Chapter 972: Curiosity
“You do, huh?” Rael said, letting out a faint chuckle as he glanced at the hole in front of him. The core of all his questions for the last couple of dozen years was right here.
And yet, Rael didn’t really feel the same urge as before to approach all the answers he wanted. If anything, just seeing that the possibility existed was enough of an answer for him.
Actually having all the answers seemed dull, very dull. What if, when he got all the answers, he had no more aspirations in life?
Yeah…
“I guess this was always how it was going to be, huh?” Rael mused, glancing at the other black boxes. “I am kind of curious what the people inside those boxes look like. Do you think they have enough control over their boxes to notice my presence?”
“Probably not,” Gaia replied. “This is a realm you wouldn’t normally be able to see. The only reason I saw it was because I found a loophole. Still… If you’re not going in, then you might as well check the other boxes.”
Rael nodded, and with that, the two of them slowly proceeded toward one of the nearby boxes beside his. He made sure not to forget his own box, since Rael had an inkling suspicion that if he were to teleport from his current location, he would end up god knows where.
Definitely not his own universe though.
And that suspicion only grew even more when Rael approached one of the boxes, pried it open, and then spotted some kind of swirling mass in front of him. He recognized it as mana, but the type of mana here was rather odd.
He couldn’t interact with it, nor could he absorb it. It rejected him pretty much instantly, and he felt suffocated whenever he got near it. Curious, Rael decided to pry open another one of those boxes, then another.
Realizing that each box held a certain signature of mana made him amazed by how the universe worked. It was so interesting, in fact, that he was sure this was in order to prevent a being from another multiverse or so, from entering that specific multiverse.
And if they did force their way into the multiverse, the mana from their old multiverse wouldn’t work. Essentially, they’d either be killed or suffocated, or… Well, they’d be left powerless, left to relearn how to use mana from scratch.
Rael figured that it might be possible for him to implement a similar feature in his own universe too, but then again, would him overpowering everyone and controlling what they did benefit him? At that point, no one could contest him or his family, which was good on one end, but also depressing on another.
Call it foolishness, but Rael decided not to do anything of the sort.
Yet right as he backed off, the headache as sharp as ever, he suddenly spotted Gaia off in the distance, gesturing at him to approach. He was a little puzzled at first, until he approached her, seeing her with an already pried-open box.
Just this one, unlike the others, had a very similar mana signature to Rael’s universe. So here, he had nothing he needed to worry about, as the rejection was very minimal. In fact, it was so non-existent that Rael could use 95% of his mana without issue.
Was that because their multiverses were compatible? Huh… What do you know, Rael could enter compatible multiverses too.
“Do you want to enter this one to check out how it is?” Gaia offered.
Rael was about to refuse, yet when he realized that her eyes were pretty much sparkling at the thought, he felt like he had no choice but to nod. It’s fine. They could just leave and go back later. If not, they could ask for the help of Concepts or something, since Rael was sure that the Concepts knew that something like this existed.
At least, the Concepts which presided over order and the universe itself would know. Finally, Rael took another step forward, and without hesitation, dematerialized himself into this new box. Gaia entered his mind at the same time, and finally, when Rael regained his consciousness, he found himself in the middle of the cosmos.
The back of his mind stung a little, and if that wasn’t enough, Rael also didn’t feel as powerful as he usually was. But then again, even if he wasn’t as powerful, he still had infinite mana, immortality, invincibility, and all of his Laws, plus this form that made him a literal multiversal disaster.
So with that in mind, Rael was pretty confident in whatever would be in store for him. Finally, when he adjusted to the surroundings, Rael went ahead and returned to his humanoid form. In the next instant, Gaia manifested beside him, her eyes still as sparkly as ever as she glanced around the empty cosmos.
Obviously, it was empty since they were literally in the middle of nowhere, likely at the very end of one of the universes, which had little to no planets. They’d need to get a lot closer if they wanted to see something.
And so, that was exactly what they decided to do. Narrowing down which location they’d need to go to, Rael and Gaia began moving at several billion times the speed of light, crossing galaxy after galaxy in mere seconds, until eventually, they arrived at a galaxy that seemed to have a big chunk of planets.
Though, there was also the problem of most of the planets being uninhabited. In fact, out of the several trillion planets, Rael could count on one hand the number of planets that actually had some sentient life on them.
Two of those planets had no humans, while the last one seemed particularly humanoid, to the point Rael was sure it must be some kind of curse for every human in every multiverse to look the same.
But instead of heading down there, Gaia seemed to have other thoughts, as she glanced over to the side, in the direction where a bunch of volatile mana was gathered.
Likely the mana left behind by a fight, or actually belonging to some unstable being. Since that being was so powerful, she was naturally interested.
And frankly, Rael was a little too.