Here’s a secret for you, though I think I might have even probably said this before to either you, or somebody out there,...So maybe it's not that much of a secret.

Magic, ki, psionics, essence, they’re all the same thing. They were all the same bullshit. Basically there’s a certain category of particles within every universe that have a high-responsiveness to cognition and sentience.

Of course, that’s not to say that the cosmos was run entirely on, “clap, if you believe”...At least that wasn’t the case for most of it. However, it was a fact that there were certain portions of reality that ran a lot more smoothly with more observers present.

The only difference between these particles is what it takes to move them around and get them to actively do what one wants. Besides that, all these particles basically operate the same way.

They all have a tendency to cluster around living matter or make inanimate matter into living matter. They all have a tendency to respond to and modify materials that they inhabit. They all can be used to directly alter reality to some extent through mere thoughts, intentions, and desires.

These particles come in tiers, or ranks, like everything else in the bloody cosmos. Going from the trash tier particles at the bottom, to the so-called immortal-tier particles at the top, but honestly, unless you’ve been around long enough, or were really lucky you’re unlikely to actually run into the really good stuff if your universe isn’t one of the higher energy universes.

A rule of thumb would be that if the magic you use is more likely to shorten your life span and turn you into a hideous monster, and it's not just because you’re using it wrong, the particles involved are trash tier. If the magic you use, can improve your lifespan, make you stronger, faster, smarter, and generally better as an existence, then the particles involved are probably closer to being immortal tier.

Those of us in the know, can tell you that mana, prana, ki, and the rest all generally float around in a range that extends from the trash tier to a sort of common to upper-common tier... Aether sits atop all them as the supposed apex commonly encountered anomalous particles. True aether, also known as, divine aether sits as the crest, the highest of the high, atop this ranking.

Naturally, there was something else that lay beyond that peak….

Above aether lay materia. Prima Materia. The first magic. The remnants of the first firmament. The remainder of those first highly thought reactive universes that were born and ended with the cosmos’ creation.

Materia was a particle. A power. An entirely new realm of subjective reality. Materia was what you get when you take the three linchpins of reality, data, energy, and law and fuse it into a single unified essence...

It was a form of energy so potent that certain universes and multiverse can’t come into contact with even the tracest amounts of it till they’ve reached a higher-energy state, lest they be blown out like a dream under the light of day.

Materia was truth. The truth of the world. The truth of all the worlds. That is why those mortal mages who managed to accumulate enough aether to accumulate a small amount of the materia called materia-based magic “ true magic”.

Everything else was just a pale imitation in comparison. This was the true peak of supernatural ability. This is what separates the lower and semi-immortals from those of us who just plainly no longer had a proper means of dying.

Materia was what separated a being that was merely hard to kill from an eidolon that could not die no matter what you did to them.

Possession of materia was how one became a being of data, law, and energy. It was how one became an entity that so thoroughly embodied their own existence that one would have to scrub all evidence of their presence from every reality they’d ever come into contact with, to be sure that they wouldn’t eventually just pop back into being one day and come back for revenge.

As to why I started this chest-pounding, horn-tooting, little info dump in the first place, that’s quite simple. Just a few hours ago, Margot began processing her first cycle of materia. Just a few hours ago, Margot became a true immortal.

It had been two years since our job in the immortal's lounge. Time skip? What time skip? I don’t count this as a time skip.

For me any time span shorter than a millennium was insignificant. Seconds, minutes, days, decades, centuries...it was all the same deal to me. They were spans of time I could easily lose track of, while napping, or working on one of my hobbies.

This was one of the reasons why my lab, kitchen, library, bedroom, and training center all made such heavy use of time dilation. It saved me from the trauma and inconvenience of getting a little wrapped up in something, and suddenly turning around to realize that the whole world had changed while I was otherwise occupied. But I digress...

I was curretly watching Margot ascend to yet another realm of greatness. I basked in her radiance. I think she’d be pleased to find that she’d finally broke into the six-foot range. She was currently six foot one’’.

She’d probably be less pleased to know that most of us eidolons were between ten and twenty feet when in human form, meaning that she was still quite tiny as far as standards go, but that’s neither here nor there...Plus, she still had room to grow and as things stood she was now far beyond such petty concerns.

Her skin was a galaxy of pale beige light. A hundred million white-hot supernovas had been captured and transformed into her supple flesh. Blindingly bright yet attractive to the eyes. Her hair was a waterfall of orange flame, a never-ending cascade of burning worlds. Her eyes were deep, silvery, gray-green pools of endless night and day and storm.

The three high-elements that she’d mastered before attempting to go for the gold and ascend filled their depths as they issued forth from her soul. The countless shades of black, gray, and green light swirled and blended into one another.

Her bones were now more sturdy than the laws of gravity and momentum and I mean that literally...She didn’t know it yet, but Margot’s strength now far exceeded the limits of this world. Never mind the planet, assuming no one tried to stop her, it would only tucker her out a little to wipe out this entire galaxy.

Her musculature was now more powerful and foreboding than the inevitability of entropic death. Assuming that there was no one there to resist her and the planet itself didn’t fight back, she could now end this little green rock just by flexing a little. Tearing apart the entire solar system would barely make her break a sweat.

Margot’s ascension had brought her infinitely near to the platonic ideal of whatever a “Margot” was meant to be.

She was magnificent. I’d loved her before but now, I was falling in love all over again. I was awed by her power, by the strength and potential I could see within her. Humbled by the power that had refined and reinforced the tether that connected us.

As to how this had happened, that’s also quite simple to explain.

I’d taken the lump of hyper-reality that we’d won during our last job. Then instead of expending it, and using it up to make macguffins and widgets or whatever, I’d used it to carve an even bigger slice out of the hyper-reality. Repeating the process till I had as much as I needed.

It was honestly just a simple trick. Simple and easy to do, albeit slightly risky if you didn’t know how to do it without facing a backlash from the transcendental entities of the higher planes, or the cosmos itself.

Still, I’d been around for a while and there weren’t that many tricks that I didn’t know. So I managed to pull it off. Then I processed the hyper-reality into a form that Margot could use to supplement her cultivation.

Now here she was, having freshly stepped past the boundaries of aether into the realm of materia. I couldn’t be prouder. It was only much later that I’d remember that our sympathetic relationship due to the tether would create some…*cough* moderate complications.

I spent so much time and energy helping her progress to this stage, that it was only later that I’d remember my own growth, was tied to her growth.

It was only later that I’d remember that there were consequences to placing her cultivation on a rocketship, while my own cultivation was still attached.

However, I’d rather not go into that now...Or ever. I think I’ll just leave it as a matter that I hurriedly sorted out to the best of my ability and pretend that the multiverse I currently call home, didn't nearly get subsumed into my swollen form. Even I can get embarrassed.