Year 333 Post-Collision – Ten Months Post-Rebirth
[ARCHIVE MORNING REPORT]
[USER AGE: 10 Months]
[VOCABULARY: 17 Words (Still Caveman-Tier)]
[MOTOR SKILLS: Can Now Sit Up Without Falling Over (Achievement Unlocked)]
[ARCHIVE ENTRIES (REAL): 1]
[ARCHIVE ENTRIES (BRIDGE): 1]
[ARCHIVE ENTRIES (FAILED): 7]
[CONTINUITY DEBT: 14.8%]
[EDITOR DETECTION THRESHOLD: 15%]
[DISTANCE FROM APOCALYPSE: 0.2%]
[USER CURRENT ACTIVITY: About To Do Something Stupid Again]
[ARCHIVE MOOD: Resigned]
Sunny had spent the last two months learning three critical things:
One: Synthesis was hard.
Two: Most synthesis attempts failed catastrophically.
Three: He was going to keep trying anyway because what else was he going to do? Just sit here and be a normal baby? Fuck that.
The Leviathan had watched his seven failed synthesis attempts with varying degrees of amusement and concern. She'd pulled him back from the edge of metaphysical collapse four times. She'd let him suffer through the other three because, in her words:
"Pain is education. If you do not remember what failure costs, you will spend your power like a fool."
Thanks, Mom. Really feeling the love.
[ARCHIVE CORRECTION]
[SHE IS NOT YOUR MOTHER]
[SHE IS AN ANCIENT PRIMORDIAL CALAMITY WHO CLAIMED YOU AS PROPERTY]
[THE FACT THAT THIS IS THE CLOSEST THING TO MATERNAL AFFECTION YOU'VE EVER RECEIVED IS CONCERNING]
Hey, my actual mom loved me.
[YOUR Actual Mom Named You "King" And Then You Died At 20 Over A Phone]
[LET's Not Evaluate Parenting Right Now]
Fair point.
Sunny sat in the pocket dimension—actually sat, which was new and exciting for his ten-month-old body—and reviewed his failed attempts.
[SYNTHESIS FAILURE LOG]
[Attempt #2: Abyssal Density + "Ki Blast" (Dragon Ball Z)]
[Result: Catastrophic Energy Mismatch]
[USER Vomited Blood For 6 Hours]
[Rank: N/A (Didn't Manifest)]
[Attempt #3: Abyssal Density + "Mana Shield" (Generic RPG)]
[Result: Partial Success → Immediate Collapse]
[Created 0.3 Second Barrier That Blocked Nothing]
[Rank: F- (Worse Than Useless)]
[Attempt #4: Abyssal Density + "Armament Haki" (One Piece)]
[Result: Concept Too Complex, User Too Weak]
[Bones Fractured Trying To Process Idea Of "Willpower As Armor"]
[Rank: N/A (Body Rejected Before Manifestation)]
[Attempt #5: Abyssal Density + "Defensive Stance" (Dark Souls)]
[Result: Almost Worked]
[Created Temporary "Guard" State For 1.2 Seconds]
[Rank: F (Barely)]
[But Couldn't Replicate It Afterward]
[Attempt #6: Abyssal Density + "Stone Skin" (D&D Spell)]
[Result: Body Tried To Become Literal Stone]
[This Was Bad]
[Leviathan Had To Intervene]
[Rank: N/A (Absolutely Not)]
[Attempt #7: Abyssal Density + "Unyielding" (Hamilton Lyric Interpretation)]
[Result: ...]
[You Tried To Synthesize A MUSICAL CONCEPT]
[It Didn't Work]
[Obviously]
[But Points For Creativity]
[Rank: F- (Emotional Resonance Only)]
[Attempt #8: Abyssal Density + "Testudo Formation" (Roman Military Tactics)]
[Result: Partial Success]
[Created Mental Framework For "Defensive Positioning"]
[No Physical Manifestation]
[Rank: F- (Conceptual Only)]
[Might Be Useful Later If You Ever Have People To Position]
Seven failures. One success that barely counted (Iron Echo). And a slowly climbing Continuity Debt that was going to get him killed by reality's error-correction system any day now.
Most people would have stopped.
Sunny was not most people.
Okay Archive. I've been thinking.
[OH NO]
All my attempts have been trying to force defensive concepts onto Abyssal Density. But that's not really what it does, right? It's not defense. It's... presence. Existence under weight. Taking up space where space doesn't want to be taken up.
[Continue...]
What if instead of making it defensive, I leaned into what it already is? What if I synthesized it with something about... claiming space? Territory? Sovereignty?
[ARCHIVE ANALYSIS]
[Interesting]
[SEARCHING MEDIA CATALOG: "Territory/Sovereignty Concepts"]
[RESULTS: 847]
[FILTERING FOR: Compatible With "Existence Under Pressure"]
[Top Matches:]
[- "Domain Expansion" (Jujutsu Kaisen) - Too Complex, Will Kill You]
[- "King's Haki" (One Piece) - Already Failed Adjacent Concept]
[- "Throne Room" (Generic Kingdom Building) - Too Vague]
[- "This Is My Territory" (Wolf Documentary You Watched High) - Maybe?]
[- "Sovereignty Declaration" (That Roman Emperor Video Essay) - Actually Possible]
[RECOMMENDATION: Try The Roman One]
[You Actually Paid Attention To That Video]
Yeah, because the guy kept emphasizing how emperors just... declared themselves legitimate and then everyone believed them. Like, power as performance. Authority as claim.
[EXACTLY]
[And Your Abyssal Density Already Works By Claiming Space]
[You Take Up Volume Through Gravitational Assertion]
[Adding "Declared Sovereignty" Might Actually Synergize]
[Compatibility Estimate: 71%]
[Success Rate: 58%]
[Pain Level: Moderate To Severe]
[Continuity Debt Increase: 1.2% - 2.7%]
[This WILL Push You Over Detection Threshold]
[Proceed? Y/N]
Sunny thought about it. Really thought about it.
If he went over 15% Continuity Debt, whatever "Editors" existed in this world might notice him. Might try to erase him. The Leviathan said she'd protect him, but there was a difference between "protected" and "safe."
But also.
He was ten months old. He had one real power, one garbage bridge concept, and a catalog of fictional ideas. If he wanted to survive in a world full of Demon Lords and Servants and Supreme Beings, he needed more.
He needed to be worth the claim the Leviathan had burned into him.
Yes.
[USER CONFIRMED]
[ATTEMPTING SYNTHESIS: Abyssal Density (Hunger Aspect) + Sovereignty Declaration (Roman Concept)]
[MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON Your Soul]
[Wait We're Not Sure If God Exists Here]
[May SOMEONE Have Mercy On Your Soul]
[Initiating...]
The Archive pulled forward his memory of that video essay—three hours long, watched over two days while he'd been eating cereal and procrastinating on literally everything. The narrator had spent like forty minutes just explaining how Roman emperors used ritual and declaration to create legitimacy. How they'd stand in front of the Senate or the army and just... announce themselves. "I am Emperor." And if they said it with enough conviction, if they performed it correctly, if they had enough backing—it became true.
It was power through assertion. Through taking up narrative space and refusing to be removed from it.
That was what Abyssal Density did to physical space.
Sunny forced the connection.
[SYNTHESIS PROCEEDING]
[COMPATIBILITY: 71%... 73%... 76%...]
[IT's Working]
[Oh Shit It's Actually Working]
The Abyssal Density fragment in his chest—his stolen, modified, hunger-driven core—reached for the concept of sovereignty. The idea of standing somewhere and declaring "this space is mine, this role is mine, this title is mine" and making reality acknowledge it.
They merged.
Not perfectly. Not cleanly. But they merged.
The pain was immediate and all-consuming. Not his bones breaking this time. His identity fracturing. The Archive was trying to rewrite what he fundamentally was—not just a thing that exists under pressure, but a thing that exists under pressure and demands acknowledgment for it.
His baby body seized. Blood poured from his nose, his ears, his eyes. His heart stopped for two full seconds.
[ALERT: CONTINUITY DEBT SPIKING]
[14.8% → 15.1% → 15.4% → 15.9%]
[DETECTION THRESHOLD EXCEEDED]
[SOMETHING IS COMING]
[SYNTHESIS: 87% COMPLETE]
[DO NOT STOP NOW OR YOU DIE]
Sunny couldn't stop even if he wanted to. The synthesis had momentum now, rewriting the Archive entry in real-time. He felt the Abyssal Density changing—still the same core law, still about existing through want and weight, but now with an edge to it. A declaration. A claim.
[SYNTHESIS COMPLETE]
[ENTRY EVOLVED: Abyssal Density (Hunger Aspect) → Abyssal Sovereignty (Fragment)]
[RANK: E]
[NEW MANIFESTATION:]
[- Self-Generated Gravitational Claim]
[- Territory Assertion (Radius: 0.8 Meters)]
[- Presence Amplification When Standing Ground]
[- Declaration Weight: Minor]
[DESCRIPTION: You Can Now Claim Physical Space As "Yours"]
[DURATION: 4 Seconds Maximum]
[EFFECT: People Will Slightly Feel Your Presence As "Solid" And "Immovable"]
[UTILITY: Actually Useful In Specific Situations]
[CONTINUITY DEBT: 16.2%]
[CONGRATULATIONS YOU'RE NOW ILLEGAL]
And then reality noticed him.
The Editor Arrives
The pocket dimension went silent.
Not quiet. Silent. Like sound itself had been removed from the equation. The pressure of the Leviathan's presence, which was always there at some level, pulled back completely.
Sunny's newly-synthesized ability cut off mid-manifestation. His body stopped moving. His heart stopped beating.
Time didn't freeze. Time just... stopped mattering.
And then it appeared.
[ARCHIVE ALERT]
[ENTITY DETECTED: UNDEFINED]
[CLASSIFICATION: ERROR]
[THREAT LEVEL: YES]
[RECOMMENDATION: DO NOT PERCEIVE IT]
Too late.
The thing that manifested in the pocket dimension wasn't really a thing. It was more like... a cut. A removal. A space where reality had been edited out and nothing was allowed to fill the gap. It had a shape, but the shape hurt to look at. It had a presence, but the presence was negative—like weight that pushed away instead of pulled down.
It was looking at him.
At the heresy he'd just committed.
At the Archive that shouldn't exist.
At the synthesis between real and unreal that was violation of continuity itself.
And it evaluated.
Sunny couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't even think properly. This thing—this Editor, this Executor, this whatever-the-fuck-maintained-reality—was reading him. Looking at his entries, his debt, his existence.
Determining whether he should be permitted.
[ARCHIVE STATUS: COMPROMISED]
[EXTERNAL SCAN IN PROGRESS]
[ENTITY CONCLUSION: USER SHOULD NOT EXIST]
[DELETION PROCEEDING IN: 3... 2...]
And then the ocean arrived.
Leviathan's Intervention
The pressure slammed back into the pocket dimension like a tsunami hitting a beach, except the tsunami was made of sovereignty and the beach was reality itself.
The Leviathan manifested—not in her human-shaped form, but as herself. As all of herself. As the full weight of an ancient primordial calamity who'd existed before this collision-world was even a concept.
She was vast. She was heavy. She was presence so enormous that the pocket dimension cracked trying to contain it.
And she was pissed.
"NO," the Leviathan said, and her voice was not sound. It was declaration. It was law. It was the bottom of the abyss deciding that down was the only valid direction and everything else could fuck off.
The Editor-thing turned its attention to her.
Sunny, frozen in place, watched two impossible forces acknowledge each other.
"This one is mine," the Leviathan continued, and space itself bent around her words. "You do not touch what is mine. You do not evaluate what is mine. You do not perceive what is mine without my permission."
The Editor-thing didn't speak. It didn't have language. But Sunny felt its response:
[Continuity Violation Detected. Correction Required.]
"There is no violation," the Leviathan said, and now her form was condensing, compressing, becoming something so dense that light was having trouble escaping her gravitational pull. "There is only claim. I claimed him. His violations are my violations. His heresy is my heresy. And I predate your protocols, Editor. I predate your authority."
[Entity Classification: Pre-Collision Anomaly. Grandfathered Permissions: Acknowledged. However—]
"There is no 'however,'" the Leviathan interrupted, and her presence expanded, filling the entire pocket dimension, crushing the Editor-thing's negative space with sheer overwhelming existence. "I exist. He exists. We exist together. These are facts. Facts do not require your permission."
The Editor-thing tried to push back. Tried to assert its purpose—maintain continuity, erase contradictions, preserve the integrity of the merged reality.
The Leviathan ate it.
Not metaphorically. She opened her presence like a mouth and consumed the Editor-thing's negative space, pulling it into her own existence and digesting it like plankton.
It took three seconds.
When she was done, the pocket dimension stabilized. Sound returned. Time started mattering again.
Sunny's heart resumed beating.
The Leviathan's form returned to human-shape, though her eyes were still burning with that deep, endless hunger.
"That," she said calmly, "was inconvenient."
Sunny stared at her, his ten-month-old brain trying to process what he'd just witnessed.
Did you just eat an editor?
"I consumed its local manifestation," the Leviathan corrected. "The entity itself still exists. They are not individual beings—they are functions. Protocols. When continuity requires correction, an Editor manifests. I simply... disagreed with the correction." She paused. "Violently."
Can you do that every time?
"No." Her expression grew serious. "That was a low-level Editor. A basic scan protocol. The next one will be stronger. The one after that, stronger still. Eventually, they will send something I cannot simply consume. Something that will require actual conflict."
She knelt down to his level.
"You have crossed the threshold, small thing. You are now officially illegal. Your Continuity Debt is high enough that reality considers you a problem to be solved. And I can protect you—I will protect you—but you must understand: every synthesis you attempt from now on will draw more attention. Every heresy will summon stronger correction."
So I should stop?
The Leviathan smiled that sharp, hungry smile.
"Absolutely not. You should continue. You should synthesize more. You should become so illegal that they cannot categorize you at all." Her eyes gleamed. "Because things they cannot categorize, they cannot fully erase. You will be too complex. Too contradictory. Too real despite being impossible."
She tapped his chest where the sigil burned.
"You are mine. And I do not collect simple things. I collect problems. So be a problem, small thing. Be a magnificent, unsolvable problem."
[ARCHIVE ANALYSIS]
[LEVIATHAN TACTICAL ASSESSMENT: She's Insane]
[LEVIATHAN EMOTIONAL ASSESSMENT: She's Proud]
[USER SITUATION: Objectively Worse Now]
[USER SITUATION: Also Kind Of Awesome?]
[RECOMMENDATION: Embrace The Heresy]
[We're Already Damned Anyway]
Sunny sat there in the aftermath of having reality's error-correction system try to delete him, being saved by an eldritch ocean goddess who'd just eaten a chunk of said system, and thought about his options.
He could play it safe. Stop synthesizing. Stop accumulating debt. Just train his one real ability and hope that was enough.
Or.
Or.
He could lean into it. Become so complicated that deletion was harder than tolerance. Build a power system that wasn't just stolen or synthesized, but merged—a fusion of this world's laws and his world's concepts that created something entirely new.
Become the thing that didn't fit in any category.
Become illegal on purpose.
"I can see you deciding," the Leviathan said. "And I approve."
How do you know what I'm deciding?
"Because you are mine," she said simply. "And I only claim things that refuse to stay small."
She stood, her form already beginning to disperse back into the ambient pressure.
"Rest tonight. Tomorrow, we continue training. And soon—very soon—you will begin walking. Speaking more than seventeen words. Interacting with this world beyond my protection." Her smile was ancient and terrifying and somehow reassuring. "And when that day comes, show them what an illegal thing can do."
She vanished.
Sunny sat alone in the pocket dimension, his body exhausted, his Continuity Debt at 16.2%, his Archive now containing one E-rank illegal sovereignty ability that would probably get him killed someday.
He thought about his first life. About being Rajah who died over a phone. About being Sunny who never finished anything he started.
About having 300 games on Steam and barely playing any of them. About watching thousands of hours of content and retaining only fragments. About being a collection of incomplete knowledge and abandoned attempts.
And he thought: Maybe that's perfect.
Maybe being incomplete is the point.
Because if I'm incomplete, I can keep adding things. Keep synthesizing. Keep becoming more complicated.
Keep being too weird to delete.
[ARCHIVE NOTATION]
[USER MINDSET: Evolved]
[NEW CORE PHILOSOPHY: "I Am The Sum Of Unfinished Things"]
[RANK: Conceptual]
[UTILITY: Unknown But Potentially Significant]
[CONTINUITY DEBT: 16.2%]
[EDITOR ATTENTION: HIGH]
[USER STATUS: Illegal And Accelerating]
[NEXT SYNTHESIS: Inevitable]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 72% And Climbing]
[BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO STUBBORN TO DIE]
[AGAIN]
Sunny closed his eyes and let his body recover from the synthesis, the Editor encounter, and the cosmic revelation that his foster mother had just eaten part of reality's error-correction system to protect him.
Tomorrow he'd probably get drowned again.
Next week he'd probably attempt another synthesis.
Next month he'd probably attract even more dangerous attention.
But tonight?
Tonight he was alive, claimed, and illegal.
And somehow, that felt right.
[END CHAPTER 5]
[CONTINUITY DEBT: 16.2%]
[ARCHIVE ENTRIES (REAL): 1 (E-rank)]
[ARCHIVE ENTRIES (BRIDGE): 1 (F-rank)]
[SYNTHESIS ATTEMPTS: 8 (Success Rate: 25%)]
[EDITOR MANIFESTATIONS SURVIVED: 1]
[EDITOR MANIFESTATIONS EATEN BY LEVIATHAN: 1]
[AGE: 10 Months]
[VOCABULARY: 17 Words (Insufficient)]
[MOTOR SKILLS: Can Sit Up, Cannot Walk Yet]
[STATUS: Officially Illegal]
[THREAT LEVEL: Ascending]
[LEVIATHAN APPROVAL RATING: 100%]
[REALITY'S APPROVAL RATING: 0%]
[USER MENTAL STATE: "Fuck It, We Ball"]
[ARCHIVE MENTAL STATE: "This Is Fine.jpg"]