slightly More Rigid For Less Than A Second]
[UTILITY: Pathetic But Technically Real]
[CONTINUITY DEBT: 12.4%]
[COST: You Just Aged Your Body By Three Days From Stress]
[WAS IT WORTH IT? Unknown]
Sunny lay there in the pocket dimension, his baby body smoking slightly, blood leaking from his nose, and thought: I made something.
It was garbage. It barely worked. It would probably be useless in any real fight.
But he'd taken a concept from his old world—a badly-translated cultivation novel he'd barely paid attention to—and forced it to connect with a real law from this world.
And it worked.
Kind of.
"What," the Leviathan's voice said from everywhere at once, "did you just do."
Oh fuck. She was back.
Consequences
The Leviathan manifested instantly, her form condensing so fast that Sunny's damaged body registered it as a pressure spike. She stared at him with those bottomless eyes, and for the first time since claiming him, she looked... confused?
"Your Archive just—" She leaned down, her hand hovering over his chest where the sigil burned. "You created a bridge. Between a fragment of my law and something that does not exist in this world."
I can explain—
"You forced a connection between real and unreal," she continued, and her voice had an edge to it that might have been anger or might have been fascination. "That should have killed you. That should have caused metaphysical rejection so severe that your soul fragmented."
But it didn't?
"But it did not." She pressed her hand against his chest, and Sunny felt her examining the bridge he'd created through the Archive. "Instead you created... a shadow. An echo. A concept from elsewhere that now has the smallest foothold in reality because you stapled it to something real."
She pulled back, and her expression shifted into that sharp, approving smile.
"This is heresy," she said. "Magnificent heresy. You are writing new rules by connecting old ones. This is—" She paused. "This is what they will kill you for, eventually. When they notice."
[ARCHIVE NOTATION]
[WARNING: Editor Attention Probability Increased]
[CONTINUITY DEBT AT: 12.4%]
[THRESHOLD FOR DETECTION: ~15%]
[USER IS GETTING CLOSE]
Who's 'they'?
"The Editors. The Executors. Whatever this world calls the beings who maintain continuity." The Leviathan settled back. "In a reality formed from shattered cosmologies, there must be something that prevents complete collapse. Something that erases contradictions, eliminates paradoxes, removes what should not exist. You, small thing, are becoming what should not exist."
Great. Cool. Love that for me.
"But," she continued, and her smile widened, "you are mine. And I do not permit my possessions to be erased. So when they come—and they will come, eventually—I will deal with them."
She tapped his forehead, and warmth flooded through his damaged body. Not healing exactly. More like... acknowledgment that he'd survive.
"You have earned rest again. And tomorrow, we continue." She paused. "But tonight, know this: what you just did—creating bridges between worlds—this is your true power. Not the Archive itself. Not the entries you collect. The synthesis. The heresy of connection. That is what makes you dangerous."
The Leviathan's form flickered and began to disperse.
"Also," she added, almost as an afterthought, "that was incredibly stupid. Do not do it again without telling me first."
Why?
"Because I want to watch."
She vanished, leaving Sunny alone with his smoking baby body, his new garbage-tier bridge concept, and the slowly dawning realization that he'd just invented a power system that this reality probably wanted to delete.
[ARCHIVE SUMMARY]
[USER HAS DISCOVERED: Cross-Reality Synthesis]
[CURRENT CAPABILITIES: Can create F-rank bridge concepts between real and fictional laws]
[COST: High Continuity Debt, Potential Editor Attention, Physical Damage]
[UTILITY: Currently Pathetic But Potentially Infinite If User Survives Long Enough]
[RECOMMENDATION: Stop Doing This]
[PREDICTION: User Will Definitely Not Stop Doing This]
You know me so well.
[That's Because I AM You]
[Now Rest Before You Die Of Stupidity]
Sunny floated in the quiet space, his body slowly recovering from the forced synthesis, his mind already racing ahead to the next experiment.
He had seventeen power-coded words he could speak.
He had one real entry from this world (Abyssal Density, E- rank).
He had one garbage bridge concept (Iron Echo, F rank).
And he had ten thousand hours of media from another world, all waiting to be tested.
He was eight months old.
He couldn't walk yet.
He could barely sit up.
But he'd just proven that the impossible was just expensive.
And if there was one thing Sunny had learned from his past life, from all those video essays about Alexander the Great and Leonardo da Vinci and every ambitious person who'd ever accomplished anything—
It was that expensive didn't mean no.
It just meant not yet.
[END CHAPTER 4]
[CONTINUITY DEBT: 12.4%]
[ARCHIVE ENTRIES (REAL): 1]
[ARCHIVE ENTRIES (BRIDGE): 1]
[ARCHIVE ENTRIES (POTENTIAL): 10,000+ Hours]
[AGE: 8 Months]
[VOCABULARY: 17 Words]
[STATUS: Heretical But Determined]
[EDITOR ATTENTION: Approaching Detection Threshold]
[LEVIATHAN PROTECTION: Active]
[NEXT DROWNING: Tomorrow (Definitely)]
[USER MENTAL STATE: "I Can Probably Synthesize My Way Out Of This"]
[ARCHIVE MENTAL STATE: "We're All Going To Die"]
[ACTUAL OUTCOME: To Be Determined]