The Multiverse

A small note: Although the author feels the world-building and plot are quite well-crafted, with many important foreshadowing elements buried within, and readers have reacted with great enthusiasm, I must still provide a heads-up: those who do not enjoy world-building-heavy chapters can skip chapters one, four, and five! These three chapters focus primarily on introducing the world's setting.

Although, doing so might mean missing out on quite a bit of excitement! --------------------------------------

(The following is the main text)

In the endless void, there are two sources for the natural evolution of the universe. One is the explosion of a singularity—infinitely small and infinitely heavy, existing between Existence and Non-existence—which forms an ever-expanding universe. The other is a universe that slowly expands starting from a singularity, and the multiverse is the latter.

Different universes have different laws. The multiverse possesses its own system of laws. Within the universe, countless bubbles drift about; some are large, others small. Each bubble is a plane. The gravity of a plane is not generated by mass, but by the plane's core. The gravity of a plane's core is not uniform in all directions, which leads to the spectacular sight of many planes appearing as a "square earth under a round sky."

Countless years have passed since the birth of the universe, and countless planes have been born and destroyed in silence.

Finally, one day, the multiverse birthed its own consciousness. He is called Ao. Ao is the multiverse itself, so his greatest wish is to keep the multiverse stable and continuously developing. But clearly, things did not go as smoothly as he had imagined; the tranquility of the multiverse would not last for long.

The Lady of Pain struck from the void. Compared to developing slowly on one's own, plundering the fruits of others' labor is clearly faster and easier. The Lady of Pain is a void-level powerhouse who uses plunder as her means of development, and the multiverse was her target this time.

Ao, of course, would not sit idly by. He began his counterattack the very moment the Lady of Pain invaded the universe. A great war, featuring two void-level powerhouses as the protagonists, broke out within the multiverse.

In the end, Ao utilized his home-field advantage to achieve victory. The Lady of Pain had miscalculated Ao's strength; she failed and was trapped within the multiverse, unable to leave. She was forced to hide in her only remaining base, known as Sigil, to recuperate. For Ao, devouring a void-level powerhouse would bring immense benefits, at least enough to compensate for the losses of this great war. He would certainly not let his enemy go.

However, he had more important matters to attend to now... which was to quickly repair the multiverse. During the great war, the multiverse had been torn by the violent forces of the two void-level powerhouses, leaving it riddled with holes. These holes would leak the essence of the multiverse into the void, thereby attracting countless violent creatures wandering in the void.

This act of leaking essence into the void is like letting a wound bleed in the middle of the ocean; even with great strength, one would be swarmed to death by countless predators. Moreover, Ao had been severely weakened in the great war; if another void-level powerhouse were to arrive, the consequences would be unimaginable.

But Ao was not a good tailor. Who knows how long it would take for him to properly patch the holes? For now, he had to plug the leaks first. Even if it were just a superficial fix, it was better than leaving them exposed. At the very least, it would be enough to fool those void creatures that possessed no intelligence whatsoever.

Ao's method was to let living beings become gods, shaping divine sparks to fill the holes. He allowed life to control the divine sparks to become gods to deal with sudden mutations, and had the gods collect faith to maintain the divine sparks. Such a chain could become a virtuous cycle, endless and self-sustaining.

Divine sparks need to be controlled by life, but life can only evolve naturally. Even Ao cannot fully control a life form, and life is undoubtedly selfish. Furthermore, the lives willing to become gods are basically all ambitious people. They would never obediently control the divine sparks to fill the holes; they would covet greater and more power and status, and they would attempt to break free from control.

However, Ao had a decent countermeasure. He tamed the divine sparks; the divine sparks tampered with by Ao would slowly erode the emotions of the living being, eventually turning them into an absolutely rational, cold, and heartless machine. A machine works naturally with all its might and has no ulterior motives of its own. Of course, by that time, the life form is no longer themselves, and they don't even count as a complete life form anymore.

But facts have proven that gods may be arrogant, greedy, and ignorant, but they are definitely not stupid!

The first batch of "lucky ones" who obtained divine sparks and became gods soon discovered that they were slowly losing their joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, turning into cold machines. And if they were to abandon the divine spark, they would perish completely. Being ambitious, they naturally could not accept such an outcome.

As the saying goes, where there is oppression, there is resistance. The gods began to rack their brains to come up with many reliable or unreliable methods. A very small number succeeded, while the majority failed. Those who succeeded hid in the cracks of the universe, living in constant fear, while those who failed turned into dust and dissipated into the sky. But their divine sparks would be found by new successors, and new gods would be born. Even if the new "lucky ones" clearly knew the drawbacks of the divine sparks, there were always countless "protagonists" who believed they could easily defy the heavens. Thus, the divine sparks were passed on, one Ancient God fell after another, and one new god was born after another. Seeing that this virtuous cycle had been established, Ao rested assured and fell into a deep sleep (yes, the method for repairing the universe is to sleep).

Life is always constantly pursuing evolution. In the long passage of time, the creatures of the multiverse found the means of evolution, with magic and battle qi being the mainstream.

Among them, magic developed the fastest. In an obscure plane, the glorious Netherese Civilization was born. Driven by the Archmages, the brilliance of Netheril spread throughout the entire multiverse at an astonishing speed. By the time Ao discovered it, the power of Netheril was about to transcend the universe and truly break free from his control.

Ao was held back by the Lady of Pain and could not take action, so he ordered the gods to fight against Netheril. But the self-righteous gods were soon defeated in the face of Netheril's ultimate creation—the Floating Cities!

The failure of the gods only made Ao more wary of these powerful creatures. How could Ao allow the creatures in the universe to escape his control? So, he painfully split off some precious origin essence to create his most loyal servants—a group of terrifying monsters covered in tentacles—and ironically named these monsters after Netheril's base, the Faerun plane. Thus, the Faerun Demon Beasts were born.

In the long years of war against the Faerun Demon Beasts, the Netherese Civilization ultimately won. However, the price was painful. Although the Archmages sealed the Faerun Demon Beasts, the Netherese Civilization also collapsed amidst the gods' kicking them while they were down. But this by no means signifies that the Netherese Civilization was destroyed; the survivors of Netheril still remember the Splendor of Netheril, and they are always working for the revival of Netheril.

The current multiverse seems calm, but beneath the seemingly ripple-free surface, there are gods competing for faith while using various means to break free from the shackles of their divine sparks, and there are survivors of Netheril hiding from pursuit from multiple sides while secretly passing down Netheril's knowledge.

And in the endless abyss, the Abyssal Will, born quietly at an unknown time, is plotting unspeakable conspiracies in the vortex of filth and chaos. The endless waves tell of the coming storm, and endless undercurrents surge beneath the surface.

In such a turbulent era, a spark of Netheril was abruptly ignited in the endless void.

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