“Oculus, Nexus, are the two of you ready?” Gaius asked, the small orb that was Cybral floating in front of his torso. He was now seated down, his legs crossed. Divinity and qi danced around him, forming incredibly odd patterns that stung his eyes whenever he laid eyes on them.

Oculus was weaving formations with divinity, while Nexus was doing the same with his qi. Gaius had the hardest — or the easiest, depending on who he asked — job of all, which was empowering those two little fellows with all his power. Fortunately, neither of them needed much in the way of either, which was good news to Gaius, since he didn’t have much in the way of divinity either.

That would soon change, however.

“Done,” said Nexus. “Your turn now, eyeball boy.”

“Hey, that’s rude.” Oculus spun madly, and the formation of grey light whirling around him sharpened into absolute focus. “It’s not easy to create this amplification formation, buddy. If Gaius wasn’t the Abyss Sovereign, it wouldn’t work at all too.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nexus extended a fist. “Fist bump?”

“Who the hell exchanges fist bumps right before the creation of a new world?” Oculus, despite his words, wobbled over and bumped it anyway. “To the success of Gaius’ plan.”

“It has already succeeded, no matter what happens in the next six months,” Nexus replied. “Hasn’t it?”

“Only my personal fate hangs in the balance now,” Gaius replied, a wry smile on his face. “I will either be a mass murderer, a monster who tried to end the whole world, or the creator god of a new world. Either way, I’m going down in the history books for sure.”

“You were always a masochist,” Nexus replied.

“Seconded, motion passed.” The eyeball did a lap around Nexus. “But…do you really want to force out the spectres in the Oblivion Portal? The Western Holdings will almost certainly fall if you do that. Millions will die at by your own hand. The spectres are different from the Abyss.”

“You have a better suggestion?” Gaius asked.

“Yes,” Oculus replied. “Shift the Oblivion Portal here, and then open it. You just need to hang on for six months, and letting those spectres kill the mortals of Orb wouldn’t help your course. If you can make it such that it’s the Wildlands all over again…”

Gaius felt his heart waver. He had initially committed himself to the use of the Oblivion Portal to wipe out the Western Holdings, which was the agrarian centre of the Five Lands. If he destroyed the farmlands there, the Five Lands wouldn’t be able to focus their forces on Machia…or whatever it became after his festival of creation started.

The deaths wouldn’t be an issue too, since they would all be reincarnated in the boundless world Gaius envisioned. There, Knights and above wouldn’t exist, the past would be wiped out, and the infinitely abundant nature of Cybral set in full swing.

Food and shelter would no longer be an issue. This utopia that Gaius wanted to create would be one in which one would no longer need to make questionable decisions to survive, a place where the basic needs would always be met. The people that Gaius killed, directly or indirectly, would be reborn in this brand-new virtual world of his own making.

It was a perfect plan, a perfect creation, made possible through the incredible miracle that was Cybral. Gaius could not bring the souls of those residing in Cybral onto the surface world, but he could superimpose Cybral onto Orb itself, granting the latter the paradisical aspects of Cybral.

Therefore, even if he killed millions of people in this endeavour of his, it should have been fine.

Theoretically, anyway. After all, the Five Lands were bound to siege him once this festival of creation started — the rulers and the privileged of Orb would lose everything that made them special in his new world. Just like how they invaded the Wildlands, the Five Lands would muster up their militaries and pour them into his Divine Kingdom.

The great gods would do the same too, and in the end, blood would flow in oceans. In such a tragedy, what did the farmers and civilians stand for?

Nothing.

Gaius knew this reasoning by heart, but he couldn’t quite commit himself to embarking on such a decision. They were innocent, and that fact was more than enough for him to waver over and over again.

“Can we really move the Oblivion Portal over here?” Gaius asked, repeating the same question he’d posed in the past few days.

“I told you before. It’s just that you…well, given your masochistic, self-sacrificial tendencies, you might actually like it.” Oculus paused. “Self-atonement would be a better word, though.”

“Shut up about that bit and we’ll be good brothers,” Gaius replied, before rolling his eyes. “Alright, then. I’ll…bring the Oblivion Portal here.”

“To be more precise, you’re closing the old one and opening a new one here,” Oculus replied.

“I know the theory, yes. Conduit, blah blah. That’s your specialty, not mine, so I’ll leave it to you to handle.” Gaius narrowed his eyes at the small orb in front of him. “My job here is to just make the sincerest of wishes, right?”

“Yes.”

Cross-legged, Gaius began to summon up his memories. What ‘sincerest of wishes’ actually meant was the full-out mobilisation of his will and desires. It wasn’t anything as easy as a birthday wish — it had to be a desire from the heart itself, forged and tempered by memories and experience. Such a desire, supported by heart, mind and soul, would trigger a resonance with his Divine Will, which would then erupt outwards.

The two formations surrounding him would then trigger. The one Nexus created would then turn him a conduit huge enough to encompass the Abyss itself, and Oculus’ efforts would guide the enormous might of the Abyss into Cybral. The virtual world would then collapse inwards, carrying not just its unique properties, but also the new laws Gaius intended to etch into this new world. From then on, any and all who died would be reincarnated into his boundless utopia, as well as those who yearned to escape the current Orb.

This was Gaius’ festival of creation.

A festival to herald the new utopia, where one would be free of the constraints that came with life itself.