Myriad Heavens: Rise of the Rune God

Chapter 243: Chapter 244: Monster at the Door

William was checking on his universe when he felt a sudden pulse of vast amounts of energy.

He turned his attention to the void outside his membrane and read what was there.

He had known Runar’s main body was sitting outside since it arrived. He had agreed to it. The void energy absorption had been running in the background for days now — significant but manageable. He just registered it at the edge of his awareness because the situation didn’t demand any attention from him.

Well that had changed.

The principle completions were coming one after another. Real principles. Complete ones. Each one fully internalized at peak depth. And his presence and aura continued to stress and press against the void. The void that only Peak Multiversal Beings could crack or shatter, was already beginning shirk just from Runar Presence alone.

And that wasn’t all he noticed, the universe count inside Runar was climbing at an insane rate, by tens every second as the absorbed void energy fueled each new internalization.

William sat with this for a moment.

He thought about his time at the Multiversal Academy. The competition. The geniuses from older and stronger universes. He had been exceptional and he knew it. He had graduated at the top of his class and outperformed beings that had advantages he didn’t.

But there had been certain existences at the academy that operated on a completely different level. Beings so talented and so compounded in their abilities that the normal way of measuring genius didn’t apply to them. He had a word for them.

Disgusting Monsters.

He meant it as an honest reaction. Not an insult. Just the word that came out when you encountered something so broken in its capabilities that you didn’t know what else to call it. You wouldn’t even know where to start when you went up against them in battle. They were just disgustingly powerful, that you would think the heavens favoured them.

He had thought those days were behind him.

And now one is camped outside my membrane.

He watched as R unar continued to pulse signifying another principle mastered and his absorption of void energy climb at an unprecedented pace.

’Even i have to take my time and not rush to absorb void energy while he is doing it like its as easy as drinking water.’

He tried to return to his normal domain management. He found it difficult.

I invited a monster to sit outside my front door, he thought. And the monster is getting more terrifying by the second.

Meanwhile, the void between universes is not empty of awareness. Every universe has a Will. The Universe Wills in the surrounding sector had been feeling the same disturbance for a while now.

Universes were spread across enormous distances in every direction from William’s universe. Each one managing their own domain, running their own existence the way they always had. None of them had been looking at the void between universes with particular attention.

Then the ripples reached them.

Universal Wills don’t need to be close to something to feel it. The void carries information and they all read it. What they read made each of them pause their normal activities and look more carefully.

A Multiversal being was in the void. Breaking through. Repeatedly. The principle completions were clear events to anyone reading at this level.

And the universe count inside that being was climbing at a rate none of them had a recent reference point for.

One Will, old and settled, extended its perception toward the source and held it there for a long time.

This being does not belong in this sector, it thought. The sector is too small for what it is becoming.

A younger Will who was an ally of william found out that the Multiversal being was directly outside the universe of his friend, William. So he sent a careful message through the void toward William’s membrane. ”William. Is that being yours?”

William: ”No.”

”Then what is it?”

”A guest. ”

The younger Will pulled back and sent nothing further.

The oldest Will in the sector read the absorption rate and the principle count and the trajectory of both. It said nothing to anyone. It simply watched and updated its understanding of what was currently happening in its region of the multiverse.

Its conclusion: Why is something like this still here. The Multiversal center is where beings on this path belong. This sector is just a stop along the way.

Every universe Will that could feel the disturbance was watching. None of them acted. They just noted it and sat with the quiet reminder that the scale they operated at was not the only scale that existed.

Runar was not thinking about any of them.

He was aware of the attention — his perception registered every probe and every cautious awareness directed his way. He noted each one and returned to what he was doing.

The void energy came in steadily. Each unit absorbed converted immediately into information energy particles that integrated into his internal structure. The universe count climbed with each completed principle and each batch of absorbed energy. The two processes ran together, one feeding the other, the queue moving at a pace his new brain tracked without effort.

The Principle of Omniscience completed. The full truth of complete knowledge settling into him cleanly. Universe count climbed.

The Principle of Fate completed. Deeper than the previous one, taking longer, arriving at a proportional depth. Universe count climbed.

The Principle of Authority completed. The complete truth of power and legitimacy fully internalized. Universe count climbed.

Each one quiet. Each one immediate. The queue moved forward.

He was not in a hurry. He was working.

The void around him was thinner in the immediate area where the absorption was heaviest but the void refilled from beyond that point as fast as he pulled from the center. A flow rather than a drain. The supply was effectively unlimited. He pulled from it and kept going.

The number climbed.

He turned his attention to the next principle and kept pushing.

----

Somewhere in the multiverse, far from William’s universe and far from Willith’s universe, in a region of the void that neither of those universes had any awareness of, there was a structure built into empty space.

It was not a universe. It was constructed — deliberately, with significant resources, built for a specific purpose. Its walls were compressed void material reinforced with high-grade formations. The interior was sealed against outside perception by concealment layers that operated well above what most beings in this region could produce.

Inside one of its cells, Wukong sat on the floor.

His staff was gone. His golden aura was pressed down by the cell’s formations — not gone but contained, held at a fraction of its natural level. The cell was well-made. He had been looking at it long enough to admit, with the irritation of someone who knew quality work when he saw it, that whoever built it knew what they were doing.

He exhaled slowly.

How does a mighty being such as myself end up in a situation like this.

He had been exploring. The multiverse had been interesting — strange regions of the void, unusual formations, opponents worth fighting. He had been, honestly, paying more attention to how interesting everything was than to the beings moving around him.

Which was how the pirates had gotten close enough.

He looked at the cell wall.

Multiversal pirates. He turned the phrase over in his mind with the specific distaste of someone who had not expected that sentence to ever apply to their situation.

He had already found three weaknesses in the cell’s formations. He had not acted on them yet because he was still mapping the full structure of the prison. He wanted a complete picture before he moved. Also he was curious about who had designed this. The formations were too good for the beings who had captured him. Someone had supplied the materials and the knowledge. That someone was more interesting than the prison.

He would find that someone eventually and probably teach him a lesson.

For now he sat and thought about what Runar would say if he found out.

He would definitely laugh, Wukong thought.

He sighed.

He closed his eyes and began planning his escape.

---

Far from Runar, in a different region of the void, the space tore open.

The rip was violent and immediate — a wound in the void that lasted exactly long enough for something large to come through it and then sealed itself shut as though it had never been there.

The thing that came through was a dragon.

Not the kind that compressed itself into humanoid form out of courtesy. This one was at its true scale — vast, ancient, its body dark as collapsed space, its wounds visible as tears in its own dimensional structure that were slowly and visibly resealing themselves.

It was breathing hard.

Fuck, fortunately I escaped, it thought. That damned phoenix.

It replayed the sequence of events that had led to its current condition with the selective memory of a being that preferred not to dwell on its own poor decisions. It had eaten the phoenix’s egg. An egg that happened to be the phoenix’s child. The dragon reviewed this and arrived at its consistent conclusion — it had done nothing particularly outrageous. Eggs were food. It had been hungry. The phoenix’s reaction had been excessive.

The injuries it was currently sporting were also excessive.

I will get my revenge for this, it thought. For injuring me to this level. The audacity.

It had been in the middle of composing this grievance when it sensed something.

It stopped moving and extended its perception outward.

Principles. A vast quantity of them, dense and complete and rich, radiating from a point in the void at a distance that would take most beings a significant time to cross. The dragon covered distances quickly. The distance was not a problem.

More interesting was the quality of what it was sensing. Principles at peak completion, compounded, the kind of density that only came from an existence that had been accumulating for a long time or had accumulated very quickly in ways that weren’t supposed to be possible.

The dragon’s wounds pulled at its attention. It needed to recover before it moved toward anything that radiated at that level. Recovery required energy. Energy required food.

It looked around.

The nearest universe was three void-distances away. A mid-tier universe, old enough to have accumulated significant energy, populated with lifeforms in the billions. The dragon read it briefly and found it acceptable.

It opened its mouth.

The universe was gone.

One motion. One breath. The entire universe — its membrane, its interior, its accumulated energy across its entire history, every lifeform that had ever existed inside it — consumed in the time it took the dragon to complete a single action.

The void where the universe had been was simply empty. No debris. No remnant. As though it had never been there.

The dragon felt its wounds begin to close faster. Better. It would need more before it was fully recovered, but this was a start.

It turned its attention back toward the direction of the principles.

High quality food has delivered itself to me, it thought. The smell of vast principles and compounded void energy was clearer now with its senses partially restored. If I devour that, I will recover completely and then some.

It began moving.

It needed perhaps one or two more universes before it was ready for what it was moving toward. It began looking for the next acceptable option.

This was just the beginning.