28 Universal Amalgamation of All
June 11th, 1348 of the Fifth Epoch
Max exited his newly bought house the next morning with an odd smile on his face. While walking, he stopped oddly for an instant, before resuming his walking. Every movement he made had this unnatural pause in it as though he was a puppet whose controller could not smoothly make his body move.
Looking up at the sun whose blaring intensity had been mitigated by the dense fog around Backlund, Max recalled the events of last night, and the utterly baffling incidents that happened to himself.
…
The fusion of Max and Samuel stood bravely in front of the creature of nightmares, as the eyes various multicoloured and shaped eyes converged at their location.
However, unlike what they had expected, the being did not immediately launch attacks at them to try and eliminate them completely, and take over their body just like a certain someone had done after Klein had used His help to defeat a monocled someone.
Instead, it stretched out a single tentacle towards Max, one that looked incredibly frail and was slightly quivering as it moved through the space between Max and the being, as though a hulk was trying to delicately pass a human mouse-sized thread through a needle.
Max was prepared to back away at any moment, but the multicoloured tentacles approached him slowly and touched his hand as delicately and softly as possible.
And that was the end of that.
Max felt his brain explode and his vision blacked out.
...
The next thing he remembered was waking back up in his body. However, this time, he felt three things different from him.
Firstly, he felt a connection with the Sefirot hiding behind the moon, a stable connection at that. Secondly, he felt vast amounts of knowledge about the Sefirot, his current situation and the situation with the other three currently orbiting the Earth. And Thirdly, Max felt a third presence within his soul.
Max's soul was no longer just Max, Samuel and the memories of the pathway, but now also included another being's memories; Unity. And Unity's soul was incredibly haphazardly fused with Max's and Samuel's own perfectly fused soul. It felt like if enough power was involved, it would actually be possible to split Unity from Max.
Though the memories of Unity were very insightful as to its origins compared to the Origins of the other Outer Gods and Pillars; all of whom originated from a super powerful being that created everything.
Unity, on the other hand, originated from no one. When the one that created everything did so, a force was born as a result of the creation process. A force that not only governed the existence of everything but also acted on bringing it all together to reform the state of nothingness. The force was immediately recognised by the creator who immediately disposed of it using all his power by condensing it into a single point and flinging that point outside his domain of creation, to affect nothing in the deepest parts of the void where none of his creations existed.
Unknown to Him, the condensed force continued to condense, since it was the embodiment of fusing back together until it created a being strong enough to carry out its job of unifying everything and return it to nothingness. Thus, Unity was born, and the very first thing it did was use the rocks around it to destroy a planet it came across while being flung through space.
However, in this process, remnants of the now nearly split-up creator sensed the birth of Unity and sent some of His power to ensnare souls from the destroyed planet and use the souls of fully developed humans to overpower the newborn soul of Unity and Split it before it fully matured and destroyed his creation.
However, this caused the now split Unity to have a sense of direction to head towards, an instinctual urge to return its home to nothingness caused it to begin moving towards His creations that existed in a space of void.
And that was where the vision Max had seen when he tried to lose control continued until he was sent to this new Earth. The process of travelling from the location of the destroyed Earth that existed outside His creation to this new Cosmos where all His creations existed, had caused almost Five Epochs to pass.
And that was the origin of Unity.
This origin story also allowed him to understand why exactly the soul of the split Unity within the Sefirot was so small compared to his own, which was essentially 1.5 fully matured human souls.
Unity had just been created and was further split into 5 parts, with each of them containing a portion of its understanding of the pathways it contained, thus resulting in a shrivelled husk of the former Unity's soul, with nothing but the briefest of memories of its existence, and the understanding of the Sefirot it occupied.
…
And this understanding of the Sefirot was not with Max as well. The Sefirot was called Universal Amalgamation of All, and it had an effect on Max's thought process just before he reached out to Unity. It had given him subconscious hints as to its name as well as Unity's name, to get him to call out to them and allow either him to win over Unity or the other way around. Either way, it would allow The Universal Amalgamation of All to finally fuse with the other pathways and possibly become whole again.
This was also why he had not thought about the consequences of calling out to Unity, as it had transformed his greed for power and knowledge into something that blinded him from the consequences of his own actions.
Now everything made sense.
But what were the uses of the Sefirot? Well, there were many.
Firstly, Max could Use the 'Aura' of the Sefirot to purge most kinds of Corruption from objects. But just like Klein using the Sefirah Castle to purge the contamination from Fallen Gods, it was possible for the ones whose corruption he was removing to know that someone had removed it from the object. Thus, trying to clean the Wanderer's Key he had received from the Mother Goddess of Depravity was out of the question for the time being.
Secondly, ordinary objects placed within the Sefirot would also slowly turn into Sealed Artifacts. Though the speed was ridiculously slow compared to the Sephirah Castle, perhaps due to the fact that the latter was receiving a constant supply of prayers from a sealed part of the world, or because the former was too 'new' of a Sefirot in terms of being used by Beyonders or given prayers to, to be able to quickly turn objects into Sealed Artifacts.
Thirdly, anything kept within the Sefirot would be contaminated by the Aura of the Universal Amalgamation of All. This was not an ability but instead a downside as it would expose his connection with the Sefirot if someone like the Mother Goddess of Depravity saw such objects.
Fourthly, any powers Max used from within the Sefirot will be amplified by quite a bit, but not enough to actually affect any High-sequence Beyonders, or even Mid-sequence Beyonders at the moment.
Another ability was the fact that the Sefirot shielded Max from any prying eyes as well as physical harm from any beings, even Outer Gods. However, this protection was only for things inside the Sefirot, and at the moment, the only thing that could enter was his soul and not his physical body.
Lastly, and most the most important ability Max could think of was the ability to use the abilities of one Sequence ahead of his own Pathway. This meant that he could use the abilities of Fool's End within the Sefirot. But Max could try that later since it was already morning by the time he had regained consciousness, and it had already taken him really long to process all this information.
Other than these abilities, Max also got a certain piece of news that sent shivers up his spine. All this time, he had been thinking about certain super-powered beings, and just by even knowing their names, they already knew about you!
And he had been casually calling out names like Adam, Mother Goddess of Depravity, Evernight Goddess, Ince Zanguill, a certain psychopathic quill, and many more without thinking about how they would react upon knowing about a certain Sequence 9 Beyonder from an Outer God pathway knowing so much about them…
Thankfully, the Sefirot had been using its powers to alter the very reality and prevent these beings from knowing about Max's thoughts. Apparently, It had stopped most of the strong beings from knowing about Max and his thoughts but had overlooked the quill, who had almost given his identity to the betrayer of Evernight, only to be stopped by the combined efforts of the Mother Goddess of Depravity and the Universal Amalgamation of All.
Since they were directly influencing a Grade 0 Sealed Artifact, that was hidden behind the barrier protecting the Earth, it had taken both their efforts to stop this from happening. After all, shielding Max's mind to prevent his thoughts from escaping, and physically stopping and erasing the memories of a Grade 0 Sealed Artifact were very different things.
From this moment forth, Max had also decided to stop thinking about these supreme beings so casually and only do it once his soul was within the Sefirot, just for precaution to prevent something like the quill giving away his information to others from happening again.
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Auther's Notes
This is a vital question. I was sick so I ended up holed up in my room, with too much free time and so wrote till chapter 31. The plot progression is almost just as slow as it is currently. I was thinking of introducing a time skip of around a few months instead of actually going through the day-to-day nuances of his life, since I cannot simply make it interesting enough for you to read to me to write. Please comment as to whether or not I should put the time skip in chapter 32? After all, we all know that the main action will begin after Klein descends, since everythign is limiting Max from advancing to Sequence 8 currently.
I would like your feedback, else the novel progression might not be to everyone's liking. Please comment!!!! This is the first time I am writing an auther's note in the story itself, but I had to do this to get your attention, since nobody reads the actual author's notes apparently. But do not worry, this has not bee included in the word count.
Thank you, and hope everyone enjoys reading! Toodles
