Deal with the Devil

Max decides not to make any rash decisions just yet, and wait to see what exactly was the plan for the Backlund smog, and if he could actually use it to advance. If not, then there was no point in actually stopping the smog, and he was better-off letting it happen and earn a lot of money by purchasing properties at incredibly low values.

Perhaps, waiting might even prove to be beneficial even if he did stop the smog incident, since the correcting force might take action and ultimately create a new incident that would lead to the death of thousands and thousands of people.

'This correcting force is clearly not fate, else the Beyonders from the Wheel of Fortune would have realised they were being pushed along a single path. No, this has got to be something higher, and less obvious.'

This was why Max had not named this force; Fate as depicted by the countless comics, anime, movies and novels that Samuel had read and watched. It was something similar to the correcting force that only the author of the novel could have; an illogically powerful force that could do whatever it wanted to make something happen the way the author wanted it to, without the characters realising they were being manipulated.

Perhaps the author was some sort of remaining sentient will of the True Creator, which would explain why he was not affected, or it could in all possibility, just be the author, and that Max somehow made it into the actual work of the author of Lord of the Mysteries.

While Max was contemplating inside the Amalgamation of All, to prevent his thoughts from being read or manipulated, he felt a tug on his powers.

Glancing in that direction, he noticed it came from the Sefirah Castle above the spirit Realm.

Following the tug on his powers, Max realised it was Klein, who was using some odd means to try and eat away at the Unity Energy. Although the energy did not appear to be changing much with his efforts, Max could instantly tell whatever he was doing was somehow working to an extent.

Although it did not reduce the amount of Unity Energy, it was clearly able to close the hole from which the Unity energy was leaking into the Sefirah Castle. This would limit the amount of energy that could flow into the castle, and if Max let this continue, he would no longer be able to exert any powers within the Sefirot, and a lot of his long-term plans would be destroyed.

More importantly, Klein knew that the black energy belonged to him now, and anything the Unity energy did would be linked to himself. If he tried to fight back against Klein, he would be marked as an enemy instead of an ally. An enemy who was trying to take over the Sefirot that Klein had. This would be even more detrimental than just letting Klein close the hole.

'Shit!' Max cursed.

'Quickly! Max, burn the energy in the Sefirah Castle. Burn it and supply the Sefirah Castle with more energy, in exchange for control over the castle itself. Then use the control to Fool Klein into thinking that the hole has been closed.' Samuel interjected, causing Max to raise his hand and the Unity Energy inside the Sefirah Castle began to boil.

Then, the illusory grey fog surged towards the black smoke that came out of the black liquid and greedily devoured it.

Klein, who was seeing this scene sighed in relief as his plan seemed to work somehow. He also realised that perhaps this black energy was not purposefully brought here by Mr. Death. His plan was simple. He would use the Grey Fog to produce a projection of how the castle was before the crack had formed and superimposed it onto the current room. His hope was that this would force out the black energy from inside it. And thankfully it seemed to be working.

'Samuel! The control it has given us is too small. If we try to fool Klein like this-'

'I know. Calm down, Max. Let me try,' Samuel said while taking over his body and directly communicating with the Sefirah Castle.

From his basic understanding, and what he could remember, the Sefirah castle was an incredibly dangerous existence. Not only was it a Sefirot, but it belonged to the original Lord of Mysteries, and contained his 'back-up' plan to return before the Earth was destroyed by the cosmos and those it represented.

Furthermore, this 'backup' plan involved a lot of complicated processes that were already set up by the original owner to be performed over time, like releasing the souls of individuals from before the Earth's human civilisation was destroyed and the Epochs began, into the current world at given periods of time.

As such, the Sefirot itself did have a rudimentary form of intelligence, at the very least, it was able to understand incredibly basic commands and perform them countless years later without too many problems.

As such, Samuel decided to take the risk and began to communicate with the Sefirot through the rapidly closing connection. At first, he decided to bait it with energy, but no reply came. A lot of offers later, and as the connection was about to be cut off, Samuel went for a final attempt.

It was now all or nothing, and he went for it without hesitation.

In that very instant, the Sefirah castle trembled slightly, as the connection was completely cut off and the chair of Mr. Death was dully repaired. Although it still was slightly turned to face Klein's seat of honour, that was not too much of an issue.

Klein sighed in relief as his plan had somehow worked. His ability to create things within the castle using the Grey fog had allowed him to create essentially a replica of the castle room, force it into existence, and reject the old room from reality, thus closing the connection with Max.

Everything was okay! However, at this moment, unknown to Klein, another structure cracked.

In the deepest part of the Sefirah Castle, hidden under this grey fog, and completely inaccessible to the current Klein, a door of light with a bluish-black lustre was present. The door was formed by countless layers of spherical light and each spherical light enveloped transparent or translucent squirming maggots.

Behind this door, there was a bluish-black fog, hiding something unknown and terrifying. There were completely transparent cocoons hanging by thin black threads from the top of the door, and inside the cocoons were souls from every race, wearing modern clothes, some even holding cell phones. All of them had the aura as though they were living but their eyes were tightly closed. Three cocoons were already broken and empty.

This door of light, at the base, formed a small crack. It was incredibly tiny compared to the entire enormity of the door, but the crack almost immediately began oozing out thick black liquid, at a rate much faster than it had when it was on Max's seat.

…

Sighing in relief at the success, Samuel gave back control to Max as he was rather tired from the sudden exertion, after all, it had been quite some time since he forcefully pushed Max out of the body and took complete control over it.

'We did it…' Max approached inside his mind, with a slightly questioning tone yet jubilant tone.

'Yes. But we now have a problem.'

'What?'

'I promised that we would help give CW a fighting chance against Klein when the time came. It was the only way to get the breach into the True Sefirah Castle so Klein would not find it anytime soon.'

'But that is alright. It was already bound to happen in the original. In fact, till where you had read, Klein and this CW; a truly horrifying existence to be honest, were still embroiled in a struggle over control over his body and the Sefirah, the winner would become the Lord of Mysteries. Right?'

'Yes, but this leaves two problems,' Samuel continued without waiting for Max's input.

'Firstly, it means we cannot mess with the plot. We will have to let it go on as it is meant to. Breaking the Backlund smog event might lead to a cascade of failing points in time that result in the plot being broken… Or not? The corrective force might be able to bring things back on track if need be. This will be a risk we will have to take to know how far we can bend the corrective force and how powerful the corrective force truly is.'

'If the corrective force fails, we could just more actively participate with Klein ensuring things flow as they are supposed to till the end.'

'But the second problem is much bigger.'

'And what is that?' Max asked, confused.