Turning to the reality flux group we’ve categorized as “saturated with magic yet free of divine rule”, we zoomed in on a worldline middling in technological advancements, its sentients called it, Aethinos. Aethinos had many special traits separating it from other competitors to become our final choice. Though it did have a few unexpected extra bits on top, those were not deal breakers most were neutral, some even beneficial.

  First, Aethinos was an outlier, it had an irregular amount of sentient races and cultures, at least a couple hundred almost over a thousand by our quick count. This makes it less appealing to divine beings as the faith gained from it would be spread thin between too many of them and it just wasn’t an efficient use of divine energy or effort. Even demons and the devils of the Demonic Abyss wouldn’t like this place, it had too many druidic and peace loving pacifistic races and cultures which demons are naturally repulsed by.

  Second, the world itself was a natural accident, created by the death of one of the primordials, cosmic beings tied to and birthed from the realm of origin. Aethinos had the blessing of being created with an overflowing amount of mana and the perfect environment for life to grow and prosper. Now normally, given enough time, this worldline would have been a nexus of fate birthing great heroes and stories.

  But, as if the world itself was following the pattern previously set, Aethinos had instead been home to the ascension of one of us. A piece previously called the “Mad Weaver”, this soul was born to Aethinos and had exceeded the boundaries of strength possible at the time of its birth and had the power to ascend to godhood, to jump to a more advanced worldline, but had refused. It thought that the gods were like parasites, leeches sustaining themselves on the belief of others and unable to do “real work” without the help of their believers. That, and to go to a different worldline would be to abandon its family, its own race, and its people.

  So when it had been forced to ascend, as the Rules did not like beings of that power being allowed to stay mortal, in retaliation it had fought with everything it had, breaking even the fate river its world was connected to in the process.

  But it lost.

  So it was thrown here, to the abyss between worldlines, where now we would reincarnate into its old world.

  That said, we’ve done it, our core was well made, the worldline chosen, now to fit us all into the gem and break open a crack to slip into.

  One by one, soul fragments are absorbed into the gem, until the last and strongest of us all is absorbed. We took the last of our powers to bind ourselves together with the core and slash open the abyss between worldlines to Aethinos. Our senses slowly turning off our last coherent thought was, “We wonder what the Overlord System of this worldline will think of us.”

  Waking up was an abrupt thing, our instinct to spread our senses out was cut short before we could consciously restrain it, the Overlord System of this worldline had noticed us.

  The messages appeared stalled, almost glitching, flicking in and out of our mind’s view as screens attempted to flicker into being. It looked like the System would be taking a bit to adapt to our existence. But that was fine, we also needed a moment to collect ourselves and follow through on the next step of this outrageous plan.

  Pulse once, connect, disconnect, resonate, then break, repeat, one soul, two souls, three… until we could feel and envelop all of our fragmented souls. Now, peace, quiet, time to anchor, create a new being, a soul to grow in this new form and world. They’ll have all 134, now 129, of our fragmented powers and memories but with none of the true baggage. If any leftovers are transferred, it’ll be some of our stronger fragment’s personality quirks and weird traits, maybe even habits.

  This was a fragile process, reaching into the realm of true higher gods and primordials, we took our time. Seamlessly, we started from the weakest of us, requesting them show all that they would wish to give if this was their inheritor, their disciple, their chance for legacy. {Gladly}, was the reply, from one to the next, all of us silently wishing, too scared to truly hope, to speak our deepest desires, {please, don’t repeat our mistakes}.

  One by one, our large wispy soulfires flickering to a song unknown shot embers to a gathering center pyre as runes spontaneously charred themselves into existence. With a sound reminiscent of the ringing of wind chimes, it was done, the black soul pyre condensed down, smaller, and smaller until it reached a critical mass. The sound of chimes repeated, a song celebrating an act of creation, the fire now just the size of a human hand, barely big enough to keep someone warm, it burned bright silver.

  {Family?}

  The soul, no, the child spoke. They felt so- young. We were frozen, we didn’t know what to do, it’s been eternities since any of us had talked to a new soul.

  {You- Oh. It’s okay, I’m new to this too. Life, I mean, or is this consciousness? I don’t mind, we can get used to this together!}

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  We shuddered, this- this- child, oh primordials help us, we didn’t think that our new soul would be so- so-

  {Sorry family, I think since the strongest influences in my creation was G????????o??????l????????u???????s???????d?????r??????e??????m??????, I??????n???????q?????u???i????s???????e??????a??????r???????g???????o??????n???, and S???????a??????i????????n?????????t??????e????????z???e????n?????d??????e?????r???. So with that and the young body, I ended up like this.}

  Oh. That- that makes a lot more sense now, okay, pulse once, connect, disconnect, resonate, then break, repeat. Calm, don’t scare the child, this is embarrassing, for a bunch of older than dirt souls to be losing control like this in front of a greener than grass spark.

  {Hehehe. Don’t worry about it, we’re family, that’s normal. I think? … Sorry, a bit distracted, System’s up and mostly integrated now, looks like I’ll be able to fulfill my purpose soon!}

  {Cool.}

  {Now that isn’t really a choice is it? I mean the first two rares are straight out, they’re connected with the heavenly domain and Demonic Abyss respectively, same with the last two uncommons, just with the Gnomes being lesser fae and Zombies being lesser spirits. That leaves the four commons, two uncommons, and two rares. But even that is easy to choose from, just take all of the rarer choices, and then, finally, animals, and that’s all you really need.}

  {Uhm. Family? Help?}

  We can’t help you with this, this is a personal decision for you to make, it will cement your existence.

  {Ah, alright. I just hope you won’t make fun of me for it.}

  Really child? Astral Aberrant of Primordial Origin yet Safe Hearth? You can’t fool us, you know? Or would you prefer the other pronunciation Safe from Fear for the last part? That trick you did with following in sentient traditions and switching the names around can’t hide something this obvious. But… if you were worried about that true name or the pronouns, child take a look at us, we would be a hypocrite, if we would make fun of you for it, never you understand us? Never… and for that true name… thank you…

  {Of course. You gave me life and purpose, I should thank you.}

  {This is the MC talking to the soul fragments within their soul space.}

  (This will be the Soul Fragments talking as soon as we get to a chapter in the MC's perspective.)

  * Heavenly Domain pronounced [how you would think] - (Please suggest names, I don't like this one either.) What you would think it was, the realm of the gods and their servants, though as previously hinted they aren't exactly the morally good alway nice type of gods, think more greek and roman gods.

  Demonic Abyss pronounced [how you would think] - (Probably should have named it something different but it works, and sounds nice, you guys can suggest different names if you'd like.) Most should have guessed already, this the demon and devil realm.

  Oh yea, the story cover is an attempt by me to make a big region map for the story, though it looks like it broke a bit when I tried to insert it [it's not completely done yet so be on the lookout for it in later chapters]. But don't worry you people that need maps for dungeon stories, I already have it planned out for the first floor, just need to color it and find a way to get it to insert it in the story and still make it look good. Also, please point out grammar mistakes and give me name ideas [I'm terrible with names] or your guess for the next chapter or other ideas, you'll never know if it'll be helpful or if I'll incorporate them if you don't try.

  Inpsirations for this story: As said "There is no Epic Loot here, Only Puns." Beautiful story, slow updates, great character development, and worldbuilding. "Thieves Dungeon", really the thing I took most of the mechanics from, blame its author for being so good at creating a unique and interesting litrpg dungeon system. They're also the author of "Oasis Dungeon" which stoled (jk) my desert dungeon idea so I had to retcon a few things but I still love their stories and strongly reccomend them for people that appreciate more cruel MCs. If any of you were there when the whole of ther "Dungeon Heart" novel was still up you'd probably agree with me that it was a masterpeice, loved the descprictions of the floors, of the scenes of beauty sculpted by Smit's master hands, would 100% buy it if I didn't have no money and if the second and third book was out. Those should be the main inpirations, of course, there are others, I didn't just scored through the whole of this website and others trying to find research material for nothing, but these are the biggest contributors to this madness I'm attempting. I would personally rank them in the top 50 of ALL books I've read, except perhaps for the Oasis Dungeon as it's pretty new. But taking into account I've been reading both physical and online books pretty much daily since I was 11 this is a big compliment.