Ilbgar The Bizarre Hermit
After making my
Wishes, I set about hurrying up and waiting. At first, I spent a lot of my time simply reading massive swathes of fanfiction and catching up on an absolutely enormous backlog of shows and movies I had considered watching but never gotten around to. I also wrote a great deal. Some for various Quests I liked, and some for projects of my own. I effectively had all the time to do so I could ever want, after all. Relaxing more or less constantly did a great deal to mitigate the strain of having to off myself on a regular basis to avoid the pangs of hunger. Water was easy enough to get my hands on, but going out for food held too much risk of a butterfly effect. Not to mention the fact that I was so far from my own time that I might as well have been living in a bubble my whole life and vice versa where disease was concerned. Sure, Protection would probably help with that on my end, but nobody else on the planet that I knew of had that defense. The bunker's sewage system took care of any diseases my waste, including my daily corpses, might have produced, but that didn't do anything if I actually left it.
So I effectively sat there in the bunker the Genie had provided. And I waited. And waited. And waited... I wrote entire novels worth of Omakes for A Simple Transaction. As much for lack of anything better to do as anything else. Of course, over even a thousand years, a minimum of a thousand words a year was quite a bit. Especially as my Prowess, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Wits increased, as did my ability to ignore requirements for sleep as my Vitality and Willpower rose, giving me even more time on top of Thirteenth Hour. While I kept a few hours in reserve, I spent most of it to push my ten million years up about 830,000 more, meaning about 63000 more for all my Attributes.
By the ten thousandth year, with all my Attributes over 800 thanks to Thirteenth Hour, I had achieved infinite effective Strength, Intelligence, Vitality, Agility, Wisdom, Luck, Appearance, Prowess, Magic, Willpower, Wits, Protection, and Theft. Now, I obviously wouldn't have been anything resembling a fight for endgame Hunger, to say nothing of a High Cursebearer, but I thought I could mess around a bit with improving things for my multiverse.
Now, with my prodigious intellect, something that was objectively true and not a matter of pride, and a pool of Magic that was effectively of a single cardinality infinite backed with similar levels of Prowess in using it, I could make pocket dimensions of arbitrary size more or less at will. I spent millennia experimenting with that capability, revising my work dramatically every dozen points gained in my mental Attributes as previously incomprehensible matters became so simple that to compare them to 1+1 was a grave disservice to that calculation's difficulty, and every dozen points in Magic and Protection made it simpler to mold them and to shield the wider universe from any negative consequences I had not expected, either from their presence or if something went wrong. I began experimenting with modified physical laws around the time I achieved 1000 in my Attributes. Spaces where up and left were synonymous. Areas of modified time where aging did not occur, and mortal creatures would experience the benefits of the Needless Wish, but they could still act, and wounds and the like would heal without issue. Infinite planes where time and distance were related.
My reasoning for these pocket dimensions was twofold. First, they allowed me to experiment with my abilities with only minor effects on my local cosmology unless I deliberately chose otherwise, as unlike the Backrooms, my layered dimensions could not be reached by accident. Not in significant numbers at least, and I could easily detect any such instances and chuck them back out. Second, they would serve to buttress the universe, and in time, the multiverse. Certainly not enough to even inconvenience Hunger or the maiden, or entities of similar power. I recalled the smashing of other dimensions and sub-layers of reality in the opening rounds of that final fight, the entire multiverse the Human Sphere resided in being shaken by that conflict. I had absolutely no reason to believe that no such beings might exist in my multiverse, or at least no reason to believe no such potential existed in any beings, considering Cursebearer potentials likely existed within it. It was never very clear how many Cursebearers the Accursed had, but I highly doubted there were any multiverses without at least the one. The better supported the cosmology was, the less likely a calamity was to shatter it.
This was not to say I didn't keep an eye on the Earth. I was reasonably certain my Protection would ignore normal paradoxes, but that was no reason to take undue risks until I was sure the timeline had either been butterflied into oblivion or I'd at least achieved 10,000 in Protection and could be
absolutely certain that messing with the timeline wouldn't cause problems for me. Unfortunately, I had overestimated the efficiency of the sewage treatment facility in the bunker, and while I'd stopped bothering with my abuse of True Immortality around the point I achieved 100 Vitality and Willpower around 1200 years in, that still left biomatter of impossible durability floating around, which slowly percolated through the environment, affecting the entire biosphere over the course of millennia. The residue of my ludicrous amount of mental energy, Magic, and Protection in these bodies was also affecting the spiritual energy of the Earth, to the point the average... I suppose I'd default to the common term, mana density had skyrocketed. Around 15000 years in, I noticed primitive mana-based lifeforms, which upon analysis seemed to be the Undertale Monster equivalent of Homo Habilis. Well, given I was fairly sure there wasn't a Mt. Ebott in my original timeline, let alone anything
else to do with Undertale, I could be reasonably certain the timeline was screwed up. Just in case, I let things play out a few thousand years more. A few hundred points of Intelligence smarter and Wisdom wiser, I reassessed, and concluded that the Stands coming into existence among the ancestors of humans, splitting off alongside the chimps and bonobos from those of the gorillas, indicated the timeline was, bluntly,
fucked.
Shrugging mentally, I assumed that 1250+ Protection was indeed enough for me to utterly ignore conventional paradoxes. So there was little reason not to interfere in a general manner. I began by using my ability to steal at the conceptual level and became a thief of my own energy. My Protection blocked any negative effects from this, with my Prowess and Luck assisting in the effort, so while my ownership of any given iota of energy was lost, I myself wasn't losing any energy. I began distributing this across the cosmos, constructing a 'pipeline' dimension to ease doing so across the multiverse. With each decade, the quality of this energy improved in one fashion or another, as did the quantity, and while I began merely able to destroy a singular universe and thus of little consequence on the scale of a multiverse, by the time I had achieved my first million years, 83,000+ in any given Attribute was more than enough to affect the entire multiverse.
Further, my pocket dimension project had born a great deal of fruit. An infinity of infinite planes served as a support structure for my home universe in 23 dimensional axes and counting, each set of infinite numbers of infinite planes having backups in the works. What's more, my understanding of physical and metaphysical laws allowed me to essentially make any sort of dimension I wished. Wells of magical energy of any type, as the nature of that dimension produced it naturally, whereupon it could be drawn out, and while the drawn out energy would be altered by the trip and could be consumed like any other form of energy, the well itself would never run out. A number of alien civilizations across the multiverse were tapping into them already, with the occasional push from me to keep them from blowing themselves up. No vagueness from
this godlike entity, I would literally just tell them why something was a bad idea, sometimes showing them some of my failed dimensions or planes to drive the point home.
Still, my home universe seemed to be having a number of strange effects appearing even beyond the general multiverse. I suspected my personal presence was influencing it, since the energy I was releasing was calibrated for as even a distribution as possible across the multiverse, as I was not yet ready to expand my reach across the Hyperverse, nevermind the Outerverse containing all related structures connected in any way to my universe, the Metaverse containing all structure fictional and non, and certainly not the Omniverse that contained all of existence. No need to draw attention from any eldritch horrors from beyond just yet. The Megaverse, the collection of the million local multiverses, was under consideration though. From there, I would move on to the Gigaverse, the collection the nearest billion Megaverses, the Teraverse, the collection of the nearest trillion Gigaverses, the Petaverse, the collection of the nearest quadrillion Teraverses, and so on to Archverses of higher cardinalities than my current singular cardinality. Although, I supposed all the dimensions I was grafting onto the universe and multiverse as a whole was increasing it's size to an unusual level, making my local Multiverse a Macroverse.
The point being, I was officially multiversal. I had achieved speeds so far beyond lightspeed that I was effectively omnipresent in any universe which held my direct attention, and could at least keep track of the entire multiverse, though a few sub-dimensions devoted solely to their monitoring were of great aid to that particular endeavor. It made keeping an eye on any civilizations messing with world-destroying projects much easier. I was the
opposite of the Great Filter. It was technically my responsibility in the cases where they were attempting to draw energy from one of the magical wells I had constructed anyway. At any rate, I began to interfere on a wider basis. I experimented with many timelines and variations of any given universe, testing the effects of unfinished universes and dimensions in the long-term, as opposed to ones that had self-destructed from some basic underpinning I had not fully understood failing, or the odd act of interference by one cosmic entity or another, as I had suspected would appear. The vast majority of these entities self-destructed within a century of their appearance, either killing each other or having their ascension come undone, as many were the result of their timeline or universe falling apart, with their survival having left them broken in fundamental ways. I was glad the Genie had granted me a safe means of ascension. It was no Progression, but no Curses to deal with was an even trade in my opinion.
Some survived, however, and slowly, they banded together. Drawing some inspiration from the Undertale multiverse of my original timeline, I crafted a version of the Omega Timeline they could use as a neutral ground. A pleasant enough sub-continent-sized landmass set in an infinite white void, which I would slowly expand over the years as it became a general evacuation zone for any destroyed universes and timelines, until it was larger than the solar system and growing. I even provided the doors that served as portals across the multiverse, on the understanding that they wouldn't abuse the privilege, being careful about anyone who'd shown themselves as a bad actor. I was under no obligation to police everyone, unlike Hunger's Tyrant Curse when combined with Indenture. However, I would not abet abuse of the networks I created to aid the inhabitants of my home multiverse.
Yet more time passed, my mental faculties making myself of a century before seem like an idiot, with my physical abilities being similarly improved and my Magic making my uttermost limits more akin to the most basic of spells. By my five millionth year, I was well on my way to expanding my system into the Gigaverse, more than 20% of it's constituent Megaverses having gained the dimensional reinforcement and slew of magical wells I provided, with Omega Timelines set up to evacuate refugees from broken universes and timelines, which I repaired as best I could, through both the mystical and technological mechanisms available to me. It seemed simulation theory was, in a manner of speaking, true, as the Undertale multiverse had indicated with coding being present in all beings not fundamentally broken by paradoxes such as being killed by their future self outside the bounds of their universe's flow of time. This meant that retrieving code fragments from destroyed universes made it possible to revive them, at least normally. A little help from some spells designed for this purpose never hurt.
Still more time passed, and the Megaverses under my watch blossomed. Apparently, like dandelions, while they would appear even in poor conditions, decent or great ones would see universes sprout up like weeds. Of course, I immediately began experimenting with my higher and lower dimensional infrastructure to influence this, mostly to have a control mechanism if they began outpacing my ability to support them, as had happened a few times early on, resulting in massive destruction in that multiverse. I certainly didn't want
that happening again. The number and quality of my support dimensions constantly increased, now populated by Elementals I'd constructed to be capable of aiding in the protection and maintenance of the associated universes, multiverses, and so on. I was creating a small number of dimensions to provide limitless living space to head off any conflicts on that front in a few universes where habitable planets and structures were at a premium for one reason or another, such as not being able to terraform and/or build fast enough to keep up with their population. When you could casually make infinite planes of infinite number, solving space issues was trivial, and I'd long since resolved energy issues.
Finally, I hit my 10.83 million year mark, with 830,000+ in all 13 of my Attributes. Enough that I might actually have been a decent fight for Hunger or the maiden, though still well below the level of relevance to a High Cursebearer, or being of any interest to the Accursed. Given how long I'd spent living a largely solitary existence, I decided to celebrate roughly reaching my original point in time by taking some time off. I crafted an avatar for each of the universes under my self-proclaimed jurisdiction, and sent them off. Each avatar, because of how thinly spread they were and my own lack of care for if they were destroyed since they were basically created for semi-vicarious leisure time, had Attributes of 8 across the board, which put them at roughly 11 times the maximum for a human, though still well below the level of any major comic book character. Heck, in this modified timeline, a number of ostensible humans were stronger than my avatars. Still, being able to life 5.5 metric tons and equivalent feats for my other 12 Attributes was nothing to sneeze at as long as I kept a low profile.
Besides, I was basically Avatar Darkseid. Even if something did happen to me, the real deal would just send out another avatar. Plus, experiencing my home world from a relatively low-power perspective would help keep me grounded, which was another reason for all the avatars. Maybe I'd start some forum Quests in my off time. Hadn't gotten the chance to post most of the Omakes I'd written back in the beginning of my time in the bunker, since the timeline had been so dramatically altered that I was fairly certain half the people on the equivalents of Sufficient Velocity and Spacebattles didn't exist in this new timeline, and vice versa. Maybe I could sell some of the previous timeline's Disney, Netflix, etc. content back to the new iterations to make this avatar a nice sum. I could totally just have the main me cast a few spells to get arbitrary amounts or become the ultimate landlord of one paradisiacal pocket universe or another, but I'd rather not call on the main me to do extra work, and I was here to relax myself, and rocking the boat in that manner wasn't something I was interested in.
It was as I thought this that I witnessed a tall, thin man dressed in a vibrant red outfit try and send his Stand out to murder someone. Sighing, I went over to step in. It was entirely possible red suit had just had his family threatened or something, but he should at least take this somewhere more private than broad daylight if that was the case. Hopefully my inhuman Protection and Luck would let me resolve this without major incident.
...It was resolved without mass casualties, at least.
AN: So, my jury-rigged Wellspring emanations have modified the local multiverse into a combination of the
Undertale multiverse,
Madness Combat,
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure,
Epithet Erased,
Metal Gear,
El Goonish Shive,
Grrl Power,
Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss,
Baki, and
Miraculous Ladybug, all taking higher interpretations(so, for example, Undertale has
Error 404 rolling around). All kinds of weird shit resulting from me just tossing energy into the cosmos, though divided between an infinite multiverse's individual universes. Then there's all the infinite planes I'd been making, including the infinite wells of magic across the multiverse. Really, my... well, it's not a non-interference policy, but I mostly intervene when there's something civilization-ending going on, like nuclear Armageddon, or a timeline collapsing. Anyway, my tendency not to interfere is the main reason my home universe hasn't become a Megaversal superpower, given the somewhat inadvertent headstart the others had gotten could be easily countered with active help, especially since my home base has by far the most developed interdimensional infrastructure. I've had a few nasties to deal with here and there, but I generally had an Attribute advantage of 100+ at least, so it's never been a problem, especially when I usually had Prowess to let me outskill them utterly. I'm currently top dog of my corner of existence, though well aware that's more a matter of nobody caring enough to bother me than anything else. I'm certainly not going looking for trouble by expanding as fast as possible. Slow and steady and what they say about that and races.
This was all mostly set up for the Slice of Life Omakes to follow, as I engage in shenanigans with the various casts. Abusing admin access to any and every sub-dimension you could want to mess with. From a recreation of the
Backrooms, to a knockoff of the Realm of Evening and the Realm of Daylight, among others. Transcendent Ilbgar has played around with universes where everyone has their Imaginary Elements unlocked or what have you, but he's not Greedy. He's mostly interested in simply accumulating power at his current pace, reinforcing the cosmology to prevent some random conflict between universe destroyers from wiping out the local multiverse, and maybe becoming a Cursebearer someday. Geas of the Sanctum would probably work, given how long he/I spent in that bunker without moving from that spot. 2nd stage mitigation should be a simple matter for pretty much any Curse, 3rd shouldn't be too hard, and maybe even the 4th could be possible with dedicated research. Being a virgin for 10 million years is probably better for Cursebearer suitability than being 35 and being a virgin. Even assuming each order of magnitude longer provides a couple percent better suitability, 5 orders of magnitude would add up. Given I find the human body disgusting and have no plans on losing my virginity, like that one Omake where a certain Lich was offered Cursebearerhood on the basis of being the ultimate virgin, I imagine I might qualify for 2-Curse Progression. Plenary would probably be my other pick, given I despise sleep IRL, so I'd never pick Slumber, though I might go for Restless Slumber, if ignoring sleep requirements through Vitality sufficient to ignore universe-destroying blows like Superman would a handgun and horrifying Willpower is an option at stage 3-4 Mitigation.
Could he/I create a pocket universe where time passes a billion times faster and abuse that to supercharge my Attributes from the perspective of the rest of existence? Absolutely. There's already a few pocket dimensions with that sort of time dilation, meant to contain things like the SCP's Unkillable Lizard. Am I interested in doing that when I could actually go out and do things? No. Now, if the Accursed made an offer and doing that to power up beforehand was an option? Definitely, but I don't think the Accursed can bugger off to let you power up first and then come back to re-offer Curses and boons to you. It's a binary choice unless you do something to get offered more Curses, from what I've seen. Maybe he's just waiting until I'm in dire straits because I'm only suitable enough for 4 Curses even with the virgin thing. Or for me to actually do that 'wait a billion years in a time-accelerated dimension' tactic to maximize early Curse Mitigation. Because if I can be confident in hitting stage 3 in basically any Curse, I might go for a bunch of extras for free just to help him out, since Progression is a really powerful boon when you're already this strong and your main limiter is really slow growth compared to basically any other system that has ever existed. He can always use it, after all, and he'd know if I was willing to do that.
3700 words discounting this line.
