Part 0: Prologue. The Countdown / The Endless War // Chapter 1: The First Core. / The Beginning.

Evan flipped a switch.

A machine started to count down, and he ran into place.

On his right was his wife, beautiful as she had always been, regardless of how much time passed.

She threw something from her pocket onto a table a second before the machine activated, in a hurry. It was a clear purple stone.

[3…]

[2….]

[1…….]

[Detected user: Evan. Directing installation to first user]

[installing omnipotence]

[80%]

[95%]

[Installation complete.]

[Executing program: Omnipotence.]

[Activating omnipotence.]

[Installing omniscience.]

[Installation complete.]

[Executing program: Omniscience.]

[User interference detected.]

[Omniscience program has been put into mode: hibernation.]

[Completed tasks: (1/2)]

[Detected user: invalid user.]

[Installing omnipotence]

[Separate activation of cores required. Completing installation of first core.]

[Generation core installation completed]

[Error: instability detected in second core. ]

[Error: golden core system not found.]

[Completed tasks: (2/2)]

[Powering down. Goodbye, Re-. I hope...to seee….you agaaannnnnn…..]

The machine finished its final task, just before an explosion destroyed the room.

It had been going on for nearly all of time.

The Endless war.

It contained all manner of creature. They endlessly warred, on many planets, in space, between galaxies, anywhere.

There were safe zones. However, earth was not inside of such a zone. And yet, somehow, it had gone unnoticed. It was untouched by the war that had been ravaging the universe, completely unaware. We lived in peace, for the most part, our world a happy place. But a world destroyed is just another day in The Endless war. Earth was no different, and it happened to be in the middle of the war zone's path. We had no idea it was even heading towards us. At least, most of us didn't.

Part 1: The beginning, before the blast.

Chapter 1: The First Core. / The Beginning.

There appeared a person one day, a young boy. This boy brought extreme advancements in almost every scientific field, equivalent to virtually centuries of progress. He had formed his own government, and took over the world. There had been no violence, neither had there been any protest. The boy had proven himself to have dedicated all his efforts to further progress our technology, and improve anything he could. When asked why he worked so passionately, he said something nobody expected.

“To save everyone.” He replied.

"Phew! Finally, I'm done. God, the smell of chemicals is starting to make me woozy. But at least I succeeded.... Computer, open logs!" A voice shouted, holding two vials.

He took liquid from two containers and stored them in the vials, shoving them into his pocket.

"Error. Access expired. Please state your name and password." The computer beeped.

"Huh... I should fix that... Computer, open account: Evan. The password is Lime06." Evan said, sighing.

"Login successful. Welcome back, Evan." The computer said.

"Open logs," Evan said.

"Logs open. What do you wish to record?" The computer asked.

"Substances 100,000 and 100,001 are showing interesting properties. Further study to be done after log recording." Evan said.

The computer beeped in acknowledgment.

"Alright. It's time to actually take a good look at these things." Evan muttered, holding up the vials.

"One of them seems to bend reality. The other seems-!" Evan said, actually taking a good look at the other liquid. It had a weird aura and seemed to flow into him.

"This is... hm. I need to put these two substances together." Evan said, dumping the reality-altering liquid into the odd, shiny purplish-blue liquid.

Once the two combined into a translucent light blue liquid, it became a gas that seemed to rush into him almost instantly, knocking Evan to the floor.

"Ow... Tssss." Evan groaned.

"What the? This feels like..." Evan muttered.

A faint voice whispered into his ear.

"Yeah. Like...Wait, who said tha-" Evan started, passing out.

"What happened?" Evan asked, waking up. It felt like there was a new part of himself somehow. A new sense.

"What is thi-" Evan flinched, accidentally smashing a lightbulb with an odd, invisible substance that he seemed to be able to control.

"This..." Evan muttered.

There was a golden gemstone in the center of a strange new aura. On the inside, it looked like an infinity symbol had been engraved into it and it glowed with holy light.

A second gem seemed to have formed as well, but it was much smaller than the golden one next to it.

"These gems....?" Evan wondered, shaking his head.

The golden gemstone seemed to be releasing a near unlimited amount of the substance he had just absorbed, but it wasn't tangible like it had been before. It seemed.....Complete. It began to rush into the other gemstone, which started to grow until it was the same size as the other stone. It was green and pink, and it reminded him of watermelon tourmaline.

"What was that? What is this? No way," Evan said, astounded.

He realized he could control the substance.

"Holy-! You can turn this thing into damn near anything, can't you? You can even make flames. It almost feels like magic....Yeah. That's a good way to put it, actually. Mana. This is Mana." Evan said.

It seemed to surge with power as if it were expressing its joy with its new name.

"Huh? You're...Happy?" Evan asked, as Mana whispered into his ear.

"You have very little control? And it's fading?" Evan asked.

Mana whispered into his ear, one final time, and then everything went silent.

"I...see. Gems...No, that doesn't sound good...Hm. Cores. I'll call them Cores. It seems to be sitting in the middle of my Mana, so that sounds a lot more fitting. But what does it mean by running the mana through the other Core?" Evan asked, passing mana from the golden core through the green and pink core instinctively.

As it went through, something seemed to take shape in Evans's hand, eventually solidifying.

"What? Oh. The Cores seem to have different abilities. So....The gold one only seems to produce a near unlimited amount of mana as far as I can tell, and the green-pink one can... create things out of mana? No, the mana seems to change somehow when it gets passed through the cores. It's not the same anymore. I should name them. To differentiate them." Evan said, thinking.

He grinned, the answer forming in his head almost immediately.

"Yeah, that sounds right. I'll call the golden one an infinity core. And I'll call the green-pink one a creation core. Plain, yet cool sounding names." Evan said happily.

"But how exactly does this creation core work? I'm guessing I should just... Imagine what I want to make?" Evan wondered, looking around the room and noticing a flashlight he had left on.

"I guess a flashlight is good enough a test as any." Evan shrugged, activating the creation core.

As the object finished forming in his hands, Evan looked it over.

"A perfect replica. I guess you need a decently sharp image of whatever you want to make." Evan said, trying to turn on the flashlight.

It didn't work.

"What? Oh, it probably doesn't have any batteries." Evan mumbled, unscrewing the bottom and confirming his assumption.

Rather than make some, he just got some batteries out of a drawer and put them in.

It still didn't work. He tried taking the batteries out and putting them back in. It still didn't work.

He frowned and took it apart.

"Ahhhh, I see. It doesn't have any of the components that connect the flashlight together properly. That explains it. Of course it wouldn't work....What if..." Evan thought, drawing up some schematics for a flashlight in his head and activating his creation core.

Evan felt the heavy steel flashlight fall into his hand, and he tried to turn it on. This time it worked perfectly.

"Batteries included. So I can also make different pieces of something. I wonder what else I can do with this...?" Evan wondered.