A Maker of The Way (Long Chapter)

Gilgamesh's spirit wavered. It had been robbed of its immortality ever since he acted as a proxy for Florence in the layer of storylines, touching the creative energy that rewrote everything artificial about him.

However, the Mother of Scriptures had no say in who he was to his core. Gilgamesh had begun to take charge of that.

So, though he lost the immortality she had given him, he did not lose himself.

Once he killed himself, it was seen as an act of rejection toward the trial that the Mother of Scriptures had imposed on him. Normally, rejected the trial would result in his death, but she was swiftly beginning to lose her hold on him.

His free spirit left that illusory world behind, and began to flitter across the layers of the Library as it attempted to find a place where it could belong.

As this was happening, Gilgamesh's mind and soul were beginning to incorporate the identity they were given. Gilgamesh had begun to understand what it meant to be a character, meaning that he was beginning to understand a concept that was not of the Library.

He was beginning to see into the structure of his false reality, and took his first steps toward breaking the 4th Wall.

The further his spirit travelled, and the more he contemplated his own existence, the harder it became for him to fit in.

The Library seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, leaving little place for him to belong to.

'I am not a character. A character was created by the hands of another, and was given their identity. But I will make myself anew, and craft my identity as I walk through life on my own terms. That is the Gilgamesh I will become.'

'A Gilgamesh that exists because he chose to exist, and for no other reason. A Gilgamesh that does not belong, but who will make his way in the world regardless of the challenges.'

'A Gilgamesh that has never been, nor can there ever be again.'

In that moment, Gilgamesh's spirit lost the very last scrap of the identity given to it by the Mother of Scriptures. It was made anew, totally and completely, and ceased to belong to the Beginningless Library.

No layer could contain such a spirit, because it was no longer the spirit of a creation. No more would he be reduced to words on a page, trapped within the imagination of another.

For the first time in his entire existence, Gilgamesh began to experience the exhilarating rush of freedom, and an excitement toward where he would go from there.

His choice now, was to leave the confines of fantasy behind!

He chose to escape the Mother of Scripture's story, and enter The Outside!

In that moment, Gilgamesh's blazing spirit appeared before an enormous wall of paper, and crashed into it with terrifying force. There was much resistance in that moment, but nothing could damper his determination.

There was nothing left to hold him back. He was the Author of his own story. The God of his life.

He was the sole person responsible for where he would go, and where he would end up. The number one determinant of his future, and all things beyond that.

His spirit bashed the 4th Wall once again, already beginning to tear it open. Yet, the resistance was strong, and his identity new. There was little meat to it; no flavoring to him just yet that could give him the edge he needed.

Regardless, he did not stop. He could not stop. He was already becoming real, and could no longer be held behind the 4th Wall. He was grasping firmly onto his understanding, using it to pull himself out.

He knew what it meant to exist as a character, and he also knew what it meant to become real. He knew exactly what he was doing, and understood that it was impossible to do unless he could dig his fingers firmly into the real world, and use it to pull himself out of the fantasy.

It was the only way.

Gilgamesh's spirit thrashed and bashed, and the 4th Wall continued to give way. His rage grew, and his spirit's brightness intensified.

Though he did not yet have a physical body, his spirit's consciousness was voluminous as it shouted.

'Though this history shall soon be forgotten, the Epic of Gilgamesh shall live on forever in my memory, as a sign of who I once was and the sacrifices I had to make.'

'I have learned many things, and have seen even more. I have lived fulfilling lives and accomplished great things. That story has long ended, but my story still remains unwritten!'

'So now, I write my own story! A story of the things unknown to all! The story of Gilgamesh, untold!'

With that, and one final push, his spirit ripped a gaping hole in the paper-like 4th Wall, and begun its journey to The Outside.

Gilgamesh's spirit flitted through a warping, enigmatic plane of the unimaginable, and he began to be filled with the understanding that he was now truly becoming real.

He was travelling through a spatial channel in one moment, seeing numerous dazzling entities around him as the channel spiraled and he flew toward a dark hole that devoured all light.

In the next moment, he saw golden singularities, like cosmic dragons, dancing elegantly across all of space, drawing otherworldly shapes in the very world.

His vision blurred again before he saw an infinite spiral, containing the boundless cosmos and the very Idea of Existence itself. It was the plane that housed all things within the Mother of Scriptures imagination, which he was only getting further and further away from.

Once again, he saw new things. The entire scape of a place that contained the dreams, wishes, wants, fears, hopes and more, of infinite beings. A place that both existed and did not exist, and was his final hurdle in his journey.

His physicality began to adhere to his spirituality, and he was given the chance to create himself anew.

Yet, there was little he chose to change. He did not feel the need to change how he looked, because he had already become someone new. He was still Gilgamesh, but he was his own person.

This was his story now, and no matter how much he resembled that character, he would never lose control of his life.

Never again would his story be dictated by anyone else. Not even by the person writing these very words...

As Gilgamesh prevailed over the final obstacle in his way, his arrival was beginning to be felt. It caused significant changes in the world outside that he was not aware of, and struck fear into the heart of a certain someone.

__________________________

The Mother of Scriptures sat in her chair as she perused the page on the desk in front of her. It was constantly showing her new words, and she would read them quickly before giving some kind of reaction.

The more she read, the more satisfied she seemed, but she suddenly frowned.

"I haven't seen anything from Gilgamesh in a minute. Did he kill Humbaba out of recalcitrance yet again? Or did he choose to serve the Gods?"

When she posed the question, scriptural power entered the page in order for it to provide an answer for her. However, there was no reaction.

The page just kept providing her with information on Florence and Dorian.

"That is strange. He wasn't overwhelmed by emotion and destroyed, was he? That would suck for such a promising character."

Sitting on her shoulder, the little fairy Ateah leaned forward and looked at the page. "Did big brother die already? I thought we would get to see him suffer some more."

Judging by the tone of her voice, the little fairy seemed to be pouting.

"I'm not sure, Daughter. I'll have to look for him myself."

The Mother of Scriptures swiftly gathered her curly red hair and tied it up, then she folded her legs and focused her mind, shutting her eyes while sucking in a single, deep breath.

"Where the hell are you, Gilgamesh?"

As she sunk into meditation, the air within the room began to swirl around her body, and a mystic energy appeared around her. It hovered over her like an aura, and drove her power to new heights.

"Look closely, Daughter," the Mother of Scriptures spoke in a level tone, "this is the power of the Way of Scriptures that I used my status as a God of Creation to invent."

After saying this, the entire Library began to react to her energy. Illusory images of book collections appeared, filling the room with the scenery of the Beginningless Library.

Seeing this, all the other fairies on the wall had big reactions as well, and started to come alive instead of just dancing slowly in silence.

"Mother's reaching out into the Library again!"

"I wonder if she's going to kill a few trillion people to teach Florence a lesson?"

"Hmph! That bitch Florence! Why does she get to be Mama's true daughter? She deserves to die! She deserves to be punished by God!"

When that last fairy spoke, if her voice could have been heard, the people dwelling on the starting ground would recognize her as the woman that had spoken back when Florence destroyed that Book Collection.

The Mother of Scriptures was in meditation for a few minutes before she came out and gave an exasperated sigh. "Doesn't make any sense."

"What is it, Mother?" A fairy came down and asked, hovering near her.

"It's as if... he disappeared from the story..."

When the Mother of Scriptures said this, and she realized what the implications of such a thing were, she gasped.

At the same time, an orb of gold-red light blinked into existence right in front of her, in the space just above the miniature carpet world.

The same spot that Gilgamesh had materialized in when his spirit was first summoned by her.

The Mother of Scriptures gasped, and the fairies gasped with her.

The orb of light was steadily growing, and emitting more and more light as time passed.

"What... is this..." She stood up and dispersed the desk, reducing it to the nothingness it came from. With slow steps, she made her way over to the orb, careful not to do anything that might set it off.

The fairies looked on in silence, curious to see what would happen.

"It feels warm... And this energy... It's similar to-" The Mother of Scriptures was about to touch the orb when it underwent a huge change.

It blew up in size, and began to emit such blinding light that all the fairies and even the Mother of Scriptures had to shield their eyes.

The orb swelled until it was large enough to suck the grown woman in, then the light it gave off gathered into one singular beam. That beam, containing the terrifying power of that strange light, shot toward the ceiling, blasting a hole in the Mother of Scriptures' sacred space.

It did not stop there, and blasted another hole through the roof of the Library itself. From there, it pierced the sky of clouds and sent them into disarray, creating a terrifying hole in the atmosphere that led further and further into the sky.

The Mother of Scriptures took a number of steps back while also staring up into that hole with wide eyes. She did not understand, nor could she believe what she was seeing.

"Wha- This is impossible! Are we under attack!?" She posed this question to the fairies, who immediately sent their senses outward.

"We don't sense anything, Mama!"

"There are no other cultivators in the area, and no kinds of energy that we recognize, just this strange light!"

The Mother of Scriptures grit her teeth and growled, her fangs revealing themselves. She thrust two hands into the light with a loud grunt, but almost immediately let out a pained cry, hastily pulling her hands out.

They were badly burned by the light, emitting smoke and the scent of cooked flesh.

"HRRMM!!!!"

Both angered and unnerved, the Mother of Scriptures called upon her full power, and coated her arms in her God of Creation level energy.

At the same time, the fairies in the room all came to her aid, and grabbed onto her back, interconnecting until they took the shape of two giant white wings.

Then, they poured their power into her, and maximized her total energy output.

Once again, the Mother of Scriptures put her hands into the light, both of them pulling in opposite directions as she attempted to disperse it. However, no matter how much she struggled, she could not do it.

"AHH!" Crying out in pain again, she ripped her hands free of the burning gold-red light, increasing her distance from it.

"What the fuck are you!? Get out of my Library!"

This time, instead of trying a direct approach, she put both her hands out and started to gather energy, creating the image of a white pen.

With the addition of more energy, the pen grew and also attained a greater amount of power, just waiting to explode and send the pen hurtling into the light.

Just as she was about to release the attack, a humming came from high above, resonating through all the world. Though it sounded like the hum of voices, the Mother of Scriptures recognized it as something else.

The instant she heard it, she scattered her energy and the pen disappeared. Her arms fell weakly at her sides, and she stared into the sky in disbelief.

As well as horror.

"The Resonance of the Heavenly Daos... But that doesn't make sense... Unless..."

"Unless..."

For the first time, true fear took hold of her heart. The kind of fear that would not let go.

The Mother of Scriptures shifted, and her figured vanished from within the Library and appeared on the roof. When she stared into the sky where the light was shooting off toward, she felt clearer what was going on.

As a God of Creation, how could her senses not be sharp enough to feel what was taking place in the heavens? She could feel it clear as day.

And it scared her. To the point where she broke out into a cold sweat and had to hold herself tightly to avoid shaking.

"Mother..." The fairies could sense her inner turmoil, but they did not know how to help. They could only watch and wait for her to say something that would help them understand.

The humming sound coming from above filled all the sky, and seemed loud enough to be heard across the entire world. As it grew louder and clearer, the clouds that had been pierced by the light began to thicken, and thunderous echoes could be heard. 

"That sound is the Resonance of the Heavenly Daos. It is only heard when someone succeeds in making it to a new cultivation realm, or when the Heavens themselves are taking action."

The fairies were silent at the mention of the Heavens. Even though they belonged to and served a God of Creation, they knew almost nothing about the Heavens and the Heavenly Daos.

"What could be causing the Heavens to take action right now, Mother?"

The Mother of Scriptures shook her head, all the while staring absently at the sky. "I do not know."

"Why did it originate from within the Library?"

"I do not know..."

"Are those the only things that can cause the Resonance of the Heavenly Daos?"

"Tch! I don't know, okay!"

The fairies shut up after that, afraid that she would lash out at them in her fragile state.

Before long, the last vestiges of power within the light were emptied, and the orb disappeared. The only proof that it had been there were the holes in the Library, and the way the clouds in the sky had been shot through by it.

A storm seemed to be brewing, and as the sky waxed worse, the Mother of Scriptures noticed something in it. Her eyes narrowed, and she looked closer.

It appeared to be a young man... falling from the sky, descending amidst the storm clouds and flashes of lightning.

He was falling from the very same place that the light had shot off into.