Free Web NovelChapter 2383: The First Universe.
"Now trace it back."
The Seer commanded and Nux looked at her like he was seeing his worst enemy.
"...what?
I already traced this branch back to the First Universe."
"You said it yourself, you traced the branch.
Now trace the Universe." ƒгeewёbnovel.com
The Seer spoke with a serious look on her face and Nux...
He gulped.
He didn’t need to be a genius to know how nightmarish what she was saying was.
"Every branch is born because ’Time’ was disturbed.
If you truly wish to know the Universe, merely following its outer connection to its root is not enough.
You need to look inside and find the exact incidents that created the Branch.
The moments Time split and gave birth to the Universe as you are seeing it, all while you trace those moments back to the Main Universe."
"..."
Nux didn’t say anything.
He wanted to complain but he too knew how important it was, so instead of using his energy to complain, he worked.
He looked inside the silver-blue Universe again. freēwebnovel.com
And again, it was madness.
A whole Universe’s past, present, and future pressed into his mind, countless events called to him, every war looked important, every death had consequences, every birth led somewhere, every use of power left marks, every Law changed something—
But not all changes created Branches.
So he ignored those and focused on those that did.
At first, it was difficult, searching through that endless stream of information. According to him, it took him at least a million years of constantly breaking his mind again and again to finally be able to take the information and not be at risk of losing his sense of self.
But now...
To search through this information—
It wasn’t an easy task.
But he did it anyways.
He searched through the complete structure and—
There.
Nux paused, his eyes noticing a being standing at the edge of a dying world. The people of this world had already died, the sky had collapsed, the Universe was moving towards a future where that world returned to nothingness.
But—
The being used the Power of Time to send one simple memory into the past, that was all he had the power to do—
And that was enough.
A Branch formed.
The past changed, the world prepared, its inevitable collapse was delayed, that delay caused another being to survive, that survival changed the course of a war, and that war changed the fate of a Universe itself.
The original future could no longer remain the only path and—
The Branch turned into a full-fledged Universe.
That was it.
That was the birth of the silver-blue Universe.
That was what separated it from its parent, the Pale Blue Universe.
"There it is."
Nux pointed at it, he didn’t know if the Seer would be able to see it but—
"Yes."
She nodded.
"Now find the birth of the Pale Blue Universe."
She commanded.
Nux expected it and he did what he was told.
The Pale Blue Universe came from a Dark Blue Universe, Nux found the exact incident that happened, then, according to the Seer’s instruction, he did the same with the Dark Blue Universe.
Then with the Universe that was parent to the Dark Blue Universe.
Then the Parent’s Parent.
The Parent’s Parent’s Parent.
And so on...
All the way back to the First Universe.
This was far, far more difficult than tracing just the outer branch, the outer branch was merely a depiction, a path, whereas the Inner Universe was... everything.
Nux had to look at an entire Universe, find the one event that mattered, then use that event to move backward through its lineage.
It was... no different than mental torture.
He was wrong more times than he could even keep count.
He thought a war had created the Branch, but the Seer showed him that the true cause was one child who was saved two thousand years before the war.
He thought a Transcendent’s death had created the Branch, but the true cause was the said Transcendent seeing his death in the future and changing one decision centuries earlier.
Actually, after that first fluke, Nux was wrong almost every other time. The Seer had to correct him again and again, it was basically just the Seer doing the work while Nux did everything in his power to follow along.
Still—
After what felt like trillions of years had passed, after Nux could look at the Universe without feeling even the slightest pain in his head, he started to change.
His understanding of a Universe itself strengthened to another level.
It made him a different person than he was before.
With time, his eyes felt... different.
They felt more... distant.
"Do not lose yourself in the Multiverse. That would ruin the entire point of what you are doing."
The Seer warned when she noticed that.
"I know."
Nux nodded, but the distant look in his eyes did not change.
The Seer narrowed her eyes.
"Do not absorb a Universe’s memory, you will overwhelm your mind if you do that. Read it, find what you want, discard the rest and move along.
Do not burden your mind more than you have to."
She advised.
"I understand that."
Nux nodded and the Seer... she didn’t say anything else and decided to do what she had been doing all this while—
To trust that he would pull himself through.
Just like that—
More time passed, and the more he practiced, the better Nux got.
He learned that Time was cruelly delicate, a Branch did not always form from the largest event, sometimes, the largest event was only the shadow of a tiny disturbance.
He learned that every Universe had a Birth Wound—an event that branched Time.
And every Wound had a shape.
Nux learned those shapes.
The more Nux saw, the faster he became.
But...
The path was still enormous.
One Universe could have quindecillions of ancestors. To trace it back properly, Nux had to enter the sight of one Universe, find its Birth Wound, follow it to the parent, then repeat.
Again and again and again.
For years that he had long stopped counting.
And finally—
He had traced a silver-blue Universe back through an impossible line of ancestors, until there were no more Birth Wounds, no more branches to read—
The First Universe.
He had succeeded.
But then—
"Now do it again with that Universe."
