On his experiments went, a spider's web of Connection expanding outward from him, infesting every crack in the fabric. Anywhere he touched, reality was cinched in place, unable to snap back into its usual shape. Distance became a suggestion, light bending strangely as it passed through the altered space to reach him, some areas blindingly bright, others plunged into shadows.

On a microscopic scale, he felt primordial chaos form in the cracks that were particularly compressed, festering into uncontainable concepts, held at bay only because of the lack of catalyst to set them off.

Only two months into the process, and he already knew he could be done at any moment, the full six months not even remotely required.

'Of course, I should have guessed. Why would he risk an entire universe unnecessarily? He probably gave me enough dilation to be convenient, but less than it could've been to give me significantly more cushion than necessary.'

The Dragon was nothing if not cautious. Still, the task was horrifically straining on him. Even with everything in his favor, his Overmind Skill had gained enough levels to evolve, specializing itself into handling matters of the fabric, such as with Void or the Realm of Reality. When it did that, he felt his manipulation become noticeably easier.

Sitting on Minerali's North Pole, he'd already compressed the world enough that he could see the mainland from his unmoving vantage, even with his intentionally slow pace. Not only that, but he'd run into more than a few survivors- those who'd been forgotten at the bottom of the ocean.

Time and time again, he was awed at how stable these elves were, despite most sitting alone for millennia. Then again, those who cracked or gave up might've taken enough soul damage to pass on. He wasn't really sure what happened if one wanted to just die, and he didn't ask.

The seventh queen, whose name he'd learned was Loraine, also learned how to… surface, in a way. By meditating in his soul, she could project herself out in a way not dissimilar to his original Astral Projection, which he no longer had.

When she did this, she was able to meet with any of the survivors without exiting his Harmonic Sanctuary fully, who knew instinctually that she was a voice of elven authority. His inner world continued to develop, though the residents were unnerved by something he didn't expect- the night sky.

Supposedly, the night sky in his soul was utterly empty, devoid of any stars or even a moon. He'd tried fixing this a few times, but didn't have enough active control over it to change such a thing.

Alternatively, his experiments with merging spells through Connect yielded incredible results. Not every spell was compatible, but they seemed to fall in "Groupings" that could interact with one another. Spatially speaking, Harmonic Sanctuary was able to interact with Roving Gate and Starved Bastion.

When connected to Roving Gate, the spell seemed to want to do something, but didn't have the means to accomplish its task. The closest the elves could note was that some movement-based magics became easier, and Dei chalked it up to complexity.

Void was a Common-grade spell, meaning it was incredibly simple. The rarer something was, the more complex it was, so Void had nothing really "hidden" in it.

Alternatively, Starved Bastion's effect was impossible to miss. Once connected to Starved Bastion, the sun in his Harmonic Sanctuary was subject to a perpetual partial eclipse, and the night sky felt utterly oppressive.

The elves demanded he never do that again after the first time.

Other than with Harmonic Sanctuary, Dei struggled to get things to work well together, as they all seemed very close-ended. He felt that they could work together, with great effort and tweaking, but it was not worth it unless he needed the effect between them.

To that end, he'd focused his efforts for a while on the one thing he needed now- a visual aid. A System.

Sanctuary, Identify, and Overmind worked in layers, tied together with the lines of Connection that ran through his soul. He almost had it, but was missing one vital detail- a power source.

He'd seen the flickering beginnings of his result multiple times, but his MP always bottomed out in seconds, and he noted that Minerali had trace amounts of MP that he absorbed from the Titan's flesh 'Just another connection between MP and the Titans.'

Running Identify everywhere had its own weight, but he later found out Divine Balance was required as well to keep Overmind from killing him. Combining the two powerful passives and making them work overtime, along with Identify, was too much for his meager MP to sustain, and he knew his affinities wouldn't be much better considering how hard it was to renew them.

Still, not all was hopeless, as he had at least two other sources. SP fell through pretty quickly, but he was hopeful for Starved Bastion being able to power his Interface.

Currently, it broke down everything into some kind of entropic energy that could only decay stuff, but Dei had a thought: where would all the energy from the stars go if he finished up early?

Could he… take it?

If he did, what if he used it to power himself? Sure, he didn't have a Time affinity to use it in the same way, but if Starved Bastion contained the power and he set it to decay the stars slowly, could he use the runoff from their fission to create an Interface? He hoped so, cause if he couldn't he was out of luck.

Ever since discovering that fact, he'd started to work on a different spell combo, one he had high hopes for.

* * *

Just three days after the two-month mark, something finally went wrong.

He heard a cracking sound and turned around. His web didn't let him move from his current spot without letting his hold over the world go, but rotating was in the cards.

He assumed the cracks would be from broken fabric as a cosmic beast or the sort broke in, but all he saw were the jagged edges of a floating window he could only see through at an angle with how it was placed.

It led to nowhere else, and the center of it just showed the space behind it rather than be some kind of portal as he'd first expected.

Despite that, Dei watched a familiar figure step through, and his brain locked up for a moment.

'That's… me.'

Dei himself stepped out from nowhere. Even through his soul sight, the resemblance was uncanny, whoever this entity was perfectly mimicking him.

He first assumed it was a Smiler of some kind with their horrific soul magic, but the person held a deep frown.

Still, they stepped into his domain, into his web. True, he couldn't move, but he'd already worked to alleviate that. After his System fell through, he worked on one combo he'd thought about long ago: Good Samaritan mixed with Cycle of Sealing.

Good Samaritan released autonomous constructs in his body to take care of any foreign affects placed upon him, which took the shape of hundreds of tiny Leviathans.

Cycle of Sealing gave autonomy to the construct it was stored within, letting them survive outside his body.

With Knowledge, he'd pinpointed the exact portions of both he needed, and fit them together in such a way that gave the mini-leviathans autonomy outside of his body. There was still the limitation that he needed to be doing something out of the Kindness of his heart to activate Good Samaritan, but right now? That was no issue. He did this exclusively to help the elves, and hadn't earned anything for his endeavor. He might, but that was no guarantee, and he'd save them either way.

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He called the combination Sealing Samaritan, uncreative but accurate.

He didn't know who this foreign Dei was, but he primed the spell to activate at a moment's notice, holding back if only for his own curiosity.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"An alternate you," his other self responded evenly, studying the connection webs with a frown.

"Parallel versions aren't real, you don't exist" he declared, testing if this was really Dei.

He would've laughed at that.

"I'm standing right here," the faker said in a monotone voice.

Dei launched Sealing Samaritan, hundreds of ghostly hands reaching out from the webs of Connection, grabbing at the faker, ready to crush or disintegrate him with their touch.

Faker disappeared, teleported several feet back with a frown, and Dei was confused, as he hadn't felt any shift in the fabric using Void.

Right now, Dei held something of a manual domain around him, so he would feel any use of Void as if it were taking place within his own body. Faker was using something to teleport that didn't overlap with Dei's affinities at all.

Faker flickered again, appearing in a completely random spot off to the left while grasping at thin air.

He frowned, "What?"

"What's wrong?" real Dei asked, relaxing slightly. Faker was having trouble for some reason, so he was not fully in control, nor did he plan this attack out properly.

"This isn't where I was supposed to end up… ah, Void," he said with resignation.

A second Dei stepped out of the first ones portal, and they both looked at each other, clearly unhappy.

"I was here first," Faker 1 said.

"I'm here now," Faker 2 replied.

Both teleported, their focuses not on Dei any longer, but each other.

They appeared in random arbitrary places around him.

"Void…" Faker 2 mumbled, and Faker 1 rolled his eyes.

'Literally what is happening?'

"Okay! Can one of you two idiots explain who you are?"

"You," they said with synchronicity, and he sighed. 'Not helpful.'

He launched more attacks. Whatever they were, they did not like Void. 'Tough. Everywhere around me is Void, moron. If you were me, you'd KNOW that.'

A third Dei stepped out of the empty window.

'Dude.'

All three teleported again, all appearing in different locations.

"Is this… Void?" Faker 3 mumbled to the air.

'Really? Is this gonna happen every time?' all of them avoided the grasping hands of Sealing Samaritan easily, instead focused on the others. 'Well, they hate Void, what if I just…'

With a mental exertion, he expanded and compressed the entire dimension, shaking his Connection.

All three Fakers dropped to their knees, hands on their heads and grunting in pain. The moment of hesitation cost them their lives, Sealing Samaritan finally taking hold.

They screamed in agony as Dei used Wrath Identify, piercing deeply into their souls, pulling them apart and scanning for what the hell they were.

He felt unnerved by the results, seeing the framework of his soul. Each soul was supposed to be unique, but these appeared to be complete duplicates structurally. They were, however, missing a lot of the meat, containing only the fragmented memories of who he was.

He found that, as they said, they were parallel versions of himself, their creation a result of the highly concentrated concepts of time taking place below the surface of this universe.

Similar to Void Beasts and Cosmic Beasts, they were Time Beasts, variants of himself created by the Time affinity, but they were not real. They felt, instinctually, that they had no place in the Physical realm, and that they would be rejected by the natural laws unless they managed to slay him and take his place.

'Okay… that's horrific, and I imagine this kind of thing is exactly what The System goes out of its way to prevent.'

From their memories he saw a strange mirror dimension, where hundreds or thousands of Dei's were born every second, not truly knowing who they were, only feeling their connection to him. He was surprised he didn't see Jacob or Thadria in this dimension either, but it seemed his efforts to manipulate the current universe had imprinted him upon it somehow, and how Time was using him as a template, accidentally creating alternate selves within its plane.

Most concerning of all were not the mindless Dei's though, but the one that'd somehow gained sentience. A more complete version of himself, this Dei had consumed many other fake in its fight for survival, getting a better picture of what it was.

It was the one that opened the portal, letting its lessers step through to test the waters, and Dei's own defenses. He'd even fallen for it, showing the other Dei his trump card against any alternate selves as it watched below the surface of existence.

The window into the Conceptual Plane of Time had collapsed the moment he shook the fabric, but he watched another open in front of him now. He shook the fabric again, and once more it destabilized, and Dei had no intention of letting it do anything else.

'I believe I should stop delaying now!'

Dei couldn't move. If a fake version of himself appeared, it might spell his demise.

There were three weaknesses he'd spotted in the True Faker: It didn't have a Void affinity, as it was antithetical to Time, it didn't have the memories of his time in this universe, as the Time affinity had some kind of built-in defense against recurring selves, and it didn't have the Entropy he'd created by feeding on this universe.

Still, he couldn't move. This fake self had also probably come up with a solution to the easy way with which he'd dispatched the others, and if it hadn't yet, it would eventually.

He was rooted, it would be able to dance around and pick him apart.

Rather than let that happen, he decided his time with experimentation was over. He'd gotten some good practice in, and made strides towards creating his System, but his vacation was over.

He threw his entire mind into Pulling the other realities closer, crushing this dimension down.

"Loraine, get ready!" He told the Seventh Queen, "Something horrific is coming and I need to shut this universe down NOW. All the elves are going to appear at once."

She didn't verbally acknowledge him, but she projected herself to the surface of his soul, ready to wave everyone through.

With a crushing force of will, the two realities began to converge, and Dei had to close his eyes or risk glimpsing the Realm of Reality again. He was positive he'd already earned the Achievement, now it would just be an unnecessary strain on his already fraying mind.

The world compressed, and Dei's Connection crawled further and further, spreading across the distorted space like the roots of a tree, contacting and absorbing anything that resisted with the power of an elven soul.

The cracking portals to the plane of Time became more frantic, and he had to expand the universe several times to throw variance into the distortion effect, shattering the gateway.

Jacob and Thadria came within view, Jacob asking questions while Thadria just looked around in wonder.

He was forced to ignore them both, pushing himself harder and even grabbing at some of the portals with Sealing Samaritan to dissolve them in his Starved Bastion.

The moment Connection touched the pole on the other side of the world, everything slipped. No more resistance, Dei was instead forced to press back against the converging universes on either side of this one, lest they collapse too quickly and crush them all.

Opening a rift, he said "Jacob, Take Thadria and jump through."

Hearing the strain in his voice, Jacob didn't hesitate to throw the woman over his shoulder and leap into the raw fabric.

Absorbing the last of the elven souls, Dei didn't let go of the universe, but he followed them as well.

The process continued behind him, thousands of limbs he'd previously had in Connection all getting pulled in and compressed into a single point.

Dei felt the multiverse attempting to smother it before a big bang could occur, but he didn't let it. He tugged on every link he had with it at once, pulling it into himself.

He ate it.

Starved Bastion exploded- utterly unable to contain the cosmic energies filling it.

Dei screamed in pain as conceptual stars filled his entire body, traveling along Connection, searing him with nowhere to go, until Harmonic Sanctuary opened its doors.

Within his mental world, the elves watched the night sky light up with the birth of a universe, everything visibly shuttering. Harmonic Sanctuary was hand-crafted by a Race of Primordial Children though, with more empty space than it was ever supposed to use and safeguards no mortal could ever understand.

It accepted the flash and more, creating a universe with the elven world at its center.

Dei, on the other hand, groaned in pain. Still, he kept an eye out, seeing no portal to the conceptual layer of Time open. He sat between Earth and the planet he'd chosen to be its neighbor in the Fabric, no sign of instability.

'That's a problem delayed for a better time,' he thought to himself.

He was under no impression that Faker was actually gone, he was just trapped somewhere below the timeline. If it were Dei, which it was, he wouldn't just give up either.

He sighed, waiting for Divine Balance to un-boil his steaming flesh before taking Jacob and Thadria back to Earth.

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