1 The End of Time
A long time ago…
No, that's wrong… In a long future, when time and space were on the verge of being entirely consumed by Nothingness, there was only a single island floating in the void, surrounded by black, empty Void.
That island was small, barely able to hold a single mansion if it was built on it. Over the island that was void of grass, there was a tall tower made of unique stone, and it didn't have any single visible window.
Inside the said tower, in a white room that smelled of medicine and drugs, a red-haired little girl was resting on a medical bed with an oxygen mask on her face. At her side, there was a young man that looked around his 18 years, coldly gazing at the little girl while taking notes.
That young man didn't look utterly human-like the little girl. From how some spots of his arms were glowing under his white coat, to the side of his head that had a vent attached to it, it was clear that he was a mechanical entity.
But they weren't the only suspicious things… The young man's pupils were shrinking and enlarging at an impossible rate, the sound of an engine came from inside himself, and his movements looked too precise and coordinated to belong to a simple human.
He found the little girl on the verge of death outside the tower and assumed that it was an enemy's attack before identifying the 'intruder' as a human lifeform. So he picked the girl and carried her inside the tower as fast as possible.
All of a sudden, the signs of life from the girl spiked up, and her body lightly twitched. The young man stopped writing notes and observed the girl waking up.
The red-haired girl groaned under the mask as her eyelids twitched, before gradually opening her black eyes.
"Good morning, are you hurt anywhere at the moment?" The young man asked with a polite tone.
"Ugh… W… What…?" The young girl was just recovering and looked at her side, seeing the black-haired young man calmly standing close to her, wearing clothes she never saw before.
Taking out his notebook, the young man asked again, with a gentler voice. "At this moment, do you have any spot that feels bad? Injury, sickness, you name it."
"...I… Where am I… And who are…" She asked as her mind gradually woke up.
"For the moment, I am the Doctor to you. As for where you are, that will come when you are fully stabilized. For that to happen, I must know your answer. Is there any spot that hurts you at the moment?"
"...I just feel some discomfort inside me…" The girl replied to the young man's question, realizing what sort of spot they were.
The young man nodded and wrote in his notebook. "Then it means that the poison is stable at the moment… You were fortunate to survive not just the Absolute God Slaying Poison, but also the harsh environment around you."
"..." The girl observed the young man for some moments before she noticed the oxygen mask around her face. As she extended one hand towards it, the young man immediately stopped her hand from touching the mask.
"I extremely suggest keeping that mask on your face, lest you wish to have two different poisons inside your body."
The red-haired girl looked at the hand grasping hers, feeling somewhat cold and weird contact with the young man. "...I see. Anything else to take note of?"
"You are currently able to move around, but if you wish to do so, you must carry that oxygen tank with you for the moment." The young man pointed to a tank that had a tube connected to her mask and wheels below to permit for a more comfortable movement.
"Also, since the Absolute God Slaying Poison has contaminated your soul, it is heavily suggested not to use any amount of Profound Energy that doesn't surpass 10PE, or it will destabilize the poison and make it spread further.
And for last, don't try to get out of this building in almost any circumstance without my permission. Be careful, breaking any of these rules will result in your death."
"Hmm…" The girl nodded and sat up from her bed, noticing that she was dressed in a clean and new white dress, and her accessories were still on her. "...Wait, what is 10PE?" She asked, noticing that the young man used a strange term.
The young man raised an eyebrow and continued to write in his notebook. "It looks like you came from further than 10'000 years ago… PE stands for Profound Energy. With ten units of PE, you can enhance one of your limbs with enough power to destroy a normal tree, use a Spatial Ring or similar subtypes, and clean your body."
"Alright, this princess understands." The tiredness of her voice disappeared now while she started to call herself in the third person, and she hopped off from her bed before approaching the oxygen tank at the side of her bed, before holding a handle that was lying over it.
"This princess wishes to look around the place." She asked the young man, who simply nodded and approached the door of the infirmary, before opening the door and walking outside. The girl followed after him as they stepped on the stone floor.
"I am Auden. What is your name?" The young man asked as they began to walk through a hall made of stone and lightened up with light bulbs.
"...This princess's name is Jasmine." The girl replied after some hesitation, before looking around. "Isn't this place too silent? This princess expected someone else to inhabit this place other than you… And why aren't there any window?"
"The last animal died thirty years ago, and the last intelligent lifeform died twenty-one years ago. At the moment, every living species previously existing is now extinct… Until you travelled in this timeline."
Auden turned around and saw Jasmine staring at him with a surprised look on her face. "...What?"
"You are currently the only living creature in the remains of this universe. By the way, I am a transhuman, a metallic doll with a human mind, this is why I don't count as a living species, and the toxic air around us doesn't harm my lungs. Now that I think about it, you call yourself 'Princess', and your PE is at 82'003'120'057'000'902, in the 8th Divine Master Realm, so from which imperial family do you come from?"
"The… The Star God Realm… I'm the Heavenly Slaughter Star God."
"I see…" Auden nodded. "The Star God Realm was annihilated in the 2012th year of the Profound Calendar due to the Evil Infant's Wheel of Myriad Tribulations."
"WHAT?!" Hearing that her own family and everything related to it was annihilated by one of the most dangerous weapons known to her brought Jasmine an intense shock. Her fists trembled in anger before she walked closer to Auden.
"How dare you to lie to this princess?!" She yelled as she grasped Auden's collar, staring at him with dense killing intent. However, Auden wasn't fazed from it as he looked right at her eyes with an unforgivingly cold gaze.
"I'm not lying. Everything that should exist is gone. The only thing that is remaining in this piece of land that is as big as a small tribe's piece of land and the tower where we are currently in. I can show you what is outside if you want."
Some dozen of seconds later, a wheeled robot approached them. Jasmine observed the robot with a curious gaze as it showed a black screen.
"This is what is outside, nothing. Literal Nothingness is filling up the previously-called Primal Chaos Dimension. In the year 52'883 of the Profound Calendar, the walls of the Primal Chaos Dimension were completely eroded from Nothingness that was lying outside and destroyed everything on its way. But that's not all…"
After trailing off, the video zoomed further, even if it wasn't noticeable since everything was black. Jasmine could see some sort of entities lurking inside that darkness, scratching the air.
"The victims of the Nothingness were turned into Hollow Corpses, enhanced versions of what they once were when they were alive. They use a unique Profound Energy that ultimately converts other types of Profound Energy and turns them into a similar energy that they release.
This also works on people as their skin cells begin to die, their muscles atrophy, and their soul consumed by themselves. After that, their body structure changes to accommodate upgrades, or predatory organs, while their physical strength reaches levels similar to their PE.
Because they are the embodiments of the Law of Nothingness, they are unchained by the other laws such as the law of reincarnation and dimensions, permitting them unrestricted movements in the Nothingness and virtually infinite resurrection."
Jasmine felt her skin crawl at those words, while Auden continued.
"There is a large variety of them… A vast amount is just a bit stronger than mortals, with a PE ranging from 10 to 5'000… But there are 30 that are currently beyond the 100'000'000'000'000'000 PE, surpassing the Divine Master Realm, and there is one in particular who reached the realm of the Creation Gods, surpassing a YPE, a Yotta Profound Energy unit, which is 1'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000 PE.
In normal circumstances, we would have no way to stop them… So we evolved. We abandoned the practice of cultivation and began to use Science and Technology against them. So far, it worked. We also created a new Law that was effective against Nothingness, the Law of the Meta."
Auden approached a wall and caressed it. "Every single brick here is built while holding the Law of the Meta, turning each of these bricks into a singularity. You will not find any block that looks like another in this tower, all down to molecular scratches.
Nothing here looks like another thing, giving each of them a certain level of protection against Nothingness. However, they are merely the last wall of defense against it. The only reason why this tower is still standing is thanks to an omnidirectional repulsive barrier made of Meta-Energy keeping off the Hollow Corpses from approaching the wall, not to talk about attacking it.
Unfortunately, because we are working with an unfinished law, we all knew that there would be a time when the barrier will turn off, and Nothingness will invade the rest of the existence, this tower. For this reason, the survivors: me, my father, and some friends of ours, passed to another project."
With a snap of his fingers, the black screen of the wheeled robot went into statics before it showed some video recordings of a humanoid entity inside a transparent capsule filled with liquid.
"'We will fight fire with fire', that was what my father said before he successfully entrapped one of the previously 31 Divine Hollow Corpses, which now are the 30 I mentioned before. Using it as a beginning, we began to fuse Meta-Energy with the Null Energy that the Hollow Corpses generate… Until Project: Chaos officially began.
With the use of Quintessence, a substance created by the fusion of Null and Meta Energy, we were able to generate enough energy for the tower to last for centuries. Unfortunately, just for a single atom of Quintessence, we lost almost everyone.
In the end, only me and my father remained alive…"
Jasmine was captivated by the story as she kept listening. Everything he said felt so true… There was no way he could make up a story like that in a short time, and there isn't any proof except for her own belief that he was lying.
"We were too little… We lost every female lifeform in this tower, making reproduction impossible. This is why my father and I split everything into two. I did everything I could to write everything that happened in the time I lived, noting down everything I could remember so I can try to save everyone with a crazy idea of mine…
Meanwhile, my father worked on two different projects. One was to turn a Hollow Corpse back into its pure form when it was still alive; the other was continuing the Project Chaos and create the last weapon he will ever create…
A Transhuman. An immortal being with virtually unlimited stamina capable of destroying the Hollow Corpses, and capable of evolving indefinitely."
With another snap, the video stopped, and the robot retreated in the depths of the hall, while Auden crossed his arms behind his back and walked away from the wall.
"Unfortunately for my father and me, we didn't account for a particular fact. And that was 'Microorganism-type Hollow Corpses'. As I mentioned before, every living entity will be turned into a Hollow Corpse, without exception.
This also counts for microscopic and dangerous beings such as Parasites. Your age doesn't belong to the era of technology, so I will skip the details. Anyway, that type of Hollow Corpse infiltrated my body after surpassing the barrier with its small size, and I began to die.
My soul was the only thing that was currently safe at the moment, so my father simply gave up on everything, and through his love for me, he placed my soul inside the unfinished Transhuman.
That granted me many benefits, even if it was far from a completed project. One of the benefits I gained is immortality and a bizarre method to get stronger."
He chuckled before he continued. "In short, I am as strong as any mortal at the moment. However, with the right material, I can harden my body; and with the right source of energy, I can get more destructive. I am also immune to any element except for pure Profound Energy, and I am immortal.
Because Project: Chaos was incomplete, I couldn't inherit the full capabilities of a Hollow Corpse. I am also fragile compared to the Hollow Corpses outside, and it doesn't help that I can't enhance my body due to the lack of durable metals around here. I am a simple metallic robot with some small special abilities...
However, as I mentioned before, with the right opportunity, I can get more durable than anyone who ever lived in history. Any question?"
"..." Jasmine remained silent for some seconds before she got a question on her mind. "You said you were going to do something with the things you wrote, what is it?"
Auden chuckled again and began to walk away. "I'll give you a tour while we get to the place…"
Jasmine started to follow Auden without a word.
