The void around me rippled like water under stress if water could twist in ten directions at once and blink in and out of existence.
The mass of blue energy in front of me, or maybe behind me, it was hard to tell when reality kept glitching and flared again. It wasn't light. It was something else, something that pressed into the mind rather than the eyes. It didn't make sense at times.
I could hear the hum of it inside my skull, like an electrical torrent trying to crawl out through my teeth.
I gritted my jaw. "You know," I muttered, sidestepping a tendril that sliced through the air like liquid lightning, "if you're supposed to be my prize, you're a pretty awful one. Usually, loot doesn't try to eat you."
It responded by distorting, its edges folding in and out like a collapsing dimension. One moment, it was a sphere, the next a man-shaped silhouette, then something with too many arms and not enough symmetry.
I could understand some of the shapes, sigils, fragments of languages, atomic lattices, the occasional planetary map, and others were… well, better left unprocessed.
My brain started screaming the first time I tried to make sense of one.
"Alright, rule number one," I said to myself, planting my feet, in whatever counted for ground in this place.
"Don't look too hard at the impossible geometry. It's bad for the neurons."
The whole world-scape trembled. I could feel my mind shaking, like tectonic plates grinding to form another mountain. The air smelled of ozone and molten glass. Cracks of white light cut across the void, bleeding reality from somewhere else into this place.
I reached out with both hands, gathering golden essence from my core. It answered sluggishly, as if annoyed. The blue energy surged, striking at me again. I rolled, barely dodging a blast that tore through the space I'd just been in. It left a trail of code-like symbols in the air. It was unstable and wild.
"Okay, okay, no plan survives contact with a divine data storm." I exhaled sharply, pulling my will together.
"Fine, let's improvise."
The golden light surged through my veins, humming like electricity. I imagined networks, energy conversion, links, and bonds like tiny nets. My thoughts arranged themselves the way they used to back in the lab: analyze, calculate, apply.
"Step one," I muttered, weaving a symbol in the air. "Containment."
A dome of gold formed, fracturing the storm's immediate space. The energy screamed, literally screamed in a distorted voice, and the sound hit like glass shards in my ears. I stumbled back, gritting my teeth. My containment net flickered, then cracked like safety glass.
"Step two, fail spectacularly. Check."
The storm retaliated, slamming into me with a burst that flung me backwards. My back hit what felt like a wall, but no, it was me. My own subconscious, shaped like the fractured memory of a cathedral ceiling, splintered under the impact.
My chest burned. My hands trembled, gold bleeding into blue. "No… no, who are you to try and take over my body." I hissed.
The energy pulsed, half-mocking, half-curious. It spoke without words, a flurry of thought, offering power and attempting domination at once.
"I've heard that pitch before," I shot back, stepping forward even as my knees wanted to give. "I'm not buying into your pyramid scheme, thanks."
Another surge came. I didn't dodge this time, I met it. My essence flared, golden light exploding outward in fractal patterns. I felt something ancient tear loose inside me, an instinct not human but divine, roaring through the circuits in my body.
The clash lit the void like a dying sun. Blue and gold twisted together, threads of words and whisps entwining, resisting, merging. I could feel it fighting to devour me, but I bit back with everything I was.
Memories flashed: the lab, flickering monitors, the weight of my failures.
"I am the god of protection," I snarled, pushing forward. "You think I can't handle a little temptation?"
"I've killed much more clever groans than you," I shouted
The blue mass convulsed, fracturing into shards of light. Some of it sank into me. Some of it screamed and dissolved into nothing.
Then silence.
I dropped to one knee, panting, the world-scape around me stabilizing in flickers of gold and blue. My hands trembled. My reflection, if that's what it was, looked older, much sharper.
My eyes glowed like the sun rising on the horizon.
I laughed weakly. "all this time fighting, huh? Figures. Divine integration: like software updates, but with a touch of existential terror. Wow"
The storm was gone. But I could feel it, still there, somewhere inside, coiled but under my firm control.
"Guess that means I won," I muttered, the sound of my own voice echoing faintly in the stillness. "Let's just hope I'm the one who wakes up… and not a shadow wearing my face." A dry chuckle slipped out of me.
"Ramona must be worried sick. Though knowing her though she probably doesn't care and is stroking that little deer again."
Ah, the deer. My little experiment. He'd evolved far beyond what I expected, thanks to the system I crafted for him. Through the link, I could still glimpse fragments of his journey: the dense forest canopy, the rivers turned to silver under moonlight, and the legions of beasts bowing before him He was no longer just any deer; he was the Emperor of the Forest. Every creature within those woods moved under his command.
I smiled faintly. The system works.
Creating that one had taught me something vital: everything, flesh, spirit, even the world itself, contained knowledge. Every atom whispered data if one knew how to listen. All it needed was a way to express that hidden understanding. I just needed a way to connect with that information.
The "Library System" I built within my own mind had become the key to that. It didn't just store information; it refined it, accelerated my thinking, mapped every process within my body, and fed it back to me in clear, precise data. Every heartbeat, every spark of essence, every divine fluctuation, I could read it all in real time.
The only downside? It was still crude, functional, but inelegant. No fancy blue screens or congratulatory chimes like the systems those transmigrators brag about. Mine was just mechanical and painfully but acceptably efficient.
I gathered my thoughts and looked around my mindscape. The chaos from before had finally subsided. The cracks that once scarred the horizon were gone, sealed by the melding of gold and blue. The air shimmered softly with divine light, peaceful for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
With a long sigh, I let myself fall onto my back, staring up into the swirling firmament above. "Finally," I breathed, eyes closing as exhaustion washed through me. "Now maybe I can get some actual rest…"