Dead Lands
I don´t know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn´t mountains, trees and grassland. I would have thought that I had just teleported to somewhere on earth, if it weren´t for the fact that everything was black, white and grey like in these very old movies and cartoons as well as the fact that I could see souls just wandering around everywhere.
The grey sky had many large and I could see the souls of the newly deceased falling through them, but what really stunned me was the fact that I could feel these rifts lead not only to my universe but also several others. Where there more universes here than I thought, is this considered a multiverse and did all the universes that I visited previously also have more variants? It appears that my understanding and sense of space wasn´t as good as I thought it to be, good thing that I noticed that now because I don´t think I have missed anything in the previous realities.
One thing I can say for certain however, this place, let´s just call it the dead lands, was a place in between the multiverse but was connected to it in such a way that almost all souls were sucked into it, kinda like a super dimensional garbage dump. I´m guessing that this was how this reality made sure that it wasn´t overflowing with ghosts. Normally souls had a lifespan, after a few hundred to thousand years they would just disappear but the souls of wizards could not only exist for a lot longer but they could also turn into ghost and exist until the universe comes to an end or their get rid of whatever binds them.
I´m guessing that both Death and Fate, the black and white entity I saw when I entered this reality, were created by this reality to manage certain aspects of it. Death was responsible for gathering the dead and Fate made sure that a universe doesn´t gets destroyed by it inhabitants, kind of reminds me of the immune system.
With this new insight I immediately readjusted my plans. I could seal or destroy Death and plant my tree here, reality probably wouldn´t care how the souls were disposed of, as long as they were. If my speculations are correct, then it might even be thankful due to Death having overstepped its boundaries and tossed three toys into the world of the living just for it entertainment. I probably couldn´t destroy Death because I'm sure that it wasn´t made of any form of energy that I absorbed, so I couldn´t use my anti-property, and devouring would most likely fail due it not having a soul, I seriously needed to find a way to devour the body as well but that would have to wait until I have my own body and not these spare things.
This place was massive so I had to search a bit before finding Death, he resided in a giant evil looking castle that really stood out from the rest. Unlike everything else here, it had colors, not a lot but enough to stand out, as well as absolutely no souls in its vicinity. It´s front gate was a giant skull with blue flames in its eye sockets, it had what looked like blood flow out of it into the trench around it and its inside was lit up by blue fire. I had to give it to him, he had style.
When I entered what I could only describe as a Throne room, I immediately saw the resting figure on the throne. It was probably around 7 meters tall when standing, wore a black tattered cloak but unlike how the grim reaper is often depicted, had very thin, boney hands instead of just bones, even if they almost looked like black bones, and I couldn´t see its face. All in all, it looked like a bigger and even creepier dementor.
The moment I entered the room, I could feel him awaken from his rest. ''Who dares to disturb me, this is forbidden ground for you mortals'' I could feel his rising anger but I still didn´t reply, I was actually a little surprised that he was able to detect me. His focus turned to me ''Keeping quiet won´t save you from the punishment you will receive for coming here and disturbing my rest'' Sheesh, why so angry that someone disturbed your rest, you act like you weren´t resting since your creation. ''I will be having fun torturing you. You better struggle and entertain me, mortal'' He is pretty arrogant, not that I can´t understand it but he should have at least noticed that my soul was strange. So, when he reached his hand out for me only to pass through me, I used his moment of surprise to cast chain and sealing magic.
He barely had time to react as the chains bound him ''what is this? Unhand me mortal'' the chains started to tighten around him and he kept struggling until he started to realize that his powers were growing weaker fast and that he didn´t have a chance of escape. ''who are you? How can you do this? Do you even know what kind of consequents sealing me will have?'' I just ignore him and wait patiently for the chains to suppress every last bit of his power.
Once they were done, I just chained him to his throne and walked back into the open. I could see the rifts in the sky slowly close, that wasn´t good, I have to hurry. I teleported to what looked like the garden of the castle and immediately summoned a world tree seed. Normally, I would just plant it and let it absorb energy on its own to grow but I didn´t have the time right know so I supplied it with my NE until its roots could reach the rift. Once the roots reached the rifts, they went trough them and keep them open.
This was close but the rewards were even better. Now the tree will devour souls from all universes in this reality, as well as absorbs energy from all these universes to grow even bigger. The harvest of knowledge was going to be a lot bigger in the future than what I originally thought but for now lets devour all souls that were already in the dead lands.
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A/N- After I wrote the last chapter I went straight to bed but the moment I laid down, I started having chest pain. This pain lasted for almost 6 hours and I didn´t get a wink of sleep and then I started having fever. At some point I felt good for an hour so I started writing this chap, only to get sick again after like 400 words so I stopped and continued again after over 10 hours of sleep. What I'm trying to say is, if you notice anything different between the first and later half of this chapter, it's because of that.