27 State of the Multiverse.

The two were sitting in silence for several minutes.

"Are you going to ask something?" Mr. Black asked.

"Yes…..i'm just trying to collect my thoughts and make sure I don't' miss anything." He said.

"How about you start off with how you are doing?" Mr. Black said.

Alex thought for a moment before speaking.

"I feel like I'm doing better. I feel like I'm actually more of a singular person now which is nice." He said.

"That's good, I don't want my employee to have any mental issues while working." Mr. Black stated.

"Now, why don't we talk about how your job went before we get into the more broad stuff." He said again.

"Do you have anything to say about your time in the world before I go?" He asked the knight.

"I made several mistakes that could have bitten me in the ass. I let my guard down a couple times and almost suffered some consequences that could have effected the job." Alex stated.

"And then there was that 'thing' I encountered...." He finished as he eyed his boss.

"Yes…..we will talk about that soon but for now lets just focus on the job you did first." Mr. Black Replied.

"As you no doubt probably figured out so far, this past world was intentionally given to you as a learning experience. I've always found that mistakes made will more easily be learned from and rectified than just telling someone what not to do. You made mistakes but you learned from them and did a good job overall." He said.

"You approached this world differently than the 'fate' one. In that world, you watched the plot move along and only interjected when you wanted to. In this past world, your description on what to do was too vague so you were forced to take a more front and center roll while also remaining as passive as possible. You didn't want to deviate the plot too much so you would have an idea of what to expect."

"Through this you learned several important lessons. The people in the world are alive. The knowledge you have of the worlds beforehand is a gift but its not to be taken as gospel. The second thing is that you discovered the deviations that may occur by interfering. Some are small, some are big and some are unexpected." Mr. Black finished.

"Did I do the correct thing? I didn't want to just walk in and remove all the threats and potentially hurt them down the road." Alex asked.

"There is no correct answer to that question. I think you did a good job and through your efforts that world should be back on track and not have any issues that would cause its destruction. Not every world will be the same too, some worlds you will have to do just that, walk in and remove all threats, while others you will just take a passive role." Mr. Black replied.

"But lets move on to that enemy you fought." He said abruptly.

"I don't think that was native to that world I visited….." Alex stated.

"You are correct. Those…..aren't native to any worlds actually." Mr. Black replied.

"This will take awhile to explain so please listen before asking questions." He said again.

"You could consider those our 'antithesis'. The Yin to our Yang, the evil to our good. However you want to picture it. Contrary to what you might believe, they are a natural force of creation just like we are. To put it in simple terms, they wish to return the multiverse to the nothingness from which everything started and will eventually end up, whereas we wish to keep it going."

"Just as our agents can grow stronger, they too can grow stronger. The ones you interacted with were the very bottom of the rung. They were barely better than mindless beasts. Our agents get stronger by essentially protecting worlds, can you guess how they get stronger?" Mr. Black asked.

"I want to say by destroying them but that seems a bit too simple." Alex replied.

"You would be correct in that regard. So this is going to get complicated and ill try my best to keep it as simple as possible." Mr. Black said before going back into a long winded explanation.

"What causes a person to become a center of a worlds development, a hero, a driving force in a worlds protection? There are many names for it, Destiny, Fate, ect. We'll call it fate for now to keep it simple."

"What one would call a protagonist in a world usually correlates to one blessed by fate. Which is also what they absorb to get stronger."

"Usually if a person dies that was blessed by fate, the fate would return to the world and the world would try its best to correct any mistakes and keep itself from approaching destruction. But if one of our 'enemies' would say, kill a protagonist, it could absorb the 'fate' before it could return to the world."

"What you experienced, one of them took over index in a moment of vulnerability and tried to remove those plot characters and take their 'fate'. If it happened, the world would probably be able to rectify itself eventually and not approach destruction. But in more extreme cases, the world could actually end and its entire supply of 'fate' could be taken by one of 'them'."

"When a world dies its supply of 'fate' returns back to the source or 'root' as magi call it. With this, new worlds are born and thus the cycle continues. But, as more and more fate is drained away, less and less worlds are made. Eventually no new worlds will be created and creation will cease. On the flip side though, once one of the 'enemies' is slain, their stolen fate returns to the source."

"Why do they not simply look for worlds that are about to end naturally and take the 'fate' then?" Alex asked.

"Its simple and complicated at the same time. To put it bluntly, they also operate by a set of rules just as we do. Just as we are 'agents of root' they too are another aspect of it. Root compromises everything both the nothingness that exists before and after and the everything that exists in-between." Mr. black said.

"I'll be honest with you…..we're losing the war. There was a very large battle recent, quite a few of our higher end agents fell while only a few of theirs died as well. Due to us losing this particular battle…..there was a large swing in their favor." Mr. Black stated.

"what happened?' Alex asked.

"Before that let me try to paint a picture of the multiverse." Mr. Black replied.

"You can think of it like a large tree. The Trunk is 'Root' as funny as it is to say. There are many branches and on each branch there are an uncountable number of leaves, each leaf is a 'world'."

"This large battle took place on a particular branch and losing it had dire consequences. Essentially, they cut the entire branch off and it collided with another branch. Many worlds were completely destroyed where as others....were forcefully merged together. We're still trying to quantify the damage that was done."

"But enough of that for now, you aren't at the point where you can make a difference or join in on those kinds of battles. Lets take a look at the points you earned." Mr. Black said, shifting the more somber tone.

"From your last world you earned, 34,450 points. Combing with your previous total of 850 you have a grand total of 35,300." Mr. Black said.

"I have something I feel I need to purchase immediately. I realized in the previous world that my mental defences are only based on magic I need to rectify that. So I was wondering if I could pay to have my already established defenses also work on non-magic attacks?" Alex asked.

"I may be able to do something about that." Mr. Black answered after thinking for a moment.

He tapped away at his own tablet for a few minutes before setting it down.

"4,000 points. It would be a lot more if you didn't already have the in place and we're merely just tweaking them." Mr. Black stated.

"Alright, seems reasonable." Alex said.

A moment later it felt like a shock went through his head as something shifted around.

"That was an interesting feeling...." Alex said as he clutched his head.

"I have something else I want, I've been looking through the Gate of Babylon for a specific item(s) and I can't seem to find them as there is A LOT to shift through and they aren't noble phantasms so they were probably just thrown to the far corners. I found myself wishing I had some in many occasions and I'm even tempted to buy some if I can't find any." Alex said.

"What are you looking for?" Mr. Black asked.

"I'm looking for some Black Keys." Alex replied.

"The gate should definitely have them somewhere, I can shift through it real quick for say, 300 points?" Mr. Black said.

"Alright, that's better than spending the 1,500 on purchasing a few dozen." Alex stated.

Mr. Black once again tapped away on his tablet for a few moments before a very large stack of rapier-like weapons suddenly materialized next to Alex at the cost of 300 points.

"There, now you can put them somewhere you can find them." Mr. Black stated.

Alex smiled as a large golden ripple opened up and took in all the black keys that were just found.

"Anything else you wish to purchase before we talk about your next assignment?" Mr. Black asked.

"No at the moment, I have a few things on my mind but I don't know if they will be relevant in the next world or not and I can always just purchase them through the shop once I get there." Alex replied.

"Alright, lets talk about the next world you are going to." Mr. Black replied as some info was sent over to Alex's tablet.

"Well...I don't actually know much about this one." Alex replied, as he looked over the information.

(Read Author's note please)