“SSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

For the first time in her life, unlife and new life, Lea could not control her flames. She could see it now however. For a while, something had been wrong with her image.

What all the pain, oddness and the blackening tree were telling her was that her flames should not be white. Desolation, not creation. And the change came almost immediately after Aki sent that ominous message, meaning she was currently hanging on a black dot on the sky as reality itself broke around her, howling it’s rage at her very existence and attacking her with even more power than what surged from inside herself, her blood lineage long awakened and burned away into something entirely new as her own records came to the forefront.

After spending so long with the crazy maniac however, she knew the answer to her current problems already. Worse, she understood now that she’d long been teached all that she needed, from the idea, magic, fighting style, everything. Because this was her Path. This was what she wanted. To truly create her own fate despite reality so readily denying her every chance.

White became black. Black became white. Intermingling the two in their constant warfare was an exercise of futility, so she just had to make sure they didn’t, leaving her self as a barrier existing between the two opposing forces.

For a moment, her charred body stopped burning. Her insides vanished as the dark flame immediately destroyed them as the universe calmed down around her.

It was hard to describe what she became. The simple answer was that she became a cell of desolation in a body of creation. Emotions, meaning, connections, memories, none of that should have mattered now, she should be unable to even interact with the concepts of the energies that were so Anathema to her insides.

Yet she shone like a white star, flesh, bones, fat and hair growing back in an instant. Her face became less sharp, her lips more full, the tip of her waist length hair grew white, sclera darkened and irises disappeared.

For all that she felt this was an unnecessary cosmetic change, she couldn't neglect the fact that she was quite close from becoming something that if left unchecked would mindlessly destroy all around her and…

"Why can't I actually put into words what would happen?" She muttered to herself, the answer coming from her 'soul' bond.

'There is no word for the actual lack of existence of energy and matter in any form, while you do not speak the equivalent of a language formed when outside of creation or even inside caos.'

Suddenly those random words from Aki made a lot more sense. She could feel it now, seeing as it was inherently part of her, that they lived in a place where nothing could actually be destroyed, just dispersed or shattered.

She could do just that now. Her being did not naturally have a form however, yet having a compatible body helped in centering her thoughts and allowed her… Not soul? To stay in this reality, to feel both the new and old, and to also see so, so much more.

More important than any instinctual munbo however was the new reality she had access to. Not the one Anathema to creation or any such, there were no intrinsic clues on her thoughts about the 'not place'. No, she meant the one that Aki had created through his image.

While the fucker had not suddenly powered up to a level needed to just whimsically create a new realm, he didn't need to either since they had Ames, who she now understood s bit better as a creature much closer to the ideal of pure creation than anything she had previously imagined possible.

The fact that the Nexus they currently resided in could even inconvenience her spoke volumes about its power. While she was not trying very hard out of consideration to Aki, Lea could now understand that were this a less well maintained reality, the eldritch being would have it's influence spilling all around by just being in it.

Irresponsibility from their part aside, there were only three entities inside this new reality.

First and most notable was the immeasurably big serpentine head that seemed just as confused as her. Through the dark eyes with cat like purple irises, she recognised it was a part of Ames.

Then there was the gigantic tree whose location she could not properly pin point despite her new sense encompassing this whole dimension. The problem there was simply that the tree was the reason for all the laws in this new reality, so it was, for all effects, everywhere. Considering the black behemoth had white runes with esoteric meanings reinforcing existence, this place's first cycle would soon begin in full throttle.

Into a xianxia type of world with vikings, assholes, some weird Christian knock off of a religion, some kind of feudal Japan archipelago… the tree was Aki's image, there's no doubt about…

"What do you mean you're a library, those are clearly just… did this fucker incorporate a tree like appearance to a polyp or something? Those white holes leading inside make no fucking sense…" She grumbled as the image sent prideful emotions telling her she was the freak of the two, as if scoffing at her.

Ignoring the precocious image which was improving right in front of her eyes as it became more and more real, she look at what stood embedded in it's crown of blazing black and white leaves.

Her egg and image were both right there, in a warm nest of fluffy pillows and soft leaves, though the later was starting to dissolve ever so slowly with only Aki to support it.

More importantly, there was something strange with her egg. She both could and could not perceive it. From what she understood due to the ramblings of a certain young man and her own unusual circumstances, her baby had turned into an impossibility.

And somehow, she didn't doubt Aki had a way to hatch it. Considering she did not actually know much about beings from caos, it might very well be something normal.

Not like it'd have hatched soon before though, as it was only twenty three years old biologically, so she was willing to wait and shove Aki head first into figuring the egg out.

…………

After about a day of refining the details of his image and doing his very best to back it up with all the base concepts he knew, Aki had fully expected some kind of problem to crop up.

He had made a whole dimension for fucks sake, how could there be no sudden problems cropping up? While the quality of his image was about only twice as good, and that was because he had ridiculous stats and an anorexic image already, it's power was at least a dozen times better now that it had something to grant it more weight as it was anchored into the concepts of the reality now linked to his soul.

However, no new zone cropped up filled with some of Ames' parasites, the sun wasn't collapsing, and he had most certainly not sold himself into marriage nor was the last danger zone even attempted according to Septima's lack of messages.

Soon, he found it though. His status was quite fucked.

Missing lines where his skills were upgraded, corrupted text on anything new. Were he a normal user he'd have immediately despaired and gone to complain to his new teacher or the closest village spirit.

"Fuck me. Why would the guy that actually knows how to fix this even get the problem and opportunity handed to him? The Nexus can’t possibly think of me as having only a hundred levels in the base and display system manipulation, so something like this after I've acquired so much is ridiculous, nevermind my current display of mastery of so many different concepts, which should be more than enough stabilise myself enough for a last power up where i take some of the best path completion rewards and then the danger zone’s rewards through disconnecting the planet from the main frame. Perhaps there’s some stupid young master currently underestimating… Fucking good thing i’m rubber ducking this, a stupid young master monitoring a potential threat to the nexus itself? Yeah, that’s a bit too egocentric even for me.” He scoffed.

Something that he’d done had interfered with an important line of command and related skills were not recorded while the corrupted path texts were only added because the skill and path acquisition are separate from the individual entrances and the unknowns still passed as though having actually counted for something because part of the logic system for mounting his already modified status page broke down. This was on him.

The situation clearly fit with one where even a system would be unable to properly deal with the changes even if there was some special monitoring on him. Rather, solving the problem himself would seem far too overbearing.

This line of thinking was exactly why Aki suddenly found himself with a restored status page but an unchanged intelligence, willpower and control score. Everything went perfectly fine up until the point where he actually tried to take on the last danger zone, but apparently a new rule was made just for him, where these doubling status increases could not affect stats over a thousand.

That was bullshit, of course. The idea of letting people become overpowered monsters through the influence and emotions contained in that option had always been there even if he was above what was expected possible in such scenarios.

The paths he'd selected before going there luckily didn't give him any more stats, which allowed him to keep the most out of the whole thing, but as it was, he didn't actually have a way to manually increase his stats without the system, even some previous cheats he had planned being bared from his path.

[Congratulations! You have completed the Chosen of creation path (1/1)! Progenitor paths reward increased*.

Congratulations! You have completed the Hero path (1000/1000)! +5 Free points per level. All resource pools multiplied by 1.1x. You have gaine the skill… Due to sinergy, Alexandria's records (P) has absorbed Heroic soul (B) and gained five levels.

Congratulations! You have completed the Greatest genius path (25/25)! Doubles the amount of free points per level. All resource modifiers are improved by one step. You have gained the skill… Due to sinergy you have instead gained +50% XP and +25% skill growth.]

He had played himself. Honestly, he wasn't even that angry though, just disappointed.

If this was how they wanted to play, then he would shove it up so hard the Nexus would understand what it was like to bleed from every pocket and… That would brand him as an irreconcilable terrorist. No, he had a better method for this. Now that he had advanced his skills so much and even created a domain, than he could very well do one better.